About us
Here’s what the blog reveals about me (Bookworm): I’m a compulsive reader, a fast typist, a lawyer, a mother, a crypto-Conservative, and I’m creeping up on middle age. My email address is Bookworm*at*bookwormroom.com.
And here’s what I can tell you about Don Quixote (and what he’d say himself, if he weren’t too modest): he’s a brilliant attorney — one of the smartest I’ve ever worked with — who has an inexorable logic and objectivity that more often than not leads to success in the Court. He’s a lifelong conservative who can ably defend his positions. And he’s just a great guy.
[...] Why Don’t They Love America? By Bookworm at Bookworm RoomMarch 29, 2006 at 6:40 pm in Feature Article, Immigration Watch I haven’t blogged about the immigration protests because, well, because I didn’t feel like blogging about them. During a lunchtime conversation, Don Quixote and I decided we were in agreement: We believe the vitality of immigrants is good for the nation’s health, and we strongly disapprove of those who break the laws as they currently exist — and who get a free pass for doing so. I’m with the Captain, who objects to those who have the temerity to demand that we allow them to live here without following our laws governing entry into the US as well as continue to provide government services to them. In the meantime, people who come here legally and wish to stay wind up having to go home and reapply for permanent residency. Joe Gandelman has a guest poster from Britain who cannot avoid leaving the US after coming here legally and showing nothing but loyalty to his new home. [...]
Your article at the American Thinker (Economic flexible morality) was brilliant.
Dear Bookworm,
I thoroughly enjoyed your critique of the movie “Maria Full of Grace” (Economic Flexible Morality). As Hollywood grasps for the reasons why 50% of the US public refuses to go to the movies anymore maybe they should simply read your observations instead. They may glean some insight into the fact that Americans are bored with movies created using a leftist, moraly barren template.
In honor of the Halloween season, I submit to you and your readers the following critique of the liberal horror movie “Land of the Dead”:
Recently I was flipping through the cable channels when I happened upon a little gem of a movie called “Land of the Dead”. This 2005 film was the fourth installment in director George A. Romero’s graphic zombie horror series. The reason that I’m writing to you about this is that as I watched this bloodbath, I realized that the director’s intention was to make a symbolic political protest statement against George Bush and ignorant red state Americans. In attempting to do so, the film inadvertently tipped the progressive left’s hand as to how they perceive violent threats to America and how they would respond to them. The movie clearly underscores the Left’s utter lack of interest in defending America from any threat no matter how violent or evil it is.
In the movie, cannibalistic zombies driven by hunger, seek out living humans to kill and partially consume (though not necessarily in that order). The freshly killed victims then transmogrified into zombies themselves and joined in on the noble quest to feed on the tasty entrails of the living. Apparently genocidal, wholesale murder was their forte because as the film portrayed, the fiends had succeeded in wiping out 95% of all humanity and forcibly converting them into the ranks of the walking dead.
One would assume that the evil protagonists in the film would be the millions of blood thirsty cannibals, right? Wrong. In Land of the Dead, the “real” evil was the corporate boss who had built a protected area to keep the zombies out. This capitalist oppressor even had the audacity to provide food, electricity, security, and other essential services to the masses for a fee! Apparently the capitalist’s crime of unequal distribution of wealth was more egregious than the zombie’s egalitarian distribution of death.
As the zombies launch an all out offensive against the last human inhabited city, an elite group of human “heroes” presses their attack against city’s leader. Let me reiterate that scenario again. Zombies are at the gates with a murderous intent to violently kill every living person in the city and an elite group of soldiers choose to attack the one man responsible for the city’s protection.
If you are scratching your head and asking why would they take such a self destructive action, then welcome to the Left’s reaction to the current global war on terror. Today we face an evil enemy whose only goal is the violent death of all who disagree with their nihilistic vision. And rather than address this real and growing threat, the Left chooses to ignore it and focus their martial efforts upon President Bush instead. If this course of action makes no sense as a plot line in a grade B horror flick, then just how crazy does this make those who follow it now as America faces real monsters at her gates?
In another eerie parallel with the global war on terror, the film tries to justify the cannibal’s final assault on the city as an understandable response to several raids conducted by humans on the un-dead’s recently acquired “homeland”. Trivial facts such as who had started the conflict and that hundreds of millions of humans had been previously murdered were conveniently never considered. The zombies did not kill in response to the humiliating treatment they had historically endured at the hands of the living. The zombies killed because that’s what zombies do.
The climactic scene in Land of the Dead shows the corporate building sacked and the evil capitalist boss deservingly burned alive (yippee!). With the city’s defenses destroyed, the zombies are finally allowed to enjoy their justified revenge on the remaining humans. Apparently the un-dead had never read the famous quotation about “revenge being a dish best served and eaten cold”.
As the elites bask in the bringing down of the city’s corporate boss, (along with food and water distribution, electricity, security, and other essential services) they spot a group of zombies crossing a bridge nearby. When one member of the team raises her weapon at them and prepares to fire she is stopped by the leader who stoically opines “They are just looking for a place to go”. Ah, moral relativism at its best! I think the line should have read “They are just looking for a place to go digest”. I wonder, where do you think the zombies are going to go when they get hungry again in a few hours?
The film ends with the elite team driving off to Canada oblivious to the fact that they were abandoning the people they had just rendered defenseless and without basic services. In the classical liberal tradition, elites formulated a solution to a problem that affected others but not themselves. Invariably, the impact of the “cure” became worse than the underlying “disease”.
It is obvious that there are limits to the parallels that can be drawn between how the left reacts to fictional film characters and how they react to real world threats. But consider that the movie Land of the Dead was a serious dramatic effort. To the screenwriter the storyline made sense. To the director the scenes made sense. To the Hollywood Left the film made sense because the themes portrayed mirrored their own political and social views. The bottom line is that if it seems reasonable that powerful right leaning political leaders are viewed as greater threats than cannibalistic zombies, then it is reasonable to view those leaders as greater threats than mere human jihadists.
Dave in VA
every thing in this website is great, but the only thing i hate i don’t see anything about “KURDISTAN”.
lkjlkjlkj
Wow, love your writing, will link. Found you via La Shawn and your latest American Thinker article.
Bookworm:
I enjoyed your insights in “Teaching children to learn”.
Do you have any references or sources for a parent to learn how to help his/her children learn?
Thanks, JH
http://cinnamonstillwell.blogspot.com/2007/05/stanford-prof-joel-beinin-dredges-up.html
Stanford Prof. Joel Beinin Dredges Up False “Death Threat” Claim Against Los Angeles Journalist
I’ve got a new post up at the Campus Watch blog regarding the strange case of Stanford Middle East history professor (currently on “extended leave” as director of Middle East studies at the American University in Cairo, Egypt) Joel Beinin and his involvement with Los Angeles journalist and activist Rachel Neuwirth’s successfully settled civil suit against UCLA Hillel director Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller. Click on the link below for the details:
Stanford Prof. Joel Beinin Dredges Up False “Death Threat” Claim Against Los Angeles Journalist http://www.campus-watch.org/weblog/id/74
http://cannoneerno4.wordpress.com/
I caught that site on my wordpress dashboard referal list. I checked out some of her posts concerning Psy Ops. Pretty good, Book. Thought you might be interested in giving it a glance. There was more than one post on PsyOps, so just give it a scroll.
I just read your well-written and helpful article on Core Conservative Beliefs. I’ve come to the realization that I am conservative to the great liberal founding principles of the United States. Here is an updated copy of my essay on Judeo-Christian Values which was published at American Thinker. If you want this in Word format, send me an email and I’ll send it to you.
Ronald R. Cherry, MD
Judeo-Christian Values
Judeo-Christian Values in America have a basis in the Declaration of Independence: “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…” Since the pursuit of happiness, as Sigmund Freud surmised, is tied to human love and to creative work and play, the principles of American Judeo-Christian Values can rightly be summarized as the honoring of God-given Life, Liberty and Creativity. This seed of American social justice was then fleshed out in the U.S. Constitution through reason and common sense, unencumbered by the dysfunctional religious and secular traditions, and laws of Old Europe. Our Founding Fathers separated church from state, but they wisely did not separate God from state; they acknowledged God as the source of our rights, and, in fact, they were careful to place Biblical morality directly into our founding documents and laws, and into our values and culture precisely to help prevent a future of totalitarian or tyrannical rule in America. The combination of keeping Judeo-Christian religious morality in the state, as opposed to the church its self; and, additionally, setting up our laws based on reason and common sense has contributed to the American Character, and to what is known as “American Exceptionalism.” Our Founding Fathers were religious in a new way, the Judeo-Christian way, and they were the liberals of their day by deducing that our political and human rights come from a power higher than human government; but they were conservative to Biblical morality. There was and still is a connection between God and Liberty; He is the author of it. It is ironic that American Conservatives are now the champion of this our most liberal founding principle; and also an irony that many American Conservatives are wholly unaware of their connection with the liberal founding ideas of this great republic. It is also an irony that many American Liberals have turned a blind eye to the required connection between God and Liberty. As Thomas Jefferson and John Adams noted, as you will see below, Liberty cannot survive among men without its Divine connection.
In Judeo-Christian America one finds the idea of equality before God and the law, but not government forced economic equality. Modern European culture has stressed the value of economic equality rather than Liberty, and their governments unjustly enforce the principle. This has led to the failed European inventions of Socialism and Communism. Socialists in America have been lured into this failed European idea of social justice. Socialism is a failure in that it unjustly suppresses human creativity by excessively taxing away its rewards and by foolishly giving economic reward to many who, even though mentally and physically able, fail to honor their Divine privilege and duty to work creatively. Socialism is a dual insult to the pursuit of happiness: it suppresses God-given human creativity; and it damages the social fabric by promoting resentment on the one hand, and ingratitude on the other. Communism was much worse in that it also dishonored the sacredness of human life and liberty. Communism was the inevitable result of separating not just church from state, but the separation of God from state. Communism dishonored Gods gifts of Life, Liberty and Creativity. European cultures have historical ties to authoritarian and totalitarian systems dating back to the Roman Empire. Even European Christianity was, for a time, contaminated by its links to authoritarian rule. American Judeo-Christian Culture, on the other hand, has been linked to honoring Life, Liberty and Creativity from the outset; deriving its wisdom from the lights of reason, common sense, and both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament Christian Bible. Thomas Jefferson, and as I can tell, the great majority of our Founding Fathers explicitly put God into the national life of the United States, precisely by putting the Creator into the Declaration of Independence. It is important that American Liberty has something to do with God; that is something for students to know and discuss, even if they are not particularly religious. This does not represent some form of tyranny of the religious majority or an injustice; it was in fact the wisdom of our founding fathers to stand in opposition to tyranny and injustice by acknowledging the source of our rights - those rights originating from God rather than from King George III, or for that matter from the Soviet or Chinese Politburo, or a courthouse, or a legislature. It should be self-evident that if our sacred human rights are derived from government, they can also be removed by government.
America is a melting pot of diverse people including Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Atheists; and from the Judeo-Christian perspective: all made in God’s image. We have in America a multiethnic society, and that is good. What is unhealthy for America is for it to become Balkanized, which is very likely to happen with the atrophy of Judeo-Christian American Culture and Values. Worse yet would be for America to adopt the toxic values which exist in some parts of the world and in some foreign cultures. The values of Fascism, Nazism, Communism or Totalitarian Islamic Sharia Law for example must never metastasize into our American Culture, which traditionally has been Judeo-Christian. These values have been with us from the beginning and they have made us strong and successful. These Judeo- Christian Values should be kept central to the American spirit and culture even as we have become more multi-ethnic. Honoring foreign cultures is desirable, but we should never tolerate the values of violence, coercion, supremacism, bigotry, intolerance, slavery or totalitarianism; values which are sadly endemic in some foreign cultures.
Several quotations from our Founding Fathers will illustrate American Judeo-Christian Values and our separation of church and state, but not the separation of God from state; and provide grounding for our understanding of social justice. Thomas Jefferson wrote: “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed …..” He also wrote: “God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?” He also wrote: “Almighty God hath created the mind free. … All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens…are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion…” He also wrote: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Our founding fathers wrote the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” President George Washington said this when proclaiming our National Thanksgiving Holiday: “It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God ……” John Adams wrote this: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Later, Abraham Lincoln wrote these words about the Bible: “In regard to this great book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to men. All the good Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong.” He also spoke these words at the Gettysburg Address: “that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
What follows is a list of what this American considers to be our Judeo-Christian Values, the values established by our Founding Fathers, and the basis for which is to be found in the Bible, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. I am indebted to Dennis Prager who has listed Judeo-Christian Values and elaborated on this subject long before I took it up; and those who know his work will recognize many of his thoughts.
1. Our sense of right and wrong and our sense of wisdom come from the use of reason and common sense, but also, and importantly, from the Bible which, by faith was considered by our Founding Fathers to be God’s inspired text; and not just from the mind or heart of man. This faith lead to the mottos: “In God We Trust” & “One Nation Under God.” Our Founding Fathers were believers in the God of the Bible, even if some were not Orthodox Christians, and they put that faith into the Declaration of Independence, into our laws, into our national monuments, and into our culture. Faith is a part of American Culture, something Atheists, Secularists, Humanists and those of other religions should acknowledge and accept as historical truth. To remove the results of Biblical Faith from America is to undo what the Founding Fathers have wrought.
2. Truth is Sacred; there can be no liberty or justice, and little happiness without it. Jesus connected truth and liberty when he said “the truth shall make you free.” In the Book of Exodus of the Hebrew Bible God describes Himself: “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth…” In Deuteronomy God is described this way: “He is the Rock, His work is perfect; For all His ways are justice, A God of truth and without injustice.” Listen to King David in Psalm 25: “Show me Your ways, O Lord; Teach me your paths. Lead me in Your truth…”; and in Psalm 51: “Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, And in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom.”
3. Human life is the first gift of God, and it is of infinite value since man is made in the image of God. Judeo-Christian Values have lead to a culture of life in America, not a culture of death. Americans with Judeo-Christian Values will defend innocent God-given life.
4. Our Liberty is a gift from God and stated so in the Declaration of Independence. It is also stated in the New Testament Christian Bible: “Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty.” Patrick Henry and our other Founding Fathers understood that peace can only occur under liberty; peace under tyranny is an oxymoron. The tyrant or terrorist is, by definition, at war with liberty-loving people; and we either accept the struggle for Liberty, or we accept the tyranny. Just war in medieval times was connected to the defense of life and privilege for kings and tyrants; American just war refers to the defense of life and liberty of a free people – individuals who wish to be free from tyranny and terror. Americans with Judeo-Christian Values will defend their God-given Liberty.
5. Human creativity is also a gift from God and is not to be unjustly suppressed by totalitarian, tyrannical or excessively taxing government. The work ethic is an important part of Judeo-Christian Values since honorable work is a reflection of God-given human creativity. Human reason is also a part of God-given human creativity, and it has led to scientific knowledge and technological progress. Reason and science are important aspects of Judeo-Christian Values. Human creativity is central to the pursuit of happiness, but does not guarantee it; totalitarian systems such as Communism or Islamic Sharia Law guarantee utopian happiness, but don’t deliver it.
6. “Establish justice.” This is commanded repeatedly in the Hebrew Bible. This is how it has been done in America: Honor Life, Liberty and Creativity. Honoring the life of others is rooted in the “golden rule”: “whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them.” Liberty in practical terms means: Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, no established or state-supported religion, right to bear arms and act in self-defense, uninterrupted elections and the division of powers into its three branches. Where our culture is now headed in the wrong direction, in my opinion, is to provide special rights for certain groups of people. Our Founding Fathers acknowledged these essential basic rights for all people, and our Civil War enforced it for the American slaves when they were denied their God-given Liberty.
7. “Hate Evil”. This is commanded three times in the Hebrew Bible; this is from the book of Proverbs: “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil.” Hear the Prophet Isaiah: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness….” Americans with Judeo-Christian Values, as opposed to European leaders, still believe in the death penalty for pre-meditated murder, and America is still the nemesis of terrorists and tyrants – see the seal of the state of Virginia.
8. “Love your neighbor” - commanded in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. “Love your enemy” - commanded in the New Testament Christian Bible. Generations of Americans, starting with our Founding Fathers, have had to square the values of “Hate Evil” with “Love your enemy.” This has been done by hating the evil within the enemies of God-given Life and Liberty, but not hating the evil-doer him/herself.
9. Courage is a Judeo-Christian Value. Courage can be defined as the willingness to place one’s self into harm’s way; and, if necessary, to die in defense of God-given Life and Liberty. I can think of no better example of warrior courage than young David as he stood with his sling before Goliath. There is no greater example of pacifist courage than Jesus, as he gave his life in defense of eternal Life and Liberty. Without sacrifice the protesting pacifist is a coward; Jesus was not a coward. The warrior and the true pacifist are linked by self-sacrifice: self-sacrifice in the defense of sacred Life and Liberty. Courage and cowardice are like fine art and pornography; you’ll know it when you see it.
10. In the Judeo-Christian Value System there is a natural and common-sense balance between compassion and courageous confrontation of evil. This can be seen metaphorically as a natural balance between femininity and masculinity; both good and necessary. The secular culture of Europe, and of many in the United States today, have unwisely suppressed the masculinity of Judeo-Christian American Culture; and this has put our society out of balance.
11. From Many, One: e pluribus unum. Ethnicity and race don’t matter, but values do matter. We Americans should consider ourselves blessed to live under God-given Liberty in the same melting pot; and we are privileged to pursue happiness through creative work and play, unencumbered by excessive government. Those things that divide us, such as race or ethnicity, can be viewed metaphorically as our various styles; and are not very important. Those things of lesser importance should melt into what is very important and which should unite us: our value of Life, Liberty and Creativity – those rights defined by the Declaration of Independence, and rightly identified as the gifts of God.
12. The natural resources of the Earth, including the animals, along with the rest of creation should be honored and well cared for, but also used and enjoyed; and never worshiped.
The elite European leaders and philosophers, and many Americans in the ivory tower, have decided that “God is Dead.” They have it wrong; and our Founding Fathers have said otherwise. The European separation of God and state in the Twentieth Century resulted in Communism and Nazism, and a disgusting explosion of mass murder, wars of aggression, indecency, subjugation and human suffering. The Judeo-Christian Values of our Founding Fathers has resulted in an explosion of Life, Liberty and Creativity for hundreds of millions of people. It can be so for our children, and their children, and for our posterity into the future – a bright future. Europe, I believe has a simple choice; accept and defend Judeo-Christian Values by placing God, but not the church, back into the state; or accept a new wave of Totalitarianism – most likely this time of the Islamist variety.
America does not have an exclusive claim on Life, Liberty and Creativity; these are the rights of all people, everywhere, and for all time. Recall that our Founding Fathers were revolutionaries; and realize that the American Revolution will not end until there are no longer enemies of our God-given Life, Liberty and Creativity. The Liberty that flourished in ancient Greece, and during the Roman Republic, was short-lived. American Liberty, however, can last as long as the Earth exists, because our Liberty has been bequeathed by the King of the Universe.
Ronald R. Cherry, MD
I read your article today on American Thinker about the difference between Conservatives and Progressives. I liked it, but disagreed with one point, in the category “The Nature Of Human Beings”. I believe many, if not most conservatives believe that mankind can be “perfected”, but only through reconciliation with God, and that this is a personal journey without an end in this lifetime. I know this scratches on a religious rather than a political answer, but any question about the nature of human beings can’t avoid religion.
May I say how much I appreciate your blog; it stands like a beautiful flower in a garden of weeds.
How you manage to fulfil your professional and personal roles AND write twelve posts in one day (November 1st) is beyond me!
I wish someone would address this. Over at AT one contributor has thrown a hissy-fight over the racial slur of “spade work” used by Madeleine Albright regarding Obama’s lack of work in foreign policy.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/01/hillary_spadework_and_democrat.html
The former Secty of State’s usage is perfectly proper and I say if we give up our language and definitions, the terrorists win ! (smile)
I fondly recall a time when, coming into my boss’s office and hearing an eerie wind blowing through the window –much like a banshee — I said to my boss “there must be spooks in here!”
My (African-American boss) boss grinned at me and when the penny dropped I said “you know what I meant”!!!! And we both had a great laugh over it.
So call a spade a spade, encourage everyone to do the necessary spade work and get a life.
Have a nice day !