Sibby Online

No, Jesus is not a socialist

That is the name of a must read column by Tom Snyder. Here is the introduction:

A group of self-described "progressive" Christian evangelicals calling themselves "Red Letter Christians," and led by the left-oriented Sojourners magazine and left-oriented religious pundits like Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo, has recently emerged in the body politic. These self-proclaimed "progressives" have been making a lot of noise recently complaining about the ties that other Christian evangelicals have long held with the conservative movement in the United States, including the conservative movement in the Republican Party.

One policy under attack by these "progressives" is the conservative effort to "cut programs to the poor." They say that such a policy goes against Jesus Christ's commands in chapter 24 of the book of Matthew to feed those who are hungry.

These "Red Letter Christians" are making a lot of noise, but they are just a bunch of clanging cymbals – and the love that they claim to spout has no truth in it whatsoever.

What these misguided religious zealots conveniently fail to note is that nowhere in the New Testament or the other books of the Bible do Jesus Christ, His apostles, God the Father, the Holy Spirit, Moses or the Hebrew prophets command the government to take money from its citizens and transfer it to poor people. In fact, the Bible says just the opposite.

God presents us with three general ways in the Bible to take care of the poor and needy: 1) through the family; 2) through the church; and 3) through individual charity. The applicable passages for these three ways are Deuteronomy 14:28, 29, Numbers 18:24, Matthew 6:1-4 and 1 Timothy 5:3-16.

Like I have been saying, the far-left are actually anti-Christian:

In other words, Jesus is not a socialist. Nor is he a liberal. In fact, in none of the Bible passages just cited, nor in any others I know of, does Jesus, God or even Moses cite the government as the means by which the poor, needy, widowed and orphaned are housed, clothed and fed.

Thus, a simple, straightforward reading of the Bible, God's Word, including the "Red Letter" words of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, clearly shows that the American welfare state is anti-Christian and unbiblical. Any Christian who advocates such a government welfare system (including clergymen or women) should be harshly rebuked.

And here is more on how the far-left socialist goes against God’s commandment:

On that note, it is interesting to recall that the 10th Commandment in Exodus 20:17 actually protects private property by commanding people not to covet their neighbor's house or belongings. That commands applies to the average citizen as well as the elected official, the judge and all other government officials.

Furthermore, the Bible condemns laziness and praises hard work. Proverbs 10:4 says, "Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth." Proverbs 14:23 says, "All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty."

And now the conclusion:

Christians must stop the ungodly, immoral rape of American citizens with the totalitarian, socialist welfare state! They must establish a proper and godly system of family, church and private charity. Not just Christians, but all true Americans should follow God's clear guidance in this matter. God will reward us mightily for our obedience in these matters.

As I have been saying the left represents anti-American, anti-God, and anti-family postions.

Poverty is an attitude

Rush Limbaugh comments on the latest economic growth update:

Anyway, now here is the way the Drive-By Media deals with good economic news. By the way, the second quarter GDP was revised up from 2.5 to 2.9% growth. That's "not good." That's still way below what it was in the wintertime in the first quarter, way, way below. I mean, it's horrible! Folks, we're talking 3% economic growth. Go to Mexico. Go to Afghanistan, go anywhere. You know, don't tell me people's expectations are low. You know, I'm not sure I buy this anyway. Well, people's expectations don't want to be low. Let us sink into a bit of a recession or let the Drive-Bys start talking about how we're going to head downward in an economic trend because of what the Fed is doing, and you'll see people get mad. Americans' expectations are high because they're Americans, and they expect tomorrow to be better than today. They almost consider that a birthright.

So this effort to lower expectations, be very suspicious of it. It's just a bunch of liberals who don't think you have the ability to make it anyway so that you will end up needing them, their largesse, their expertise, their magnanimity, and all of that. You can go talk to members of groups who have believed and relied on liberals to do that for them and check their economic circumstances, and you tell me if you want to join the group.

In South Dakota, all we have to look to is the reservations to find out what liberals do to a people. And Bruce Whalen has the inside scoop on that.

Limbaugh then goes into the true cause of poverty…attitude:

Poverty is an attitude. Poverty is an attitude that is cemented in people's minds. Economic growth is going on. The story indicates it.

How come the New York Times never, never cites the abject failure of the War on Poverty? When I read this number, 37 million people still living below the poverty line, the War on Poverty started way back with LBJ, mid-sixties. We have had a war on poverty for 31 years, 30 years or so, and yet the percentages of people in poverty hover anywhere from 12 to 14%. It hasn't changed. All of a sudden, though, 1965 to the year 2001 never happened. No, no, no. This is Bush's fault, and now the New York Times wants to say that economic growth has been shown that it's not enough. What we need are government programs. We've got government programs. Programs piled upon programs. We got programs that are redundant. We got more programs than people know exist.

And the attitude that causes poverty is liberalism [specifically, socialism]:

The problem is liberalism. The problem is a big nanny state government. The problem is the welfare state mentality. It's on parade in New Orleans, Louisiana, among way too many Americans, and it's sad and unfortunate to see. In this great nation, to see people who have no clue, don't have any idea what to do, because they have been robbed of their own initiative. They've been robbed of their own potential. That's what liberalism does, and that's what all these great programs the New York Times advocates have done, rob people of their human capacity to succeed because they have replaced the necessary ambition with a sustenance, not an abundance.

And the attitude that Limbaugh is talking about is pride created by accomplishment, in other words…genuine self-esteem:

The people who have abundance in this country -- we're talking economic -- and I'm not talking about financial wealth alone. We're talking about happiness and contentment, we're talking about the joy one gets from accomplishment, the joy that one gets from achievement. You don't find that among most of the constituencies of the left because that's not what they're selling and that's not what they are providing. They are providing and selling dependence, they are advocating mediocrity; they are suggesting that people are no better than that anyway. This is the need they have to remain in power, and so four years into an economic recovery, the number of people living in poverty has finally stopped climbing.

While listening to this Rush Limbaugh segment, I couldn’t help but think about Bruce Whalen. He understands this truth. That socialism creates poverty by killing ones attitude. It is a negative approach. Socialsim is not what made America great. And we are not talking about financial wealth as much as we are talking about people being happy living in freedom.

Socialism and the reservation

Kevin Woster started a thread on Mount Blogmore based on a point I made regarding socialism creating the poverty on the reservations. Here is what I sent as a comment to that thread:

For those who refuse to open up their minds, the idea that socialism creates poverty sounds silly. Perhaps the folks on the far-left should stop and listen to what a person says instead of ignoring the content just because it is coming from a conservative. This is especially important if the conservative lived in poverty.

For example Star Parker, a African American who grow up in the inner citizens[city] of LA, explains in her book, "Uncle Sam’s Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can Do About It", that socialism caused and is still causing the poverty where she grew up.

And with regard to the Native American, take it from Native American Bruce Whalen who said this yesterday at the South Dakota Republican convention:

"The Republican Party has a conservative platform and lines up better with Lakota values and culture. Abortion is just one of the issues," Whalen said. "There are a lot of Republicans in Indian Country. They just don't know it yet."

The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation remains one of the nation's poorest counties despite the millions of federal dollars poured into the area each year, he said. The area is hurt by federal regulations that hamper private enterprise, said Whalen.

"Socialism doesn't work, folks," he said.

Whalen grew up in Pine Ridge, moved to Utah as a teen and returned to South Dakota in 1999 to raise his family.

Bruce left the reservation and learned what is harming his people…socialism. Now hs is back and wants to make a change for the betterment of his people. And that is true for all of us conservatives. We are the progressive ones. We are the ones who are fighting for the liberal idea of economic freedom. So in that sense, the left is not liberal or progressive. The left may be considered liberal on social issues as they want us to reject morality. So "secular socialism" is a more accurate term for the left's ideology. That is why they want higher taxes and the right to kill unborn babies.

Health care, more socialism the answer?

The Argus Leader reports on one healthcare event, but not on another. Here is what they did report today:

The words "national health care" come out of Sen. John Thune's mouth about as often as the sun disappears in a solar eclipse.

So it was notable when he uttered the phrase Tuesday at a health care round-table at the Sioux Falls Convention Center. And while Thune made it clear afterward that he is not endorsing the concept, he added, "If we don't take steps to fix the current system, we are going to get there by default."

Yesterday, the Argus Leader tried to paint Newt Gingrich as anti-war, now today they try to paint John Thune into a pro-socialized medicine corner. And speaking of Newt Gingrich, Joel Rosenthal provides us with something that the Argus Leader did not cover:

What has not been reported was an informal presentation that was made mid day yesterday by Newt in Sioux Falls at the small assembly hall at the new Avera McKennan Behavioral Health Hospital. Invited guests were McKennan executives and what I would describe as a ragtag Republican Legislative caucus. Senator Tom Dempster, a substantive man, organized the event. Tom has been leading the charge with free enterprise initiatives and solutions to the health care affordability issue (more crisis I’d say) in South Dakota.

There was little discussion directly relating to health care as the group moved very quickly to broader public policy issues and broad political strategizing. Speaker Gingrich, a PhD and former college professor speaks equally well to the big picture and the minutiae of the details.

Since health care affordability is a BIG issue Gingrich is passionate about it he referred us to his website, www.healthtransformation.net, and his book "Saving Lives and Saving Money."

His roughly two hour presentation that included a heart healthy lunch moved on to changing the way people think about problems and find solutions. It was absolutely fascinating. He spoke to the need to address big ideas and that we need 21st Century solutions not approaching problems the same "old" way. He encouraged legislative transformation and ways that government MUST be modernized. He suggested a metrics led leadership system. A lot of new ways of looking at things were talked about.

Newt Gingrich said will have a new book out this fall, "The Art of Transformation." Newt Gingrich is a deep thinker and excellent in his word craft. It was a joyous event because the right ideas do matter.

Gingrich addressed the heatlhcare issue in Sioux Falls clear back in 2003 at an Augustana sponsored Boe forum. But the pathetic Argus Leader completely missed reporting the message. The message was that socialized medicine is not the answer, but rather America’s free market enterprise system and the technology that that system has already created was the solution.

So now lets go back to today’s Argus Leader report:

The federal government, through Medicare for seniors and Medicaid for low-income individuals, already is funding a large percentage of U.S. health care, and those programs are annually growing at 9 percent and 8 percent, respectively.

"It's not sustainable in its current form over time," Thune said.

"We are on the cusp of a fundamental decision on what could be a paradigm shift. Do we have market-based health care or go to a government system?" he told about 15 doctors, nurses, pharmacists, physical therapists and health care administrators.

Dave Hewitt, chief executive officer of the South Dakota Association of Health Care Organizations, predicted that "loss of employer health insurance coverage is the tipping point that will send us to a new model and change our system dramatically."

Medicare reimburses health care providers at about 70 percent of true cost, Hewitt said. The shortfall is typically made up by charging higher prices for health care services to people with medical insurance. That is driving up the cost of such insurance to the point employers may no longer be able to offer it, he said.

Virtually everyone in the discussion told Thune that federal reimbursement for health care is inadequate.

So clearly the government program is failing, but the pressure is on Thune to increase the role of the federal government. So here is what Newt Gingrich says about that:

And you know, what do we normally do in both parties? Whoever gets to be in charge thinks they have to pretend the system's working because, after all, they're in charge. (Laughter.) But they're not in charge. They are actually not in charge. They are presiding over a series of mechanisms that are totally beyond control.

I want to talk today about Medicaid. If you combine Medicare and Medicaid, there are at least 39,000 pages of regulations, not counting what we believe are 15,000 pages of waivers at the Medicaid level, and not counting 50 states full of laws and regulations.

And one of my challenges to the Congress is to get all the documents together in one room -- (laughter) -- because it will make the case on the -- you'll look at it and you'll say this is silly; it can't possibly work. We told the Soviets this for 70 years: large centralized command bureaucracies don't work. Guess what? We were right, they were wrong. They disappeared. (Laughter.) But we won't take our own medicine.

And this is what John Thune and the Republicans are faced with. The pressure of the liberal MSM causes them to pretend the government system is working just fine, and all we need is more money. But costs are already too high, and adding more government funding only means one thing…higher costs on top of the already high costs. Socialism is the problem. As Gingrich noted, the Soviet Union should have taught us that that system does not work. America was built on a free market system. Why would we reject that system which provides us with choices that lead to higher quality at a lower cost, and continue with a one size fits all government run program that wastes money through a bureaucracy bogged down with 39,000 pages of regulations?

This is no time to be fine tuning a mistake, it is time for America to reclaim itself. It is time to reject the 20^th Century experiments of socialism and return back to the system our Founding Fathers created. But want that requires Americans to start acting like Americans and chose to take repsonsibility for ourselves. And that will not happen as long as the MSM continues with their biased and shallow, and at times, false reporting.

Socialism makes people worse

This Dennis Prager column hits the nail on the head more than once:

Throughout much of last week, hundreds of thousands of students in France were angrily protesting.

They have been joined by the major French labor unions, which are threatening a general strike.

And what is this all about?

It is all about a new law in France that allows a company to fire a person under the age of 26, without cause, within two years of being hired.

Wow. Imagine that. You might get fired from your first job.

As it happens, the whole point of the law was to encourage companies to hire young people. The unemployment rate among young people in France is 23 percent. And in many suburbs, it is double that. Meanwhile, French companies are understandably loath to hire 22-year-olds when they cannot fire them except "for cause," which under union rules means something like committing mass murder in the workplace.

What these massive demonstrations reveal is the narcissism, laziness and irresponsibility inculcated by socialist societies.

Enough generations of socialist policies have now passed for us to judge their effects. They are bleak. Socialism undermines the character of a nation and of its citizens. In simpler words, socialism makes people worse.

These young people in France really believe that they should be able to be hired at their tender ages and that a company must not be allowed to fire them from their first day at work (except "for cause," which, as we are learning in America, is increasingly difficult to establish). In America, most of us would call the French young people's attitudes "spoiled."

Socialism teaches its citizens to expect everything, even if they contribute nothing.

Socialism teaches its citizens that they have a plethora of rights and few corresponding obligations – except to be taxed.

And that is why the citizens of less socialist – and more religious – America give more charity per capita and per income than do citizens of socialist countries. That is why Americans volunteer time for the needy so much more than citizens of socialist countries do. That is why citizens of conservative states in America give more charity than citizens of liberal states do. The more left one identifies oneself on the political spectrum, the more that person is likely to believe that the state, not fellow citizens, should take care of the poor and the needy.

Under socialism, one is not only liberated from having to take care of oneself; one is also liberated from having to take care of others. The state will take care of me and everybody else.

The same holds true for foreign affairs. Why did the conservative government of Spain support the American war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq and send troops there, while the Spanish socialists withdrew Spanish troops as soon as they were voted into office? Because the idea of risking one's life to bring freedom to others – or to risk one's life for another nation for just about any reason – is alien to the socialist mindset.

Similarly, in the great litmus test of moral acuity – the Middle East – socialist countries and parties virtually all line up behind the Palestinians. They do so either out of moral confusion or out of cowardice – it takes a lot more courage to support Israel than to support the Palestinians and the whole Muslim world.

The socialist idea sounded altruistic to those who began it, and it sounds altruistic to the naive who believe in it today. In practice, however, it creates self-centered individuals and a narcissistic society. So while it may have begun as a way to help others, it has come to mean a way of evading responsibility for oneself and for others.

That is why France is so frightened of the utterly rational idea that a young person should have a two-year trial period at work before being granted a lifetime job. Such an innovation in France would mean that young people would have to work hard and earn the right to lifetime employment. But if socialism means anything, it means that one shouldn't have to earn anything. One merely has to breathe.

As much as America has been adversely affected by socialist thought, it is still inconceivable that in America hundreds of thousands of students would shut down their schools in order to gain the right not to be fired by the first company that hires them. But every time America's socialists, the Democrats, prevail in an election, we move in that direction. No matter how pure their motives, the left makes America and its citizens less noble people, just like the spoiled French students.

Socialism

First there is this from NewsMax:

The federal government last year spent an average of more than $20,000 for each household in the U.S.

That’s more than was spent under Presidents Clinton ($18,000 per household when adjusted for inflation), Reagan ($14,000) and Nixon ($12,000), Lauren Etter of the Wall Street Journal reports.

The situation looks to be even worse this year. In fiscal 2006 – which ends in September – the federal government will likely spend $2.65 trillion and bring in $2.31 in revenue, leading to a projected deficit of nearly $340 billion, according to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

That doesn’t include funds for the Iraq war and hurricane recovery that could be requested.

Last year the deficit was $318 billion, including war and other costs, the Journal states.

Nor does the situation appear to improve several years down the road. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will eat up $1.1 trillion in fiscal 2006, or 43 percent of all federal spending.

But as baby boomers begin to qualify for Social Security and Medicare in 2008, spending on those programs will accelerate – and account for more than half of all federal spending by 2016.

The CBO forecasts that if current trends continue, those two programs alone will account for 20 percent of the economy by 2050.

"If you look at the numbers and the trajectory we’re on, the next five years are the best of times, and then it gets really hard," said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the CBO.

"Regardless of what any administration or Congress does in the next five years, we’re going to wake up and have a big problem."

Henry Lamb points out how the United Nations wants to take socialism to a new level:

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, the United Nations Development Program promoted its plan to rule the world through a global socialist economic system. The plan is detailed in a book entitled "The New Public Finance: Responding to Global Challenges", published by Oxford University Press.

The U.N. plan identifies seven trillion dollars – that's $7,000,000,000,000 – to be taken from developed nations for use by the U.N. to solve all the world's problems.

…

Proponents of this scheme realize that the American people would overwhelmingly reject this proposal if given an opportunity to vote on the decision to subject the United States to U.N. global rule. That's why the mechanism for global governance is being constructed in small steps taken by a multitude of different U.N. agencies and organizations, all coordinated, all working toward the same goal.

The solution is an orderly withdrawal from the United Nations. The United States must continue to be engaged in security and commerce around the world, but it must be neither constrained by, nor subject to, the United Nations. The U.N. has proven to be a cesspool of unaccountable corruption. Every American should study the documents referenced above, published or endorsed by the United Nations, and then insist that their elected representatives remove the United States from the grasp of the global body.

Rest assured that the proponents of global governance are working daily to advance their goals. The apathy, indifference and ignorance of ordinary Americans are among the primary weapons relied upon by the U.N. People who do nothing to stop global governance are actually helping to implement it.

Socialists not liberals

That is the name of one of my categories. And guess what, Rush Limbaugh agrees with me:

It's the same template when talking about soldiers. "They don't want to do that, they're only over there because they have no other choice. They come from poor areas, hayseed areas of the country, have no chance to get an education, no chance to get a job, Bush won't even raise the minimum wage, what choice do they have, they have to join the Army to go get killed." They impugn them, impugn the military, impugn the country. It's all about impugning capitalism. These people are socialists. They call themselves liberals, but they're socialists, and they want a great socialist order with themselves ruling the roost. Of course, different rules for themselves than the rules they will write and set for everybody else. Then you have the egalitarians. These are the people that it doesn't matter if 95% of the country believe in something, if 5% don't, then the 5% need to dominate. Why, what about the people who don't agree with us? Well, if those people don't agree with it then it's called a democracy. It's called win elections and get the power and do it your way. It's also called adaptation. But, "Oh, no, we are ignoring these people, we're making them feel left out, we're leaving them behind. This system sucks. This is not fair." Yet go anywhere around the world you want and find where their system has ever worked. Find where their system of socialism has produced prosperity like this nation has, you can't find it. You can't find a system of socialism around the world which has produced anything like the freedom we have here. And yet for some reason that's founded in ignorance, coupled with elitism and arrogance, they insist that their way is better, even though it's an utter failure. It gets people killed. It makes slaves of people. It enslaves them, and oftentimes you build walls around the country to keep them in. And yet they still laud that system and they still pretend that that's what their objectives are.

Schuldt, pay attention to this

Chad Schuldt, Tom Daschle’s paid liar, has an assignment to advocate more government dependency for the poor. Star Parker has a column that brings the truth to the table in regard to the Democrat’s socialism. [Note to Schuldt’s minions: This column may deprogram the brainwashing you have been exposed to on the Clear Cut Kidder’s web site.] First, Parker mentions California’s attack on the family:

November has been a banner month so far in California for assaulting the traditional family. Last Tuesday, California voters rejected Proposition 73, which would have required parental notification before allowing a minor to receive an abortion. The week before, California's wacko 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that parents do not have "exclusive" right in their children's sex education.

Now, in the state of California, a 15-year-old girl has full and exclusive sovereignty over the production and destruction of life. However, her 40-year-old parents have only limited jurisdiction over the values that this child learns and how she lives her life.

Parker then begins to explain how the far-left’s anti-family ideology is actually bad for blacks and the poor:

Aside from the angst that comes from watching the long-term implosion of a society, I have immediate concerns that California's assault on the traditional family is simultaneously an assault on blacks and the poor.

The nation's highest rate of teen abortions is among blacks. It is more than double the national average and more than three times higher than the rate among whites.

Data compiled by the Heritage Foundation show that teens from homes headed by single, never-married women are twice as likely to be sexually active than teens from homes headed by married couples. Black children are three times more likely than white children to be living in a single-parent household and are three times more likely to be poor.

So despite arguments from Planned Parenthood and other liberal advocates that inserting government between parents and their children protects children, things are quite the opposite. The reality of the black community is testimony that the formula for keeping children poor – and assuring that their children will be poor – is to destroy the integrity of the family.

Government subsidization and protection of irresponsible behavior has gotten blacks into the social black hole in which they now find themselves. Black kids are not suffering because they need more rights. They are suffering because they are not learning, from an early age, about responsibilities and consequences.

Parker ends by pointing out that the far-left socialists of the Democrat Party are not friends to blacks and/or the poor:

The very decision of the court tells you what values the government will teach. Marginalize the traditional family and have Justice Reinhardt, or his equivalent, join you as the co-parent of your kids.

Poor black kids, already coming from broken homes, are forced into broken schools where they are taught the very values that will increase the probability that they will stay poor, as will their children. And liberals think they are our friends?

Blacks see and feel the crisis. We are trying to rebuild our families and communities.

And the Democrats are trying to keep the blacks poor so that they can use them as political pawns as they attempt to advance their socialism. And there is nothing progressive about that.

The Democrats, the French, and socialism:

From Rush Limbaugh:

They are not insurgents in Iraq, they are terrorists, they are Islamic terrorists, and they are being recruited from all over by Iran and Syria, and yet, Bush can't be right. You have to understand what a guiding principle this is for the American left, which includes the Democratic Party in the media. Bush cannot be right. So what's happening in Paris is just a young bunch of ruffians, just a young bunch of street thugs who are of course trapped in their poverty and have no hope and have no future and are lashing out because in France you have the haves and the have-nots, which of course is a joke because in France you've got nothing but pure socialism. You don't have to work to get benefits. You can if you want to but it doesn't make any difference. You have very high minimum wage, and if you don't have a minimum wage job you'll have a pretty high benefit unemployment rate, and benefit. France threw its lot behind socialism long, long time ago with the mistaken belief that the finer elements of humanity would rise to the cream of the crop and the surface and we would all find experimental ways to get along with one another in our differences yet side by side and so forth, and it stems from the liberal arrogance. The liberal arrogance is that there will be no enemies of liberals because liberals have the ability to make everybody appreciate and love them and be in awe of them. Liberals, that's why they always think they can appease their enemies.

"Why, they won't want to attack us, why, they will want us to help them rule the world, because we're the smart people, we are the good people." And it's just amazing to me when you look at world history, and you find the number of liberal socialist appeasers who have been profoundly embarrassed time and time and time again, you talk about people who are stupid rather than the brilliant elites they think they are, they do not learn from one experience or two or a dozen. What's the definition of insanity? You keep repeating the same thing, hoping for a different outcome? Under that definition, the worldwide socialist movement and the left is insane. The Soviet Union? Why, it would have just worked if we hadn't had corrupt people in there. If we hadn't had corrupt people, the Soviet Union would have worked. Socialism, it's clearly the best for everybody, because it doesn't choose winners. Everybody is equal. Yeah, equally miserable!

Sheehan and the anti-American socialists

From WorldNetDaily:

Cindy Sheehan, the California woman who became an anti-war activist after her son was killed in Iraq, was arrested today during a protest in front of the White House.

Sheehan, 48, was with several dozen demonstrators who sat down on the sidewalk after marching on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Police, who took Sheehan into custody first, made arrests after warning the protesters three times they were breaking the law by failing to move along, the Associated Press reported.

As police led Sheehan to a vehicle, protesters chanted, "The whole world is watching."

The Vacaville, Calif., woman, whose son Casey was killed fighting insurgents in Iraq, launched an anti-war movement last month when she camped outside Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch and demanded to meet with the president, drawing national media attention.

The demonstration today, organized by the umbrella group United for Peace and Justice, drew several hundred demonstrators who marched around the White House chanting, "Stop the war now!"

On its website, United for Peace and Justice calls itself an "anti-American, anti-war coalition consisting of more than 800 local and national groups" that is co-chaired by "committed Socialist and longtime activist Leslie Cagan."