Leadership
If You Tell a Lie Long Enough…
A number of items in the news have prompted my thinking on telling the truth. It seems like that reality is in short supply these days–especially when it comes to government affairs. It’s also a problem in many people’s individual lives.
You see, when you tell a lie long enough you might just start believing it yourself.
A number of issues are forefront on the world stage this week. They include the Greek debt crisis, the nuclear deal with Iran, and an illegal alien killing 32-year old Kate Steinle in San Francisco.
Let’s talk about the power of words, especially when used to tell ongoing lies.
Words are powerful and truth is important. It was by the spoken word that God created the entire universe (Genesis 1:1-29 and John 1:1-4). On a human level, we’ve all experienced that words can give life (“You can do it!”) or they can bring death (“You’ll never amount to anything.”)
And I think we all know that if you tell a lie long enough, it takes on a meaning of its own. After awhile, you’re no longer sure what the original truth was.
Adolph Hitler nearly took over the world on the power of his words and the promulgation of lies. The killing of millions of innocent people was wrapped in the language of “The Final Solution” which sounds like solving a business problem–not annihilating a race.
The power to distort truth with words is a problem we face everyday. Who do we believe about the big issues of life? Who do we trust in making daily decisions?
Words are powerful and lies are destructive. A good portion of our day should be spent in serious thought, sorting out truth from lies.
Let me help you with a few contemporary issues.
The Greek Debt Crisis
I’m sure many have been praying for the Greek people as they voted in a referendum last week and their leaders shuffled between Vienna and Athens. I have a number of friends in Greece and have visited that nation on a number of occasions. It is a beautiful country with a wonderful people that have made a great impact on the world.
But Greece is in trouble with debt–like many other nations (including the United States). We are being told that their answer is austerity. Sounds awful and undeserved.
One dictionary defines austerity as:
“The fact or condition of being rigorous and unsparing: hardness, harshness, rigidity, rigor, rigorousness, severity, sternness, strictness, stringency, and toughness.”
Doesn’t sound like fun–more like someone’s out to get you. We are told in headline after headline that the Greek people are facing “austerity” and their mean neighbors to the north are inflicting it upon them.
No wonder the Greek people said NO in the referendum. Would you want to be faced with austerity?
But it’s the wrong word. It’s not a matter of what you want or like, but what you deserve and need to get back on the right path.
Many Greek people and certainly Greece’s leaders have lived an economic lie for many decades. That lie is called socialism. Socialism’s basic tenet is that government can take care of us from cradle to grave so we don’t really need to work hard, save money, and be frugal in life. We can pile up debt and hope that someone in the future will pay for it.
But as Margaret Thatcher pointed out a generation ago, eventually socialists “run out of other people’s money.” That’s where Greece is today, a nation of 11 million people, many living on the dole, with billions of dollars in unsustainable and unpayable debt to other people and nations.
The Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore puts it this way:
“Greece is now sitting on $350 billion of debt. It’s unpayable and the international monetary experts are deluding themselves if they believe that by some magic stroke this nation of 11 million citizens will sometime in the future come up with the funds to repay it.”
“Greece is already overtaxed, and adding more taxes on the few businesses that are still functioning is only going to ensure their eventual demise too. Meanwhile the Greek citizens have come to the conclusion that fat pensions and cradle to grave welfare benefits are a human right that can never be taken away. That is what they declared in the referendum. But those benefits are going to be lost. Socialism has radically reduced the standard of living of the citizens.”
“The big lie is that Greece has already lived through austerity. This is a nation that in 2013 was spending up to 59 percent of its GDP on government benefits and programs. Even today the government accounts for half of all spending. How is that austerity? The problem is as the private economy shrinks, the government’s role keeps expanding. Greece’s debt was 120 percent of GDP a decade ago, and now its 175 percent. This is the opposite of austerity. It is a spendfest.”
“In sum, Greece needs much less socialism, and much more privatization. Sell off government assets. Cut tax rates. Sell one of the islands to Disney. Oust the communists who ruined this nation. Get government spending down to 25 percent of GDP.”
Get the picture? Austerity, as a term for this situation, is victim drivel. Greece needs national repentance from living it up with other peoples’ money.
It’s not Europe’s or anybody else’s fault. I can just hear Dave Ramsay giving the same advice to a wildly spending married couple: “Sell your big house, get rid of that car you can’t afford, work two jobs if you have to, and get out of debt so that you can rescue your dignity and future!”
That’s what Greece needs to do.
Don’t feel sorry for them about “austerity.” Pray for their honesty and repentance. (And look in the mirror because we’ve not far behind.)
The Iran Nuclear Deal
The truth is pretty simple on this one. The government of Iran is the world’s leading cause of terrorism. Making a deal with them that allows them a pathway to a nuclear bomb is insanely suicidal. Even a few years ago, that idea was unthinkable.
But then President Obama almost unilaterally decided and promoted the falsehood that a deal with Iran was in the best interest of the Middle East and world. His powerful advisor, Valerie Jarratt, was born in Persia. Apparently, she convinced him that a “deal with Iran” would be great for his legacy.
But disaster for the globe.
He told the lie long enough to himself and those around them that even with Congress and the nation kicking and screaming about stopping Iran from getting nukes, John Kerry forged ahead with a monstrous and dastardly deal.
Columnist Clifford May brings us back to reality:
“Imagine if, on Sept. 12, 2001, I had written a column predicting that within less than 15 years, the president of the United States would be offering the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism a path to nuclear weapons and tens of billions of dollars. You’d have thought me a lunatic. But that’s what President Obama means to do.”
“Just to be clear: There can be no doubt that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. No less an authority than the U.S. government has affirmed that many times over. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Americans have been killed and maimed by Iranian-backed militias and proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan.”
“The founding principle of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution was “Death to America!” Even as Iranians negotiators have smiled across the table at their American counterparts, that chant has been repeated—not least by Ayatollah Khamenei himself.”
Yet the US administration drinks in the lie like koolaid which could lead to a nuclear holocaust.
Immigration Madness
Thirty-two year old Kate Steinle was taking an evening walk with her dad on a San Francisoc pier on July 1, 2015, when she was allegedly shot and killed by Francisco Sanchez, an illegal immigrant who had seven felonies on his record and had been deported (and returned) to the US five times.
Bill O’Reilly is trying to use Kate’s senseless death to spur Congress to pass “Kate’s Law” which would mandate a five year mandatory sentence for any deported felon who returned to the USA. If caught twice, it would be ten years. If three, twenty years.
Why are illegal alien felons walking the streets of America?
Because we’ve been telling ourselves a series of lies about immigration for many decades. They include:
- They aren’t really alien and they aren’t really illegal. They’re just desperate people who should be called “undocumented workers.” (Notice the deception of the words here. “Undocumented” implies no illegal entry and “workers” focuses on what they give to America, not what they take away by disobeying the law.)
- The border can’t really be sealed. Try saying that about your own house: “We can’t really put a fence up on have locks on the doors. Everybody should be welcome to come in.”
- Businesses need cheap labor (promoted by Republicans) and Democrats want new voters (who are bribed by giving licenses, voting rights, and welfare entitlements.)
- We need “Sanctuary Cities” where illegal aliens are shielded from the crime of illegal entry by sympathetic city councils. Illegals break the law then city governments do too. Is it any wonder that many other Americans think they can now loot and destroy and break the laws of our country because others are doing it?
Kate Steinle, and many others like her, would be alive today if we had not changed the words to propagate a lie that illegal immigration is benign. That lie has now been told so long and in so many different ways that the United States is under attack on its southern border by illegal immigrants, criminals and terrorists.
Words are powerful. Use them carefully. Don’t tell yourself lies–especially over time.
And don’t vote for leaders who do the same.
Why the New York Times Fears Marco Rubio
Over the past week, the New York Times, supposedly America’s leading newspaper (“All the News That’s Fit to Print”), published two hit pieces on US Senator Marco Rubio who is a Republican candidate for president.
No, they didn’t call them hit pieces. But that’s what they were.
The first story was about Senator Rubio’s (and his wife’s) traffic tickets over the past twenty years. The second detailed his personal finances, including mortgages, student loans, and even the purchase of a boat.
Both stories were political hit jobs–very misleading, and extremely biased.
Why is the mighty New York Times so afraid of Marco Rubio?
The name of the first NYT story was called “Rubios on the Road Have Drawn Unwanted Attention.” It pointed out that over the past eighteen years, Sen Rubio has received four moving violation tickets.
That’s about one every four to five years.
Senator Rubio lives in Miami which is a big city with a lot of traffic. So it’s worth a major story in the New York Times to point out four traffic tickets in almost twenty years?
Is that all they’ve got?
Oh, but what allowed them to publish the story is that his wife, Jeanette, a former Miami Dolphins cheerleader, received thirteen tickets during that same time–so the total for both of them was seventeen. One of Mrs. Rubio’s sins, pointed out by the Time’s Morality Department, was a ticket for going 23 in a 15 mile an hour zone.
E-gads! Stone her to death! (Oops, we’re not in Saudi Arabia.)
I think I commit that type of sin a number of times a week. Guess the cops here just aren’t as good as Miami Vice.
What do a few speeding tickets have to do with becoming president of the United States? So his wife’s not the best driver in the world. Big deal. I know a bunch of people who can relate. The Times’ bosses must have forgotten that when a man becomes president, he and his wife no longer have to drive themselves around–so it’s irrelevant for their White House years.
Actually, it’s rather refreshing that the Rubios are real people who actually drive cars and deal with the same frustrations we do. If I remember right, the lady in the other party who’s running for president hasn’t driven a car for over twenty years, so maybe they should have written a story on her being out of touch.
If you’d like to take a brief course in hit pieces 101, you can read about the Rubios traffic ticket sins here.
Then came the other slam on Marco Rubio from the Times entitled “Marco Rubio’s Career Be-Deviled by Financial Struggles.” The headline choosers at the New York Trash must have really had fun with this one. I can hear the conversation.
First, let’s throw in the word “Be-deviled” because it has the word “devil” in it which makes Marco appear to be in line with El Diablo. Then we’ll finish with the word “Struggle” to make it appear that he’s in trouble.
Bingo.
Then you read the actual article and it simply reveals a normal American story. Rubio’s parents escaped from Cuba and settled in the Miami, Florida area. They were blue collar folks–his dad working as a bartender and his mother doing maid, office, and assembly line jobs to make ends meet.
Marco Rubio began his life like many of us–from the lower side of the tracks. To go to college, he took out student loans and worked hard to pay them back over a number of years. He got married, started a family, bought some homes, and worked his way up the ladder.
The Times makes this all look like bad financial management. They say he takes out loans he shouldn’t have (too much money)–that he sold a house at the wrong time and took a loss on it (as if he’s at fault for the American economy and rise and fall of real estate prices).
They fail to mention that these heavy personal debt years were his family and career start-up years where he was:
- Elected to the Miami City Commission in 1998.
- Elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 1999.
- Became Majority Leader in the House in 2003 and Speaker in 2006.
- Elected to the US Senate in 2009.
Start-up years are difficult years, often involving the use of debt for long-term gain. Rubios’ financial tests seem to mirror once again the average American experience. He knows what we all face because he has looked it in the eye himself.
Yet, he never missed a mortgage payment and eventually paid off his student loans and began making enough money to elevate and bless his family.
Heck, I didn’t get out of the family debt scenario until I was sixty.
In the article, the NY Times points out two glaring sins that are apparently greater than the others. The first is Marco Rubio recently bought a speed boat for $80,000–apparently for fishing and family outings in the beautiful Florida sunshine.
The Times writers called it a “luxury speedboat.” Kind of gives you the impression of a Ferrari with fins or maybe even an opulent yacht. Then you look at the picture and you say to yourself, “Hey, it’s a speedboat. What’s the big deal?”
That’s what average people say. But not the New York Times.
I know many working people who own speed-boats. Marco Rubio worked hard to purchase his, parks it in Florida and pays taxes on it. Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry has a real luxury yacht that’s never been flagged by the New York Times. By the way–he didn’t work for it but married a wealthy heiress who paid for it and who parks it in Rhode Island to avoid tax liabilities.
Oops–we can’t point that out. Kerry’s a progressive chap and that means his wealth is always good.
The other thing that grated me about the second story was a reference to Rubio buying a house in West Miami for $550,000. The NYT reporters said it was the “most expensive” home in the neighborhood–as if the Rubios are upper class snobs who crave status.
Then you see the picture of the house. It looks like an average home in a suburban neighborhood with Rubio’s Ford F150 truck parked in the driveway.
In Seattle, the median priced house costs the same as the Rubios.
So what’s the story here? Isn’t there another presidential candidate who owns a mansion in Chappaqua, New York, another home in D.C., and makes hundreds of millions of dollars through a family foundation?
Who’s really normal and in touch with the average American?
Here’s the second NYT hit piece for you to read for yourself: “Marco Rubio’s Career Be-deviled By Financial Struggles” here.
So why is the nation’s most prestigious newspaper out to get Republican Senator Marco Rubio with crappy caricatures and hit pieces? Why does the mighty New York Times fear presidential candidate Marco Rubio?
The answer is very simple.
A generation ago a good-looking man rose up out of his own humble beginnings and made a name for himself both in business and in government. He was handsome, charismatic, a good speaker, and seemed to be able to relate to the common person in America.
Over time, that individual was elected president of the United States, and turned the American nation back to trust in God, restraints on government, lower taxes, a robust military, and belief in the uniqueness (exceptionalisnm) of the American Dream and experience.
This man set back the liberal/progressive agenda some twenty or thirty years as a time of renewal visited the United States of America and sound conservative policies elevated many. This drove the New York Times and their acolytes crazy.
That man, of course, was Ronald Reagan.
That period was similar to today. The US was going through a time of sexual revolution, riots against war and policing, economic problems, and the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter.
The New York Times, and those who share their worldview are scared to death of Marco Rubio because he (and a number of others) could once again reverse America’s death spiral:
- He is young (44). Hilary Clinton is 67. He is the future–she is the past.
- He is of Hispanic origin. She can only claim white-privilege.
- He is from humble means–a self made man. She was born with a silver spoon in her mouth.
- He is handsome and charismatic. She is a grandmother who sounds like your mother-in-law.
- He is extremely articulate and sharp as a tack. Hillary is slow on her feet and is always parsing words.
- He is known for honesty and integrity. She lives under a constant cloud of scandals.
- He has policy principles that will limit government and empower people. She is a Big Government devotee.
There are other good candidates on the Republican side who are young, experienced, articulate, and share good principles that could encourage another renewal of the American Republic.
But few are as attractive as Marco Rubio.
That’s why the New York Times fears him.
King Barack Flips American Voters the Bird
I have never seen anything like this in the sixty-one years of my life:
A United States president, acting like a monarch or dictator, thumbs his nose at the American people he is supposed to lead and protect, granting de facto amnesty to millions of illegal aliens by executive fiat.
President Obama’s November 20 executive action is bad for the country, is a blatant abuse of Constitutional power and directly contradicts the expressed will of the American people.
I will focus on the latter point. He acts like a king with utter disdain for the people.
It’s time to stop tip-toeing around the presidential problem we face. We are being gamed by a narcissistic president who cares more for his agenda than those that he serves..
And here’s what we need to do about it.
Last night President Barack Obama did something that no American president has ever done. He symbolically displayed his middle finger to the American people he is supposed to listen to and represent–as well as the Congress who makes our laws–and acted like a king who creates law, interprets and enforces them.
We haven’t seen those brazen actions on our shores for nearly 240 years when King George III did the same with the American colonists–making laws without their consent–which precipitated the Revolutionary War and the birth of the USA.
When a humble George Washington became our first president, he rigorously resisted the easy temptation to be called “Your Majesty” and rule like a king. No–he said calling him “Mr. President” was enough, and that republican institutions were to make laws only through the peoples’ elected representatives.
George Washington was a humble leader with great character.
Barack Obama seems to be completely lacking in this most important quality of leadership.
In the past few decades we’ve seen other presidents–both Democrat and Republican–chastised by the voters in mid-tem elections–come out humbled and working for the good of the nation.
In 1986, Democrats took over both the House and the Senate during the Reagan years. A humbled Ronald Reagan accepted the verdict of the voters and began working with House Speaker Tip O’Neill for the good of the nation. Economic prosperity followed.
Twelve years later, Bill Clinton’s government was shellacked in the mid-term elections. He, too, humbled himself, listened to the people and committed to working with Capitol Hill on major achievements which included welfare reform and a balanced budget.
When good leaders are rebuked, they learn (even when they may have mixed motives for changing). When bad leaders are chastised, they react in pride and disdain.
Last evening, Barack Obama gave a smooth yet deceptive speech. He decided to go around Congress and allow certain unlawful residents with established roots to “come out of the shadows” because mass deportation of illegal immigrants “would be both impossible and contrary to our character.”
“I hear those concerns,” he added in a speech that quoted both Moses and George W. Bush, but “immigrants are a net plus for our economy and our society.”
It all sounded good and almost reasonable at certain points. But the entire presentation was lawless in nature and deceptive to the core.
Before we analyze his action, let’s look at what Barack Obama, acting like a king, did on November 20 to lead our immigration system into certain chaos.
Specifically, the president’s executive action will:
- Create a new deferred deportation program for parents of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent resident children if they have been in the country for more than five years.
- Grant work permits for three years if they pass background checks and pay back taxes and fees. In nearly all states, the people who are granted legal status will be entitled to driver’s licenses.
- Expand protection from deportation to more “Dreamers,” or people who came to the U.S. illegally as children, and grant more work permits to high-skilled workers.
- Establish a new priority system for deporting illegal immigrants, requiring the Department of Homeland Security to focus on people serving jail time for criminal offenses.
- Add more immigration judges to the border region so illegal immigrants who are deemed low-priority can be released more quickly, and recent border crossers and those with serious criminal records can be deported.
While the president portrayed his edict as necessary to address long-standing immigration problems, giddy Democrats who held immigration parties across the nation also believe President Obama’s action will buy them millions of Hispanic votes and provide progressive candidates with an electoral edge for years to come.
And he enacted the ruling like a tin-pot dictator–against the wishes of the American people. Columnist John Hayward comments:
“It’s still striking that not a single poll can be produced showing majority support for what Obama did last night, including some resistance from people who are generally in favor of all that “pathway to citizenship” stuff but oppose the way Obama is forcing it down their throats. The most recent election could not have made it more clear that the American electorate doesn’t want this. But Obama seized new powers to override the American people, acting as the representative of foreign citizens.”
That’s an incredibly deaf abuse of power and wrong priorities.
The 2014 mid-term elections, which just rolled through the nation as a thunder storm, were a clear repudiation of two Obama policies: Obamacare (ACA) and amnesty for illegals. You can’t interpret the results any other way unless you live in a fantasy world.
Election 2014 was a refutation of Barack Obama’s policies and priorities. As he likes to say:
“Period.”
Let’s analyze the timing of the president’s announcement.
Barack Obama would like us to think that his executive order is based on what he knows is best for the American people and nation.
But that doesn’t square with reality. President Obama and his party controlled both the Congress and the presidency for the first two years of his term. If they really believed Americans wanted to legalize illegal entrants into the country en masse, then it would have been easy to pass comprehensive immigration reform without a fight. Write the bill. Pass it in both chambers and sign it into law.
Why didn’t they do it? Because they knew that the American people didn’t want illegal aliens being treated better than legal-in-the-process immigrants that America has always loved and championed.
We are a nation of immigrants—legal ones!—who believe in the rule of law and fairness.
The Democrats knew this and punted. Barack Obama also knew he couldn’t be re-elected in 2012 if he went against the wishes of the American people on such a major issue.
After he was re-elected, he pushed through the Senate another bill (with the help of a few Republicans) that the House refused to take up. Why did they table it? Because the People’s House knew that the folks didn’t support it.
Why did Barack Obama not push that bill prior to the 2014 elections? Because he knew if he did, then there might not be one Democrat left in either chamber of Congress. The shellacking would have been even worse than it was.
So after hearing the people speak in the 2014 election, he should have humbled himself like Reagan and Clinton and many other presidents, listened to the voice of the people, and gone to Congress after the lame-duck session to put together a good bill that will benefit the America people as well as take into account those who came to our nation unlawfully.
He refused to listen, and with no other elections to bind him, decided to act like a spoiled child or a self-absorbed dictator and rule by presidential fiat.
And why did he do that? Is it because he really wants to do “what’s best for America?”
I don’t think so. It’s a political move—plain and simple. Barack Obama believes that granting de facto amnesty to millions of Hispanics will help the Democrats win elections for years to come.
He did it for votes–nothing else.
So what should we do about this partisan and reckless act by a man who would be emperor?
1. Like the Committees of Correspondence of Revolutionary times, we need to make our voices heard that we want a secure border, a stream-lined legal process for legal immigration, and some penalties and process for those who broke our laws. That applies to adults only (kids are not responsible for their parents’ sins). Both the Heritage Foundation and Bill O’Reilly offer sensible plans for dealing with immigration.
2. We need to pray for the new Congress to wisely resist this president’s authoritarian tendencies in all area of his administration. May God give them specific wisdom to resist bad policies and enact righteous solutions that the nation truly wants and needs.
3. We must have a long memory—two years to be exact—and elect a humble and competent president in 2016 who will help reverse the bad decisions of the past few years and lead America once again into a time of moral, economic, and social renewal.
No more snubs by would-be monarchs should be tolerated in our nation.
To quote the early colonists, “We have no king but Jesus!”