Human Events Notes on Global Warming

“Global warming made the winter too warm and caused increased snowfall. It made the summer way too hot in one state and much too cool in another. Global warming causes both storms and stagnant air. It causes desertification and flooding. It causes increased malaria while wiping out wetlands. And also it controls the banking system. Basically if there’s weather, it’s a horrible never-before-seen consequence of global warming….

“As I noted earlier, global warming is routinely blamed for unusally warm winters, such as the one that just occurred in Europe. However, the unusally cold and snowy winter the year before was also blamed on global warming, which some postulated had disrupted the Gulf Stream and would thus trigger an Ice Age in Europe. Global warming could cause an Ice Age. Is it hot in here, or is it just the glare from all this ice?

“When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (who became an expert in climate when ordered to serve 1,500 hours of community service as part of a plea-bargained herion-possession charge) famously declared that it was ‘proof’ of global warming. The following year’s mild hurricane season didn’t seem to prove anything, however. Not only is the bar for proof of global warming quite low, the traffic over it seems to go only one way.

“Given such a standard of proof, nearly anything can be linked to global warming. A widely reported news piece from a few months ago told the story of an intrepid group of activists who went to the Arctic to find proof of global warming – and what do you know, they found it! What was this proof? They saw some baby seals sitting on the ice without their mothers around. So obviously…global warming had so stressed the mothers that they abandoned their pups to die – and just before the loud boat full of activists arrived to document their absense. What a coincidence! Come to think of it, I saw a bunch of kids at the mall the other day and their mothers were nowhere to be found. I suspect global warming drove the stressed mothers away, possible to the cooler climate of Bed, Bath & Beyond.

“When sea otters began disappearing off the coast of Alaska, many suspected it could be due to man-made global warming. Then a scientist documented that a local pod of killer whales had learned to eat the little otters like so many furry beer nuts, so immediately people knew that global warming must have driven the killer whales to eating tiny otters.”

-Human Events, Juen 25, 2007, p. 20

For the Love of God and Country, READ THIS!!!

The Americans Who Risked Everything

My father, Rush H. Limbaugh, Jr., delivered this oft-requested address locally a number of times, but it had never before appeared in print until it appeared in The Limbaugh Letter. My dad was renowned for his oratory skills and for his original mind; this speech is, I think, a superb demonstration of both. I will always be grateful to him for instilling in me a passion for the ideas and lives of America’s Founders, as well as a deep appreciation for the inspirational power of words which you will see evidenced here:

“Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor”

It was a glorious morning. The sun was shining and the wind was from the southeast. Up especially early, a tall bony, redheaded young Virginian found time to buy a new thermometer, for which he paid three pounds, fifteen shillings. He also bought gloves for Martha, his wife, who was ill at home.

Thomas Jefferson arrived early at the statehouse. The temperature was 72.5 degrees and the horseflies weren’t nearly so bad at that hour. It was a lovely room, very large, with gleaming white walls. The chairs were comfortable. Facing the single door were two brass fireplaces, but they would not be used today.

The moment the door was shut, and it was always kept locked, the room became an oven. The tall windows were shut, so that loud quarreling voices could not be heard by passersby. Small openings atop the windows allowed a slight stir of air, and also a large number of horseflies. Jefferson records that “the horseflies were dexterous in finding necks, and the silk of stockings was nothing to them.” All discussing was punctuated by the slap of hands on necks.

On the wall at the back, facing the president’s desk, was a panoply — consisting of a drum, swords, and banners seized from Fort Ticonderoga the previous year. Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold had captured the place, shouting that they were taking it “in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!”

Now Congress got to work, promptly taking up an emergency measure about which there was discussion but no dissension. “Resolved: That an application be made to the Committee of Safety of Pennsylvania for a supply of flints for the troops at New York.”

Then Congress transformed itself into a committee of the whole. The Declaration of Independence was read aloud once more, and debate resumed. Though Jefferson was the best writer of all of them, he had been somewhat verbose. Congress hacked the excess away. They did a good job, as a side-by-side comparison of the rough draft and the final text shows. They cut the phrase “by a self-assumed power.” “Climb” was replaced by “must read,” then “must” was eliminated, then the whole sentence, and soon the whole paragraph was cut. Jefferson groaned as they continued what he later called “their depredations.” “Inherent and inalienable rights” came out “certain unalienable rights,” and to this day no one knows who suggested the elegant change.

A total of 86 alterations were made. Almost 500 words were eliminated, leaving 1,337. At last, after three days of wrangling, the document was put to a vote.

Here in this hall Patrick Henry had once thundered: “I am no longer a Virginian, sir, but an American.” But today the loud, sometimes bitter argument stilled, and without fanfare the vote was taken from north to south by colonies, as was the custom. On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted.

There were no trumpets blown. No one stood on his chair and cheered. The afternoon was waning and Congress had no thought of delaying the full calendar of routine business on its hands. For several hours they worked on many other problems before adjourning for the day.

Much To Lose

What kind of men were the 56 signers who adopted the Declaration of Independence and who, by their signing, committed an act of treason against the crown? To each of you, the names Franklin, Adams, Hancock and Jefferson are almost as familiar as household words. Most of us, however, know nothing of the other signers. Who were they? What happened to them?

I imagine that many of you are somewhat surprised at the names not there: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry. All were elsewhere.

Ben Franklin was the only really old man. Eighteen were under 40; three were in their 20s. Of the 56 almost half – 24 – were judges and lawyers. Eleven were merchants, nine were landowners and farmers, and the remaining 12 were doctors, ministers, and politicians.

With only a few exceptions, such as Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, these were men of substantial property. All but two had families. The vast majority were men of education and standing in their communities. They had economic security as few men had in the 18th Century.

Each had more to lose from revolution than he had to gain by it. John Hancock, one of the richest men in America, already had a price of 500 pounds on his head. He signed in enormous letters so that his Majesty could now read his name without glasses and could now double the reward. Ben Franklin wryly noted: “Indeed we must all hang together, otherwise we shall most assuredly hang separately.”

Fat Benjamin Harrison of Virginia told tiny Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts: “With me it will all be over in a minute, but you, you will be dancing on air an hour after I am gone.”

These men knew what they risked. The penalty for treason was death by hanging. And remember, a great British fleet was already at anchor in New York Harbor.

They were sober men. There were no dreamy-eyed intellectuals or draft card burners here. They were far from hot-eyed fanatics yammering for an explosion. They simply asked for the status quo. It was change they resisted. It was equality with the mother country they desired. It was taxation with representation they sought. They were all conservatives, yet they rebelled.

It was principle, not property, that had brought these men to Philadelphia. Two of them became presidents of the United States. Seven of them became state governors. One died in office as vice president of the United States. Several would go on to be U.S. Senators. One, the richest man in America, in 1828 founded the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. One, a delegate from Philadelphia, was the only real poet, musician and philosopher of the signers. (It was he, Francis Hopkinson not Betsy Ross who designed the United States flag.)

Richard Henry Lee, a delegate from Virginia, had introduced the resolution to adopt the Declaration of Independence in June of 1776. He was prophetic in his concluding remarks: “Why then sir, why do we longer delay? Why still deliberate? Let this happy day give birth to an American Republic. Let her arise not to devastate and to conquer but to reestablish the reign of peace and law.

“The eyes of Europe are fixed upon us. She demands of us a living example of freedom that may exhibit a contrast in the felicity of the citizen to the ever-increasing tyranny which desolates her polluted shores. She invites us to prepare an asylum where the unhappy may find solace, and the persecuted repost.

“If we are not this day wanting in our duty, the names of the American Legislatures of 1776 will be placed by posterity at the side of all of those whose memory has been and ever will be dear to virtuous men and good citizens.”

Though the resolution was formally adopted July 4, it was not until July 8 that two of the states authorized their delegates to sign, and it was not until August 2 that the signers met at Philadelphia to actually put their names to the Declaration.

William Ellery, delegate from Rhode Island, was curious to see the signers’ faces as they committed this supreme act of personal courage. He saw some men sign quickly, “but in no face was he able to discern real fear.” Stephan Hopkins, Ellery’s colleague from Rhode Island, was a man past 60. As he signed with a shaking pen, he declared: “My hand trembles, but my heart does not.”

“Most Glorious Service”

Even before the list was published, the British marked down every member of Congress suspected of having put his name to treason. All of them became the objects of vicious manhunts. Some were taken. Some, like Jefferson, had narrow escapes. All who had property or families near British strongholds suffered.

· Francis Lewis, New York delegate saw his home plundered — and his estates in what is now Harlem — completely destroyed by British Soldiers. Mrs. Lewis was captured and treated with great brutality. Though she was later exchanged for two British prisoners through the efforts of Congress, she died from the effects of her abuse.

· William Floyd, another New York delegate, was able to escape with his wife and children across Long Island Sound to Connecticut, where they lived as refugees without income for seven years. When they came home they found a devastated ruin.

· Philips Livingstone had all his great holdings in New York confiscated and his family driven out of their home. Livingstone died in 1778 still working in Congress for the cause.

· Louis Morris, the fourth New York delegate, saw all his timber, crops, and livestock taken. For seven years he was barred from his home and family.

· John Hart of Trenton, New Jersey, risked his life to return home to see his dying wife. Hessian soldiers rode after him, and he escaped in the woods. While his wife lay on her deathbed, the soldiers ruined his farm and wrecked his homestead. Hart, 65, slept in caves and woods as he was hunted across the countryside. When at long last, emaciated by hardship, he was able to sneak home, he found his wife had already been buried, and his 13 children taken away. He never saw them again. He died a broken man in 1779, without ever finding his family.

· Dr. John Witherspoon, signer, was president of the College of New Jersey, later called Princeton. The British occupied the town of Princeton, and billeted troops in the college. They trampled and burned the finest college library in the country.

· Judge Richard Stockton, another New Jersey delegate signer, had rushed back to his estate in an effort to evacuate his wife and children. The family found refuge with friends, but a Tory sympathizer betrayed them. Judge Stockton was pulled from bed in the night and brutally beaten by the arresting soldiers. Thrown into a common jail, he was deliberately starved. Congress finally arranged for Stockton’s parole, but his health was ruined. The judge was released as an invalid, when he could no longer harm the British cause. He returned home to find his estate looted and did not live to see the triumph of the Revolution. His family was forced to live off charity.

· Robert Morris, merchant prince of Philadelphia, delegate and signer, met Washington’s appeals and pleas for money year after year. He made and raised arms and provisions which made it possible for Washington to cross the Delaware at Trenton. In the process he lost 150 ships at sea, bleeding his own fortune and credit almost dry.

· George Clymer, Pennsylvania signer, escaped with his family from their home, but their property was completely destroyed by the British in the Germantown and Brandywine campaigns.

· Dr. Benjamin Rush, also from Pennsylvania, was forced to flee to Maryland. As a heroic surgeon with the army, Rush had several narrow escapes.

· John Martin, a Tory in his views previous to the debate, lived in a strongly loyalist area of Pennsylvania. When he came out for independence, most of his neighbors and even some of his relatives ostracized him. He was a sensitive and troubled man, and many believed this action killed him. When he died in 1777, his last words to his tormentors were: “Tell them that they will live to see the hour when they shall acknowledge it [the signing] to have been the most glorious service that I have ever rendered to my country.”

· William Ellery, Rhode Island delegate, saw his property and home burned to the ground.

· Thomas Lynch, Jr., South Carolina delegate, had his health broken from privation and exposures while serving as a company commander in the military. His doctors ordered him to seek a cure in the West Indies and on the voyage, he and his young bride were drowned at sea.

· Edward Rutledge, Arthur Middleton, and Thomas Heyward, Jr., the other three South Carolina signers, were taken by the British in the siege of Charleston. They were carried as prisoners of war to St. Augustine, Florida, where they were singled out for indignities. They were exchanged at the end of the war, the British in the meantime having completely devastated their large landholdings and estates.

· Thomas Nelson, signer of Virginia, was at the front in command of the Virginia military forces. With British General Charles Cornwallis in Yorktown, fire from 70 heavy American guns began to destroy Yorktown piece by piece. Lord Cornwallis and his staff moved their headquarters into Nelson’s palatial home. While American cannonballs were making a shambles of the town, the house of Governor Nelson remained untouched. Nelson turned in rage to the American gunners and asked, “Why do you spare my home?” They replied, “Sir, out of respect to you.” Nelson cried, “Give me the cannon!” and fired on his magnificent home himself, smashing it to bits. But Nelson’s sacrifice was not quite over. He had raised $2 million for the Revolutionary cause by pledging his own estates. When the loans came due, a newer peacetime Congress refused to honor them, and Nelson’s property was forfeited. He was never reimbursed. He died, impoverished, a few years later at the age of 50.

Lives, Fortunes, Honor

Of those 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died of wounds or hardships during the war. Five were captured and imprisoned, in each case with brutal treatment. Several lost wives, sons or entire families. One lost his 13 children. Two wives were brutally treated. All were at one time or another the victims of manhunts and driven from their homes. Twelve signers had their homes completely burned. Seventeen lost everything they owned. Yet not one defected or went back on his pledged word. Their honor, and the nation they sacrificed so much to create is still intact.

And, finally, there is the New Jersey signer, Abraham Clark.

He gave two sons to the officer corps in the Revolutionary Army. They were captured and sent to that infamous British prison hulk afloat in New York Harbor known as the hell ship Jersey, where 11,000 American captives were to die. The younger Clarks were treated with a special brutality because of their father. One was put in solitary and given no food. With the end almost in sight, with the war almost won, no one could have blamed Abraham Clark for acceding to the British request when they offered him his sons’ lives if he would recant and come out for the King and Parliament. The utter despair in this man’s heart, the anguish in his very soul, must reach out to each one of us down through 200 years with his answer: “No.”

The 56 signers of the Declaration Of Independence proved by their every deed that they made no idle boast when they composed the most magnificent curtain line in history. “And for the support of this Declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

My friends, I know you have a copy of the Declaration of Independence somewhere around the house – in an old history book (newer ones may well omit it), an encyclopedia, or one of those artificially aged “parchments” we all got in school years ago. I suggest that each of you take the time this month to read through the text of the Declaration, one of the most noble and beautiful political documents in human history.

There is no more profound sentence than this: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness…”

These are far more than mere poetic words. The underlying ideas that infuse every sentence of this treatise have sustained this nation for more than two centuries. They were forged in the crucible of great sacrifice. They are living words that spring from and satisfy the deepest cries for liberty in the human spirit.

“Sacred honor” isn’t a phrase we use much these days, but every American life is touched by the bounty of this, the Founders’ legacy. It is freedom, tested by blood, and watered with tears.

- Rush Limbaugh III

Gas

The Americans Who Risked Everything

My father, Rush H. Limbaugh, Jr., delivered this oft-requested address locally a number of times, but it had never before appeared in print until it appeared in The Limbaugh Letter. My dad was renowned for his oratory skills and for his original mind; this speech is, I think, a superb demonstration of both. I will always be grateful to him for instilling in me a passion for the ideas and lives of America’s Founders, as well as a deep appreciation for the inspirational power of words which you will see evidenced here:

“Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor”

It was a glorious morning. The sun was shining and the wind was from the southeast. Up especially early, a tall bony, redheaded young Virginian found time to buy a new thermometer, for which he paid three pounds, fifteen shillings. He also bought gloves for Martha, his wife, who was ill at home.

Thomas Jefferson arrived early at the statehouse. The temperature was 72.5 degrees and the horseflies weren’t nearly so bad at that hour. It was a lovely room, very large, with gleaming white walls. The chairs were comfortable. Facing the single door were two brass fireplaces, but they would not be used today.

The moment the door was shut, and it was always kept locked, the room became an oven. The tall windows were shut, so that loud quarreling voices could not be heard by passersby. Small openings atop the windows allowed a slight stir of air, and also a large number of horseflies. Jefferson records that “the horseflies were dexterous in finding necks, and the silk of stockings was nothing to them.” All discussing was punctuated by the slap of hands on necks.

On the wall at the back, facing the president’s desk, was a panoply — consisting of a drum, swords, and banners seized from Fort Ticonderoga the previous year. Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold had captured the place, shouting that they were taking it “in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!”

Now Congress got to work, promptly taking up an emergency measure about which there was discussion but no dissension. “Resolved: That an application be made to the Committee of Safety of Pennsylvania for a supply of flints for the troops at New York.”

Then Congress transformed itself into a committee of the whole. The Declaration of Independence was read aloud once more, and debate resumed. Though Jefferson was the best writer of all of them, he had been somewhat verbose. Congress hacked the excess away. They did a good job, as a side-by-side comparison of the rough draft and the final text shows. They cut the phrase “by a self-assumed power.” “Climb” was replaced by “must read,” then “must” was eliminated, then the whole sentence, and soon the whole paragraph was cut. Jefferson groaned as they continued what he later called “their depredations.” “Inherent and inalienable rights” came out “certain unalienable rights,” and to this day no one knows who suggested the elegant change.

A total of 86 alterations were made. Almost 500 words were eliminated, leaving 1,337. At last, after three days of wrangling, the document was put to a vote.

Here in this hall Patrick Henry had once thundered: “I am no longer a Virginian, sir, but an American.” But today the loud, sometimes bitter argument stilled, and without fanfare the vote was taken from north to south by colonies, as was the custom. On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted.

There were no trumpets blown. No one stood on his chair and cheered. The afternoon was waning and Congress had no thought of delaying the full calendar of routine business on its hands. For several hours they worked on many other problems before adjourning for the day.

Much To Lose

What kind of men were the 56 signers who adopted the Declaration of Independence and who, by their signing, committed an act of treason against the crown? To each of you, the names Franklin, Adams, Hancock and Jefferson are almost as familiar as household words. Most of us, however, know nothing of the other signers. Who were they? What happened to them?

I imagine that many of you are somewhat surprised at the names not there: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry. All were elsewhere.

Ben Franklin was the only really old man. Eighteen were under 40; three were in their 20s. Of the 56 almost half – 24 – were judges and lawyers. Eleven were merchants, nine were landowners and farmers, and the remaining 12 were doctors, ministers, and politicians.

With only a few exceptions, such as Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, these were men of substantial property. All but two had families. The vast majority were men of education and standing in their communities. They had economic security as few men had in the 18th Century.

Each had more to lose from revolution than he had to gain by it. John Hancock, one of the richest men in America, already had a price of 500 pounds on his head. He signed in enormous letters so that his Majesty could now read his name without glasses and could now double the reward. Ben Franklin wryly noted: “Indeed we must all hang together, otherwise we shall most assuredly hang separately.”

Fat Benjamin Harrison of Virginia told tiny Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts: “With me it will all be over in a minute, but you, you will be dancing on air an hour after I am gone.”

These men knew what they risked. The penalty for treason was death by hanging. And remember, a great British fleet was already at anchor in New York Harbor.

They were sober men. There were no dreamy-eyed intellectuals or draft card burners here. They were far from hot-eyed fanatics yammering for an explosion. They simply asked for the status quo. It was change they resisted. It was equality with the mother country they desired. It was taxation with representation they sought. They were all conservatives, yet they rebelled.

It was principle, not property, that had brought these men to Philadelphia. Two of them became presidents of the United States. Seven of them became state governors. One died in office as vice president of the United States. Several would go on to be U.S. Senators. One, the richest man in America, in 1828 founded the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. One, a delegate from Philadelphia, was the only real poet, musician and philosopher of the signers. (It was he, Francis Hopkinson not Betsy Ross who designed the United States flag.)

Richard Henry Lee, a delegate from Virginia, had introduced the resolution to adopt the Declaration of Independence in June of 1776. He was prophetic in his concluding remarks: “Why then sir, why do we longer delay? Why still deliberate? Let this happy day give birth to an American Republic. Let her arise not to devastate and to conquer but to reestablish the reign of peace and law.

“The eyes of Europe are fixed upon us. She demands of us a living example of freedom that may exhibit a contrast in the felicity of the citizen to the ever-increasing tyranny which desolates her polluted shores. She invites us to prepare an asylum where the unhappy may find solace, and the persecuted repost.

“If we are not this day wanting in our duty, the names of the American Legislatures of 1776 will be placed by posterity at the side of all of those whose memory has been and ever will be dear to virtuous men and good citizens.”

Though the resolution was formally adopted July 4, it was not until July 8 that two of the states authorized their delegates to sign, and it was not until August 2 that the signers met at Philadelphia to actually put their names to the Declaration.

William Ellery, delegate from Rhode Island, was curious to see the signers’ faces as they committed this supreme act of personal courage. He saw some men sign quickly, “but in no face was he able to discern real fear.” Stephan Hopkins, Ellery’s colleague from Rhode Island, was a man past 60. As he signed with a shaking pen, he declared: “My hand trembles, but my heart does not.”

“Most Glorious Service”

Even before the list was published, the British marked down every member of Congress suspected of having put his name to treason. All of them became the objects of vicious manhunts. Some were taken. Some, like Jefferson, had narrow escapes. All who had property or families near British strongholds suffered.

· Francis Lewis, New York delegate saw his home plundered — and his estates in what is now Harlem — completely destroyed by British Soldiers. Mrs. Lewis was captured and treated with great brutality. Though she was later exchanged for two British prisoners through the efforts of Congress, she died from the effects of her abuse.

· William Floyd, another New York delegate, was able to escape with his wife and children across Long Island Sound to Connecticut, where they lived as refugees without income for seven years. When they came home they found a devastated ruin.

· Philips Livingstone had all his great holdings in New York confiscated and his family driven out of their home. Livingstone died in 1778 still working in Congress for the cause.

· Louis Morris, the fourth New York delegate, saw all his timber, crops, and livestock taken. For seven years he was barred from his home and family.

· John Hart of Trenton, New Jersey, risked his life to return home to see his dying wife. Hessian soldiers rode after him, and he escaped in the woods. While his wife lay on her deathbed, the soldiers ruined his farm and wrecked his homestead. Hart, 65, slept in caves and woods as he was hunted across the countryside. When at long last, emaciated by hardship, he was able to sneak home, he found his wife had already been buried, and his 13 children taken away. He never saw them again. He died a broken man in 1779, without ever finding his family.

· Dr. John Witherspoon, signer, was president of the College of New Jersey, later called Princeton. The British occupied the town of Princeton, and billeted troops in the college. They trampled and burned the finest college library in the country.

· Judge Richard Stockton, another New Jersey delegate signer, had rushed back to his estate in an effort to evacuate his wife and children. The family found refuge with friends, but a Tory sympathizer betrayed them. Judge Stockton was pulled from bed in the night and brutally beaten by the arresting soldiers. Thrown into a common jail, he was deliberately starved. Congress finally arranged for Stockton’s parole, but his health was ruined. The judge was released as an invalid, when he could no longer harm the British cause. He returned home to find his estate looted and did not live to see the triumph of the Revolution. His family was forced to live off charity.

· Robert Morris, merchant prince of Philadelphia, delegate and signer, met Washington’s appeals and pleas for money year after year. He made and raised arms and provisions which made it possible for Washington to cross the Delaware at Trenton. In the process he lost 150 ships at sea, bleeding his own fortune and credit almost dry.

· George Clymer, Pennsylvania signer, escaped with his family from their home, but their property was completely destroyed by the British in the Germantown and Brandywine campaigns.

· Dr. Benjamin Rush, also from Pennsylvania, was forced to flee to Maryland. As a heroic surgeon with the army, Rush had several narrow escapes.

· John Martin, a Tory in his views previous to the debate, lived in a strongly loyalist area of Pennsylvania. When he came out for independence, most of his neighbors and even some of his relatives ostracized him. He was a sensitive and troubled man, and many believed this action killed him. When he died in 1777, his last words to his tormentors were: “Tell them that they will live to see the hour when they shall acknowledge it [the signing] to have been the most glorious service that I have ever rendered to my country.”

· William Ellery, Rhode Island delegate, saw his property and home burned to the ground.

· Thomas Lynch, Jr., South Carolina delegate, had his health broken from privation and exposures while serving as a company commander in the military. His doctors ordered him to seek a cure in the West Indies and on the voyage, he and his young bride were drowned at sea.

· Edward Rutledge, Arthur Middleton, and Thomas Heyward, Jr., the other three South Carolina signers, were taken by the British in the siege of Charleston. They were carried as prisoners of war to St. Augustine, Florida, where they were singled out for indignities. They were exchanged at the end of the war, the British in the meantime having completely devastated their large landholdings and estates.

· Thomas Nelson, signer of Virginia, was at the front in command of the Virginia military forces. With British General Charles Cornwallis in Yorktown, fire from 70 heavy American guns began to destroy Yorktown piece by piece. Lord Cornwallis and his staff moved their headquarters into Nelson’s palatial home. While American cannonballs were making a shambles of the town, the house of Governor Nelson remained untouched. Nelson turned in rage to the American gunners and asked, “Why do you spare my home?” They replied, “Sir, out of respect to you.” Nelson cried, “Give me the cannon!” and fired on his magnificent home himself, smashing it to bits. But Nelson’s sacrifice was not quite over. He had raised $2 million for the Revolutionary cause by pledging his own estates. When the loans came due, a newer peacetime Congress refused to honor them, and Nelson’s property was forfeited. He was never reimbursed. He died, impoverished, a few years later at the age of 50.

Lives, Fortunes, Honor

Of those 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died of wounds or hardships during the war. Five were captured and imprisoned, in each case with brutal treatment. Several lost wives, sons or entire families. One lost his 13 children. Two wives were brutally treated. All were at one time or another the victims of manhunts and driven from their homes. Twelve signers had their homes completely burned. Seventeen lost everything they owned. Yet not one defected or went back on his pledged word. Their honor, and the nation they sacrificed so much to create is still intact.

And, finally, there is the New Jersey signer, Abraham Clark.

He gave two sons to the officer corps in the Revolutionary Army. They were captured and sent to that infamous British prison hulk afloat in New York Harbor known as the hell ship Jersey, where 11,000 American captives were to die. The younger Clarks were treated with a special brutality because of their father. One was put in solitary and given no food. With the end almost in sight, with the war almost won, no one could have blamed Abraham Clark for acceding to the British request when they offered him his sons’ lives if he would recant and come out for the King and Parliament. The utter despair in this man’s heart, the anguish in his very soul, must reach out to each one of us down through 200 years with his answer: “No.”

The 56 signers of the Declaration Of Independence proved by their every deed that they made no idle boast when they composed the most magnificent curtain line in history. “And for the support of this Declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

My friends, I know you have a copy of the Declaration of Independence somewhere around the house – in an old history book (newer ones may well omit it), an encyclopedia, or one of those artificially aged “parchments” we all got in school years ago. I suggest that each of you take the time this month to read through the text of the Declaration, one of the most noble and beautiful political documents in human history.

There is no more profound sentence than this: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness…”

These are far more than mere poetic words. The underlying ideas that infuse every sentence of this treatise have sustained this nation for more than two centuries. They were forged in the crucible of great sacrifice. They are living words that spring from and satisfy the deepest cries for liberty in the human spirit.

“Sacred honor” isn’t a phrase we use much these days, but every American life is touched by the bounty of this, the Founders’ legacy. It is freedom, tested by blood, and watered with tears.

- Rush Limbaugh III

Limbaugh Excerpt – long, but this is why you came to college

A Great Column on Fear
March 28, 2007

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is a fascinating, fascinating piece. It’s right up my alley here, and I’m surprised that this piece got published in Newsweek — and furthermore, that it was put on the PMSNBC website. The woman who wrote it is Paula Spencer who lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and I can’t believe she will last there very long after having written this. “We Protect Kids From Everything But Fear — With hand sanitizer and long-sleeved swimsuits, we’re teaching our children a dangerous lesson.” This is in the April 2nd issue of Newsweek, by the way. “Four 11- and 12-year-old girls stood in front of my open pantry, mouths gaping wide. ‘Look! Fruit Roll-Ups!’ ‘Oh, my God! Chocolate-chip cookies!’ ‘You have regular potato chips? We only get the soy kind!’ After 14 years and four kids, I thought I’d feel comfortable as a mother. Instead, I’m increasingly aware of a prickly new sensation: that I’m some kind of renegade.

“Who knew that buying potato chips would become a radical act? Or that letting my daughters walk home from school alone would require administration approval? How did I, a middle-of-the-road mom, become a social deviant? Fear is the new fuel of the American mom. If it’s not fear of her child becoming obese, it’s the fear of falling behind, missing out on a sports scholarship or winding up with a thin college-rejection envelope. Apparently I’m not nervous enough. Last summer while I was loafing in front of the TV with my kids, the most benign things morphed into menaces. For example, the sun: long-sleeved, UV-protective swimsuits were all the rage at my neighborhood pool, while I could barely remember to bring the year-old sunscreen. The water wasn’t safe either: at the beach I saw tots dressed in flotation belts and water wings — for shelling along the shore.” They weren’t even in the water! “And goodbye, cotton candy and hot dogs! At a major-league game I saw moms and dads nix the stuff as if they’d never eaten the occasional ballpark treat.

“As if their children would balloon into juvenile-diabetes statistics if a single swig of sugary soda passed their lips. Half my kids’ friends — who already make A’s and B’s — had summer tutors in order to ‘keep it fresh.’ I thought vacation was for relaxing and recharging. What would our pioneer foremoms think? (You want something to worry about, let me show you frostbite, typhoid and bears!) Heck, what must our own mothers think? (Snap out of it! Go worry about something truly scary, like how you’re going to pay for retirement!) I thought that once the kids were back in school, things would calm down. Instead, a fresh seasonal crop of anxiety sprouted, this time over corruptive candy fund-raisers and insufficient use of hand sanitizer. I know one mom who wants to change her son’s schedule because he doesn’t know anyone in his classes; she’s worried he’ll be ’socially traumatized’ all year.

“Another is afraid of a learning disability she just read about, though her child seems bright and charming to me. And then there’s playground panic. I had to laugh when an Australian study recently found that playground injuries continue to rise despite safety improvements. One of the suspected reasons: the safe new play structures are so boring that kids are taking more risks in order to have fun. The fears are as irrational as they are rampant. Recently my children’s elementary school failed to meet adequate yearly progress goals for a particular minority’s reading progress under the No Child Left Behind Act and was placed on a warning list. This meant parents might gain the right to transfer their children to another school in the district. Never mind that this very same school sent more kids to the district’s gifted program than any other, or that this entire district has the highest SAT scores in the state. The day the news broke, six different moms (none in the affected minority) asked me if I was planning to transfer my kids. From neighborhood pride and joy to threat to child’s future overnight.

“It’s not that I think parents shouldn’t worry about anything. I’m personally petrified of SUV drivers on cell phones. I fret as much as the next mom about how to pay for college. I pray my kids won’t wander onto MySpace and post something dumb.” Hey, that’s probably already happened. “But you can’t go around afraid of everything. It’s too exhausting! No matter how careful you are, bad stuff happens (diaper rash, stitches, all your friends assigned to another class). And it’s seldom the end of the world. Watching my daughter’s friends ogle my pantry, I realized there’s one big, legitimate fear that I haven’t heard anybody mention: what’s the effect of our collective paranoia on the kids? Yes, these very kids we want to be so self-sufficient, responsible, confident, happy and creative (not to mention not food-obsessed).

“They’re growing up thinking these weirdly weenie views are healthy and normal. Walking out my front door that day, each girl happily clutched a plastic baggie stuffed with the exotic kid snacks that my daughter had doled out in pity. I may be a rebel mom, but at least I’m not afraid of a chocolate-chip cookie.” This is right up my alley. I don’t know whether this woman, Paula Spencer, realizes just how squarely she has hit the nail on the head here. I’m sure you’ve seen this. (It’s been floating around the Internet for I don’t know how long.) I’m 56, and it lists the horrors that we survived growing up compared to the attempt to sanitize children’s lives today. Global warming and all of these other political fears get thrown into this mix, too, and it works. I mean, you have little children who can’t sleep at night now because they think that we’re killing polar bears when in fact polar bears are killing panda bears in the Berlin Zoo! (Well, they play a role in it, so it’s said. Details of that coming up.)

We have all of this paranoia: “This is going to cause this! This is going to get you sick! This is going to get you this! This is going to cause that,” and every day there’s more of it released, and it’s just absurd. So she’s right. There is a climate out there that’s creating paranoia and fear of nature, human and otherwise, to the point that people are expecting that it’s entirely possible to have a flawless existence — one with little danger, one with hardly any disappointment, one with no failure — and we want to shield all of our young people from the slightest bit of confrontation, the slightest bit of pain, discomfort, and all of the lessons that life teaches. These fears that are being promulgated by Nanny State liberals are actually stunting the growth of young kids. They’re going to grow up and they’re going to become adults, and the fears are going to be realized and they’re going to be passed on, and they’re not going to have the slightest ability to cope with what the real world is really all about once they leave their parents’ house, leave the protected environment of a grade school or what have you.

This is something that… Now, I remember when it first hit me. We go back to the early nineties, and it’s one of these water volleyball games up on Croton-on-Hudson. I’ve told you about it. It was at Roger Ailes’ house. These were fun events, and we didn’t cut the women any slack. Women and men were on the same teams on opposite sides of the net. Nobody went easy on slamming the ball, dunking it, if a woman was in there. It was water volleyball, and everybody had a great time. There was no problem whatsoever. After one of these things we always had a barbecue, sat around and chewed the fat. Some 26-year-old school teacher, who was a babe, started talking about how we’re pushing kids too fast.

“We’re just pushing them too hard. We’re demanding too much.”

I was appalled. I said, “What do you mean pushing them too hard?”

“We’re trying to make them learn too much too soon. We’re trying to make them grow up. We need to relax and just let these kids find their own way.”

“So what? You want the inmates to run the asylum?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, you want the kids to tell you when they want to learn and what they want to learn and what they aren’t going to learn and when they are going to show up and when they’re not going to show up, and when they’re going to leave?”

“Well, I just think we’re being too hard. We’re pushing them too hard. Our expectations are too high.”

I said, “Expectations are too high? That’s exactly how you get more out of them! It’s when they’re young. Why do you think most people are in school at that age? Because they don’t know diddly-squat and that’s when they have the energy to soak it all up and learn it! It’s when they have the energy to study and do all these things. They don’t have any other responsibilities. That’s theirs. They’re too young to go out and earn a living. This is what they have to do. We need an educated society. If you cut back on it, you’re going to create a generation of blithering idiots.”

It became a knock-down, drag-out. “You’re the problem,” she said. “People like you are the problem. You’re just a slave driver!”

I said, “I don’t drive any slaves. I don’t have any kids, but I’m damn glad that my kids aren’t being taught by you because every night I’d have to do a little mind reworking after you’d programmed them into a bunch of marshmallow men robots.”

“What are you saying?”

“You say we’re not pushing them hard enough. I want my kid to learn. I want my kid to think — I would want my kid to know that there are great expectations! I want him reaching for heights that he doesn’t think he can get to.”

“Well, that sets him up for disappointment. What if he fails?”

“We all fail! Are you what you really wanted to be? Have you reached your life’s dream teaching school and telling us that it’s too much the way we’re doing it? Have you really reached your dream? You’re 26 years old. Is that it for you?”

“I resent that question. I’m doing this because I love children.”

“I’m sure you do love children, but you’re not doing anything if this is the way you’re teaching them. You’re not prepping them for anything other than to be a bunch of softies, and you’re nowhere near getting their full potential out of them.”

“Well, how do you know what their full potential is?”

“Well, see that’s the basic difference between you and me, because I think most people have far more potential than they realize themselves. Most people have a comfort level, and when they get there, they stop but most people have the ability to go far beyond their comfort level if they’re just inspired and motivated — and you don’t inspire people and you don’t motivate people by acquiescing to their cries and moans that it’s too tough.” I asked her, “How are you at math?”

“Well, I’m not the best at math, but I don’t teach math.”

I said, “It doesn’t matter. You know why you’re not very good at math? Because you’ve been told that math is tough for women, that women don’t do well in math. So you probably didn’t pursue it. Who says women aren’t any good at math? That may be statistically true, but you could learn math if you wanted to, if you had somebody make it interesting to you. But you fall for all this stuff, and now you have these kids falling for all these things, ‘We’re pushing them too hard,’ and so forth.”

This is a problem. It’s exacerbated now, and it’s been amplified I don’t know how many times, to where life is nothing but a constant fear, a constant fear of the food we eat, a constant fear of the cars we drive, a constant fear of the barbecue pit and what it’s doing to the environment, a constant fear. When you’ve got the essence of innocence, these little skulls full of mush who are primed to soak up as much as they can, when all you’re putting into their heads is fear and paranoia and all those things based on lies — like they are killing the polar bears (or worse, their parents are) — I’ll tell you what the purpose this is. It’s to create a whole generation upon generation upon generation of little young leftist radicals who are going to end up incapable of getting any kind of work except going to a nonprofit where they have to rely on the donations of other saps because they’re not prepared to go out and earn a real living with real work in the real world, and there’s a bunch of that happening out there. I don’t have any patience for it whatsoever, and I love running into people that have that kind of attitude, especially people that think they’re doing so much for the “human condition,” and so much for people when they’re not doing diddly-squat.

“I get together with these kids after school. We have a conversation. I teach them arts and crafts and dancing and so forth.”

“Well, that’s all well and good. It makes you feel good, but it’s worthless if that’s it, if that’s the full scope of what you think you’re doing for kids.”

“Well, it’s keeping them off the streets! It’s keeping them away from drugs!”

“I appreciate that, but it’s far beneath all that they’re capable of doing.”

“We have to build their self-esteem.”

“The best way to build self-esteem is through achievement and accomplishment, not by taking the self-esteem of others and trying to whittle it down.”

We had a story not long ago. The promotion of all this self-esteem in school is causing all kinds of problems, because we have a bunch of ego freaks running around who don’t deserve to have the huge egos! “I have been taught to love myself and I love myself and I’m good,” and they have no reason for it. They’ve just been told that that’s a justifiable way to behave and have an attitude. They get out there, and they get crushed by reality. The first time they go out for a job interview, and they’re treated like just one of a million of the ants that are showing up, and when they’re 24 and don’t have the 5,000-square-foot house that they grew up in, then all of a sudden it’s Bush’s fault and the country sucks or what have you.

END TRANSCRIPT

Background Material:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17770831/site/newsweek/

A Fitting Valentine’s Day Story

Vasectomy may put men at risk for type of dementia

CHICAGO — Northwestern University researchers have discovered men with an unusual form of dementia have a higher rate of vasectomy than men the same age who are cognitively normal.

The dementia is Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA), a neurological disease in which people have trouble recalling and understanding words. In PPA, people lose the ability to express themselves and understand speech. It differs from typical Alzheimer’s disease in which a person’s memory becomes impaired.

Sandra Weintraub, principal investigator and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and of neurology at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, began investigating a possible link between the surgery and PPA when one of her male patients connected the onset of his language problem at age 43 to the period after his vasectomy.

At a twice-yearly Chicago support group for PPA patients Weintraub sees from around the country, the male patient rushed into the room and asked the men sitting there, “OK, guys, how many of you have PPA?” Nine hands went up.

“How many of you had a vasectomy?” he demanded next. Eight hands shot up.

Weintraub and her team of researchers surveyed 47 men with PPA who were being treated at Northwestern’s Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center and 57 men with no cognitive impairment who were community volunteers. They ranged from 55 to 80 years old.

Of the non-impaired men, 16 percent had undergone a vasectomy. In contrast, 40 percent of the men with PPA had had the surgery.

“That’s a huge difference,” said Weintraub, director of neuropsychology in the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center. “It doesn’t mean having a vasectomy will give you this disease, but it may be a risk factor to increase your chance of getting it.”

In addition, the men who had undergone a vasectomy developed PPA at a younger age (58 years) than men with PPA who hadn’t had one (62 years.)

While PPA robs people of their ability to speak and understand language, an unusual twist of the disease is patients are still able to maintain their hobbies and perform other complicated tasks for a number of years before other symptoms develop. Some people garden, build cabinets and even navigate a city subway system. By contrast, Alzheimer’s patients lose interest in their hobbies, family life and may become idle. As PPA progresses over a number of years, however, patients eventually lose their ability to function independently.

Preliminary evidence from the study also seemed to connect another form of dementia to a vasectomy. In a smaller group of 30 men with a dementia called frontotemporal dementia (FTD,) 37 percent had undergone a vasectomy. The earliest symptoms of FTD are personality changes, lack of judgment and bizarre behavior. As in PPA, FTD usually starts at an earlier age, in the 40s and 50s.

One of Weintraub’s patients with FTD was eating lunch in a restaurant with his family and excused himself to go to the bathroom. When he hadn’t returned after 10 minutes, his sons went to investigate. They found him doing pushups on the bathroom floor. Other FTD patients begin shoplifting, compulsively gambling, misspending large amounts of money or become sexually demanding.

The most common form of dementia caused by brain deterioration in individuals over age 65 is Alzheimer’s disease. Weintraub did not find an increased rate of vasectomy in patients with Alzheimer’s.

Many patients with FTD and PPA share a common brain disease that is completely different from Alzheimer’s. Whether a patient will get the behavioral or language problems depends on where the disease causes the most destruction in the brain. In FTD, most of the damage is in the frontal lobes; in PPA, it’s in the language centers of the left hemisphere of the brain.

Weintraub theorizes a vasectomy may raise the risk of PPA (and possibly FTD) because the surgery breeches the protective barrier between the blood and the testes, called the blood-testis barrier.

Certain organs – including the testes and the brain – exist in what is the equivalent of a gated community in the body. Tiny tubes within the testes (in which sperm are produced) are protected by a physical barrier of Sertoli cells. The tight connections between these cells prevent blood-borne infections and poisonous molecules from entering the semen.

After a vasectomy, however, the protective barrier is broken and semen mixes into the blood. The immune system recognizes the sperm as invading foreign agents and produces anti-sperm antibodies in 60 to 70 percent of men.

Weintraub said these antibodies might cross the blood-brain-barrier and cause damage resulting in dementia. “There are other neurological models of disease which you can use as a parallel,” Weintraub said. Certain malignant tumors produce antibodies that reach the brain and cause an illness similar to encephalitis, she noted.

The next step in Weintraub’s research will be to launch a national study to see if her results will be confirmed in a larger population.

“I don’t want to scare anyone away from getting a vasectomy,” Weintraub stressed. “It’s obviously a major birth control alternative. This is just a correlational observation,” she said of the dementia connection. “We need to do more research to find out.”

###
The research was conducted as part of an Alzheimer’s Disease Core Center Grant from the National Institute on Aging.

World Opinion and Evil

“World opinion” is worthless
By Dennis Prager
Tuesday, August 1, 2006

If you are ever morally confused about a major world issue, here is a rule that is almost never violated: Whenever you hear that “world opinion” holds a view, assume it is morally wrong.

And here is a related rule if your religious or national or ethnic group ever suffers horrific persecution: “World opinion” will never do a thing for you. Never.

“World opinion” has little or nothing to say about the world’s greatest evils and regularly condemns those who fight evil.

The history of “world opinion” regarding the greatest mass murders and cruelties on the planet is one of relentless apathy.

Ask the 1.5 million Armenians massacred by the Ottoman Turks;

or the 6 million Ukrainians slaughtered by Stalin;

or the tens of millions of other Soviet citizens killed by Stalin’s Soviet Union;

or the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their helpers throughout Europe;

or the 60 million Chinese butchered by Mao;

or the 2 million Cambodians murdered by Pol Pot;

or the millions killed and enslaved in Sudan;

or the Tutsis murdered in Rwanda’s genocide;

or the millions starved to death and enslaved in North Korea;

or the million Tibetans killed by the Chinese;

or the million-plus Afghans put to death by Brezhnev’s Soviet Union.

Ask any of these poor souls, or the hundreds of millions of others slaughtered, tortured, raped and enslaved in the last 100 years, if “world opinion” did anything for them.

On the other hand, we learn that “world opinion” is quite exercised over Israel’s unintentional killing of a few hundred Lebanese civilians behind whom hides Hezbollah — a terror group that intentionally sends missiles at Israeli cities and whose announced goals are the annihilation of Israel and the Islamicization of Lebanon. And, of course, “world opinion” was just livid at American abuses of some Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. In fact, “world opinion” is constantly upset with America and Israel, two of the most decent countries on earth, yet silent about the world’s cruelest countries.

Why is this?

Here are four reasons:

First, television news.

It is difficult to overstate the damage done to the world by television news. Even when not driven by political bias — an exceedingly rare occurrence globally — television news presents a thoroughly distorted picture of the world. Because it is almost entirely dependent upon pictures, TV news is only capable of showing human suffering in, or caused by, free countries. So even if the BBC or CNN were interested in showing the suffering of millions of Sudanese blacks or North Koreans — and they are not interested in so doing — they cannot do it because reporters cannot visit Sudan or North Korea and video freely. Likewise, China’s decimation and annexation of Tibet, one of the world’s oldest ongoing civilizations, never made it to television.

Second, “world opinion” is shaped by the same lack of courage that shapes most individual human beings’ behavior. This is another aspect of the problem of the distorted way news is presented. It takes courage to report the evil of evil regimes; it takes no courage to report on the flaws of decent societies. Reporters who went into Afghanistan without the Soviet Union’s permission were killed. Reporters would risk their lives to get critical stories out of Tibet, North Korea and other areas where vicious regimes rule. But to report on America’s bad deeds in Iraq (not to mention at home) or Israel’s is relatively effortless, and you surely won’t get killed. Indeed, you may well win a Pulitzer Prize.

Third, “world opinion” bends toward power. To cite the Israel example, “world opinion” far more fears alienating the largest producers of oil and 1 billion Muslims than it fears alienating tiny Israel and the world’s 13 million Jews. And not only because of oil and numbers. When you offend Muslims, you risk getting a fatwa, having your editorial offices burned down or receiving death threats. Jews don’t burn down their critics’ offices, issue fatwas or send death threats, let alone act on such threats.

Fourth, those who don’t fight evil condemn those who do. “World opinion” doesn’t confront real evils, but it has a particular animus toward those who do — most notably today America and Israel.

The moment one recognizes “world opinion” for what it is — a statement of moral cowardice, one is longer enthralled by the term. That “world opinion” at this moment allegedly loathes America and Israel is a badge of honor to be worn proudly by those countries. It is when “world opinion” and its news media start liking you that you should wonder if you’ve lost your way.

Dennis Prager is a radio show host, contributing columinst for Townhall.com, and author of 4 books including Happiness Is a Serious Problem: A Human Nature Repair Manual.

When Tolerance is Intolerant

When Tolerance Is Intolerant

Greg Koukl

There’s one word that can stop you in your track. That word is “tolerance.”

Let’s take a look at the confusing and mistaken ways tolerance is used in our culture today.

Using the modern definition of tolerance, you will see that no one is tolerant, or ever can be. It’s what my friend Frank Beckwith calls the “passive aggressive tolerance trick.” Let’s start with a real life example.

I had the privilege of speaking to seniors at a Christian high school in Des Moines. I wanted to alert them to this “tolerance trick,” but I also wanted to learn how much they had already been taken in by it. I began by writing two sentences on the board

“All views have equal merit and none should be considered better than another.”

“Jesus is the Messiah and Judaism is wrong for rejecting that.”

They all nodded in agreement as I wrote the first sentence. As soon as I finished writing the second, though, hands flew up. “You can’t say that,” a coed challenged, clearly annoyed. “That’s disrespectful. How would you like it if someone said you were wrong?”

“In fact, that happens to me all the time,” I pointed out, “including right now with you. But why should it bother me that someone thinks I’m wrong?”

“It’s intolerant,” she said, noting that the second statement violated the first statement. What she didn’t see was that the first statement also violated itself.

I pointed to the first statement and asked, “Is this a view, the idea that all views have equal merit and none should be considered better than another?” They agreed.

Then I pointed to the second statement—the “intolerant” one—and asked the same question: “Is this a view?” They studied the sentence for a moment. Slowly my point began to dawn on them. They’d been taken in by the tolerance trick.

If all views have equal merit, then the view that Christians have a better view on Jesus than Jews is just as true as the idea that Jews have a better view on Jesus than Christians. But this is hopelessly contradictory. If the first statement is what tolerance amounts to, then no one can be tolerant because “tolerance” turns out to be gibberish.

“Would you like to know how to get out of this dilemma?” I asked. They nodded. “Return to the classic view of tolerance and reject this modern distortion.” Then I wrote these two principles on the board:

“Be egalitarian regarding persons.”

“Be elitist regarding ideas.”[1]

The first principle is true tolerance, what might be called “civility.” It can loosely be equated with the word “respect.” Tolerance applies to how we treat people we disagree with, not how we treat ideas we think false. Tolerance requires that every person is treated courteously, no matter what her view, not that all views have equal worth, merit, or truth.

Don’t let this new notion of tolerance intimidate you. Treat all people with respect, but be willing to show them where their ideas have gone wrong. The modern notion of tolerance actually turns this value on its head. It’s one of the first responses deployed when you take exception with what someone has said. “You’re intolerant.”

To say I’m intolerant because I disagree with someone’s ideas is confused. The view that one person’s ideas are no better or truer than another’s is simply absurd and contradictory. To argue that some views are false, immoral, or just plain silly does not violate any meaningful definition or standard of tolerance.

The irony is that according to the classical notion of tolerance, you can’t tolerate someone unless you disagree with him. We don’t “tolerate” people who share our views. They’re on our side. There’s nothing to “put up” with. Tolerance is reserved for those who we think are wrong, yet we still choose to treat them decently and with respect.

This essential element of classical tolerance—elitism regarding ideas—has been completely lost in the modern distortion of the concept. Nowadays if you think someone is wrong, you’re called intolerant no matter how you treat them.

Whenever you’re charged with intolerance, always ask for a definition, then point out the contradiction built in to this new view.

Most of what passes for tolerance today is intellectual cowardice, a fear of intelligent engagement. Those who brandish the word “intolerant” are unwilling to be challenged by other views, to grapple with contrary opinions, or even to consider them. It’s easier to hurl an insult—“you intolerant bigot”—than to confront the idea and either refute it or be changed by it. In the modern era, “tolerance” has become intolerance.

As ambassadors for Christ, however, we choose the more courageous path. In Paul’s words, “We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians 10:5). In a gracious and artful way, we accurately speak the truth, and then trust God to transform minds.

[1] This way of putting it comes from Peter Kreeft.

Dead End Thoughts About God

Dead-End Thoughts about God

by Greg Koukl

Most speculations about God lead to a dead-end. Here’s what I mean.

Imagine a lonely young man who sits by himself every night and wonders, “Does anyone love me?” He takes comfort in the hope that somewhere there’s a young lady who cares. She hasn’t spoken to him or made her affections known, but he’s sure she exists.

“She’s probably brunette” he muses, “maybe quiet like me, gentle and uncritical.” For years he consoles himself, developing a detailed picture of what she’s like. He’s not concerned that she’s been silent; she’s there (or so he hopes) and that’s what counts.

Our lonely friend has a problem, though. His belief can never be verified. At best, it’s an empty hope, a fairy tale; at worst a sad and pitiful delusion. And in the long run it does him no good. His mystery lover can do nothing for him. He’s at a dead end.

Man, left entirely to his own devices, can speculate about God. He can invent ideas about Him. He can wish and hope and surmise. But man’s ruminations on God rarely rise above mere speculation. One man’s opinion is as good as another’s, and for the most part, just as useless. Like our lonely young man, he clings to an empty hope, a sad delusion. In the end it does him no good because his ideas can never be verified. It’s just guesswork, a dead-end.

But What If…?

But what if our friend goes to the mailbox one day and finds a letter? It’s from a girl who loves him. She’s not a shy brunette, though. She’s a redhead with fire in her blood. Though she loves him, she’s been watching him closely, and there are a few things she doesn’t care for. Can they meet?

This changes everything. It isn’t a dream or a fantasy. What he holds in his hand is concrete, something he can test, something he can act on. It’s a real letter written by a real person who has a real name. She can be known and experienced and loved. What’s more, she can love him tangibly in return.

This is the Christian message: God speaking to man. He doesn’t ask us to guess who He is and what He wants. He sends us a letter, tells us His desires, and asks, “Can we meet?”

Because God has spoken, we can know about Him. But what if we don’t like what we learn? What if He’s more than we bargained for? What if He cramps our style?

What we think we know about God must always be surrendered when God makes the effort to reveal Himself clearly. When He speaks, that’s the end of the debate.

God with a Face

This is why Jesus is so offensive. If you talk about God, everyone smiles and nods approval. The concept of God is general and benign–no real threat. But if you talk about Jesus, sparks fly. Jesus is God with a face, not the fill-in-the-blank variety we conform to our own tastes. He can’t be twisted and distorted and stuffed in our back pocket. And that bothers people.

If God is silent, it’s anyone’s game. We can speculate all we want and think what we like. But if God speaks, then our opinions don’t matter. He’s the authority on what He’s like and what He wants. We have to take Him as He is, shy brunette or fiery redhead, on His terms not ours.