THE PATRIOT POST 09/23/2015

Right Analysis | Right Hooks | Right Opinion Patriot Headlines | Grassroots Commentary Daily Digest September 23, 2015    THE FOUNDATION "[I]f we are to be told by a foreign power ... what we shall do, and what we shall not do, we have Independence yet to seek, and have contended hitherto for very little." —George Washington, 1796 TOP RIGHT HOOKS President Xi Needs an Uncomfortable Visit to U.S. Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping during Obama's visit to China last year Last year, Barack Obama visited China in an effort to rally support for an international treaty on climate change and underscore the economic opportunities the two countries have in working together. Oh, how things have changed. Chinese President Xi Jinping is in Washington, DC, this week, and the issues facing the two countries are more ... awkward. The Chinese stock market plummeted at the end of August due to an opaque, centrally planned economic system, which rocked the global economy. China continues to grow belligerent in the Pacific, laying claim to vast swaths of the South China Sea, and sending ships to steam off the Alaskan coast while Obama visited the Arctic Circle. Furthermore, the country has detained American Sandy Phan-Gillis since March on charges of "spying and stealing state secrets." This comes at a time when the U.S. strongly suspects it was China that stole the data of millions of federal employees and everyone who applied for a security clearance. "Denying ourselves engagement with the Chinese would deny ourselves the ability to advance our interests and to make clear to China where we stand," said Ben Rhodes, deputy national security advisor for strategic communications. "We won't paper over those differences." We're not holding our breath. After all, Obama's paper tiger diplomacy has created room for China to flex its might toward America. An uncomfortable visit would do much to restore America's spine in the relationship, so it's too bad it's going to be a lavish "state visit" instead. Comment | Share Hillary Flip-Flops on Her Keystone Pipeline Legacy On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton expounded a bit on the legacy she formed while secretary of state. She's previously boasted of playing a "leading role" in starting the review process for building the proposed Keystone pipeline, which was designed to transport crude oil from Canada to American refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. It's been gummed up in bureaucratic review since 2010, though Clinton said then she would be "inclined" to approve it. But now, she wants the pipeline buried. "I think it is imperative that we look at the Keystone pipeline as what I believe it is — a distraction from important work we have to do on climate change," Clinton told a crowd in Iowa. "Therefore I oppose it." Clinton's decision was not based on principles good for the economy, but rather political gain with her ecofascist base. Fellow Democrat candidate Martin O'Malley said, "On issue after issue, Secretary Clinton has followed — not forged — public opinion. Leadership is about stating where you stand on critical issues, regardless of how they poll or focus group." (The ironic thing is the public supports the Keystone pipeline by an overwhelming margin.) The result of Clinton's inaction as secretary resulted in lost jobs and lost economic activity. Now, after the Left has stonewalled the project for years, Clinton wants to simply sweep it aside. Furthermore, she had the "courage" to make this announcement while the media focused squarely on Pope Francis' visit. Comment | Share Iran Prepares to Annex Iraq Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told his nation Tuesday that Iran and Iran alone has the military might in the Middle East to keep the Islamic State at bay. The remarks came during a military parade commemorating the start of the 35-year-old Iraq-Iran War. "[If] terrorists begin to expand in the region, the only hope will be Iran's army and the Revolutionary Guards," Rouhani said. And does anyone think they would leave if they came in to wipe out the Islamic State? Rouhani continued, saying the West had little influence in the struggle: "Today, our armed forces are the biggest regional power against terrorism." Seeing how the United States' proxy fighters are doing against the Islamic State, the Iranian president might just be correct. The fight against the Islamic State has ground to a standstill in Iraq, as an offensive to retake Ramadi from the Islamic State has been delayed. So the U.S. turns to Syria, where only a handful of American-trained Syrian rebels are still in the fight. Many of the fighters were delayed in Turkey, but when they returned, they handed over their weapons to the al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. This was exactly the worry many people had in giving arms and training to proxy fighters. As Marco Rubio said: Our military "was not built to conduct pinprick attacks." If we want to take a simplistic route to foreign policy and focus our whole attention to the short term — dealing with the Islamic State — then maybe we should just give Iran $150 billion. Oh, wait... Comment | Share FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS Francis Confuses Corporatism and Capitalism By Nate Jackson Pope Francis arrived Tuesday for his first visit to the U.S. He will not only tour a Philadelphia prison and a Harlem school to showcase his trademark concern for the poor and downtrodden, but he will give the first-ever papal address to Congress Thursday on a range of topics. The political angle is that Democrats have finally found a pope with whom they can agree on the issues of climate and poverty — all while ignoring traditional Catholic teaching on marriage and the sanctity of life. Francis arrived here by way of the Communist paradise poverty-stricken totalitarian island known as Cuba, where he spent four days and met not with dissidents but with Fidel Castro — whom he reportedly thanked for his contributions to world peace. Notably, Francis arrived by plane, not by homemade raft on the shores of Florida as do many of the poor people fleeing Cuba's oppressive regime for the Land of Liberty. Indeed, if Francis truly cares for the poor, he showed it quite poorly in this instance. Of capitalism in general, he said in his recent apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, “Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape. ... Such an economy kills.” It's no wonder he has an eager audience in the Democrats and Castros of the world. But it's important to understand that Francis' views on capitalism are informed by his experience in his home country of Argentina — a nation beset with powerful families and businesses influential in government. In other words, it's not the free market and it's not capitalism. It's cronyism and corporatism. It’s also ironic, writes Thomas Sowell, considering “Argentina was once among the leading economies of the world, before it was ruined by the kind of ideological notions [Francis] is now promoting around the world." God does warn His people about loving money, and greed and inequity are part of sinful human nature no matter the economic system. But which country's poor are better off — Cuba's, Argentina's or America's? The truth is that no economic system has done more than capitalism to lift the poor out of poverty. Tyranny kills, not Liberty. Furthermore, Jesus never told his followers to perform charity by giving their money to the Romans instead. Contrary to the assertions of far too many, Jesus was not a socialist — He always preached individual responsibility for our brothers and sisters, not collective statist mandates. In many respects, Francis' care for the poor is welcome. All Christians ought to see every opportunity to help the disadvantaged among us. But it's the pope's methods we object to. He is a proponent — at least tacitly — of liberation theology, a synthesis of Marxism and Christianity born in South America in the 1970s and 80s. Liberation theology embraces collectivization, the subordination of the individual in favor of the group, and the forced redistribution of wealth and property without fair compensation. Furthermore, Marxism is profoundly anti-religion, making its blending with Christian teaching like mixing oil and water. It's noteworthy that Francis has thus effectively reversed the position of John Paul II, who was a staunch opponent of such noxious theology, and, together with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, brought down the Soviet Empire. Try to imagine John Paul glad-handing Fidel Castro while dissidents languished in prison. On the subject of climate change, the onerous regulations and top-down government solutions favored by Francis and his fellow alarmist travelers (and we do mean travelers in fuel-burning jets all over the world) are exactly the policies that will hurt the poor the most. In his recent encyclical, Francis declared, "The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth." He blames the problem on consumerism, corporate greed, overreliance on technology and the poisonous political atmosphere in and among many nations. He called for a radial change in how people conduct their political and economic affairs and suggested that the time has come for each of us to alter our individual lifestyles in response to climate issues. But The Wall Street Journal retorts, "Well, he should have seen East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the air in Beijing today. Coercive governments are the worst befoulers of the environment. Democratic capitalism has created the wealth and electoral consent to clean the air and water, and only continued economic growth will create the resources to deal with climate change if it does become a serious threat to the Earth." Francis says, “Humanity is called on to be aware of the need to change lifestyles, production and consumption” because the world is filled with a “culture of waste.” We're all for using energy judiciously and curbing waste, but not under the pretense of a UN-Vatican mandate, which is essentially the prescription Francis gives. In short, while Francis has authority over doctrinal issues in his own church, his message on climate and economics is dead wrong and it should be rejected. Comment | Share Share MORE ORIGINAL PERSPECTIVE ANALYSIS: Bergdahl Defense Withers Under Evidence No Review of Punishment for Soldiers' Rape Intervention? Navajo Nation Wonders: Why Have Democrats Abandoned Us? Hillary's Prescription: Price Controls for Medication BEST OF RIGHT OPINION Star Parker: Dr. Carson Is Right About Islam Michelle Malkin: Another Cynical Democratic 'Citizenship USA' Voter Drive Walter Williams: Liberal Reasoning: Idiotic or Dishonest? For more, visit Right Opinion. TOP HEADLINES U.S. Taxpayers Cheated $51 Million in Volkswagen Scam FBI Recovers Personal Emails From Clinton Server Study: Teenagers Are Most Anti-Pot Group in America For more, visit Patriot Headline Report OPINION IN BRIEF Star Parker: "The Constitution is not a value-free operating manual. The reason the founders created it was to preserve American values. They were quite clear about this in the preamble to the Constitution. The preamble says: 'We the people' establish the Constitution to 'secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.' I spend much of my time reading the Bible so I can be a good Christian. I don’t feel it is my responsibility to read the Quran and get into the business of trying to understand what Muslims believe. My measuring stick can only be how Muslims behave. And the evidence is overwhelming that Islam does not produce behavior consistent with the American value of freedom, the core value our constitution exists to preserve. It is perfectly constitutional to elect someone with values that will destroy America. It’s just not a very good idea to do it. When Ben Carson says he 'would not advocate putting a Muslim in charge of this nation,' only someone who does not care about the future of this nation would question the power of his logic." Comment | Share SHORT CUTS Insight: "The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy." —Milton Friedman (1912-2006) Observations: "To undo the supposed evils of Capitalism, intellectualism, and creative economic destruction would be to undo the entire network of interactions that currently feeds and educates [seven billion people]. This would leave Pope Francis with the choice of having about 1/2 of that world die, or having about 1/3 of it enslaved and utterly despoiled to feed the rest. Is this a Hobson’s choice that any believing Christian would feel good about making? In essence, Pope Francis’ theology is the theology of failure. It fails to make the vital distinction between humility in lifestyle and degradation of being." —RedState's Repair_Man_Jack Alpha Jackass: "Here in the United States, we cherish religious liberty. ... [W]e stand with you in defense of religious freedom." —Barack Obama to the pope, the leader of the church he persecutes via ObamaCare mandates Non Compos Mentis: “Well, there's nothing in the [Bible] that says anything about abortion. Let's make sure of that. The Ten Commandments are the Ten Commandments. There's only ten." —Whoopi Goldberg ("One might argue she forgot the Sixth Commandment: 'Thou shall not kill.'" —Newsbusters' Scott Whitlock) Unprincipled stand: "I’m prepared to accept that at the moment of conception there’s human life and being, but I’m not prepared to say that to other God-fearing [or] non-God-fearing people that have a different view." —Joe Biden Village Idiots: "I would call on [GOP] candidates to stop this dissent into the kind of hateful mean-spirited divisive rhetoric that we have seen too much of in the last few months." —Hillary Clinton, who knows well that the foundation of Democrat politics is "hateful mean-spirited divisive rhetoric" Dezinformatsia: "To describe those who don’t accept climate science or dispute the world is warming from man-made forces, use climate change doubters or those who reject mainstream climate science. Avoid use of skeptics or deniers." —Associated Press guideline revision Late-night humor: "All the presidential candidates are trying to woo millennials. I'm not sure college kids can identify with 22 people desperately fighting for one job." —Stephen Colbert Comment | Share Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis! Managing Editor Nate Jackson Join us in daily prayer for our Patriots in uniform — Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen — standing in harm's way in defense of Liberty, and for their families.