A Statesman’s Solution To Terrorism
October 2, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · Leave a Comment
While the neo-conservative “solution” of war-imposed “democracy” continues to fail and bankrupt America, former Congressman and UN Ambassador Mark Siljander has been quietly, yet steadily, building bridges of love, tolerance, peace, and understanding in the Middle East.
His new book, A Deadly Misunderstanding: A Congressman’s Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide, offers hope and genuine reconciliation between cultures and religions and answers to centuries-old conflicts.
An experienced statesman at home and abroad, Mr. Siljander serves on the Board of George Wythe University. In this revelatory book he recounts his amazing spiritual odyssey from anti-Muslim Christian conservative to pioneer in discovering uncharted, ground-breaking common roots between Islam and Christianity, while trailblazing a unique diplomatic path for bringing the two communities together.
This is not just another book; there are many interesting books filling our shelves. Nor is it an academic thesis or political agenda. This story inspires hope in our increasingly desperate world, uncovering compelling common ground for followers of these two super-power religions.
“No Christian or Muslim will be unaffected after reading this book. Siljander’s paradigm-shifting discoveries could radically shift the contemporary religious landscape and help heal the rift between Islam and the West.” -Christianbook.com
At our root are basic misunderstandings of concepts like “religion” and “conversion.” Siljander breaks down and re-assembles these concepts through study of the ancient Semitic languages of both religions, making paradigm-shifting discoveries that unite rather than divide us. His findings are drawn from twenty-seven years of study and practice in a real life journey. Wherever he and his praying partners travel among Muslim nations, the outcome of their quiet diplomacy is respect, trust, love of friends and enemies, and significant real-world breakthroughs in crisis situations of which few are aware.
His book offers explosive models based on ancient truths, proven to powerfully affect people, conflicts, countries, and potentially change cultures. This is the kind of “change” future presidents must strive for. This seemingly implausible path to peace dismantles the engine of terror without firing a single shot.
Click here to learn more and to purchase your copies now. Readers are encouraged to purchase copies on October 7th, which is the official release date of the book.
“Rumors indicate that the Siljander book … has angered … the influential ‘war lobby’ depending on decades of religious conflict.” -Veterans Today
About the Author
Mr. Siljander represented Michigan for fifteen years, which includes three terms as a Member of the United States Congress, where he served on the International Relations Middle East Subcommittee and was Ranking Member of the Africa Subcommittee. He was the primary sponsor of the African Famine Relief Act. Mark was later appointed by President Reagan as a US Ambassador (Alt. Delegate) to the United Nations in New York, where he served as a member of the Middle East and Africa Strategy Group of permanent representatives.
Ambassador Siljander is a student of several languages, including Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebrew, and has spent over ten years studying the three Holy Books of the Abrahamic faiths. With over 26 years serving in the power circles of Washington and semi-official travel to nearly 130 countries, he has generated unique opportunities for frequent access to world leaders. These experiences have led him to develop a unique paradigm for the peaceful resolution of conflict that has been successfully applied in several challenging areas of the globe.
Mark Siljander reinforces his conflict resolution efforts through regular travel overseas with Congressional and high-level delegations.
Purchase your copy now to get on the cutting edge of the Middle East conflict and find real solutions to terrorism.
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Do You Hate Oppression, Or Love Liberty?
September 10, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · 4 Comments
And why does it matter? Is there a difference between the two?
Truth and freedom are synonymous with happiness, for as man aligns his thoughts, speech, and actions with eternal, immutable truth, he discovers personal freedom and is therefore happy; one cannot be free and unhappy simultaneously. Understanding this, we find that mere political freedom is simply one level of freedom on an infinite scale, and is not the ultimate goal of the pursuit of happiness — the former is merely a framework to facilitate the latter.
Many of us make the mistake of pursuing political freedom before internalizing personal integrity. In the pursuit of happiness, the question one must answer is, “Do I love freedom, or do I hate oppression?” On the surface level, these questions appear to be a redundancy, yet what naturally flows from the answers to each are worlds apart in their long-term consequences.
The Law — Tool of Acquisition, Redistribution, or Justice?
September 1, 2008 by Mike Wilson · 1 Comment
How To Keep The Law In Its Rightful Place
The only legitimate purpose of legislation is to establish some level of justice in society. However, it doesn’t take long for that proposed intent to be abused. Human beings have a tendency to self-interest and legislators are no different.
The French physiocrat Frederic Bastiat, popularized the phrase “legal plunder” in his essay The Law. Legal plunder means to use legislation to accomplish exchanges of money, capital, labor, resources, etc. that one could not do without the law. This legalization does the following: “And, as law cannot exist without the sanction and the support of a preponderating force, it must finally place this force in the hands of those who legislate.”
Historically, how has this been manifested? How do we understand it today? What can we do about this problem in order to increase our liberty and prosperity?
The Conservative/Liberal Divide
August 16, 2008 by Mike Wilson · Leave a Comment
The Politically-Induced “Split-Personality” of the Human Soul
I recently experienced an epiphany that generated hope out of a lot of frustration regarding the contending factions in American and world politics, and within my own heart.
I was discussing Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments with a colleague, in which Smith (according to my discussant) puts forth the idea that it is easier for human beings to be worried about right and wrong than it is for us to worry about the welfare of our neighbor. I interjected, stating that this is true for conservatives, but that the opposite is true for liberals. I then sat back amazed at the thought that we both had, almost instantaneously, that these two concepts need not be separated, and in fact belong together.
I have stated in the past that “the role of a statesmen is to help people that love God to learn to love their neighbor and to help people who love their neighbor to learn to love God.” However, I had never realized that this division between those who were more concerned with the right and wrong way to govern and those who were more focused on the necessity to care for the well being of humankind was a false and pernicious split of the divine nature of the human soul.
What caused this split? Does the division naturally exist, or is it something passively imposed upon us by society, environment, upbringing, etc.? Or is it an active process in that we choose to deny a certain portion of ourselves? It’s likely that we are somewhat naturally compartmentalized (Jefferson uses the argument between the Head and the Heart to demonstrate his internal strife) to allow us to deal effectively with things of the heart (the welfare of others) and the cold, hard facts of the head (what is wrong and what is right). However, the environment which we are exposed to will generally accentuate one compartment over the other.
Environmental exposure is not sufficient to explain the entire situation. Human choice also plays an important role in moving us to predominately concern ourselves with either the importance of determining wrong and right or the importance of the welfare of our neighbor. As we understand this dichotomy, we can begin to see the perspective of others without falling prey to the common, unhelpful tendency to characterize those who promote a different portion of their soul as “cold-blooded, heartless conservatives” or “bleeding-heart liberals” and “do-gooders” (said with the patent EIB network mocking sneer).
In order to solve the problems we face as human beings with the determination and desire to promote freedom and prosperity and goodness, we must heal this rift within us and in society. Of course most of us will still retain a residue of the predominate portion, but our determination must be to let go of standard, tired, staid definitions and categories and embrace the whole human soul.
Classical literature plays a powerful role in this transition. Examples from the moral dilemmas discussed by Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Orson Scott Card (to name a few of my favorites) help us to ask the hard questions of ourselves and help us bring unity to our soul.
Another, more important, source of healing is to recognize our dependence on God and His emphasis on law and love, justice and mercy. He knows our soul and our individual make-up, and how to bridge the divide and reconcile in us the sadly split portions.
After recognizing one’s dependence on God, the next step in the healing process is to pick up a literature classic and engage the author in the conversation and, with profound introspection, ask “How can I become a more complete human being?” Without this wholeness, our statesmanship and our pursuit of the cause of liberty will not only ring hollow, but it will come up short.
Move the Cause of Liberty by (1) subscribing to the Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and (2) pledging your Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor to the Cause by signing the Declaration of Dependence.
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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
The “McGuffy Paradigm” & Why It Should Be Revived
August 15, 2008 by Hyrum Lefler · Leave a Comment
Have you heard of the McGuffy Readers? Do you know there were 120 million of them sold in the middle part of our nation’s history? They were the standard educational text for America for a hundred years. So, what is in them?
Well, the first page of the first book talks about cats and rats, the second page shows the cat eating the rat, the third page is about a brother and sister trying out a homemade sail boat, fanning it because there is not enough wind. Skip down the pages; stories about boys that are fat getting caught in games of tag by skinny and fast boys, old men with makeshift bandages over broken legs, young girls being kind to old and young blind men.
Then we have three different notes on a bird’s nest with five eggs in it. “Do not rob the nest,” it says. And, “Tom will not rob a bird’s nest, he is too kind to do so.” Then a few more pages and we have twelve-year old boys chopping wood with the caption, “Ned and John are hard at work. John has a saw, and Ned has an ax. They will try to cut all of the wood which you can in the pile. Do you think they can do this in one day?”
Interesting…animals dying, skinny boys catching fat boys, charity for the downtrodden, protecting a bird’s nest. Young, unfortunate boys breaking a sweat — not to mention breaking child-labor regulations and facing dismal obituaries someday that may contain the words “hard worker” in them.
These stories are real! You know as well as I do that in the real world we don’t get anywhere by staying home forever and being entertained by The Cat in the Hat. No offense intended to fans of Cat in the Hat; I’m just a little burned out on the media-mania out there. I want some backbone to my children’s stories!
Life is an experience like no other! It is about toil, hardship, joy, service to others, excitement, challenges surmounted, focus, driving out the imperfections in ourselves, moving the cause of liberty, and making a difference! This is where we find our happiness. There is so much more to life than most of us realize and experience; we have so much dormant ability. As Thomas Jefferson put it, “Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.”
Love the challenge! Face life with all its wonder, mystery, and difficulty. Take a stand in spite of opposition.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, recently deceased, was a man who lived life to the fullest. In a speech at Harvard he said the following:
“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days…A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger. Six decades for our people and three decades for the people of Eastern Europe; during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. Life’s complexity and mortal weight have produced stronger, deeper and more interesting characters than those produced by standardized Western well-being.”
Struggle? Isn’t that for foreigners — or at least anybody but “me”? It is time we all took a step back and asked ourselves some tough questions: Why are we fighting so hard for the stagnant life here in America? Why are we so intent on outsourcing our window washing, lawn care, weed pulling, the teaching of our children (public education), thinking (the media), policy making (anybody but us), and the good life (our entertainment gods and goddesses); and all this in the hopes of allowing ourselves the Pastoral boringness of a fake, aristocratic ease and laziness.
There is a constant discussion in our country about illegal aliens and the work that they do because we won’t. “Isn’t hard work something that migrant workers do?” we ask. Isn’t it our ultimate goal to get out of work, to “retire,” to “arrive” and never have to work again? No! It’s not — or at least it should not be if we want to call ourselves Americans! Work is for us, if we have a spine or any real desire for happiness and success in this life! “The love of work is success,” said David O Mackay.
Virgil also wrote of this in The Georgics:
“No easy road to husbandry assigned,
And first was he by human skill to rouse
The slumbering glebe, whetting the minds of men
With care on care, nor suffering realm of his
In drowsy sloth to stagnate.”
In our affluence, we have forgotten that happiness comes through work, service, love, and faith. The greatest nation on earth doesn’t know what it stands for anymore. Actually, WE as individuals don’t know what we stand for anymore. After all you and I are America!
Too many of us stagnate in the mire of complacency, afraid to be leaders. Make the change, not excuses! Join the Cause of Liberty, subscribe to the Sentinel, and experience the Georgic Revolution in your life!
Move the Cause of Liberty by (1) subscribing to the Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and (2) pledging your Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor to the Cause by signing the Declaration of Dependence.
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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
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