Archive | August, 2017

Mark Caserta: Should pro-choice include selective birth?

25 Aug

me

Mark Caserta:  Free State Patriot editor

Aug 25, 2017

down

“What kind of a society do you want to live in?: Inside the country where Down syndrome is disappearing.”

That was the title of the August “CBSN On Assignment” column by Julian Quinones and Arijeta Lajka of CBS News reporting on the “significantly decreased” number of Down syndrome births in Iceland. With a population of about 330,000, Iceland has reduced the number of children born with Down syndrome to around one or two per year, according to the report.

Interested in how they did it? Simple. They killed the babies before they were born.

Per the column, since prenatal screening tests were introduced in Iceland in the early 2000s, the vast majority of women, close to 100 percent, who received a positive test for Down syndrome terminated their pregnancy.

Using what’s called the Combination Test, screeners determine whether the baby will have chromosome abnormality, which could result in Down syndrome. Reportedly, other countries aren’t far behind using this method of selective birth.

Knowing that many people born with Down syndrome can live healthy, productive lives, how does this make you feel?

Understanding the progressive movement’s pro-choice stance, I submit this is a liberal form of genetic selection based upon predetermined, preferential impact on society – nothing more, nothing less. But despite its despicable and evil nature, I believe most liberals would support the woman’s choice.

No doubt, many progressives would answer the CBS question with something like: “While we may not subscribe to the morality of the mother’s choice, it’s still her choice, and we support it.”

But, historically, where does this mindset originate?

In 2009, I wrote a column titled “Planned Parenthood fulfilling founder’s vision.” In the column, I discussed how Margaret Sanger, a controversial eugenicist, founded Planned Parenthood in 1916, envisioning a society not unlike that sought by Adolf Hitler.

In her 1922 book “The Pivot of Civilization,” Sanger refers to blacks, immigrants and indigents as “human weeds, reckless breeders, and ‘spawning … human beings who never should have been born.'”

Sanger believed “The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” Since its founding, Planned Parenthood, an organization which has the support of most liberals, has become the largest abortion provider in the U.S.

Sanger, officially endorsed by the American Eugenic Society in 1932, was also recognized by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a 2009 Planned Parenthood function.

“The 20th-century reproductive rights movement, really embodied in the life and leadership of Margaret Sanger, was one of the most transformational in the entire history of the human race,” Clinton stated upon receiving an award from the organization Sanger founded.

Clinton extraordinarily acknowledged she was in “awe” of Sanger.

Others stand in “awe” of creation.

Do we really want life to be so arbitrary? How many champions have been destroyed before given the opportunity of life? Where will selective birth end?

God, in His infinite wisdom (and sometimes to our detriment) has given us the ability to choose.

I propose we give life a chance.

Mark Caserta is a Cabell County resident.

 

 

 

 

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Parents Grill School Board Over Kindergarten Transgender Discussions « CBS13 | CBS Sacramento

22 Aug

The incident happened earlier this summer during the last few days of the academic school year.

Source: Parents Grill School Board Over Kindergarten Transgender Discussions « CBS13 | CBS Sacramento

North Korea’s latest propaganda puts Trump in cemetery | Fox News

22 Aug

President Trump is pictured looking out over a Guam graveyard cluttered with crosses in a photoshopped image from the newest propaganda film — and grim warning — from North Korea.

Source: North Korea’s latest propaganda puts Trump in cemetery | Fox News

Doug Smith: When is a liberal not a liberal

21 Aug

This is the first part of a series on the history and evolution of liberalism in America.

doug and mark 1

Doug Smith: Free State Patriot history and society editor

August 21, 2017

 

 

Well, the flippant answer is 1900.  But a more reasoned answer must ask first, what is liberalism? As happens so often, the word has been hijacked.  Orwell warned of this practice. Up is down. Truth is a lie. War is peace. 2 plus 2 equals 5, Winston Smith.

Words are important. Meaning is important. If we permit people to undermine meaning, they can mask actions and intentions. If I like chocolate all my life, and suddenly we call it butterscotch, we make a lie of my frame of reference.

The father of classical liberalism is widely considered to be John Locke. He believed that people were equal and had the right to defend their life, health, liberty, or possessions. That phrase was condensed into Jefferson’s “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness in the Declaration of Independence. He believed that individuals had the right to own their property and goods based upon their own labor to produce them.

Classical liberalism, as opposed to what passes for liberalism after Woodrow Wilson, is in favor of private property rights and a free economy, guarantees of freedoms codified into law in the Constitution. From Wilson forward, the term Liberal came to mean something it is not.  The modern “liberal “is more the egalitarian of the French revolution; emphasizing state control of property, markets, and equalization of outcomes by government picking winners and losers.  We have seen that where this is practiced, the only winners are those in government power, and private citizens, who find they have no rights that the government does not choose to give them, see those rights decreasing as the power of the state increases. The losers are the folks waiting in line in Moscow for bread, the millions murdered because they had no wall to protect them from the psychotic whims of Stalin.

This is the dangerous fantasy put forth by Wilson’s ” Living Document” view of the Constitution. Rather than an agreed wall between the individual and the state, the Wilson New liberals see it as a fluid contract, subject to the perceived notions of those currently in power as to the needs of the people.

Imagine if you signed a contract to buy a house for a certain sum. 5 years into the contract, the governor decided that all homes should cost 20% more, and now, regardless of the agreement you had made, you were forced to borrow additional money and send it to the seller. With, of course, a taxed sop to the government. Or suppose you were the seller, and he decided that you had sold your house for too much, and you had to borrow money and refund it to the buyer, years after the fact.

You wouldn’t like it so much.  That wall of iron words took years, and much effort to get the agreement of enough citizens and states to ratify it and enter a contract.  The idea that the contract is living and can change with time would make it useless, and meaningless. It could come to mean anything at any time.  Recognizing how hard it was to ratify, and that future citizens may, indeed wish to alter it, Madison and the framers included specific steps to do so, and made it as difficult to alter as to pass initially. They protected the individual from the whim of a government official, or a vocal minority, or a small but insistent majority. If you wish to change this contract, you must persuade a decisive majority that the change is beneficial.

Our government as a rule of law, not lawyers, or nobles, or kings, affords that protection to all our citizens.  The liberal judge who looks between the lines and finds things we must do as a government undermines those protections for every citizen.

So then, the classical liberal, as the term was used for over 200 years, places its trust and support of the individual’s rights to property, self-determination, and personal liberty and responsibility. The citizen, in the view of a classical liberal, resides in the state, not under the state.

The egalitarian, or “social” liberal, has a very different world view indeed. Next article, we shall lift the veil of the Wilsonian “liberal” and look at the iron hammer lurking there to supplant the iron words of the Constitution he so disdains.

 

Tags: , , ,

Mark Caserta: President’s N. Korea strategy a good one

20 Aug

me

Mark Caserta:  Free State Patriot editor

 

Aug 18, 2017

kim

 

We’ve never been closer to engaging another nuclear power in my lifetime as we are with North Korea.

The escalating threat prompted President Trump last week to warn the rogue nation he was prepared to unleash “fire, fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before” should that country’s Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-Un, fulfill threats against the United States or any of her allies.

In 2012, I wrote a column titled, “U.S. must maintain its military resolve,” referencing the waning respect leaders of other nations had for the global military prominence of the United States, largely due to the appeasement strategies of Barack Obama.

In the column, I discussed the significance of a North Korea missile test despite U.N. resolutions banning that country from using ballistic missile technology. I also discussed how Iran’s nuclear and missile programs were also reported to have benefited from Russia and China, breaching the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which calls for only peaceful use of nuclear power.

In March of this year, I reiterated in a column that North Korea was becoming an increasing military concern, warning the economic and military ties with Russia and China were very dangerous for the U.S.

We are now knee-deep in military mire, I believe, due to our weak strategies.

We know China is technically committed to the defense of North Korea. They’re also economically dependent upon them, comprising roughly three-quarters of North Korea’s imports and exports.

Russia’s ties with Iran are similar. I believe we will see that relationship become an increasing concern soon.

Let’s be clear. No nation would dare suggest the U.S. doesn’t possess the most powerful military armament the world has ever known. That isn’t the problem.

The problem is that lack of leadership of prior administrations has precipitated opposing nations to perceive the U.S. had lost its military resolve. Perception in military engagement is reality. When appeasement precludes action, your enemies take notice.

In 1994 the Clinton administration chose to deal with North Korea’s mounting nuclear weapons program by “bribing” it with more than $4 billion in energy aid over 10 years. In turn, North Korea was expected to reciprocate by dismantling its nuclear weapons program.

In 2016, the Obama administration decided to take the same sort of action with Iran when Obama approved a $1.7 billion settlement resolving claims over a failed arms deal. The first installment was in cash, secretly delivered by plane, the same day Iran released four American prisoners and formally implemented Obama’s nuclear deal with the Iranians, per The Washington Times.

Negotiating from a position of appeasement is a poor strategy. And then there was Donald J. Trump.

As a master negotiator, Trump knows something about leadership and the importance of defining and adhering to consequences. While the president has made clear he’d rather conduct business peacefully, he’ll not withdraw on a pledge he’s made on behalf of protecting our nation – period.

Given our nation’s position, this is the only way to proceed.

North Korea would be wise to negotiate with our commander-in-chief.

Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.

Tags: , , ,

Doug Smith: “The Patriot’s Credo” A declaration birthed from freedom

12 Aug

doug and mark 1

Doug Smith:  Free State Patriot history and social editor

 

newborn-812470__340

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

 

“The Patriot’s Credo”

By Doug Smith

 

I believe that a man ought to:

Always do his best.

Tell the truth or be silent.

Earn his own way, and keep the fruits of his labor

Never abandon women or children dependent on him

Be kind and courteous to those weaker than him.

Learn all he can, all the time.

Know the history of his people, and his nation, and his world.

 

I believe that people:

Have the capacity to be decent and responsible, but are not angels. Some cure polio: some build Auschwitz.

Are mostly decent, hardworking, law abiding, and desire peace with their neighbors.

Should defend his family, his neighbors, and his country against harm from those who do not.

Are either cantankerous, independent cusses who want to make their own way and be left alone, or weak spirited desiring to be ruled and cared for.

There are those like George Washington who will reluctantly lead the former,  and far too many who will gleefully rule the latter.

 

I believe that government:

Is made up of people not angels, so must be held in check

Is governing people, not angels, so must have sufficient power.

Requires constant attention and effort from those governed.

Exists to protect the rights and property of the people.

Produces nothing, owns nothing, and is a thief unless it serves the people.

Is about protecting the Constitutional rights of its citizens, not supplying their needs.

 

I believe that America:

Is the greatest nation in history

Has done more to extend liberty to more people than any nation in history.

Has greater opportunity for people to better themselves than any nation in history.

For all its faults, is far and away the best place to live in history.

Is worth defending.

Is worthy of pride.

Can be better.

Can fail, if we don’t preserve her.

 

These things I believe. Being a man, and not an angel, I admit to sometimes, far too often, falling short of those things I believe as ideals. But these beliefs form the basis for which I strive.

 

 

 

 

Tags: , , ,

Mark Caserta: President is blocking the progressive movement

11 Aug

me

Mark Caserta:  Free State Patriot editor

8.10.2017

 

progressive movement

 

Much to the chagrin of liberal Democrats, President Trump’s visit on Thursday of last week was a banner day for the city of Huntington and the state of West Virginia. The turnout and enthusiasm of Trump supporters everywhere clearly illuminates the disconnect between the president’s reported approval ratings and reality.

Remember, the same people trying to convince you Trump’s approval ratings are low are the same folks who tried to persuade you Hillary Clinton would win in a landslide.

Sadly, the American people seem to have increasingly fewer mainstream media outlets which can be trusted to adhere to the gravity of free speech afforded them by the Constitution, a condition I’m concerned will be memorialized as a discordant turning point in our country’s history.

But, it’s quite fascinating that even with the support of the media, the liberal voice is becoming increasingly irrelevant on nearly every front, by virtue of liberals’ expanding progressive ideology moving them further to the left of most Americans.

For posterity, I’d like to pose a few questions to readers.

Do you feel like liberals hate President Trump more than they love our country?

Is there anything Trump will ever do which liberals will support, regardless of the benefit to our nation?

And where does this pathological hatred of the president place liberal leaders in terms of acting on behalf of the American people?

One observation I’ve made is that President Trump has forced many progressives out of their “moderate” closets into the dimly lit darkness of hard-core liberalism, both locally and nationally. Meanwhile, and possibly even more appreciably, conservatives who were heretofore complacently on the sidelines have enthusiastically engaged in the fight.

It’s mind-boggling that progressives continue to propose their liberal policies as a “better deal” for America. The eight-year liberal Obama experiment certainly rendered that argument mute.

The progressive movement involves tenaciously advancing an ideology free of tethering principles and boundaries of morality. And frankly, their methodology for improving America is quite nonsensical.

Liberals believe removing God and His Word from all public venues will make America a better place.

Liberals believe more government intrusion into our lives is a good thing.

Liberals believe government deserves to have more of your hard-earned tax dollars because they will spend it more wisely.

Liberals believe in open borders and anyone who disagrees is a bigot.

Liberals believe abortion-on-demand is the right of every woman and supersedes the life of an innocent baby.

Liberals want to take guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens.

Liberals want to “progressively” redefine the family structure beyond the traditional union of a man and a woman.

And liberals don’t want to place any restrictions on gender identification, regardless of anatomy.

Is this the America you desire?

I believe liberalism is about fundamentally changing society to accommodate a new, universally accepting social order. And the fact that we have a president who is successfully blocking their movement is driving liberals crazy.

Conservatives have the momentum, so let’s keep working. Tell your representatives to support the president.

Let’s return America to greatness. And continue to make the liberal voice irrelevant in our society.

Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.

Tags: , , , ,

Russian ‘ISIS fanatic’ who ‘plotted to crash a US plane by flying a DRONE into it’ is arrested in Turkey

10 Aug

A SUSPECTED ISIS jihadi has been arrested in Turkey after allegedly plotting to down a US jet using a drone, police said today. Turkish cops swooped to detain the Russian national who they say was …

Source: Russian ‘ISIS fanatic’ who ‘plotted to crash a US plane by flying a DRONE into it’ is arrested in Turkey

North Korea Threat Comes After Trump Vows ‘Fire and Fury’ – WSJ

8 Aug

President Donald Trump demanded North Korea not “make any more threats” to the U.S., saying the U.S. would respond “with fire and fury.” North Korea says it is ‘carefully examining” plan to launch missiles at Guam.

Source: North Korea Threat Comes After Trump Vows ‘Fire and Fury’ – WSJ

Mark Caserta: Readers respond to columnist’s question

5 Aug

me

Mark Caserta:  Free State Patriot editor

Aug 4, 2017

 

capitol

Last week’s column, “Did West Virginians elect Trump out of ignorance?,” was centered on the facetious question as to whether voters in our state are qualified to make an educated choice for president of the United States.

Of course they are.

But some of the cynical responses were very telling. Some even had me questioning the reader’s ability to comprehend the text, as portrayed in this response from one reader.

“Mark. Oh no, buddy. It has finally hit you right between the eyes. YOU are seeing Trump for what he is. You’re asking YOURSELF this question: Did I help elect Trump out of ignorance? Looks like you’ve been mulling that over.”

Other folks, as in this reader, surmised West Virginians simply chose the “lesser of two evils.”

“As West Virginians only had, as a viable alternative vote in 2016 the corporatist, republican-lite option of voting for Hillary Clinton, it is very understandable that most Democratic voters stayed home and some even voted for what was perceived as a wild-card, anti-DC candidate like Trump rather than falling in line behind the empty establishment pants suit.”

Of the responses from individuals typically aligning themselves with progressives, it’s worth noting the lack of regard they apparently have for the intellect of West Virginians.

“They had other options, they can write in any person they want, or not vote at all. Only stupid people believe there is some magical civic- duty to vote. They never/don’t realize the door of obligation swings both ways. Ignorant conservatives, you know I love-em!”

“Well, considering Arch Moore was convicted for corruption and jailed, then RE-ELECTED in West Virginia as governor and THEN his daughter enters politics and SHE gets elected? I don’t know, but? Does that speak to an abundance of smarts in this state?”

“A majority of West Virginians are too busy trying to make a living to give much time to considering political candidates. After all, they’ve sent some real losers (not this one) to the statehouse.”

“Did West Virginians elect Trump out of ignorance? Yes. Like there was any other option. How else could/would clueless conservative hillbillies vote?”

Then there were responses like this one, interjecting reasoned perspective into the discussion.

“This is all pretty funny. And it confirms something I’ve known to be true for a long time. Liberals can’t read. Mark concludes that ‘And just perhaps, it isn’t the 68 percent of West Virginians who elected Donald Trump who are the ignorant ones, after all.’ And liberals read that as Mark concluding that West Virginians who voted for Trump did so out of ignorance. Pretty funny, and shows their total lack of logic and reasoning ability.”

So, according to liberals, ignorance, indeed, played a role in electing Trump in West Virginia. I can only assume they believe similarly for the other 30 states he won.

This progressive rationale prompts me to ask liberals another clarifying question.

Do you accept any of the blame for Donald Trump being elected president, or was it simply the ignorance of others?

Future voters eagerly await your response.

Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.

 

 

 

 

Tags: , , , , , , ,