Honoring the Creator God
By
ANGEL MANUEL RODRIGUEZ
Question: Is it true that some Adventist scientists and theologians no longer believe that God created everything in six literal days.?
The short answer is, "Yes, it is true." In your letter you also asked why this is the case. I cannot go into all the details, but I will give you some of the main reasons behind their views. Let me make clear that the number of Adventist theologians embracing some type of evolutionary model is very small. I suspect that the same applies to scientists. Among theologians the fundamental issue relates to the proper methodology of interpreting the Bible. Their reading of Genesis 1-11 is based on a particular understanding of revelation and inspiration.
1-Revelation and Inspiration: Adventists believe that the Bible is its own interpreter. This is based on the conviction that the ultimate author is God; that since there is one Author, there is a fundamental unity in the Bible's message; and that a passage is to be interpreted in its literal sense unless the context points in a different direction. Those who promote some form of
evolutionism within the church have rejected or questioned most of those principles. In the area of revelation and inspiration they overemphasize thought-inspiration-that God only reveals thoughts and ideas to the prophets. This idea, taken to extreme, limits the authority of the Bible. With respect to Genesis 1 and 2,
this means-to them-that God did not reveal to the biblical writer how He created. For them the question is What was the idea or thought God revealed to the prophet? They answer: God was revealing that He was the Creator. Since the text, they say, does not define how He created, the answer to that question could be evolution. Instead of allowing the Bible to interpret itself, which in this case would mean that God is the Creator because He created everything in six days, they arbitrarily conclude that it does not answer the how question. One could even suggest that they first accept evolution as a concept and then reinterpret the text to make it fit their previous conclusions.
2-Assumptions Brought to the Text: Those theologians use nonbiblical materials to determine the meaning of the biblical text. They argue that the biblical creation narrative should not be interpreted literally because this type of literature was common in the ancient Near East, where this literature served to convey the idea that a particular god was the supreme creator. That argument is then applied to Genesis 1 and 2. But the creation narratives of the ancient Near East hardly describe a particular god creating everything. In fact, scholars now consider one of the longest of those narratives to be a propaganda story meant to justify the supreme role of one god over the other gods, not a creation narrative.
Besides, Genesis 1 and 2 are unique in the ancient Near East. None of the ancient texts come close to it in terms of narrative style, organization, and theological depth. In Genesis we seem to have a witness describing what he saw. This uniqueness places it in a different category, the category of biblical revelation. Some of these scholars have concluded that the explanatory force of natural evolution was sufficient to establish its reliability. Now "science" is used to define Christian theology and doctrine.
3-Your Concern: Space does not allow me to say more about the tragedy of Adventists who are evolutionists. But I do want to address the concern expressed in your communication about what Adventist parents should do in this situation. I agree that having teachers in our colleges and universities arguing and supporting the idea that natural evolution is the best alternative for the understanding of origins is outrageous. They not only violate the meaning of the biblical text, but also violate the trust the church placed in them by calling them to teach our young people.
Your alternatives are few. Remember, you are paying for your children to obtain an Adventist education; and if the school is not providing what you're paying for, you have to make a decision. This is what I suggest: Visit our colleges and talk to the teachers about their views on natural evolution and their interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2. If you are unsatisfied with their answers, discourage your son or daughter from attending that school. Most teachers in other Adventist schools stand by what the Bible teaches. You may also want to inform the school's administration
about your findings.
Angel Manuel Rodriguez is director of the Biblical Research Institute of the General Conference.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Evolution
La Sierra University Teaches Evolution (taken from "Waymarks" by Vance Farrell)
On May 22, 1999, the Press-Enterprise, the newspaper published in nearby Riverside, California, reported on what is taking place at La Sierra University. Shortly afterward, we reprinted a summary (which is reprinted on pages 7 and 8 of this present report).
Our report was entitled La Sierra University Rejects the Bible, Christianity, and God [WM-902}.
Reading the report, you discover that the title was a remarkably accurate statement of fact. We will reprint much of that article near the end of the present report.
A new aspect to the crisis has developed since then. As more of our people have become aware of the astounding fact that LSU is no longer a Christian institution, they are increasingly voicing their concerns and urging responsible leadership in our denomination to take action! Something has to be done! Frankly, a lot has to be done! That entire educational facility needs to overhauled.
There are teachers and administrators at La Sierra University who should be discharged. They should not merely be transferred to other schools to infect them with their agnostic theories.
Here are several quotations which will support what I have just stated, and provide you with additional information. As you will learn below, the administration at LSU is adamant that it is not going to change, and faithful believers are just as urgent that changes must be made! The minds of Adventist youth who are lured to LSU, thinking that it teaches Adventist beliefs, are, in many cases, being irreparably harmed.
STATEMENTS BY THE PRESIDENT OF LSU
Randal Wisbey's May 18, 2009, statement in response to complaints:
" 'Naturalistic evolution' is a phrase that either in code or direct definition implies a perspective of 'atheistic evolution.' We reject this implied atheistic charge. Everyone of our science faculty share the goal of students experiencing a vibrant Adventist Christian faith while pursuing their education in the sciences."-Randal Wisbey. Statement made May 18. 2009, in response to complaints.
Wisbey goes on to say this:
[La Sierra provides] "an excellent setting for examining the evolutionary process-a subject that is foundational to the modern biological and behavioral sciences," and it is La Sierra's "commitment to responsibly address difficult issues" and to "consider a variety of views."
On November 21,2008, Wisbey delivered a major philosophical address to one of the largest organizations of Adventist Ph.D. professors.
This important 7-page speech was given to the Adventist Society of Religious Studies. In this pivotal address, entitled Nurturing the Adventist Mind, he declares that Seventh-day Adventists should integrate "Adventist thinking" with a "vast array of intellectual disciplines." In other words, bring as much of the false theories and teachings found in worldly universities-into our schools. As an example of how our denomination "needs" to be integrated, he cites the need to bring every aspect of evolutionary theory into all of our schools!
"One example of how the church needs this integration is in the vexing issue of the relation of Adventist thinking to the natural sciences as pertains to the history of life on planet Earth. On the one hand, for more than a hundred years Adventists have believed that 'the book of nature and the written word shed light upon each other. They make us acquainted with God by teaching us something of the laws through which He works.' On the other hand, we recognize that 'creationists do not have an adequate explanation' for 'radiometric dates of many millions of years, , The most difficult question is probably the apparent sequence of radio¬metric dates, giving older dates for lower layers in the geologic column and younger dates for upper layers.'
"What Adventist colleges and universities can do is to provide a supportive environment and conceptual assistance not only to their students but also to
the whole church in addressing this issue effectively by reexamining our understanding of both the 'book of nature' and the 'written word.' In the process. Adventist colleges and universities can be examples of thinking faithfully. "-Randal Wisbey. "Nurturing the Adventist Mind." speech given to the Adventist Society of Religious Studies. on No¬vember 21.2008,
In that speech. Wisbey cited Karl W Giberson's book, Saving Darwin. as an example of how we as Seventh-day Adventists can engage in reexamining our understanding of nature and the Word of God.
Giberson calls himself a "Christian evolutionist." The subtitle of the book is: "How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution." But should our people be trying to connect the two? In reality, it cannot be done. We are either genuine disciples of Christ, and worshipers of the living Creator God, who, according to the Bible, created our world in six days and commanded us to commemorate it by sacredly keeping the Seventh day Sabbath,-or we become practical agnostics who accept theories about origins that atheists have carefully pieced together over a period of more than one hundred and fifty years.
Tragically, in his first footnote in the above address, Wisbey declares that the Bible teachers at LSU, as well as a number of leaders of other Adventist colleges and universities, are in agreement with his determination that Adventist schools must boldly unite with the worldly universities-in teaching the very same subjects, theories, and concepts! Here is this footnote:
"I wish to acknowledge my colleagues in the School of Religion at La Sierra University who have generously dialogued with me in preparation for the writing of this paper. I have also been encouraged by conversations with members of the Association of Adventist Colleges and Universities who heard an earlier version of this paper presented during its 2008 Mission Conference."-Ibid.
Wisbey essentially discards the Bible (and Spirit of Prophecy) as useless. He does this in his declaration that, apart from the wisdom of educated moderns as taught in their schools, mankind will never find its way through the dark maze of life.
"Over the years I have been involved in many conversations that remind me of the difficulty of finding a way through the myriad of life choices young adults face. As Dante wrote in the Divine Comedy:
" 'In the middle of this road we call our life. I found myself in a dark wood. with no clear path through' (Dante Altghieri. The Divine Comedy. Inferno: Canto IJ.
"In many ways, this struggle to find the path that provides clarity and direction is one in which all of us are constantly involved with. This is certainly true for our students as they are increasingly faced with a world that demands the very best of them. Careful academic preparation is imperative for those who are committed to making a difference through their work and leadership.
"For the Adventist Church, it is also clear that we are dependent upon finding properly trained individuals who will guide and support the work of a global community. consistently and ably providing resources in a rapidly changing and challenging environment. We need people who can think with clarity and purpose. whose opinions and commitments are born of a broad understanding of opportunities and challenges. Adventist higher education can help our community navigate these exciting times through our work of properly training the very ones who will one day lead our denomination." Ibid.
Is the Office of Higher Education in the General Conference worried about the educational direction in which La Sierra is headed? According to Wisbey, it is not.
In the above address, Wisbey boasts that Adventist educational leadership ranks LSU at the top as one of the two best in Adventism, along with 125 outside colleges and universities in which to send our youth for a preparation for their life work in the church and in the world! Does Wisbey really believe this? Can this really be true?
"Last year La Sierra University was inducted into the President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll-an honor we were delighted to share with Union College and 12~ other outstanding institutions in the United States."-Ibid.
Then, in this major address to the Adventist Society of Religious Studies in November 2008, Wisbey turns to a favorite topic: the need for Adventist schools to adopt modern evolutionary theory. Here are his words:
“Another way in which we faithfully serve the best interests of our church involves the integration of Adventist thinking with a vast array of intellectual disciplines. How does our faith inform our understanding of the natural. social, and health sciences? What about the humanities? And what of the growing interest in the performing and visual arts-theater, music, and the fine arts? And how will our understanding of current ethical issues-environmental, Social, and biomedical-be guided in a uniquely Adventist perspective if we do not rely upon our universities and colleges?
"One example of how the church needs this integration is in the vexing issue of the relation of Adventist thinking to the natural sciences as pertains to the history of life on planet Earth."-Ibid.
Remarkably, at this point in his comments on the value of evolution, Wisbey quotes the individual in charge of our Geoscience Research Institute, who, he says, has stated that Creationists do not have valid answers to questions about purported long ages of time! Wisbey is trying to implicate every educational thought leader in the church in his drive to make modern evolutionary theory the orthodox teaching of Adventism.
Here is this quotation:
"We recognize that creationists do not have an adequate explanation for radiometric dates of many millions of years. The most difficult question is probably the apparent sequence of radiometric dates, giving older dates for lower layers in the geologic column and younger dates for upper layers." James Gibson. director, Geoscience Research Institute. "Frequently Asked Questions."
Since Dr. Gibson actually said that, we would suggest that he read pp. 167-207 in our book. The Evolution Handbook. In careful detail, this 41-page chapter, entitled "Inaccurate Dating Methods," nicely unravels the radiodating enigma-by showing that, due to a variety of scientific reasons and evidence, neither radiometric dating nor radiocarbon dating can provide any valid means of measuring earlier time spans, or dating earlier specimens. Therefore neither can be used to support or prove the speculations of evolutionists.
(Although nearly a thousand pages in length, Evolution Handbook is available from us for only $7.00 a copy ppd or only $1.00 a copy. plus shipping, in small boxful quantities.)
Here is the remainder of the above statement by Wisbey. He states that by adopting these modern theories, the ability of Seventh-day Adventists to think more clearly will be greatly improved:
"What Adventist colleges and universities can do is to provide a supportive environment and conceptual assistance not only to their students but also to the whole church in addressing this issue effectively by reexamining our understanding of both the "book of nature" and the "written word." In the process, Adventist colleges and universities can be examples of thinking faithfully"-Ibid.
Immediately after that statement, Wisbey emphasizes once again the urgency of our people coming in line with the thinking of worldlings about us.
"One of the more important contributions the Adventist learning community provides on behalf of the denomination is in establishing Adventist credibility through participation in external academic communities and conducting research that increases the sum of human knowledge. When demonstrating the intellectual soundness of Adventist faith, our professors contribute to current theological, scientific and ethical conversations."-Ibid.
Wisbey adds that another reason why Adventists should adopt the teachings of modern intellectuals is because we are already enjoying all the entertainments which the world has to offer anyway! We might as well indulge in all the rest.
"Because we live in a global community-connected by the Internet and by satellite television, we listen to the same songs, wear the same clothing, watch the same movies, and give adoration to the same actors and athletes. This is the world our church must address, and our faculty and students have much to offer to this intriguing, and daunting, work. A valuable resource that Adventist higher education offers the church is research that enables the denomination to better understand itself. "-Ibid.
Elsewhere in this speech, Wisbey mentioned, as a plus factor for LSU, the time spent by students in helping others in the community.
"On our campus, over the past school year, La Sierra University students logged some 45,000 hours of service to benefit others. "-Ibid.
That truly sounds laudable; but it should be remembered that, for years, La Sierra has instructed its students to spend their Sabbath afternoons cleaning and painting houses in the greater Riverside area!
That fact was revealed in an article in the Pacific Union Recorder, a number of years ago. The staff at LSU are proud of the fact that they train students to use Sabbath hours to do many of the things which they do not want to bother with on Sunday or during the week.
STATEMENTS BY LSU BIOLOGY TEACHERS
In addition to Randal Wisbey's astonishing statements, here are several others about the problem at La Sierra University:
La Sierra University Biology Department teaches naturalistic evolution as the best explanation of the living world. According to retired La Sierra biology professor Larry McCloskey, "nothing makes much, if any, sense outside of this unifying theory." In effect, this theory nullifies the historicity of the Genesis account. The Seventh-day Adventist Church affirms the Genesis account of a literal six-day creation, and recognizes that denial of this brings into question a number of other fundamental beliefs. which cannot be redacted [edited or changed].
Dr. Larry McCloskey, now retired, taught in the Biology Department at LSU for a num-
ber of years.
His Biology 112 Syllabus was actually a mix¬ture of quotations taken from his slide presentation and his Biology 112 syllabus. For example, in the third lecture, slide 10, McCloskey made this statement:
"There is nothing 'theoretical' about the evidence supporting evolution. The research about evolution is ongoing and continues to support and refine Darwin's original ideas. No data have been found to refute the idea. It is the single unifying explanation of the living world, and nothing makes much, if any, sense outside of this unifying theory."-Larry McCloskey, Biology 112 Syllabus, LSU publication.
Gary Bradley is a current biology teacher at LSU. One of his slide sets, Hominin Evolution, was published only this year by LSU,for use in its biology classes as required viewing. ("Homminid is an evolutionary biology term. and means "any of a family of primates of whom the only surviving species is man.")
The slide set can be viewed on Scribd on the internet. Look for Gary Bradley, Hominin Evolution. Biology Capstone, 2009, LSU. It clearly reveals that Bradley believes that humans evolved over a very long period of time, a position that is clearly different from the Bible, the Spirit of Prophecy, or our historic beliefs. We are not here discussing random philosophy; Creationism is a solid, historic Adventist Bible doctrine, fully supported in the Inspired Books.
Another production by Gary Bradley, produced with the full approval of LSU, is The Fossil Record, Spring 2009. In it, he teaches that all living creatures in our world, nothing excluded, slowly evolved from more primitive forms of life. Go back far enough and there is nothing but worms, and then amoeba, and finally raw chemicals.
Of course, all this is ridiculous speculation.
Read our 992-page book, The Evolution Handbook. The scientific evidence for Creationism is overwhelming! The evidence for evolution is a speculative maze of confused thinking and theories.
Lee Greer is another biology teacher at LSU.
His UNST/UHNR 404B Presentation is yet another attempt to indoctrinate the young minds who come to LSU for knowledge.
The April-May 2009 issue of a local journal, Riverside Magazine, mentioned, as a news note,
Greer's project to use sunlight to help produce electricity for LSD, and for sale to the community. Here is part of the news note:
"LSU biology Professor Lee Greer is leading a project that will consider multi-million-dollar bids for photovoltaic arrays that will be situated on campus."-Quoted in Riverside Magazine. April-May 2009.
Explaining why he is interested in conducting this project, Greer is quoted by the magazine as saying this:
.. 'As a biologist and an evolutionary biologist concerned about bio-diversity on the planet, it is an ethical concern of mine,' Greer says. 'It's a pocketbook issue as well.' "-Ibid.
A CURRENT LSU BIOLOGY STUDENT
Louie Bishop is currently studying at La Sierra University, and tells what he is being taught there right now. Bishop received a B.S. in Business from the University of California at Davis. Afterward, he attended the Amazing Facts Center of Evangelism. He then worked as a Bible worker for two churches in Trinity County, California.
"I came to La Sierra University knowing the popular scientific views regarding life on earth. I previously attended a secular university, where evolution was taught. That is one reason I chose La Sierra University to begin pre-medicine classes. The first day of General Biology 2 I sat down only to see Charles Darwin's face on the first slide. In my opinion, there would be no problem with that, except for the fact that we were taught only evolutionary principles of life for the next several weeks, and were told they were the truth. In fact, we were told Evolution "is the single unifying explanation of the living world, and nothing makes much, if any, sense outside of this unifying theory."
''After a few class lectures, I sat down to talk with Biology department head Dr. Wilson. Though it has now been almost five months since that meeting, I distinctly remember him saying "I was afraid this was going to happen." In other words, he was not looking forward to the day when someone would take a stand and speak up concerning the teachings of the Biology department. Not to go unsaid, I have had many good conversations with members of the Biology department, including Dr. Lee Greer. He has taken the time to talk with me for over an hour on a number of occasions, providing me with reasons for his views of life on earth. I respect him for the fact that he has studied both the Bible and science to a great extent. and is convicted concerning what he believes. Yet what he and many others teaching Biology at La Sierra believe and teach involves many assumptions and, most importantly, is contradictory to the clear messages of the Bible. This fact was made clear to me when I attended one of Dr. Greer's worship "breakouts." He talked about the Biblical Creation accounts in detail, and concluded that Genesis chapters 1 and 2 are contradictory accounts. The message I received was a message of doubt toward the Bible, which is no doubt what many other students were led to feel. I can now believe this is happening on a Seventh-day Adventist campus, because I've seen it with my own eyes!
"It is a fact that Evolution is being taught and promoted by professors of Biology on the La Si¬erra University campus. They are obviously welcome to hold such views, yet I believe they have come to the wrong place to promote those beliefs. I know that La Sierra was founded for the purpose of raising up young people to share God's message of mercy and truth with the world-young people who, out of their own free will choose to say "What does the Bible say?" Yet many young people on the La Sierra University campus are being led to doubt their beliefs. I asked my lab teaching assistant during Winter Quarter what her views were concerning Evolution vs. a literal Creation week. She ended up giving me her testimony at La Sierra. She told me that she was the daughter of a Seventh-day Adventist pastor, and that she came to La Sierra to study Biology. After going through General Biology and being presented with the theory of evolution, she wrestled with her faith in God and seemed to find some middle ground. She then took a Senior Capstone course entitled Religious, Social. and Moral Aspects of Biology. She was presented with all the 'evidence' that seems to support Evolution, and now considers herself to be an agnostic."-Louie Bishop, statement made June 5,2009.
-Christina Harris is a Ph.D. research chemist in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
She obtained her B.S. from Oklahoma State University, Ph. D. at the University of Colorado Boulder campus, and did post doctoral work at Memorial Sloan Kettiering Cancer Center in Hew York City. She was baptized in New York City in 2003.
Although she never attended LSD, her comment about the situation is well-worth reading.
The following letter was written to the members of the Board of Trustees of La Sierra University, which includes the presidents of the General Conference, Pacific Union Conference, and several other conference presidents:
"June 8, 2009
"Dear Pastors Paulsen, Schneider, Graham, and Officers of the Board of Trustees (Arnold Trujillo, Ted Benson, Kelly Bock, Tony Anobile)
"Undoubtedly, you are aware that the evolution-creation debate is a growing point of concern in our Adventist educational system among various church leaders, pastors, and lay-members. This open letter addresses my concerns about theistic macro-evolution being taught at La Sierra University as the preferred worldview. I am a converted Seventh-day Adventist Christian, a Ph,D. scientist. and Creationist according to the Genesis account-a literal creation week consisting of seven literal, contiguous, consecutive 24-hour days ..
"While it is conceivable to believe in God and hold to the idea of Darwinian-style evolution occurring over the course of billions of years, for a Seventh-day Adventist in a Seventh-day Adventist setting, these beliefs are untenable and irreconcilable. Consequently, those professors finding themselves unable to accept and promote these fundamental beliefs should naturally seek employment elsewhere-perhaps at a public or other non-SDA college or university. -There are many options.
"Having taught chemistry at the university level, I am acutely aware that young adults of college age are greatly impressed by what their professors think, say and believe. Those parents who want a truly Seventh-day Adventist education for their young people should be able to obtain what their hard-earned dollars have paid for; otherwise, a public institution of higher learning would be more suitable and less expensive.
"As Seventh-day Adventists, with a clear statement of our belief in creation posted for the world to see, why do we not strive to be the head in this important debate? God has designed that His ambassadors be the head and not the tail; why should we clearly take on a position that will place us at the tail?
"I challenge the leadership of LSU and the leaders and laity of the Seventh-day Adventist Church to hold to and support the Bible truths that our name represents. I close with the following quote taken from the pen of inspiration:
" 'Since the book of nature and the book of revelation bear the impress of the same master mind, they cannot but speak in harmony . . Inferences erroneously drawn from facts observed in nature have, however, led to supposed conflict between science and revelation; and in the effort to restore harmony, interpretations of Scripture have been adopted that undermine and destroy the force of the Word of God. Geology has been thought to contradict the literal interpretation of the Mosaic record of the creation. Millions of years, it is claimed, were required for the evolution of the earth from chaos: and in order to accommodate the Bible to this supposed revelation of science, the days of creation are assumed to have been vast, indefinite periods, covering thousands or even millions of years. Such a conclusion is wholly uncalled for' (Education, pp. 128-130).
"Sincerely,
"Christina R. Harris, Ph.D .. Senior Research Sci¬entist, Kalamazoo, Michigan."-Open Letter to the Board of Trustees of La Sierra University.
Clifford Goldstein, editor of the Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, has deep feelings about this matter:
"What amazes me isn't so much that people can believe in evolution (after all, I used to), but that those who do still want to be Seventh-day Adventists. I can respect someone who, believing in evolutionary theory, rejects the Adventist Church entirely. I have no respect for those who think they can meld the two.
"For anyone, especially our young people, struggling with these issues, I say: Keep seeking with a fervent and honest heart. As long as you stick to the Bible (and Ellen White's books and articles) you will not go wrong. For those among us who have already decided-despite the Bible and Ellen White-on evolution, there are plenty of other churches for you. Ours isn't one. And to those teaching in our schools who believe in evolution and yet take a paycheck from the Seventh-day Adventist Church, I say: If you honestly reject a literal six-day creation in favor of theistic macroevolution, fine; now turn that honesty into integrity and go somewhere [else] where you won't have to cloak your views under the anfractuosities of language."-Clifford Goldstein, Seventh-day Darwinians, article published in 2003 in the Adventist Review.
"Given the vital importance of the Biblical Doctrine of Creation to the Christian Faith and to the Seventh-day Adventist message, the ASI Missions Inc. Board voted unanimously to urge the top leadership of the church to weigh in on this matter with voice, pen, broadcast, and any other media or administrative vehicle that will send a clear, unmistakable signal of reassurance to our lay members.
"It seems only fair that this dialog move to a point where parents and prospective students have a full disclosure of what our Colleges and Universities are offering, so they can make informed decisions and have realistic expectations regarding the philosophy and quality of education being offered.
"We also believe time is of the essence due to the viral internet communication technologies that are powering this dialog.
"You are in our prayers. Courage!"-Harold J. Lance, Chairman of the Board, ASI Missions, Inc .. letter dated May 27, 2009, to Don Schneider, President, North American Division, Silver Spring, Maryland.
We are deeply thankful for faithful Advent believers, such as Dr. Christina Harris, Clifford Goldstein, and Harold Lance. We need more such influential people in high places-to speak up and lead a reformation in our denomination-which will fully return it, on all levels and in all areas, to our historic beliefs!
On May 22, 1999, the Press-Enterprise, the newspaper published in nearby Riverside, California, reported on what is taking place at La Sierra University. Shortly afterward, we reprinted a summary (which is reprinted on pages 7 and 8 of this present report).
Our report was entitled La Sierra University Rejects the Bible, Christianity, and God [WM-902}.
Reading the report, you discover that the title was a remarkably accurate statement of fact. We will reprint much of that article near the end of the present report.
A new aspect to the crisis has developed since then. As more of our people have become aware of the astounding fact that LSU is no longer a Christian institution, they are increasingly voicing their concerns and urging responsible leadership in our denomination to take action! Something has to be done! Frankly, a lot has to be done! That entire educational facility needs to overhauled.
There are teachers and administrators at La Sierra University who should be discharged. They should not merely be transferred to other schools to infect them with their agnostic theories.
Here are several quotations which will support what I have just stated, and provide you with additional information. As you will learn below, the administration at LSU is adamant that it is not going to change, and faithful believers are just as urgent that changes must be made! The minds of Adventist youth who are lured to LSU, thinking that it teaches Adventist beliefs, are, in many cases, being irreparably harmed.
STATEMENTS BY THE PRESIDENT OF LSU
Randal Wisbey's May 18, 2009, statement in response to complaints:
" 'Naturalistic evolution' is a phrase that either in code or direct definition implies a perspective of 'atheistic evolution.' We reject this implied atheistic charge. Everyone of our science faculty share the goal of students experiencing a vibrant Adventist Christian faith while pursuing their education in the sciences."-Randal Wisbey. Statement made May 18. 2009, in response to complaints.
Wisbey goes on to say this:
[La Sierra provides] "an excellent setting for examining the evolutionary process-a subject that is foundational to the modern biological and behavioral sciences," and it is La Sierra's "commitment to responsibly address difficult issues" and to "consider a variety of views."
On November 21,2008, Wisbey delivered a major philosophical address to one of the largest organizations of Adventist Ph.D. professors.
This important 7-page speech was given to the Adventist Society of Religious Studies. In this pivotal address, entitled Nurturing the Adventist Mind, he declares that Seventh-day Adventists should integrate "Adventist thinking" with a "vast array of intellectual disciplines." In other words, bring as much of the false theories and teachings found in worldly universities-into our schools. As an example of how our denomination "needs" to be integrated, he cites the need to bring every aspect of evolutionary theory into all of our schools!
"One example of how the church needs this integration is in the vexing issue of the relation of Adventist thinking to the natural sciences as pertains to the history of life on planet Earth. On the one hand, for more than a hundred years Adventists have believed that 'the book of nature and the written word shed light upon each other. They make us acquainted with God by teaching us something of the laws through which He works.' On the other hand, we recognize that 'creationists do not have an adequate explanation' for 'radiometric dates of many millions of years, , The most difficult question is probably the apparent sequence of radio¬metric dates, giving older dates for lower layers in the geologic column and younger dates for upper layers.'
"What Adventist colleges and universities can do is to provide a supportive environment and conceptual assistance not only to their students but also to
the whole church in addressing this issue effectively by reexamining our understanding of both the 'book of nature' and the 'written word.' In the process. Adventist colleges and universities can be examples of thinking faithfully. "-Randal Wisbey. "Nurturing the Adventist Mind." speech given to the Adventist Society of Religious Studies. on No¬vember 21.2008,
In that speech. Wisbey cited Karl W Giberson's book, Saving Darwin. as an example of how we as Seventh-day Adventists can engage in reexamining our understanding of nature and the Word of God.
Giberson calls himself a "Christian evolutionist." The subtitle of the book is: "How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution." But should our people be trying to connect the two? In reality, it cannot be done. We are either genuine disciples of Christ, and worshipers of the living Creator God, who, according to the Bible, created our world in six days and commanded us to commemorate it by sacredly keeping the Seventh day Sabbath,-or we become practical agnostics who accept theories about origins that atheists have carefully pieced together over a period of more than one hundred and fifty years.
Tragically, in his first footnote in the above address, Wisbey declares that the Bible teachers at LSU, as well as a number of leaders of other Adventist colleges and universities, are in agreement with his determination that Adventist schools must boldly unite with the worldly universities-in teaching the very same subjects, theories, and concepts! Here is this footnote:
"I wish to acknowledge my colleagues in the School of Religion at La Sierra University who have generously dialogued with me in preparation for the writing of this paper. I have also been encouraged by conversations with members of the Association of Adventist Colleges and Universities who heard an earlier version of this paper presented during its 2008 Mission Conference."-Ibid.
Wisbey essentially discards the Bible (and Spirit of Prophecy) as useless. He does this in his declaration that, apart from the wisdom of educated moderns as taught in their schools, mankind will never find its way through the dark maze of life.
"Over the years I have been involved in many conversations that remind me of the difficulty of finding a way through the myriad of life choices young adults face. As Dante wrote in the Divine Comedy:
" 'In the middle of this road we call our life. I found myself in a dark wood. with no clear path through' (Dante Altghieri. The Divine Comedy. Inferno: Canto IJ.
"In many ways, this struggle to find the path that provides clarity and direction is one in which all of us are constantly involved with. This is certainly true for our students as they are increasingly faced with a world that demands the very best of them. Careful academic preparation is imperative for those who are committed to making a difference through their work and leadership.
"For the Adventist Church, it is also clear that we are dependent upon finding properly trained individuals who will guide and support the work of a global community. consistently and ably providing resources in a rapidly changing and challenging environment. We need people who can think with clarity and purpose. whose opinions and commitments are born of a broad understanding of opportunities and challenges. Adventist higher education can help our community navigate these exciting times through our work of properly training the very ones who will one day lead our denomination." Ibid.
Is the Office of Higher Education in the General Conference worried about the educational direction in which La Sierra is headed? According to Wisbey, it is not.
In the above address, Wisbey boasts that Adventist educational leadership ranks LSU at the top as one of the two best in Adventism, along with 125 outside colleges and universities in which to send our youth for a preparation for their life work in the church and in the world! Does Wisbey really believe this? Can this really be true?
"Last year La Sierra University was inducted into the President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll-an honor we were delighted to share with Union College and 12~ other outstanding institutions in the United States."-Ibid.
Then, in this major address to the Adventist Society of Religious Studies in November 2008, Wisbey turns to a favorite topic: the need for Adventist schools to adopt modern evolutionary theory. Here are his words:
“Another way in which we faithfully serve the best interests of our church involves the integration of Adventist thinking with a vast array of intellectual disciplines. How does our faith inform our understanding of the natural. social, and health sciences? What about the humanities? And what of the growing interest in the performing and visual arts-theater, music, and the fine arts? And how will our understanding of current ethical issues-environmental, Social, and biomedical-be guided in a uniquely Adventist perspective if we do not rely upon our universities and colleges?
"One example of how the church needs this integration is in the vexing issue of the relation of Adventist thinking to the natural sciences as pertains to the history of life on planet Earth."-Ibid.
Remarkably, at this point in his comments on the value of evolution, Wisbey quotes the individual in charge of our Geoscience Research Institute, who, he says, has stated that Creationists do not have valid answers to questions about purported long ages of time! Wisbey is trying to implicate every educational thought leader in the church in his drive to make modern evolutionary theory the orthodox teaching of Adventism.
Here is this quotation:
"We recognize that creationists do not have an adequate explanation for radiometric dates of many millions of years. The most difficult question is probably the apparent sequence of radiometric dates, giving older dates for lower layers in the geologic column and younger dates for upper layers." James Gibson. director, Geoscience Research Institute. "Frequently Asked Questions."
Since Dr. Gibson actually said that, we would suggest that he read pp. 167-207 in our book. The Evolution Handbook. In careful detail, this 41-page chapter, entitled "Inaccurate Dating Methods," nicely unravels the radiodating enigma-by showing that, due to a variety of scientific reasons and evidence, neither radiometric dating nor radiocarbon dating can provide any valid means of measuring earlier time spans, or dating earlier specimens. Therefore neither can be used to support or prove the speculations of evolutionists.
(Although nearly a thousand pages in length, Evolution Handbook is available from us for only $7.00 a copy ppd or only $1.00 a copy. plus shipping, in small boxful quantities.)
Here is the remainder of the above statement by Wisbey. He states that by adopting these modern theories, the ability of Seventh-day Adventists to think more clearly will be greatly improved:
"What Adventist colleges and universities can do is to provide a supportive environment and conceptual assistance not only to their students but also to the whole church in addressing this issue effectively by reexamining our understanding of both the "book of nature" and the "written word." In the process, Adventist colleges and universities can be examples of thinking faithfully"-Ibid.
Immediately after that statement, Wisbey emphasizes once again the urgency of our people coming in line with the thinking of worldlings about us.
"One of the more important contributions the Adventist learning community provides on behalf of the denomination is in establishing Adventist credibility through participation in external academic communities and conducting research that increases the sum of human knowledge. When demonstrating the intellectual soundness of Adventist faith, our professors contribute to current theological, scientific and ethical conversations."-Ibid.
Wisbey adds that another reason why Adventists should adopt the teachings of modern intellectuals is because we are already enjoying all the entertainments which the world has to offer anyway! We might as well indulge in all the rest.
"Because we live in a global community-connected by the Internet and by satellite television, we listen to the same songs, wear the same clothing, watch the same movies, and give adoration to the same actors and athletes. This is the world our church must address, and our faculty and students have much to offer to this intriguing, and daunting, work. A valuable resource that Adventist higher education offers the church is research that enables the denomination to better understand itself. "-Ibid.
Elsewhere in this speech, Wisbey mentioned, as a plus factor for LSU, the time spent by students in helping others in the community.
"On our campus, over the past school year, La Sierra University students logged some 45,000 hours of service to benefit others. "-Ibid.
That truly sounds laudable; but it should be remembered that, for years, La Sierra has instructed its students to spend their Sabbath afternoons cleaning and painting houses in the greater Riverside area!
That fact was revealed in an article in the Pacific Union Recorder, a number of years ago. The staff at LSU are proud of the fact that they train students to use Sabbath hours to do many of the things which they do not want to bother with on Sunday or during the week.
STATEMENTS BY LSU BIOLOGY TEACHERS
In addition to Randal Wisbey's astonishing statements, here are several others about the problem at La Sierra University:
La Sierra University Biology Department teaches naturalistic evolution as the best explanation of the living world. According to retired La Sierra biology professor Larry McCloskey, "nothing makes much, if any, sense outside of this unifying theory." In effect, this theory nullifies the historicity of the Genesis account. The Seventh-day Adventist Church affirms the Genesis account of a literal six-day creation, and recognizes that denial of this brings into question a number of other fundamental beliefs. which cannot be redacted [edited or changed].
Dr. Larry McCloskey, now retired, taught in the Biology Department at LSU for a num-
ber of years.
His Biology 112 Syllabus was actually a mix¬ture of quotations taken from his slide presentation and his Biology 112 syllabus. For example, in the third lecture, slide 10, McCloskey made this statement:
"There is nothing 'theoretical' about the evidence supporting evolution. The research about evolution is ongoing and continues to support and refine Darwin's original ideas. No data have been found to refute the idea. It is the single unifying explanation of the living world, and nothing makes much, if any, sense outside of this unifying theory."-Larry McCloskey, Biology 112 Syllabus, LSU publication.
Gary Bradley is a current biology teacher at LSU. One of his slide sets, Hominin Evolution, was published only this year by LSU,for use in its biology classes as required viewing. ("Homminid is an evolutionary biology term. and means "any of a family of primates of whom the only surviving species is man.")
The slide set can be viewed on Scribd on the internet. Look for Gary Bradley, Hominin Evolution. Biology Capstone, 2009, LSU. It clearly reveals that Bradley believes that humans evolved over a very long period of time, a position that is clearly different from the Bible, the Spirit of Prophecy, or our historic beliefs. We are not here discussing random philosophy; Creationism is a solid, historic Adventist Bible doctrine, fully supported in the Inspired Books.
Another production by Gary Bradley, produced with the full approval of LSU, is The Fossil Record, Spring 2009. In it, he teaches that all living creatures in our world, nothing excluded, slowly evolved from more primitive forms of life. Go back far enough and there is nothing but worms, and then amoeba, and finally raw chemicals.
Of course, all this is ridiculous speculation.
Read our 992-page book, The Evolution Handbook. The scientific evidence for Creationism is overwhelming! The evidence for evolution is a speculative maze of confused thinking and theories.
Lee Greer is another biology teacher at LSU.
His UNST/UHNR 404B Presentation is yet another attempt to indoctrinate the young minds who come to LSU for knowledge.
The April-May 2009 issue of a local journal, Riverside Magazine, mentioned, as a news note,
Greer's project to use sunlight to help produce electricity for LSD, and for sale to the community. Here is part of the news note:
"LSU biology Professor Lee Greer is leading a project that will consider multi-million-dollar bids for photovoltaic arrays that will be situated on campus."-Quoted in Riverside Magazine. April-May 2009.
Explaining why he is interested in conducting this project, Greer is quoted by the magazine as saying this:
.. 'As a biologist and an evolutionary biologist concerned about bio-diversity on the planet, it is an ethical concern of mine,' Greer says. 'It's a pocketbook issue as well.' "-Ibid.
A CURRENT LSU BIOLOGY STUDENT
Louie Bishop is currently studying at La Sierra University, and tells what he is being taught there right now. Bishop received a B.S. in Business from the University of California at Davis. Afterward, he attended the Amazing Facts Center of Evangelism. He then worked as a Bible worker for two churches in Trinity County, California.
"I came to La Sierra University knowing the popular scientific views regarding life on earth. I previously attended a secular university, where evolution was taught. That is one reason I chose La Sierra University to begin pre-medicine classes. The first day of General Biology 2 I sat down only to see Charles Darwin's face on the first slide. In my opinion, there would be no problem with that, except for the fact that we were taught only evolutionary principles of life for the next several weeks, and were told they were the truth. In fact, we were told Evolution "is the single unifying explanation of the living world, and nothing makes much, if any, sense outside of this unifying theory."
''After a few class lectures, I sat down to talk with Biology department head Dr. Wilson. Though it has now been almost five months since that meeting, I distinctly remember him saying "I was afraid this was going to happen." In other words, he was not looking forward to the day when someone would take a stand and speak up concerning the teachings of the Biology department. Not to go unsaid, I have had many good conversations with members of the Biology department, including Dr. Lee Greer. He has taken the time to talk with me for over an hour on a number of occasions, providing me with reasons for his views of life on earth. I respect him for the fact that he has studied both the Bible and science to a great extent. and is convicted concerning what he believes. Yet what he and many others teaching Biology at La Sierra believe and teach involves many assumptions and, most importantly, is contradictory to the clear messages of the Bible. This fact was made clear to me when I attended one of Dr. Greer's worship "breakouts." He talked about the Biblical Creation accounts in detail, and concluded that Genesis chapters 1 and 2 are contradictory accounts. The message I received was a message of doubt toward the Bible, which is no doubt what many other students were led to feel. I can now believe this is happening on a Seventh-day Adventist campus, because I've seen it with my own eyes!
"It is a fact that Evolution is being taught and promoted by professors of Biology on the La Si¬erra University campus. They are obviously welcome to hold such views, yet I believe they have come to the wrong place to promote those beliefs. I know that La Sierra was founded for the purpose of raising up young people to share God's message of mercy and truth with the world-young people who, out of their own free will choose to say "What does the Bible say?" Yet many young people on the La Sierra University campus are being led to doubt their beliefs. I asked my lab teaching assistant during Winter Quarter what her views were concerning Evolution vs. a literal Creation week. She ended up giving me her testimony at La Sierra. She told me that she was the daughter of a Seventh-day Adventist pastor, and that she came to La Sierra to study Biology. After going through General Biology and being presented with the theory of evolution, she wrestled with her faith in God and seemed to find some middle ground. She then took a Senior Capstone course entitled Religious, Social. and Moral Aspects of Biology. She was presented with all the 'evidence' that seems to support Evolution, and now considers herself to be an agnostic."-Louie Bishop, statement made June 5,2009.
-Christina Harris is a Ph.D. research chemist in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
She obtained her B.S. from Oklahoma State University, Ph. D. at the University of Colorado Boulder campus, and did post doctoral work at Memorial Sloan Kettiering Cancer Center in Hew York City. She was baptized in New York City in 2003.
Although she never attended LSD, her comment about the situation is well-worth reading.
The following letter was written to the members of the Board of Trustees of La Sierra University, which includes the presidents of the General Conference, Pacific Union Conference, and several other conference presidents:
"June 8, 2009
"Dear Pastors Paulsen, Schneider, Graham, and Officers of the Board of Trustees (Arnold Trujillo, Ted Benson, Kelly Bock, Tony Anobile)
"Undoubtedly, you are aware that the evolution-creation debate is a growing point of concern in our Adventist educational system among various church leaders, pastors, and lay-members. This open letter addresses my concerns about theistic macro-evolution being taught at La Sierra University as the preferred worldview. I am a converted Seventh-day Adventist Christian, a Ph,D. scientist. and Creationist according to the Genesis account-a literal creation week consisting of seven literal, contiguous, consecutive 24-hour days ..
"While it is conceivable to believe in God and hold to the idea of Darwinian-style evolution occurring over the course of billions of years, for a Seventh-day Adventist in a Seventh-day Adventist setting, these beliefs are untenable and irreconcilable. Consequently, those professors finding themselves unable to accept and promote these fundamental beliefs should naturally seek employment elsewhere-perhaps at a public or other non-SDA college or university. -There are many options.
"Having taught chemistry at the university level, I am acutely aware that young adults of college age are greatly impressed by what their professors think, say and believe. Those parents who want a truly Seventh-day Adventist education for their young people should be able to obtain what their hard-earned dollars have paid for; otherwise, a public institution of higher learning would be more suitable and less expensive.
"As Seventh-day Adventists, with a clear statement of our belief in creation posted for the world to see, why do we not strive to be the head in this important debate? God has designed that His ambassadors be the head and not the tail; why should we clearly take on a position that will place us at the tail?
"I challenge the leadership of LSU and the leaders and laity of the Seventh-day Adventist Church to hold to and support the Bible truths that our name represents. I close with the following quote taken from the pen of inspiration:
" 'Since the book of nature and the book of revelation bear the impress of the same master mind, they cannot but speak in harmony . . Inferences erroneously drawn from facts observed in nature have, however, led to supposed conflict between science and revelation; and in the effort to restore harmony, interpretations of Scripture have been adopted that undermine and destroy the force of the Word of God. Geology has been thought to contradict the literal interpretation of the Mosaic record of the creation. Millions of years, it is claimed, were required for the evolution of the earth from chaos: and in order to accommodate the Bible to this supposed revelation of science, the days of creation are assumed to have been vast, indefinite periods, covering thousands or even millions of years. Such a conclusion is wholly uncalled for' (Education, pp. 128-130).
"Sincerely,
"Christina R. Harris, Ph.D .. Senior Research Sci¬entist, Kalamazoo, Michigan."-Open Letter to the Board of Trustees of La Sierra University.
Clifford Goldstein, editor of the Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, has deep feelings about this matter:
"What amazes me isn't so much that people can believe in evolution (after all, I used to), but that those who do still want to be Seventh-day Adventists. I can respect someone who, believing in evolutionary theory, rejects the Adventist Church entirely. I have no respect for those who think they can meld the two.
"For anyone, especially our young people, struggling with these issues, I say: Keep seeking with a fervent and honest heart. As long as you stick to the Bible (and Ellen White's books and articles) you will not go wrong. For those among us who have already decided-despite the Bible and Ellen White-on evolution, there are plenty of other churches for you. Ours isn't one. And to those teaching in our schools who believe in evolution and yet take a paycheck from the Seventh-day Adventist Church, I say: If you honestly reject a literal six-day creation in favor of theistic macroevolution, fine; now turn that honesty into integrity and go somewhere [else] where you won't have to cloak your views under the anfractuosities of language."-Clifford Goldstein, Seventh-day Darwinians, article published in 2003 in the Adventist Review.
"Given the vital importance of the Biblical Doctrine of Creation to the Christian Faith and to the Seventh-day Adventist message, the ASI Missions Inc. Board voted unanimously to urge the top leadership of the church to weigh in on this matter with voice, pen, broadcast, and any other media or administrative vehicle that will send a clear, unmistakable signal of reassurance to our lay members.
"It seems only fair that this dialog move to a point where parents and prospective students have a full disclosure of what our Colleges and Universities are offering, so they can make informed decisions and have realistic expectations regarding the philosophy and quality of education being offered.
"We also believe time is of the essence due to the viral internet communication technologies that are powering this dialog.
"You are in our prayers. Courage!"-Harold J. Lance, Chairman of the Board, ASI Missions, Inc .. letter dated May 27, 2009, to Don Schneider, President, North American Division, Silver Spring, Maryland.
We are deeply thankful for faithful Advent believers, such as Dr. Christina Harris, Clifford Goldstein, and Harold Lance. We need more such influential people in high places-to speak up and lead a reformation in our denomination-which will fully return it, on all levels and in all areas, to our historic beliefs!
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
A Clash of Rites
Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: A Clash of Rites
Author: Alan J. Reinach
Publishing date: 05/01/2009 9:05 am
As the election season was building to a climactic finish, and opponents of California’s Proposition 8 publicly mocked claims that gay marriage would impact public school curriculum and religious freedom, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that a first grade class was taken on a field trip to attend the wedding of a popular lesbian teacher.1 This story demolished the credibility of Prop. 8 opponents and heightened fears of marriage supporters. Clearly, gay marriage was already having a demonstrable impact on impressionable young children.
Earlier in the year, National Public Radio, not exactly a bastion of right-wing hysteria, chronicled some of the major legal and legislative challenges to religious freedom posed by gay rights in general, and same-sex marriage in particular. The report declared:
“[S]ame-sex couples are beginning to challenge policies of religious organizations that exclude them, claiming that a religious group’s view that homosexual marriage is a sin cannot be used to violate their right to equal treatment. Now parochial schools, ‘parachurch’ organizations such as Catholic Charities and businesses that refuse to serve gay couples are being sued—and so far, the religious groups are losing.”2
This really gets to the core issue. It is one thing to claim the right to marry, and quite another to restrict the religious beliefs and practices of those who do not approve of same-sex marriage. The stories reported by NPR include both large institutions and small businesses. Catholic Charities shuttered its Boston adoption services when legislators refused to enact a conscience clause respecting its rights to refrain from placing children with same-sex couples. Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City opened up its married student housing to same-sex couples after the state’s highest court ruled that its exclusion violated discrimination laws. In New Mexico, a wedding photographer was fined for refusing to provide services to a same-sex couple. And in a case being closely watched by religious groups around the nation, a Methodist camp meeting organization in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, has had a portion of its property tax exemption revoked for refusing to permit a same-sex couple to conduct a commitment service on its grounds.
The cases cited above scratch only the surface of the legal challenges to religious freedom, which are analyzed by some of the top legal and constitutional scholars in the nation in a new book: Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts. One of the editors, Professor Douglas Laycock, a top First Amendment scholar himself, summed up the problem this way: “All six contributors—religious and secular, left, center and right—agree that same-sex marriage is a threat to religious liberty.” 3
The threat to religious liberty is even more acute in California, due to the legal landscape established by the California Supreme Court last year. As a general proposition, when rights conflict, courts engage in a balancing of interests, seeking to protect the rights of all parties, and weighing individual cases to determine how best to uphold these rights. The California Supreme Court effectively held that the right to be free of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation trumps religious freedom.
The conflict arose in a case in which Christian physicians were sued for refusing artificial insemination to an unmarried lesbian patient, and instead, referred her to another clinic where she obtained the desired services. The court set up the case as a direct conflict of rights:
“Do the rights of religious freedom and free speech, as guaranteed in both the federal and the California constitutions, exempt a medical clinic’s physicians from complying with the California Unruh Civil Rights Act’s prohibition against discrimination based on a person’s sexual orientation? Our answer is no.” 4
Under long-established principles of constitutional adjudication, courts ordinarily approach these problems differently. Instead of declaring one set of rights preeminent, as the court did here, courts have engaged in a more rigorous analysis. The analysis begins by considering whether the application of a law or policy to the religious person or institution would cause them to violate a sincerely held religious belief. Once it has been determined that there is a genuine religious freedom interest at stake, the courts will inquire whether the state’s interest in restricting the religious practice is sufficiently important or compelling. We can assume that the state’s interest in eradicating discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation would be considered compelling. This sets up a genuine conflict of competing rights or interests, requiring the court to search for a way to reconcile these interests that has the least intrusive impact on religious freedom.
In the given case, the least restrictive means had already been accomplished. The Christian doctors had referred the patient to an outside clinic where she obtained the desired care. The doctors also claim they offered to pay any added expense incurred by the patient that insurance did not cover. It was not necessary, then, for the California Supreme Court to exalt the right to be free of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation at the expense of religious freedom. It could have demonstrated respect for both rights. That it chose not to do so, but to devalue religious freedom, has alarmed churches and their lawyers not only in California, but nationally.
Canadian lawyer and keen observer of the battles over same-sex marriage in his country, Barry Bussey analyzed the prospects for a “live and let live” compromise between the religious and gay rights communities, in a chapter titled “The Marriage Debate: The Hidden Danger.” 5 With an evenhandedness often lacking in these discussions, Bussey concludes:
“In the end, it is unlikely that moderation will prevail in either camp. Neither side seems ready to recognize that liberty of conscience cannot be secured for one group alone. The risk remains that the veneer of civility could be swiftly peeled back to reveal the persecuting spirit of those who know they are right, believe their issue is critical, and are convinced that coercion is worth the risk.” 6
Rally for Yes on Prop. 8 in Fresno.
In a sign that such “persecution” is not merely theoretical, following the November election, opponents of Proposition 8 engaged in widespread intimidation of some who donated money to support Prop. 8, costing some people their jobs.
Writing in the L.A. Times prior to the election, Dean R. Broyles observed:
“[A] broad range of constitutional attorneys and scholars . . . affirm that this ‘rights’ clash is real. Marc Stern of the American Jewish Congress calls it a pending ‘train wreck’ or ‘Armageddon.’ In a chilling statement, Chai Feldblum, Georgetown University law professor and thoughtful gay activist who helps draft federal legislation related to sexual orientation, said that when push comes to shove and religious- and sexual-liberty conflict, ‘I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win.’” 7
If the NPR survey of cases is an accurate indication, the courts share Professor Feldblum’s views. Writing in the L.A. Times, Marc Stern expressed his concern about the prospect of protracted conflict between gay marriage and religious freedom:
“If past rulings are any guide, it is religious rights that are likely to be ‘obliterated’ by an emerging popular majority supporting same-sex relationships—and it seems unlikely that the California courts will intervene. That’s a shame.” 8
Reasonable people may disagree about how the conflict of rights should be resolved in specific cases, but the existence of the conflict between gay rights and religious freedom is undeniable. In fact, it is likely to be the main event in religious freedom jurisprudence for the foreseeable future.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alan J. Reinach, an attorney and director of the Department of Public Affairs and Religious Liberty for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Pacific Union (an area of several Western states), writes from Thousand Oaks, California.
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1 Erin Allday, Newsom Becomes Campaign Tool for Prop. 8 Backers, San Francisco Chronicle, October 14, 2008, www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/14/MNKT13G9AD.DTL&type=politics. See also, John Diaz, “A Lesson in Political Naivete,” San Francisco Chronicle, Oct.14, 2008, www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?=/c/a/2008/10/14/EDGE13G80Q.DTL&hw=
first+graders+attend+lesbian+wedding&sn=002&sc=68.
2 Barbara Bradley Hagerty, When Gay Rights and Religious Liberties Clash, NPR, June 13, 2008, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91486191.
3 Douglas Laycock, Anthony R. Picarello, Jr., Robin Fretwell Wilson, eds., Same -Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008).
4 North Coast Women’s Care Medical Group, Inc. v. San Diego Superior Court, Guadalupe Benitez, Real Party in Interest; California Supreme Court, Aug. 18, 2008.
5 Chapter 9 of the book Politics and Prophecy: The Battle for Religious Liberty and the Authentic Gospel, Christa Reinach and Alan J. Reinach, eds. Pacific Press, Nampa, Idaho, 2007.
6 Ibid., p.143.
7 “A Gay-Marriage Pandora’s Box?” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 27, 2008.
8 “Will Gay Rights Trample Religious Freedom?” Los Angeles Times, June 17, 2008.
Author: Alan J. Reinach
Publishing date: 05/01/2009 9:05 am
As the election season was building to a climactic finish, and opponents of California’s Proposition 8 publicly mocked claims that gay marriage would impact public school curriculum and religious freedom, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that a first grade class was taken on a field trip to attend the wedding of a popular lesbian teacher.1 This story demolished the credibility of Prop. 8 opponents and heightened fears of marriage supporters. Clearly, gay marriage was already having a demonstrable impact on impressionable young children.
Earlier in the year, National Public Radio, not exactly a bastion of right-wing hysteria, chronicled some of the major legal and legislative challenges to religious freedom posed by gay rights in general, and same-sex marriage in particular. The report declared:
“[S]ame-sex couples are beginning to challenge policies of religious organizations that exclude them, claiming that a religious group’s view that homosexual marriage is a sin cannot be used to violate their right to equal treatment. Now parochial schools, ‘parachurch’ organizations such as Catholic Charities and businesses that refuse to serve gay couples are being sued—and so far, the religious groups are losing.”2
This really gets to the core issue. It is one thing to claim the right to marry, and quite another to restrict the religious beliefs and practices of those who do not approve of same-sex marriage. The stories reported by NPR include both large institutions and small businesses. Catholic Charities shuttered its Boston adoption services when legislators refused to enact a conscience clause respecting its rights to refrain from placing children with same-sex couples. Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City opened up its married student housing to same-sex couples after the state’s highest court ruled that its exclusion violated discrimination laws. In New Mexico, a wedding photographer was fined for refusing to provide services to a same-sex couple. And in a case being closely watched by religious groups around the nation, a Methodist camp meeting organization in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, has had a portion of its property tax exemption revoked for refusing to permit a same-sex couple to conduct a commitment service on its grounds.
The cases cited above scratch only the surface of the legal challenges to religious freedom, which are analyzed by some of the top legal and constitutional scholars in the nation in a new book: Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts. One of the editors, Professor Douglas Laycock, a top First Amendment scholar himself, summed up the problem this way: “All six contributors—religious and secular, left, center and right—agree that same-sex marriage is a threat to religious liberty.” 3
The threat to religious liberty is even more acute in California, due to the legal landscape established by the California Supreme Court last year. As a general proposition, when rights conflict, courts engage in a balancing of interests, seeking to protect the rights of all parties, and weighing individual cases to determine how best to uphold these rights. The California Supreme Court effectively held that the right to be free of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation trumps religious freedom.
The conflict arose in a case in which Christian physicians were sued for refusing artificial insemination to an unmarried lesbian patient, and instead, referred her to another clinic where she obtained the desired services. The court set up the case as a direct conflict of rights:
“Do the rights of religious freedom and free speech, as guaranteed in both the federal and the California constitutions, exempt a medical clinic’s physicians from complying with the California Unruh Civil Rights Act’s prohibition against discrimination based on a person’s sexual orientation? Our answer is no.” 4
Under long-established principles of constitutional adjudication, courts ordinarily approach these problems differently. Instead of declaring one set of rights preeminent, as the court did here, courts have engaged in a more rigorous analysis. The analysis begins by considering whether the application of a law or policy to the religious person or institution would cause them to violate a sincerely held religious belief. Once it has been determined that there is a genuine religious freedom interest at stake, the courts will inquire whether the state’s interest in restricting the religious practice is sufficiently important or compelling. We can assume that the state’s interest in eradicating discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation would be considered compelling. This sets up a genuine conflict of competing rights or interests, requiring the court to search for a way to reconcile these interests that has the least intrusive impact on religious freedom.
In the given case, the least restrictive means had already been accomplished. The Christian doctors had referred the patient to an outside clinic where she obtained the desired care. The doctors also claim they offered to pay any added expense incurred by the patient that insurance did not cover. It was not necessary, then, for the California Supreme Court to exalt the right to be free of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation at the expense of religious freedom. It could have demonstrated respect for both rights. That it chose not to do so, but to devalue religious freedom, has alarmed churches and their lawyers not only in California, but nationally.
Canadian lawyer and keen observer of the battles over same-sex marriage in his country, Barry Bussey analyzed the prospects for a “live and let live” compromise between the religious and gay rights communities, in a chapter titled “The Marriage Debate: The Hidden Danger.” 5 With an evenhandedness often lacking in these discussions, Bussey concludes:
“In the end, it is unlikely that moderation will prevail in either camp. Neither side seems ready to recognize that liberty of conscience cannot be secured for one group alone. The risk remains that the veneer of civility could be swiftly peeled back to reveal the persecuting spirit of those who know they are right, believe their issue is critical, and are convinced that coercion is worth the risk.” 6
Rally for Yes on Prop. 8 in Fresno.
In a sign that such “persecution” is not merely theoretical, following the November election, opponents of Proposition 8 engaged in widespread intimidation of some who donated money to support Prop. 8, costing some people their jobs.
Writing in the L.A. Times prior to the election, Dean R. Broyles observed:
“[A] broad range of constitutional attorneys and scholars . . . affirm that this ‘rights’ clash is real. Marc Stern of the American Jewish Congress calls it a pending ‘train wreck’ or ‘Armageddon.’ In a chilling statement, Chai Feldblum, Georgetown University law professor and thoughtful gay activist who helps draft federal legislation related to sexual orientation, said that when push comes to shove and religious- and sexual-liberty conflict, ‘I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win.’” 7
If the NPR survey of cases is an accurate indication, the courts share Professor Feldblum’s views. Writing in the L.A. Times, Marc Stern expressed his concern about the prospect of protracted conflict between gay marriage and religious freedom:
“If past rulings are any guide, it is religious rights that are likely to be ‘obliterated’ by an emerging popular majority supporting same-sex relationships—and it seems unlikely that the California courts will intervene. That’s a shame.” 8
Reasonable people may disagree about how the conflict of rights should be resolved in specific cases, but the existence of the conflict between gay rights and religious freedom is undeniable. In fact, it is likely to be the main event in religious freedom jurisprudence for the foreseeable future.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alan J. Reinach, an attorney and director of the Department of Public Affairs and Religious Liberty for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Pacific Union (an area of several Western states), writes from Thousand Oaks, California.
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1 Erin Allday, Newsom Becomes Campaign Tool for Prop. 8 Backers, San Francisco Chronicle, October 14, 2008, www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/14/MNKT13G9AD.DTL&type=politics. See also, John Diaz, “A Lesson in Political Naivete,” San Francisco Chronicle, Oct.14, 2008, www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?=/c/a/2008/10/14/EDGE13G80Q.DTL&hw=
first+graders+attend+lesbian+wedding&sn=002&sc=68.
2 Barbara Bradley Hagerty, When Gay Rights and Religious Liberties Clash, NPR, June 13, 2008, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91486191.
3 Douglas Laycock, Anthony R. Picarello, Jr., Robin Fretwell Wilson, eds., Same -Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008).
4 North Coast Women’s Care Medical Group, Inc. v. San Diego Superior Court, Guadalupe Benitez, Real Party in Interest; California Supreme Court, Aug. 18, 2008.
5 Chapter 9 of the book Politics and Prophecy: The Battle for Religious Liberty and the Authentic Gospel, Christa Reinach and Alan J. Reinach, eds. Pacific Press, Nampa, Idaho, 2007.
6 Ibid., p.143.
7 “A Gay-Marriage Pandora’s Box?” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 27, 2008.
8 “Will Gay Rights Trample Religious Freedom?” Los Angeles Times, June 17, 2008.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Starches
March 2009
Vol. 8, No. 3
People Passionate about Starches Are Healthyand Beautiful
My wife, Mary, and I were enjoying steamed sweet corn (vegan) tamales with a side dish of black beans served to us at a bayside table at Guaymas Mexican/Seafood restaurant in Tiburon, a small town located a few miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. At an inside table next to us sat three plump women, their short sleeves revealing upper arms almost as big as my thighs. They were elegantly dressed and from their speech I knew they were well educated. During the course of our meal I watched all three of them at various times hobble with painstaking efforts from their table to the restroom and back.
A light seaward breeze carried the smells from their clams, shrimp, and vegetables—all deep-fried in fat—over our table, spoiling our meal. I looked at Mary and thought, “these women are at least a decade younger than you are and all three are physically disabled.” For what pleasure? Food? It was all I could do to keep myself from asking them to try some of my tamale, or at least a bite of my black beans, and hand them a business card. I looked across our table and whispered to Mary, “Thank you.” She had no idea that I was telling her how happy she made me, and that some of my happiness came from enjoying the sight of a beautiful woman radiating health.
Where have all the pretty women and handsome men gone? Over to the dark-side of dining. Good-looking people who care enough about themselves to enhance their attractiveness by spending thousands of dollars on clothes, cars, makeup, perfumes, and plastic surgery have become unsightly—sacrificing themselves for yellow and brown food that tastes of grease and salt, and smells repugnant (in my opinion). Lives are ruined by food, to the same degree, as are the lives of a smoker, alcoholic, or narcotics addict destroyed by their misguided choices. Too few people know that for free, they can have all the health that money can’t buy.
Health Is Attractive
I learned the facts of life from my father many years ago. We were close and discussed all matters frankly. Walking down a busy street one day he noticed my eyes drawn to many of the young women passing by. He said, “The reason you find some of these girls especially attractive is because they look healthy.” My hormone-fueled boyish response was, “That’s not what I am looking at Dad.” It took me many years before I understood how right he was. Health is attractive, by natural design, for the preservation of the species. Sexually, we are drawn to healthy people, because those are the ones that we want to mate—to share our genetic material—with. This character of human nature enhances the chances that a loving relationship between man and woman will result in the highest quality offspring. Overweight, and even more so obesity, is a glaring sign of malnutrition and poor health.
In platonic relationships health is also a magnet that pulls people together. In times past, villages of people depended upon the strengths of their individual members in order to survive. Physically fit people could hunt, gather, and defend for the sake of all members in the community. The sick were a burden, and often banished. These same principles transfer to the business world of today. Appearing healthy means you are more likely to add to the common goals of the company. Hearty employees work harder, for longer hours, more cleverly, and more efficiently—they are valuable contributors. Good health radiates your worth to others, resulting in personal advancement.
The Truth Is Simple and Easy to Explain
Most people are completely backwards about the diet that results in health and an attractive appearance. They learn, “Don’t eat starches, because rice turns to sugar, which turns to fat, making you gain weight.” If this mantra were true then there would be an epidemic of obesity among the 1.73 billion Asians living on rice-based diets. Confirming this truth, after moving west and replacing their starch with “high-protein” foods, then people from Japan and the Philippines would become trimmer and healthier looking. Is that what you see? “Potatoes are fattening.” If true, then why during the 2000 McDougall Adventure trip to Peru, a country where common potatoes are the staple food, were the residents so trim and strong looking? We did see a few overweight people on this trip. The “chubby ones” were the waiters and chefs serving tourists their favorite meat and cheese dishes, and obviously sampling the menu.
Let’s look together at a globe of the Earth and identify the populations of people who look the youngest, healthiest, and trimmest. Those living in Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines stand out. Their diet is mostly rice with some vegetables. In rural Mexico we will find beautiful people eating corn, beans, and squash. No one is overweight or on a diet there. The men, women and children of central New Guinea are nourished almost entirely by sweet potatoes. These people have no need for Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig. Worldwide, populations with the highest consumption of starch are the trimmest and fittest.1 Learn about the health of these trim people and you will discover that they also have extremely low rates of diabetes, arthritis, gallbladder disease, constipation, indigestion, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, and cancers of the breast, prostate, and colon.
Starches Generate Fitness
The basic metabolism of the body is genetically encoded to run most efficiently on starches, and no amount of willpower, dieting, or wishful thinking will ever change the fundamentals of our internal workings. The one big simple solution to health and beauty is to eat the diet we were designed for—a starch-based diet.
Starches Are Appetite Satisfying.
The hunger drive keeps you and the whole human race alive. You will not fool your hunger drive by pushing yourself away from the table, putting your fork down between bites, eating from a small plate, or counting calories. It will always hurt to be hungry and you can never train yourself to not feel that pain, even if you practice until you are 90 years old. So give in and eat, you must satisfy this basic survival need. The control you do have is the composition of the foods that are on your plate. Choose wisely. Meat, dairy, and oils for meals will mean overweight and sickness. Starches, vegetables, and fruits will mean a trim fit body and lifetime of excellent health.
You may have heard that “all calories are the same when it comes to body weight.” This is incorrect, especially in terms of efficiency of appetite satisfaction and ease of fat accumulation. Three substances—protein, fat, and carbohydrate—can provide fuel for the body, measured as calories. Starches, like corn, beans, potatoes, and rice, are abundant in carbohydrates, dietary fiber, and are very low in fat. Appetite satisfaction begins with physically filling the stomach. Compared to cheese (4 calories per gram), meat (4 calories per gram), and oils (9 calories per gram), starches, at only one calorie per gram, are very calorie dilute. In the simplest terms, starches physically will fill you up with a fraction—one-fourth—of the calories as will cheese, meat, and oil.2 Furthermore, research comparing the impact of eating carbohydrates and fats on the appeasement of our appetite shows carbohydrates lead to long-term satiety, enduring for hours between meals; whereas the fats in a meal have little impact on satiety—people are left wanting more food when they eat fats and oils.3,4
My early eating experiences taught me this lesson well. Before I understood the importance of starch-centered meals my diet consisted of red meat (no carbohydrates), chicken (no carbohydrates), fish (no carbohydrates), cheese (2% carbohydrates), and animal fats and vegetable oils (no carbohydrates). After finishing my first full plate of these foods I was still starving. My second plate left me with a sense of physical fullness in my abdomen, but still very hungry. After my third plate of carbohydrate-deficient foods I received two signals that the time had come to stop eating—I felt overstuffed and in pain. But I remember thinking, because I was still not satisfied, that “if I had room, I would like to stuff into my stomach one more pork chop.” At times I wondered if I had emotional issues with food because I was never content. Maybe I was a compulsive overeater? Fortunately, my “mental illness,” my compulsiveness, was completely cured once I began eating sufficient amounts of appetite-satisfying carbohydrates, plentiful in starches.
Excess Starch Does Not Turn to Body Fat
A widely held belief is that the sugars in starches are readily converted into fat and then stored unattractively in the abdomen, hips, and buttock. Incorrect! And there is no disagreement about the truth among scientists or their published scientific research.5-13 After eating, the complex carbohydrates found in starches, such as rice, are digested into simple sugars in the intestine and then absorbed into the bloodstream where they are transported to trillions of cells in the body in order to provide for energy. Carbohydrates (sugars) consumed in excess of the body’s daily needs can be stored (invisibly) as glycogen in the muscles and liver. The total storage capacity for glycogen is about two pounds. Carbohydrates consumed in excess of our need and beyond our limited storage capacity are not readily stored as body fat. Instead, these excess carbohydrate calories are burned off as heat (a process known as facultative dietary thermogenesis) or used in physical movements not associated with exercise.9,13
The process of turning sugars into fats is known as de novo lipogenesis. Some animals, such as pigs and cows, can efficiently convert the low-energy, inexpensive carbohydrates found in grains and grasses into calorie-dense fats.5 This metabolic efficiency makes pigs and cows ideal “food animals.” Bees also perform de novo lipogenesis; converting honey (simple carbohydrates) into wax (fats). However, human beings are very inefficient at this process and as a result de novo lipogenesis does not occur under usual living conditions in people.5-13 When, during extreme conditions, de novo lipogenesis does occur the metabolic cost is about 30% of the calories consumed—a very wasteful process.11
Under experimental laboratory conditions overfeeding of large amounts of simple sugars to subjects will result in a little bit of de novo lipogenesis. For example, trim and obese women were overfed 50% more total calories than they usually ate in a day, along with an extra 3.5 ounces (135 grams) of refined sugar. From this overfeeding the women produced less than 4 grams (36 calories) of fat daily, which means a person would have to be overfed by this amount of extra calories and sugar every day for nearly 4 months in order to gain one extra pound of body fat.10 Obviously, even overeating substantial quantities of refined and processed carbohydrates is a relatively unimportant source of body fat. So where does all that belly fat come from? The fat you eat is the fat you wear.
Fat Is the Metabolic Dollar Saved for the Next Famine
After eating, dietary fat (from lard, butter, meat, cheese, nuts, olive oil, etc.) is absorbed from the intestine into the bloodstream and transported to the millions of cells designed for storage—the body fat (adipose) cells. The metabolic cost for this transfer is relatively inexpensive (3% of the calories consumed).11 No pricey chemical conversion is required, so this is a routine metabolic movement after every typical meal. When samples of a person’s body fat tissue are chemically analyzed the results reveal the kinds of fats which that person commonly eats.14-17 For example, the consumption of margarine and shortening results in high proportions of “trans” fats in a person’s fatty tissues. A diet with large amounts of cold-water marine fish means omega-3 fats are deposited and stored in the body fat. The saying “from my lips to my hips” expresses the real life effects of the fat-laden Western diet. Fortunately, starches contain very little fat for us to wear.
Starches Cause Us to Radiate Vitality
Weight loss is accomplished every year by thousands of people by methods that don’t necessarily promote health and commonly cause illness. The best example of this is the low-carbohydrate, Atkins-type approaches that have been so popular in the recent past. These diets work by severe carbohydrate deprivation, which causes a state of illness (with the hallmark of ketosis). When people become sick they lose their appetite and thereby lose weight. This method for losing extra pounds is analogous to the weight loss seen in people taking cancer chemotherapy drugs.18 To the careful observer, people following low-carbohydrate diets look and act sick.
A starch-based diet results in loss of excess body fat, and as desirable, radiant health. Winning endurance athletes know well the benefits of “carbohydrate loading.” In addition to achieving peak performance, following a starch-based diet improves blood flow to all tissues. The skin glows from improved circulation. A clear complexion is also a welcome byproduct from the low-fat nature of starches—no more oily skin, blackheads, whiteheads, and acne. From the weight loss and the relief of arthritis, people become more active and agile, like when they were much younger. The key to gaining all these benefits is accomplished solely by changing the composition of the foods on your plate—but that’s easier said, than done.
Moderation Is Impossible for Passionate People
My great grandmother, Laura Bristow lived to be 106 years old eating a “well-balanced diet.” I recall her telling me, when I was a child, “Johnny, you eat too much meat; it’s going to make you sick.” Years later—I was 30 and she was 102—I had become, in all practical terms, a strict vegetarian. One afternoon at her home in the suburbs of Detroit she asked me to drive to the neighborhood McDonald’s and buy her a hamburger—a 30 cent burger, made with paper thin ground beef, two pickle slices and a blob of mustard and ketchup, all hidden within two halves of an airy white bread bun. Upon my return she proceeded to cut the hamburger into quarters and she shook one quarter in my face and advised me, “If you ate a little more meat you would be healthier.” She then ate two quarters and put the rest away for later. My great-grandmother was by nature a very moderate person who picked at tiny platefuls of traditional American foods, drank ¼ cup of diluted coffee each morning, and had one small glass of red wine on holidays. I am not like her.
I am not a restrained person and neither are most of my patients. In my youth I started the day with several mugs of strong coffee, I frequented all-you-can eat buffets and fast food restaurants, I smoked two packages of Marlboros daily, and too often unwound at the end of my stress-filled day with a whiskey or two. (I also paid a big price for this excessive behavior with a cholesterol level of 335 mg/dl, 50 pounds of excess body fat, major abdominal surgery, and a debilitating stroke, all before the age of 25 years.) I realize most people are not as wicked as I was, but on the other hand most people I know allow at least one of these overindulgences in their lives—and that one extravagance is usually unending forkfuls of rich foods. For people like us, attempts at moderation result in continued dependence and recurring failures.
“Everything in moderation” has been preached to every generation throughout human history. It didn’t work way back then and it doesn’t work for most folks today. Have you ever met a smoker who quit by cutting down? I haven’t. Have you ever heard of an alcoholic who sobered up by switching to beer? Neither have I. Westerners are completely addicted to their steaks, cheeses, and pies. Don’t tease them with a little bit. Cutting down on the portion size of fried chicken, gravy, biscuits, and ice cream is slow torture and is one of the primary reasons diets fail.
William Lloyd Garrison (1805 – 1879), known for his anti-slavery activities, clearly understood the shortcomings of moderation, “Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation.” The startling observation that almost all people living in Western societies are fat and/or sick with diseases which will wreck and shorten their lives, should have health professionals up in arms, demanding an immediate and complete end to this senseless suffering—regardless of the expense and effort. But, for some unexplainable reason, the loss of a father or a husband to a heart attack, the disfigurement of a mother by breast cancer surgery, and the blinding of a friend from diabetes are accepted consequences for our birthright to eat like aristocrats. To mitigate these food-induced tragedies we are told to eat a little less of the same.
Throughout my entire life I have been enthusiastic about everything—my schoolwork, my hobbies, my sports, the whole lot of life. I was born this way, and scientific research establishes the fact that like the color of our eyes and hair, our personality traits are determined in part by complex genetics.19,20 Early life experiences fostered my exuberant nature. So now, even if I wanted to, I could not become a “moderate person.” Still, I love life and do not want my high-spirited personality to kill me, as it almost did in my youth. So I have found the solution.
I now direct my energies towards supportive, not destructive, behaviors. I have learned to love healthy foods—I eat them without reservation. Windsurfing is my passion. I eagerly look forward to long walks with my youngest grandson carried in a backpack. I spend a little extra money to indulge myself with bottled pure water. My favorite drink is herbal tea—and I do drink a lot of it. I fill my lungs with fresh air cleaned by an air purifier. I passionately pursue every “good thing” in my life. Irish poet and dramatist, Oscar Wilde said: "Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess." I encourage you to take these words to heart and live life enthusiastically and focused on health-supporting behaviors.
References:
1) The thinnest people eat the most carbohydrate:http://webcenters.netscape.compuserve.com/homerealestate/package.jsp?name=fte/thinnestpeople/thinnestpeople
2) Rolls BJ. The role of energy density in the overconsumption of fat. J Nutr. 2000 Feb;130(2S Suppl):268S-271S.
3) Blundell JE, Lawton CL, Cotton JR, Macdiarmid JI. Control of human appetite: implications for the intake of dietary fat. Annu Rev Nutr. 1996;16:285-319.
4) Rolls BJ, Kim-Harris S, Fischman MW, Foltin RW, Moran TH, Stoner SA. Satiety after preloads with different amounts of fat and carbohydrate: implications for obesity. Am J Clin Nutr. 1994 Oct;60(4):476-87. Annu Rev Nutr. 1996;16:285-319
5) Hellerstein MK. De novo lipogenesis in humans: metabolic and regulatory aspects. Eur J Clin Nutr. 1999 Apr;53 Suppl 1:S53-65.
6) Acheson KJ, Schutz Y, Bessard T, Anantharaman K, Flatt JP, Jequier E. Glycogen storage capacity and de novo lipogenesis during massive carbohydrate overfeeding in man. Am J Clin Nutr. 1988 Aug;48(2):240-7.
7) Minehira K, Bettschart V, Vidal H, Vega N, Di Vetta V, Rey V, Schneiter P, Tappy L. Effect of carbohydrate overfeeding on whole body and adipose tissue metabolism in humans. Obes Res. 2003 Sep;11(9):1096-103.
8) McDevitt RM, Bott SJ, Harding M, Coward WA, Bluck LJ, Prentice AM. De novo lipogenesis during controlled overfeeding with sucrose or glucose in lean and obese women. Am J Clin Nutr. 2001 Dec;74(6):737-46
9) Dirlewanger M, di Vetta V, Guenat E, Battilana P, Seematter G, Schneiter P, JÇquier E, Tappy L. Effects of short-term carbohydrate or fat overfeeding on energy expenditure and plasma leptin concentrations in healthy female subjects. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 2000 Nov;24(11):1413-8.)
10) McDevitt RM, Bott SJ, Harding M, Coward WA, Bluck LJ, Prentice AM. De novo lipogenesis during controlled overfeeding with sucrose or glucose in lean and obese women. Am J Clin Nutr. 2001 Dec;74(6):737-46
11) Danforth E Jr. Diet and obesity. Am J Clin Nutr. 1985 May;41(5 Suppl):1132-45.
12) Hellerstein MK. No common energy currency: de novo lipogenesis as the road less traveled. Am J Clin Nutr. 2001 Dec;74(6):707-8.
13) Tappy L. Metabolic consequences of overfeeding in humans. Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. 2004 Nov;7(6):623-8.
14) Thomas LH, Jones PR, Winter JA, Smith H. Hydrogenated oils and fats: the presence of chemically-modified fatty acids in human adipose tissue. Am J Clin Nutr. 1981 May;34(5):877-86.
15) London SJ, Sacks FM, Caesar J, Stampfer MJ, Siguel E, Willett WC. Fatty acid composition of subcutaneous adipose tissue and diet in postmenopausal US women. Am J Clin Nutr. 1991 Aug;54(2):340-5.
16) Baylin A, Kabagambe EK, Siles X, Campos H. Adipose tissue biomarkers of fatty acid intake. Am J Clin Nutr. 2002 Oct;76(4):750-7.
17) Brevik A, Veierød MB, Drevon CA, Andersen LF. Evaluation of the odd fatty acids 15:0 and 17:0 in serum and adipose tissue as markers of intake of milk and dairy fat. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2005 Dec;59(12):1417-22.
18) McDougall J. Effects of a low-carbohydrate diet. Mayo Clin Proc. 2004 Mar;79(3):431;
19) Reif A, Lesch KP. Toward a molecular architecture of personality. Behav Brain Res. 2003 Feb 17;139(1-2):1-20.
20) Noblett KL, Coccaro EF. Molecular genetics of personality. Curr Psychiatry Rep. 2005 Mar;7(1):73-80.
2009 John McDougall All Rights Reserved
Vol. 8, No. 3
People Passionate about Starches Are Healthyand Beautiful
My wife, Mary, and I were enjoying steamed sweet corn (vegan) tamales with a side dish of black beans served to us at a bayside table at Guaymas Mexican/Seafood restaurant in Tiburon, a small town located a few miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. At an inside table next to us sat three plump women, their short sleeves revealing upper arms almost as big as my thighs. They were elegantly dressed and from their speech I knew they were well educated. During the course of our meal I watched all three of them at various times hobble with painstaking efforts from their table to the restroom and back.
A light seaward breeze carried the smells from their clams, shrimp, and vegetables—all deep-fried in fat—over our table, spoiling our meal. I looked at Mary and thought, “these women are at least a decade younger than you are and all three are physically disabled.” For what pleasure? Food? It was all I could do to keep myself from asking them to try some of my tamale, or at least a bite of my black beans, and hand them a business card. I looked across our table and whispered to Mary, “Thank you.” She had no idea that I was telling her how happy she made me, and that some of my happiness came from enjoying the sight of a beautiful woman radiating health.
Where have all the pretty women and handsome men gone? Over to the dark-side of dining. Good-looking people who care enough about themselves to enhance their attractiveness by spending thousands of dollars on clothes, cars, makeup, perfumes, and plastic surgery have become unsightly—sacrificing themselves for yellow and brown food that tastes of grease and salt, and smells repugnant (in my opinion). Lives are ruined by food, to the same degree, as are the lives of a smoker, alcoholic, or narcotics addict destroyed by their misguided choices. Too few people know that for free, they can have all the health that money can’t buy.
Health Is Attractive
I learned the facts of life from my father many years ago. We were close and discussed all matters frankly. Walking down a busy street one day he noticed my eyes drawn to many of the young women passing by. He said, “The reason you find some of these girls especially attractive is because they look healthy.” My hormone-fueled boyish response was, “That’s not what I am looking at Dad.” It took me many years before I understood how right he was. Health is attractive, by natural design, for the preservation of the species. Sexually, we are drawn to healthy people, because those are the ones that we want to mate—to share our genetic material—with. This character of human nature enhances the chances that a loving relationship between man and woman will result in the highest quality offspring. Overweight, and even more so obesity, is a glaring sign of malnutrition and poor health.
In platonic relationships health is also a magnet that pulls people together. In times past, villages of people depended upon the strengths of their individual members in order to survive. Physically fit people could hunt, gather, and defend for the sake of all members in the community. The sick were a burden, and often banished. These same principles transfer to the business world of today. Appearing healthy means you are more likely to add to the common goals of the company. Hearty employees work harder, for longer hours, more cleverly, and more efficiently—they are valuable contributors. Good health radiates your worth to others, resulting in personal advancement.
The Truth Is Simple and Easy to Explain
Most people are completely backwards about the diet that results in health and an attractive appearance. They learn, “Don’t eat starches, because rice turns to sugar, which turns to fat, making you gain weight.” If this mantra were true then there would be an epidemic of obesity among the 1.73 billion Asians living on rice-based diets. Confirming this truth, after moving west and replacing their starch with “high-protein” foods, then people from Japan and the Philippines would become trimmer and healthier looking. Is that what you see? “Potatoes are fattening.” If true, then why during the 2000 McDougall Adventure trip to Peru, a country where common potatoes are the staple food, were the residents so trim and strong looking? We did see a few overweight people on this trip. The “chubby ones” were the waiters and chefs serving tourists their favorite meat and cheese dishes, and obviously sampling the menu.
Let’s look together at a globe of the Earth and identify the populations of people who look the youngest, healthiest, and trimmest. Those living in Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines stand out. Their diet is mostly rice with some vegetables. In rural Mexico we will find beautiful people eating corn, beans, and squash. No one is overweight or on a diet there. The men, women and children of central New Guinea are nourished almost entirely by sweet potatoes. These people have no need for Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig. Worldwide, populations with the highest consumption of starch are the trimmest and fittest.1 Learn about the health of these trim people and you will discover that they also have extremely low rates of diabetes, arthritis, gallbladder disease, constipation, indigestion, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, and cancers of the breast, prostate, and colon.
Starches Generate Fitness
The basic metabolism of the body is genetically encoded to run most efficiently on starches, and no amount of willpower, dieting, or wishful thinking will ever change the fundamentals of our internal workings. The one big simple solution to health and beauty is to eat the diet we were designed for—a starch-based diet.
Starches Are Appetite Satisfying.
The hunger drive keeps you and the whole human race alive. You will not fool your hunger drive by pushing yourself away from the table, putting your fork down between bites, eating from a small plate, or counting calories. It will always hurt to be hungry and you can never train yourself to not feel that pain, even if you practice until you are 90 years old. So give in and eat, you must satisfy this basic survival need. The control you do have is the composition of the foods that are on your plate. Choose wisely. Meat, dairy, and oils for meals will mean overweight and sickness. Starches, vegetables, and fruits will mean a trim fit body and lifetime of excellent health.
You may have heard that “all calories are the same when it comes to body weight.” This is incorrect, especially in terms of efficiency of appetite satisfaction and ease of fat accumulation. Three substances—protein, fat, and carbohydrate—can provide fuel for the body, measured as calories. Starches, like corn, beans, potatoes, and rice, are abundant in carbohydrates, dietary fiber, and are very low in fat. Appetite satisfaction begins with physically filling the stomach. Compared to cheese (4 calories per gram), meat (4 calories per gram), and oils (9 calories per gram), starches, at only one calorie per gram, are very calorie dilute. In the simplest terms, starches physically will fill you up with a fraction—one-fourth—of the calories as will cheese, meat, and oil.2 Furthermore, research comparing the impact of eating carbohydrates and fats on the appeasement of our appetite shows carbohydrates lead to long-term satiety, enduring for hours between meals; whereas the fats in a meal have little impact on satiety—people are left wanting more food when they eat fats and oils.3,4
My early eating experiences taught me this lesson well. Before I understood the importance of starch-centered meals my diet consisted of red meat (no carbohydrates), chicken (no carbohydrates), fish (no carbohydrates), cheese (2% carbohydrates), and animal fats and vegetable oils (no carbohydrates). After finishing my first full plate of these foods I was still starving. My second plate left me with a sense of physical fullness in my abdomen, but still very hungry. After my third plate of carbohydrate-deficient foods I received two signals that the time had come to stop eating—I felt overstuffed and in pain. But I remember thinking, because I was still not satisfied, that “if I had room, I would like to stuff into my stomach one more pork chop.” At times I wondered if I had emotional issues with food because I was never content. Maybe I was a compulsive overeater? Fortunately, my “mental illness,” my compulsiveness, was completely cured once I began eating sufficient amounts of appetite-satisfying carbohydrates, plentiful in starches.
Excess Starch Does Not Turn to Body Fat
A widely held belief is that the sugars in starches are readily converted into fat and then stored unattractively in the abdomen, hips, and buttock. Incorrect! And there is no disagreement about the truth among scientists or their published scientific research.5-13 After eating, the complex carbohydrates found in starches, such as rice, are digested into simple sugars in the intestine and then absorbed into the bloodstream where they are transported to trillions of cells in the body in order to provide for energy. Carbohydrates (sugars) consumed in excess of the body’s daily needs can be stored (invisibly) as glycogen in the muscles and liver. The total storage capacity for glycogen is about two pounds. Carbohydrates consumed in excess of our need and beyond our limited storage capacity are not readily stored as body fat. Instead, these excess carbohydrate calories are burned off as heat (a process known as facultative dietary thermogenesis) or used in physical movements not associated with exercise.9,13
The process of turning sugars into fats is known as de novo lipogenesis. Some animals, such as pigs and cows, can efficiently convert the low-energy, inexpensive carbohydrates found in grains and grasses into calorie-dense fats.5 This metabolic efficiency makes pigs and cows ideal “food animals.” Bees also perform de novo lipogenesis; converting honey (simple carbohydrates) into wax (fats). However, human beings are very inefficient at this process and as a result de novo lipogenesis does not occur under usual living conditions in people.5-13 When, during extreme conditions, de novo lipogenesis does occur the metabolic cost is about 30% of the calories consumed—a very wasteful process.11
Under experimental laboratory conditions overfeeding of large amounts of simple sugars to subjects will result in a little bit of de novo lipogenesis. For example, trim and obese women were overfed 50% more total calories than they usually ate in a day, along with an extra 3.5 ounces (135 grams) of refined sugar. From this overfeeding the women produced less than 4 grams (36 calories) of fat daily, which means a person would have to be overfed by this amount of extra calories and sugar every day for nearly 4 months in order to gain one extra pound of body fat.10 Obviously, even overeating substantial quantities of refined and processed carbohydrates is a relatively unimportant source of body fat. So where does all that belly fat come from? The fat you eat is the fat you wear.
Fat Is the Metabolic Dollar Saved for the Next Famine
After eating, dietary fat (from lard, butter, meat, cheese, nuts, olive oil, etc.) is absorbed from the intestine into the bloodstream and transported to the millions of cells designed for storage—the body fat (adipose) cells. The metabolic cost for this transfer is relatively inexpensive (3% of the calories consumed).11 No pricey chemical conversion is required, so this is a routine metabolic movement after every typical meal. When samples of a person’s body fat tissue are chemically analyzed the results reveal the kinds of fats which that person commonly eats.14-17 For example, the consumption of margarine and shortening results in high proportions of “trans” fats in a person’s fatty tissues. A diet with large amounts of cold-water marine fish means omega-3 fats are deposited and stored in the body fat. The saying “from my lips to my hips” expresses the real life effects of the fat-laden Western diet. Fortunately, starches contain very little fat for us to wear.
Starches Cause Us to Radiate Vitality
Weight loss is accomplished every year by thousands of people by methods that don’t necessarily promote health and commonly cause illness. The best example of this is the low-carbohydrate, Atkins-type approaches that have been so popular in the recent past. These diets work by severe carbohydrate deprivation, which causes a state of illness (with the hallmark of ketosis). When people become sick they lose their appetite and thereby lose weight. This method for losing extra pounds is analogous to the weight loss seen in people taking cancer chemotherapy drugs.18 To the careful observer, people following low-carbohydrate diets look and act sick.
A starch-based diet results in loss of excess body fat, and as desirable, radiant health. Winning endurance athletes know well the benefits of “carbohydrate loading.” In addition to achieving peak performance, following a starch-based diet improves blood flow to all tissues. The skin glows from improved circulation. A clear complexion is also a welcome byproduct from the low-fat nature of starches—no more oily skin, blackheads, whiteheads, and acne. From the weight loss and the relief of arthritis, people become more active and agile, like when they were much younger. The key to gaining all these benefits is accomplished solely by changing the composition of the foods on your plate—but that’s easier said, than done.
Moderation Is Impossible for Passionate People
My great grandmother, Laura Bristow lived to be 106 years old eating a “well-balanced diet.” I recall her telling me, when I was a child, “Johnny, you eat too much meat; it’s going to make you sick.” Years later—I was 30 and she was 102—I had become, in all practical terms, a strict vegetarian. One afternoon at her home in the suburbs of Detroit she asked me to drive to the neighborhood McDonald’s and buy her a hamburger—a 30 cent burger, made with paper thin ground beef, two pickle slices and a blob of mustard and ketchup, all hidden within two halves of an airy white bread bun. Upon my return she proceeded to cut the hamburger into quarters and she shook one quarter in my face and advised me, “If you ate a little more meat you would be healthier.” She then ate two quarters and put the rest away for later. My great-grandmother was by nature a very moderate person who picked at tiny platefuls of traditional American foods, drank ¼ cup of diluted coffee each morning, and had one small glass of red wine on holidays. I am not like her.
I am not a restrained person and neither are most of my patients. In my youth I started the day with several mugs of strong coffee, I frequented all-you-can eat buffets and fast food restaurants, I smoked two packages of Marlboros daily, and too often unwound at the end of my stress-filled day with a whiskey or two. (I also paid a big price for this excessive behavior with a cholesterol level of 335 mg/dl, 50 pounds of excess body fat, major abdominal surgery, and a debilitating stroke, all before the age of 25 years.) I realize most people are not as wicked as I was, but on the other hand most people I know allow at least one of these overindulgences in their lives—and that one extravagance is usually unending forkfuls of rich foods. For people like us, attempts at moderation result in continued dependence and recurring failures.
“Everything in moderation” has been preached to every generation throughout human history. It didn’t work way back then and it doesn’t work for most folks today. Have you ever met a smoker who quit by cutting down? I haven’t. Have you ever heard of an alcoholic who sobered up by switching to beer? Neither have I. Westerners are completely addicted to their steaks, cheeses, and pies. Don’t tease them with a little bit. Cutting down on the portion size of fried chicken, gravy, biscuits, and ice cream is slow torture and is one of the primary reasons diets fail.
William Lloyd Garrison (1805 – 1879), known for his anti-slavery activities, clearly understood the shortcomings of moderation, “Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation.” The startling observation that almost all people living in Western societies are fat and/or sick with diseases which will wreck and shorten their lives, should have health professionals up in arms, demanding an immediate and complete end to this senseless suffering—regardless of the expense and effort. But, for some unexplainable reason, the loss of a father or a husband to a heart attack, the disfigurement of a mother by breast cancer surgery, and the blinding of a friend from diabetes are accepted consequences for our birthright to eat like aristocrats. To mitigate these food-induced tragedies we are told to eat a little less of the same.
Throughout my entire life I have been enthusiastic about everything—my schoolwork, my hobbies, my sports, the whole lot of life. I was born this way, and scientific research establishes the fact that like the color of our eyes and hair, our personality traits are determined in part by complex genetics.19,20 Early life experiences fostered my exuberant nature. So now, even if I wanted to, I could not become a “moderate person.” Still, I love life and do not want my high-spirited personality to kill me, as it almost did in my youth. So I have found the solution.
I now direct my energies towards supportive, not destructive, behaviors. I have learned to love healthy foods—I eat them without reservation. Windsurfing is my passion. I eagerly look forward to long walks with my youngest grandson carried in a backpack. I spend a little extra money to indulge myself with bottled pure water. My favorite drink is herbal tea—and I do drink a lot of it. I fill my lungs with fresh air cleaned by an air purifier. I passionately pursue every “good thing” in my life. Irish poet and dramatist, Oscar Wilde said: "Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess." I encourage you to take these words to heart and live life enthusiastically and focused on health-supporting behaviors.
References:
1) The thinnest people eat the most carbohydrate:http://webcenters.netscape.compuserve.com/homerealestate/package.jsp?name=fte/thinnestpeople/thinnestpeople
2) Rolls BJ. The role of energy density in the overconsumption of fat. J Nutr. 2000 Feb;130(2S Suppl):268S-271S.
3) Blundell JE, Lawton CL, Cotton JR, Macdiarmid JI. Control of human appetite: implications for the intake of dietary fat. Annu Rev Nutr. 1996;16:285-319.
4) Rolls BJ, Kim-Harris S, Fischman MW, Foltin RW, Moran TH, Stoner SA. Satiety after preloads with different amounts of fat and carbohydrate: implications for obesity. Am J Clin Nutr. 1994 Oct;60(4):476-87. Annu Rev Nutr. 1996;16:285-319
5) Hellerstein MK. De novo lipogenesis in humans: metabolic and regulatory aspects. Eur J Clin Nutr. 1999 Apr;53 Suppl 1:S53-65.
6) Acheson KJ, Schutz Y, Bessard T, Anantharaman K, Flatt JP, Jequier E. Glycogen storage capacity and de novo lipogenesis during massive carbohydrate overfeeding in man. Am J Clin Nutr. 1988 Aug;48(2):240-7.
7) Minehira K, Bettschart V, Vidal H, Vega N, Di Vetta V, Rey V, Schneiter P, Tappy L. Effect of carbohydrate overfeeding on whole body and adipose tissue metabolism in humans. Obes Res. 2003 Sep;11(9):1096-103.
8) McDevitt RM, Bott SJ, Harding M, Coward WA, Bluck LJ, Prentice AM. De novo lipogenesis during controlled overfeeding with sucrose or glucose in lean and obese women. Am J Clin Nutr. 2001 Dec;74(6):737-46
9) Dirlewanger M, di Vetta V, Guenat E, Battilana P, Seematter G, Schneiter P, JÇquier E, Tappy L. Effects of short-term carbohydrate or fat overfeeding on energy expenditure and plasma leptin concentrations in healthy female subjects. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 2000 Nov;24(11):1413-8.)
10) McDevitt RM, Bott SJ, Harding M, Coward WA, Bluck LJ, Prentice AM. De novo lipogenesis during controlled overfeeding with sucrose or glucose in lean and obese women. Am J Clin Nutr. 2001 Dec;74(6):737-46
11) Danforth E Jr. Diet and obesity. Am J Clin Nutr. 1985 May;41(5 Suppl):1132-45.
12) Hellerstein MK. No common energy currency: de novo lipogenesis as the road less traveled. Am J Clin Nutr. 2001 Dec;74(6):707-8.
13) Tappy L. Metabolic consequences of overfeeding in humans. Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. 2004 Nov;7(6):623-8.
14) Thomas LH, Jones PR, Winter JA, Smith H. Hydrogenated oils and fats: the presence of chemically-modified fatty acids in human adipose tissue. Am J Clin Nutr. 1981 May;34(5):877-86.
15) London SJ, Sacks FM, Caesar J, Stampfer MJ, Siguel E, Willett WC. Fatty acid composition of subcutaneous adipose tissue and diet in postmenopausal US women. Am J Clin Nutr. 1991 Aug;54(2):340-5.
16) Baylin A, Kabagambe EK, Siles X, Campos H. Adipose tissue biomarkers of fatty acid intake. Am J Clin Nutr. 2002 Oct;76(4):750-7.
17) Brevik A, Veierød MB, Drevon CA, Andersen LF. Evaluation of the odd fatty acids 15:0 and 17:0 in serum and adipose tissue as markers of intake of milk and dairy fat. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2005 Dec;59(12):1417-22.
18) McDougall J. Effects of a low-carbohydrate diet. Mayo Clin Proc. 2004 Mar;79(3):431;
19) Reif A, Lesch KP. Toward a molecular architecture of personality. Behav Brain Res. 2003 Feb 17;139(1-2):1-20.
20) Noblett KL, Coccaro EF. Molecular genetics of personality. Curr Psychiatry Rep. 2005 Mar;7(1):73-80.
2009 John McDougall All Rights Reserved
Friday, March 6, 2009
Idol-Elect
Why millions of Americans are totally mesmerized by Barack Obama
By Lyle H. Rossiter Jr., M.D. Copyright 2009 WorldNetDaily.com Inc.
CHARASMATIC, brilliant, mesmerizing. These and other glowing attributions have been assigned to President-elect Barack Obama in a wave of electoral celebration. As he bounds up steps and strides across platforms to roars of approval, tears of joy on ecstatic faces, even swoons, greet his eminence. A harsh political critic, formerly intent on altering his anatomy, now weeps in his presence. A woman widely known for her wisdom dubs him “The One.”
The Phenomenon himself modestly declares: “We are the ones we have been waiting for,” though he really means “I am The One you have been waiting for.” With his dazzling debut on the world’s political stage, even foreigners have suspended their fashionable contempt for all things American. Millions now acknowledge a new Idol.
Of course, there is no thing new about the human tendency to create idealized personas, especially in politics. In fact, idealizing others is part of normal human development. The toddler-age child believes his mother is the most wonderful person in the world. Overlooking her flaws, he expects her to protect him (even if she doesn’t), to meet all his needs and desires (even if she doesn’t) and to relieve his pain (even if She doesn’t). By age 4 or 5, his bond with her will include something akin to worship. In those same preschool years, he will likely idealize his father for real or imagined powers, again, with something akin to worship.
By their late grade-school years, children idealize rock stars and sports heroes. “Overestimation of the object,” as we psychiatrists sometimes call it, is surely present when we fall in love: The newly struck lover invariably idealizes his beloved. In our adult spiritual lives, our reverence for the deity is defined in part by its inherent idealism and by our expectations of salvation. In the normal course of development, we idealize certain ethical and moral principles, and at the core of our patriotism lies a deep reverence for the political ideals that define our country. Idealizing is in our genes. If idealizing other persons and things is indeed normal in our human nature, we may then ask whether this tendency can go awry. That is, if we pervert this process, can we unwittingly cause ourselves serious problems? The answer is: “Yes, we can!” In fact, we have already begun.
When a child’s development proceeds well enough, his tendency to overvalue others is gradually neutralized to become a mature capacity for realistic admiration. Instead of starry-eyed worship of grand illusions, the mature citizen admires and idealizes proven values. He reveres, among other things, certain time-honored virtues and the people who practice them, especially the personal ideals of honesty, integrity, self-reliance, courage, persistence and dependability, the political ideals of individual liberty, the rights of property and contract, and the rule of law, and the ethical Ideals of mutuality, decency and charity, among others.
When development does not proceed well enough, the longing of the child for a benevolent parent with superhuman powers persists into adulthood. The search for an Idealized Other easily contaminates the immature citizen’s judgment on political matters, with grave implications for societal sanity. His wish for a loving caretaker in the flesh aborts his moral commitment to the abstract principles essential to civilized freedom. Instead of seeking through limited government those protections that allow him to make a good life for himself, the immature adult seeks an omnipotent leader and benevolent government to provide it for him. In his fondest fantasy, The Modern Parental State will meet his needs and desires, rescue him from his mistakes and quiet his existential angst. The Modern Permissive Culture will indulge his appetites and rationalize his sins. The Idealized Leader who brings “Change We Can Believe In” will make us all, as Jacquez Barzun observed in “From Dawn to Decadence,”“safe and at ease in a hundred ways.”
There is more. As Critical Review’s Jeffrey Friedman has systematically observed for years, and Fox News and Jay Leno and have informally recorded on the street, very large numbers of the American electorate are profoundly ignorant about how societies work. Our government-run school systems have committed educational malpractice for decades in failing to teach children the responsibilities of citizenship in a free society, the fundamentals of economics in free markets, the political foundations of ordered liberty and the dynamics of voluntary social cooperation. The uneducated citizen expects government to run his life with myriad regulations, pay his bills with other people’s money and force others to “cooperate” with him for his benefit. Like a dependent child, he seeks freedom from want and risk, not freedom to live responsibly as he chooses.
Ignorance combined with immaturity can be politically devastating. On Nov. 4, 2008, massive numbers of immature and ignorant American voters failed to understand the ominous implications of Barack Obama’s personal history: his adolescent tutelage with communist activist Frank Marshall Davis, his 20-year filial relationship with hate-filled Jeremiah Wright, his political and business dealings with terrorist William Ayers, his real estate transactions with felon Tony Rezko, his Fannie Mae connections to the sub-prime mortgage debacle, his vote in the Illinois Senate against medical care of aborted-live babies and his radically liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate. On Nov. 4, 2008, millions of immature and ignorant American voters saw Obama as a loving father of two little girls, but ignored his choice to send them every Sunday to hear the vile racist and socialist rants of a mad preacher.
More generally, the combined immaturity and ignorance of the American electorate has produced millions of voters who understand almost nothing of substance in a candidate’s policy proposals but eagerly welcome him as an adoptive parent. The natural result of this process is a population increasingly seduced by the utopian promises of collectivism. Norman Thomas’ fondest dream, that America will embrace European socialism with all of its Marxist delusions, is becoming a reality. All of this has been brilliantly exploited by President-elect Obama, who has kept his message of change wonderfully vague and, ambiguous, for the most part, while presenting himself as an unusually articulate and charming man ready to help everyone in need. With a few exceptions, he has been as evasive about his real economic, social and political intentions as he has been secretive about the political influence of his education at Columbia and Harvard. Having not
defined himself clearly to America’s voters, he has made himself into an ideal target on which they can project whatever idealized traits they wish for.
Mr. Obama’s vagueness has not been complete, however. He told Joe the Plumber about his intent “to spread the wealth around,” and he told Bill O’Reilly that taking money from rich people and giving itto a struggling waitress was “the neighborly thing to do.” But spreading the wealth around Obama-style is classical redistributionist socialism. There is nothing neighborly about the IRS taking one citizen’s money at gunpoint and giving it to someone else, even if she is struggling. In fact, in a May 2001 National Public Radio interview, Obama lamented the U.S. Constitution’s “blind spot” regarding “redistributive change” and the fact that the Supreme Court had “never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and (into) more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.” These statements reveal the fundamentally collectivist philosophy of our president-to-be and his intent to use the power of government to bring about a drastic change in America. Furthermore, it is virtually certain that he will consolidate a liberal Supreme Court for decades to come. ‘What Mr. Obama has in mind is change that no lover of liberty can ever believe in.
The prognosis for freedom in America is guarded at best. If a man’s character can be judged by the company he keeps, and if what he says is any indication of what he intends, then a large number of immature and ignorant voters have just elected a very dangerous man to the most powerful office in the world.
Lyle H. RossiterJr., M.D., is a board certified psychiatrist who. has diagnosed and treated mental disorders for more
than 40 years. As a veteran forensic psychiatrist, he has been
retained as an expert in more than 2,700 civil and criminal cases. His book, “The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness,” is available from WND
online store.
By Lyle H. Rossiter Jr., M.D. Copyright 2009 WorldNetDaily.com Inc.
CHARASMATIC, brilliant, mesmerizing. These and other glowing attributions have been assigned to President-elect Barack Obama in a wave of electoral celebration. As he bounds up steps and strides across platforms to roars of approval, tears of joy on ecstatic faces, even swoons, greet his eminence. A harsh political critic, formerly intent on altering his anatomy, now weeps in his presence. A woman widely known for her wisdom dubs him “The One.”
The Phenomenon himself modestly declares: “We are the ones we have been waiting for,” though he really means “I am The One you have been waiting for.” With his dazzling debut on the world’s political stage, even foreigners have suspended their fashionable contempt for all things American. Millions now acknowledge a new Idol.
Of course, there is no thing new about the human tendency to create idealized personas, especially in politics. In fact, idealizing others is part of normal human development. The toddler-age child believes his mother is the most wonderful person in the world. Overlooking her flaws, he expects her to protect him (even if she doesn’t), to meet all his needs and desires (even if she doesn’t) and to relieve his pain (even if She doesn’t). By age 4 or 5, his bond with her will include something akin to worship. In those same preschool years, he will likely idealize his father for real or imagined powers, again, with something akin to worship.
By their late grade-school years, children idealize rock stars and sports heroes. “Overestimation of the object,” as we psychiatrists sometimes call it, is surely present when we fall in love: The newly struck lover invariably idealizes his beloved. In our adult spiritual lives, our reverence for the deity is defined in part by its inherent idealism and by our expectations of salvation. In the normal course of development, we idealize certain ethical and moral principles, and at the core of our patriotism lies a deep reverence for the political ideals that define our country. Idealizing is in our genes. If idealizing other persons and things is indeed normal in our human nature, we may then ask whether this tendency can go awry. That is, if we pervert this process, can we unwittingly cause ourselves serious problems? The answer is: “Yes, we can!” In fact, we have already begun.
When a child’s development proceeds well enough, his tendency to overvalue others is gradually neutralized to become a mature capacity for realistic admiration. Instead of starry-eyed worship of grand illusions, the mature citizen admires and idealizes proven values. He reveres, among other things, certain time-honored virtues and the people who practice them, especially the personal ideals of honesty, integrity, self-reliance, courage, persistence and dependability, the political ideals of individual liberty, the rights of property and contract, and the rule of law, and the ethical Ideals of mutuality, decency and charity, among others.
When development does not proceed well enough, the longing of the child for a benevolent parent with superhuman powers persists into adulthood. The search for an Idealized Other easily contaminates the immature citizen’s judgment on political matters, with grave implications for societal sanity. His wish for a loving caretaker in the flesh aborts his moral commitment to the abstract principles essential to civilized freedom. Instead of seeking through limited government those protections that allow him to make a good life for himself, the immature adult seeks an omnipotent leader and benevolent government to provide it for him. In his fondest fantasy, The Modern Parental State will meet his needs and desires, rescue him from his mistakes and quiet his existential angst. The Modern Permissive Culture will indulge his appetites and rationalize his sins. The Idealized Leader who brings “Change We Can Believe In” will make us all, as Jacquez Barzun observed in “From Dawn to Decadence,”“safe and at ease in a hundred ways.”
There is more. As Critical Review’s Jeffrey Friedman has systematically observed for years, and Fox News and Jay Leno and have informally recorded on the street, very large numbers of the American electorate are profoundly ignorant about how societies work. Our government-run school systems have committed educational malpractice for decades in failing to teach children the responsibilities of citizenship in a free society, the fundamentals of economics in free markets, the political foundations of ordered liberty and the dynamics of voluntary social cooperation. The uneducated citizen expects government to run his life with myriad regulations, pay his bills with other people’s money and force others to “cooperate” with him for his benefit. Like a dependent child, he seeks freedom from want and risk, not freedom to live responsibly as he chooses.
Ignorance combined with immaturity can be politically devastating. On Nov. 4, 2008, massive numbers of immature and ignorant American voters failed to understand the ominous implications of Barack Obama’s personal history: his adolescent tutelage with communist activist Frank Marshall Davis, his 20-year filial relationship with hate-filled Jeremiah Wright, his political and business dealings with terrorist William Ayers, his real estate transactions with felon Tony Rezko, his Fannie Mae connections to the sub-prime mortgage debacle, his vote in the Illinois Senate against medical care of aborted-live babies and his radically liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate. On Nov. 4, 2008, millions of immature and ignorant American voters saw Obama as a loving father of two little girls, but ignored his choice to send them every Sunday to hear the vile racist and socialist rants of a mad preacher.
More generally, the combined immaturity and ignorance of the American electorate has produced millions of voters who understand almost nothing of substance in a candidate’s policy proposals but eagerly welcome him as an adoptive parent. The natural result of this process is a population increasingly seduced by the utopian promises of collectivism. Norman Thomas’ fondest dream, that America will embrace European socialism with all of its Marxist delusions, is becoming a reality. All of this has been brilliantly exploited by President-elect Obama, who has kept his message of change wonderfully vague and, ambiguous, for the most part, while presenting himself as an unusually articulate and charming man ready to help everyone in need. With a few exceptions, he has been as evasive about his real economic, social and political intentions as he has been secretive about the political influence of his education at Columbia and Harvard. Having not
defined himself clearly to America’s voters, he has made himself into an ideal target on which they can project whatever idealized traits they wish for.
Mr. Obama’s vagueness has not been complete, however. He told Joe the Plumber about his intent “to spread the wealth around,” and he told Bill O’Reilly that taking money from rich people and giving itto a struggling waitress was “the neighborly thing to do.” But spreading the wealth around Obama-style is classical redistributionist socialism. There is nothing neighborly about the IRS taking one citizen’s money at gunpoint and giving it to someone else, even if she is struggling. In fact, in a May 2001 National Public Radio interview, Obama lamented the U.S. Constitution’s “blind spot” regarding “redistributive change” and the fact that the Supreme Court had “never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and (into) more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.” These statements reveal the fundamentally collectivist philosophy of our president-to-be and his intent to use the power of government to bring about a drastic change in America. Furthermore, it is virtually certain that he will consolidate a liberal Supreme Court for decades to come. ‘What Mr. Obama has in mind is change that no lover of liberty can ever believe in.
The prognosis for freedom in America is guarded at best. If a man’s character can be judged by the company he keeps, and if what he says is any indication of what he intends, then a large number of immature and ignorant voters have just elected a very dangerous man to the most powerful office in the world.
Lyle H. RossiterJr., M.D., is a board certified psychiatrist who. has diagnosed and treated mental disorders for more
than 40 years. As a veteran forensic psychiatrist, he has been
retained as an expert in more than 2,700 civil and criminal cases. His book, “The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness,” is available from WND
online store.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Cloward Piven Strategy
AMERICA waits with bated breath while Washington struggles to bring the U.S. economy back from the brink of disaster. But many of those same politicians caused the crisis, and if left to their own devices will do so again.
Despite the mass media news blackout, a series of books, talk radio and the blogosphere have managed to expose Barack Obama’s connections to his radical mentors — Weather Underground bombers William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis and others. David Horowitz and his Discover the Networks.org have also contributed a wealth of information and have noted Obama’s radical connections since the beginning.
Yet, no one to my knowledge has yet connected all the dots between Barack Obama and the radical left. When. seen together, the influences on Obama’s life comprise a who’s who of the radical leftist movement, and it becomes painfully apparent that not only is Obama a willing participant in that movement, he has spent most of his adult life deeply immersed in it.
But even this doesn’t fully describe the extreme nature of Obama. He can be tied directly to a malevolent overarching strategy that has motivated many, if not all, of the most destructive radical leftist organizations in the United States since the 1960s.
The Cloward-Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis
In earlier writings, I have noted the liberal record of unmitigated legislative disasters, the latest of which is now being played out in the financial markets before our eyes. Before the 1994 Republican takeover, Democrats had 60 years of virtually unbroken power in Congress — with substantial majorities most of the time. Can a group of smart people, studying issue after issue for years on end, with virtually unlimited resources at their command, not come up with a single policy that works? Why are they chronically incapable?
Why?One of two things must be true. Either the Democrats are unfathomable idiots, who ignorantly pursue ever more destructive policies despite decades of contrary evidence, or they understand the consequences of their actions and relentlessly carry on anyway because they somehow benefit.I submit to you they understand the consequences. For many it is simply a practical matter of eliciting votes from a targeted constituency at taxpayer expense; we lose a little, they gain a lot, and the politician keeps his job. But for others, the goal is more malevolent — the failure is deliberate. Don’t laugh. This method not only has its proponents, it has a name: the Cloward-Piven Strategy It describes their agenda, tactics, and long-term strategy.
The Strategy was first elucidated in the May 2, 1966, issue of The Nation magazine by a pair of radical socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. David Horowitz summarizes it as:The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The “Cloward-Piven Strategy” seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.
Cloward and Piven were inspired by radical organizer [and Hillary Clinton mentor] Saul Alinsky:“Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules,” Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book ‘Rules for Radicals.’ When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system’s failure to “live up” to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist “rule book” with a socialist one. (Courtesy Discover the Networks.org)
Newsmax rounds out the picture:Their strategy to create political, financial and social chaos that would result in revolution blended Alinsky concepts with their more aggressive efforts at bringing about a change in U.S. government. To achieve their revolutionary change, Cloward and Piven sought to use a cadre of aggressive organizers assisted by friendly news media to force a re-distribution of the nation’s wealth.
In their Nation article, Cloward and Piven were specific about the kind of “crisis” they were trying to create:By crisis, we mean a publicly visible disruption in some institutional sphere. Crisis can occur spontaneously (e.g., riots) or as the intended result of tactics of demonstration and protest which either generate institutional disruption or bring unrecognized disruption to public attention.
No matter where the strategy is implemented, it shares the following features:1. The offensive organizes previously unorganized groups eligible for government benefits but not currently receiving all they can.2. The offensive seeks to identify new beneficiaries and/or create new benefits.3. The overarching aim is always to impose new stresses on target systems, with the ultimate goal of forcing their collapse.
Capitalizing on the racial unrest of the 1 960s, Cloward and Piven saw the welfare system as their first target. They enlisted radical black activist George Wiley, who created the National Welfare Reform Organization (NWRO) to implement the strategy. Wiley hired militant foot soldiers to storm welfare offices around the country, violentlydemanding their “rights.” According to a City Journal article by Sol Stern, welfare rolls increased from 4.3 million to 10.8 million by the mid-1970s as a result, and in New York City, where the strategy had been particularly successful, “one person was on the welfare rolls ... for every two working in the city’s private economy.”
According to another City Journal article titled “Compassion Gone Mad”:The movement’s impact on New York City was jolting: welfare caseloads, already climbing 12 percent a year in the early sixties, rose by 50 percent during Lindsay’s first two years; spending doubled... The city had 150,000 welfare cases in 1960; a decade later it had 1.5 million.The vast expansion of welfare in New York City that came of the NWRO’s Cloward-Piven tactics sent the city into bankruptcy in 1975. Rudy Giuliani cited Cloward and Piven by name as being responsible for “an effort at economic sabotage.” He also credited Cloward-Piven with changing the cultural attitude toward welfare from that of a temporary expedient to a lifetime entitlement, an attitude which in-and-of-itself has caused perhaps the greatest damage of all.
Cloward and Piven looked at this strategy as a gold mine of opportunity. Within the newly organized groups, each offensive would find an ample pool of foot soldier recruits willing to advance its radical agenda at little or no pay, and expand its base of reliable voters, legal or otherwise. The radicals’ threatening tactics also would accrue an intimidating reputation, providing a wealth of opportunities for extorting monetary and other concessions from the target organizations. In the meantime, successful offensives would create an ever-increasing drag on society. As they gleefully observed:Moreover, this kind of mass influence is cumulative because benefits are continuous. Once eligibility for basic food and rent grants is established, the drain on local resources persists indefinitely.
The next time you drive through one of the many blighted neighborhoods in our cities, or read of the astronomical crime, drug addiction and out-of-wedlock birth rates, or consider the failed schools, strapped police and fire resources of every major city, remember Cloward and Piven’s thrill that “...the drain on local resources persists indefinitely.
ACORN, the new tip of the Cloward-Piven spear
In 1970, one of George Wiley’s protégés, Wade Rathke — like Bill Ayers, a member of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) — was sent to found the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now. While NWRO had made a good start, it alone couldn’t accomplish the Cloward-Piven goals. Rathke’s group broadened the offensive to include a wide array of low-income “rights.” Shortly thereafter they changed “Arkansas” to “Association of” and ACORN went nationwide.
Today ACORN is involved in a wide array of activities, including housing, voting rights, illegal immigration and other issues. According to ACORN’s website: “ACORN is the nation’s largest grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people with over 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in 110 cities across the country.” It is perhaps the largest radical group in the U.S. and has been cited for widespread criminal activity on many fronts.
Voting
On voting rights, ACORN and its voter mobilization subsidiary, Project Vote, have been involved nationwide in efforts to grant felons the vote and lobbied heavily for the Motor Voter Act of 1993, a law allowing people to register at motor vehicle departments, schools, libraries and other public places. That law had been sought by Cloward and Piven since the early 1980s and they were present, standing behind President Clinton at the signing ceremony.
ACORN’s voter rights tactics follow the Cloward-Piven
Strategy:
1. Register as many Democrat voters as possible, legal or otherwise and help them vote, multiple times if possible.
2. Overwhelm the system with fraudulent registrations using multiple entries of the same name, names of deceased, random names from the phone book, even contrived names.
3. Make the system difficult to police by lobbying for minimal identification standards.
In this effort, ACORN sets up registration sites all over the country and has been frequently cited for turning in fraudulent registrations, as well as destroying Republican applications. In the 2004-2006 election cycles alone, ACORN was accused of widespread voter fraud in 12 states. It may have swung the election for one state governor.
ACORN’S website brags: “Since 2004, ACORN has helped more than 1.7 million low- and moderate-income and
minority citizens apply to register to vote.” Project vote boasts 4 million. I wonder how many of them are dead? For the 2008 cycle, ACORN and Project Vote pulled out all the stops, giving a furious nationwide effort.
Barack Obama ran ACORN’s Project Vote in Chicago and his highly successful voter registration drive was credited with getting the disgraced former Senator Carol Moseley-Braun elected. Newsmax reiterates Cloward and Piven’s aspirations for ACORN’S voter registration efforts:
By advocating massive, no-holds-barred voter registration campaigns, they [Cloward & Piven] sought a Democratic administration in Washington, D.C., that would re-distribute the nation’s wealth and lead to a totalitarian socialist state.
Illegal immigration
As I have written elsewhere, the radical left’s offensive to promote illegal immigration is “Cloward-Piven on steroids.” ACORN is at the forefront of this movement as well, and was a leading organization among a broad coalition of radical groups, including Soros’ Open Society Institute, the Service Employees International Union (ACORN founder Wade Rathke also runs a SEIU chapter), and others, that became the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform. CCIR fortunately failed to gain passage for the 2007 illegal immigrant amnesty bill, but its goals have not changed.
The burden of illegal immigration on our already over- stressed welfare system has been widely documented. Some towns in California have even been taken over by illegal immigrant drug cartels. The disease, crime and overcrowding brought by illegal immigrants places a heavy burden on every segment of society and every level of government, threatening to split this country apart at the seams. In the meantime, radical leftist efforts to grant illegal immigrants citizenship guarantee a huge pool of new Democrat voters. With little border control, terrorists can also filter in.
Obama aided ACORN as their lead attorney in a successful suit he brought against the Illinois state government to implement the Motor Voter law there. The law had been resisted by Republican Gov. Jim Edgars, who feared the law was at opening to widespread vote fraud.
His fears were warranted as the Motor Voter law has since been cited as a major opportunity for vote fraud, especially for illegal immigrants, even terrorists. According to the Wall Street Journal: “After 9/11, the Justice Department found that eight of the 19 hijackers were registered to vote.
ACORN’s dual offensives on voting and illegal immigration are handy complements. Both swell the voter rolls with reliable Democrats while assaulting the country ACORN seeks to destroy with overwhelming new problems.
Mortgage crisis
Now we have the mortgage crisis, which has sent a shock wave through Wall Street and panicked world financial markets like no other since the stock market crash of 1929. But this is a problem created in Washington long ago. It originated with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), signed into law in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter. The CRA was Carter’s answer to a grassroots activist movement started in Chicago, and forced banks to make loans to low-income, high-risk customers. Ph.D. economist and former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm has called it “a vast extortion scheme against the nation’s banks.”
ACORN aggressively sought to expand loans to low- income groups using the CRA as a whip. Economist Stan Leibowitz wrote in the New York Post:
In the 1980s, groups such as the activists at ACORN began pushing charges of “redlining” — claims that banks discriminated against minorities in mortgage lending. In 1989, sympathetic members of Congress got the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act amended to force banks to collect racial data on mortgage applicants; this allowed various studies to be ginned up that seemed to validate the original accusation.
In fact, minority mortgage applications were rejected more frequently than other applications — yet the overwhelming reason wasn’t racial discrimination, but simply that minorities tend to have weaker finances.
ACORN showed its colors again in 1991, by taking over the House Banking Committee room for two days to protest efforts to scale back the CRA. Obama represented ACORN in the Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Say. Bank, 1994 suit against redlining. Most significant of all, ACORN was the driving force behind a 1995 regulatory revision pushed through by the Clinton administration that greatly expanded the CRA and laid the groundwork for the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac-borne financial crisis we now confront. Barack Obama was the attorney representing ACORN in this effort. With this new authority, ACORN used its subsidiary, ACORN Housing, to promote subprime loans more aggressively.
As a New York Post article describes it:
A 1995 strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to find ways to provide mortgages to their poorer communities. It also let community activists intervene at yearly bank reviews, shaking the banks down for large pots of money.
Banks that got poor reviews were punished; some saw their merger plans frustrated; others faced direct legal challenges by the Justice Department.
Flexible lending programs expanded even though they had higher default rates than loans with traditional standards. On the Web, you can still find CRA loans available via ACORN with “100 percent financing ... no credit scores ... undocumented income ... even if you don’t report it on your tax returns.” Credit counseling is required, of course.
Ironically, an enthusiastic Fannie Mae Foundation report singled out one paragon of nondiscriminatory lending, which worked with community activists and followed “the most flexible underwriting criteria permitted.” That lender’s $1 billion commitment to low-income loans in 1992 had grown to $80 billion by 1999 and $600 billion by early 2003.
The lender they were speaking of was Countrywide, which specialized in subprime lending and had a working relationship with ACORN.
Investor’s Business Daily added:
The revisions also allowed for the first time the securitization of CRA-regulated loans containing subprime mortgages. The changes came as radical “housing rights” groups led by ACORN lobbied for such loans. ACORN at the time was represented by a young public-interest lawyer in Chicago by the name of Barack Obama.
Since these loans were to be underwritten by government- sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the implicit government guarantee of those loans absolved lenders, mortgage bundlers and investors of any concern over the obvious risk. As Bloomberg reported: “It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit.”
And if you think Washington policy makers cared about ACORN’s negative influence, think again. Before this whole mess came down, a Democrat-sponsored bill on the table would have created an “Affordable Housing Trust Fund,” granting ACORN access to approximately $500 million in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac revenues with little or no oversight.
Even now, unbelievably — on the brink of national disaster — Democrats have insisted ACORN benefit from bailout negotiations! Sen. Lindsay Graham reported on Sept. 25, 2008, in an interview with Greta Van Susteren of Fox’s “On the Record” that Democrats wanted 20 percent of the bailout money to go to ACORN!
This entire fiasco represents perhaps the pinnacle of ACORN’s efforts to advance the Cloward-Piven Strategy and is a stark demonstration of the power they wield in Washington.
Enter Barack Obama
Barack Obama is at the epicenter of an incestuous stew of American radical leftism. Not only are his connections significant, they practically define who he is. Taken together, they constitute a who’s who of the American radical left, and guiding all is the Cloward-Piven strategy.
Conspicuous in their absence are any connections at all with any other group, moderate, or even mildly leftist. They are all radicals, firmly bedded in the anti-American, communist, socialist, radical leftist mesh.
Saul Alinsky
Most people are unaware that Barack Obama received his training in “community organizing” from Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation. But he did. In and of itself that marks his heritage and training as that of a radical activist. One really needs go no further. But we have.
Bill Ayers
Obama objects to being associated with SDS bomber Bill Ayers, claiming he is being smeared with “guilt by association.” But they worked together at the Woods Fund. The Wall Street Journal added substantially to our knowledge by describing in great detail Obama’s work over five years with Ayers on the board of a nonprofit, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, to push a radical agenda on public school children. As Stanley Kurtz states:
the issue here isn’t guilt by association; it’s guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.
Also included in the mix is Theresa Heinz Kerry’s favorite charity the Tides Foundation. A partial list of Tides grants tells you all you need to know: ACLU, ACORN, Center for American Progress, Center for Constitutional Rights (a communist front,) CAIR, Earth Justice, Institute for Policy Studies (KGB spy nest), National Lawyers Guild (oldest communist front in U.S.), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and practically every other radical group there is. ACORN’s Wade Rathke runs a Tides subsidiary, the Tides Center.
Carl Davidson and the New Party We have heard about Bomber Bill, but we hear little about fellow SDS member Carl Davidson. According to Discover the Networks, Davidson was an early supporter of Barack Obama and a prominent member of Chicago’s New Party; a synthesis of Communist Party USA members, Socialists, ACORN veterans and other radicals. Obama sought and received the New Party’s endorsement, and they assisted with his campaign. The New Party also developed a strong relationship with ACORN. As an excellent article on the New Party observes: “Barack Obama knew what he was getting into and remains an ideal New Party candidate.”
George Soros
What is the reason for George Soros’ fervent support of Obama? The president of his Open Society Institute is Aryeh Neier, founder of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). As mentioned above, three other former SDS members had extensive contact with Obama: Bill Ayers, Carl Davidson and Wade Rathke. Surely Aryeh Neier would have heard from his former colleagues of the promising new politician. More to the point, Neier is firmly committed to supporting the hugely successful radical organization, ACORN, and would be certain to back their favored candidate, Barack Obama.
ACORN
Obama has spent a large portion of his professional life working for ACORN or its subsidiaries, representing ACORN as a lawyer on some of its most critical issues, and training ACORN leaders. Stanley Kurtz’s excellent National Review article, “Inside Obama’s Acorn,” also describes Obama’s ACORN connection in detail. But I can’t improve on Obama’s own words:
I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work. — Barack Obama, Speech to ACORN, November 2007 (Courtesy Newsmax)
In another excellent article on Obama’s ACORN connections, Newsmax asks a nagging question:
It would be telling to know if Obama, during his years at Columbia, had occasion to meet Cloward and
study the Cloward-Piven Strategy;
I ask you, is it possible ACORN would train Obama to take leadership positions within ACORN without telling him what he was training for? Is it possible ACORN would put Obama in leadership positions without clueing him into what his purpose was? Is it possible that this most radical of organizations would put someone in charge of training its trainers, without him knowing what it was he was training them for?
As a community activist for ACORN; as a leadership trainer for ACORN; as a lead organizer for ACORN’s Project Vote; as an attorney representing ACORN’S successful efforts to impose Motor Voter regulations in Illinois; as ACORN’s representative in lobbying for the expansion of high risk housing loans through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that led to the current crisis; as a recipient of their assistance in his political campaigns — both with money and campaign workers — it is doubtful he was unaware of ACORN’s true goals. It is doubtful he was unaware of the Cloward-Piven Strategy.
Fast-forward to 2005 when an obsequious, servile and scraping Daniel Mudd, CEO of Fannie Mae, spoke at the Congressional Black Caucus swearing-in ceremony for newly elected Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. Mudd called the Congressional Black Caucus “our family” and “the conscience of Fannie Mae.”
In 2005, Republicans sought to rein in Fannie and Freddie. Sen. John McCain was at the forefront of that effort.
But it failed due to an intense lobbying effort put forward by Fannie and Freddie.
In his few years as a U.S. senator, Obama has received campaign contributions of $126,349 from Fannie and
Freddie, second only to the $165,400 received by Sen. Chris Dodd, who has been getting donations from them since 1988. What makes Obama so special?
His closest advisers are a dirty laundry list of individuals at the heart of the financial crisis: former Fannie Mae
CEO Jim Johnson; former Fannie Mae CEO and former Clinton budget director Frank Raines; and billionaire failed
Superior Bank of Chicago Board Chair Penny Pritzker. Johnson had to step down as adviser on Obama’s VP search after this gem came out:
An Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) report from September 2004 found that, during Johnson’s tenure as CEO, Fannie Mae had improperly deferred $200 million in expenses. This enabled top executives, including Johnson and his successor, Franklin Raines, to receive substantial bonuses in 1998. A 2006 OFHEO report found that Fannie Mae had substantially under-reported Johnson’s compensation. Originally reported as $6-7 million, Johnson actually received approximately $21 million.
Obama denies ties to Raines, but the Washington Post calls him a member of “Obama’s political circle.” Raines and Johnson were fined $3 million by the Office of Federal Housing Oversight for their manipulation of Fannie books. The fine is small change however, compared to the $50 million Raines was able to obtain in improper bonuses as a result of juggling the books.
Most significantly, Penny Pritzker, the finance chairperson of Obama’s presidential campaign helped develop the complicated investment bundling of subprime securities at the heart of the meltdown.
She did so in her position as shareholder and board chair of Superior Bank. The Bank
failed in 2001, one of the largest in recent history, wiping out $50 million in uninsured life savings of approximately 1,400 customers. She was named in a RICO class action lawsuit but doesn’t seem to have come out of it too badly.
As a young attorney in the 1990s, Barack Obama represented ACORN in Washington in their successful efforts to expand Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) authority. In addition to making it easier for ACORN groups to force banks into making risky loans, this also paved the way for banks like Superior to package mortgages as investments, and for the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to underwrite them. These changes created the conditions that ultimately led to the current financial crisis.
Did they not know this would occur? Were these smart people, led by a Harvard graduate, unaware of the Econ 101 concept of moral hazard that would result from the government making implicit guarantees to underwrite private-sector financial risk? They should have known that freeing the high-risk mortgage market of risk, calamity was sure to ensue. I think they did.
Barack Obama, the Cloward-Piven candidate, no matter how he describes himself, has been a radical activist for most of his political career. That activism has been in support of organizations and initiatives that at their heart seek to tear the pillars of this nation asunder in order to replace them with their demented socialist vision. Their influence has spread so far and so wide that despite their blatant culpability in the current financial crisis, they are able to manipulate Capital Hill politicians to cut them into $140 billion of the bailout pie!
God grant those few responsible yet remaining in Washington, D.C., the strength to prevent this massive fraud from occurring. God grant them the courage to stand up in the face of this Marxist tidal wave.
James Simpson is a former White House staff economist and budget analyst. His writings have been published in American Thinker, the Washington Times, FrontPage
Magazine, Defense Watch, Soldier of Fortune and others. His blog is Truth and Consequences (truthandcons. blogspot. coin),
34 whistleblower January 2009
In 1970, one of George Wiley’s protégés, Wade Rathke — like Bill Ayers, a member of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) — was sent to found the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now. While NWRO had made a good start, it alone couldn’t accomplish the Cloward-Piven goals. Rathke’s group broadened the offensive to include a wide array of low-income “rights.” Shortly thereafter they changed “Arkansas” to “Association of” and ACORN went nationwide.
Today ACORN is involved in a wide array of activities, including housing, voting rights, illegal immigration and other issues. According to ACORN’s website: “ACORN is the nation’s largest grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people with over 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in 110 cities across the country.” It is perhaps the largest radical group in the U.S. and has been cited for widespread criminal activity on many fronts.
Voting
On voting rights, ACORN and its voter mobilization subsidiary, Project Vote, have been involved nationwide in efforts to grant felons the vote and lobbied heavily for the Motor Voter Act of 1993, a law allowing people to register at motor vehicle departments, schools, libraries and other public places. That law had been sought by Cloward and Piven since the early 1980s and they were present, standing behind President Clinton at the signing ceremony.
ACORN’s voter rights tactics follow the Cloward-Piven
Strategy:
1. Register as many Democrat voters as possible, legal or otherwise and help them vote, multiple times if possible.
2. Overwhelm the system with fraudulent registrations using multiple entries of the same name, names of deceased, random names from the phone book, even contrived names.
3. Make the system difficult to police by lobbying for minimal identification standards.
In this effort, ACORN sets up registration sites all over the country and has been frequently cited for turning in fraudulent registrations, as well as destroying Republican applications. In the 2004-2006 election cycles alone, ACORN was accused of widespread voter fraud in 12 states. It may have swung the election for one state governor.
ACORN’S website brags: “Since 2004, ACORN has helped more than 1.7 million low- and moderate-income and
minority citizens apply to register to vote.” Project vote boasts 4 million. I wonder how many of them are dead? For the 2008 cycle, ACORN and Project Vote pulled out all the stops, giving a furious nationwide effort.
Barack Obama ran ACORN’s Project Vote in Chicago and his highly successful voter registration drive was credited with getting the disgraced former Senator Carol Moseley-Braun elected. Newsmax reiterates Cloward and Piven’s aspirations for ACORN’S voter registration efforts:
By advocating massive, no-holds-barred voter registration campaigns, they [Cloward & Piven] sought a Democratic administration in Washington, D.C., that would re-distribute the nation’s wealth and lead to a totalitarian socialist state.
Illegal immigration
As I have written elsewhere, the radical left’s offensive to promote illegal immigration is “Cloward-Piven on steroids.” ACORN is at the forefront of this movement as well, and was a leading organization among a broad coalition of radical groups, including Soros’ Open Society Institute, the Service Employees International Union (ACORN founder Wade Rathke also runs a SEIU chapter), and others, that became the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform. CCIR fortunately failed to gain passage for the 2007 illegal immigrant amnesty bill, but its goals have not changed.
The burden of illegal immigration on our already over- stressed welfare system has been widely documented. Some towns in California have even been taken over by illegal immigrant drug cartels. The disease, crime and overcrowding brought by illegal immigrants places a heavy burden on every segment of society and every level of government, threatening to split this country apart at the seams. In the meantime, radical leftist efforts to grant illegal immigrants citizenship guarantee a huge pool of new Democrat voters. With little border control, terrorists can also filter in.
Obama aided ACORN as their lead attorney in a successful suit he brought against the Illinois state government to implement the Motor Voter law there. The law had been resisted by Republican Gov. Jim Edgars, who feared the law was at opening to widespread vote fraud.
His fears were warranted as the Motor Voter law has since been cited as a major opportunity for vote fraud, especially for illegal immigrants, even terrorists. According to the Wall Street Journal: “After 9/11, the Justice Department found that eight of the 19 hijackers were registered to vote.
ACORN’s dual offensives on voting and illegal immigration are handy complements. Both swell the voter rolls with reliable Democrats while assaulting the country ACORN seeks to destroy with overwhelming new problems.
Mortgage crisis
Now we have the mortgage crisis, which has sent a shock wave through Wall Street and panicked world financial markets like no other since the stock market crash of 1929. But this is a problem created in Washington long ago. It originated with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), signed into law in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter. The CRA was Carter’s answer to a grassroots activist movement started in Chicago, and forced banks to make loans to low-income, high-risk customers. Ph.D. economist and former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm has called it “a vast extortion scheme against the nation’s banks.”
ACORN aggressively sought to expand loans to low- income groups using the CRA as a whip. Economist Stan Leibowitz wrote in the New York Post:
In the 1980s, groups such as the activists at ACORN began pushing charges of “redlining” — claims that banks discriminated against minorities in mortgage lending. In 1989, sympathetic members of Congress got the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act amended to force banks to collect racial data on mortgage applicants; this allowed various studies to be ginned up that seemed to validate the original accusation.
In fact, minority mortgage applications were rejected more frequently than other applications — yet the overwhelming reason wasn’t racial discrimination, but simply that minorities tend to have weaker finances.
ACORN showed its colors again in 1991, by taking over the House Banking Committee room for two days to protest efforts to scale back the CRA. Obama represented ACORN in the Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Say. Bank, 1994 suit against redlining. Most significant of all, ACORN was the driving force behind a 1995 regulatory revision pushed through by the Clinton administration that greatly expanded the CRA and laid the groundwork for the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac-borne financial crisis we now confront. Barack Obama was the attorney representing ACORN in this effort. With this new authority, ACORN used its subsidiary, ACORN Housing, to promote subprime loans more aggressively.
As a New York Post article describes it:
A 1995 strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to find ways to provide mortgages to their poorer communities. It also let community activists intervene at yearly bank reviews, shaking the banks down for large pots of money.
Banks that got poor reviews were punished; some saw their merger plans frustrated; others faced direct legal challenges by the Justice Department.
Flexible lending programs expanded even though they had higher default rates than loans with traditional standards. On the Web, you can still find CRA loans available via ACORN with “100 percent financing ... no credit scores ... undocumented income ... even if you don’t report it on your tax returns.” Credit counseling is required, of course.
Ironically, an enthusiastic Fannie Mae Foundation report singled out one paragon of nondiscriminatory lending, which worked with community activists and followed “the most flexible underwriting criteria permitted.” That lender’s $1 billion commitment to low-income loans in 1992 had grown to $80 billion by 1999 and $600 billion by early 2003.
The lender they were speaking of was Countrywide, which specialized in subprime lending and had a working relationship with ACORN.
Investor’s Business Daily added:
The revisions also allowed for the first time the securitization of CRA-regulated loans containing subprime mortgages. The changes came as radical “housing rights” groups led by ACORN lobbied for such loans. ACORN at the time was represented by a young public-interest lawyer in Chicago by the name of Barack Obama.
Since these loans were to be underwritten by government- sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the implicit government guarantee of those loans absolved lenders, mortgage bundlers and investors of any concern over the obvious risk. As Bloomberg reported: “It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit.”
And if you think Washington policy makers cared about ACORN’s negative influence, think again. Before this whole mess came down, a Democrat-sponsored bill on the table would have created an “Affordable Housing Trust Fund,” granting ACORN access to approximately $500 million in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac revenues with little or no oversight.
Even now, unbelievably — on the brink of national disaster — Democrats have insisted ACORN benefit from bailout negotiations! Sen. Lindsay Graham reported on Sept. 25, 2008, in an interview with Greta Van Susteren of Fox’s “On the Record” that Democrats wanted 20 percent of the bailout money to go to ACORN!
This entire fiasco represents perhaps the pinnacle of ACORN’s efforts to advance the Cloward-Piven Strategy and is a stark demonstration of the power they wield in Washington.
Enter Barack Obama
Barack Obama is at the epicenter of an incestuous stew of American radical leftism. Not only are his connections significant, they practically define who he is. Taken together, they constitute a who’s who of the American radical left, and guiding all is the Cloward-Piven strategy.
Conspicuous in their absence are any connections at all with any other group, moderate, or even mildly leftist. They are all radicals, firmly bedded in the anti-American, communist, socialist, radical leftist mesh.
Saul Alinsky
Most people are unaware that Barack Obama received his training in “community organizing” from Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation. But he did. In and of itself that marks his heritage and training as that of a radical activist. One really needs go no further. But we have.
Bill Ayers
Obama objects to being associated with SDS bomber Bill Ayers, claiming he is being smeared with “guilt by association.” But they worked together at the Woods Fund. The Wall Street Journal added substantially to our knowledge by describing in great detail Obama’s work over five years with Ayers on the board of a nonprofit, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, to push a radical agenda on public school children. As Stanley Kurtz states:
the issue here isn’t guilt by association; it’s guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.
Also included in the mix is Theresa Heinz Kerry’s favorite charity the Tides Foundation. A partial list of Tides grants tells you all you need to know: ACLU, ACORN, Center for American Progress, Center for Constitutional Rights (a communist front,) CAIR, Earth Justice, Institute for Policy Studies (KGB spy nest), National Lawyers Guild (oldest communist front in U.S.), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and practically every other radical group there is. ACORN’s Wade Rathke runs a Tides subsidiary, the Tides Center.
Carl Davidson and the New Party We have heard about Bomber Bill, but we hear little about fellow SDS member Carl Davidson. According to Discover the Networks, Davidson was an early supporter of Barack Obama and a prominent member of Chicago’s New Party; a synthesis of Communist Party USA members, Socialists, ACORN veterans and other radicals. Obama sought and received the New Party’s endorsement, and they assisted with his campaign. The New Party also developed a strong relationship with ACORN. As an excellent article on the New Party observes: “Barack Obama knew what he was getting into and remains an ideal New Party candidate.”
George Soros
What is the reason for George Soros’ fervent support of Obama? The president of his Open Society Institute is Aryeh Neier, founder of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). As mentioned above, three other former SDS members had extensive contact with Obama: Bill Ayers, Carl Davidson and Wade Rathke. Surely Aryeh Neier would have heard from his former colleagues of the promising new politician. More to the point, Neier is firmly committed to supporting the hugely successful radical organization, ACORN, and would be certain to back their favored candidate, Barack Obama.
ACORN
Obama has spent a large portion of his professional life working for ACORN or its subsidiaries, representing ACORN as a lawyer on some of its most critical issues, and training ACORN leaders. Stanley Kurtz’s excellent National Review article, “Inside Obama’s Acorn,” also describes Obama’s ACORN connection in detail. But I can’t improve on Obama’s own words:
I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work. — Barack Obama, Speech to ACORN, November 2007 (Courtesy Newsmax)
In another excellent article on Obama’s ACORN connections, Newsmax asks a nagging question:
It would be telling to know if Obama, during his years at Columbia, had occasion to meet Cloward and
study the Cloward-Piven Strategy;
I ask you, is it possible ACORN would train Obama to take leadership positions within ACORN without telling him what he was training for? Is it possible ACORN would put Obama in leadership positions without clueing him into what his purpose was? Is it possible that this most radical of organizations would put someone in charge of training its trainers, without him knowing what it was he was training them for?
As a community activist for ACORN; as a leadership trainer for ACORN; as a lead organizer for ACORN’s Project Vote; as an attorney representing ACORN’S successful efforts to impose Motor Voter regulations in Illinois; as ACORN’s representative in lobbying for the expansion of high risk housing loans through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that led to the current crisis; as a recipient of their assistance in his political campaigns — both with money and campaign workers — it is doubtful he was unaware of ACORN’s true goals. It is doubtful he was unaware of the Cloward-Piven Strategy.
Fast-forward to 2005 when an obsequious, servile and scraping Daniel Mudd, CEO of Fannie Mae, spoke at the Congressional Black Caucus swearing-in ceremony for newly elected Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. Mudd called the Congressional Black Caucus “our family” and “the conscience of Fannie Mae.”
In 2005, Republicans sought to rein in Fannie and Freddie. Sen. John McCain was at the forefront of that effort.
But it failed due to an intense lobbying effort put forward by Fannie and Freddie.
In his few years as a U.S. senator, Obama has received campaign contributions of $126,349 from Fannie and
Freddie, second only to the $165,400 received by Sen. Chris Dodd, who has been getting donations from them since 1988. What makes Obama so special?
His closest advisers are a dirty laundry list of individuals at the heart of the financial crisis: former Fannie Mae
CEO Jim Johnson; former Fannie Mae CEO and former Clinton budget director Frank Raines; and billionaire failed
Superior Bank of Chicago Board Chair Penny Pritzker. Johnson had to step down as adviser on Obama’s VP search after this gem came out:
An Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) report from September 2004 found that, during Johnson’s tenure as CEO, Fannie Mae had improperly deferred $200 million in expenses. This enabled top executives, including Johnson and his successor, Franklin Raines, to receive substantial bonuses in 1998. A 2006 OFHEO report found that Fannie Mae had substantially under-reported Johnson’s compensation. Originally reported as $6-7 million, Johnson actually received approximately $21 million.
Obama denies ties to Raines, but the Washington Post calls him a member of “Obama’s political circle.” Raines and Johnson were fined $3 million by the Office of Federal Housing Oversight for their manipulation of Fannie books. The fine is small change however, compared to the $50 million Raines was able to obtain in improper bonuses as a result of juggling the books.
Most significantly, Penny Pritzker, the finance chairperson of Obama’s presidential campaign helped develop the complicated investment bundling of subprime securities at the heart of the meltdown.
She did so in her position as shareholder and board chair of Superior Bank. The Bank
failed in 2001, one of the largest in recent history, wiping out $50 million in uninsured life savings of approximately 1,400 customers. She was named in a RICO class action lawsuit but doesn’t seem to have come out of it too badly.
As a young attorney in the 1990s, Barack Obama represented ACORN in Washington in their successful efforts to expand Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) authority. In addition to making it easier for ACORN groups to force banks into making risky loans, this also paved the way for banks like Superior to package mortgages as investments, and for the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to underwrite them. These changes created the conditions that ultimately led to the current financial crisis.
Did they not know this would occur? Were these smart people, led by a Harvard graduate, unaware of the Econ 101 concept of moral hazard that would result from the government making implicit guarantees to underwrite private-sector financial risk? They should have known that freeing the high-risk mortgage market of risk, calamity was sure to ensue. I think they did.
Barack Obama, the Cloward-Piven candidate, no matter how he describes himself, has been a radical activist for most of his political career. That activism has been in support of organizations and initiatives that at their heart seek to tear the pillars of this nation asunder in order to replace them with their demented socialist vision. Their influence has spread so far and so wide that despite their blatant culpability in the current financial crisis, they are able to manipulate Capital Hill politicians to cut them into $140 billion of the bailout pie!
God grant those few responsible yet remaining in Washington, D.C., the strength to prevent this massive fraud from occurring. God grant them the courage to stand up in the face of this Marxist tidal wave.
James Simpson is a former White House staff economist and budget analyst. His writings have been published in American Thinker, the Washington Times, FrontPage
Magazine, Defense Watch, Soldier of Fortune and others. His blog is Truth and Consequences (truthandcons. blogspot. coin),
34 whistleblower January 2009
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