FINANCIAL COLLAPSE - THE WAY OUT OF THE MESS

Folks - this is the single-most excellent film I have watched on what is wrong with our money system.   Note that anyone who has tried to challenge the international banking system, was either assassinated or were attempted to assassinate from Andrew Jackson to Lincoln (greenbacks) to JFK with his silver certificates.  I absolutely HATE corruption and those who purvey it.  They WILL be destroyed - and I intend to be a part of the solution.   We must embrace this and preach it to all we know:

DECIPHERING OUR MONEY SYSTEM


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swkq2E8mswI&feature=related

A NICE OVERVIEW OF MASONRY

I thought this was very interesting. Always wondered how masonry was all put together:



(CLICK ON PICTURE FOR LARGER REPRESENTATION)

HANGING BY A THREAD - THE DESTINY OF OUR ELDERS TO SAVE OUR WAY OF LIFE

THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST COLLECTIONS OF QUOTES I COULD FIND ON OUR BELOVED CONSTITUTION;

The Constitution Hanging by a Thread

Source


Comments

ENSIGN, J SMITH JUN:1976


Even this nation will be on the verge of crumbling to pieces and tumbling to the ground and when the Constitution is on the brink of ruin this people will be the staff upon which the nation shall lean and they shall bear the Constitution away from the very verge of destruction.

Joseph Smith Papers, LDS Church Historical Archives, Box 1, March 10, 1844 Also: D. Michael Stewart, "I Have a Question," Ensign, June 1976, 64-65

ENSIGN, J SMITH JUN:1976


Parley P. Pratt wrote in 1841 that the prophet said, "The government is fallen and needs redeeming. It is guilty of Blood and cannot stand as it now is but will come so near desolation as to hang as it were by a single hair!!!!! Then the servants goes [sic] to the nations of the earth, and gathers the strength of the Lord�s house! A mighty army!!!!!! And this is the redemption of Zion when the saints shall have redeemed that government and reinstated it in all its purity and glory!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

George A. Smith Papers, Church Archives, Box 7, Folder 5, January 21, 1841. Also: D. Michael Stewart, "I Have a Question," Ensign, June 1976, 64-65

ENSIGN, J SMITH JUN:1976


The time would come when the constitution and government would hang by a brittle thread and would be ready to fall into other hands but this people the latter-day saints will step forth and save it."

James Burgess Journal, 1818-1904, Church Archives, vol. 1-found among loose sermons. Also: D. Michael Stewart, "I Have a Question," Ensign, June 1976, 64-65

JD, O HYDE 6:150


The time would come that the Constitution and the country would be in danger of an overthrow and said he, if the constitution be saved at all, it will be by the Elders of this Church. I believe this is about the language as nearly as I can recollect it.

Also: D. Michael Stewart, "I Have a Question," Ensign, June 1976, 64-65

ENSIGN, E SNOW JUN:1976


Eliza R. Snow said, "I heard the prophet say, �The time will come when the government of these United States will be so nearly overthrown through its corruption, that the Constitution will hang as it were by a single hair, and the Latter-day Saints-the Elders of Israel-will step forward to its rescue and save it."

In a Pioneer Day celebration in Ogden in 1871 - Journal History, MSF 143 #28, July 24, 1871 Also: D. Michael Stewart, "I Have a Question," Ensign, June 1976, 64-65

ENSIGN, J M GRANT JUN:1976


Jedediah M. Grant, during the dark days of threatened invasion of Utah by a federal army, referred to the Prophet�s utterance as he addressed a Mormon Battalion gathering in Salt Lake City, February 6, 1855. "What did the Prophet Joseph say? When the Constitution shall be tottering we shall be the people to save it from the hand of the foe."

Deseret News Weekly, January 19, 1870 Also: D. Michael Stewart, "I Have a Question," Ensign, June 1976, 64-65

JD, B YOUNG 12:204


Brigham Young, reflecting on the prophecy of 1868, expressed: "It would not be many years before these words come to pass."

Also: D. Michael Stewart, "I Have a Question," Ensign, June 1976, 64-65

JD, J TAYLOR 25:350


"It may be nearer...than some of us think."

Also: D. Michael Stewart, "I Have a Question," Ensign, June 1976, 64-65

CR, J R CLARK OCT:1942


President J. Reuben Clark, Jr., warned in 1942: "Whether it [the Constitution] shall live or die is now in the balance."

Also: D. Michael Stewart, "I Have a Question," Ensign, June 1976, 64-65

CR, C W NIBLEY OCT:1923


Brethren and sisters, let me say in closing that we have it of record, that the prophet Joseph Smith said the time would come when, through secret organizations taking the law into their own hands, not being governed by law or by due process of law, but becoming a law unto themselves, when, by those disintegrating activities, the Constitution of the United States would be so torn and rent asunder, and life and property and peace and security would he held of so little value, that the Constitution would, as it were, hang by a thread. But he never said, so far as I have heard, that that thread would be cut. I believe, with Elder Richards, that this Constitution will be preserved, but it will be preserved very largely in consequence of what the Lord has revealed and what this people, through listening to the Lord and being obedient, will help to bring about, to stabilize and give permanency and effect to the Constitution itself. That also is our mission. That also is what we are here for. I glory in it. I praiseGod with all my heart and soul that I am a member of it.

A COMMEMORATION OF 9/11

On this day (9/11), I have to do something to show the downfall of this nation. This is truly sad. We did what we did to the Branch Davidians (right or wrong), but we let this happen in the name of political correctness.



Let me be very clear on this day that has largely become a symbol of sacrifice of our public "servants", I do not worship our troops, I do not worship our police, I do not worship our fire fighters, I do not worship anyone that gets paid for what they do (they are largely over-paid fat cats in my opinion - not the George Washingtonian public servant model). It is simply a job - and they are amply compensated for what they do and the level of danger and that is their reward. They feel it is their calling just as I feel my line of work is mine. However, I DO have respect and reverence for a humble missionary who travels largely without purse or scrip and is rejected by the proud and haughty but who perseveres in faith. It is missionary armed with God's word who will largely change the world over those armed with instruments of death and force who will compel change. Lets not forget through all of the killing that occurred in the Book of Mormon, it was a few dedicated missionaries who changed an entire culture to the correct side - so much so that the former "bad guys" sent missionaries to set the former "good guys" straight before the Lord came. Lets keep things in perspective folks.

A NIBLEY ROAST ON PRIDE AND ARROGANCE

I have never much been into pomp and circumstance - to the point I did not attend my own graduation at BYU. It was about the knowledge gained, not the stupid piece of paper and the ridiculous clothes worn.

So, to read this is really rich. I love Hugh Nibley and others who just say it the way that it is:

Leaders to Managers: The Fatal Shift
Hugh W. Nibley
Provo, Utah: Maxwell InstituteThe views expressed in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of the Maxwell Institute, Brigham Young University, or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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Leaders to Managers: The Fatal Shift

Hugh W. Nibley

This speech was delivered at the BYU commencement ceremony on 19 August 1983 after Nibley had received an honorary doctor of letters degree; it was published as "Leaders to Managers: The Fatal Shift," Dialogue 16/4 (Winter 1983): 12—21.

Twenty-three years ago today, if you will cast your minds back, on this same occasion I gave the opening prayer in which I said: "We have met here today clothed in the black robes of a false priesthood . . ." Many have asked me since whether I really said such a shocking thing, but nobody has ever asked what I meant by it. Why not? Well, some knew the answer already; and as for the rest, we do not question things at "the BYU." But for my own relief, I welcome this opportunity to explain.

Why a priesthood? Because these robes originally denoted those who had taken clerical orders; and a college was a "mystery," with all the rites, secrets, oaths, degrees, tests, feasts, and solemnities that go with initiation into higher knowledge.

But why false? Because it is borrowed finery, coming down to us through a long line of unauthorized imitators. It was not until 1893 that "an intercollegiate commission was formed . . . to draft a uniform code for caps, gowns, and hoods" in the United States.1 Before that there were no rules. You could design your own; and that liberty goes as far back as these fixings can be traced. The late Roman emperors, as we learn from the infallible DuCange, marked each step in the decline of their power and glory by the addition of some new ornament to the resplendent vestments that proclaimed their sacred office and dominion. Branching off from them, the kings of the tribes who inherited the lands and the claims of the empire vied with each other in imitating the Roman masters, determined to surpass even them in the theatrical variety and richness of caps and gowns.

One of the four crowns worn by the Emperor was the mortarboard. The French kings got it from Charlemagne, the model and founder of their royal lines. To quote DuCange:

When the French kings quitted the palace at Paris to erect a Temple of Justice, at the same time they conferred their royal adornments on those who would preside therein, so that the judgments that came from their mouths would have more weight and authority with the people, as if they were coming from the mouth of the Prince himself. [That's the idea of the robe of the prophet, descending on his successor.] It is to these connections that the mortarboards and the scarlet and ermine robes of the Chancellors of France and the Presidents of Parlement are to be traced. Their gowns or epitogia [the loose robe thrown over the rest of the clothing, to produce the well-known greenhouse effect] are still made in the ancient fashion. . . . The name "mortarboard" is given to the diadem because it is shaped like the mortarboard which serves for mixing plaster, and is bigger on top than on the bottom.2

But where did the Roman emperors get it? For one thing, the mortarboard was called a Justinianeion, because of its use by the Emperor Justinian, who introduced it from the East. He got his court trappings and his protocol from the monarchs of Asia, in particular the Grand Shah, from whom it can be traced to the khans of the steppes and the Mongol emperors, who wore the golden button of all wisdom on the top of the cap even as I do now. The shamans of the North also had it, and among the Laplanders it is still called "the Cap of the Four Winds." The four-square headpiece topped by the golden tassel—the emergent Flame of Full Enlightenment—also figures in some Buddhist and Lamaist representations. But you get the idea: this Prospero suit is pretty strong medicine—"rough magic" indeed!3

Another type of robe and headdress is described in Exodus and Leviticus and the third book of Josephus's Antiquities, i.e., the white robe and linen cap of the Hebrew priesthood, which have close resemblance to some Egyptian vestments.4 They were given up entirely, however, with the passing of the temple and were never even imitated after that by the Jews. Both their basic white and their peculiar design, especially as shown in the latest studies from Israel, are much like our own temple garments. This is not the time nor the place to pursue a subject in which Brother Packer wisely recommends a judicious restraint. I bring it up only to ask myself, "What if I appeared for an endowment session in the temple dressed in this outfit I'm wearing now?" There would be something incongruous about it, perhaps even comical. But why should that be so? The original idea behind both garments is the same—to provide a clothing more fitting to another ambience, action, and frame of mind than that of the warehouse, office, or farm. Doctrine and Covenants 109 describes the function and purpose of the temple as much the same as those of a university: A house where all seek learning by study and faith, by a discriminating search among the best books (no official list is given—you must search them out), and by constant discussion—diligently teaching "one another words of wisdom"; everybody seeking greater light and knowledge as all things come to be "gathered in one"—hence university (D&C 109:7, 14; 42:36).

Both the black and the white robes proclaim a primary concern for things of the mind and the spirit, sobriety of life, and concentration of purpose removed from the largely mindless, mechanical routines of your everyday world. Cap and gown announced that the wearer had accepted certain rules of living and been tested in special kinds of knowledge.

What is wrong, then, with the flowing robes? For one thing, they are somewhat theatrical and too easily incline the wearer, beguiled by their splendor, to masquerade and affectation. In the time of Socrates, the Sophists were making a big thing of their special manner of dress and delivery.5 It was all for show, of course, but it was "dressing for success" with a vengeance, for the whole purpose of the rhetorical brand of education which they inaugurated and sold at top prices to the ambitious youth was to make the student successful as a paid advocate in the law courts, a commanding figure in the public assemblies, or a successful promoter of daring business enterprises by mastering those then irresistible techniques of persuasion and salesmanship which the Sophists had to offer.

That was the classical education which Christianity embraced at the urging of the great St. Augustine. He had learned by hard experience that you can't trust revelation because you can't control it—the Spirit bloweth where it listeth (John 3:8); and what the church needed was something more available and reliable than that, something commodior et multitudini tutior ("handier and more reliable for the public") than revelation or even reason, and that is exactly what the rhetorical education had to offer.

At the beginning of this century, scholars were strenuously debating the momentous transition from Geist to Amt, from spirit to office, from inspiration to ceremony in the leadership of the early church, when the inspired leader, Peter, was replaced by the typical city bishop, an appointed and elected official—ambitious, jealous, calculating, power-seeking, authoritarian, an able politician, and a master of public relations. We have an immense literature on this in the Patrologia. This was St. Augustine's trained rhetorician. At the same time, the charismatic gifts (the gifts of the Spirit), not to be trusted, were replaced by rites and ceremonies that could be timed and controlled, all following the Roman Imperial model, as Alföldi has shown, including the caps and gowns.6

And down through the centuries the robes have never failed to keep the public at a respectful distance, inspire a decent awe for the professions, and impart an air of solemnity and mystery that has been as good as money in the bank. The four faculties of theology, philosophy, medicine, and law have been the perennial seedbeds, not only of professional wisdom, but of the quackery and venality so generously exposed to public view by Plato, Rabelais, Molière, Swift, Gibbon, A. E. Housman, H. L. Mencken, and others. What took place in the Greco-Roman as in the Christian world was that fatal shift from leadership to management that marks the decline and fall of civilizations.

At the present time, that grand old lady of the Navy, Captain Grace Hopper (the oldest commissioned officer in the Navy), is calling our attention to the contrasting and conflicting natures of management and leadership. No one, she says, ever managed men into battle. She wants more emphasis in teaching leadership. But leadership can no more be taught than creativity or how to be a genius. The Generalstab tried desperately for a hundred years to train up a generation of leaders for the German army; but it never worked, because the men who delighted their superiors, i.e., the managers, got the high commands, while the men who delighted the lower ranks, i.e., the leaders, got reprimands.

Leaders are movers and shakers, original, inventive, unpredictable, imaginative, full of surprises that discomfit the enemy in war and the main office in peace. For the managers are safe, conservative, predictable, conforming organization men and team players, dedicated to the establishment.

The leader, for example, has a passion for equality. We think of great generals from David and Alexander on down, sharing their beans or maza with their men, calling them by their first names, marching along with them in the heat, sleeping on the ground, and being first over the wall. A famous ode by a long-suffering Greek soldier, Archilochus, reminds us that the men in the ranks are not fooled for an instant by the executive type who thinks he is a leader.7

For the manager, on the other hand, the idea of equality is repugnant and even counterproductive. Where promotion, perks, privilege, and power are the name of the game, awe and reverence for rank is everything, the inspiration and motivation of all good men. Where would management be without the inflexible paper processing, dress standards, attention to proper social, political, and religious affiliation, vigilant watch over habits and attitudes, that gratify the stockholders and satisfy security?

"If you love me," said the greatest of all leaders, "you will keep my commandments. "If you know what is good for you," says the manager, "you will keep my commandments and not make waves." That is why the rise of management always marks the decline, alas, of culture. If the management does not go for Bach, very well, there will be no Bach in the meeting. If the management favors vile sentimental doggerel verse extolling the qualities that make for success, young people everywhere will be spouting long trade-journal jingles from the stand. If the management's taste in art is what will sell—trite, insipid, folksy kitsch—that is what we will get. If management finds maudlin, saccharine commercials appealing, that is what the public will get. If management must reflect the corporate image in tasteless, trendy new buildings, down come the fine old pioneer monuments.

To Parkinson's Law, which shows how management gobbles up everything else, he added what he calls the "Law of Injelitance": Managers do not promote individuals whose competence might threaten their own position; and so as the power of management spreads ever wider, the quality deteriorates (if that is possible). In short, while management shuns equality, it feeds on mediocrity.

On the other hand, leadership is an escape from mediocrity. All the great deposits of art, science, and literature from the past, on which all civilization has been nourished, come to us from a mere handful of leaders. For the qualities of leadership are the same in all fields, the leader being simply the one who sets the highest example; and to do that and open the way to greater light and knowledge, the leader must break the mold. "A ship in port is safe," says Captain Hopper speaking of management, "but that is not what ships were built for," she says, calling for leadership.

To quote one of the greatest of leaders, the founder of this institution, "There is too much of a sameness in this community. . . . I am not a stereotyped Latter-day Saint and do not believe in the doctrine . . . away with stereotyped 'Mormons'!"8 Good-bye all. True leaders are inspiring because they are inspired, caught up in a higher purpose, devoid of personal ambition, idealistic, and incorruptible.

There is necessarily some of the manager in every leader (what better example than Brigham Young himself?), as there should be some of the leader in every manager. Speaking in the temple to the temple management, the scribes and pharisees all in their official robes, the Lord chided them for one-sidedness: They kept careful accounts of the most trivial sums brought into the temple; but in their dealings they neglected fair play, compassion, and good faith, which happen to be the prime qualities of leadership.

The Lord insisted that both states of mind are necessary, and that is important: "These ought ye to have done [speaking of the bookkeeping], and not to leave the other undone." But it is the blind leading the blind, he continues, who reverse priorities, who "strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel" (Matthew 23:23—24). So vast is the discrepancy between management and leadership that only a blind man would get them backwards. Yet that is what we do. In that same chapter of Matthew, the Lord tells the same men that they do not really take the temple seriously, while the business contracts registered in the temple they do take very seriously indeed (Matthew 23:16—18). I am told of a meeting of very big businessmen in a distant place, who happened also to be the heads of stakes, where they addressed the problem of "How to stay awake in the temple." For them what is done in the house of the Lord is a mere quota-filling until they can get back to the real work of the world.

History abounds in dramatic confrontations between the two types, but none is more stirring than the epic story of the collision between Moroni and Amalickiah, the one the most charismatic leader, the other the most skillful manager, in the Book of Mormon. This is both timely and relevant—that's why I bring it in here. We are often reminded that Moroni "did not delight in the shedding of blood" and would do anything to avoid it, repeatedly urging his people to make covenants of peace and to preserve them by faith and prayer. He refused to talk about "the enemy." For him they were always "our brethren," misled by the traditions of their fathers. He fought them only with heavy reluctance, and he never invaded their lands, even when they threatened intimate invasion of his own. He never felt threatened, since he trusted absolutely in the Lord. At the slightest sign of weakening by an enemy in battle, Moroni would instantly propose a discussion to put an end to the fighting. The idea of total victory was alien to him—no revenge, no punishment, no reprisals, no reparations, even for an aggressor who had ravaged his country. He would send the beaten enemy home after battle, accepting their word for good behavior or inviting them to settle on Nephite lands, even when he knew he was taking a risk. Even his countrymen who fought against him lost their lives only while opposing him on the field of battle. There were no firing-squads, and former conspirators and traitors had only to agree to support his popular army to be reinstated. With Alma, he insisted that conscientious objectors keep their oaths and not go to war even when he desperately needed their help. Always concerned to do the decent thing, he would never take what he called an unfair advantage of an enemy. Devoid of personal ambition, the moment the war was over he "yielded up the command of his armies . . . and he retired to his own house . . . in peace" (Alma 62:43), though as the national hero he could have had any office or honor. For his motto was, "I seek not for power" (Alma 60:36), and as to rank he thought of himself only as one of the despised and outcast of Israel. If all this sounds a bit too idealistic, may I remind you that there really have been such men in history, hard as that is to imagine today.

Above all, Moroni was the charismatic leader, personally going about to rally the people, who came running together spontaneously to his title of liberty, the banner of the poor and downtrodden of Israel (Alma 46:12, 19—21). He had little patience with management. He let himself get carried away and wrote tactless and angry letters to the big men sitting on their "thrones in a state of thoughtless stupor" back in the capital (Alma 60:7). And when it was necessary he bypassed the whole system, and "altered the management of affairs among the Nephites," to counter Amalickiah's own managerial skill (Alma 49:11). Yet he could apologize handsomely when he learned that he had been wrong, led by his generous impulses into an exaggerated contempt for management; and he gladly shared with Pahoran the glory of the final victory, one thing that ambitious generals jealously reserve for themselves.

But if Moroni hated war so much, why was he such a dedicated general? He leaves us in no doubt on that head—he took up the sword only as a last resort. "I seek not for power, but to pull it down" (Alma 60:36). He was determined to "pull down [the] pride and . . . nobility" (Alma 51:18) of those groups who were trying to take things over. The "Lamanite brethren" he fought were the reluctant auxiliaries of Zoramites and Amalickiahites, his own countrymen. They "grew proud . . . because of their exceedingly great riches," and sought to seize power for themselves (Alma 45:24), enlisting the aid of "those who were in favor of kings . . . those of high birth . . . supported by those who sought power and authority over the people" (Alma 51:8). They were further joined by important "judges [who] had many friends and kindreds" (the right connections were everything) plus "almost all the lawyers and the high priests," to which were added "the lower judges of the land, and they were seeking for power" (3 Nephi 6:27; Alma 46:4).

All these Amalickiah welded together with immense managerial skill to form a single ultraconservative coalition who agreed to "support him and establish him to be their king," expecting that "he would make them rulers over the people" (Alma 46:5). Many in the church were won over by Amalickiah's skillful oratory, for he was a charming ("flattering" is the word used by the Book of Mormon) and persuasive communicator. He made war the cornerstone of his policy and power, using a systematic and carefully planned communications system of towers and trained speakers to stir up the people to fight for their rights, meaning Amalickiah's career. For while Moroni had kind feelings for the enemy, Amalickiah "did care not for the blood of his [own] people" (Alma 49:10). His object in life was to become king of both the Nephites and Lamanites, using the one to subdue the other (Alma 46:4—5). He was a master of dirty tricks, to which he owed some of his most brilliant achievements as he maintained his upward mobility by clever murders, high-powered public relations, and great executive ability. His competitive spirit was such that he swore to drink the blood of Alma, who stood in his way. In short, he was "one very wicked man" (Alma 46:9), who stood for everything that Moroni loathed.

It is at this time in Book of Mormon history that the word management makes its only appearances (three of them) in all the scriptures. First there was that time when Moroni on his own "altered the management of affairs among the Nephites" (Alma 49:11) during a crisis. Then there was Korihor, the ideological spokesman for the Zoramites and Amalickiahites, who preached that "every man fared in this life according to the management of the creature; therefore every man prospered according to his genius [ability, talent, brains, etc.], and . . . conquered according to his strength; and whatsoever a man did was no crime" (Alma 30:17). He raged against the government for taking people's property, that "they durst not enjoy their rights and privileges, Yea they durst not make use of that which [was] their own" (Alma 30:27—28). Finally, as soon as Moroni disappeared from the scene, the old coalition "did obtain the sole management of the government," and immediately did "turn their backs upon the poor" (Helaman 6:39), while they appointed judges to the bench who displayed the spirit of cooperation by "letting the guilty and the wicked go unpunished because of their money" (Helaman 7:5). (All this took place in Central America. the perennial arena of the Big People versus the Little People.)

Such was the management that Moroni opposed. By all means, brethren, let us take Captain Moroni for our model, and never forget what he fought for—the poor, the outcast, and the despised; and what he fought against—pride, power, wealth, and ambition; or how he fought—as the generous, considerate, and magnanimous foe, a leader in every sense.

At the risk of running overtime, I must pause and remind you that this story of which I have given just a few small excerpts is supposed to have been cooked up back in the 1820s and somewhere in the backwoods by some abysmally ignorant, disgustingly lazy, and shockingly unprincipled hayseed. Aside from a light mitigation of those epithets, that is the only alternative to believing that the story is true; for the situation is equally fantastic no matter what kind of author you choose to invent. This must be a true story.

That Joseph Smith is beyond compare the greatest leader of modern times is a proposition that needs no comment. Brigham Young recalled that many of the brethren considered themselves better managers than Joseph and were often upset by his economic naiveté. Brigham was certainly a better manager than the Prophet (or anybody else, for that matter), and he knew it; yet he always deferred to and unfailingly followed Brother Joseph all the way while urging others to do the same, because he knew only too well how small is the wisdom of men compared with the wisdom of God.

Moroni scolded the management for their "love of glory and the vain things of the world" (Alma 60:32), and we have been warned against the things of this world as recently as the last general conference.9 But exactly what are the things of the world? An easy and infallible test has been given us in the well-known maxim, "You can have anything in this world for money" If a thing is of this world you can have it for money; if you cannot have it for money, it does not belong to this world. That is what makes the whole thing manageable—money is pure number. By converting all values to numbers, everything can be fed into the computer and handled with ease and efficiency. "How much?" becomes the only question we need to ask. The manager "knows the price of everything and the value of nothing," because for him the value is the price.

Look around you here. Do you see anything that cannot be had for money? Is there anything here you couldn't have if you were rich enough? Well, for one thing you may think you detect intelligence, integrity, sobriety, zeal, character, and other such noble qualities. Don't the caps and gowns prove that? But hold on! I have always been taught that those are the very things that managers are looking for. They bring top prices in the marketplace.

Does their value in this world mean, then, that they have no value in the other world? It means exactly that. Such things have no price and command no salary in Zion; you cannot bargain with them because they are as common as the once-pure air around us; they are not negotiable in the kingdom because there everybody possesses all of them in full measure, and it would make as much sense to demand pay for having bones or skin as it would to collect a bonus for honesty or sobriety. It is only in our world that they are valued for their scarcity. "Thy money perish with thee," said Peter to a gowned quack (Simon Magus) who sought to include "the gift of God" in a business transaction (Acts 8:20).

The group leader of my high priests' quorum is a solid and stalwart Latter-day Saint who was recently visited by a young returned missionary who came to sell him some insurance. Cashing in on his training in the mission field, the fellow assured the brother that he knew that he had the right policy for him just as he knew the gospel was true. Whereupon my friend, without further ado, ordered him out of the house, for one with a testimony should hold it sacred and not sell it for money. The early Christians called Christemporoi those who made merchandise of spiritual gifts or church connections. The things of the world and the things of eternity cannot be thus conveniently conjoined; and it is because many people are finding this out today that I am constrained at this time to speak on this unpopular theme.

For the past year I have been assailed by a steady stream of visitors, phone calls, and letters from people agonizing over what might be called a change of majors. Heretofore the trouble has been the repugnance that the student (usually a graduate) has felt at entering one line of work while he would greatly prefer another. But what can they do? "If you leave my employ," says the manager, "what will become of you?" But today it is not boredom or disillusionment, but conscience that raises the problem. To seek ye first financial independence and all other things shall be added, is recognized as a rank perversion of the scriptures and an immoral inversion of values.

To question that sovereign maxim, one need only consider what strenuous efforts of wit, will, and imagination have been required to defend it. I have never heard, for example, of artists, astronomers, naturalists, poets, athletes, musicians, scholars, or even politicians coming together in high-priced institutes, therapy groups, lecture series, outreach programs, or clinics to get themselves psyched up by GO! GO! GO! slogans, moralizing clichés, or the spiritual exercises of a careful dialectic, to give themselves what is called a "wealth mindset" with the assurance that (in the words of Korihor) "whatsoever a man did was no crime" (Alma 30:17). Nor do those ancient disciplines lean upon lawyers, those managers of managers, to prove to the world that they are not cheating. Those who have something to give to humanity revel in their work, and do not have to rationalize, advertise, or evangelize to make themselves feel good about what they are doing. It is only when their art and their science become business oriented that problems of ethics ever arise. Look at TV. Behind the dirty work is always money. There would be no crime on Hill Street if people didn't have to have money. Paul was absolutely right: The drive for money is "the root of all evil" (1 Timothy 6:10); and he's quoting, incidentally, the old book of Enoch.

In my latest class, a graduating honors student in business management (who is here today) wrote this—the assignment was to compare one's self with some character in the Pearl of Great Price, and he quite seriously chose Cain:

Many times I wonder if many of my desires are too self-centered. Cain was after personal gain. He knew the impact of his decision to kill Abel. Now, I do not ignore God and make murderous pacts with Satan; however, I desire to get gain. Unfortunately, my desire to succeed in business is not necessarily to help the Lord's kingdom grow [now there's a refreshing bit of honesty]. Maybe I am pessimistic, but I feel that few businessmen have actually dedicated themselves to the furthering of the Church without first desiring personal gratification. As a business major, I wonder about the ethics of business—"charge as much as possible for a product which was made by someone else who was paid as little as possible." You live on the difference. As a businessman will I be living on someone else's industry and not my own? Will I be contributing to society or will I receive something for nothing, as did Cain? While being honest, these are difficult questions for me.

They have been made difficult by the rhetoric of our times. The Church was full of men in Paul's day teaching that gain is godliness and making others believe it. Today the black robe puts the official stamp of approval on that very proposition. But don't blame the College of Commerce! The Sophists, those shrewd business- and showmen, started that game 2,500 years ago, and you can't blame others for wanting to get in on something so profitable. The learned doctors and masters have always known which side their bread was buttered on and have taken their place in the line. Business and "Independent Studies," the latest of the late-comers, have filled the last gaps; and today, no matter what your bag, you can put in for a cap and gown. And be not alarmed that management is running the show—they always have.

Most of you are here today only because you believe that this charade will help you get ahead in the world. But in the last few years things have got out of hand. The economy, once the most important thing in our materialistic lives, has become the only thing. We have been swept up in a total dedication to the economy which, like the massive mudslides of our Wasatch Front, is rapidly engulfing and suffocating everything. If President Kimball is "frightened and appalled" by what he sees, I can do no better than to conclude with his words: "We must leave off the worship of modern-day idols and a reliance on the 'arm of flesh,' for the Lord has said to all the world in our day, 'I will not spare any that remain in Babylon' (D&C 64:24)."10 And Babylon is where we are.

In a forgotten time, before the Spirit was exchanged for the office and inspired leadership for ambitious management, these robes were designed to represent withdrawal from the things of this world—as the temple robes still do. That we may become more fully aware of the real significance of both is my prayer.

Notes

1. Encyclopedia Americana, International Edition, 30 vols. (New York: Americana,1965), 8:49.

2. D. P. Carpenter, "Des Couronnes des rois de France," Dissertation 24 of Dissertations ou réflexions sur l?histoire de Saint Louys, in Charles du Fresne DuCange, Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, 10 vols. (Paris: Didot, 1840?50; reprinted Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1954), 10:83; cf. essays on crowns in the supplement.

3. William Shakespeare, The Tempest, act V, scene i, line 57.

4. Cf. Exodus 28:4; 39:1—31; Leviticus 8:7—9; and Josephus, Antiquities III, 7, 1—7.

5. Plato, Protagoras 309a—d.

6. András Alföldi, A Conflict of Ideas in the Late Roman Empire, tr. Harold Mattingly (Oxford, Clarendon: 1952).

7. Archilocus, frag. 58.

8. JD 13:153, 55.

9. For example, see Thomas S. Monson, "Anonymous," Ensign 13 (May 1983): 55—57.

10. Spencer W. Kimball, "The False Gods We Worship," Ensign 6 (June 1976): 4, 6.

THE GLOBAL WARMING COVERUP - BECAUSE OF THE DESIGNS OF CONSPIRING MEN

BECAUSE OF MY TIME IN BRAZIL, I HAVE A DEEP-SEATED HATRED FOR CORRUPTION OF ANY KIND. I LITERALLY SAW PEOPLE DYING BECAUSE SOMEONE THOUGHT THEY NEEDED THE MONEY FOR THEIR MERCEDES MORE THAN THE STARVING AND SICK NEEDED FOOD AND MEDICINE. WHEN THE WICKED RULE, THE RIGHTEOUS (OR INNOCENT) MOURN.

AFTER JUST WATCHING THE MOVIE "TAKEN" WITH MY WIFE AND DAUGHTER (WHO IS A SPITTIN IMAGE OF ELIZABETH SMART), I REMEMBER WHY CORRUPTION NEEDS TO BE FOUGHT AT ANY LEVEL AND WHY, WHEN I THINK OF HOW HARD THINGS WILL BE WHEN THE LORD COMES, I REMEMBER HOW NICE IT WILL BE WHEN THE LORD COMES AND "TAKES THE TRASH TO THE CURB" - AS I ALWAYS SAY...... HEH, HEH, HEH. IT WILL BE WORTH IT ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TRAUMA.

SO, KNOWING HOW MUCH I HATE CORRUPTION, I BLOG THIS NON-POLITICAL PIECE (REMEMBER, THIS IS NOT A POLITICAL BLOG) AND RAIL ON YET ANOTHER ALL-CONSUMING SOURCE OF CORRUPTION AMONG THE MODERN DAY GADIANTIONS - AL GORE AND HIS GLOBAL WARMING DELUSION.
THESE CORRUPT SACKS WILL SELL OUR SOVEREIGNTY AND RIGHT TO SELF-DETERMINATION AT THE COPENHAGEN SELLOUT.

WE ALL KNOW THAT THE GLOBAL GADIANTONS SEEK A ONE-WORLD SOLUTION TO ALL OF OUR PROBLEMS, INCLUDING THE "TERRIFYING" GLOBAL WARMING PROBLEM, THE SPECTRE OF GLOBAL PANDEMICS, AND OF COURSE, GLOBAL ECONOMIC COLLAPSE. HMMMM, SEEMS LIKE WE HAVE ALL OF THESE VERY THINGS COMING TOGETHER AT THE SAME TIME - A CONVENIENT PERFECT STORM IN WHICH TO IMPLEMENT CHANGE OF A GLOBAL NATURE. NOT THAT THERE IS A CONSPIRACY OF ANY KIND......

WE CANNOT SAY THAT WE HAVE NOT BEEN WARNED. THE BOOK OF MORMON IS THE BIGGEST ANTI-CONSPIRACY MANUAL OUT THERE. THEIR BASIC TRICKS ARE THE SAME - JUST A DIFFERENT SET OF GOONS RUNNING THE SHOW, AND ON A SOPHISTICATED GLOBAL SCALE.

ENJOY THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE OF A PATRIOT WHO HACKED SOME E-MAILS THAT EXPOSE THE LIE THAT IS GLOBAL WARMING:

WND HEAT OF THE MOMENT
Hacked e-mails reveal global-warming fraud?
Top climate scientists discuss hiding contrary data, marginalizing dissenters
Posted: November 20, 2009
11:27 am Eastern

© 2009 WorldNetDaily


University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit
Officials at a key global warming research center in the United Kingdom have authenticated a series of e-mails and other documents apparently taken from their computer system by a hacker, but they cannot explain what scientists in internal exchanges meant by references to a "trick" that would "hide the decline" of global temperatures nor by instructions to delete contrary data.

Author James Delingpole writes in a London Telegraph column the most damaging revelations indicate climate-change scientists may have "manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause."

According to the Australian Investigate magazine, the 62 megabyte Zip file with documents, e-mail exchanges and other information from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit apparently was posted by an unidentified hacker on a Russian web server.

One e-mail said: "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd (sic) from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

Another expressed internal doubts: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate."

Further, an e-mail exchange suggested the suppression of information: "Can you delete any e-mails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment – minor family crisis."

"And, perhaps most reprehensibly," Delingpole writes, "a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority."

(Story continues below)




He cites an e-mail: "This was the danger of always criticizing the skeptics for not publishing in the 'peer-reviewed literature.' Obviously, they found a solution to that – take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering 'Climate Research' as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board …What do others think?"

Myron Ebell, of the GlobalWarming.org website where "cooler heads prevail," said the e-mails are "shocking."

"Its kind of interesting to learn that petty politics seems to be more prevalent in the scientific community than in the political community," he said.

The documents, he said, "raise a huge number of questions about the integrity of a lot of people in the alarmist community.

"What I've seen there is a very strong effort to manage the issue by scientists and not as a scientific issues. It's very improper," he said. " One of the criticisms is that we need scientists to be scientist, and policy can be handled in public debate."

Delingpole observes the world "is currently cooling; electorates are increasingly reluctant to support eco-policies leading to more oppressive regulation, higher taxes and higher utility bills; the tide is turning against Al Gore's Anthropogenic Global Warming theory. The so-called 'skeptical' view is now also the majority view."

Phil Jones, head of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, confirmed to Investigate magazine the documents appeared authentic.

"It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and e-mails," he said.

"It's completely illegal for somebody to hack into our system," he told the magazine

But Jones denied there was any attempt to mislead or conceal.

"They're talking about proxy data going further back in time, a thousand years, and it's just about how you add on the last few years, because when you get proxy data you sample things like tree rings and ice cores, and they don't always have the last few years," he said.

Jones said he could not recall what he meant when he wrote about a plan to "hide the decline."

In the e-mail, dated 10 years ago, Jones wrote: "Once Tim's got a diagram here we'll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow. I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from1961 for Keith's to hide the decline. Mike's series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998. Thanks for the comments, Ray. Cheers, Phil Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit."

The documents also included a message dated last month from Kevin Trenberth to Michal Mann about the "U-turn on climate" by Britain's BBC News.

"Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather)."

Despite the advocacy of a financially vested former vice president, Al Gore, and others, public opinion about whether mankind is causing an ultimately catastrophic rise in global temperatures is shifting.

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, has urged members of Congress to consider the joint opinion of nearly 32,000 scientists, including more than 9,000 Ph.D.s, who believe humans likely have little or nothing to do with any "global warming."

The Petition Project, launched some 10 years ago when the first few thousand signatures were gathered, has steadily grown without any special effort or campaign.

But in the last few years, and especially because of the release of Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth," the campaign has been reinvigorated.

"Mr. Gore's movie, asserting a 'consensus' and 'settled science' in agreement about human-caused global warming, conveyed the claims about human-caused global warming to ordinary movie goers and to public school children, to whom the film was widely distributed. Unfortunately, Mr. Gore's movie contains many very serious incorrect claims which no informed, honest scientist could endorse," project spokesman and founder Art Robinson has told WND.


Robinson, a research professor of chemistry, co-founded the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine with Linus Pauling in 1973, and later co-founded the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.

Paul cited the petition results in his statement to Congress.

"Our energy policies must be based upon scientific truth – not fictional movies or self-interested international agendas," Paul said. "They should be based upon the accomplishments of technological free enterprise that have provided our modern civilization, including our energy industries. That free enterprise must not be hindered by bogus claims about imaginary disasters."

The petition states: "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."

Robinson has warned of serious political and economic consequencesof assuming "global warming" results from mankind's actions.

"The campaign to severely ration hydrocarbon energy technology has now been markedly expanded," he said. "In the course of this campaign, many scientifically invalid claims about impending climate emergencies are being made. Simultaneously, proposed political actions to severely reduce hydrocarbon use now threaten the prosperity of Americans and the very existence of hundreds of millions of people in poorer countries," he told WND.

Warned Paul, "Above all, we must never forget our contract with the American people – the Constitution that provides the sole source of legitimacy of our government. That Constitution requires that we preserve the basic human rights of our people – including the right to freely manufacture, use, and sell energy produced by any means they devise – including nuclear, hydrocarbon, solar, wind, or even bicycle generators.

"While it is evident that the human right to produce and use energy does not extend to activities that actually endanger the climate of the Earth upon which we all depend, bogus claims about climate dangers should not be used as a justification to further limit the American people's freedom," Paul said.

ITS GOING TO BE A SWEET TIME WATCHING THE TRIALS IN HEAVEN WHERE THESE FOLKS GET SENT TO WHERE THEY BELONG. BRING ON THE SECOND COMING! ITS TIME TO ROCK AND ROLL....

VIOLENCE AND IMMORALITY IN THE MEDIA - THE NOAH CONNECTION

As a parent, I have often been pretty-much freaked out with the amount of violence, immorality and pure filth portrayed in the media. We no longer use the tv in our home for anything other than what we overtly allow into our home. Just flicking on the tube is pretty much out.

As I always tell the kids, they have their agency and full ability to choose as they move into adulthood (I came to the conclusion that my parental influence is inversely proportional to their age - so its in their best interest to make as many decisions for themselves as they can as time goes on). One of the things I always tell them, is that, IN THE BIG PICTURE, IT IS ULTIMATELY SURVIVAL OF THE SPIRITUAL FITTEST. God does not care how far ahead in life we got, what we did, unless we followed His Son's example in doing it. The same goes for what we view. If we participated in violence or anything offensive to God, we will be swept off the face of the land with the rest, just as they were in the days of Noah for the same reason.

11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

The earth was destroyed (baptized by immersion) the first time due to violence and not keeping the commandments/corruption.

It will be destroyed the second time (by fire) due to the same causes.

To avoid being caught up in that scenario, it will be most important to be spiritually fit. Those who are spiritually fit will survive to go on, Millenially speaking. Those that love agency and the Son get bodies to experience choice with all of its pitfalls. Those who love the law of chastity and obedience to God's commands will receive the privilege of having an eternal increase. Cause and effect - plain and simple.

All of these darwinists who rely on the arm of the flesh to make their way in life are sadly in for a big surprise. The sad realization will sink in that they should have put their ultimate trust in God and his ways to achieve the biggest, longest lasting effect for all that they do in this life and beyond.

So what does all that have to do with the trash in the media? Violence and filth in, violence and filth out and the trash WILL get taken to the curb before Christ returns again. If we choose wisely what we choose to run through our spiritual filters, we will have indeed chosen wisely.

Here's the article:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RECLAIMING THE SILVER SCREEN
Explicit sex, violence and language? Not anymore!
Meet the man who's cleaning up Hollywood movies, protecting your family

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: March 31, 2009
8:07 pm Eastern


By Chelsea Schilling
© 2009 WorldNetDaily



Dr. Ted Baehr (photo: Movieguide)


CAMARILLO, Calif. – At the height of the Golden Age of Hollywood, a man who would revolutionize the entertainment industry and "clean up American movie screens" was born to two prominent actors.

Ted Baehr, the son of Robert "Tex" Allen, star in Broadway's "Showboat," and Evelyn Pierce, an MGM actress, was raised in New York City. He performed in commercials, movies, television and on stage.

Baehr would become a famous media critic, founder and publisher of Movieguide and a champion of uplifting Hollywood movies with Christian worldviews. He would take on the giants of the industry and inspire filmmakers to produce wholesome, family films.

Early life and education

"I grew up backstage in the theaters doing commercials, going to very elite schools," he told WND. "I was there, day after day, walking the streets of Broadway, going to the plays, sitting in the back on the steps with the stage manager and doing commercials."

Baehr endured a tragic phase in his life when his mother died in 1959. At the young age of 14, he left for boarding school at St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H.


Robert "Tex" Allen


"It was a bleak period, and I quickly got into sex, drugs and self-destructive behavior, although I did well academically," he said.

Baehr later attended the University of Munich, Germany; Cambridge University, England; and Bordeaux and Toulouse Universities in France. He graduated with honors from Dartmouth College, receiving a degree in comparative literature. He served as editor of the student newspaper at the New York University School of Law where he earned his juris doctor.

With an extensive background in entertainment, Baehr had been exposed to various "new Age" religions. He said his mother had "luke-warm" religious beliefs and was involved in Christian Science.

Baehr said he began to support left-wing and anti-Christian causes after studying at Dartmouth College and other "prestigious and politically correct colleges."

Get Ted Baehr's "MOVIEGUIDE" for a complete Christian guide to movies for you and your family.

Accepting Jesus as Savior

In 1974, when he was financing several independent movies for Canon Films, a woman named Audrey Clark, a former friend of his deceased mother, dared him to read the Bible and tell her "what was wrong with it."


Ted and Lili Baehr (photo: Movieguide)


Baehr reluctantly accepted her challenge.

"Finally after six months, I decided to read the short part," he said.

After reading the New Testament, Baehr's views on Christianity changed drastically and he accepted Jesus Christ into his life.

One week later, he married his Argentine-born sweetheart, Lili, an architect. Her family immigrated to the United States in 1955 after living under socialist Juan Domingo Perón.

Baehr attended seminary at the Institute of Theology at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. He later accepted a position as the director of the Television Center at the City University of New York and started the Good News Communications ministry in 1978.

While at the City University of New York, he researched the impact of media in education and was elected president of the Episcopal Radio and Television Foundation, the organization that produced the Emmy Award-winning animated movie, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." Baehr also served on the communications board of the National Council of Churches.

Cleaning up the movie industry


Movieguide offices in Camarillo, Calif.


"Pink Panther" and "Christy" producer Ken Wales introduced Baehr to George Heimrich, former director of the Protestant Film Office – an organization that read every Hollywood script from 1933 to 1966 to ensure that movies adhered to high standards of decency.

Baehr said American movies were morally bankrupt prior to 1933, and the Protestant Film Commission, along with the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency, cleaned up the industry. However, the Protestant Film Commission shut down in 1966.

"The Baptists pulled their funding, and within three years, we went from 'The Greatest Story Ever Told' to the first sex and Satanism film and from 'The Sound of Music' to the first 'X'-rated movie," he said.

The U.S. suffered a severe decline in movie attendance when Hollywood was no longer producing wholesome movies – spiraling from 44 million tickets sold every week to only 20 million.

(Story continues below)





Sir John Templeton, 1912-2008


In 1985, Baehr formed the Christian Film & Television Commission ministry and Movieguide: A Family Guide to Movies and Entertainment. Heimrich donated his Protestant Film Office files to the commission, and Baehr began his monumental task of taking on Hollywood's film giants, using 22 biblically based objective standards to review films and clean up American screens.

Movieguide, a biweekly magazine, TV and radio show and successful website, offers in-depth analyses of movies and reviews nearly 100 percent of U.S. films released in at least nine theaters. The magazine also includes the latest news from the entertainment industry, articles on movies, TV, Internet and cultural trends in addition to warning discerning parents about the worst films coming out of Hollywood.

In 1988, Sir John Templeton, the late billionaire philanthropist and entrepreneur who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, called Baehr to share a new proposal.

"He said, 'I see what you're doing in Hollywood. You're having a good effect, and I've always felt that we should have an award for Hollywood because the Templeton Prize, which is the award for science and religion, has been so effective," Baehr said. "I didn't even know him. He just called out of the blue."


Chuck and Gena Norris present award at 2009 Annual Movieguide Faith & Values Awards Gala


Baehr welcomed the idea with enthusiasm, and the Christian Film & Television Commission initiated the Annual Movieguide Faith & Values Awards Gala and Report to the Entertainment Industry in 1992 in Los Angeles.

The gala honors "good and uplifting" productions in film and television and has become a wild success.

"We always focus on Jesus at the gala, and we get a lot of non-Christians there because we're in Hollywood," he said. "People talk about Jesus. We talk about Jesus. We're giving them church. The films testify to Jesus. Everything about it testifies to Him. That's our major point."

Many now refer to the event as the "Christian Oscars," and along with the Report to the Entertainment Industry, it has led to a dramatic increase in family movies and movies with positive moral content.

"When we started, there was only one movie with positive Christian content, and last year it was 44 percent of the movies," Baehr said. "Christian movies always do better because people want redemption. They have a tough life. They want to go to a movie and be delivered from all of that."

The Annual Report to the Entertainment Industry has shown that moviegoers prefer clean movies without explicit sex, nudity, foul language and drug abuse. According to Movieguide's analysis of the top movies released in 2008, box office earnings for movies with 0-25 obscenities/profanities made $32,145,527 at the box office while movies with no obscenities or profanities made $55,569,733. Likewise, movies with no sex, no nudity and no drug references regularly made tens of millions of dollars more at the box office than movies with immoral content.

Additionally, a seven-year Movieguide study of the top 275 movies reveals that Americans prefer conservative, patriotic, pro-American movies with traditional, Judeo-Christian values and free-market ideals rather than films pushing anti-capitalist, socialist, atheistic, communist or anti-Christian agendas.

"In fact," Baehr added, "movies with more conservative values averaged more than seven times as much money as those movies promoting liberal or leftist values, $81.2 million versus only $11.4 million."



He said viewers are looking for three things in a film.

"They want to be entertained, so they want great drama; they want a moral worldview; and then they want a savior," he said. "They always want someone to come in and rescue them, so movies about salvation do incredibly well."

Baehr said it is pertinent that parents pay attention to the movies and television shows their children watch.

"We're concerned about the vulnerability of kids at different stages of their development. They need to be protected," he said. "Parents can't be there all the time, so we want to ensure that children are self-motivated to do the right thing and make the right choices."

A 'rotten' ratings system

Parents must never rely on the traditional rating system to determine whether films are appropriate for their families.

"The ratings system is rotten," he said. "In the movie industry, you can use whatever words you want. They just color it blue and give you an 'R' or whatever it happens to be. But the system has no basis on any understanding of cognitive development. It has no basis for understanding values."

Each year two or three "G"-rated films have a completely occult and new-age worldview, he said. They contain propaganda and condition children to be anti-parent. At the same time, a movie such as "The Passion of the Christ" – with a healthy message – is inexplicably rated "R."

"In the old days, they would say that you could have violence, but you couldn't have it in such a way that a susceptible youth would want to copy the violence," he said. "The question is, how do you do it? Today we seem to be so simplistic that we can't figure that out. The violence in 'The Passion of the Christ' is such that nobody will be attracted to being a Roman centurion whipping Christ."


"Watchmen" (2009)


On the other hand, violence in movies such as Warner Brothers' "Watchmen" is meant to be exciting and entertaining.

"In one scene, they're out killing and chopping and maiming. They are superheroes, so they're beating the other guys up. There's lots of blood. Arms are sawed off. Things are splattered, and they look at each other and say, 'This is fun.' So they have sex together," he said. "When you combine sex and violence in a way that it's a pleasurable relief, that is a very bad motivation for kids."

Baehr continued, "They tell you it's fun. They tell you it's exciting, but the more intelligent children are, the more likely they will respond to those scripts. They create our view of reality."

WND asked Baehr which film is his favorite and which one he believes is the worst ever produced.

"My overall favorite popular film of all time is 'Finding Nemo,'" he said. "It's the story of the Prodigal Son and the love of a father. It's also a well-plotted movie with wonderful dialogue and construction."

He continued, "One of the worst films of all time, the worst made and the worst topic, is 'Hounddog.'"


Dr. Ted Baehr holds 'Teddy Bear' Award for best family friendly films


"Houndog" is a story about a sexual assault of a young girl played by actress Dakota Fanning.

In terms of impact, he said one of the worst films of all time was "The Da Vinci Code," starring Tom Hanks. Baehr said the book suggests Jews had orgies in the temple.

"To me, that's extremely offensive, because the Jews protected the temple with their lives," he said. "They would never defile a temple. So this is just outlandishly anti-Semitic. It's just vile stuff."

Despite these films, Baehr has encouraging news for parents and moviegoers: The six major Hollywood studios have all begun focusing on making more family films in recent years.

"Now there are more than 100 ministries in Hollywood. There are conservative groups in Hollywood," he said. "We've told producers, if they put this into their work, their movies will do better at the box office. It has now become the buzz in Hollywood that you will do better at the box office when you do movies with faith and values in them. It has made a tremendous impact on Hollywood."

Academy Awards ≠ Hollywood

But don't look to the Academy Awards for proof of this family friendly trend, he said. Many awardees are from independent films and not Hollywood studios.



"Movies like 'Harvey Milk' are not Hollywood movies," Baehr said. "Most of those are made by kids who want to go to the Sundance Film Festival, which is one of the most debauched places on the face of the planet. There's a whole other side of Hollywood, which is the suits behind the scenes. You will find more conservatives and Christians than you expect."


Baehr with actor Michael Clarke Duncan

He said studios lost control of the Academy Awards in 1989. So if moviegoers want to know about family films, they must look to Movieguide.

Baehr now has many relationships with famous Hollywood figures and serves on the board or board of advisers of more than 20 groups, including the National Religious Broadcasters, the American Theater of Actors and the Theological Summit Conference.

He has appeared on major networks and shows such as "Hannity & Colmes," CNN, ABC, Fox News, MSNBC, "Oprah" and "Entertainment Tonight." His commentary pieces have been featured in USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Time magazine and WorldNetDaily.

'Everything relates to Christ'

On Feb. 11, Movieguide held its 17th Annual Faith & Values Awards ceremony in Beverly Hills. The movie "Fireproof" received a $100,000 Epiphany Prize for the Most Inspiring Movie of 2008, sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation.

For television, "The Christmas Choir," a story of homeless men who form a choir, also won an Epiphany Prize. The prizes are awarded to encourage filmmakers and television producers to create movies and television shows that help increase man's understanding and love of God.

Movieguide and the John Templeton Foundation also presented Kairos Prizes at the gala. The top three winners were: "A Matter of Time," "Touched" and "Moody Field."

According to Movieguide, the purpose of the Kairos Award is to "inspire first-time and beginning screenwriters to produce compelling, entertaining, spiritually uplifting scripts that result in a greater increase in man's love or understanding of God."


Baehr family, from left to right: Daughter Evelyn, son Pierce,Ted, wife Lili, son Robby and son James



Because Movieguide is a Christian organization, Baehr said everything relates to Christ and glorifies Him. He said he has felt God's hand in his work since the very beginning.

On numerous occasions, God has protected and provided for the ministry. And after Baehr prayed for His help during tough economic times, anonymous donors delivered six and seven-figure checks to the commission.

"They were not from people I knew," he said. "To this day, I don't know who gave them."

Baehr said his goal is to see the Christian and Television Commission grow beyond movies into television, because many TV shows have morally deteriorated in recent years.

"There's so much work to do. One person said that God never takes you home until you finish your mission," he said. "Well, I figure this mission is so big that I'm going to be doing this for a long time."

WHY WE ELECT LIARS - CORRUPT SOCIETY

I REALLY LIKED THIS PIECE BY DAVID KUPELIAN THAT BASICALLY STATES THAT WE ELECT PEOPLE THAT REFLECT BACK ON US WHO WE ARE AS A SOCIETY:






David Kupelian David Kupelian Why we elect liars as leaders
Posted: March 12, 2009
1:00 am Eastern

© 2009

Editor's note: Barack Obama, aided by a like-minded Congress, has pulled off what amounts to an economic and political coup d'etat in the few weeks since his inauguration as president. Here, WND Managing Editor David Kupelian explains why we so often elect lying, unprincipled leaders, and why they in turn create huge crises for the secret purpose of increasing their power and control.

Did you ever stop to wonder why most governments – no matter where on earth you look, or what time period you consider – tend toward being dishonest, predatory and tyrannical?

Iraq was one big torture chamber before America and its coalition partners liberated it. North Korea is a national concentration camp, where every citizen is the slave of a demented little dictator named Kim Jong-il (who may or may not still be alive – hard to tell in such a fantastically closed society). Zimbabwe, once a major breadbasket for all of Africa, has sewers clogged with aborted babies, an inflation rate of over 11 million percent, and its average life expectancy has been cut almost in half, from 57 to only 34 years.

Yes, I know, these are some of the worst governments on earth. But a great many other nations are not much better. Burma and Sudan are ruled by brutal military dictatorships and mass slaughter and genocide are normal there. The vast Middle East is made up largely of Arab-Muslim police states, almost two dozen of them, where Islam's strict, medieval Shariah law reduces everyday life to one of repression, cruelty and paralyzing fear at best – and at worst, terrorism, "honor killings" and death by stoning for relatively minor offenses (and sometimes for no offense) – all sugar-coated with a stiflingly rigid and intolerant religious code.

China, with a quarter of the world's population – 1.3 billion souls – is still at core a ruthless and suffocating communist dictatorship, despite its massive economic growth. Russia has deteriorated dramatically in recent years; its judicial system is almost dysfunctional, there's virtually no freedom of the press, and international human rights organizations report widespread abuses, including systematic torture of people held by police.

We could continue on with our tour, but we'd just find that most other governments on this earth, from the Far East to Africa to South America, are corrupt, predatory and power-hungry. Each typically perfumes its tyranny with an idealistic, utopian philosophy like communism or Islamic fundamentalism to help control the population. Even Europe and the United Kingdom, once the crown of Western Civilization, are firmly in the grip of secular (de facto atheistic) socialism, which suffocates their once-vibrant Christian culture and seduces their citizens into giving up their hard-won freedoms, independence and wealth in exchange for "cradle-to-grave" security.

That brings us to America.

The United States of America has a transcendent heritage of liberty rooted in self-government and personal responsibility, the result of a revolutionary 200-year-old "experiment" so gloriously successful it became a shining light in an otherwise mostly dark world.

Yet, in recent decades, we too have been seduced. Many of us have been taught in our universities that the "self-evident truths" the founders relied upon are just outdated and dangerous myths. The press routinely portrays values the founders considered to be evil (high taxes, unrestrained federal power, permissive sexual morals) as good, and good as evil. Same with Hollywood, which once showcased pro-American and patriotic themes, but now glorifies sex, violence and total moral confusion.

With this constant cultural subversion in the background, no wonder millions of Americans have gradually been demoralized into depending on government to solve all of their problems, fueling today's uncontrolled, cancer-like growth in government.

Power-hungry demagogues have always used basically the same methods: They demonize "the rich," implying they obtained their wealth by exploiting and stealing from the downtrodden; they stir up racial or tribal hatreds at every opportunity; they blame convenient scapegoats for problems they themselves have caused; and they promise universal peace and happiness if we'll just give them unlimited power over us.

(Column continues below)

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But they win our support only by appealing to the basest part of us – anger, dissatisfaction, greed and especially envy. They know instinctively that if they can stir up and ignite these dark and addictive passions in all of us, they will seduce us away from our inner dependency on God, and instead create a massive voting bloc of people dependent upon them. The reward for this transference of fidelity is great power for them, and confusion, demoralization and ultimate bondage for us. In its purest form, this phenomenon is known today as Marxism, communism, socialism – the spiritual core of which is raw envy.

Communism, as we know, is atheistic – where the government is the only true god, the giver of blessings, the solver of problems, the dispenser of justice and mercy, the source of civilization's progress. Of course, the only "progress" it actually confers is from freedom to slavery.

And yet, this is exactly the appeal more and more Americans today have been conditioned to respond to, as we have progressively fallen away from the Judeo-Christian values that once animated our culture and institutions. The envy-based system Marx unleashed on the world is alive and well, and in different forms still dominates large parts of the world. In America, it has taken root in the once-noble Democratic Party.

As Americans have succumbed to this socialistic seduction, government has enlarged to its current incomprehensible size and has sucked much of the life and productive capability out of the nation, while feeding its uncontrolled growth.

For instance, here's how energy expert and scientist Arthur Robinson, Ph.D., explains this transformation, focusing on America's scandalous inability to provide for its own energy needs:

Why are American fuel prices so high? Why are food and electricity prices on their way to doubling? Why are economic conditions chaotic? The reason is simple. Americans no longer possess the freedom to produce the goods and services required to maintain their former standard of living. Taxation – both direct and indirect through currency inflation – runaway government regulation and government-sponsored-and-encouraged litigation have reduced the productivity of Americans below that required to maintain their way of life. This tyranny – this economic slavery – has been produced entirely by the federal and state governments of the United States.

There are no resource limitations, technological limitations or geopolitical reasons for the current energy shortages and high prices. These shortages and prices are solely the result of taxation, regulation and litigation that have stifled American energy-producing industries.

Government has also robbed Americans of their very substance by corrupting its money system. Almost a century ago, the U.S. Congress created the Federal Reserve System, handing over to a private banking cartel the crucial responsibility for the nation's money supply, which the people had specifically vested in Congress in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. Ever since, middle-class working Americans have seen the value of their money continually diminish – a clandestine form of theft – due to the Fed's inflationary, debt-based, "crank-up-the-printing-press" policies and the abandonment of the gold standard.

If you understand what money really is – it represents your life and substance, it's literally stored energy – you'll see that life itself is being stolen by government. As Texas congressman and money expert Rep. Ron Paul puts it: "From the Great Depression, to the stagflation of the '70s, to the burst of the dotcom bubble … every economic downturn suffered by the country over the last 80 years can be traced to Federal Reserve policy."

As citizens struggle to earn enough to support their families and pay their mortgages, the government literally throws their money away. Yes – throws it away. The watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste annually issues its famed "Pig Book" that details the preceding year's wasteful spending by the federal government. You know, like giving $400,000 of your money to the Sparta Teapot Museum in Sparta, N.C., or $1 million for the "Waterfree Urinal Conservation Initiative" or $50 million for an "indoor rainforest" in Coralville, Iowa, or a thousand and one other wasteful and unconstitutional expenditures.

The level of squandering of taxpayers' substance is a wonder. As just one example, a recent audit showed the U.S. Defense Department wasted $100 million on unused commercial airline tickets it had purchased, never bothering to collect refunds even though the tickets were totally returnable and refundable.

And government doesn't just waste your money – it sometimes uses it to fund evil. Not too many years back, the public was less than thrilled to learn that the federal government was funneling their hard-earned tax dollars into support for obscene, perverse and blasphemous "art." There was the "homoerotic artwork" of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, featuring images too repugnant to be described here. Then there was Andres Serrano's "Pi-- Christ," consisting of a crucifix submerged in the artist's urine (as well as "Pi-- Pope," with the image of the pope in urine). And of course there was David Wojnarowicz's "Tongues of Flame," depicting Jesus shooting up heroin. All funded by you.

It's not just obscene art we've paid for; it's obscene politicians too. We have a never-ending stream of prostitute-loving governors and other "public servants": President Bill Clinton had a predatory sexual relationship with a White House intern barely older than his daughter. Then there was New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey who held a press conference, wife stoically at his side, to announce he was coming out as a "gay American," and New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer who frequented high-priced prostitutes, and presidential candidate Jonathan Edwards who cheated on his cancer-stricken wife while accepting the "Father of the Year" award. The revelations are endless – congressmen preying on teenage page boys, frequenting prostitutes, "coming out" as gay, and betraying their sacred marriage vows.

All this corruption and outrageous behavior shouldn't be surprising. The fact is, a great many human beings are just plain dishonest and predatory, lying and stealing in a multitude of obvious and subtle ways. We all have selfish tendencies. For example, think about a typical male fixated on an attractive female walking down the street. Is this love? No, he just has exploitation and selfish gratification in mind. The point is: With virtually all of us beset by typical human flaws like selfishness, egotism, lust, envy, greed, anger, insecurity and the need for approval, how on earth do we expect the same flawed human beings to suddenly manifest great love and nobility when they get into government? Doesn't make much sense, does it? That's precisely why our founders wisely created a national government with very limited powers and lots of internal checks and balances.

What we need to understand here is that it's not just deranged psychopaths like Saddam Hussein and Robert Mugabe that give us tyrannical government; regular politicians and bureaucrats do it too. As long as they're unprincipled and self-serving, more inclined to preserve their job, personal advantage, wealth and comfort than to risk it all by championing the public good, evil will end up running rampant in that society.

I know this sounds pretty negative, but we really need to understand why it is that governments just about always end up playing god and controlling our lives.

Let's pause again and reflect momentarily on the core reality of our lives. Are you ready?

There really is an omniscient God, and He really does create human beings whose intended destiny is to discover ultimate fulfillment by being obedient to His leading in all things. And our life goes badly – and is supposed to go badly – if we rebel against His will and defy His laws, which are not only found in the Holy Bible, but are also "written" clearly inside each of us.

If we fail to find this inner fidelity to the One who created and sustains us and directs our paths, then we automatically designate someone or something else to fill that necessary role: We will worship another god. Moreover, when we are in rebellion against the true God, we need lies and deception to keep our pursuing conscience at bay – and people who enjoy power are all too eager to step up and play that role for us.

That's right: We elect liars as leaders because we actually need lies if we're rebelling against God's inward leading. Lies do a great job of "serving" us with an illusion of worth and righteousness (that's why we believe them compulsively), as we rebel against the real God, Who is always revealing our faults to us – except that most of us don't want to hear it.

Since bad government relies so totally on persuasive lying, let's take a look at that phenomenon. There's more to it than you might think.

Why politicians lie, and why we believe them

In "The Marketing of Evil," I explore many powerful manipulation techniques used to alter Americans' attitudes toward everything from abortion to divorce to homosexuality. But there's one technique that reigns supreme as the king of all propaganda weapons – lying. To make evil look good – and good appear to be evil – you have to lie.

The power of lies is not so much in the little "white lies" that are part of the fabric of most of our lives. It's in the big lies. It's paradoxical, but we're more likely to believe big lies than small ones.

How can this be? Wouldn't the big, outrageous lie be more easily discerned and resisted than the small, less consequential lie? You'd think so, but you'd be wrong.

There's a dark magic in boldly lying, in telling a "big lie" – repeatedly, with a straight face and with confidence and authority.

One of the greatest liars of the last century – Adolf Hitler – taught that the bigger the lie, the more believable it was.

During World War II, the U.S. government's Office of Strategic Services – a precursor to today's CIA – assessed Hitler's methods this way:

"His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it."

Hitler himself, in his 1925 autobiography "Mein Kampf," explained with eerie insight the fantastic power of lying:

… [I]n the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes. ...

Truly the words of an evil genius. But let's bring this explanation down to earth: Suppose, just prior to Election Day, one candidate accuses his opponent of immoral or illegal behavior. Even if the charges are totally false, and even if the accused candidate answers the charges credibly and effectively, "the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it." In plain English, no matter how effectively the accused answers the charges, some people will still believe he's guilty, and many others will still retain varying degrees of doubt and uncertainty regarding the accused, who may well lose the election due to the cloud hanging over his head. This, as Hitler said, is the magic of lying that "is known to all expert liars in this world. …"

The "doubt-inducing" quality inherent in a "big lie" is actually more powerful even than Hitler explained in "Mein Kampf." Let's say someone tells you a real whopper – like, "Your husband/wife is cheating on you. I saw it with my own eyes." Although it's totally untrue, the big lie has the ability to upset you in a way the little, everyday white lie doesn't. And when you get upset over anything, guess what? You feel a little bit of guilt for falling to being upset, a little angry, a little confused, perhaps a little fearful – and voila, all those conflicting emotions cause you to be unable to think straight, and you can easily end up compulsively believing the lie. To put it another way: When you're upset, the lie takes on a mysterious quality of attraction and believability, as though a protective force-field has temporarily been disabled, allowing the lie to enter your mental inner sanctum.

Hitler's principle is exactly what unprincipled leaders everywhere bank on to get their way with the public.

Using lies to create a crisis

One of the most creative uses of lying – and a key tactic for bending a population to your will – is the creation of a crisis. Now, anyone even superficially familiar with the history of the political left has heard references to the strategy of creating crises as a means of transforming society. You've probably heard of the "Hegelian dialectic," a key Marxist technique whereby an idea ("We need more gun control laws!") generates its opposite ("No, we don't need more gun laws, we just need tougher sentencing of criminals!"), which leads to a reconciliation of opposites, or synthesis ("OK, we'll compromise by passing new gun-control laws, but watering them down somewhat"). This is how socialist progress is achieved "peacefully" – through conflict or crisis – and always in the direction of greater socialism.

The problem is, this "crisis-creation" talk just sounds so wicked, so foreign to us, that it's hard to believe our fellow human beings, no matter how confused or messed up, could actually engage in such a practice. But it's not only true; it's actually a common part of everyday life.

Consider this non-political example and how it illustrates the power of a crisis to mold people to the deceiver's will: In a very sad child-abduction case, a little girl was approached after school by a man she didn't know. He claimed her house was burning down, that her parents were busy putting out the fire, and that he was a friend of the parents who had asked him to pick up their daughter and take her to them. The crisis – and the emotional upset the girl experienced over the thought of her house being on fire and her parents in danger – drowned out her normal caution about getting into a car with a stranger. You guessed it: The stranger was a predator who had concocted the lie for the sole purpose of tricking and upsetting the girl into going with him so he could brutalize and murder her.

This tragic story makes an important point: A crisis throws us off our guard, upsets us and inclines us to make decisions and accept "solutions" we normally would reject.

Politically, the strategy is to create a crisis, or exploit a real one, by throwing people into a mode where they can be redirected toward a predetermined "solution" – whether it's imposing "carbon penalties" on businesses in response to fears of global warming, or a trillion-dollar taxpayer-funded corporate bailout in response to a sudden "financial meltdown," or draconian gun-control laws in response to a rash of school shootings. We're talking about solutions people would normally reject, but now in a crisis accept, and as a result establish a new baseline of what is normal – which becomes the starting point for pushing the nation still further leftward in response to the next "crisis."

Let's look at a few examples of fake "crises." They're all around us:

* Small towns and cities across America pull a certain stunt with depressing regularity around election time. They claim that if taxpayers don't vote in favor of a new tax levy, they'll be forced to eliminate or drastically cut back police and fire protection – two items the people actually want from their government. I once lived in a town where the city council and city manager decided that the way to force voters to approve their new tax levy would be to threaten to completely eliminate police protection within the city limits between midnight and 8 a.m. No joke. This was a crisis of their own creation and for their own obvious purposes. After all, the city council members and their budget committee could have re-prioritized their budget to cut back on street sweeping, park maintenance, library hours, raises and benefits for themselves, or other things less crucial to the public safety and welfare, and gotten by on the existing tax base without leaving the citizens vulnerable to criminals every night. As I said, this is a common tactic in cities and towns up and down the turnpike.

* The radical environmental movement's primary modus operandi is the creation of crises where none exist. The "spotted owl" crisis in my home state of Oregon is a great example. Environmentalists claimed the northern spotted owl was dying out because of commercial logging of old-growth forests where the birds nested. So in 1991 a compliant judge halted logging in Oregon's national forests, causing the loss of about 30,000 jobs, an 80 percent reduction in timber harvesting, a consequent decrease in the supply of lumber and sky-high prices. I remember – I was there. However, it wasn't owls that environmentalists were in love with; they were in love with stopping loggers from harvesting any trees in Oregon's old-growth forests. The owls just provided the needed "crisis."

Oh, here's the rest of the story. Long after Oregon's timber-based economy was crippled by the court-ordered logging ban, the northern spotted owl population inexplicably continued to decline. Surprise! New research showed logging in old-growth forests wasn't a problem at all. The real problem, it turned out, was competition from another larger and more aggressive species of owl that liked the same habitat and food as the spotted owl.

The truth is, ever since "socialism" lost its luster as the salvation of mankind (because it has never actually worked anywhere), the environmental movement has become one of the most powerful, modern battering rams of the left for advancing the same socialist agenda. And of course, the biggest environmental cause of all is global warming.
* Today, a generation of children worldwide is being brainwashed into believing they face imminent doom – monster hurricanes and tornadoes, polar ice melting and raising ocean levels, leading to catastrophic flooding, tidal waves and other cataclysmic events. Many have been forced to sit in classrooms and watch Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth," in which he claims the oceans may rise by 20 feet, leading to worldwide devastation. Not to be outdone, NBC reporter Meredith Vieira warned on national TV of the oceans rising – are you ready? – 200 feet. Thus, while the kids suffer from doomsday nightmares, grown-ups respond to the "crisis" by clamoring for "solutions" offered by the environmentalist crisis-creators.

And yet, not only is there absolutely no scientific basis for either NBC's 200 feet or Gore's 20 feet figure, in reality tens of thousands of scientists have gone on record stating their belief that man-caused global warming is a fake crisis. Indeed, as of this writing, more than 30,000 American scientists, including over 9,000 with Ph.D.s, have signed a petition stating: "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."
* Another legacy of phony environmental crises is our fear of nuclear power. In truth, nuclear energy is clean, homegrown and abundant, and its safety record is extremely good. Many other nations – including France, Russia and Japan – have long taken advantage of this amazing power source. But irrational fear, in response to an environmentalist-created "crisis" mentality, has long gripped the American consciousness and contributed greatly to our dangerous national dependence on foreign energy sources.

* The "Fairness Doctrine" is a freedom-destroying solution to a crisis that doesn't exist. With the exception of talk radio and certain online and cable TV news offerings, virtually the entire news media establishment is overwhelmingly left-of-center. Yet some congressmen and senators claim there's an unfair conservative bias in the media (talk radio) that demands "balance" by legally forcing radio stations to provide air time to "opposing views" – that is, to the left-leaning views that utterly dominate the rest of the information media.

* Racism is largely a manufactured crisis in America today. So-called "black leaders" like Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton are long-time professional race-baiters who thrive on stirring up racial suspicions and hatreds. In reality, America is probably the least racist nation in the world. Yes, we had slavery, but that ceased a century and a half ago when we sacrificed more than 600,000 American lives in the Civil War (more than in all other American wars combined) to exorcise it from our nation. Yes, we had segregation – but we long ago repented of this and made it illegal. Since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s led by Martin Luther King, Jr., the vast majority of Americans – hundreds of millions of normal, middle-class citizens – believe deeply and wholeheartedly in the color-blind America King envisioned.

And yet Sharpton, Jackson and others have thrived for decades on literally creating the perception of racism where none existed – for their own benefit. From the fake rape claims of Tawana Brawley to the fake rape claims against the Duke lacrosse team-members – the false accusation of racism remains a powerful weapon of the left.
* Similarly, charges of rampant anti-Muslim bigotry and hate-crimes in the U.S., leveled by groups like the ACLU and CAIR, constitute a totally fake crisis. Actually, Americans have demonstrated extraordinary restraint and magnanimity toward Muslims since the 9/11 terror attacks and the subsequent revelations of widespread Islamic antipathy toward America. In fact, according to a 2006 FBI report, between 2001 and 2006 anti-Islamic hate crimes in the U.S. decreased by 68 percent!

We could go on and on – fake crises are everywhere. People who want to manipulate and remold us are always creating crises, small or large, real or imagined, to use as leverage. That leverage, to be precise, is our emotional upset and our resulting inability to think straight and make sensible decisions. Repeat: Just upsetting us through any means whatsoever constitutes a mini-crisis – by means of which we can be manipulated. Although being upset by some injustice or cruelty seems like a "small" crisis in the scheme of things – it is the basis for all other crises, even the largest.

If you think about it, this process of remolding us through crises is a perversion of what God does with His children. He creates a crisis – or perhaps more accurately, allows a crisis to develop in our lives because of our ignorance of His laws – which cries out for resolution. Our marriage and family are in crisis, or our health is in crisis, or our finances are in crisis – and yet if we are sincere, truth-loving souls, that crisis mysteriously has a way of maturing and changing us, and we end up growing in His direction.

You might well wonder what kind of person could be so deranged that they'd create a phony crisis for the purpose of exercising power over others. But this shouldn't be hard to comprehend. For one thing, lots of us are so troubled and insecure that we develop an unhealthy need to be needed by others – a very common syndrome. Consciously or unconsciously, we tempt or corrupt people into becoming dependent on us, so as to fulfill our unhealthy need to be needed.

Moreover, consider that if you are consumed by pride – in other words, if you're a big egomaniac – you actually have a subconscious need or desire for other people to fail. Why? Because your own sense of worth is based on comparing yourself with other people, and particularly with cultivating others to look up to you. Unfortunately, this need for adulation can be fulfilled only if you weaken and fool other people into depending on you for their happiness.

So, if you're a dishonest, ambitious and manipulating politician like so many, even though you haven't murdered anyone, haven't committed genocide, haven't put people feet-first through a plastic-shredder like Saddam Hussein, you're still spreading evil and misery throughout the land.

If this syndrome describes you (whether in politics or in your marriage or at your workplace), you may not be aware of the forces working through you. Oh, you may occasionally catch a fleeting glimpse of it, but you quickly escape from this painful, humiliating realization. For a fraction of a second you see it, but then it's gone.

But let me ask anyway: Have you ever seen another person lose his temper, or fail in some other way – and felt a very slight, perverse sense of satisfaction? Or, when someone has done really well and received credit for it, or made a lot of money, or just expressed an obviously brilliant idea, have you ever noticed a subtle feeling of envy rearing its head inside you?

It's OK. Most everyone has experienced feelings like this at some point – perhaps often. But if you're a sincere soul and you are willing to observe these base feelings emanating from the dark side – and if deep down you really don't agree with those feelings – then in a very real sense those feelings are not you. In a sense, there are two of you, the real you being the observer who is chagrined over the dark thoughts and feelings rising from the deep. Watching those thoughts and feelings honestly leads to repentance and real change.

However, many people are not so sincere. And these type of thoughts and the dark forces behind them come to dominate their lives, albeit unconsciously. So without being a Saddam Hussein, but just being a prideful, selfish, denial-based person, you can do terrible things to other human beings – deceive them, betray them, enslave them. You can destroy lives and civilizations.

And this, once again, is exactly why we have limited government in America – because power corrupts, and now we know why.

By the way, what we're talking about here – the tendency for government to be lying and predatory – didn't start with Karl Marx. It has ever been with the human race. More than 2,000 years ago, the great orator and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero foretold the decline and fall of the Roman Empire with these words, which exquisitely described the ravages wrought by lying politicians:

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.

When all is said and done, we elect liars as leaders because we need lies. And we need lies because we haven't found God.

Lies that fulfill us in a wrong way are offered to us constantly, in every area of life: If our marriage in trouble, there's always "the other woman" or "the other man" who will embrace and reassure us that we're great people and that our spouse is the problem. But their lying "solution" only makes things immeasurably worse. If we're depressed or full of rage, but not really interested in understanding ourselves, we have experts eager to prescribe drugs to mask our symptoms – a false "solution" without repentance and hope of real change. Or we can bypass the doctor and go to the liquor store or criminal drug dealer to procure another wrong "solution."

William Penn said it all: "If man is not governed by God, he will be ruled by tyrants." Freedom apart from God is just an illusion of pride. This is because when we are at war with our conscience, something has to sustain our denial, our secret war against the still, small voice of Truth within – hence our need for lies. And government, in the form of other prideful human beings, is only too happy to oblige.

John Adams, a principal crafter of our Constitution, and later our second president, understood this very well, writing: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

But the Bible puts it most eloquently and succinctly of all: "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty." (2 Corinthians 3:17)

The preceding has been excerpted from the January 2009 edition of Whistleblower, "SECRETS OF THE LEFT." You may subscribe to Whistleblower at a special discounted rate here.



David Kupelian is vice president and managing editor of WorldNetDaily.com and Whistleblower magazine, and author of the best-selling book, "The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom." He is a dynamic speaker and has been featured on Fox News, MSNBC, CBN and many other media outlets.