WATERGATE EVERY WEEK: USING THE FBI TO SUPPRESS A POLITICAL REVOLUTION

A new Watergate every week.  A very appropriate analogy to what his happening in our government today.  The author of the article gets this exactly right.  And he also correctly nails the essence of WHY we’re seeing a new Watergate every week.  Here’s the money quote that sums it up.

These are the police state tactics usually used by Communist dictatorships where domestic security agencies accuse the political opposition of treason, spy on them, raid their homes on fake charges and then look for anything that can be used to put them away. Just like in Russia. And for the same reasons.

Russian domestic security agencies, from the KGB to the FSB, used these tactics against political opponents who might pose a threat to their rule. That is exactly what’s happening here.

The democrats are communists.  

Everything the democrats believe and support is not found in the Constitution, but can be found in the Communist Manifesto.

All the people they look up to are Marxists, communists, socialists, and acolytes of them who prescribe how to advance the cause of totalitarian communism.

All of the tactics they employ to destroy their political opponents are those of the communist agitators such as Alinsky.

Everything the democrats stand for directly conflicts with the things America was founded on and for.

We are witnessing a communist revolution, or more accurately a Menshevik revolution right here in America just as took place in Russia.  The history of communism across the world is not one of peace, prosperity, and happiness.  It is a history of totalitarianism, oppression, death, and suffering.  It is important to understand this history to see where the communists in America are taking us.  For the most recent example, look at Venezuela.  It NEVER ends well.

The chances that communism will work THIS time are about as good as surviving a jump from the top of the Empire State Building on the SECOND attempt.  If we don’t stop it here and now, they will destroy America as we know it, and we will be the next Venezuela. 

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From Steele to Mueller, the cost of overturning the 2016 election.

April 12, 2018  Daniel Greenfield

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism.

In the early seventies, political operatives disguised as delivery men broke into a Washington D.C. office. These efforts to spy on the political opposition would culminate in what we know as Watergate.

In the late teens, political operatives disguised as FBI agents, NSA personnel and other employees of the Federal government eavesdropped, harassed and raided the offices of the political opposition.

The raids of Michael Cohen’s hotel room, home and office are just this week’s Watergate.

Political operatives have now seized privileged communications between the President of the United States and his lawyer. Despite fairy tales about a clean process, these communications will be harvested by the counterparts of Peter Strzok, who unlike him are still on the case at the FBI, some of it will appear in the Washington Post and the New York Times, and some will be passed along to other political allies.

That’s what happened at every juncture of Watergate 2.0. And it only follows that it will happen again.

Just like the eavesdropping, the process will be compartmentalized for maximum plausible deniability. The leakers will be protected by their superiors. The media will shrilly focus the public’s attention on the revelations in the documents rather than on the more serious crimes committed in obtaining them.

Nixon couldn’t have even dreamed of doing this in his wildest fantasies. But Obama could and did. Now his operatives throughout the government are continuing the work that they began during his regime.

Attorney-client privilege is just one of those rights we have to give up to protect ourselves from a conspiracy theory invented by the Clinton campaign. (But no amount of dead Americans can ever justify ending immigration from Islamic terror states or deporting illegal alien gang members.)

We are at the latest stage of a process that began when the Clinton campaign funded a dossier alleging foreign ties by her political opponent. It did this using a law firm while lying on its FEC disclosures about payments to that firm. (But unlike Cohen, Hillary’s lawyers will never be raided by the FBI.)

That dossier was then used to justify eavesdropping on Trump associates by political allies in the State Department, the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Council. This wasn’t really breaking new ground. Obama had already been caught using the NSA to spy on members of Congress opposed to his Iran Deal.

The contents of the dossier were rambling nonsense. Its claims about Michael Cohen were easily disproven. But that covert investigation was transformed into an overt one with Mueller. And Mueller’s very public investigation follows the same path as the secret investigation by Obama associates. Both used the dubious claims of the Clinton dossier as the starting point for an endless fishing expedition.

Eavesdrop enough, raid enough, squeeze enough and you will eventually find something. And even if you don’t, you can always manipulate them into denying something and nail them for lying to the FBI.

Keep squeezing and maybe you’ll even find someone willing to lie under oath for you.

Mueller has yet to deliver on Russian collusion. But Susan Rice and Samantha Power couldn’t do it either. Instead they all assembled a vast network of international conspiracy theories whose only purpose is to justify more raids, more eavesdropping and more fishing expeditions.

These are the police state tactics usually used by Communist dictatorships where domestic security agencies accuse the political opposition of treason, spy on them, raid their homes on fake charges and then look for anything that can be used to put them away. Just like in Russia. And for the same reasons.

Russian domestic security agencies, from the KGB to the FSB, used these tactics against political opponents who might pose a threat to their rule. That is exactly what’s happening here.

This isn’t just an ideological war. Washington D.C. is fighting to suppress a political revolution.

Even Obama and Hillary’s political operatives couldn’t have pushed the DOJ and other agencies this far outside their comfort zone under ordinary circumstances. There had been previous abuses of power, under JFK, LBJ, Nixon and Clinton, but there has been nothing like this since the Alien and Sedition Acts or Madison’s Machiavellian scapegoating of the Federalists for the disastrous War of 1812.

To apolitical operatives like Mueller, Strzok and their many allies in the FBI, Trump is an unprecedented threat to the business of the Federal government. They shrug at the economy or tax reform, except where it affects them. And social issues don’t move them either. They are as interested in the ideological left-right battles as the nomenklatura were in the works of Karl Marx.

There are indeed two Americas. One is your country. The other consists of the people who run it. Both have their headquarters in Washington D.C. And they get along pretty well most of the time.

The people are allowed to vote for whomever their party chooses. They can even vote for less respectable choices as long as they understand that those people will never get anywhere. Then the people they select will go to Washington D.C. and be briefed on what they can and can’t do. There they will rent pricey condos, bicker with each other, eat at nice restaurants and, in theory, make laws.

Then the nomenklatura, the bureaucracy that runs the country, will transform laws into policy. The policy will be shaped by judicial rulings and expert opinion. By the time the policy sausage comes out the other end of the Imperial City, it will have very little to do with what the voters might have wanted.

There are plenty of gatekeepers to keep a common sense idea from being implemented. If a congressman proposes that sensible measure you suggest to him, it will never leave the committee or it’ll be watered down. The Senate will neuter it or the president, on the advice of his advisors, will veto.

And then came Trump.

The gates began to collapse. The nomenklatura propped them up. Judicial rulings were used to block everything. The petty bureaucracies within government agencies stalled and sabotaged. Former agency bosses, their internal allies and the media colluded to target Trump’s agency heads with scandals.

The elected head of the government and the unelected heads of the government were at war.

Mueller is the tip of the nomenklatura’s spear. The DOJ is the bluntest weapon in the D.C. arsenal and for the first time it’s been completely unleashed to undo the results of a presidential election.

The same leftists that fought for the civil rights of terrorists and drug dealers, cheer government eavesdropping on the political opposition and the violation of attorney-client privilege because it was never about civil rights, it was about protecting their political allies and punishing their enemies.

Radical movements are inherently totalitarian. And totalitarians view process, whether of elections or criminal justice proceedings, as a train that they ride until they take power and then disembark.

As Roger Nash Baldwin, a co-founder of the ACLU, wrote, “If I aid the reactionaries to get free speech now and then… it is only because those liberties help to create a more hospitable atmosphere for working class liberties… When that power of the working class is once achieved, as it has been only in the Soviet Union, I am for maintaining it by any means whatever.”

The working class of Washington D.C. has achieved quite a bit of power along with a fortune in overseas bank accounts, mansions, private schools and all the privileges of membership in the ruling class.

But the leftists cheering Mueller’s abuses might pause to consider the consequences.

The Romans broke their republic. Now we’re breaking ours. The pink hat brigade enlisted the Praetorian Guard to bring down Trump. But the Roman lesson is that once you break the republic, it stays broken. Once you use political mercenaries like Mueller to overturn an election for you, they might not stop.

The left likes to believe that it can close Pandora’s Box whenever it pleases. History tells us differently.

The Praetorian Guard didn’t stop. What can be done once, will be done again. When control of the DOJ and FBI matters more than elections, then voters will be irrelevant and the Praetorian of D.C. will rule.

And then a new Watergate really will happen every week.

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Link to article:  https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/269851/watergate-every-week-using-fbi-suppress-political-daniel-greenfield#.WtBQrastOyM.twitter

Elijah “Mob Mentality” Cummings Says Removing the Confederate Flag is Not Enough

Well, Representative Elijah E. Cummings. If you’re going to erase history like ISIS is trying to do, don’t stop with just the Confederate flag. You must erase any likenesses or references to racists who hid behind it, like all the democrats who filibustered the Civil Rights Act led by KKK member democrat senator Robert “Sheets” Byrd of WV, and his good friend Al Gore Sr. Don’t forget the democrats who actually founded the KKK, and the democrats who implemented poll taxes and Jim Crow laws, and democrat president LBJ who said “we’ll have these ni***rs voting democrat for 200 years.” Don’t for democrat presidents like Bill Clinton and even Barack Obama who campaigned behind the Confederate flag while pandering for votes.  I’m sure I missed MANY who deserve your ire and energy to erase. It seems that if you carry your mob mentality madness to a logical conclusion, you’ll have to erase the entire democrat party.

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June 28, 2015, 11:57 am

Dem: Removing Confederate flag ‘not enough’

By Timothy Cama

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Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) on Sunday welcomed the movement in South Carolina and elsewhere against the Confederate flag, but said much more needs to be done to help race relations.

“It is a major thing that has to happen, and it will happen, I agree,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“And I applaud the folks in South Carolina for doing that. I also applaud the Governor of Alabama for doing what he’s done, taking down the flag,” Cummings continued. “But that is simply is not enough.”

Read entire article HERE.

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Dixie’s Censored Subject – Black Slaveowners

Ruh Roh. Liberal-progressive narrative, and boogey man for liberal blacks, destroyed. Now who are you going to demonize? Who sold blacks into slavery? Muslims. Who enslaved blacks in America prior to 1865? Blacks, and a small percentage of whites. Who has enslaved blacks since the Civil War? The democrats. Democrats founded the KKK. Democrats were responsible for poll taxes and “Jim Crow” laws. Democrats fought AGAINST the Civil Rights Act. Democrat laws and policies have destroyed the black nuclear family, and done nothing but increase dependence on government. It was DEMOCRAT president Lyndon B. Johnson who said “I’ll have those ni****s voting democrat for the next 200 years.” Apparently he was right.

How many liberals, and liberal blacks will EVER acknowledge these facts, and begin to think for themselves instead of listening to the “evil racist white Republican” bull crap they have been fed for over 100 years? Blacks have been promised the moon and the stars by democrats for almost a century now, and what do you have to show for it? Nothing. Instead of waiting on someone else to give you prosperity which never comes, don’t you think you should go back to the Frederick Douglas model of hard work and take advantage of opportunities to better your own life?

Look at cities like Ferguson, MO, and now Baltimore, MD. Look at failed cities like Detroit, MI, and failing cities like Chicago, IL. There are many others where there are high concentrations of blacks who complain about lack of opportunity, crime, police brutality, etc. Who do you usually blame for the conditions in these cities? You usually blame Republicans and whites, but NEVER acknowledge that there haven’t been any Republicans in charge of these cities for 30-75 years, and most of the politicians, and many of the police in these cities are black/minority. You blame police for the police state you live in, yet fail to understand that the police merely enforce the laws passed by the politicians that YOU elect. That’s right. You either voted for the politicians oppressing you and ruining your cities, or you stayed home letting others elect them. But you at least share the responsibility for electing the people who have destroyed your cities.

Black Americans have reached a crossroads. You can continue to take no responsibility for your problems, and start a senseless race war over your very real problems caused by YOU and the people YOU elected. Or you can accept appropriate responsibility for your own actions, pull yourself up, and EARN a life worth living. MOST whites, including myself, will gladly work alongside you as you seek to honestly make your own way. Those who would stand in your way will be those, both black and white, who benefit and profit from your dependence. That would be a long list of politicians, and race/poverty pimps like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Free yourselves from people like this, and free yourselves of dependence on government, and you will finally be free indeed.

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DIXIE’S CENSORED SUBJECT

BLACK SLAVEOWNERS

By Robert M. Grooms

© 1997
(THIS ARTICLE IS COPYRIGHTED AND IS PROVIDED HERE COURTESY OF THE BARNES REVIEW)

In an 1856 letter to his wife Mary Custis Lee, Robert E. Lee called slavery “a moral and political evil.” Yet he concluded that black slaves were immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially and physically.

The fact is large numbers of free Negroes owned black slaves; in fact, in numbers disproportionate to their representation in society at large. In 1860 only a small minority of whites owned slaves. According to the U.S. census report for that last year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million whites in the country. Some eight million of them lived in the slaveholding states.

“Protests” Continue in Ferguson and St. Louis

Why are they protesting?  They are being ruled by the people they have elected for decades.  Whose fault is their current set of circumstances?
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Democrats Have Been Lying to Black Americans for Decades

Socialism’s Trajectory: Obama’s HHS Is Bigger Than LBJ’s ENTIRE Government

Yes, you read that right. Adjusted for inflation, JUST the Dept of Health and Human Services under Obama will spend more in 2011 than LBJ’s ENTIRE FREAKING GOVERNMENT.

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Jeffrey on Socialism’s Trajectory: Obama’s HHS Is Bigger Than LBJ’s Government

Wednesday, February 16, 2011
By Terence P. Jeffrey

Anyone who doubts that the trend toward socialism is pushing America toward ruin should examine the historical tables President Obama published Monday along with his $3.7 trillion budget.

In fiscal 2011, according to these tables, the Department of Health and Human Services will spend $909.7 billion. In fiscal 1965, the entire federal government spent $118.228 billion.

What about inflation? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator, $118.228 billion in 1965 dollars equals $822.6 billion in 2010 dollars. In real terms, the $909.7 billion HHS is spending this year is about $87.1 billion more than the entire federal government spent in 1965.

1965 was a key year in the advancement of socialism in the United States.

From 1776 until 1965, Americans generally did not rely on the federal government for health care unless they served in the military or worked in some other capacity for the federal government.

But in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson and a Democratic Congress enacted two massive federal entitlement programs — Medicare and Medicaid — that fundamentally altered the relationship between Americans and the federal government by making tens of millions dependent on the government for health care.

Prior to 1937, the Supreme Court correctly understood the Constitution to deny the federal government any power to create and operate social-welfare programs. The Constitution held no such enumerated power, and the 10th Amendment left powers not enumerated to the states and the people.

From George Washington’s administration to Franklin Roosevelt’s, Americans took care of themselves and their own communities without resorting to federal handouts.

FDR sought to change what he believed was an unrealistic reliance on families in American life.

He used the crisis of the Great Depression to pass the Social Security Act of 1935, compelling Americans to pay a payroll tax in return for the promise of a federal old-age pension. This was blatantly unconstitutional. That same year, in Railroad Retirement Board v. Alton, the Supreme Court had justly slapped down a law mandating what amounted to a Social Security program for the railroad industry alone.

FDR attempted to defend the railroad pension law as a legitimate regulation of interstate commerce, justifiable under the Commerce Clause — the same argument the Obama administration has used to defend the individual mandate in Obamacare.

The Court scoffed, suggesting that if the federal government could mandate a federal pension for railroad workers, the next thing it would do would be to mandate health care.

“The question at once presents itself whether the fostering of a contented mind on the part of an employee by legislation of this type is, in any just sense, a regulation of interstate transportation,” the Court said answering FDR’s argument. “If that question be answered in the affirmative, obviously there is no limit to the field of so-called regulation. The catalogue of means and actions which might be imposed upon an employer in any business, tending to the satisfaction and comfort of his employees, seems endless. Provision for free medical attention and nursing, for clothing, for food, for housing, for the education of children, and a hundred other matters, might with equal propriety be proposed as tending to relieve the employee of mental strain and worry.”

When Social Security went to the Court in 1937, FDR used a different strategy. He argued that Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 of the Constitution, which gave Congress the power to levy taxes to “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States,” meant the federal government could do virtually anything it deemed in the “general welfare” of Americans even if it was otherwise outside the scope of the Constitution’s other enumerated powers.

FDR’s interpretation of the General Welfare Clause effectively rendered the rest of the Constitution meaningless.

To persuade the same court that ruled against him in the railroad case to rule for him in the Social Security case, FDR proposed the Judicial Reorganization Act. This would allow him to pack the court by appointing an additional justice for each sitting justice who had reached age 70 and six months and not retired.

Faced with a potential Democratic takeover of the court, and thus a federal government controlled entirely by FDR’s allies, Republican Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and Associate Justice Owen J. Roberts flip-flopped from their position in the railroad case. They quietly voted in favor of Social Security and took the steam off FDR’s court-packing plan.

That year, federal spending was 8.6 percent of gross domestic product, according to President Obama’s historical tables.

When LBJ enacted Medicare and Medicaid — and began fulfilling the court’s prophecy in the 1935 railroad-pension case — federal spending was 17.2 percent of GDP.

When George W. Bush expanded Medicare with a prescription drug benefit in 2003, federal spending was 19.7 percent of GDP. This year, federal spending will be 25.3 percent of GDP.

In 2014, when Obamacare is scheduled to be fully implemented, HHS will become the first $1-trillion-per year federal agency. That year, Medicare and Medicaid will cost $557 billion and $352.1 billion respectively, or a combined $909.1 billion — about what all of HHS costs this year.

In other words, when Obamacare is just getting started, Medicare and Medicaid will cost more than the $822.6 billion in 2010 dollars than the entire federal government cost in 1965 when LBJ signed Medicare and Medicaid into law.

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Historical Perspective: If You Preach It, They Will Fall

America has been slowly detouring from the road of freedom, liberty, and prosperity ever since its founding.  Those who despise the foundation upon which America was founded have been chipping away at that foundation one hammer blow and court decision at a time.

One shining example of erosion of the American way is the 1954 amendment of the Internal Revenue Code §501(c)(3), offered by our good buddy Lyndon Johnson, which restricted the speech of non-profit tax exempt entities, including churches.

After the amendment, churches faced a choice of speaking freely on any and all issues addressed by Scripture and potentially risking their tax exemption, or remaining silent and protecting their tax exemption. Unfortunately, many churches have allowed the 1954 Johnson amendment to effectively silence their speech, even from the pulpit. (http://www.alliancedefensefund.org/userdocs/Pulpit_Initiative_executive_summary_candidates_2009.pdf)

In other words, it forced churches to choose between money and the Gospel.  Keep the doors open by watering down the Gospel and not choosing sides politically, or have someone who doesn’t like being talked about sic the IRS on you and tax you out of business.  This was all done because there were several ministers who were openly speaking out against LBJ, and he simply didn’t like it.  So he pushes this amendment that was a stepping stone to where we find ourselves today.

Now flash back to Cold War Hungary, and flash forward to the Fractured Socialist States of Obamastan.  The story below illustrates what can happen when the Gospel (good news, truth) is spoken boldly.  Truth is light, and the Gospel is truth.  That is why totalitarian regimes and despot leaders try so desperately to cover it up.

Will pastors and ministers have the courage to stand up and speak the truth?  Some will as evidenced by the Pulpit Freedom Sunday that took place in September.  But will it be enough?

Each and every one of us MUST speak the truth boldly and without reservation.  I’m not just talking about preaching the Gospel, but speaking out against wrongs and injustice.  If you don’t, you can’t complain about what the tyrants do to you.  If we are all shining the light of truth on the dark places of tyranny, there is no darkness left for it to hide.

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http://www.americanvision.org/print/printpage.php

If You Preach It, They Will Fall

by Bojidar Marinov, Dec 16, 2009

Exactly 20 years ago, on December 15, 1989, a small crowd of parishioners of the Hungarian Reformed Church in TimiÅŸoara gathered in front of the church flat where their pastor lived. The occasion was the eviction orders to their pastor set for that day by a Romanian civil court. The group formed a human chain around the flat. When the police arrived to remove the pastor from the flat, the crowd had grown to several hundred strong; they were singing hymns in the brutally cold weather and from their words the police guards understood that the people were determined to stay and prevent the eviction of their pastor. The police guards returned with agents of the dreaded Communist secret police Securitate, but to no avail, the crowd refused to let them pass. For the first time in the history of Communist Romania someone was refusing to obey Securitate.

On the next day the mayor of TimiÅŸoara—the second largest city in Romania—arrived and tried to persuade the crowd to disperse. He arrived with the pastor’s family doctor to persuade the pregnant wife of the pastor to come with them to the hospital. She refused. By that time the crowd had grown beyond the numbers of the congregation, with young ethnic Romanians joining the Hungarian Reformed believers in the vigil and the human chain in the cold December day. The mayor then left, threatening to return with police watercannons.

On December 17, instead of police watercannons, Army troops took positions against the now significant demonstrations that had grown from the humble crowd of Reformed parishioners. They fired into the crowd. This did not stop the demonstrators. On December 18 tens of thousands of industrial workers in TimiÅŸoara left their jobs to join the demonstrations. By December 20 the city was out of the control of the Communist government. The insurrection spread to other cities in Romania, and on December 22 the most brutal and maniacal Communist dictatorship in Eastern Europe—that of Nicolae Ceausescu—fell.

The fall of the bloodiest and most inhumane Communist dictatorship in Eastern Europe started there, in the small humble church of the 37-year old Pastor László Tökés. Dr. Joseph Pungur of the University of Alberta in Canada writes about him:

And in the midst of all this arose that one person, Reverend László Tökés, a minister of the Hungarian Reformed Church in Romania in charge of the church of Timisoara (Temesvár) who, with his heroic resistance to the dictatorial Church and State authorities, single-handedly triggered a popular revolution in Romania. Within days it toppled the Ceausescu regime.

Who was László Tökés? What made him so terrifying to the regime to deserve such attention? Why did the Communist government have to send agents of the Secret Police, and later the army, to make sure he is evicted? What made those thousands of people keep vigil in the cold December nights around his house to protect a humble, unimportant religious minister? Why was it that even unbelievers were willing to lay down their lives but not let the government troops pass to his house?

Was he a military organizer of the resistance? Did he lead an opposition party? May be he was a skillful politician, experienced in the art of bureaucratic machinations? Did he make explosives, blow bridges, start insurrections in the army?

No. He was only a preacher. No, he wasn’t only a preacher. He was a preacher with a heart for God, a preacher who believed that the pulpit was entrusted to him to preach against principalities and powers, no matter what the consequences were. He preached against the Communist regime, he preached against the oppressive policies, against the nationalist crackdowns of the regime on the Hungarian minority, and against the lack of freedom, religious and political, in his country. László Tökés wasn’t there just to preach “believe and get saved.” He was on the pulpit to speak for King Jesus in every area of life, and especially in those areas where the government was oppressive against those politically weak and poor. László Tökés was there to tell Caesar that “there is another King, one Jesus.”

And that was enough to make him so dangerous to the regime. Government institutions on all levels—police, courts, the secret police—were employed to make him stop preaching. Members of his congregation—fully supportive of their pastor—were “suicided” by the Securitate agents. His pay was stopped and his ration-card was taken away, making it impossible for him to buy even food (and his wife was pregnant at the time). One night a group of thugs hired by Securitate broke into his apartment and Tökés and members of the congregation had to fight them off with kitchen knives.

The Bishop of Transylvania, László Papp, a puppet of the Communists and a collaborationist with the government, ordered Tökés to stop preaching and officially closed his church. Interestingly enough, he appealed to the “separation of church and state,” and claimed that Tökés violated the laws of both the church and the state. The congregation stood firm, and the young pastor kept preaching. A few weeks before the events described above he wrote an open letter explaining the situation he was in:

I speak out for I cannot do otherwise, or else the stones themselves will speak, the stones of our demolished towns and monuments…. I am not a courageous man but I have overcome my fear. I am waiting for a trial at a Romanian civil court, indicted by my own bishop in order to evict me from the manse of the church at Temesvar, and to banish me in medieval style not only from this “closed” town but also from the priesthood. . . The fight is no less bitter than it was in the past, though this time the weapons are different. And the price of the siege is the same; when the castle falls, a piece of our country goes with it . . . The self-defence of the Reformed Church in Temesvár symbolizes a “pars pro toto,” it displays the “particular” as a representative of the “universal.” We are called in question, one by one, as Calvinists and as Hungarians living here. To the challenge the congregation tries to answer like David . . . it takes its stand only on a tiny foothold of the Spirit, from of the Word of God: “Fight for your brethren, your sons, your wives and your homes” (Nehemiah 4:14). “A mighty fortress is our God” sings the church congregation on Sundays, identifying themselves with its strength; they rely on that strength throughout the week.

László Papp, the Bishop of Nagyvárad, has been besieging the Church in Temesvár since April. He has banned services in the church and the works of renovation. . .He has limited the activity of the minister and the session; he has frozen a great deal of the congregational finances . . . This was the introductory phase of the siege . . . the phase of “starve them into surrender” . . . the mocking of Goliath.

But God’s plans trumped the mocking of Goliath, and the giant fell within a week after the start of the final showdown. And it all started with the humble sermons of a humble pastor in a small parish church.

If you are a Christian, and if you care about teaching your children in the way of our Lord, you should have a gallery of Christian heroes for them to imitate and be inspired by. Add a name there: László Tökés. He is part of your Christian history.

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About a year ago I visited a worldview conference organized in our town by Brannon Howse. Mr. Howse was outstanding. He didn’t pull any punches. Nothing in this country was outside of God’s Sovereignty, everything was a legitimate sphere for action for us Christians. Government? Yes, government too.

On the way back a local pastor was with me in my car. I was excited about the conference, and I naturally was optimistic about what we as Christians could do to restore America to its Biblical roots.

In the middle of the conversation the pastor just said, “You know, this is all good, but I don’t think we can accomplish too much in these last days. We may be able to save a few souls, but we can’t stop the drift to darkness in this country. We should expect the times to be worse and worse for us Christians.”

I thought of László Tökés. He was against the worst political and government machine we can imagine. He couldn’t buy food, he was about to be evicted from his house. There was no institution to come to his defense, and there was no hope, humanly speaking. He was in a situation that no American pastor in the 20^th century has been or had to be. And yet he compared himself to David against Goliath, firmly convinced of his victory, against all human odds.

He just preached against the government, against the principalities and powers, against the forces of darkness in the high places of the land. And they fell. Our pastors should learn from his example.

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Obama’s War

Obama’s War
by Patrick J. Buchanan (more by this author)
Posted 12/19/2008 ET

Just two months after the twin towers fell, the armies of the Northern Alliance marched into Kabul. The Taliban fled.

The triumph was total in the “splendid little war” that had cost one U.S. casualty. Or so it seemed. Yet, last month, the war against the Taliban entered its eighth year, the second longest war in our history, and America and NATO have never been nearer to strategic defeat.

So critical is the situation that Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in Kandahar last week, promised rapid deployment, before any Taliban spring offensive, of two and perhaps three combat brigades of the 20,000 troops requested by Gen. David McKiernan. The first 4,000, from the 10th Mountain, are expected in January.

With 34,000 U.S. soldiers already in country, half under NATO command, the 20,000 will increase U.S. forces there to 54,000, a 60 percent ratcheting up. Shades of LBJ, 1964-65. Afghanistan is going to be Obama’s War. And upon its outcome will hang the fate of his presidency. Has he thought this through?

How do we win this war, if by winning we mean establishing a pro-Western democratic government in control of the country that has the support of the people and loyalty of an Afghan army strong enough to defend the nation from a resurgent Taliban?

We are further from that goal going into 2009 than we were five years ago.

What are the long-term prospects for any such success?

Each year, the supply of opium out of Afghanistan, from which most of the world’s heroin comes, sets a new record. Payoffs by narcotics traffickers are corrupting the government. The fanatically devout Taliban had eradicated the drug trade, but is now abetting the drug lords in return for money for weapons to kill the Americans.

Militarily, the Taliban forces are stronger than they have been since 2001, moving out of the south and east and infesting half the country. They have sanctuaries in Pakistan and virtually ring Kabul.

U.S. air strikes have killed so many Afghan civilians that President Karzai, who controls little more than Kabul, has begun to condemn the U.S. attacks. Predator attacks on Taliban and al-Qaida in Pakistan have inflamed the population there.

And can pinprick air strikes win a war of this magnitude?

The supply line for our troops in Afghanistan, which runs from Karachi up to Peshawar through the Khyber Pass to Kabul, is now a perilous passage. Four times this month, U.S. transport depots in Pakistan have been attacked, with hundred of vehicles destroyed.

Before arriving in Kandahar, Gates spoke grimly of a “sustained commitment for some protracted period of time. How many years that is, and how many troops that is … nobody knows.”

Gen. McKiernan says it will be at least three or four years before the Afghan army and police can handle the Taliban.

But why does it take a dozen years to get an Afghan army up to where it can defend the people and regime against a Taliban return? Why do our Afghans seem less disposed to fight and die for democracy than the Taliban are to fight and die for theocracy? Does their God, Allah, command a deeper love and loyalty than our god, democracy?

McKiernan says the situation may get worse before it gets better. Gates compares Afghanistan to the Cold War. “(W)e are in many respects in an ideological conflict with violent extremists. … The last ideological conflict we were in lasted about 45 years.”

That would truly be, in Donald Rumsfeld’s phrase, “a long, hard slog.”

America, without debate, is about to invest blood and treasure, indefinitely, in a war to which no end seems remotely in sight, if the commanding general is talking about four years at least and the now-and-future war minister is talking about four decades.

What is there to win in Afghanistan to justify doubling down our investment? If our vital interest is to deny a sanctuary there to al-Qaida, do we have to build a new Afghanistan to accomplish that? Did not al-Qaida depart years ago for a new sanctuary in Pakistan?

What hope is there of creating in this tribal land a democracy committed to freedom, equality and human rights that Afghans have never known? What is the expectation that 54,000 or 75,000 U.S. troops can crush an insurgency that enjoys a privileged sanctuary to which it can return, to rest, recuperate and recruit for next year’s offensive? Of all the lands of the earth, Afghanistan has been among the least hospitable to foreigners who come to rule, or to teach them how they should rule themselves.

Would Dwight D. Eisenhower — who settled for the status quo ante in Korea, an armistice at the line of scrimmage — commit his country to such an open-ended war? Would Richard Nixon? Would Ronald Reagan?

Hard to believe. George W. Bush would. But did not America vote against Bush? Why is America getting seamless continuity when it voted for significant change?

Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, “The Death of the West,”, “The Great Betrayal,” “A Republic, Not an Empire” and “Where the Right Went Wrong.”