My thought of the day....

[Sandy Eggo]

There was a theory that then entire debacle was a CIA mind-control experiment.

I think he was just a drugged out megalomaniac who was fortunate enough to find 900 or so lemmings. People who suspend logic for fairy tales are easy pickins...apparently.

[LOsborne]

Since the group suicide didn't happen until the late 70's does anyone know if the people involved were Indianian?

Peoples Temple was founded in 1955 in Indy. In 1965 it moved to California, and in 1977 to Guyana (part of it anyway.) Congressman Ryan of California led the trip to investigate concerns from families of members that they had been brainwashed, or were being held against their will. Since Ryan was Californian, it is a logical assumption the families who asked for the investigation were from California. But Jimmy Jones himself was indisputably Hoosier.

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/jonestown1.html

My younger child (who wasn't born until 1986) once was chastised by paternal family members because she stopped going to Mass. She told them she had joined a new church ... although some people called it a cult... and next Sunday it was her turn to bring the Kool-Aid. So I doubt that either California or Indiana can lay sole claim to the legend. It has turned in to an archetype!

[LOsborne]

I think he was just a drugged out megalomaniac who was fortunate enough to find 900 or so lemmings. People who suspend logic for fairy tales are easy pickins...apparently.

Hold on, Sandy. The 1955 Peoples Temple was a very different critter from the Jonestown zombie farm.

On April 4, 1955, Jones and the members of his new congregation, which numbered at around20, founded the Wings of Deliverance. This group was looking for an early expansion and the doorwas left opened for other congregations as affiliates. The Wings of Deliverance had just gotten started when it changed its name. With its interracial followers, his "healing powers" and the widepread Pentecostal use of the world temple, they called the group The People's Temple. With a choir, a youth group, room for 700 people and Jone's reputation for his healing ministry, it did not take long for large crowds to come and fill the place up.

The People's Temple then founded social services all over the city which gave the new church a chance to promote its liberal idea of a social gospel and to help reopen the eyes of the city and possibly even more to the problem of poverty. In 1959, Jones set up an orphanage adoption fund to closely mimic his own "rainbow family". Jim and his Marceline adopted children of different races and culture as their own children. Another social service provided by The People's Temple was a free restaurant and social service center in the Temple's basement. The restaurant opened its doors on February 24, 1960 and it became a fast success, known to give out thousands of meals per month to the homeless.

http://www.caic.org.au/biblebase/apocolyptic/jones.htm

Your perspective depends on where you are standing ... and when. Remember, the Black Panther Party organized community programs ranging from free breakfast for children, to free health clinics, to rent strikes resulting  in tenant ownership of their buildings, to Liberation School for grade-schoolers, to free clothing drives, to campaigns for community control of schools, community control of police, and campaigns to stop drugs, crime, and police murder and brutality in the various Black colonies across America. For these reasons, and others, the influence of the BPP spread far beyond its actual membership. Not only did the BPP programs teach self-reliance, but years later the government established similar programs such as free school lunch, expanded medicare and day care facilities, and liberalized court procedures for tenant takeovers of poorly maintained housing, partly if not primarily in order to snuff out the memory of previous similar BPP programs and the principle of self-reliance.

http://www.thetalkingdrum.com/bla2.html

After all, "There is nothing either good or bad - but thinking makes it so." Hamlet. Act II, Scene 2

[Sandy Eggo]

I wasn't clear..the lemmings part...was intended to be my editorial of the end result. Thanks for the rest of the history was interesting.

It's amazing how organizations begin w/great intentions, inspired by an opportunity to make a difference in some way and end up being hurtful.

I absolutely love your youngest response! I imagine she got quite a few hung jaws on that one.

[Sandy Eggo]

Ohhh I see, I did say "entire". My apologies, and thanks for catching me.

[JANADELE]

We know from the Scriptures that persons without authority will use the name of Jesus Christ to work what seem to be miracles. The Savior taught that as part of the Final Judgment many would say, "Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in Thy name have cast out devils? and in Thy name done many wonderful works?" (Matt. 7:22)...these pretenders were rejected by the Lord (see Matt. 7:23).

Not every manifestation or miracle comes from God or from mortal deception. The adversary has great powers to deceive, and he will use these to give his corrupted copy of the genuine miracles worked by the power of God. It is not desirable to say much about the powers of the evil one. It is sufficient for us to know that his power exists, and that we have been warned against it ... see Rev. 13:11–14; D&C 28:11; D&C 50:1–3

[The Troll]

We know from the Scriptures that persons without authority will use the name of Jesus Christ to work what seem to be miracles. The Savior taught that as part of the Final Judgment many would say, "Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in Thy name have cast out devils? and in Thy name done many wonderful works?" (Matt. 7:22)...these pretenders were rejected by the Lord (see Matt. 7:23).

Not every manifestation or miracle comes from God or from mortal deception. The adversary has great powers to deceive, and he will use these to give his corrupted copy of the genuine miracles worked by the power of God. It is not desirable to say much about the powers of the evil one. It is sufficient for us to know that his power exists, and that we have been warned against it ... see Rev. 13:11–14; D&C 28:11; D&C 50:1–3

  Since you seen to know all about the bible have you have ever had a religious experience
.  We have a Hawk who claims he had one but won't tell what is was.  To me that really seems odd.
 
  I have asked three old preachers that same question and all of they said no.

[Palehorse]

  Since you seen to know all about the bible have you have ever had a religious experience
.  We have a Hawk who claims he had one but won't tell what is was.  To me that really seems odd.
 
  I have asked three old preachers that same question and all of they said no.

Greaaaat! Now they'll be speaking in tongues, passin around rattlers, and telling us all how we're damned to an eternity of hell-fire and brimstone. . .  (Which by the way is a volcano).

[LOsborne]

It's amazing how organizations begin w/great intentions, inspired by an opportunity to make a difference in some way and end up being hurtful.

Since I'm on a Shakespeare binge: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. Julius Caesar, Act I, scene 2

We've all seen it often. As you say, "organizations begin w/great intentions, inspired by an opportunity to make a difference in some way and end up being hurtful." I don't know why it happens, but I know how. We lose sight of the goal (or worse, we achieve the goal) and then arbitrarily define a new objective -- often a self-serving one. I've seen it in the women's movement, the unions, both political parties ... the only group that didn't fall victim was the yips. When it stopped being fun, we just freakin' quit.

I absolutely love your youngest response! I imagine she got quite a few hung jaws on that one.

Nah, they didn't get it. But her father and I damned near wet our pants!

[JANADELE]

  Since you seen to know all about the bible have you have ever had a religious experience
.  We have a Hawk who claims he had one but won't tell what is was.  To me that really seems odd.
 
  I have asked three old preachers that same question and all of they said no.

Yes, I have had many.

[JANADELE]

During an attempted military coup to overthrow the government of Philippine president Corazon Aquino in December 1989  many persons were killed in nearly a week of heavy fighting between rebel and loyal government troops. A principal site of this fighting was Camp Aguinaldo, which adjoins The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Temple in Manila.

During the first day of the attempted coup, gunfire and bombing could be heard from our Temple. That night the road in front of the Temple was occupied by rebel armored vehicles, trucks, and many soldiers. With the coming of daylight on Saturday, these rebel forces exchanged gunfire with the loyal government troops in Camp Aguinaldo. Opposing aircraft fired rockets and dropped bombs.

At about 3:00 p.m. Saturday afternoon, the rebel soldiers breached the gate of the Temple and occupied our Temple grounds. At this time we had five Philippine employees there: three security men and two custodians. Our Temple president, Floyd H. Hogan, instructed them by phone not to resist the soldiers entering the Temple grounds or the Temple annex, which housed auxiliary facilities like name processing, but to secure the Temple and take cover there. The man in charge, Brother Espi, later wrote that he worked to develop a good relationship with the rebel soldiers to convince them that even though they wanted to get access to the Temple, "because of the sacred nature of the Temple, they should not try to enter."

Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning there were almost continuous exchanges of gunfire between the government troops in Camp Aguinaldo and the rebels around the camp, including those occupying our Temple grounds. Brother Espi later wrote: "We all thought that we are on our own but still asked our Heavenly Father to strengthen each one of us and to spare the Temple from being desecrated."

Others were praying too. In his later report, Area President George I. Cannon wrote: "The Sunday when the rebellion was going on was fast Sunday. Throughout the Philippines the members were praying and fasting for The temple, for the members, and for the missionaries."

Sunday morning a government helicopter gunship appeared and strafed the vicinity of the Temple, but retreated because of stiff resistance from the rebels' 50-caliber machine guns. About noon that day an air force plane dropped several bombs that hit the residence house near the Temple. Bomb fragments broke windows in the Temple annex.

Sunday evening Manila radio reported that the LDS Temple was in rebel hands but that a government force was moving in to drive them out. At that report, President Hogan, the Temple president and a retired colonel in the U.S. military, went into action himself. He made the dangerous walk from the Temple president's home to the assembling government troops. There he found that their commander had given the rebels one hour to surrender and planned to attack them at 11:00 p.m. His force included armored personnel carriers, heavy mortars, and at least 150 soldiers, who believed they outnumbered and could easily defeat the rebel force in the Temple annex. But their attack would obviously employ extensive heavy weapons and rifle fire and would cause great damage to the Temple facilities. President Hogan argued with the commanding officer that if he would only wait until daylight, the rebels might abandon the Temple grounds and no attack would be necessary. The commander insisted that he had to follow his orders, and President Hogan was not able to contact the general who had given the order to see if he would rescind it.

During this time I was the member of the Quorum of the Twelve whom the Philippines Area President contacted for help at headquarters. Thirty minutes before the 11:00 p.m. Manila deadline, Area President George I. Cannon phoned me to report that our Temple annex and grounds were the last remaining rebel stronghold in Manila and the army had massed artillery and troops for an assault at any moment. He said he had done all he could through the Philippine government and the American ambassador to discourage the attack, but without success. It was then 7:30 a.m. Sunday in Salt Lake City.

By a remarkable coincidence—one of those happenings that cannot be coincidental—the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles had scheduled an unusual meeting that Sunday morning. At 8:00 a.m., 3 December, just 30 minutes after I received that alarming report from Manila, the assembled First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve bowed in prayer and pleaded with the Lord to intervene to protect His house. Elder Marvin J. Ashton led our prayer. As we prayed, it was 11:00 p.m. Sunday evening in Manila, the exact hour appointed for the assault.

The attack never came. Twenty minutes after our prayer, President Cannon phoned Church headquarters to report that the military commander had unexpectedly decided against a night assault. Early the next morning, Philippine time, President Hogan phoned to say that the rebels had melted away during the night. I recorded in my journal, "I consider this a miracle of divine intervention no less impressive than many recorded in holy writ."

On Monday morning President Hogan inspected the Temple annex. It had shrapnel marks and many broken windows on the north side, but inside, none of its locked rooms had been entered. The Temple itself had not been entered and was not damaged. A total of six mortar or rocket shells had exploded inside the Temple grounds. From their trajectory, President Hogan concluded that some of these shells had to have passed between the spires of the Temple. The patron housing building under construction nearby had been hit by four or five rockets and had sustained extensive damage. The Manila Temple opened for normal sessions the next day.

A week later I received a letter from the Philippine ambassador to the United States, Emmanuel Pelaez, whom I had recently hosted at Church headquarters. His letter explained how he had worked behind the scenes, as soon as he learned that our Temple was threatened, to urge the Philippine military to "do everything possible" to spare this sacred building from damage. After the fighting was over, they had reported to him that "they were careful in their counter-shelling, so as not to cause damage" to the Temple. I concluded that the Lord had worked behind the scenes through these government servants to save His house.

When I was in the Philippines a few months later, I personally inspected the Temple and grounds and found that despite all of the shelling and exchanges of gunfire within a few feet of this sacred edifice, it was completely unmarked by any shell fire except for one bullet hole, apparently a single stray rifle shot, at the top of the highest steeple. As President and Sister Donald L. Hilton of the Philippines Manila Mission wrote in a letter sent to their missionaries, "an unseen army of angels assisted faithful Temple guards that the Temple was not desecrated."

By Elder Dallin H. Oaks

Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

[JANADELE]

http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=0371759235d0c010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD   

Link for the above post.

[Henry Hawk]

Is U.S. Now On Slippery Slope To Tyranny?
By Thomas Sowell





When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics.
Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler's rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions.

"Useful idiots" was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union.

Put differently, a democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, or ultimately even survive.
In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it.

The president's poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies.

Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere.

And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Many among the public and in the media may think that the issue is simply whether BP's oil spill has damaged many people, who ought to be compensated.

But our government is supposed to be "a government of laws and not of men."

If our laws and our institutions determine that BP ought to pay $20 billion — or $50 billion or $100 billion — then so be it.

But the Constitution says that private property is not to be confiscated by the government without "due process of law."

Technically, it has not been confiscated by Barack Obama, but that is a distinction without a difference.
With vastly expanded powers of government available at the discretion of politicians and bureaucrats, private individuals and organizations can be forced into accepting the imposition of powers that were never granted to the government by the Constitution.

If you believe that the end justifies the means, then you don't believe in constitutional government.
And, without constitutional government, freedom cannot endure. There will always be a "crisis" — which, as the president's chief of staff has said, cannot be allowed to "go to waste" as an opportunity to expand the government's power.

That power will of course not be confined to BP or to the particular period of crisis that gave rise to the use of that power, much less to the particular issues.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt arbitrarily took the United States off the gold standard, he cited a law passed during the First World War to prevent trading with the country's wartime enemies. But there was no war when FDR ended the gold standard's restrictions on the printing of money.

At about the same time, during the worldwide Great Depression, the German Reichstag passed a law "for the relief of the German people."

That law gave Hitler dictatorial powers that were used for things going far beyond the relief of the German people — indeed, powers that ultimately brought a rain of destruction down on the German people and on others.
If the agreement with BP was an isolated event, perhaps we might hope that it would not be a precedent. But there is nothing isolated about it.

The man appointed by President Obama to dispense BP's money as the administration sees fit, to whomever it sees fit, is only the latest in a long line of presidentially appointed "czars" controlling different parts of the economy, without even having to be confirmed by the Senate, as Cabinet members are.

Those who cannot see beyond the immediate events to the issues of arbitrary power — vs. the rule of law and the preservation of freedom — are the "useful idiots" of our time. But useful to whom?

[followsthewolf]

So the POTUS is a Nazi.

OOOOOOOOOOKKAAAAAAAAAAY.

So we're really reachin' hard to whip up the True Murkin' Patriots.

Makin' me laugh so very hard.

[Henry Hawk]

So the POTUS is a Nazi.

OOOOOOOOOOKKAAAAAAAAAAY.

So we're really reachin' hard to whip up the True Murkin' Patriots.

Makin' me laugh so very hard.

There is no need to spin this FTW...it never said he was a Nazi.....this is a typical rhetoric response to a very well written opinion piece....try reading this without a closed, liberal mind, and try to see the big picture that as Sowell paints..... the immediate events to the issues of arbitrary power — vs. the rule of law and the preservation of freedom