Battle of Princeton: “Washington advanced so near the enemy’s lines that his horse refused to go further” – American Minute with Bill Federer
Frederick the Great of Prussia called these ten days “the most brilliant in the world’s history.”
After winning the Battle of Trenton, Christmas Day evening, 1776, George Washington’s 1,200 man force faced General Cornwallis’ 4,500 man British army.
Washington was fighting the army of the globalist King of Great Britain — the most powerful military on the planet.
On the night of January 2, 1777, Washington left his campfires burning and marched his army around the back of a portion of Cornwallis’ army – the 1,400 British troops camped at Princeton, New Jersey.
He ordered his soldiers to march in absolute silence, even wrapping their guns with heavy cloth to lessen the noise of troop movement.
British commander Lord Cornwallis ordered Colonel Mawhood to join his regiments to the rest of the British army.
This providentially, resulted in the British ceasing to patrol the very roads Washington was marching on.
At daybreak, January 3, 1777, Washington attacked the British from behind.
This was similar to what the British did to the Americans at the Battle of Brooklyn Heights a little over four months earlier.
At the Battle of Princeton, the surprised British immediately fought back, sending forth a bayonet charge which killed dozens of American soldiers.
One of those killed was General Hugh Mercer, who had fought with Washington in the French and Indian War, and in the Battle of Trenton.
Hugh Mercer’s descendants included WWII General George S. Patton.
After Mercer was killed, the British pressed their counter-attack.
The American militia under General John Cadwalader began to panic and flee.
To stop the retreat, General George Washington immediately rode to the front of the line and ordered the soldiers to stop running away.
He commanded them to turn around and follow him back to the front lines.
Washington rode extremely close to the British, within just 30 yards.
Turning and facing his men, Washington yelled:
“Halt!”
“Aim,”
then “Fire!”
The British immediately fired a volley in return.
The field of battle was filled with a cloud of smoke.
Many thought Washington was surely shot, as he was exposed to fire from both sides.
Irishman John Fitzgerald, who was an American aide-de-camp, pulled down his hat down to cover his eyes so as to not see Washington killed.
But when the smoke cleared, to their dismay, Washington was seen on his horse, waving to his men to charge ahead.
The Americans charged and won a great victory at the Battle of Princeton.
An estimated 100 British were killed or wounded, and over 300 captured, as compared to only 23 Americans killed and 20 wounded.
Enthusiasm swept America. Though it took nearly seven more years of fighting till the Revolutionary War ended, this battle was a major turning point.
British historian Sir George Otto Trevelyan wrote of the American victories at Trenton and Princeton:
“It may be doubted whether so small a number of men ever employed so short a space of time with greater and more lasting effects upon the history of the world.”
President Calvin Coolidge stated October 28, 1925:
“Distinguished military critics have described Washington’s campaign of Trenton and Princeton as a military exploit of unparalleled brilliancy.”
The equestrian statue at Washington Circle in Washington, D.C., depicts General Washington at the Battle of Princeton.
At the statue’s dedication in 1860, sculptor Clark Mills stated:
“… at the Battle of Princeton where Washington, after several ineffectual attempts to rally his troops, advanced so near the enemy’s lines that his horse refused to go further, but stood and trembled while the brave rider sat undaunted with reins in hand.
But while his noble horse is represented thus terror stricken, the dauntless hero is calm and dignified, ever believing himself the instrument in the hand of Providence to work out the great problem of liberty.”
Yale President Ezra Stiles described General George Washington as the American version of the Israelite commander Joshua, in an Election Address before the Governor and General Assembly of Connecticut, May 8, 1783:
“Congress put at the head of this spirited army, the only man, on whom the eyes of all Israel were placed …
… This American Joshua was raised up by God, and divinely formed by a peculiar influence of the Sovereign of the Universe, for the great work of leading the armies of this American Joseph …
and conducting this people through the severe, the arduous conflict, to liberty and independence …”
Ezra Stiles continued:
“In our lowest and most dangerous estate in 1776 and 1777, we sustained ourselves against the British army of sixty thousand troops commanded by Howe, Burgoyne, and Clinton, and other the ablest generals Britain could procure throughout Europe, with a naval force of 22,000 seamen in above eighty British men of war …
… This was sealed and confirmed by God Almighty in the victory of General Washington at Trenton,
and in the surprising movement and battle of Princeton; by which astonishing effort of generalship, General Howe and the whole British army, in elated confidence and in open-mouthed march for Philadelphia, was instantly stopped, remanded back, and cooped up for a shivering winter in the little borough of Brunswick.
Thus God turned the battle to the gate; and this gave a finishing to the foundation of the American Republic …”
Stiles ended:
“Who but a Washington, inspired by Heaven, could have struck out the great movement and maneuver of Princeton? …
The United States are under peculiar obligations to become a holy people unto the Lord our God.”
—
American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate.
The True Meaning of Christmas
I have mostly pleasant memories of CHRISTmas past- though some are in “baby fog”. It is special to me though it may be hard for some to which I am compassionate.
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2:14).
The true meaning of Christmas is this: God took on the form of a human to die in our place, paying for our sins, so that humans who receive Him might be forgiven and be with Him forever.
You are free to reject that message and the One who delivered it, but what you are not free to do is to redefine or change the message into something that fits your own beliefs and choices.
As the carol says, “Where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.”
The world today is a sad place, and those who love freedom sometimes feel we are shoveling against the tide. But for just a moment, at this time of year, we should pause and remember an event that occurred about 2,000 years ago in the Middle East.
The world then was a far worse place, yet a light seared through the darkness. A baby was born in a cave. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. The baby came into the world so that we might have life and live it abundantly. The baby came into the world so that we would be set free from our own sins, free from the temptations of the world and free from the governments that seek to control us.
The baby was the Son of God and the Prince of Peace and the Savior of the world. This week we celebrate His birthday.
Merry CHRISTmas.
(This article was originally published in 2015 and written by our late friend and mentor Pastor Garrett Lear, “The Patriot Pastor who would often say “We have no king by King Jesus” and ended his presentations with “Someone has stolen my country and I want her back now.”
Camp Constitution wishes all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Garrett Lear “The Patriot Pastor” 1948-2021
The Fall of Minneapolis: An Interview with Liz Collin
Camp Constitution Radio hosted by Hal Shurtleff recently interviewed Liz Collin, a former Minneapolis news anchor and reporter, author of They’re Lying and the producer of the powerful documentary The Fall of Minneapolis:
https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/shurtleffhal/episodes/2023-12-18T10_50_16-08_00
The Fall of Minneapolis features interviews of dozens of officers, witnesses, and experts who were there during the riots and the aftermath following the arrest and death of George Floyd. After years of in-depth research, we show the evidence that others have ignored or outright censored. This is everything they don’t want you to see. From George Floyd’s criminal history, to questionable witness testimony, and the media manipulation in between, get the facts and watch the lies fall apart.
The documentary can be viewed here: https://www.thefallofminneapolis.com/
Happy Bill of Rights Day
December 15th is Bill of Rights Day, the anniversary of the most successful assertion of individual rights and liberties ever written. The date is as obscure as it should be celebrated. If you watched the news this morning, they were more likely highlighting National Cupcake Day. But it’s also one of the most important dates in American history, because without the Bill of Rights the fledgling United States may not have survived.
Barely a decade after 1776, shortcomings in the Articles of Confederation brought about a political crisis among the states, culminating in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The new Constitution was ratified the following year, but that was not the end of the crisis, as a number of states made ratification contingent on a Bill of Rights being swiftly added to it.
With the fate of the Republic at stake, the two dominant political forces of the time – the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists – waged a public contest of ideas. It ended with the drafting by consensus of the first ten amendments to the new Constitution, collectively known as the Bill of Rights, which sealed the deal when Virginia became the 11th state to ratify, on this day in 1791.
The history of the document since then has been a stunning success. In a testament to the power of its ideas, the visionary principles embodied in the Bill of Rights that were considered radical by most of the outside world at the time – freedom of expression and belief, the presumption of innocence, due process and equality under the law – are today lauded as universal human rights.
The expanding reach of these principles in our own country has been no less breathtaking. When the Bill of Rights was ratified its provisions only fully applied to 5% of the people living here. They didn’t apply to slaves, native Americans, women, or white men of less than a certain means or property.
But the amendments themselves do not contain a single exclusionary clause. So as our understanding of freedom grew from the experience of it, along with the wrenching tragedy of a civil war, the Bill of Rights remained a clear beacon illuminating the path forward. Today virtually all Americans expect that these rights and freedoms belong to all equally.
There have been setbacks and reversals along the way. President Roosevelt declared the first Bill of Rights Day in 1941. Two months later he issued the executive order interning all Japanese Americans, one of the darker episodes in our history. Today’s headlines remind us just how perpetually fragile the idea of a free, just, and civil society is. As President Reagan pointedly observed “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream.”
The Bill of Rights:
THE BILL OF RIGHTS – FULL TEXT
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
Amendment III
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Hanukkah: Festival of Lights, Rededication of Second Temple c.164 BC – American Minute with Biill Federer
LISTEN (text to speech)
The origin of lights at this season can be traced back to the Jewish Festival of Lights, or Feast of the Dedication, in Hebrew called “Hanukkah.”
Solomon’s week-long dedication of the First Temple began on the 1st day of the Hebrew month Tishri, in the 10th century B.C., ending on the 8th day of Tishrei. First Kings 8; Second Chronicles 7.
The Babylonians destroyed the First Temple on the 9th day of the month of Av, circa 587 B.C.
Jews were taken away from Jerusalem and held captive in Babylon, 597-581 B.C.
The prophet Jeremiah wrote in chapter 25:
“And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith the Lord.”
And Jeremiah wrote in chapter 29:
“For thus saith the Lord, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place.”
The prophet Daniel read Jeremiah’s prophecy and wrote in chapter 9:
“In the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.”
In 539 B.C., Cyrus of Persia captured Babylon, the ancient world’s largest city. Shortly after, Cyrus let Jews return to Jerusalem after 70 years of captivity.
The Book of Ezra, chapter 6, recorded how Jews built the Second Temple and dedicated it circa 516 B.C.
Around 334 B.C., Alexander the Great invaded from the west and speedily conquered the Medo-Persian Empire.
The prophet Daniel foretold in chapter 8:
“The male goat was coming from the west over the surface of the whole earth without touching the ground; and the goat had a conspicuous horn between his eyes.
He came up to the ram that had the two horns, which I had seen standing in front of the canal, and rushed at him in his mighty wrath … and he struck the ram and shattered his two horns.”
At the height of his power, Alexander the Great suddenly died and his four generals divided up his empire.
Daniel had foretold:
“The male goat magnified himself exceedingly. But as soon as he was mighty, the large horn was broken; and in its place there came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of heaven.”
The common understanding is that Alexander’s Empire, after numerous “Diadochi” battles, was divided up thus:
- Lysimachus ruled Thrace & Asia Minor;
- Cassander ruled Macedonia and Greece;
- Ptolemy ruled Egypt and into the Middle East;
- Seleucus ruled the rest of the Middle East, Syria, Babylon, Persia, and parts of India, collectively known as the “Seleucid Empire.”
Around 167 B.C., out of the Seleucid Empire, there arose an aggressive king, Antiochus the Fourth Epiphanes.
Daniel wrote further:
“Out of one of them came forth a rather small horn which grew exceedingly great toward the south, toward the east, and toward the Beautiful Land.”
Best-selling author Joel Richardson presents the thought, that with modern-day Iran threatening Israel, there may yet be a future element to Daniel’s prophecy: “Son of man, understand that the vision pertains to the time of the end.”
Antiochus attacked Jerusalem, as reported in 2nd Book of Maccabees 5:11-14:
“The king … thought that Judea was in revolt. Raging like a wild animal, he set out from Egypt and took Jerusalem by storm. He ordered his soldiers to cut down without mercy those whom they met and to slay those who took refuge in their houses.
… There was a massacre of young and old, a killing of women and children, a slaughter of virgins and infants …
In the space of three days, eighty thousand were lost, forty thousand meeting a violent death, and the same number being sold into slavery.”
The prophet Daniel foretold in chapter 11:22-27:
“While returning to his land with great riches, his heart shall be moved against the holy covenant … and return in rage against the holy covenant, and do damage …
And forces shall be mustered by him, and they shall defile the sanctuary fortress; then they shall take away the daily sacrifices, and place there the abomination of desolation.”
Antiochus the Fourth Epiphanes tried to force the Jews to abandon their beliefs and adopt the Greek culture, as recorded in 2 Maccabees 5:11-14:
“Not long after this the king sent an Athenian senator to force the Jews to abandon the customs of their ancestors and live no longer by the laws of God; also to profane the temple in Jerusalem and dedicate it to Olympian Zeus …
They also brought into the temple things that were forbidden, so that the altar was covered with abominable offerings prohibited by the laws …
A man could not keep the sabbath or celebrate the traditional feasts, nor even admit that he was a Jew …
… Women … arrested for having circumcised their children were publicly paraded about the city with their babies hanging at their breasts and then thrown down from the top of the city wall …
Others, who had assembled in nearby caves to observe the sabbath in secret, were betrayed … and all burned to death.”
Though they were persecuted, Daniel prophesied:
“But the people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out great exploits.”
Around 167 B.C., Mattathias and his sons began the Maccabean Revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes. Judas Maccabaeus was finally successful in driving the enemy out circa 164 B.C.
When the Second Temple was cleansed of all pagan defilement, a week long re-dedication began on the 25th day of Kislev, circa 164 B.C.
There was a problem — there was only found enough holy olive oil to light the golden lamp stand – the menorah, for one day, and it would take a week before more could be made.
The decision was made to relight it anyway, and miraculously, the light burned for eight days.
This is celebrated annually as the Feast of Dedication, also known as the Festival of Lights, or HANUKKAH, which is the Hebrew word for “dedication.”
Flavius Josephus wrote in the Jewish Antiquities (12.7.6-7 316-325) that circa 164 BC:
“The generals of Antiochus’ armies having been defeated …
Judah Maccabee assembled the people and told them that after the many victories which God had given them they ought to go up to Jerusalem and purify the Temple …
But when he with the whole multitude came to Jerusalem and found he Temple deserted, its gates burned down, and plants growing in the Temple of their own accord because of the desolation, he and those with him began to lament …”
Josephus continued:
“He had carefully purged it he brought in new vessels — the menorah, the table and the incense altar, which were made of gold …
… And on the 25th day of the month Kislev, which the Macedonians call Apellaios, they lighted the lights that were on the menorah, and offered incense upon the altar, and laid the loaves upon the table, and offered whole burnt offerings upon the new altar.
As it happened, these things took place on the very same day on which, three years before, the divine worship had been reduced to an impure and profane form of worship;
for the Temple had remained desolate for three years after being made so by Antiochus …”
Josephus concluded:
“And so Judah and his fellow citizens celebrated the festival of the restoration of the sacrifices of the Temple for eight days …
They honored God, and delighted themselves with psalms of praise and the playing of harps.
Indeed, they were so very glad at the revival of their customs and, after so long a time, having unexpectedly regained their right to worship, that they made it a law for their posterity that they should keep a festival celebrating the restoration of their Temple worship for eight days.”
The New Testament Book of John, chapter 10:22-23, recorded that even Jesus observed the Feast of Dedication:
“At that time the Feast of the Dedication took place at Jerusalem; it was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple in the portico of Solomon.
The Jews then gathered around Him, and were saying to Him, ‘How long will You keep us in suspense? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.'”
The many centuries of Hanukkah candles being lit during the winter might have been an inspiration for the Christian tradition of putting lights in tree branches to depict the sky above Bethlehem.
Various U.S. Presidents acknowledged Hanukkah:
Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote to Samuel I. Rosenman, President of the Jewish Education Committee in New York, December 16, 1940:
“Dear Sam, Please convey my best wishes to your co-workers in the Jewish Education Committee of New York, at the annual Hanukkah Dinner …
Our modern democratic way of life has its deepest roots in our great common religious tradition, which for ages past has taught to civilized mankind the dignity of the human being, his equality before God, and his responsibility in the making of a better and fairer world …
The world – is – … engaged in a great spiritual struggle to test whether that ancient wisdom is to endure, or whether … some few men shall dominate multitudes of others and dictate to them their thinking, their religion, their living …
We need the sustaining, buttressing aid of those great ethical religious teachings which are the heritage of our modern civilization.
For ‘not upon strength nor upon power, but upon the spirit of God’ shall our democracy be founded.”
In 1951, President Harry S. Truman received a presentation of a Hanukkah menorah from Israel’s Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion.
On December 17, 1979, President Jimmy Carter was the first President to participate in Hanukkah. He walked from the White House to Lafayette Park to light the National Menorah erected by the American Friends of Lubavitch.
Carter commented:
“It’s a real honor for me to come from the White House here to this ceremony celebrating the commencement of Chanukah, last night, the Feast of Lights.
As many of you know, the season of Chanukah commemorates the victory of religious freedom …
At the commencement of the celebration of this annual event, this season of thanksgiving and closeness to God, there was a miracle within which the candle which was supposed to only burn a short time burned for 8 days and nights …
This miracle showed that God meets our needs. If we depend on Him, He will meet our needs. This also shows that there is a need to celebrate courage and to remember that hope in one’s breast need never die …
… The first candle that I lit, the shammes candle, has given its light now in this glass cage to five other candles.
It has not itself been diminished. It shows that when we give life and love to others, the life and love in our own hearts is not diminished … It grows the more we share it.
So, tonight we pray that our closeness to God, our memory of these fine commitments of human beings down through the ages will strengthen our desires to share our life and our love …
I’m very grateful that this beautiful menorah has been dedicated for the commemoration of the season of Chanukah, and I’m very grateful as President to be partaking in this commemoration of a season when human beings are drawn closer to God and, in that spirit, have confidence that the future will bring us a better life with God and with one another.”
President Ronald Reagan stated in his Hanukkah Message, 1983:
“Whether we be Americans or Israelis, we are all children of Abraham, children of the same God. The bonds between our two peoples are growing stronger, and they must not and will never be broken.
President George H.W. Bush stated in his Hanukkah Message, 1991:
“When Judah Maccabee and his followers prepared to rededicate the Temple in Jerusalem, they found … only enough oil to light the menorah for one night. Miraculously, it lasted eight.”
In 1996, the U.S. Postal Service unveiled the first stamp commemorating Hanukkah.
President Bill Clinton stated in his Hanukkah Message, 1997:
“From the days of the ancient Maccabees down to our present time, tyrants have sought to deny people the free expression of their faith and the right to live according to their own conscience and convictions …
Hanukkah symbolizes the heroic struggle of all who seek to defeat such oppression and the miracles that come to those full of faith and courage.
This holiday holds special meaning for us in America, where freedom of religion is one of the cornerstones of our democracy.
The coming year will mark the 50th anniversary of the State of Israel, where the story of the first Hanukkah took place so many centuries ago …
May the candles of the menorah light our way to a true and lasting peace for the people of the Middle East.”
President George W. Bush remarked lighting the Hanukkah Menorah in the White House, December 10, 2001:
“Tonight, for the first time in American history, the Hanukkah menorah will be lit at the White House residence … The magnificent menorah before us was crafted over a century ago in the city of Lvov …
The Jews of Lvov fell victim to the horror of the Nazi Holocaust, but their great menorah survived. And as God promised Abraham, the people of Israel still live …
We’re reminded of the ancient story of Israel’s courage and of the power of faith to make the darkness bright.
We can see the heroic spirit of the Maccabees lives on in Israel today, and we trust that a better day is coming, when this Festival of Freedom will be celebrated in a world free from terror.”
President Donald J. Trump remarked on Hanukkah, December 12, 2017:
“The miracle of Hanukkah began more than 2,000 years ago, when the practice of Judaism was made punishable by death. A small band of Jewish patriots rose up and reclaimed their Jewish identity by vanquishing a mighty army.
In their pursuit to rededicate their holy temple, the Jewish heroes found only enough oil to light the temple’s menorah for one night. However, a miracle occurred and with God’s grace the oil lasted for eight days.
On this holiday, we are proud to stand with the Jewish people who shine as a light to all nations. We also stand with the people of Israel, the Jewish State, which has itself a miraculous history of overcoming the tallest of odds.
We hope that those observing the holiday here, in Israel, and around the world have a wonderful holiday.”
—
American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate.
Reposted with permission from American Minute
The Weekly Sam: Moyers on Christian Reconstruction By Samuel L. Blumenfeld
It was nice to see so many familiar faces on prime-time
television — R. J. Rushdoony, Rev. Morecraft, Bob Thoburn, Arnie
and Barbara Simkus. And everyone looked good and sounded good.
Technically, it was a beautiful job — from the bucolic views of
Vallecito to the sunny Simkus kitchen. It showed people —
specifically, Christians — in the process of reconstructing America,
not just talking about it: writing books, building churches, teaching
children, getting involved in politics. But hovering over the
entire presentation was the question: are these people a danger to
democracy?
The questions Moyers posed Rush were the expected ones, the
difficult ones concerning the Bible’s references to capital offenses,
and Rush answered them forthrightly. The punishments called for in
the Bible were not necessarily those Rush preferred or advocated.
In any case, he made it qaite clear that he opposed coercion and
that a reconstructed America could only corne about when and if the
vast majority of people had voluntarily accepted the Bible as their
moral standard.
Moyers focused on the issue of democracy because that is the
liberal skewer on which all values are cooked. And that’s probably
why Moyers never adequately defined democracy, because in America
the word evokes aromas, feelings, and images but not much thought.
Moyers ignored the fact that the Founding Fathers warned us of the
perils. of democracy • it seems as if Rush were the first in
American history to cite the dangers of majority rule. And of course
virtually no time was given to showing what majorities can do to
minorities when not restrained by God’s law. After all, Hitler was
put into power by a majority of Germans voting under the most
democratic and permissive government the Germans had ever had, the
Weimar Republic.
Also, there was no one to correct Norman Geisler’s mis representations of Christian Reconstruction. The idea that Reconstructionists
can, or even want to, impose their rule over the United States against
the will of the majority is so preposterous as to be laughable.
Unfortunately, many people will believe Geisler or, at the least, use
Geisler’s words as justification for their wildest nightmares about
the religious right.
And so the major issue that was bandied about was the potential
use of coercion by civil government to impose the rule of “the
righteous.” Obviously, “the righteous” were referred to in the
pejorative sense: self-styled Biblical moralists who want to impose
their moral values on others. Yet, no mention was made of the coercion
liberals are presently using against Christian schools and home schoolers
in this tolerant, humanistic democracy. The stories of harassment,
prosecution and jailing of Christian parents have found no responsive
chord among the celebrants of pluralism and variant lifestyles .
Democracy, Moyers inferred, is a system of tolerance, in which
variant lifestyles and values systems live side by side in competitive
but brotherly harmony. Such a system might indeed be ideal if all
lifestyles were acceptable to God. But the Bible clearly tells us
what is permissible and what is not.
Not surprisingly, Gary North emerged as the heavy in this
debate, even though he refused to be taped or interviewed by Moyers.
Moyers simply quoted North at his worst, and that was enough to set
the skewer. spinning and the juices boiling.
Yet, on the whole, what emerged from the video was, I believe,
basically positive — all the criticism of Christian Reconstruction
notwithstanding. What emerged was an image of Christians in control
of themselves, leading productive lives, providing lifesaving spiritual
answers to a society in the throes of social, cultural, and moral
disintegration.
Yet, nothing can come of the movement if people are repelled by it.
And it obviously has repelled such moralists as Norman Geisler
But Rushdoony wrote in Intellectual in 1961,
“For Scripture, the godly man is the saved man, not the self-consciously
good man. It is not a contrast between moral and immoral but between
godly and ungodly, holy and wicked, and the moral man, as witness
the Pharisees, can epitomize ungodliness.”
What attracts people to Christian Reconstruction is its adherence
to Biblical principles, its reliance on God’s word as a guide to
living, its uncompromising stand on the vital moral issues of the day,
its strong support of family life, its advocacy of economic freedom,
its vision of Christian liberty, its hope for the future. It is a
movement of godly parents anxious to raise a new godly generation.
That is why Christian Reconstruction is particularly strong among
home schoolers.
Another positive point made by Moyers is that the Reconstruction
movement is attracting people from all denominations, from all
races. It is even attracting Jews. The scenes in the Atlanta
church gave the impression of enormous potential power to Reconstructionism when fired with charismatic energy.
Obviously , Moyers
viewed this potential development more with apprehension than joy. So the positive seemed to outweigh the negative in this
production. Even though this is not what Moyers may have intended.
Clearly, what we saw was Christian Reconstruction seen through the
eyes of a troubled liberal, sophisticated enough not to see modern
Calvinists as witch-burning bigots, but betraying his prejudices
by way of his focus. I came. away feeling that Moyers is of two
minds concerning Christian Reconstruction: he liked Rushdoony but
tended to believe Geisler. Which means there is hope for Moyers.
He may convert!
(This article was written in the mid 1990s.) For more of Sam’s work please visit his archive: https://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/
Battle of Lepanto, Sinking of Spanish Armada, and Pilgrim Governor William Bradford – American Minute with Bill Federer
News arrived in Europe that in 1570, Ottoman Turks under the command of Lala Kara Mustafa Pasha, captured Nicosia, Cyprus, after a 50-day siege.
20,000 captured Nicosians were executed. Women and boys were sold as slaves.
The Cathedral of St. Sophia was turned into the Selimiye Mosque …
In 1571, Lala Kara Mustafa Pasha surrounded the Christians in Famagusta, Cyprus, the last stronghold of Western Europe in the Eastern Mediterranean.
He promised the defenders of Cyprus that if they surrendered, they would be allowed to leave.
Lala Kara Mustafa Pasha broke his promise. He flayed alive Venetian commander, Marco Antonio Bragadin, and ordered the execution of all 6,000 Christian prisoners.
The beautiful St. Nicholas Church was turned into the Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque. The Church of Saints Peter and Paul was converted into the Sinan Pasha Mosque.
After this, the Sultan planned on attacking Rome, and from there conquer the rest of western Europe.
The Sultan’s threat was taken serious, as centuries earlier, in 846 AD, Rome was attacked by 11,000 Muslim pirates.
They sacked the city, looted the old St. Peter’s basilica, and the church St. Paul Outside the Wall, and desecrated the graves of both St. Peter and St. Paul.
In response, Pope Leo IV built a 39 foot high wall around the Vatican.
In 1571, with the Sultan again threatening Rome, Pope Pius V used all his influence to get the Christian states of Spain, Naples, Sicily, Venice, Genoa, Sardinia, Savoy, Urbino, Papal States, Germans, and Croatians to assemble into the Holy League.
The Holy League insisted that their fleet be led by the 24-year-old son of King Charles V of Spain – Don John of Austria.
Spain used gold from the New World to fit out its navy to keep the Muslim Ottomans from taking over the Mediterranean.
On October 7, 1571, the largest and most decisive sea battle on the Mediterranean took place — the Battle of Lepanto off the western coast of Greece.
Don John of Austria led the 212 ships with nearly 68,000 soldiers and sailors of the Holy League.
A danger for soldiers fighting at sea, was that if they fell overboard, their armor would cause them to immediately sink.
Ali Pasha led the Muslim Ottoman Turks, consisting of 82,000 soldiers and sailors on 251 ships powered by thousands of Christian galley slaves rowing under the decks.
This was the last major battle with rowing vessels.
As the sun rose on the day of battle, the Holy League found itself at a great disadvantage, having to row against a strong wind.
Don John led his men on deck in a prayer, then suddenly the wind changed 180 degrees to favor the Holy League.
The Holy League’s ships collided into Ali Pasha’s ships.
Fierce fighting went on for hours.
Don John sailed his flagship Real crashing into Ali Pasha’s ship.
Ali Pasha was soon killed, his vessel’s crescent flag was lowered and his head was hung high in its place.
This cause Ottoman warriors to lose heart.
The Ottomans lost 200 of their 230 ships.
Some 12,000 Christian galley slaves were released from under the decks.
Had the Ottomans not been defeated, they would have invaded Italy and possibly conquered Europe.
Telling the story of the freeing of the Christian galley slaves, G.K. Chesterton wrote in his epic poem, “Lepanto”:
“… Above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a laboring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
… They are lost like slaves that swat, and in the skies of morning hung
The stairways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon.
… And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell
Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,
And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign —
But Don John of Austria has burst the battle line!
… Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop (the rear stern deck),
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labor under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania! Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria has set his people free!”
Hilaire Belloc wrote in The Great Heresies (1938):
“The last great Turkish organization working now from the conquered capital of Constantinople, proposed to cross the Adriatic, to attack Italy by sea and ultimately to recover all that had been lost in the Western Mediterranean.
There was one critical moment when it looked as though the scheme would succeed. A huge Mohammedan armada fought at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth against the Christian fleet at Lepanto.
The Christians won that naval action and the Western Mediterranean was saved.
But it was a very close thing, and the name of Lepanto should remain in the minds of all men with a sense of history as one of the half dozen great names in the history of the Christian world.”
One of the Spanish sailors in the Battle of Lepanto was Miguel de Cervantes. He was later captured and made a slave in Algiers, North Africa. After 5 years, he ransomed by Trinitarian Order, returned to Madrid, Spain, and there he wrote Don Quixote, Man of La Mancha, 1605, considered Europe’s first modern novel.
In an autobiographical passage, Cervantes wrote: “They put a chain on me … with several others … marked out as held to ransom … We suffered from hunger and scanty clothing … seeing at every turn the unexampled and unheard–of cruelties my master inflicted upon the Christians …
Every day he hanged a man, impaled one, cut off the ears of another … all with so little provocation … Turks acknowledged he did it merely for the sake of doing it … because he was by nature murderously disposed towards the whole human race.”
U.S. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts wrote in White Slavery in the Barbary States, 1853:
“Algiers, for a long time the most obnoxious place in the Barbary States of Africa, the chief seat of Christian slavery … the wall of the barbarian world …
… And Cervantes, in the story of Don Quixote … give(s) the narrative of a Spanish captive who had escaped from Algiers …
The author is supposed to have drawn from his own experience; for during five and a half years he endured the horrors of Algerine slavery, from which he was finally liberated by a ransom of about six hundred dollars.”
A missed opportunity followed the Battle of Lepanto.
Spain could have gone throughout the Mediterranean freeing ports, Greek Islands and even Constantinople from Ottoman control.
Instead, Spain sent its army and navy to crush the Reformation which was taking place in Holland and in England.
Over the next 35 years, Spain’s expensive military campaigns would result in depleted financial resources and bankruptcy.
In 1572, the Iron Duke of Alba began the Spanish Furies, decimating the cities of the Netherlands.
Tens of thousands were massacred at:
Mechelen, Guelders, Zutphen, Naarden, Haarlem, Maastricht, Aalst, and finally Antwerp, where soldiers torched a thousand buildings and killed an estimated 17,000 men, women and children.
In 1588, King Philip II of Spain sent his Invincible Armada to conquer Protestant England.
Queen Elizabeth, who had previously declined a marriage proposal from Philip, put on her armor and rallied Englishmen to defend their country in what is considered her most famous speech, August 9, 1588:
“Let tyrants fear …
I am come amongst you … resolved, in the midst and heat of battle, to live or die amongst you all — to lay down for my God, and for my kingdoms, and for my people, my honour and my blood even in the dust.
… I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king — and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm …
By … your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.”
Spain was repulsed by English and Dutch sailors, such as:
- Sir Francis Drake,
- Sir John Hawkins,
- Sir Martin Frobisher,
- Lord Howard of Effingham, and
- Dutch Admiral Justinus van Nassau.
A hurricane smashed 56 Spanish ships, 10 more ships had to be scuttled.
Over 20,000 Spaniards died from battle, storms and disease.
Philip sent a second Spanish Armada in October of 1596, but it was destroyed in a storm.
He sent a third Spanish Armada in October of 1597, but it met the same fate.
In 1601, Philip’s son, Philip III, sent the Spanish navy to Ireland to mount an attack on Britain, but was defeated at the Battle of Kinsale.
Spain’s costly military losses led to the bankruptcy of the Spanish Empire and their loss of its monopoly over the new world.
This opened the door for other European nations to settle colonies in America.
Had the Spanish Armada won took control of England, there would have been:
- No Anglican England;
- No Puritans & Pilgrims;
- No New England;
- No United States.
North America would have just been an extension of New Spain-Mexico.
Writing for HistoryToday.com (Vol. 57 Issue 11 Nov. 2007), Richard Cavendish described the Spanish Bankruptcy:
“Spain had imported enormous quantities of treasure from the gold and silver mines of Mexico and Peru in the sixteenth century and yet the royal government was all too frequently in or close to bankruptcy.
Massive amounts were spent on crusading against both Islam and Protestantism, and the Netherlands cost more to administer than they brought in.
When Philip III became King of Spain and Portugal in 1598 … instead of being used to stimulate industry … the treasure from the Americas had created an attitude that held productive work in contempt, while foreigners – Genoese, Dutch, Germans – ran Spain’s trade and finance to their own profit …”
Cavendish continued, describing Spain’s version of deep state insiders:
The new king was far too idle and irresponsible to run the government himself, as his father had done.
Instead he spent fecklessly on frivolous entertainments while the government was managed by a favorite, the Duke of Lerma, who was just as torpid and incompetent as the king, and kept himself in power by dispensing grants and pensions to the leading Castilian nobles, who crowded the court.
He also lined his own pockets and moved the court from Madrid to Valladolid and back again to make profits from real estate dealings …”
Spain then attempted to stimulate the economy by debasing its money resulting in inflation, as Cavendish explained:
“The crown’s supply of money from the Americas … slumped by half during the first fifteen years or so of Philip’s reign, while money had to be spent on defending Spanish America from the English and the Dutch.
The government tried to escape its financial problems by issuing a debased copper coinage, the vellon, but was still forced to declare a moratorium on its debts, or in effect acknowledge bankruptcy on November 19th, 1607 …
By the time Philip III died in 1621, some Spaniards were starting to wonder whether their American empire was more of a liability than an asset.”
A pattern can be observed. When a nation reaches what could be considered “global superpower status,” the prosperity experienced causes those in political leadership to indulge in fiscal irresponsibility.
Enormous debt leads to national bankruptcy and a loss of international preeminence. When this happens there is a “great reset” where other nations quickly vie with each other to fill the power vacuum, resulting in a new global political structure.
Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations, 1776:
“The Spaniards, by virtue of the first discovery, claimed all America as their own, and … such was … the terror of their name, that the greater part of the other nations of Europe were afraid to establish themselves in any other part of that great continent …
But … the defeat … of their Invincible Armada … put it out of their power to obstruct any longer the settlements of the other European nations.
In the course of the 17th century … English, French, Dutch, Danes, and Swedes … attempted to make some settlements in the new world.”
Two years after the famed sinking of the Invincible Spanish Armada, a boy was born on March 19, 1590, in England, named William Bradford.
On November 5, 1605, the Gunpowder Plot was thwarted. An anonymous letter tipped it off. Guy Fawkes, who had fought for Spain, joined with conspirators to place 36 barrels of gunpowder in an unused cellar beneath Parliament’s House of Lords.
The plot was to kill King James I, who was speaking in Parliament that day, and return England to a Catholic monarchy. The Gunpowder Plot caused James I to be suspicious and intolerant of any religious group: Catholic, Puritan, Presbyterian, as well as the Pilgrims.
In 1605, St. Vincent de Paul was sailing from Marseille, France, when he was captured by Turks and sold into slavery in Tunis, North Africa. After sharing his faith with one of his master’s wives, she convinced her master to let him escape in 1607. He founded a hospital and an organization to ransom slaves.
When William Bradford was 17, Shakespeare was producing his play, “Anthony and Cleopatra,” 1607, and the Jamestown Colony was being founded in Virginia.
In 1609, William Bradford fled from England to Holland with the Pilgrim separatists, led by Pastor John Robinson and Elder William Brewster.
In 1620, after much hardship, William Bradford, age 30, sailed with the Pilgrims to America.
In 1621, Bradford was chosen governor and reelected 30 times till his death.
William Bradford’s journal, Of Plymouth Plantation, is the main historical record of the Pilgrims, published in 1650:
“Since ye first breaking out of ye light of ye gospel in our Honorable Nation of England … what wars and oppositions … Satan hath raised … against the Saints … by bloody death and cruel torments … imprisonments, banishments …
What could now sustain them but ye spirit of God and His grace? … Ought not the children of these fathers rightly say:
Our fathers … came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; but they cried unto ye Lord, and He heard their voice …”
Bradford continued:
“All great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties … Out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing …
and, as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation; let the glorious name of Jehovah have all the praise.”
—
American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Reposted with permission.
The Weekly Sam: Islamic Trojan Horse at Ground Zero By Samuel L. Blumenfeld
Islamic Global Jihad declared war against America on September 11, 2001, in an attack
that killed nearly 3000 Americans in the Twin Towers in Manhattan. the Pentagon in
Washington, D.C., and in four hijacked airliners. Had the fourth airliner succeeded in
reaching Washington, it might have crashed into the White House or the Capitol with
even more loss of life. But, thanks to the brave passengers on the plane, the attack was
thwarted and the plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
Anyone who has watched videos of ordinary men and women jumping out of the Twin
Towers to their deaths will never forget the horror perpetrated by Islamic jihadists on that
day. The attack took months of intricate, detailed planning by the terrorists, but our
government was simply too inept to prevent it from happening.
Meanwhile, Muslims around the world danced in the streets at their great victory over
America and their spectacular advance in the war against the West. The goal of the
Jihad is to impose the Islamic religion and Sharia law over the entire world, and the
attack on 9/11 was just the visible tip of the iceberg in what has been and will be a very
long war.
For example, there is an Islamic missionary organization active throughout the world in
recruiting converts to Islam. It is called Tablighi Jamaat, and according to reliable
sources, it is estimated that about 15,000 of its missionaries are active in the United
States. It is particularly active among Black Muslims and criminals in our prisons.
And so, while American soldiers are fighting and dying in Afghanistan against the
jihadist enemy, the enemy is quietly subverting the American homeland with virtually no
resistance from the American people.
It should be reminded that Islam is a totalitarian, genocidal political movement operating
under the guise of a peace-loving religion. It is intolerant of other religions and despises
the governing principles of the United States. Islam does not believe in the separation of
church and state, as clearly demonstrated by the regime in Iran. Yet President Obama
refuses to acknowledge that we are at war against Global Jihad or even radical Islamic
terrorism. Terrorism, by the way, is just one of the means the war is being fought
against the West.
And this Global Jihad is being fought by bombing trains in Madrid, bombing subways
and buses in London, bombing a night club in Bali, attempted airplane bombings by the
shoe bomber and the Christmas underwear bomber, an attempted bombing in Times
Square, the murder of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood by a jihadist in uniform, suicide bombings
in Israel, the murder of a cinematographer in Holland, the beheading of an American
journalist kidnapped in Pakistan, bombings and massacres in India, Indonesia and
Uganda, the killing of Christians and burning of churches in Pakistan, Kenya, and
elsewhere. There is no end to the atrocities being committed by jihadists. In the U.S. a
Muslim father killed his daughter because she was becoming too Americanized.
So it should not take a political genius to figure out why the Muslims want to build a
mosque at Ground Zero. They want to commemorate and honor those jihadists who died
crashing those planes into the Twin Towers. Where better to honor them than at Ground
Zero? And not just an ordinary mosque, but a 13-story, $100-million mosque. The
developer of the project is Feisal Abdul Rauf, born in Kuwait of Egyptian parents with a
known tradition of Islamic radicalism. Rauf was brought to America at the age of 17 by his parents when his father moved from
Malaysia to the U.S. to set up the Islamic Cultural Center in Washington, D.C. Rauf then
got a BS in physics at Columbia University. In 1997, Rauf established the American
Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA) with funding from Gloria Steinem’s Ms.
Foundation, New York Carnegie Corporation, U.N. Population Fund, Rockefeller
Brothers Fund, and Hunt Alternatives Fund.
The project is significantly called the Cordoba Initiative, to commemorate the return of
Islam to Spain where it was expelled in 1492. According to Raymond Ibrahim, the
Christian city of Cordoba “was conquered by Muslims around 711, its inhabitants
slaughtered or enslaved. The original mosque of Cordoba — the namesake of the Ground
Zero mosque — was built atop, and partly from the materials of, a Christian church.
Modern day Muslims are well aware of all this. Such is the true — and ominous —
legacy of Cordoba. More pointedly, throughout Islam’s history, whenever a region was
conquered, one of the first signs of consolidation was/is the erection of a mosque atop the
sacred sites of the vanquished.”
The Ground Zero mosque plan is akin to a project initiated by Rauf’s late father in 1965.
That year, Muhammad R. Abdul Rauf came to New York to plan the construction of an
Islamic Cultural Center that took many years to complete.. He bought prime Manhattan
real estate at 96th Street and 3rd Avenue, where a huge mosque was built, with funding
from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Libya.
The mosque at Ground Zero will contain a community center and will draw thousands of
Muslims to worship at the very site where 3000 innocent men and women were murdered
by their brave, dedicated jihadist martyrs. It will have a swimming pool and a basketball
court to attract the young, an auditorium and culinary school, a library, art studios, and
meditation rooms. But it will still symbolize not only a glorious Islamic victory, but also
the impending surrender of America to Islam. It will also have a “memorial” dedicated
to the victims of the 9/11 attacks, which makes the project even more odious,
hypocritical, and dangerous. After all, it will be easy enough to claim the perpetrators of
the crime as “victims” of an unjust West.
That Americans are willing to permit this Trojan Horse to be built in what is now
considered hallowed ground, where so many men and women lost their lives in the worst
terrorist attack visited on America, should make us realize how weakened America has
become in this life and death struggle under the Obama regime in Washington.
According to Salah Choudhury, a journalist and author, who has exposed the work and
motives of Feisel Abdul Rauf: “Rauf’s early UK education and familiarization with
American popular culture and values made him an acutely adept practitioner of Islamic
taqiyya – deceptive speech and action to advance the interests and supremacy of Islam….
Now, Imam Rauf is set to construct his dream project, wherefrom possibly the radical
Islamists will start Islamization of America. This will not be a mere mosque, but a tower
of terrorism to further flex the muscle of militant Islam right inside the heart of United
States.”
Liberals like Mayor Bloomberg of New York, who seems to live in a fantasy world, use
the argument of freedom of religion to approve the construction of the mosque at Ground
Zero. They do not accept that we are at war with Global Jihad which is determined to
destroy us. It doesn’t occur to them that the U.S. Constitution is not a suicide pact. But
maybe Bloomberg believes that that Muslims have a Constitutional right to Islamicize
America and destroy our Judeo-Christian heritage in the name of religious freedom. I
wonder what he would say if Christians decided to erect a giant cross at Ground Zero or
if Jews wanted to erect a giant Star of David or a replica of the Ten Commandments at
Ground Zero.
There is no doubt that if the mosque is built, Ground Zero will become the center of daily
religious and political conflict with competing demonstrations, speakers, pamphlet
distributions, and even violence. The resentment against the mosque is so great among
ordinary Americans that it may well inspire greater resistance to this blatant Islamic plan
to conquer America.
Meanwhile, it is hoped that enough New Yorkers rise up against this evil project and kill
it before it becomes the focus of hatred and dread, an arrogant, brutal affront to the men
and women who died at Ground Zero.
The estimated 15,000 Tablighi missionaries reportedly active in the United States present
a serious national security problem. At best, they and their proxy groups form a powerful
proselytizing movement that preaches extremism and disdain for religious tolerance,
democracy, and separation of church and state. At worst, they represent an Islamist fifth
column that aids and abets terrorism. Contrary to their benign treatment by scholars and
academics, Tablighi Jamaat has more to do with political sedition than with religion.
Feisal Abdul Rauf, the prospective developer of a $100 million, 13-story
mosque 600 feet from Ground Zero, presents himself as a Muslim
moderate. Yet Kuwait-born Feisal Abdul Rauf also boasts of his issue
from an “Egyptian family steeped in religious scholarship”. Indeed,
Feisal Rauf’s Muslim Brotherhood provenance, radical by definition, is as
authentic as it gets.
Rauf’s father, Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf [1917-2004] – an Egyptian contemporary of
Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna – conveyed to Feisal his family’s long
tradition of radicalism, which he acquired at Islam’s closest equivalent to the Vatican,
Al-Azhar University. The elder Dr. Rauf studied and taught there before fleeing Egypt in
1948. That year, Feisal Abdul Rauf was born in Kuwait.
Feisal Rauf has planned for some time to further develop his father’s U.S. Islamic
expansionism. In 1990, Rauf opened the tiny al-Farah Mosque at 245 West Broadway in
lower Manhattan. Area residents did not even notice the mosque until 2006, when the
New York State Liquor Authority [SLA] refused to license a new bar on the same block
and started yanking others’ liquor licenses.
Rauf attended grammar school and high school in the UK and Malaysia, according to his
biography. He probably first lived in America only in 1965, at age 17, when his father
moved from Malaysia to New York to plan and head the Islamic Cultural Center [not
built until the mid-1980s]. Rauf then obtained a BS in physics at Columbia University. In
1971, the family moved to Washington, D.C., where Rauf’s father headed the Islamic
Center on Massachusetts Ave. His father, buried in Suitland, MD, at the for-profit
Washington National Cemetery, also founded three Malaysian Islamic studies programs,
including the International Islamic University of Malaysia.
Rauf’s early UK education and familiarization with American popular culture and values
made him an acutely adept practitioner of Islamic taqiyya – deceptive speech and action
to advance the interests and supremacy of Islam. To further that Islamic advancement,
Rauf in 1997 established the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA). His
Kashmir-born wife Daisy Kahn, an interior designer by profession, has run the
organization since 2005.
Rauf then began cultivating new spheres of influence. In about summer 2002, Rauf
started lecturing on Islam at the 750-acre southwestern New York campus of Chautauqua
Institution, a 136-year-old non-profit where religion director Joan Brown Campbell took
Rauf under her wing. Under the rubric of the “Abrahamic” faiths, a convenient cover for
Rauf’s Islamic activities, Campbell subsequently named him the prospective head of a
Muslim house now planned on campus by another Rauf brainchild – the 501(3)c
organization Muslim Friends of Chautauqua. Rauf also befriended Karen Armstrong, the
former British nun and devotee of Islam.
In 2003, Rauf befriended leaders of Denver’s Aspen Institute, including former executive
director and four-term Aspen mayor John S. Bennet. In 2004, under ASMA auspices,
Rauf organized a meeting of 125 young Muslims and formed Muslim Leaders of
Tomorrow. With Bennet’s help, he co-founded the Cordoba Initiative in Aspen,
purportedly to “improve” Muslim-West relations. Rauf gets funding from a variety of
other liberal organizations, including, for example, Gloria Steinem’s Ms. Foundation.
Now, the same Rauf is set to construct a mosque at Ground Zero, which he claims will
prove that ‘Islam is not a violent faith’.
As Islamic attacks on September 11, 2001 destroyed the World Trade Center towers,
falling jet debris simultaneously crushed the five-story 1923 structure some 600 feet
away that until that morning housed a robust Burlington Coat Factory store. Over the ruin
of the former retail outlet, Rauf now plans to build a 13-story, $100 million mosque. Rauf
says the Cordoba Initiative bought the former retail building to prove to the world that
Islam is not a violent faith.
Imam Rauf says that New York Muslims provided nearly $5 million in cash to buy the
Park Place building. Yet in fiscal 2009, Rauf’s ASMA received large international
donations. In the year ended June 30, 2009 – days before Feisal closed the purchase –
ASMA received at least $1.3 million. The largest donation, $576,312, came from Qatar.
That Persian Gulf nation has long harbored terror financiers, and even the government
stands accused of funding international terrorism. Qatar also has, for decades, hosted
Muslim Brotherhood spiritual chief Yusuf al-Qaradawi. The elderly sheikh, a large and
founding shareholder in the terror-financing al-Taqwa Bank, champions sharia law, wife
beating, and suicide bombing.
ASMA also received $481,942 from Holland’s Millennial Development Goals Fund
[MDG3], $144,752 from New York’s Carnegie Corporation, $53,664 from the U.N.
Population Fund [UNFPA], plus donations from the Rockefeller Brothers and Hunt
Alternatives funds, among others.
The Ground Zero mosque plan is more than a little reminiscent of a program initiated by
Rauf’s late father in 1965. That year, Muhammad R. Abdul Rauf moved to New York to
plan and head a huge Islamic Cultural Center that took decades to realize. He bought
prime Manhattan real estate at 96th St. and 3rd Ave – roughly two thirds of a city block –
apparently with $1.3 million in funding from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Libya. The late
Rauf long retained some of that land in a personal trust. But when construction started on
the $17 million mosque in 1984, it had received funding from 46 Islamic nations. By
2010, the enormous Islamic complex had added another two buildings. Since 1984, its
founders-envisioned apartment unit has been restricted to Muslims alone.
Whenever Feisal first considered building a mosque across from Ground Zero, he had the
idea firmly in mind by 2004, when he wrote What’s Right with Islam. The book was
translated into many languages. In Indonesia’s Bahasa, its title translates as “The Call
from the WTC Rubble.” Rauf promoted the book in December 2007 at a Kuala Lumpur
gathering of Hizb ut Tahrir — a terror outfit banned in Germany since 2003, and also
outlawed in Bangladesh, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, and Saudi
Arabia, among other places – and ideologically akin to the Muslim Brotherhood. Both
seek to replace the U.S. Constitution with Islamic law [Sharia], and eventually impose
Islam and Sharia law worldwide. Most North American Muslim Brotherhood
organizations avoid widely publicizing that aim. The Hizb Ut Tahrir however, at a July
2009 Khalifah conference at a suburban Chicago Hilton, openly promised to replace
capitalism with Islam and Sharia law.
Now, Imam Rauf is set to construct his dream project, wherefrom possibly the radical
Islamists will start Islamization of America. This will not be a mere mosque, but a tower
of terrorism to further flex the muscle of militant Islam right inside the heart of United
States.
Hope Americans will realize this, before it is too late!
Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is a journalist, columnist, author, amd editor of the
“Weekly Blitz”. Email him at salahuddinshoaibchoudhury@yahoo.com
HOME May-June 2010 Featured Stories Background Information News On The Web
A REVEALING SKETCH OF IMAM RAUF:
FOUNDED GROUND ZERO MOSQUE PROJECT.
HELPED FUND THE GAZA FLOTILLA
by AllahPundit
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is the founder of the Ground Zero mosque project. He’s also part
of a group[1] that’s funding another group that helped organize the flotilla. Too far
removed for culpability? Let’s see.
The imam behind a proposed mosque near Ground Zero is a
prominent member of a group that helped sponsor the
pro-Palestinian activists who clashed violently with Israeli
commandos at sea this week.
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is a key figure in Malaysian-based Perdana
Global Peace Organization, according to its website.
Perdana is the single biggest donor ($366,000) so far to the Free Gaza
Movement, a key organizer of the six-ship flotilla that tried to break
Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip Monday.
Here’s Rauf’s bio at the Perdana website.
Chairman, Cordoba Initiative, USA
Feisal Abdul Rauf has been Imam of Masjid al-Farah in New York
City since 1983. Through his sermons and writings, Imam Abdul
Rauf seeks to provide spiritual seekers with answers to their eternal
questions that often hinder them from developing a personal
relationship with the Divine.
He is the founder of the ASMA Society, dedicated to furthering
Islamic Art and Culture. He invites non-Muslims to experience the
spiritual impulse of Islam, and Muslims to develop on the spiritual
path.
He teaches Islam and Sufism at the Center for Religious Inquiry at
St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City, and at the New York
Seminary. He has been particularly effective with non-Muslims who
seek to discover and assimilate the spiritual dimension of the Qur’an
and Islam’s ritual teachings, and who seek to understand the Islamic
experience from within.
He is the author of Islam: A Search for Meaning, in which he defines
Islam as the universal religion that goes beyond the cultural settings
of the Prophet Muhammad, and Islam: A Sacred Law, What Every
Muslim should know about the Shari`ah.
Born in Kuwait of Egyptian ancestry, Imam Abdul-Rauf was educated
in England, Egypt, Malaysia and the United States, and is a graduate
of Columbia University in New York. He speaks Arabic, English and
Malay/Indonesian.
Imam Abdul-Rauf is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Islamic
Center of New York, and of the Interfaith Center of New York. He
lectures regularly at Synagogues, Churches and Mosques, and on
radio and television programs in the United States and abroad.
Reuters[2] confirmed with the Free Gaza Movement — whose supporters include
William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn,[3] natch — that its biggest donation did indeed
come from Perdana. Any reason to fault Rauf for belonging to a “global peace
organization” willing to give money to another group that promises only “civil resistance
and non-violent direct action”?[4] Well, it depends. Did he know that the flotilla was
being co-organized by a Turkish charity with terrorist ties?[5] Did he know that goon
provocateurs would be aboard the flotilla, some of them from the Muslim
Brotherhood?[6] Does he realize that the stated mission[7] of the Free Gaza Movement,
i.e. to “establish a permanent sea lane between Gaza and the rest of the world,” will
assuredly result in weapons shipments to Hamas? If he didn’t know those things before
— and maybe he didn’t — does finding out now change his opinion of the FGM?
Inquiring reporters should want to know.
But as intriguing as the Post’s report is, it’s actually missing a bigger story. Go take a look
at who the most prominent member[8] of Perdana is. Right — Mahathir Mohamad,
former prime minister of Malaysia, Jew-baiter[9] extraordinaire, and prominent … 9/11
Truther.[10] Actual quote: “There is strong evidence that the attacks were staged. If they
can make Avatar, they can make anything.” Question for Rauf: If you’re all about peace
and healing at Ground Zero, why stick with a charity that’s being spearheaded by a guy
who blames the U.S. government for what happened there?
Which brings me to a point that’s been drowned in the uproar over the mosque. A few
days ago, Greenroomer CK MacLeod accused the mosque’s critics of playing into
jihadists’ hands[11] by conflating radical Muslims with all Muslims. Why punish all
members of the faith collectively by denying them a mosque near Ground Zero, asked
CK, when it’s the Bin Ladenites who are culpable for bringing down the towers? The
problem is, Islam isn’t divided cleanly into “radical” and “liberal” camps, with Osama
emblematic of the first camp and, say, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser (who, incidentally, opposes[12]
the Ground Zero mosque) emblematic of the other. It’s a spectrum, which includes true
jihadis, who are willing to commit violence; those who support them morally (and
financially) but are unwilling to commit violence themselves; those who oppose violence
but nonetheless believe in Islamic supremacy; those who believe civil law should be
supreme but nonetheless condone various forms of cultural self-isolation; and of course
truly assimilated, liberal Muslims like Jasser, who risks his life every day speaking out
against the scum on the other end.
At what point on the spectrum does Rauf fall? Does his association with Mahathir affect
that judgment? How about the fact that, as Greenroomer J.E. Dyer[13] notes, he’s
coincidentally chosen to name his mosque after a great Muslim victory over the west? Or,
if all that’s too heady, what about his insistence on bringing his symbol of “healing” to
Ground Zero despite the fact that the idea’s had quite the opposite effect for many New
Yorkers? As I’ve said before, that’s a curious bit of cultural insensitivity, particularly
when no one’s objecting to the idea of a new mosque located pretty much anywhere else
in the city. Just wondering: If some imam decided he wanted to build a mosque on
Ground Zero itself, at the foot of the never-to-be-completed Freedom Tower, shouldn’t
we indulge him per CK’s logic? And if he decided he wanted to build it in the shape of an
airplane — just to “reclaim the symbol” from the evil jihadists who attacked on 9/11,
mind you — shouldn’t we indulge him that, too? At what point is it okay to question
motives here?
THE TWO FACES OF THE GROUND ZERO
MOSQUE
by Raymond Ibrahim
Depending on whether Islamists address Americans or fellow Muslims, the same exact
words they use often relay diametrically opposed meanings. One example: when
Americans hear Muslims evoke “justice,” the former envision Western-style justice,
whereas Muslims naturally have Sharia law justice in mind.
Islamists obviously use this to their advantage: when addressing the West, Osama bin
Laden bemoans the “justice of our causes, particularly Palestine”; yet, when addressing
Muslims, his notion of justice far transcends territorial disputes and becomes
unintelligible from a Western perspective: “Battle, animosity, and hatred — directed from
the Muslim to the infidel — is the foundation of our religion. And we consider this a
justice and kindness to them.
West perceives fighting, enmity, and hatred all for the
sake of the religion [i.e., Islam] as unjust, hostile, and evil. But who’s understanding is
right — our notions of justice and righteousness, or theirs?” (Al Qaeda Reader, p. 43[1]).
Of course, that Osama bin Laden — slayer of 3,000 Americans and avowed enemy to the
rest — exhibits two faces,[2] one to Americans another to Muslims, is not surprising. Yet
the reader may well be surprised to discover that the controversial Cordoba Initiative,
which plans on manifesting itself as the largest American mosque, situated atop Ground
Zero — that is, atop the carnage caused by none other than bin Laden — also has two
faces, conveying one thing to Americans, quite another to Muslims.
The very name of the initiative itself, “Cordoba,” offers different connotations to different
people: In the West, the Andalusian city of Cordoba is regularly touted as the model of
medieval Muslim progressiveness and tolerance for Christians and Jews. To many
Americans, then, the choice to name the mosque “Cordoba” is suggestive of
rapprochement and interfaith dialogue;[3] atop the rubble of 9/11, it implies “healing” —
a new beginning between Muslims and Americans. The Cordoba Initiative’s mission
statement[4] certainly suggests as much:
Cordoba Initiative[5] aims to achieve a tipping point in Muslim-West relations
within the next decade, bringing back the atmosphere of interfaith tolerance and
respect that we have longed for since Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together
in harmony and prosperity eight hundred years ago.
Oddly enough, the so-called “tolerant” era of Cordoba supposedly occurred during the
caliphate of ‘Abd al-Rahman III (912-961) — well over a thousand years ago. “Eight
hundred years ago,” i.e., around 1200, the fanatical Almohids — ideological predecessors
of al-Qaeda — were ravaging Cordoba, where “Christians and Jews were given the
choice of conversion, exile, or death.”[6] A Freudian slip on the part of the Cordoba
Initiative?
At any rate, the true history of Cordoba, not to mention the whole of Andalusia, is far less
inspiring than what Western academics portray:[7] the Christian city was conquered by
Muslims around 711, its inhabitants slaughtered or enslaved. The original mosque of
Cordoba — the namesake of the Ground Zero mosque — was built atop, and partly from
the materials of, a Christian church. Modern day Muslims are well aware of all this. Such
is the true — and ominous — legacy of Cordoba.
More pointedly, throughout Islam’s history, whenever a region was conquered, one of the
first signs of consolidation was/is the erection of a mosque atop the sacred sites of the
vanquished: the pagan Ka’ba temple in Arabia was converted into Islam’s holiest site, the
mosque of Mecca; the al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, was built atop
Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem; the Umayyad mosque was built atop the Church of St.
John the Baptist; and the Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque upon the conquest
of Constantinople.
(Speaking of, in 2006, when the Pope visited the Hagia Sophia in Turkey, there was a
risk that the “Islamic world [would go] into paroxysms of fury”[8] if there was “any
perception that the pope is trying to re-appropriate a Christian center that fell to
Muslims,” for example, if he had dared pray there — this even as Muslims today seek to
build a mosque on the rubble of the Twin Towers.)
Such double-standards lead us back to the issue of double-meanings: As for the literal
wording of the mosque project, “Cordoba House,”[9] it too offers opposing paradigms of
thought: to Westerners, the English word “house” suggests shelter, intimacy — coziness,
even; in classical Arabic, however, the word for house, dar, can also mean “region,” and
is regularly used in a divisive sense, as in Dar al-Harb, i.e., “infidel region of war.” Thus,
to Muslim ears, while “Cordoba” offers allusions of conquest and domination, dar is
further suggestive of division and separation (from infidels, a la the doctrine of al-Wala’
wa al-Bara’,[10] for instance).
Words aside, even the mosque’s scheduled opening date — 9/11/2011 — has two aspects:
to Americans, opening the mosque on 9/11 is to proclaim a new beginning with the
Muslim world on the ten-year anniversary of the worst terror strikes on American soil;
however, it just so happens that Koranic verse 9:111 is one of the loftiest calls for
suicidal jihad — believers are exhorted to “kill and be killed” — and is probably the
reason al-Qaeda originally chose that date to strike. So while Americans may think the
mosque’s planned 9/11 opening is meant to commemorate that date, cryptically speaking,
it is an evocation for all out war. A “new beginning,” indeed, but of a very different sort,
namely, the propagation of more Islamists and jihadists — mosques are, after all,
epicenters of radicalization[11] — on, of all places, soil sacred to America.
Some final thoughts on the history of Cordoba and the ominous parallels it bodes for
America: though many Christian regions were conquered by Islam prior to Cordoba, its
conquest signified the first time a truly “Western” region was conquered by the sword of
Islam. It was also used as a base to launch further attacks into the heart of Europe (until
decisively beaten at the Battle of Tours[12]), just as, perhaps, the largest mosque in
America will be used as a base to subvert the rest of the United States. And, the sacking
of the original Cordoba was facilitated by an insider traitor — a warning to the U.S.,
which seems to have no end of traitors[13] and willing lackeys.[14]
Such, then, is the dual significance of the Cordoba Initiative: What appears to many
Americans as a gesture of peace and interfaith dialogue, is to Muslims allusive of Islamist
conquest and consolidation; mosques, which Americans assume are Muslim counterparts
to Christian churches — that is, places where altruistic Muslims congregate and pray for
world peace and harmony — are symbols of domination and centers of radicalization; the
numbers of the opening date, 9/11/11, appear to Americans as commemorative of a new
beginning, whereas the Koranic significance of those numbers is suicidal jihad. Of
course, the two faces of the Cordoba House should not be surprising considering that the
man behind the initiative, Feisal Abdul Rauf, also has two faces.[15]
Going along with the historic analogy, there is one bit of good news: As opposed to the
vast majority of onetime Western/Christian nations annexed by Islam, Cordoba, Spain
did ultimately manage to overthrow the Islamic yoke. Though only after some 700 years of occupation.
Protecting the Constitution: Hal Shurtleff on the Pro America Report with Ed Martin
Ed Martin, host of Pro America Report recently interviewed Camp Constitution director Hal Shurtleff. Ed’s show is heard on a number of radio stations and podcast platforms: https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/shurtleffhal/episodes/2023-11-13T14_02_16-08_00
Hal Shurtleff, director and co-founder at Camp Constitution, joins Ed to discuss his Supreme Court victory last year, in which the Supreme Court upheld his right to fly the Christian Flag in a precedent-setting First Amendment case. Hal and Ed also discuss the importance of educating people about the Constitution.
Ed Martin is the New York Times best-selling author of The Conservative Case for Trump. He’s a former CNN political contributor and has appeared on every major TV network and hundreds of radio stations. He serves as an articulate advocate for Donald Trump’s policies that put Americans first. Formally trained as a lawyer and ethicist, Ed is the president of Phyllis Schlafly Eagles and the hand-picked successor to Phyllis Schlafly. He was the Missouri Republican Party chairman and a member of the Republican National Committee from 2013-2015. He lives in Virginia (in the swamp, not of the swamp!) with his wife and four children.
The Weekly Sam: Dyslexia: The Disease You Get in School By Samuel L. Blumenfeld
Dyslexia is an exotic word, concocted from the Greek dys, meaning ill or bad,
and lexia, meaning words. It was invented to describe a condition that affects
many normal and intellectual youngsters who, for some reason that seems to baffle most educators, parents, and physicians, can’t learn to read. The difference between a dyslexic and a functional illiterate is purely social.
Dyslexics are usually adolescents from middle-class or professional families
whose parents assume that their child’s reading difficulty is more of a medical or
psychological problem than an educational one. The child is too smart to be that
dumb.
The functional illiterate is simply someone who has kept his reading problem
to himself and goes through life pretending he can read, avoiding situations which
involve reading, choosing, jobs which do not reveal his reading disability. He assumes he’s dumb, not sick or mentally disturbed.
However, in the last ten years, with the growth of federally funded Special Education and the proliferation of early testing, more and more children with reading
difficulties are being labeled “learning disabled,” or LD, in the first grade or even
kindergarten. These children are being “diagnosed” as suffering from minimal
brain damage, minimal brain dysfunction, neurological impairment, perceptual
impairment, attention deficit syndrome, or dyslexia.
The Symptoms
What are the symptoms of dyslexia? The Academic American Encyclopedia
(Vol. 6, page 320) gives us as good a summary of the disease as we shall find
anywhere. It says:
“Dyslexia refers to an impaired ability to read or comprehend what one reads,
caused by congenital disability or acquired brain damage. Dyslexia is independent
of any speech defect and ranges from a minor to a total inability to read.”
Specialist used the term specific dyslexia to refer to inability to read in a person
of normal or high general intelligence whose learning is not impaired by socioeconomic deprivation, emotional disturbance, or brain damage. Psychologists disagree about whether specific dyslexia is a clearly identifiable syndrome. Those
who think it is clearly identifiable note that it persists into adulthood despite conventional instruction; tends to run in families; and occurs more frequently in males. It is also associated with a specific kid of difficulty in identifying words
and letters, which dyslexics tend to reverse or invert (reading p or q, or example
or on for no). Competing theories exist about the causes and nature of dyslexia.
Although there is disagreement among “experts” over the causes of dyslexia,
there is general agreement that the most effective “cure” is remedial programs that
stress phonics.
Dr. Orton’s Findings
But it is somewhat puzzling that there should be so much disagreement over
the cause of dyslexia, when, as early as 1929, a leading physician attributed its
cause to a new look-say, whole word, or sight method of teaching reading that
was being introduced in the schools of America. In February 1929, there appeared
in the Journal of Educational Psychology an article entitled “The ‘Sight Reading’
Method of Teaching Reading as a Source of Reading Disability.” written by Dr.
Samuel T. Orton, a neurologist at Iowa State University.
Dr. Orton, a brain specialist who dealt with children’s language disorders, had
been seeing a lot of children with reading problems at his clinic. In diagnosing the
children’s problems at his clinic he came to the conclusion that their reading disability was being caused by this new instruction method. He decided to bring these findings to the attention of the educators, and he did so in as diplomatic a
way as was possible. He wrote:
“I wish to emphasize at the beginning that the strictures which I have to offer here
do not apply to the use of the sight method of teaching reading as a whole but
only to its effects on a restricted group of children for whom, as I think we can
show, this technique is not only not adapted but often proves an actual obstacle to
reading progress, and moreover I believe that this group is one of considerable
size and because here faulty teaching methods may not only prevent the acquisition of academic education by children of average capacity but may also give rise to far reaching damage to their emotional life.”
This warning to the educators was quite explicit: this method of teaching will
harm a large number of children.
D. Orton expected the educators to respond to his findings. They did – negatively. In fact, they accelerated the introduction and promoted of the new teaching methods throughout the primary schools of America. And it didn’t take very long
before America began to have a reading problem.
The Disease Spreads
Although Dr. Orton went to become the world’s leading authority on “dyslexia,”
and in effect created on of the most effective remediation techniques, the Orton-Gillingham method, his 1929 article is nowhere referred to in the literature on the
subject.
I came across it quite by accident while doing research for my book, The New
Illiterates, which was published in 1973. But why the experts on dyslexia have not
found it, I don’t know. In any case, dyslexia was virtually unknown in this country until the 1940s when, suddenly millions of American children were coming
down with the disease. Life magazine reported in April 1944:
“Millions of children in the U.S. suffer from dyslexia which is the medical
term for reading difficulties. It is responsible for about 70% of the school failures
in the 60 to 12-year-age group, and handicaps about 15% of all grade-school children. Dyslexia may stem from a variety of physical ailments or combination of them – glandular imbalance, heart disease, eye or ear trouble – or form a deep-seated psychological disturbance that ‘blocks’ a child’s ability to learn. The article then described the treatment for dyslexia giving a young girl at
Chicago’s Dyslexia Institute on the campus of Northwest University: “thyroid
treatments, removal of tonsils and adenoids, exercise to strengthen her eye muscles. Other patients needed dental work, nose, throat or ear treatment, or a thorough airing out of troublesome home situations that throw a sensitive child off the
track of normality.”
Enter Dr. Flesch
In 1955, Dr. Rudolf Flesch published his famous book, Why Johnny Can’t
Read, in which he revealed to parents the true cause of the reading problem. He
wrote:
“The teaching of reading – all over the United States, in all schools, and in all
textbooks – is totally wrong and flies in the face of all logic and common sense.”
And then he explained how in the early 1930s the professor of education
changed the way reading is taught in American schools. They threw out traditional alphabetic-phonics method, which is the proper way to teach a child to read an alphabetic writing system, and put in a new look-say, whole-word, or sight
method that teaches children to read an alphabetic writing system, and they put I a
new look-say, whole-word, or sight method that teaches children to read English
as if it were Chinese, an ideographic writing system. Flesch contended that when
you impose an ideographic teaching method on an alphabetic writing system you
cause reading disability.
Dr. Orton had said as much in 1929, but in 1955 Flesch could cite millions of
reading-disabled children as substantiation of what he was saying. Naturally, the
educators rejected Flesch’s contentions.
Most people, of course, don’t know the difference between an alphabetic system and an ideographic one. But one must know the difference in order to understand how and why look-say can cause dyslexia.
The Alphabet
Ours is an alphabetic writing system, which means that we use an alphabet.
What is an alphabet? It is a set of graphic symbols – we call them “letters” – that
stand for the irreducible speech sounds of the language. In other words, alphabet
letters are not meaningless configurations. They actually stand for something.
Each letter represents a specific sound, and in some cases more than one sound.
All alphabets are the same in that regard. The Russian, Greek, and Hebrew alphabets all stand for sounds of their respective languages, and the English alphabet stands for the sounds of the English language.
How does one teach a child or anyone else to read an alphabetic writing system? For hundreds of years it was done very simply in three steps.
First, the child was taught to recognize the letters of the alphabet; second, the child was taught
the sounds the letters stood for; and third, the child was then given words and sentences to read.
How was the child taught the letter sounds? Usually it was done in the simplest
mechanical way possible. For example, the child was taught the consonant sounds
and then drilled on the consonant-vowel combinations arranged in colwnn form,
such as ba, be, bi, bo, bu; da, de, di, do, du etc. the purpose of the drill was to enable the child to develop as quickly and easily as possible an automatic association between letter and sound. Developing that association is at the heart of learning to read an alphabetic writing system.
Pictographs and Ideographs
The first alphabet was invented about 2,000 B.C. Prior to that invention, the
earliest form of writing we know of is pictograph – the pictures represented objects and actions. You didn’t have to go to school to learn to read pictographs, for the symbols looked like the things they represented.
However, as civilization became more complex, the scribes had to begin drawing
pictures of things that did not lend themselves to easy depiction. For example,
how would you draw pictures of such concepts as good, bad, dream, reality, persuasion, confidence, memory, intent, liberty, justice, etc? You can’t. So the scribes drew symbols, none of which looked like the concept they represented.
Thousands and thousands of such symbols – called idiographs – were created.
And now you had to go to school and be taught what all these symbols meant.
The result was that literacy was limited to a small class of scholars, scribes and
priests. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics is an ideographic writing system, and so
is modern Chinese. The Chinese use 50,000 ideographs, of which 5,000 must be
mastered if an individual is to be able to read a Chinese newspaper. Thus, ideographic writing is cumbersome, difficult, and time-consuming to master.
However, somewhere around 2,000 RC. someone in the area of ancient Phoenicia
(today’s southern Lebanon and northern Israel) made a remarkable discovery. He
discovered that all the human language, everything we say, is actually composed
of a small number of irreducible speech sounds arranged in end.less combinations.
It occurred to him that by creating a set of symbols to stand for the irreducible
speech sounds of the language, he could create a new form of writing based on
actual transcription of the spoken word. And so alphabetic writing was invented.
Advantages of tbe Alpbabet
And now for the first time an had an accurate, precise means of transcribing
the spoken word directly into written form, and an equally precise means of translating the written word back into its spoken form. It was the most revolutionary invention in all history. It did away with hieroglyphic and ideographic writing and
accelerated the speed of intellectual deVelopment. It also made learning to read
simple and available to the population as a whole. The invention of the alphabet also had great spiritual significance for mankind.
It permitted the word of God to be put down on paper accurately and precisely in
the form of the Scripture. It made the word of God accessible to the human race.
Clearly, alphabetic writing had enormous advantages over ideographs: I it permitted greatly increased speeds and accuracy in communications, it was easy to master, and it facilitated a tremendous expansion in vocabulary, permitting the human
mind to develop ideas hitherto inconceivable.
In the light of all these advantages, it seems strange that professors of education in the 1930s would decide to teach American children to read English if it were an ideographic writing system. How could you possibly teach children to
read that way? To a logical mind the whole idea seems not only absurd but insane.
Yet, that is what the professors did.
Going Backwards
Their idea was that it was better for children to look at whole words as pictures
and have them associate them directly with objects, actions and ideas rather than
have them learn to associate the letters with sounds. And so they eliminated step
two in the three-step alphabetic learning process and had the children go directly
from step one to step three; sometimes they would even skipped step one and
started out with whole words. Essentially, the method works as follows: the child is given a sight vocabulary
to memorize. He is taught to look and say the word without knowing that the letters stand for sounds. As far as the pupil is concerned, the letters are a bunch of
arbitrary squiggles arranged in some arbitrary, haphazard order. His task is to see
a picture in the configuration of the whole word – to make the word horse look
like a horse.
Of course, the word horse does not look like a horse. So how does a child remember that the word is horse? Anyway, he can. There isn’t a professor of education anywhere in the world who can tell you how a child learns a sight vocabulary. The only research we know of that addresses that question was done by Josephine H. Bowden at the elementary school of the University of Chicago around
1912. A description of the studies was given by Prof. Walter F. Dearborn in 1914
as follows:
In the first study of pupils, who had no instruction in reading, were
taught by a word method without the use of phonics and the problem was
to determine by what means children actually recognized and differentiated words when left to their own devices. The following quotation indicates the methods employed by the experimenter: “First, incidents; for example, one day when the child was given the cards to read from, it was observed that she read with equal ease whether the card was right side up
or upside down. This incident suggested a test which was later given. Second, comments of the child; for example, when she was asked to find in context the word ‘shoes,’ she said that ‘dress’ looked so much like ‘shoes’
that she was afraid she would make a mistake. Third, questioning; for example, she had trouble to distinguish between ‘sing’ and ‘song.’ When she had mastered the words she was asked how she knew which was which.
Her reply was, ‘by the looks.’ When questioned further she put her finger
on the ‘i’ and the ‘0.’ These three types of evidence correspond to introspection with an adult. The fourth type of evidence is comparison of the words learned with the words not learned as to the parts of speech, geometric form, internal form, and length. Fifth, misreadings; for example, ‘dogs’ was read ‘twigs,’ and ‘feathers,’ ‘fur.’ Sixth, mutilations; for example ‘dogs’ was printed ‘digs,’ lilac’ was printed ‘laJci.”’
Some of the conclusions may be cited, first as regards the kinds of
words most easily learned on the basis of the word form. Four out of six
children learned more ‘linear’ words, i&., words like “acorns,” “saw,” in
which there were no high letters, than of any other group. In but one case
were the “superlinear” words more easily recognized misreadings or the mistaking of one word for another occurred most frequently in these early stages, first when the words were of the same length (which again converts Messmer’s findings); secondly, when words had common letters, the “g” and “0” of “igloo” caused it to be read as “dogs”;
thirdly, when the initial letters of words were the same; and fourthly, when
the final letters were the same. Words were recognized upside down
nearly as easily as right side up, but [ only] two children noticing any difference. The word seems to be recognized as a whole, and as the author notes, recognized upside down just as the child would recognize a toy upside down. The general conclusion of the study may be quoted:
“The comments and the questions, as well as misreadings, seem to
show that children learn to read words by the trial-and-error method. It
may be the length of the word, the initial letter, the final letter, a characteristic letter, the position of the word in the sentence, or even the blackness of the type that serves as the cue. . .. There is no evidence that the child
works out a system by which he learns to recognize words. That he does
not work out phonics for himself comes out quite clearly in the transposition test. Furthermore, only once did a child divide a word even into its syllables. There is some evidence that conscious of letters, except in the
case of “E,” who so analyzed the word “six.” Sometimes, when the child
seems to have made a letter analysis, he failed to recognize the word a
second time, and in some cases did not learn it at all.”
And so it was obvious to the professors as far back as 1914 that the sight method
was a totally horrendous, inefficient and illogical way to teach a child to read.
And despite Dr. Orton’s warning in 1929 that the method would harm many children, they proceeded to put their new reading programs in all the schools of America.
Look-Say Strategies.
Of Course, they beefed up their sight vocabulary approach with a battery of
“word recognition strategies.” They provided configuration clues – putting sight
words in frames; picture clues – loading the page with illustrations depicting the
words; context clues – inane stories in which the word could be easily guessed on
the basis of context; and phonetic clues – teaching initial and final consonant
sounds to reduce some ridiculousness of some of the guessing.
It is important to note that teaching phonetic clues is not the same as teaching intensive, systematic phonics. The latter helps the child develop an automatic association of letters and sounds and teaches blending. The fonner simply teaches isolated consonant sounds with no connection to the rest of the syllable.
That this method of teaching can cause symptoms of dyslexia is not difficult to
surmise. What are the symptoms? Dr. Harold N. Levinson, founder of the Medical
Dyslexic Treatment Center in Lake Success, New York, and author of Smart But
Feeling Dumb which he dedicated to “40 million dyslexic Americans,” lists the
symptoms as follows: (1) memory instability for letters, words, or numbers; (2) a
tendency to skip over or scramble letters, words, and sentences; (3) poor, slow,
fatiguing reading ability prone to compensatory head tilting, near-far focusing,
and finger pointing; (4) reversal of letters such as Q, g, words such as saw and
was, and numbers such as 6 and 9 or 16 and 61.
Most of these symptoms sound like the very mistakes made by those children
back in 1912 who were trying to learn a sight vocabulary. Some of those children
even read words upside down!
Poor Spelling
But it is obvious that if you are told to look at words as a picture, you may look
at it from right to left as easily as from left to right You will reverse letters because they look alike and you have not been drilled to know them by sound as well as by sight. You will be a poor speller because the sequence of letters seems
completely arbitrary, with no rhyme or reason. Of course, to a phonetic reader the
sequence of letters is most important because it follows the same sequence in
which the sounds are uttered. Other symptoms include transposing letters in a word, for example, abroad for
aboard, left for felt, how for who; confusing words with others of similar configuration, such as, through, though, thought, or quit, quite, quiet, guessing at unknown words.
Dr. Kenneth L. Goodman, America’s top professor of reading, calls reading a
“psycho linguistic guessing game.” And that’s exactly what it is for most American children in today’s primary schools. The result is an explosion in Special Education, which has become the growth industry for educators so worried about
falling enrollment. The primary schools create the learning disabilities, and the
federal government is funding a new industry to deal with them. In the 1976-77
school year there were 976,000 learning disabled students in Special Education.
In 1983-84 there were 1,806,000. Dyslexia is booming!
Obviously, the prevalent teaching method causes dyslexia. I have visited many
American cities on my lecture tours and have seen for myself the look-say basal
reading programs being used in today’s primary classrooms all across the country.
You can imagine my feelings when I know that the minds of millions of American children are being permanently crippled, their futures handicapped, their self-esteem destroyed by educators who should have known better. This criminal malpractice is going on right now in your community. And yet there is little one can
do about it. The professors of education won’t listen – after all, they write the
textbooks. The book publishers publish what the educators want and what the
textbooks committees adopt. The classroom teachers, as a whole, now no other
way to teach; the professional organizations promote look-say; the principals,
administrators, and superintendents leave the teaching of reading to the “experts.”
Circumventing the System
But there is some hope. There are a growing number of private and church
schools that are teaching children to read by alphabetic, systematic, intensive
phonics. Also, the home-school movement has largely adopted phonics as the technique to teach reading. And here and there one finds a teacher in public schools
who uses an alphabetic-phonics approach or even a school district that has
adopted a phonics-oriented basal.
However, for the nation as a whole, there is little hope that the vast majority of
schools will change their teaching methods in the foreseeable future – unless a
group of well informed top business leaders make the teaching of reading a top
priority issue and force the educators to change their ways. But considering how
poorly informed our business leaders are and how difficult it is to reach them, let
alone brief them on this rather complex subject, there is little likelihood that they
will act effectively on behalf of the children entrapped in the public schools.
(The quotation from Dr. Dearborn is from The Psychological Researches of James
McKeen Cattell: A Review by Some of His Pupils, Archives of psychology, No.
30, 1914, pp. 40-41.)
The above article was written in the mid 1980s and can be found along with much of Sam Blumenfeld’s works in the Sam Blumenfeld Archive: https://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/