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REQUIEM

Below are the two final essays to be posted on Allegiance and Duty Betrayed. The first one is written by a friend -- screen name 'Euro-American Scum' -- who, over the past four years, has been the most faithful essayist here. He has written about everything from his pilgrimage to Normandy in 2004 to take part in the 60th–year commemoration of the invasion, to his memories of his tour in Vietnam. His dedication to America’s founding principles ... and those who have sacrificed to preserve them over the past 200+ years ... is unequaled. Thank you, E-A-S. It has been a privilege to include your writing here, and it is a privilege to call you my friend.

The second essay is my own farewell. And with it I thank all of the many regular visitors, and those who may have only dropped in occasionally, for coming here. I hope you learned something. I hope a seed or two was planted. But, even if not, I thank you for stopping by ... 25 March, 2010

4/22/2008

A Sign of Spring in Lancaster County

Photos of a broodmare and her two-week-old foal taken early this evening at the horse farm at the end of our road. Just watching them exercising wore me out. The foal tried desperatelty to keep up with its mother, and, whenever possible, was never more than five feet from her side.

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~ joanie

Local Observations in the
Pennsylvania Primary

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Spent a little time at the polls this morning. If our polling place is any indication of a statewide trend (and it generally isn’t), Hillary is going to do very well in Pennsylvania today.

We live in a heavily-Republican rural area of south-central Pennsylvania. I spoke with maybe two dozen voters this morning. About a third of them had switched registration to democrat for this primary alone, and every one of those switcers (with the exception of one who did not divulge her vote) voted for Hillary. As I had suspected, it would appear that the majority of Pennsylvania republicans who switched their registration to democrat for this primary (reportedly in excess of 100,000 voters) did so in order to vote for Hillary Clinton -- or, better said, in order to vote against Barack Obama.

That is not to say that Hillary will win the Pennsylvania primary by the enormous margin needed to continue to consider her a viable candidate, but she certainly is receiving support (from republicans) in this area. Of course, voting tendencies in any part of the ‘Pennsylvania T’ are quite often cancelled out by the Philadelphia -- and, to a lesser degree, Pittsburgh -- area vote, where support for Obama is extremely strong. When dead people, canaries and people whose registration address is a vacant lot are allowed to vote, it’s difficult to overcome such nebulous political ‘support’.

A friend who is attending a local (although in another, more liberal, county) campus of Penn State stopped in for a visit last night and stayed until the wee hours of the morning. He reports that the large majority of students on his campus are Obama supporters. The popularity of this anti-American ‘leader’ on college campuses today unpleasantly transports me back to the sixties, when young self-proclaimed ‘rebels’ would vote for anyone promising ‘change’ – knowing little about what that ‘change’ would entail.

Never thought I’d be hoping for a decisive win for Hillary Clinton. Just goes to prove the wisdom of the adage 'Never say never ... '

P.S. I voted for Ron Paul this morning. I despise his isolationist/pacifist ideology, but could not in good conscience vote for John McCain or Mike Huckabee. Considered writing in my (deceased) Dad’s name, but I heard his voice whispering to me, 'Joanie, leave me out of this debacle.' :)

~ joanie

4/20/2008

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If you haven't seen it, you must.

If it isn't playing in your neighborhood, drive thirty miles to a neighborhood where it is playing (we did).

Odds are you will have to travel some distance, because, as is the case with most non-politically-correct films, it will not receive wide distribution.

'Expelled' speaks candidly and courageously about the widespread, but covert, censorship that is occurring in the American scientific community on many levels and in many areas of science. It illustrates with painful candor the persecution of academics and scientists who dare to suggest that the theory of Intelligent Design deserves debate (a persecution that strangely parallels the censorship that is occuring against those scientists who dare to speak out against the doctrine of global warming).

Darwinists are succeeding in stifling debate, and they are ending the careers of scientists and academics who dare to even whisper that a theory might exist other than Darwin's origin-of-the-species-based theory of evolution.

The film also paints a gloomy, but entirely realistic, picture of the future of America if we allow politically correct censorship in scientific disciplines to continue, drawing stark parallels between Hitler's embracing of Darwinist theories and the subjugation, death and tyranny that resulted.

Our audience tonight -- including dozens of teenagers -- was small, but mesmerized, and nearly all were standing in applause at the finish.

~ joanie

4/13/2008

A Small-Town Pennsylvanian's View of Arrogance

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I am a ‘small town Pennsylvanian’. There is no amount of explanation, or any claim of ‘mis-statement’ that can erase for me Barack Obama’s recent diagnosis of what ails small-town Americans.

I resent the fact that Barack Obama sees my faith, my belief in my right to keep and bear arms, and my negative opinion of those who have illegally invaded my country, as abnormal behavior, in need of remedy, and evidence of personal weakness and shortcomings on my part.

I suggest to Senator Obama that offering such unsolicited advice and diagnosis is evidence of deep arrogance and elitism the likes of which used to be unheard of in America’s ‘public servants’. Since when do those who ‘serve the public’ take upon themselves the duty to mold that public into their own image ... and to define as abnormal those beliefs and characteristics that do not conform to that image?

Senator Obama, you possess some of the characteristics of one who envisions himself a god in human form. Such men must not attain positions of leadership in a free society. In serving as a United States senator, you have ascended far higher than your elitist mindset should allow. And I will do everything within my power to see to it that you ascend no further.

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the midwest, the jobs have been gone now for twenty-five years and nothing’s replaced them ... And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.


I am not bitter. I am not frustrated. And for you to tell me that I am … and to offer a diagnosis for my non-existent symptoms … simply because I choose to place value on different things than you do, reveals volumes more about you than it does about me and my fellow small-town Americans.

A rough translation of your condescending statement above:

_____________________

Americans who live in (Pennsylvania, and other) rural communities are turning to Christianity because they are experiencing difficult economic times. Their Christianity is a crutch and the scripture teaching, for where two or three have gathered together in my name, I am there in their midst, has little to do with their reason for attending church with fellow believers.

Gathering on Sunday morning in the Lord’s house with others of like mind and purpose in order to worship the God who gave us breath … and to fellowship with others whose faith is focused on Him … is simply not a sufficient reason to ‘cling to religion’.

Instead, the fact that our all-powerful, omniscient government has somehow ‘let us down’ has transformed us into wretched creatures who have no alternative but to surround ourselves with other fellow wretches and ‘cling to religion’ as a foundation of last resort, since the God of Government has somehow failed to provide us jobs and economic security.

We treasure our right to keep and bear arms for the same reason. Our wretchedness causes us to cling to antiquated symbols of ‘worth’ and ‘power’. Our desire to own a gun has nothing whatsoever to do with a right bequeathed to us by our Founders, or to an increased awareness that our government is systematically stealing from us every freedom granted by God and secured by our Constitution. And our ‘fascination’ with guns has nothing to do with our educated awareness that the declaring of gun ownership as ‘criminal’ has preceded the imposition of total tyranny over countless numbers of oppressed people throughout the history of modern civilization.

No, we are simply weak, paranoid, redneck wretches who haven’t the wherewithal to obtain a sense of personal security or self-worth without having a weapon within arm’s reach.

The fact that we ‘small-town Americans’ resent the millions of criminal malcontents who have taken up illegal residence in our country is not due to the facts that:

  • these criminals are enjoying many of the benefits of residency here without contributing to those benefits as American citizens are, and they are sometimes even receiving preferential treatment from a government that answers more to special interests than it does to its electorate

  • many politicians in Washington are pandering to these criminals, to the detriment of the American citizen and those whose charge it is to protect our borders

  • these criminals are committing crimes (many of them deadly) against the citizenry of this country at a significantly higher rate than the rest of the population

  • a contingent of these criminals is here with the specific intent of ‘reclaiming’ large portions of the southwestern United States as their own

  • many of these criminals are making no attempt to assimilate into American society, but instead are fomenting division, hatred and balkanization in the locations in which they take up residence. They are demanding that legal Americans alter their lives and laws in order to accommodate them and their native language and heritage.
The above considerations are, however, irrelevant. ‘Small-town Americans’ harbor a negative opinion of these criminals simply because they aren’t like us. They are of a different national origin, and we are closed-minded bigots. We are ‘taking out our frustrations’ on them simply because we are a small-minded people.

_____________________

What Barack Obama would have us believe is that America is in dire need of a president who is capable of having us recognize the ‘faults’ listed above, and then declare as a national priority the eradication of those ‘faults’. Re-education camps might be in order. Or more gun control. Or more hate crime legislation. Perhaps we can even re-define ‘anti-illegal immigrant’ speech as a hate crime. Yeah. That’s the ticket.

Senator Obama, your brand of arrogance is a threat to every American, and every freedom-loving person on this planet.

I worship only one God, and I am suspect of any man who deems himself one. And any man who defines my devotion to my religion as the result of ‘bitterness’ and ‘frustration’ has stepped over the line of civility and humility.

That you are a front-runner for the office of the presidency, and that you could conceivably become the leader of the free world, is every freedom-loving American’s worst nightmare.

~ joanie

4/10/2008

Come November ... Part Two

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I am not quite as sure as some conservatives are that John McCain would be an defender of the Constitution. Granted, he has held fast on a number of Constitutional issues, but his abandonment of that precious document on an equal number of other issues worries me deeply.

Take McCain-Feingold. On the surface, it would appear that our national sovereignty, and our ability to keep Islamic terrorism at bay, are more important considerations than our First Amendment rights.

But are they?

One of the reasons we find ourselves in this terrible dilemma this election cycle rests in the fact that so much of our modern-day election process has literally been taken out of the hands of the people. The nominees are chosen by an ever more circuitous process in which ‘the people’ have less and less say – some states having caucuses and primaries; some having delegates that really are uncommitted; some having ‘super-delegates’, etc. The representation of the people’s will in our election process has become so convoluted as to be almost laughable anymore.

Our voices, no matter how loud and impassioned, are now channeled through so many mazes that they become all but inaudible. Special interests have hi-jacked the political process, and individual candidates, unless they are independently wealthy, have very little opportunity to rise to the top.

What is really more important, bottom-line, than the ability of a free people to speak their minds, especially in the process of electing those who will lead them (those who will make the major decisions regarding our national sovereignty and the determination with which we will battle Islamic terrorists)?

If our leaders don’t reflect our wishes, because of the convoluted, unconstitutional process by which we put them in office, then our ability to effectively do the things about which you and I are so concerned is compromised from the start.

John McCain contributed mightily to that circumstance in co-authoring McCain-Feingold, one of the most insidious affronts to personal liberty in recent memory.

He is also on board with many other left-wing, liberty-robbing agendas, whose sole purpose is to destroy our capitalist foundations and amass unbridled power for the ruling elite. His support of global warming initiatives is a sterling (but not the only) example of such a mindset.

Every national leader who supports such initiatives knows how phony, deceptive, agenda-driven and perilous they are. Those 'leaders' aren’t dupes. They’re the authors of the hoax. Global warming advocates, put simply, are placing the amassing of political power above the safety and sovereignty of our republic every bit as much as those who want us to retreat from our mission in Iraq. They steadfastly handcuff our energy policies, prevent us from developing our own oil reserves and building new refineries, etc., which results in our dependence on our ideological enemies (and those who perceive our annihilation as their destiny).

John McCain is pandering to supporters of such agendas.

His sponsoring of the ludicrous Patients’ Bill of Rights served as more evidence that he tends to march in lock-step with those who author altruistic sounding, liberty-robbing legislation. The bill was just another major step toward universal healthcare/socialized medicine, in that it deliberately imposed onerous regulations on the insurance industry and opened the door for a myriad of additional frivolous lawsuits against healthcare providers. The ultimate purpose of all such legislation? To turn the best medical care in the history of the world into an expensive bureaucratic nightmare. The inevitable ‘solution’? Nationalized healthcare.

And his stand on immigration – at least the one he formulated before the American people rejected it – would have rewarded criminal behavior and dramatically changed the fabric of our society, without the necessary means to ensure future enforcement of immigration laws. He authored a pretty package that had no teeth. And he knew it.

In short, while I do believe that McCain would conduct the war against Islamic terrorism as we would want him to, I believe he also embraces policies that would endanger our liberties and place our national security in jeopardy in other equally perilous ways.

He has succeeded in stifling our voices in our efforts to elect those who represent our views.

He has authored and supported measures that could soon alter, in a major and irretrievable way, the complexion of our society (according genuine patriots such as you and I less and less of a voice about the direction in which our republic travels).

And he embraces leftist environmentalist/climate/healthcare policies that dramatically tighten the socialist grip, and make us dependent on some of the worst terrorist leaders of the world.

Sometimes the threats that lie beneath the surface, and that receive minimal attention, can be every bit as menacing as those that we discuss openly and frequently.

Rick Santorum, my former Senator, for whom I have a great deal of respect, observed a few months ago:

It’s amazing to hear what John McCain is trying to convince the voters he is all about. The bottom line is, I served twelve years with him, six years in the Senate as one of the leaders of the Senate, trying to put together the conservative agenda, and almost at every turn, on domestic policy, John McCain was not only against us, but leading the charge on the other side.

I was determined until recently that I would simply sit out this presidential ballot (for the first time in forty years). Since recent disturbing revelations about the company that Barack Obama keeps, I have wavered in that decision. At this point, I am not certain how or whether I will be casting my vote for president. I cannot vote for Obama, but I believe McCain is a far greater threat to our liberty and sovereignty than most of us are willing to admit. The fact that he isn’t a conservative represents just the tip of the iceberg.

~ joanie

4/06/2008

Charlton Heston, R.I.P.

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The character of a ‘celebrity’ is perhaps best defined by his behavior when the cameras aren’t rolling. The following post that appeared today on FreeRepublic paints an accurate portrait of the man (whose integrity defined ‘the husband and father’, ‘the actor’ and ‘the outspoken political activist’), that is much more powerful and revealing than any I could pen:

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Back in the early 90s, my brother moved into an apartment in Hoboken, New Jersey that was previously occupied by then-emerging movie director John Sayles.

One day, he found an invitation in his mailbox, addressed to John Sayles. My brother had been living there about a year, and had no forwarding address for the director, so he opened the invitation. Inside it read something like:

    “Miramax Films and Martin Scorsese invite you and a guest to join stars Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren for a private screening of the fully restored release of their classic film, ‘El Cid’...” followed by information about the date and place (a small private theater in downtown Manhattan.)
So we showed up that night, but weren't on the guest list. We had the invite so we just nuisanced our way in by arguing politely and insistently at the door.

There was an open bar, so we sidled up to that and started drinking with John Turturro, who was also there. After a while there was a big commotion as Charlton Heston, Sophia Loren, and Martin Scorsese arrived. My brother and I had purchased disposable cameras, and wandered into the press throng to take pictures with those ridiculous things.

When we made our way into the theater, we sat in the row directly in front of Heston and Loren and Scorcese. Scorsese got up and talked about the restoration and why he loved the film and all that. Then Heston got up and was all class. Thanking "Marty" and everybody who helped restore the film to it's original beauty. Then he added "There is, of course, one aspect of the film that needed no restoration and more beautiful today than she was those thirty years ago - my lovely costar, Sophia Loren."

She waved to the crowd like the Queen of England and nodded at him. She did still look really good for an old lady.

Watching El Cid was great. It was a terrific movie, brilliantly restored. Plus we could see Heston and Loren up there on the screen, then turn around and see their thirty-years-older selves sitting beside each other right behind us.

After the show, Heston hung around talking to anybody who cared to. He was really wonderful. I walked up to him and shook his hand and told him I was a long time admirer of his work, in movies and politics. He thanked me quite sincerely.

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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1997455/posts?page=379#379

4/04/2008

Saint Hillary

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Hillary Clinton’s campaign ads here in Pennsylvania are focusing significantly on the slogan, ‘The purpose of my life has been standing up for people who weren’t getting a fair shake.

I’d like to take a look at just three, of countless, people Hillary Clinton has ‘stood up for’ and then ask the readers here whether they would want to be the recipient of Hillary’s particular brand of altruism:

- 1 -

Juanita Broaddrick, who very credibly claims she was raped by Ms. Clinton’s husband -- and then advised to ‘put some ice on it’ -- stated the following during an interview with Sean Hannity, in which Ms. Broaddrick described what occurred at a fund-raiser that took place just two weeks after the rape:

She made her way, just as quick as she could, to me.

I got nauseous when she came over to me. She came over to me, took ahold of my hand, and said, ‘I’ve heard so much about you, and I’ve been dying to me you. I just want you to know how much Bill and I appreciate what you do for him.’

I said, ‘Thank you,’ and I started to turn and walk away. This little soft-spoken – pardon me for the phrase -- dowdy woman, who seemed very unassertive, took ahold of my hand and squeezed it and said, ‘Do you understand? Everything that you do.’

I could have passed out at that moment. I got my hand from hers and I left … I mean cold chills went up my spine. That was the first time I became afraid of that woman.

[Hannity: You interpret that to mean that she knew about the incident?]

I certainly do. And she was saying ‘Thank you for keeping quiet.’


I perceive Juanita Broaddrick to be a woman who hasn’t been given a fair shake and I would give anything to be able to ask Ms. Clinton whether her treatment of Ms. Broaddrick should be broadly defined as ‘standing up for’ such people.

- 2 -

Billy Dale had worked in the White House Travel Office for three decades. He had served eight presidents in that capacity. But Hillary Clinton wanted to replace Dale and his staff with a group of political cronies who had donated to the Clinton campaign, and who had provided a million dollars in deferred travel expenses for the campaign, thus allowing that money to be used to foot other campaign expenses.

So Hillary had Dale fired. Just three months after her husband took office, Dale and all of the other employees of the Travel Office were given one hour's notice to pack up their belongings, and they were escorted from the White House grounds in a windowless van. Their replacements, the Clinton cronies, were hired without the customary receiving of competitive bids.

Ms. Clinton then spearheaded an effort to have Billy Dale and the rest of the Travel Office staff accused of, and prosecuted for, improper financial practices during their employment in the Travel Office. In addition, the Internal Revenue Service was told to investigate Mr. Dale’s personal finances. Yet, despite Hillary’s obsessive efforts to defame a man whose record was without blemish, and who was well thought of by all who knew and worked with him, all charges against Dale and the other Travel Office workers were eventually determined to be groundless and were dismissed.

I perceive Billy Dale to be a man who hasn’t been given a fair shake and I would give anything to be able to ask Ms. Clinton whether her treatment of Mr. Dale should be broadly defined as ‘standing up for’ such people.

- 3 -

Back in 1974, Hillary Clinton attempted to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the Watergate investigation. You see, if Nixon had enjoyed the benefit of counsel, then E. Howard Hunt (who coincidentally knew a great deal about crimes committed during the Kennedy administration -- crimes that would have made Watergate look like a walk in the park) could have undergone cross-examination. Hillary and her ilk wanted to prevent such cross-examination, at any cost – even the Constitutional rights of a sitting president.

In order to garner enough votes on the House Judiciary Committee to change House rules and deny Nixon the right to counsel, Hillary wrote a fraudulent legal brief. And in order to disguise her brief as factual, she removed all files that would have revealed the lies contained in her brief. She had them taken to her office, which was not accessible to the public.

When the investigation ended, Jerry Zeifman, who was then chief of staff of the Judiciary Committee, fired Hillary from her position on the committee staff as a result of her attempts to defraud and deceive, and, to this day, he asserts that, if Hillary had submitted her deceptive, baseless and fraudulent brief to a judge, she would have run the real risk of facing disbarment proceedings.

No matter one’s feeling about Nixon, the man, I perceive him to be a man who was judged by a different yardstick than that used to judge others, before or since. In that way, he hasn’t been given a fair shake. And I would give anything to be able to ask Ms. Clinton whether her treatment of Mr. Nixon should be broadly defined as ‘standing up for’ such people.

I also suspect that the waitresses she has stiffed, the campaign workers whose health insurance premiums she has neglected to pay on time, the White House staff who were instructed never to look her in the eye when they passed her in the hallways, and countless other ‘little people’ with whom Hillary has crossed paths during her saintly life of devotion to bettering the lives of ‘the underdog’ might also take issue with the portrait that her campaign advertisements paint of Saint Hillary.

In an unprecedented occurrence, more than one hundred thousand Pennsylvania republicans have changed their registrations to democrat for the upcoming primary election on April 22nd. It will be interesting to see for which of the democrat candidates these 'temporary democrats' cast their ballots. Both candidates are Marxists. Both are pathological liars. And both are megalomaniacal, self-serving ideologues in humanitarian clothing.

Talk about a rock and a hard place.

~ joanie