Dear Emeritus: “… he (Obama) is functioning in a poisonous and gridlocked political environment.” Until the beau from Massachusetts won, Obama had the run of the litter! What does it say about his political abilities that even with an absolute majority he could and did not advance his agenda? “He continues to have my support--not adulation--but a respectful appreciation of how nearly impossible his job is …” Does your assessment only apply to Obama or to presidents in general? I only hear that when one of yours is in office. “I find it easy to worry that the country has become essentially ungovernable.” Ditto. How come you’ve never said that when Dubya was in office? My assessment of the president’s personality and character is purely anecdotal and rests simply on my impressions. However, I don’t think it is far off the mark. I believe his much touted intelligence is mostly Chicago back alley cunning and I just can’t avoid thinking that he is a few sizes too small for the office. Which, of course, doesn’t mean a president is successful just because he is comfortable in his role. This reminds me! I do want to take the opportunity to revise my opinion of the Reagan years and, along with Murray Rothbard’s plaint, commiserate about the “eight years, eight dreary, miserable, mind-numbing years, the years of the Age of Reagan, (which) are at long last coming to an end.” I do fully agree with your assessment of the Tea Party. But, be prepared, it may well be out front in 2012 under Sarah’s leadership. But Obama’s intra-party challenge will come from Bill and Hillary. Our economic fundamentals are not sound and the administration only exacerbates an already dismal situation. I fully expect a paradigm shifting depression and Obama and his team are not sufficiently competent to lead us through the Valley of Tears. Keynes, Socialism and Krugman’s advice are the cure which will kill the patient. Ludwig van Mises, Murray Rothbard, Hayek, Austrian Economics, Libertarianism, Anarcho-Capitalism and the Free Market show the way out of the mess made by the statists. But you liberals are just too stubborn to accept and willingly blind to see the truth. You insist your failed ideology will lead, on a golden brick road, no less, to the Wizard of Oz. And you know what Dorothy found behind the curtain?

The Anthem

Dear Emeritus: When Bill Clinton was in trouble he moved to the center. Barrack Obama doesn’t even know where the center is. Obama won’t be able to move there for as a narcissist he believes he himself is the center. He has only contempt for us. He has the divine right to rule over us (“I am the one we have been waiting for!”). He is angry and petulant and will have no leverage when he’ll need it. He is the president. But he is not presidential. He does not know how to be presidential. He is just playing the role supported by his Teleprompters without which he is dumb struck and helpless. And even at that he does a lousy job at it. He wafted upwards through the system, shepherded through Illinois politics, always coddled by the elite, remaining self indulgent. He has no humor, his touch is light and he cannot get beyond his self regard. We are ill served by the man. He has put our nation at peril and into harms way. When he’ll be driven from office we will be a lesser nation and a poorer people. Funny, isn’t it, one can say the same about his predecessors? I know you used to be besotted by the man. Especially obsessed by his color. Please, tell me, you have awaken from your dogmatic slumber and seen that the Demiurge is not clothed but stark naked.

Dear Emeritus: We (meaning the populace in general) demonize each other over politics more so than over any other subject, including religion. Why? Because there is no doubt that truth is on our side. We are the better people than the other ones. You hate the odious and frightening militant stupidity of the flagitious gasbags (William Grigg’s preferred definition of Rush Limbaugh). While you condone political plunder and the redistribution of personal property, I don’t doubt that you would never break into your neighbor’s house and run off with the valuables (after all, you are a Lutheran). But you nevertheless think of yourself as virtuous and full of caritas for expecting and demanding of your politicians to do exactly that. In demonizing, deriding, ridiculing and disdaining the opposition (I am very indignant that you always identify me as an evil Republican), you define your critique as dissent, but my opinion about your ideology becomes, in your eyes, nihilistic malice. Due to government interference and regulations we have a most abusive financial system (Federal Banks, Wall Street), urban decay, a humongous debt problem, a ubiquitous drug problem (due to Reagan’s™ War on Drugs), and the slow disintegration of culture, tradition and civilization (ask Benedikt XVI). And herewith the solution. Laissez faire, free market, Capitalism, liberty, freedom, and – above all - make sure government stays out of the way. A posteriori: the markets are superior to a planned economy. I am all for outlawing socialist machinations, practices, swindle and trickery. And the First Circle of Hell is still reserved for Mrs. Pelosi, nee Miss D’Alesandro (la mia famiglia?). Hot off the presses! Book recommendation: Earl Doherty’s Jesus. Neither God nor Man. The Case for a Mythical Jesus. Mr. Doherty plunges into (un)charted territory: the theory that Christianity began with belief in a spiritual heavenly Son of God, that the Gospels are essentially allegory and fiction, and that no “historical Jesus” worthy of the name existed. ™) Also known as eight years, eight dreary, miserable, mind-numbing years, the years of the Age of Reagan.

Dear Emeritus: Under my relentless but always respectful pressure you often reveal your real ideological predilections. Always remember, merely being liberal does not make anyone a good human being. On the left (and on the right) is nothing which commends itself to me. Liberalism is a fundamentally immoral political philosophy, treating the citizen only as a means to a totalitarian end and lacking respect for tradition and culture. And, by the way, you have way too much faith in government which by nature is parasitic, stifling and suffocating. Also, only mealy mouthed and cowardly ideologues claim the middle of the road as their weltanschauliche Heimat. In the middle of the road is only road kill, as Hightower, a famous Texan leftist, said. You always have very harsh words for capitalism and Wall Street (not exactly a courageous political stance), however you never level criticism at the Federal Reserve or other government agencies that, for instance, had financed and guaranteed all the ridiculous real estate speculations that precipitated the crash. You fawn over a president who hates Capitalism and liberty. You love to defame your opposition as knuckle dragging imbecile Birchers, possessed by odious and frightening militant stupidity. Liberals not only believe, like Stalin and Mao, they can change human nature, it’s part of their programme which inevitably and ultimately results in catastrophe and disaster. Lastly, you have minimal interest in whether your programmes you support work or not as long as it is totalitarian power they will afford you to exercise. I am for liberty and the Articles of Confederation. I think only the free market can be fair and just in allocating profit and increase. I oppose a regulating, restricting and suffocating government, income taxes and all politicians. I am a firm believer in the Bill of Rights, especially the Tenth Amendment. I believe in my right to bear arms and change government, by force if needs be, if the parasites become oppressive. But the First Circle of Hell remains reserved for Mrs. Pelosi.

Dearest Emeritus: And round and round she goes … The quadrennial game in Washington is called “Let’s get the President!” The party in power is outraged when its candidate is debased and debunked by the opposition, yet enjoys playing the same game when it’s its turn. Yawn! The atheist and social democrat Buno Kreisky, former chancellor of Austria and proof that even leftists can have intellect, decency and class, and Franz Cardinal König, a true prince of the church, had a respectful, cordial, polite and mutually extremely beneficial relationship. The State, the common weal and the Church did profit, too. And, I have it on deep background that they never asked to see the other’s birth certificate. The Wall Street titans and Health Industry executives freely walk the corridors of power in Washington, even work in the present administration, have dinner at The White House, and have their pictures taken with the president in the Rose garden. A whore sleeps with anybody who’s got the money. And who handed candidate Obama hundreds of millions of Dollars for his campaign? When you claim militant stupidity is most frightening, I do feel your fear. By the way, why Rhinebeck? Was it the only NY state community left willing to have you? Tomorrow is Mariä Lichtmeß (Purificatio Mariae). Which means we’ll either have six more weeks of Winter or 1½ months till Spring. w

After all the Kings, Emperors, Führers and assorted Helmsmen, the modern liberal state was supposed to guide us citizen almost imperceptibly, leaving us unmolested. However, it turned into a socialist monster, a debtor state which not only enslaves its citizens with unsustainable debt but also pillages future generations. We live under a totalitarian warfare-welfare fascist state because socialism can only be realized in a totalitarian system by dictatorial means. And our political class does not fear us. After all, we reelect those criminals while their plunder intensifies. They claim at least half of our economic profits and also personally abuse the Treasury and our property. Mrs. Pelosi flies each week home to California to her million dollar home, on a plane provided by us, stocked with the finest foods, wines and liquors, also at our expense. We must eliminate the progressive income tax, too, which is the primary means by which the predatory Keynesian monster pillages and controls us. The political class, of course, must also be eliminated and never be allowed again to return. However, hell’s first circle is reserved for Mrs. Pelosi. The feudal barons of yesterday turned into today’s kleptocracy and need to be fusilladed. In our nation, run by fascists, 25 % of our top earners pay 86% of federal income taxes. We are exploited by the unproductive and the incompetent. The sage of Baltimore wrote that “the art of government is the exclusive possession of quacks and frauds. It has been so since the earliest days, and it will probably remain so until the end of time.” I don’t think so.

Hermann Detering: The Falsified Paul

". . . I would like to take the reader once more over the stretch of road that I myself traveled in my engagement with Paul and early Christianity and that finally led me to the conviction that the Pauline letters in their entirety are inauthentic. Perhaps at the end . . . readers will be surprised at themselves with regard to how effortlessly and easily they have followed a road at whose end stands the total destruction of their own familiar and beloved conceptions. Perhaps at the end of this road they will even come to realize how little they have really lost and how much they have gained. "