See It For Yourself - This Downtown Salt Lake City Beautification Project

The downtown beautification project is captured in this computer animation.

See it for yourself and enjoy!

http://www.downtownrising.com/city_creek/flash/tourVid_large.php

Once there, click on the video.

Obama's Leftism - A deeper Examination

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/obama-s-leftism-12961

A colleague scoffs at the idea of Obama being a Marxist. Then, at least entertain this possibility in Commentary.

Amid the Gay Marriage Controversy, Read These Ideas

http://manwomanmarriage.blogspot.com/

A compilation of important articles.
Suggestions are welcome.
Truth is the object.

Replenishing the Soul at LDS General Conference

My soul drinks deeply from the source of living waters during conference.

How is it that they know so well the deepest personal struggles in the most private chambers of this soul?

Why does so much strength, wisdom and counsel fall like manna from heaven?

Beat up by life, in such need 0f nourishment, we lap up dews from heaven and gain strength to carry on.

In my Savior I can do all things as He strengthens me, though deeply depleted these past dozen years.

The promise is: On wings of eagles shall we rise in His Power. On such whispered promises of power hangs my faith and work.

My Heart Yearns for Southern Utah University's Shakespeare Fest

Every summer, I remember taking my youngest brother and daughter to Cedar City to see the Shakespeare Festival, kidnapping her from college, in a whirl-wind weekend tour of the area, seeing Hamlet, the play she'd studied in high school.

Our driving over Hell's Backbone at midnight! Our talks about life, and where we were all going in the next ten years.

With wistful longing, I yearn for the plays, the slot canyons, the red rock cliffs, the Pink Cliffs, Kanab, St. George, Zion Canyon, the 1930's Depression era WPA tunnel carved through Vermillion rock and sandstone, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Calf Creek, Hell's Backbone, the quiet and solitude, the family and friends.

And so I drove down to see Taming of the Shrew and Cyrano de Bergerac, yearning in my heart - seeing in my mind's eye the future settlement of the Great Basin in and around Fillmore.

What yearning this is I cannot explain. But it has to do with solitude and place.

Go see the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City. Go to http://www.bard.org/ for a great weekend. Their Fall Season starts September 15 and runs till October 31.

Go Elsewhere for the Political

In order to not muddy these waters, you can find all political entries at this site:



http://countrymenlendmeyourears.blogspot.com/



This will retain the spirit of all things virtuous, lovely and of good report that you will find here.

Don't Be Fooled by the Communist Party's PR Blitz

With the opening of the Beijing Olympics, the Communist Party wants the image of Tianamen Square, the Gates of Heavenly Peace, to be remembered not as a place of brutal repressive murder, but of a new openness.

However, the Communist Party, rarely mentioned in news reports in favor of mentioning China and its people, has never fully acknowledged its culpability in the murder of student protestors.

If it were truly open, it would acknowledge to its citizens and to the world the ugly naked horror that was that night attack on students.

The most famous image of Tianamen Square is of the young man with a white shirt and briefcase standing and blocking the line of tanks rolling into the Square. This image smacks the face of those Chinese who think that the brutal view of Tianamen is merely a foreign image.

Ask those related to the students who never came home that night, whose bodies were helicoptered quickly at night in mass bundles to be deposited somewhere in mass graves, if the brutality of Tianamen Square is a foreign image!

Amid the glitz of orchestrated euphoria and celebration, let us remember the thousands of young people who sculpted a Lady Liberty and wrote on banners the words of Thomas Jefferson - that All Men are endowed by their Creator with certain Unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

All men and women yearn to breathe free, unless you're one of the millions of urbane, Communist free who value security of the People over freedom of the Individual.

Repressive regimes are always about mass graves, secrecy and buried truth.

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn - Farewell Friend

In the early years of the 70's, after barely surviving the turbulent excesses of the 60's, we heard a lone voice crying in the wilderness that was Harvard College, et al.

In the college's 1978 commencement speech a Russian "prophet" excoriated the West for its decadence and weakness.

That Russian was the Nobel Prize winning writer Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn.

He said there were real battles being fought for personal freedom and that we in the West weren't fully engaged. We were lazy, soft - we who should have been the guardians of the chalice.
His book The Gulag Archipelago was written because he sensed that those murdered by Stalin were crying from the dust, pleading not to be forgotten.

When I first opened the book, the number of dead he reported was staggering - tens of millions! Lost in the prisons, worked to death, tortured, shot and thrown in unmarked graves.

Millions disappeared in the middle of the night, never to return to their families.

For a small percentage (3-4%) of Communist Party members to rule the masses, that minority had to be willing to murder on a large scale to keep power.

That is the reason Saddaam Hussein so admired Stalin, and filled his personal library with every book about the Communist dictator available. Hussein's Baathist Party numbered only 3-4% of the Iraqui population.

His long beard, his dissident status, his anti-communist and anti-democracy position of paradox, calling on the West for an awakening to vigilance.

Not some few of us heard him, stiffened the sinews, and entered the fray.

For Us Goyim, This is the Call - Never Again

Someone wrote recently: "The final scene in Schindler's List capsulizes for us who are not Jewish, for us Goyim, what we should all be about - we could have done more! We should have done more!"

It is for all of us to do all we can and not to lament that we could have done more.

For all our service to our fellowman, let us not say we could have done more.

May we waste and wear out our life in bringing about much good.

We'll be a long time dead, according to a Jewish saying.

Let us recall that if we save one life, we save the world entire.

Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing

"Prone to wander, Lord I feel it/Prone to leave the God I love.
Here's my heart! O, take and seal it! Seal it for Thy courts above."

If ever a hymn spoke to my soul's belief, it is this one. So, one is constrained to acknowledge weaknesses and to say: I believe! O, help Thou my unbelief!

All of us are sinners, so much in need of His Saving Balm - His Saving Grace! But only after all we can do, said Nephi.

And so, we make covenants and promises, to follow Him. To come unto Jesus, with a broken heart and a contrite Spirit!

In these tenderest of moments, His Love abounds. Music makes maleable our Hearts to feel His love.

That we may love one another, as He hath loved us.

That we may be one.

Itzak Pearlman Performs the Theme from Schindler's List

Of good report is Itzak Pearlman's sonorous violin lamentation of the theme from the film Schindler's List.

Composer John Williams had practiced with the music from Fiddler of the Roof, and according to Pearlman nailed it perfectly in its authenticity.

Within the Williams score one emotionally experiences the deep melancholy of the awful suffering depicted in the film.

Seldom can one listen to this music without some stirring deep within the soul.

Love a Well-Reasoned Argument!

One reader posts this response to that teacher suspended for using the book Freedom Writers.

"I agree with the suspension. She was insubordinate. I have no opinion on the book, because I have not read it, but the school board has the power and authority and responsibility to approve the books used in the classroom. If they determined it was not suitable for their particular student population, then that is their right. If the parents do not think the decision was appropriate, they can replace the school board at the next election. But she had no right to 'do it anyway.'

"I agree that that is a poor role model for the students. We have enough students who already feel they are entitled to do or not do whatever they feel like. This should not be reinforced by adult behaviors.

"149 permission slips were returned. Did those parents give permission because they knew the content of the book and made a conscious decision to have it used as a textbook in their students classroom? Or did they sign it on the reputation of the teacher and the desire of their child?

"If 149/150 parents were in favor of using the book, where were those parents when the teacher needed the support? My guess is once the parents actually found out what was in the book, they had real reservations.

"As usual CNN gives a very half-hearted attempt at bringing the whole story to light."

At the very moment that this teacher made the decision to have her students read the book, despite being told to retrieve it - by the board of education, no less - she stepped over the line, and should not then wonder that these are the consequences of her actions.

As teachers nurture allegiance to national movements like Erin Gruwell's, while ignoring local morals and mores, they join collectivist movements that seek to impose their will on every home and hamlet across the nation.

Supreme Court decisions allow for local standards to take the forefront of the debate on pornography. In like manner, localities can determine their own standards of decency for the literature read in their schools.

Censorship, by definition comes from huge government forces to silence dissent, not from citizens in a local school board, expressing and controling the direction of their children's education.

If the teacher felt differently, she needed to do the hard work of getting her message out, by established standard means available to her within the system that provides her with a decent living.

Spot-on commentary, from a reader who should be blogging, too!

Barak Obama will Appoint Judges Who Swing Sledge Hammers at Family Foundations

His Kennedyesque appeal notwithstanding, I will not vote for Barak Obama, because of the Supreme Court justices he would appoint.

My friends, who are Democrat will not vote for him either, for that same reason. He threatens to redefine marriage so that 3% of the population can attain their agenda, and win their debate.

You can win any debate, if you redefine the terms in the broadest possible cant.

Man/man, woman/woman is not equal to a man & woman, rowing oar to oar in their boat of family, on the rough seas with children in the skiff in peril for their very lives.

They, the Gay Community, should strive to shore up the family, that comes as seeds are sown on tenuous land near the raging surf, in danger of being washed away in the storm of life, leaving the settlement bereft and vulnerable and in peril.

They want to be called what they are not, and say they are wronged where no wrong is given.

As an independent, I sided with JFK, then Goldwater, RFK, Nixon, Reagan, Rampton, Matheson, and Wayne Owens.

However, I will not facilitate Mr. Obama appointing judges who will ignore our distinctly geopolitical foundations and traditions, in favor of a collective international jurisprudence and philosophy.

My way of life does not match Europe's.

My freedom to speak threatens despots. They want a fairness doctrine, when they control the schools, the universities, the media, the courts. It is not fairness they want.

Leftist liberals want unquestioned despotic paternalism, because they know better than the rest of us. Hence, the San Fransisco speech.

And I do loathe elitists.

They want Hugo Chavez shutting down opposition TV stations and newspapers - all in the name of "fairness.".

Their socialism wants to silence free and open discussion of issues, all the while appearing to be caring and concerned for the poor. They appeal to the emotions and stomachs of the masses, but don't trust the wretched refuse to make their own decisions.

The despot Fidel Castro would give every family a rice cooker; when the open market would give them Nike shoes, iPods, laptops, cell phones, efficiently made cars, clothing, medical science and not just medical practices.

Venezuela, Cuba and China would enshrine the word "We" and destroy the word "I" from off the face of the Earth, through their judges, courts and social engineers.

Obama snears and denigrates people who are the salt of the Earth - a people he loathes and...

No, this socialist Barak Hussein Obama will not get my vote.

English Teacher Suspended Not for Teaching Freedom Writers, but Insubordination

Here is a teacher who thinks she knows better what her students should be reading, than local school officials who are supporting local school norms.

Watch it carefully. It's not about censorship, but the teacher's insubordination.

And don't be fooled into thinking that only conservatives come down on teachers in this manner. I've known Leftists to be much harder and more stringent.

I have to open that political blog, and not muddy these clear mountain lakes.

Click on the link to see CNN video: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2008/06/29/tuchman.in.banned.book.cnn

A River Runs Through It - Loving Without Perfect Understanding

I have lost people whom I loved but did not understand.

But that doesn't keep me from loving them without perfect understanding. It occurs to me, this is the definition of faith - not to have a perfect knowledge of things. But still to love.

Do we understand perfectly a painful separation which is then severed forever, a person who turns away never to return, an organic break of heart so real and so sorrowed as to feel near eternal in depth and duration. No we do not. But we can still reach out in love.

And know that God is in charge. That He is at the helm and hath the steerage of our course.

Film Amazing Grace Inspires Deep Discussions in Class

For teachers who would like to teach about slavery and the abolitionist movement in England and the United States, several scenes provide extraordinary chances for learning.

The ensuing class discussions are exemplary in their depth. The level of inquiry sends the students in many directions.

These scenes provide great discussion:
1. "We humbly suggest that you can do both."

2. "God made men equal."

3. "Finally, we have something on which we disagree."

4. "William you have work to do."

5. "What is true of the Negro is true of the worker in the field and of women."

6. Final scene: William Wilberforce will be able to sleep at night knowing the slave trade is no more.

Watch the Weekly Debate of Parliament and the Prime Minister

Take a few moments and watch C-Span's coverage of Questions to the Prime Minister - a weekly session of debate while Parliament is in session.

http://www.c-span.org/Series/Prime-Minister-Questions.aspx

Watch the rigorous cross-examination of the Prime Minister by Britain's members of the House of Commons.

Imagine our president having to answer such a barrage of questions.

Canadian Health Care - Not the Utopia We Thought

The political blogs are going to a new site. They'll be separate from things of good report.

Politics is so volatile as to render a celebration of things lovely and praiseworthy null and void, if not dirty.

Until then, here are testimonials on Canadian health care, with a warning to the U.S. NOT to nationalize its health care.

More people will die.

And if the government decides you aren't worth the treatment, you won't get it!

Who are these members of the Church of Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints?

The Church found in a survey that there was a lot of confusion about the differences between the FLDS and the Church of Jesus Christ.

To help dispel the confusion, members living in Texas put together various videos about who they are, which might help clear up some of the confusion. So, here; to drive away mixed up rumor...

Capitol Hills 4th of July Breakfast This Morning in Salt Lake City, Utah- Warm Springs Park

Of good report and praiseworthy are the hundreds of thousands of July 4th community breakfasts across the United States celebrating Independence Day, today.

One such breakfast is the Capitol Hill Community Council's 4th of July Breakfast at Warm Springs Park near the Children's Museum in Salt Lake City, Utah at 8:30 AM (MST).

If you're a trucker or a traveler, and need a free breakfast, this is the place to be! Come one, come all.


Lines begin to form, as a community service neighbor looks on.
Three professors, two Italian (right and center) and one German (left), discuss their work on gathering stories and interviews for their oral history projects. One is a visiting scholar from the University of Bologna (right).
Kiwanas Club members and local LDS stake officials flipping flap-jacks and grilling sausages.
Councilman Eric Jorgensen looking on, while others discuss their concerns, and enjoy the wondrous variety of their associations.

Obama Hid His Father's Socialism From Readers

A scholar at the Ludwig von Mises (pronounced "meeses") Institute reveals the socialist background of Barak Obama's father.

Here is how the article begins:

"There's a big mystery at the heart of Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. What was Barack Obama doing seeking out Marxist professors in college?

"Why did Obama choose a Communist Party USA member as his socio-political counselor in high school? Why was he spending his time studying neocolonialism and the writings of Frantz Fanon, the pro-violence author of "the Communist Manifesto of neocolonialism," in college?

"Why did he take time out from his studies at Columbia to attend socialist conferences at Cooper Union?

"And there is more mystery in the book. Why does Obama consider working in a consulting house for international business like being "a spy behind enemy lines?" Why does he repeatedly find it so hard to explain his political views to others? Why was he driven to become a left-aligned political organizer? It's a question Obama again and again can't seem to answer to the satisfaction of the interlocutors in his own memoir.

"If there is a mystery at the heart of Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father, one thing is not left a mystery, the fact that Barack Obama organized his life on the ideals given to him by his Kenyan father. Obama tells us, "All of my life, I carried a single image of my father, one that I .. tried to take as my own." (p. 220)

[This photo and caption (no part of this scholar's article) were together on the internet. The photo is not doctored, according to my sources. This is a young Barak Obama (Jr.) in Muslim dress, indicating a young man searching his roots. Taken too far, such an image could be prejudicial; however, it does say something of his sensibilities, which must be taken into account during our deliberations of his fitness for the highest office in the land.]

"And what was that image? It was "the father of my dreams, the man in my mother's stories, full of high-blown ideals .." (p. 278) What is more, Obama tells us that, "It was into my father's image ... that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself." And also that, "I did feel that there was something to prove ... to my father" in his efforts at political organizing. (p. 230)

"So we know that his father's ideals were a driving force in his life, but the one thing that Obama does not give us are the contents of those ideals. The closest he comes is when he tells us that his father lost his position in the government when he came into conflict with Jomo Kenyatte, the President of Kenya sometime in the mid 1960s; when he tells us that his father was imprisoned for his political views by the government just prior to the end of colonial rule;...

"...[A]nd when he tells us that the attributes of W. E. B. DuBois, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela were the ones he associated with his father and also the ones that he sought to instill in himself. (p. 220) This last group is a hodge podge, perhaps concealing as much as it reveals, in that it contains a socialist black nationalist, a Muslim black nationalist, a civil rights leader, and (at the time indicated in the memoir) an imprisoned armed [Marxist-Leninist]revolutionary.

"A bit of research at the library reveals the answers about Barack Obama's father and his father's convictions which Obama (Jr.) withholds from his readers."

Go the Mises Institute for the rest of this article: http://blog.mises.org/archives/008007.asp

Also posted at PrestoPundit http://gregransom.com/prestopundit/2008/04/gregs-guide-to-barack-obamas-d.html

Two Bright Angels Sing the Lakme Flower Duet

Of Good Report and lovely is the Flower Duet. You'll recognize it as the British Airways commercial.


Here are the lyrics. But you don't have to know them to understand two beautiful women admiring the flowers in the morning along the river bank.

Sous le dôme épais,
où le blanc jasmin
À la rose s’assemble
Sur la rive en fleurs,
riant au matin
Viens, descendons ensemble.

(Under the thick dome,
where the white jasmine
With the rose gathers,
To the flowered river bank,
with morning laughter,
Come, let us go down together.)

Doucement glissons
de son flot charmant
Suivons le courant fuyant
Dans l’onde frémissante
D’une main nonchalante
Viens, gagnons le bord,
Où la source dort
Et l’oiseau, l’oiseau chante.

(Gently let us slip
from the pleasant rising flow,
Let us follow the fleeting current
In the shimmering stream,
Without any care,
Come, let us reach the bank,
Where the spring waters slumber
And the bird, the bird, she sings.)

Sous le dôme épais
Où le blanc jasmin,
Ah! descendons
Ensemble!
Sous le dôme épais
Où le blanc jasmin
À la rose s’assemble
Sur la rive en fleurs
Riant au matin
Viens, descendons ensemble.

(Under the thick dome
where the white jasmine
Ah! We descendTogether!
Under the thick dome
where white jasmine
With the roses entwined together
On the river bank covered
with flowers laughing in the morning)

Doucement glissons
de son flot charmant,
Suivons le courant fuyant
Dans l’onde frémissante
D’une main nonchalante
Viens, gagnons le bord
Où la source dort et
L’oiseau, l’oiseau chante.

(Let us descend together
Gently floating
on its charming risings,
On the river’s current
On the shining waves,
One hand reaches,
Reaches for the bank,
Where the spring sleeps,
And the bird, the bird sings.)

Sous le dôme épais
Où le blanc jasmin,
Ah! descendons
Ensemble!
(Under the thick dome
where the white jasmine
Ah! We descend
Together!)

What Powerful Love This Father Has For His Son

On first viewing this, I was moved by its power. This man's love for his son is extraordinary, yet recognizable by all who love their children. And all whose hope in Christ reigns supreme.

The song "I Can Only Imagine" adds grace and beauty to their story.

And on viewing it again, I can no more but weep.




For God so loved the world...

Rondine al Nido - A Most Beautiful, Stirring Tenor Aria

The late Luciano Pavarotti left us with a beautiful legacy of songs rivaling the great Enrique Caruso.

This is Rondine al Nido, Return to the Nest. A heart-broken man - triste solo (sad and alone) - watches the sparrows in the primavera (spring) drink-in the air as they fly. Free and liberated their spirits soar with the joy of life. This is their return to the nest.

Only love (solo amore) flies away - se fugida (my Italian is sketchy) and it never returns - torna ni piu. And we can hope in vain (espere in vano), but it never returns.

Then, in an emotional conceit, turning the simile toward his sorrow, he cries...

...Mia picina (my little one) - the love of his life - she has flown away like the sparrow. Never to return again.

For anyone who has lost someone they loved dearly, this stirs deep emotions of loving lost, as longing soars - but of love never to return.

Hollywood Actors Reading Declaration of Independence - Best Yet Found

Of good report is this short film on the Declaration of Independence as read by Mel Gibson, Michael Douglas, Whoopi Goldberg and other film stars.

It is the best rendition I've found ever of this document, bringing us closer to how it must have been when it first was sent throughout the Colonies, and was read to crowds of people.

If memory serves me well, 200 0f these were printed in 1776. The handwritten document was sent to King George, famously signed by John Hancock in script large enough so that the King would not have to put on his glasses to read Hancock's signature.

Some scholars have called the handwritten document "an elitist" document - written by aristocrats to another aristocrat. However, the printed copies (some 200), set to type, just days after the signing, and sent to major population areas in the colonies, best represent the democratic ideal of "the People."

Until relatively recent, there were only about 24 of these original printed copies remaining. Then, in the 1980s, a woman purchased for the frame a cheap piece of art at a flea market. When she got it home and tore off the backing she found another of these original printings of the Decaration of Independence. It sold at auction for several million, I believe.

A Hollywood producer purchased it, because it reminded him of the ideals his father loved as an immigrant to the United States. If my recollection is right, he remembered his father quoting from it often.

This producer (Norman Lear, I think), then pulled together some of the best actors of the age to perform it as a trailer in theaters across the nations.

For teachers, it will keep students' attention and act as a springboard for excellent discussion this July 4th for summer school.

Is this a dead document or a live, vibrant declaration of human rights? What of students at Tianamen Square in China holding banners with the words of Jefferson: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness?

It is great for U.S. History, Constitutional Law, U.S. Philosophical Foundations.

Teachers can do Stop & Starts. Play a section, stop and discuss. Start the next section. Stop, discuss and start, again.

It allows discussion of each grievance. It is indeed praiseworthy.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints & the Sierra Club?

Amazing - the rancor on both sides of the political spectrum in Utah over the recognition the LDS Church received from the Sierra Club for the environment friendly, green design of the plaza the Church is building in downtown Salt Lake.

Go there and read for yourselves - fanatics on both ends of the spectrum who rant and rage. (I just realized I'm a toddler at this ugly political division.)

http://deseretnews.com/user/comments/1,5150,700236376,00.html

As you can see, each has a modicum of truth that is swelled to a grotesque proportion.

Each hears only part of the conversation. Neither hears it fully.

Both rants on about their left-wing vs. right-wing hatred. No one will sit on a wrought-iron bench and hear birds chirr, warble or trill, while cool breezes rustle native species of grasses without fear that someone's cigarette butt will ignite the overly dry cheat grass that's not native to Utah.

May we someday meet there in the Plaza and talk about our differences? I'm the 6'6" (2 meters) tall fellow that used to have a beard. We'll sit under a tree that's not Russian Olive.

And this from someone who's been conservative since Goldwater (AuH2O) ran against Lyndon Baines Johnson, and who still has a couple of Goldwater/Miller bumper-stickers in his den...lying around here...somewhere...

Oh, look at the quail!

Barak for All His Rhetoric is Wrong for America

George Will and William Bennett aside, Barak Obama is still too Left-leaning and who will bring more government into our lives.

We'll have shoddy health care, less freedom of decision, and a horrendous Left-wing Supreme Court that will continue the sanction the murder of millions of unborn children, and institutionalize genderless marriage, thereby de-institutionalizing man and woman marriage.

The sanction of law tends to erase old meanings of marriage to give new meanings to this new social institution that only promises to reap equal benefits, but which is as yet still untried and unproven. I'll list the unique benefits of man-woman marriage in a later missive.

The Hollywood, "close personal relationship" model of marriage will have taken over the man-woman model with its natural result of children and with its focus on the rising generation.

We have become a nation of two joggers and a slew of dogs.

If Ye Love Wealth Better Than Liberty

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. -Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776

"If You Haven't Suffered Enough It Is Your God Given Right To Suffer Some More" Wm. Aberhart Alberta Premier

In this country you have many rights - the right to free speech, the right to peaceably assemble, the right to bear arms and you have the right to be stupid. That's right, God has given you the right to be stupid, if you so desire. - T.M. Limnbrook

George F. Will on Barak Obama - Maybe, Just Maybe...

Early this morning, conservative commentator, George Will said in a radio interview with William Bennett that Americans are ready to elect an African American as President of the Unitied States.

They are excited at the prospect of laying to rest this racist stigma. They've moved on; and it's time to put it all behind us. America is no longer Selma, Alabama. Nor do police officers stand at the bottom of a bridge and forbid passage across to complete a march for civil rights.

We have in Barak Obama an orator, a man of words who can tell us who we are. Lincoln was a man of words, possibly a greater president than George Washington, who set the tone for the office. Will said that though he does not agree with Obama's politics, nonetheless, here is someone who can possibly unite us.

I was impressed with his speech in New Hampshire, but pulled away on learning that he is the nation's most left-leaning senator; that his wife cannot feel pride for her country, even though she is the beneficiary of a great education, and earns a six-figure income. Additionally, I am disturbed that he would give legitimacy to Iran's president, while cozying up to Fidel Castro.

To sit in a congregation for 20 years, listening to Reverend Wright's inflammatory racist rhetoric, leaves one more than uneasy.

However, if he will tell African American men that they must focus on their responsibilities as fathers, and other such hard to hear positions, then perhaps some good can come of this election.

Still, I'm as wary of dictators on the Left, as I am of fascists on the Right.

A Sad Father's Day for the Tim Russert Family

Our hearts are heavy, and our prayers go out to the Russert family. Tim Russert, host of Meet the Press, dead at a mere 58 years.

It is sobering to brush up against this path - open to us all. The English writer Dickens said it well: We are all fellow travelers to the grave.

These last few years, three good friends of mine passed away, whom I thought would never fade before I would ever see that day.

One whom I knew in Venezuela, fell to his death free climbing on the granite mountainsides of the Wasatch range. Another, who taught sociology came back from a run, laid down and never got back up. And a third, who'd run the Boston Marathon, sitting at his desk, preparing to teach a Sunday School lesson, died of an aneurism to the brain.

All three were beautiful, loving men, with families who loved them - accomplishing, great men who'd impacted our lives forever for the good they did. While only two were active in their faith, all three went about the world doing good. All three were teachers at various times at the university. One, a friend since my teenage years, was a full professor. Though they did not know each other, all three sought to make the world better in their unique ways. All made my life much richer.

They died within a handful of years of each other, and left such a heartache to be filled by no one else. One grace of their triumverate of passing is etched into our hearts - it is this deep truth: God is in charge.

God is in charge! He is the author and finisher of our faith! Only He can wipe away all our tears! And little children, He hath overcome all!

I thank God I ever knew these men; I pray God bless the Russerts in their loss. May His Holy Spirit comfort them in this time of deep sorrow.

Ohio High School Student Honors U.S. Soldiers

Growing up in the 60s, amid the turbulence of that decade, I experienced the ugly hypocritical hatred that many young Americans had for the military. This video, however, represents the best that is in us all. For, hopefully, we shall have overcome that someday of discontent. And made in us a New Day with Depth of Feeling toward friend and foe, reconciled of that Tet Offensive, resolved against that Decadent Age.

Push Play.

One Guitar - Two Players, Must See This Duel

The computer guru, Kim Komando on http://www.kimkomando.com/, features numerous interesting videos, one-a-day, on her website. This guitar duet was written for Chet Atkins by one of his students. These two fellows add an interesting twist to the composition.

Global Warming Dishonesty Revealed on Aussie TV

Al Gore's presentation was the consummate attorney presenting his client's case, but the facts were not balanced, often mistaken and, at times, were outright fabrication.

Here's an example.

Amerca is Planted Thick with Laws; Cut Them Down, Where Will You Stand?

If you don't have enough evidence to keep a person in jail, you follow the law and let them go. The State cannot deprive a man, or woman of their life, their liberty, or their pursuit of happiness without due process of law.

The State cannot deprive the FLDS 400 without evidence or due process of law - even if you think they are the devil.

In the play A Man For All Seasons, Sir Thomas More says he would "give the devil benefit of law for mine own safety sake." This country is planted thick with laws - like trees - to protect us all. And if we cut those laws down to get at the devil, where would we stand when the whirlwind blows, the trees being all cut down.

To my students who are active Communists, who have their Communist youth groups (Young Communists League), listen well to Sir Thomas' argument! Where will you stand when all the laws are cut down, by mindless angry teenagers with AK-47s?

In the recent film, Amazing Grace, about England's fight to abolish the slave trade, is a powerful scene between William Wilburforce and his revolutionary friend who wants to go to France to taste the wine of revolution.

His revolutionary friend tells him that what is true of the slave, is also true of the worker in the field, the miner, the butcher. And finally, it is true of women. Universal suffrage! Yet the dramatic irony, which we know but the characters do not, is that within a few years 40,000 people will be beheaded in an horrific bloodfest that shocked Thomas Jefferson, and made Edmund Burke lament: Where were the thousands of cavaliers who should have come to the aid of their King and Queen?

Radical revolutionaries would do well to contemplate the results of their violent overthrow. Every nation that has cut down the "old regime" to get at the Brave New World has created deadly chaos, poverty and misery. Vietnam and Cambodia lost a whole generation of doctors, jurists, engineers, and professionals who could have helped build their countries. Even that vast utopia of Stalinist Russia, which in the 1930s gave so many intellectuals and idealists in America such hope for the future, was a bloody, 45-million-dead nightmare.

Listen to Sir Thomas' argument!

High School Student Produces Tribute to 9/11

This student would get an A- on her assignment, were she to produce this in my English class. Except for the "your" that should be "you're," she done good.

Caution, dear reader. Some of these photos are sobering, especially those of people leaping to their deaths.

However, the mainstream....no, the Leftist advocacy media - no longer is media seen as objective - this media does not want us to see or to dwell on these images.

Six Year-old Sings Before Simon - the Grinch

This little six year-old sings a beautiful rendition of "Over the Rainbow." The voice is neither forced nor overwrought - sweetly innocent and natural in tone. Listen.

http://videos.komando.com/2008/06/01/amazing-6-year-old-singer/

Tissue, please.

McCain Listens to Woman Who Lost Brother in Iraq

My sister sent me this brief article. Senator McCain went to visit a woman who'd lost her son to a roadside bomb. Senator McCain's son was about to ship out to Iraq.

"One evening last July, Senator John McCain of Arizona arrived at the New Hampshire home of Erin Flanagan for sandwiches, chocolate-chip cookies and a heart felt talk about Iraq. They had met at a presidential debate, when she asked the candidates what they would do to bring home American soldiers - - soldiers like her brother, who had been killed in action a few months earlier.

"Mr. McCain did not bring cameras or press. Instead, he brought his youngest son, James McCain, 19, then a private first class in the Marine Corps about to leave for Iraq. Father and son sat down to hear more about Ms. Flanagan's brother Michael Cleary, a 24 year-old Army First Lieutenant killed by an ambush ... a roadside bomb.

"No one mentioned the obvious: In just days, Jimmy McCain could face similar perils. 'I can't imagine what it must have been like for them as they were coming to meet with a family that ......' Ms. Flanagan recalled, choking up. 'We lost a dear one,' she finished.

"Mr. McCain, now the presumptive Republican nominee, has staked his candidacy on the promise that American troops can bring stability to Iraq. What he almost never says is that one of them is his own son, who spent seven months patrolling Anbar Province and learned of his father's New Hampshire victory in January while he was digging a stuck military vehicle out of the mud.

"Two of Jimmy's three older brothers went into the military. Doug McCain, 48, was a Navy pilot. Jack McCain, 21, is to graduate from the Naval Academy next year, raising the chances that his father, if elected, could become the first president since Dwight D. Eisenhower with a son at war.

"I chose to share this with those who I believe will pass it on, to others who will pass it on. We hear so much inflated trash out there. How about a simple act of kindness ... and dedication to others placed above oneself?

"Has anybody heard if Barack Hussein Obama has served in The American Armed Services? This is for all you Barack voters. From Barack's book, Audacity of Hope:

'I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly
direction.'

"HE DID NOT SAY HE WOULD STAND WITH AMERICANS!!!!!"

These represent messages which never make it to mainstream media, but speak truth with those who have ears to hear.

Barak Obama on Small-town, Middle-America

"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or anitpathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." -Senator Barak Obama, U.S. Presidential candidate, 2008

Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, winner of the 2007 National Humanities Medal and the 2008 Bradley Prize, advanced, in the National Review, "Beneath the Hope," this explanation for Obama's Neo-Marxist polit-speak:

"That he [Obama] gave this speech in liberal, upscale San Fransisco only added to the aura of condescension - especially the standard liberal trope of false consciousness: The ignorant working classes turn toward extraneous palliatives rather than follow the advice of Harvard intellectuals to agitate for economic redistribution that would better solve their mostly material problems."

Religion is the opiate of the masses! (Where have we heard that before?) Sedative, pain reliever, bromide, calmative - it's Socialism! Old hat, central planning, welfare state, forcible redistribution of wealth.

I live among people who give each month a sizeable amount of their wealth to feed and clothe the poor. Mny voluntarily give more than 10% of their income to alleviate poverty, and contribute significant amounts to endow my inner-city students with means to move towards college. I don't need any forcible redistribution of wealth.

And I don't need arrogant elites arguing that they know better how to spend my money. Americans voluntarily give upwards of 60 billion to charity each year, according to my sources. FDR New Deal socialism did not pull us out of the Depression, but rather prolonged the Market Crash, as it was adjusting to the excesses of the 20s. Moving towards more Leftist FDR policies will not make this world a better place.

Barak's policies will further subjugate a free people, making them more like Cuba, Venezuela and Iran. Fidel's rice pressure cookers for every household were mere drops in the bucket compared with the iPods, MP3 players, laptops, PSPs, and various foods distributed on every corner of every major city in the U.S. As David Mamet argued in his recent turn from Leftist politics, corporations have supplied him and the rest of the world with all the things that make life easier, more comfortable - all the things he loves, that have made his life good.

Senator Obama doesn't trust the American people to make free-market decisions. He wants to be the elitist demagogue herding us toward his Neo-marxist vision of economic and political Utopia. He wants to be at the head of that Central Committee that makes decisions which Frederick Hayek and other economists have proved are too complex for men and women to make at the federal level. They believe they are smart enough to make those decisions that are best left to the local level in open markets of free-flowing ideas. These decisions should be made by individuals who are intimately acquainted with the factors of each person's needs, and the supplies available to meet those demands.

The "unseen hand" that govens such markets will be handcuffed and restrained by Barak's bungling intrusions. Man cannot handle all the intricacies of so many variables. But these are people who believe Man to be Supreme.

The problem with these elitists and socialists is that they want to effectuate change now. They do not want to wait, nor be patient, nor advance gradually. they hit the streets running - demonstrating, yelling, pushing and shoving for change. They believe religion dulls the senses.

However, in the liturgy of my Church, the ancient prophet Alma calls for his fellow-followers in Christ to "awake and arouse [their] faculties, even unto an experiment upon my words." That doesn't sound like a passive process to me! In fact, it is quite rigorous. To awake and arouse one's faculties - intellectual and spiritual; to experiment upon the word. Now here's a prophet I can follow.

He continues: "And now, how do ye suppose that I know of these things myself? Behold I have prayed and fasted many days that I might know of these things. And now I tell ye that I do know of myself that they are true." No fatsy-patsy process that!

[More on this, later.]

No WMDs? I Regret Having to Report...

Our idea that there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), doesn't match the testimony of soldiers who have recently returned from Iraq.

One friend, a sargeant, in a unit guarding a weapons depot tells of the nerve gas, VX, he was assigned to guard. He was in charge of safeguarding 60 tons of it, which I reckon would be like guarding 120 half-ton pick-up trucks full of the deadly stuff. That helps me visualize what we're talking about here. The stockpile was seized from the Iraquis.

He said that one gallon of VX, were it released into the atmoshere, would kill everyone along the Wasatch Front, from Ogden, Utah down to Provo, Utah.

So, I'm a tad uncomfortable being told there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction.

In a manner of speaking, we've already found three of the weapons - a father and his two sons - and we got rid of them. In addition, we found plenty of evidence of the Mass Destruction they caused in the mass graves we've been unearthing all over Iraq. Estimates range from 750,000 to 2 million Kurds and Shiia were executed and thrown into mass graves, leaving us to wonder: How many more grave sites will we yet find?

These Iraqis were executed with such impunity that their identification cards were left in their pockets, because it was never thought that anyone would discover them. Well, those graves have been revealed! Those responsible are being held accountable. At one point someone has to have said: Enough! No more mass graves!

So, go ahead and stick your heads in the sand about these WMDs. Only, when you pull your heads out of the desert sand, also, pull out the bones of the Iraqi dead you find there.

Political Placards & Slogan Left-Overs

• "MooreOns."
• "MoveOn.OhComeOn!"
• "MoveOns? Morons."
• "Fascists Ram Tanks Into Compounds at Waco."
• "Peace is NOT Free."
• "Fight For Peace."
• "Imagine There's No Religion -John Lennon" (Photo of bombed-out London, WWII) "We already have! It ain't so pretty."
• (Photo of Twin Towers burning) "Remember These?"
• (Photo of Towers burning; Second plane about to hit) "Casas Belli!"
• "Abortion: You Kill Unborn Babies; But Not Serial Killers?"
• "A Person of Tolerance Just Keyed My Car!"
• "Crush Intolerance - You Oxy-morons You."
• "WMDs? Mass Graves!"
• "Mass Destruction? Mass Graves!"
• "Mass Graves! You idiots."
• "Do Mass Graves Count as Mass Destruction?"
• "Your Flap Here Causes Deadly Flak There."
• "I'd Rather a prisoner in Abu-Graib" (Famous Photo of hooded prisoner) "Than Prisoner of Abu-Masab" (Photo of terrorist cutting off head of an innocent).
• "Your Protest Aids & Abets the Enemy."
• "You Protest & Embolden the Enemy."
• "You Keep Yakkin' & Terrorists Keep Flakkin'."
• "One Man/One Vote = Mob Rule."
• "Straight Democracy Voted for a Cup of Hemlock in Athens & Nails in a Cross on Calvary!" [Russell Kirk paraphrase].
• "Mass Graves - Casas Belli!"
• "Your Peace Kills" (A crossed-out Hippy Peace Sign) [PJ O'Rourke's book cover].
• "Moore" (arrow points to his fat body) "Is Less" (arrow points to his head).
• Michael "Moor" (Photo of Michael Moore face wrapped in PLO turban).
• If "The family is slavery." -Hillary Clinton, (1973 school paper). "Then, the Village must be Tyranny!"
• Famous logo of Che Guevara on T-shirt with dialogue bubble saying: "Destroy Capitalism*" Then, near the bottom of the logo: "*but, buy this shirt!"
• "Property and Freedom are Inseparably Connected"
• "There is More to Heaven and Earth, than in All Your Philosophy, Horatio" -Hamlet.
• Logo of Che Guevara in the center of T-shirt (surrounded with similar photos of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Fidel and Moussolini). Compile the total number they've killed: "X Million Murdered! And you thought religion was bad! Try their State Religion - Communism!"

And there's much more to come! Have at 'em. Duty free; public domain.

Some Fun Film Studies

• 12 Angry Men starring Henry Fonda. My students knew how the wrongly accused kid felt; and grew to appreciate that grown men would argue to find the truth.
• Finding Forrester with Sean Connery. A young Black writer and his mentor confront their fears of finding themselves.
• Emma by Jane Asten, starring Gwyneth Paltrow. Particularly moving is Emma and Mr. Knightly scene confronting her for her insensitive put-down of a longtime friend. The depth of emotion, shame and regret amid the undercurrent of love stirs the heart.
• Little Women with Winona Ryder. Who knew the simple joy of an orange in winter, or the beauty of giving up breakfast for the poor family down the road, and the singular anticipation of a writer's first book, of kindred souls finally together, and family sweet.
• Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. That moment in the study playing the piano, when after a callous comment, intended to hurt Elizabeth, and which could wound Mr. Darcy's sister, Elizabeth covers swiftly to protect her and earns the deep admiration of Darcy.
• Taming of the Shrew with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Both brilliant.
• Band of Brothers Spielberg. The film and the book by Major Richards combine for an in-depth study of leadership.
• Lend Me Your Ears by Safire. Oops! This is a book, filled with some of the greatest speeches in world history with enlightening introductions on the literary devices employed in each.

So many more will be added to the list. But it's a start.

A List of Cool Stuff to Embrace

• Romeo and Juliet, 1968 Franco Zeffirelli version, minus the bedroom scene
• Persuasion, BBC Canadian version
• Minerva Teichert paintings at the BYU Museum of Art ending soon!
• A River Runs Through It, Maclean, University of Chicago
• Film by the same name, Robert Redford directing
• Dorothea Lange photographs from the Great Depression
• The Springville Arts Museum - a sanctuary for the weary, full of regional art
• Pride and Prejudice, the modern version, Irish director from BYU - charming in the extreme
• The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument - Calf Creek, Spooky Gulch, Peek-a-Boo Canyon
• Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City
• Any hiking trail long the Wasatch Front
• Main Street in Park City
• Sitting in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, especially at Christmas time listening to youthful choirs singing carols
• The lights on Temple Square from Thankgiving to New Year's Eve
• Running along Eleventh Avenue in Salt Lake City,
• Through the SLC Cemetery,
• Past the Frank Lloyd Wright home between "E" and "B" Streets - north side of the road, (You figure it out!)
• Then, up City Creek Canyon and countless adjoining running paths.
• Temple Square and the Christus in the Visitor's Center
• The 20,000 seat Conference Center and its beautiful interiors, original paintings and furniture - not to mention cordial tour guides and the ever-endearing sister missionaries there from all over the world, who will field your questions in whatever language you choose.
• The University of Utah's Museum of Fine Art
• The Santa Fe train depot in Salt Lake
• The Alpine Loop, up Provo Canyon, to Sundance Ski Resort, down into Timpanogos Cave Ranger Station
• Bear Lake, from Logan city, up Logan Canyon and into the Riviera of the Rockies.
• Lava Hot Springs on the way to Pocatello, Idaho
• Zions Canyon, the hike back - way back, the daring Angel's Landing hike, the WPA tunnel joining Zions with Utah Highway 89, Kanab, Bryce Canyon - O, the marvel of Bryce Canyon
• Bumbleberry Pie in Zions village
• St. George
• The plays - the Shakespeare plays!

All this and infinitely more - enjoy!

Separation of Church, State - Misunderstood Metaphor

This book should be part of every citizen's library of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation between Church and State by Daniel Dreisbach. http://www.nyupress.org/

Jefferson's letter to the Danbury, Connecticut Baptist Association has undergone too little scholarship to understand its context, its contents, and Jefferson's intent and understanding of the metaphor, which was neither as high nor as inpregnable as modern interpretations since 1947 (Everson vs. Board of Ed.) would have us believe. One need merely begin with Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall" to arrive at serious doubts as to whether or not we have got it right.

This book fills that gap with important insights and analysis, and is thereby essential for its "scholarly critique of separationist pieties" (Christianity Today).

Question stuck-in-the-mud authority, and dogmatic adherence to separationist policies, which over-emphacize the "Congress shall make no law respecting" section of the First Amendment, and assign too little emphasis to the "nor restrict the free exercise thereof" clause.

Jefferson: The People Ignorant? Educate Them

A paraphrase of Jefferson's famous quote on the importance of education goes something like this: If the People are not sufficiently intelligent enough to wield Power, do not take it from them - educate them! If they are not a sufficiently safe repository of Power, the solution is not to take Power from them, but to educate them and make them so.

One's life can be dedicated to that proposition: That all men are created equal and where inequalities exist, education will make up the difference.

I eschew elitist posturings - both on the Left and on the Right. Through hard work, people can rise above the mire they've been born into, with the help of family, friends and neighbors, with limited Federalist intervention.

O, the blessings of work! And the curse of the dole - the curse of that generational Culture of Welfare.

Now, let's get to it! Go to iTunes University, to Stanford and MIT free online classes. Take advantage of online degrees. Such rigor hardens us into thoroughbreds, capable of more than those horses bred in Collectivist Colonies of Despotic Imperialism.

The talking horse in C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia was valient compared to those of the repressive regime he'd fled from. But when compared to the free souls of Narnia, his was merely average - his valor commonplace - for theirs rose to such extraordinary heights of courage and pitch as to embarrass him in his mediocrity.

May we rise up on wings of eagles, to run and not be weary, to walk and not faint. For He will make the Princes of the Left and the Right as dust. Let us wait patiently on Him, and He will give us our heart's desires! Come, let us reason together. Let us learn of Him, for therein is wisdom! God bless us all in this endeavor!

Books You Read, People You Meet - Change You

Here is a list of High School Recommended Reading from the Young Americans Foundation, along with some personal commentary. These books take issue with the orthodoxy of the Left, provoke thought, and quite possibly can change your thinking:

• The Bible. It has inspired a whole host of writers beginning with Shakespeare, and continues to to give us book titles, story lines and incredible insights into human nature.
• The Declaration of Independence. Recently under attack for mentioning God, the Creator, Nature and Nature's God, thus offending ACLU sensibilities.
• Constitution of the United States. Including the Bill of Rights, with all its ammendments, which Leftist writer Gore Vidal called a "messy document," and called for a new Constitutional Convention to clean it up and pattern it after a more Europhile model.
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Life in the Soviet New World Order ain't so hot. But on reading Solzi's denunciation of the West at Harvard's commencement in 1972, neither is modern democracy in the United States.
• Great American Conservative Women: A Collection of Speeches compiled by the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute. Great women aren't all Leftists!
• The Conscience of a Conservative by Barry Goldwater. Some of us remember what AuH2O meant and the movement to not throw out the baby with the bathwater and preserve the good during that Decade of Discarding.
• The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek. If you really trust the people, you will give them choice in all areas of their lives. Otherwise, central committees lead to slavery.
• The Myth of the Robber Barrons by Burton W. Folsom, Jr. Can lead to a questioning of Leftist liberal bias against corporations, which corporations just happen to be one way democracy manifests itself and brings you everything you love in your life - from shoes, clothes, food, computers, cars, books.
• The Federalist Papers by Hamilton, Madison, Jay. Still the best peak inside the brains of the Framers and of the Constitution, despite our puerile Euro-centric fascination of looking to Europe for inspiration on what the U.S. Constitution could really mean.
• The Law by Frederic Bastiat. Taxation becomes legal plunder and the forcible redistribution of wealth can be shown for what it is - theft by totalitarians.
• Letters to a Young Conservative by Dinesh D'Souza. Here are some letters to the young man and woman as artist and conservative, in a world that believes the Leftist lie that only Liberals are caring and feeling. The artististic and conservative sensitivities in me denounce that lie.
• Ronald Reagan by Libby Highes. "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" And the world's timetable was hastened along, and changed forever.
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Show the hot flames of Political Correctness for what it is - right next to the book burners of the world.
• Animal Farm by George Orwell. Which animals do we identify with most?
• 1984 by George Orwell. Big Brother is watching! Thank Heaven for Macintosh computers being intoduced in 1984 to keep us from "1984!" And Patriot Acts to keep real Big Brothers at bay.
• The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck. Somewhere in all that Leftist, we-love-Russia-as-utopia sentiment, amid The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, he said something worthwhile.

I would add Aldous Huxley's Brave New World to the list.

Huxley argues against Fabianism - a severe Logical Positivism, wherein science will solve all our problems, social engineering will create the perfect society and the dirtiest word in their language is "mother."

With science being able to create, to incubate, and to raise children, the naturalistic mother and family become the vilest forms of savage primitivism.

Interestingly, Bill Clinton was a member of the Fabian Society while he was at Oxford. How much that association influences his actions toward dismantling the family in the international arena, can only be surmised. Read A Sacred Duty by Richard Wilkins, a Deseret Book publication.

Read; it will change your life.

Immigration - There is Room Enough For All!

Many of my students are from immigrant families, which may or may not be in the United States legally. Here is one take on the issue.

A dear friend of mine, who graduated with a doctorate from Columbia, who ran the elections in El Salvador, who counts the cities of Berlin and Boston as clients and who spent 30 years in Manhattan, tells of his father, a farmer from West Virginia, who when friends, or missionaries, or strangers came to eat at his home, would say in faith: Throw another potato in the oven; there's room enough for all!

We need to read Isaiah 54 very carefully; and we shall see this so-called "immigration problem" in a new light.

"Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations; spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes..." We are to make room under the pavillion of the Lord for all who would come here to seek refuge from the sun. Are there families who can't fit under the tent? Then, lengthen the cords and add more curtain; make way for the new comer.

And when these immigrants come, they will be so many that they will "break forth on the right hand and on the left," spilling out of the tent. Then, add to the tent; let them come! We Gentiles who have a dearth of births will dwindle, and our cities shall begin to be desolate and uninhabitated. Therefore, the immigrants who come will make up the lack. "Thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited."

My dear brothers, you and your families are welcome at the table; there is room enough for all! Come in from the sun of Oppression! Come and rest under this Tent of Liberty - this land, this Constitution! We shall enlarge the place of the tent! We shall stretch forth the curtains of our habitations; we'll lengthen the cords! There is room enough for you all, at this table, under this tent - this Pavillion of Our Lord!

Throw another potato in the oven; there is room enough for all!

William F. Buckley, Jr. - A Man For All Seasons

In my father's extensive library, collected while he was in medical school at Harvard, were two large tomes that caught my eye when I was 14 years old - Whittaker Chamber's Witness and Buckley's God and Man at Yale.

I was impressed that Mr. Chambers would defect from the Workers of the World revolution, couple his idealism with sober realism, and reveal the truth of the Communist infiltrator, Alger Hiss, to a scathingly unbelieving world. My friends were similarly and militantly unbelieving.

I thought his book heroic amid the turmoil of the Sixties, with all my Leftist friends yelling "screw you" to the adult world that had given us Freakin' Don't-Ask-I-Don't-Give-A-Damn Vietnam, Valium popping moms ratting and hairspraying their beehive hairdos, and fathers in thin-lapelled suits, trying to keep it all together (or not and having an affair).

I never bought it.

There was something disingenuous about it all. I thought my generation did protest too much. It wasn't until much later that I read a Nobel Prize winning economist (other than Milton Friedman) link the hypocrisy of the 1950s to liberal parents who did not live their ideals. This sounded like the 50s and 60s I lived through, for many of my friends were liberal.

And while they were always "more real and more authentic" in their own eyes, they were not a little hypocritical in it all.

Oddly, and not without a measure of irony, the Era of Sexual Freedom, for all its so-called liberation, and at its core, treated women as objects. That I saw in the actions of my reactionary friends who loved to tell me about George Washington's indiscretions late in his life, all the while their indiscreet obsessions sent one beautiful young woman to the psych ward of a local hospital early in her young life.

Indelibly carved in my mind during that Decade of Decadence (the 60s) was the book that dared challenge Yale's, and by extension, the nation's godless direction, for its lack of truth and light, even though those words were, according to my sources, inscribed in Hebrew (Urim and Thummim) on Yale's crest.

William F. Buckley's quietus this past week hands the torch of Light and Truth to a younger generation, and with it comes a sense of deep loss, as I have noted the passings of leftist John Kenneth Galbraith, noted Keynesian economist at Harvard and economic advisor to President John Kennedy; of Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Freidman, heir to Adam Smith and Ludwig von Mises, and principal champion of Free Market economics. These are three men whose loss I mourn. Not to mention Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whose burly ectomorph chassis I identify with (though I'll pass on the bowties).

Freidman and Buckley loved to ski where my best buddy, the late Dr. Gary Mertlich, sociologist at the University of Toledo, taught me that same love - on the slopes of Alta, Utah. Gary and I enjoyed a Left/Right relationship similar to Buckley and John Kenneth Galbraith (me being Buckley). Similarly, I rejoice in the knowledge that Bill and Mr. Galbraith, likewise, had an intellectually vigorous friendship and correspondence.

When Gary and I were kids, he made a ski slope in his back yard with an old door elevated and meticulously covered with snow to give me enough speed to do a snow-plow. Little could I realize the hidden agenda, when he left me at the top of a ski run at Alta, on my first day skiing, laughing as he skied away (which made him more like Galbraith).

In today's self-righteous, pundit-posturing political domain (at both ends - Left and Right!), there needs to be more political ecumenicalism, and a Buckleyesque civility in debate (excepting the Gore Vidal exchange; but that's been settled, in court even, as Mr.Vidal needs to move on). http://nationalreview.com/

William F. Buckley, conservative advocate, founder and editor of the National Review, host on Firing Line, interviewed, wholeheartedly teased, and debated the greatest minds of our Modern Age, giving us balance during the Season of Excess that was the Sixties.

His influence powerfully spanned six decades and all seasons of political and cultural intrigue.

Requiescat In Pace, William F. Buckley, friend, and man for all seasons.


[Charlie Rose's final tribute to Mr. Buckley is touching.]

China and Cuba are the "Real" Communism

While in the picturesque college town of Trujillo, in the mountains of Venezuela, I had the rare opportunity, 32 years ago, of living among and talking with some of the best and the brightest students of Latin America at the time. I was serving an LDS mission there during the mid-70s.

On first arriving in the city, after the drive up the long ravine leading to the town, the central square opened to our view as though I'd walked into a movie set - white stucco 18th-century Catholic church, quaint shops surrounding the plaza, and a government building, seat of power for the state of Trujillo. We took residence in a youth hostel full of college students on the main townsquare, and occupied a simple bedroom room with two cots, and a communal shower.

In that huddle of young men, idealistic and passionate for the causes they would soon dedicate their entire lives, I spoke to a few of them about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

One young man, with whom I had a brief discussion, and to whom I handed a Book of Mormon, handed me a small book of essays by the positivist philosopher Bertrand Russell, and effectively bore his "testimony" of how China and Cuba were the real Communism. Russia was too much like the United States - white, European. "Look to China and Cuba for the future, as they were closest to the people," he said.

I awoke this morning with his words ringing in my ears: China and Cuba are the real Communism!

I also knew that the man in China responsible for the dog food poisonings in the United States was taken out into a field and shot. And the black men who highjacked an airplane in an attempt to land in the United States, were forced to turn back to Cuba and after a five-day trial, were also shot.

The famous World War II cartoonist, Bill Mauldin, drew a scathing political cartoon decrying the hypocrisy of Fidel Castro's uprising. In the executions that followed Castro's revolution in 1959, prisoners were tied to a pole and summarily shot. In his cartoon, Mauldin drew three prisoners tied to stakes, readied for execution.

The first man is slumped down, kneeling, head hanging, having just been shot but still alive. Above him, nonchalantly pointing a .45 caliber pistol at the condemned man's head, is a bearded, cigar-smoking Che Guevarra-looking revolutionary, uniformed like Castro, with his sleeves rolled up for the ugly work at hand.

Behind this Che-faced executioner, who has one eye closed, the other cocked open as he aims down the pistol sight to administer the coup de gras, stands another Castro-capped, rifle-toting thug tying up a second prisoner who is looking grimly at the ugly fate awaiting him. This second bearded brigand, a Marxist-Leninist, whispers in the condemned man's ears: "Think what could happen to you if we weren't idealists."

Mauldin added: "Fidel came out of the hills like Robin Hood and...began acting like the Sheriff of Nottingham."

And that is the true Communism.

Principal Ancestors They Never Were

Recently the LDS Church has dropped a phrase from its introduction to the Book of Mormon, and, in doing so, invoked the ridicule and derision of all who tell half-truths, wipe their mouths, and say they've done no wrong.

Here, for you dear reader, is a more full citation of the controversial passage: "The Book of Mormon...is a record of God's dealings with the ancient inhabitants of the Americas and contains, as does the Bible, the fulness of the everlasting gospel.

"The book was written by many ancient prophets by the spirit of prophecy and revelation. Their words, written on gold plates, [Any of this sounding familiar?] were quoted and abridged by a prophet-historian named Mormon. [Now that name has got to be familiar.] The record gives an account of two great civilizations. One came from Jerusalem in 600 B.C., and afterward separated into two nations, known as the Nephites and the Lamanites. The other came much earlier when the Lord confounded the tongues at the Tower of Babel. This group is known as the Jaredites. After thousands of years, all were destroyed except the Lamanites, [Now here it is.] and they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians." (You are invited to read the whole book ;) yourself at http://www.blogger.com/www.lds.org !)

For many decades, I've suspected we were too ambitious to think that the books in The Book of Mormon were the complete annals of the broader Meso-American history. Like the Bible, the Book of Mormon is a record of a single family's dealings within a much broader scope of history. In this context of a small thread woven into a large tapestry, things are bound to get lost, covered in jungle and dirt, and destroyed. (How's that for mixing metaphors!)

Against that larger tapestry of Pre-Columbian and Meso-American history, is it not reasonable that the specific stories of the families and the more limited history that The Book of Mormon covers might possibly be harder to discern in the many-threaded tapestry of archeology, and thus, take many years to unearth and unravel? Indeed, one prophet wrote that he could not write a hundreth of all that could be written of his people!

[For a pleasant and thoughtful journey through Guatemala and Mexico, and the most up-to-date scholarship, covering such questions as DNA, the Hebraic poetic form of chiasmus, and metal in the Book of Mormon, see the DVD Journey of Faith: The New World from the Neil A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at http://www.byu.edu/ )

Time magazine ran an article a few years back, claiming that the history contained in the Bible had few solid archeological proofs, citing that they had only recently found a shard of pottery with the name of "David King of Israel" inscribed on it. The point being: Give The Book of Mormon a bit of breathing room! ( Also, go to the Jewish intellectual journal Commentary for an exciting story on the recent discovery of the personal palace of Solomon.) Need I say: In archeology great discoveries are uncovered everyday! http://www.commentarymagazine.com

Recently Mormon archeologists and scholars have refined their conclusions and views from those of early Mormon scholars like B. H. Roberts. He and others thought that the "narrow neck of land" spoken of in the scripture was Panama, and that the Nephites would have been the Peruvians and the Lamanites...well, you get the old picture.

These kinds on unfolding truths, only help to solidify my faith, not rattle it.

Every Scientific System has Unproven Postulates

"The world prides itself on "hard" evidence, on objectivity, on the strength of consensus. However, as a philosopher of knowledge, I can only shake my head. For I know and can prove that there is no such thing as evidence apart from a matrix of presuppositions, that objectivity is at best consensus, and that consensus is often but a public relations job. Every scientific system begins with unproven postulates. Every person founds his life on articles of faith." -Dr. Chauncey C. Riddle, philosopher.

When I read Dr. Riddle's article (Ensign, September 1975), I was 20 years old and had completed my first year at a major university under a track scholarship, emerging from the experience fairly beat-up and abused by professors hell-bent on faith-busting.

During that year, taking philosophy, psychology and political science, I marveled as the godless, angry, agenda-driven professors railed on every form of faith, especially Mormonism - their particular favorite along the Wasatch Front mountain range. They prided themselves on their "hard" facts, the truth of their position, the strength of their consensus. After taking so many barrages against religious belief, one gained some consolation at their being knocked down a notch by someone in their own league.

It wasn't till many decades later that I learned what an affront to decency such attacks were. A good friend, whose father had won an Oscar for his lighting designs, told me that she'd recently experienced the same kinds of attacks from professors here in Salt Lake.

But she spoke up - not having been in the Church all her life, and having had no small amount of experience in the world. She raised her hand and told the professor that had he railed on Jews or Catholics anywhere back East, as he had just done to Mormons, he would have been decried, and even shouted down, as a bigot.

"Somehow," she continued, "because it's Mormons, it's okay to do here in Salt Lake?"

I've often mused: Where did they get their license? It must have come from when they were undergraduates, and their Leftist professors told them that it would be a noble thing to dedicate their lives to jumping into the fire of religious bigoty - the last great bastion of backwoods narrow-mindedness - Utah!

Were they told that it would be like voter registration in the South during the 50s and 60s? Come! Come to Utah, and drag these bumbling, fertile, mindless obediatrons into the 20th Century of "enlightened" scientific positivism! How could they equate Mormons with what happened to those heroic young college students at the hands of those over-fed, good-ole-boys, impudently grinning at the photographer at their mock trial?

How is it morally equivalent - the murderers with those fatboy cheeks stuffed with chaw, the corner of their lips dripping in racism, juxtaposed to the Mormon widow fasting each month and giving her small mite, every thing she has, to feed the poor in her neighborhood?

And don't tell me about Mormons being blindly obedient! The simple cross-kite that's anchored to something solid, (and yes, perhaps weighed down with a bit of cumbersome baggage of a tail) flies much higher than the most sophisticated untethered box-kite. But that's another essay.

All of us found our lives on unproven postulates - upon articles of faith. But how wonderful to ground our faith on a rock - on personal revelation, on the Rock of Our Salvation, Jesus Christ!

This Book of Mormon: What My Friend from Harvard Said...

My dear friend, attorney, mission president, Howard J. Marsh sat me in his office in Venezuela, and said regarding the Book of Mormon, "It's like the Cartesian Doubt exercise. You will remember how Rene Descartes doubted everything away."

Marsh went to Harvard Law School and was the editor of the Law Review. He continued, " You can doubt everything away: Joseph Smith, the prophets, the angel Moroni, the gold plates - everything; doubt it all away. And you are left with the book in front of you. It is physical; it's there; you can handle it. Where did it come from? Given the extraordinary amount of internal and external evidences supporting it, you must ask yourself: Could the ploughboy Joseph have produced it?"

Now, at this point I am well aware of the arguments against it, as was Howard J. Marsh, visiting scholar at Oxford - from arguments like the Spaulding manuscript, to the "no credible archeology" argument; from it being the product of the 19th Century American scene, to horses, peep stones, and salamanders; from gold digger, to philanderer. I have heard it all.

(For more detailed discussion on these topics go to http://www.fairlds.org/ ) However, one need only read 3 Nephi 17 on pages 440 -441 in that Book; then, tell me what you think.

One visiting scholar of the Apocrypha, a Methodist minister, said of Nephi's Chapter 17, that of all the Apocrypha he'd ever studied, "your chapter 17 is the most beautiful I've ever read." That, for me, is the least of the arguments.

Those who love the words of Christ will love the words in this Book, for they are Christ's. I bear witness that they are the Words of Christ. I have listened to the witness of Jesus born by your tele-evangelists, and have felt the Spirit of God moving with them, as they bore testimony of accepting Jesus. He that believeth in Christ and is baptized the same shall be saved; I know this to be true. Likewise, I hear and know His voice in the passages of 3 Nephi chapter 17! And that for me, is much.

But most is His witness of Grace in my life - after all I can do, which in the eternal measure is close to nothing - but it still must be done! For without His Charity, we are as tinkling brass and sounding cymbal. So we must pray with all the energy of heart that we may be filled with His love.

And so as brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, I humbly petition you, with all the tender feelings of hearts knit together in His love, pick up the Book one more time - just once more, and....May His Grace be with you ever, my fellow citizens in Christ!

The Days of Old Long Since

What is Auld Lang Syne?
Here's an answer from the My Yahoo Home Page (January 2008)

"Here's a translation, which you can see refers to a friendship between childhood friends who have been parted and met again. Literally it means that for the sake of our long friendship we should join hands and share a drink together in the spirit of good will. To extend that meaning it means that we should not forget our old friends and celebrate reunion with them.

Should old acquaintances be forgotten,
And never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintances be forgotten,
And days of long ago !

Chorus:
For old long ago, my dear
For old long ago,
We will take a cup of kindness yet
For old long ago.

We two have run about the hillsides
And pulled the daisies fine,
But we have wandered many a weary foot
For old long ago.

We two have paddled (waded) in the stream
From noon until dinner time,
But seas between us broad have roared
Since old long ago.

And there is a hand, my trusty friend,
And give us a hand of yours,
And we will take a goodwill draught (of ale)
For old long ago!

And surely you will pay for your pint,
And surely I will pay for mine!
And we will take a cup of kindness yet
For old long ago!"

For more info, see: http://www.rampantscotland.com/know/blknow12.htm