Jasper Journal

This short video is a testament to people who struggle with horrible diseases every day. The subject is a well known reporter for Fox News, Jennifer Griffin. Her story, repeated by many others, is a fitting remembrance for Holy thursday, when we all have hope.

The White House is  expressing bewilderment over  reaction to the President’s treatment of the Israeli Prime Minister last week. While many  observers considered it an insult, a snub, a gross display of poor manners to a friend, the smartest White House Press Secretary ever, Robert Gibbs, put it this way:

I’m puzzled by the notion that somehow it’s a bad deal to get two hours with the president almost entirely alone,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. “That doesn’t seem like a lot of punishment to me.”

Well I got to thinking about that. Two hours with Barack Obama…..? Wow, I’m not sure I would enjoy that. As a matter of fact, there is not a single member of this administration that I would enjoy socializing with for two hours.  Not them, their wives. cabinet secretaries, Democratic members of Congress, Aides, Staff , political advisers , or spokespeople.  This is sad because I think I would have enjoyed a beer with bubba or a good cigar or game of golf. I would have loved to visit with the Reagans, the Bushes even the Kennedy’s. But this gang from Chicago leaves me cold.  Perhaps the worst thing for Netanyahu was two hours alone with the president?

The president mocked his health care opponents last week by saying that the sky hasn’t fallen and the world hasn’t stopped since passage of this bloated bill.  Give it time Mr President. The potential damage caused  not just by  the legislation. but the manner in which it was passed, and the impact this has on government control of the private sector and our liberties, is enormous.

I read an editorial the other day in the Washington Post. It was written by Jeffrey Kuhner, president of the Edmund Burke Institute. I have excerpted the second half of the editorial here. It is frightening in its forecast.  If you wish to read the whole thing, I have the hyperlink at the end. Clearly this exercise over healthcare is not the end of the barrage of liberal policies. It is just beginning.

“The bitter debate over Obamacare has exposed the country’s profound divisions. We are no longer one nation or one people. Rather, there are now two Americas: one conservative, the other liberal. Increasingly, we no longer just disagree but we despise each other.

Our disagreements encompass everything – politics, morality, culture and history. We no longer share a unifying essence or common values. One half of America believes abortion is an abomination; the other half considers any attempt to repeal it as oppressive and sexist. One half opposes homosexual unions because it elevates immoral and unnatural behavior to the sacred status of marriage; the other half supports it as an extension of civil rights. One half reviles Mr. Obama’s socialist agenda, viewing it as the destruction of capitalism and our constitutional government; the other half embraces it as the culmination of social justice and economic equality. One half reveres America’s heroes – Christopher Columbus, George Washington, James Madison, Davy Crockett – and its glorious history; the other half is ashamed of its past, seeing it as characterized by racism, imperialism and chauvinism.

Ultimately, a country is not simply its geographical borders with the people inside of it. It is something more – and deeper. A nation must share a common heritage, language, culture, faith and myths. Once upon a time, Americans celebrated the same heroes, sang the same patriotic songs, read the same history and literature, and gloried in its exceptional nature: a city upon a hill, with liberty and freedom for all. It was understood that, for all of our different ethnic and religious backgrounds, America is a product of English and Christian civilization. Those days are long gone.

Instead, we are going the way our Founding Fathers warned us against: increasing balkanization and sectionalism. A constitutional republic – unlike an empire – is only as strong as its national cohesion. It is based not on imperial coercion but civic consent. Mr. Obama is recklessly pulling at the strings of unity, further polarizing us.

In confronting Obamacare, state sovereignty, states’ rights and state nullification of federal laws are being asserted. This is what happened in the 1830s and 1840s. They are the signs of growing political anarchy and social frustration – people can only be pushed so far. Mr. Obama’s drive for a socialist super-state threatens America’s very existence. As Jefferson warned about slavery, it is time we start ringing the “fire bell in the night.”

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold,” wrote William Butler Yeats. “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

Conservatives will not be passive in this onslaught on all our core values. Mr. Obama’s true legacy may be that he divides us deeper than ever before – unless he abandons his revolutionary project.”

Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at The Washington Times and president of the Edmund Burke Institute, a Washington think tank. He is the daily host of the “Kuhner Show” on WTNT 570-AM (www.talk570.com) from noon until 3 p.m.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/25/will-america-break-up/