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“Why Not?” Analysis

May 9th, 2013

One of the most disturbing things surrounding the rapid advance of the homosexual political agenda is not homosexuality itself. It is the apparent collapse of thinking. For most people today the question “Why not?” seems to be a sufficient argument to support changing the 6,000 year old common sense definition of marriage that has been the bedrock of civilization. For that matter, it seems a sufficient reason to support child killing, gay sex clubs in school, legalizing drugs use, pornography, and who knows what else?

I suppose that “Why not?” is enough for people who (a) do not know anything, and (b) have no interest in knowing anything. The whole situation brings to mind a recent Walter Williams column “Is Thinking Obsolete?”.

The most shocking example of the abandonment of thinking is that found in recent court cases mandating same-sex”marriage.” In several of these, the judges involved based their ruling on their finding that the opposition had “no rational basis” for upholding the existing definition of marriage. In other words, the judges just dismissed these arguments as irrational because they personally disagreed with the conclusion The declaration that anyone who disagrees with you is by definition insane is itself evidence of insanity. And these are judges who are supposedly trained to think.

All of this is by way of introducing the following article on the Jews and Homosexuality by Dennis Prager. I found his historical perspective particularly interesting.

http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles2/PragerHomosexuality.php).

Posted in The Homosexual Political Agenda | No Comments »

Happy Easter!

March 31st, 2013

Every year at Christmas and Easter we find these two traditional holidays condemned by a pair of unusual bedfellows. On the one hand, the rabid secular enemies of Christ say these holidays are hateful relics of the past that only serve to exclude non-believers. Now that we all believe in diversity and inclusion we must exclude these totally Christian days from our observance.
On the other hand we find the most pious and fundamental Christians condemning Christian observance of these days as pagan observances and forms of idolatry. In particular we are told the celebrating Easter is worshipping the pagan goddess Ishtar.
Indeed I used to hold this latter position myself and wouldn’t even have a Christmas tree in my house for fear of idolatry.
Now I’ve changed my mind.
History is complicated. Did the early Christians take essentially pagan observances and try to Christianize them? Was this a grave, compromising mistake? Or were the so-called pagan observances themselves corruptions of an earlier Noahic set of observances meant to honor God and His plan for history? Are we incorporating something that is wholly pagan, or just recapturing what was God’s in the first place?
I think it was Dennis Praeger who shed some light on this when he said that the history of these aspects of culture is not as important as what they mean in our culture right now. Right now, Christmas and Easter are reminders of our Christian roots, and right now the enemies of Christ and His Church are trying to eliminate or corrupt (again) these observances in an effort to suppress the knowledge of God in our land. And IMHO those Christians getting worked up about supposed pagan roots are the same ones who want to escape from cultural engagement and hide in shrinking Christian enclaves until Jesus comes and takes us out of this place.
So I say engage the culture head on and celebrate the resurrection of our Lord this Easter Sunday!

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Conservatism and Libertarianism

March 17th, 2013

In announcing his switch from opposing to supporting same-sex “marriage” Republican Ohio Senator Rob Portman offered what has become a common rationale. He argued that legalizing same sex marriage was a conservative position since it maximized individual liberty and minimized the role of government.

Besides being wrong as to its effect, Portman was wrong to call this argument conservative. This is a libertarian argument, which is to say an ideological argument. Ideology is the elevation of an abstract principle to the status of a super-idea from which all other positions are deduced.

The libertarian idea of maximizing the individual and minimizing the collective society is the opposite of that held by other ideologies like communism and socialism that maximize the collective at the expense of the individual. In both cases the ideologue is in love with a beautiful idea and clings to it even when experience indicates it is not working. Neither is interested in the wisdom of the past.

Conservatism rejects abstract ideas as our guide in favor of tradition and authority. It looks to an ultimately divine authority mediated to us by the tradition of our fathers. It looks to the wisdom of the past. Liberalism is the flip side of conservatism and is characterized by rejection of tradition and authority, and is scornful of fathers and their wisdom.

So while there can be a libertarian argument for the oxymoron of same sex marriage there cannot be a conservative one. All of our culture’s tradition and religious authority stands opposed to it.

The Republican Party is a coalition of conservatives and libertarians owing to the large overlap of their positions on economic matters. These groups have less agreement on the social issues, so it is an obvious place for the Democrats to drive a wedge and a difficult one for Republicans to smooth over.

While the Democrats are a coalition of bought-and-paid-for interest groups, the Republicans must strive for an overarching coherent philosophy. After all, no one can out-pander the Democrats. Is there such a philosophy that can be articulated and still appeal to 51% of the voters?

Yes there is. It is the philosophy of Conservatism. It is the philosophy that defends the wisdom of our traditions which are based on experience and the biblical world view of our religious heritage and not on any abstract ideology. The case to be made for this wisdom is strong. It has shown itself superior to every fad that has come down the pike. Let the Democrats defend the bloody nightmare history of ideology. Let us be the faithful heirs of our fathers.

Posted in Spiritual and Philosophical Questions, The Homosexual Political Agenda | 3 Comments »

Article

February 4th, 2013

Here are an article I wanted to bring to everyone’s attention. It is on the issue of fatherhood. It may be the most succinct and comprehensive diagnoses of what ails us I have read.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/print-friendly/52852

Posted in The Homosexual Political Agenda | No Comments »

Women in Combat

January 26th, 2013

On January 23^rd the Military opened all combat assignments to women. This has been a long time coming. When I resigned from the Navy in 1978 I gave as part of my reason “the admission of women to the US Naval Academy.” Not many people joined me. My thinking at the time was that either the nation was not serious about the combat mission of the service academies or was serious about putting women in combat. In either case I wanted nothing to do with it.

As I reflect on this sustained course of madness, I realize the fact is that we are simply following the inexorable logic of our decision to walk away from God.

God created mankind as man and woman for a reason. That reason was to reflect God’s own nature in creation.

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Genesis 1:27

God is triune. The three persons of the Trinity are so united in love that they are just as much one as they are three, and we can truly say there is only one God. This is imaged in marriage where man and woman become “one flesh” producing yet more life.

In his rebellion against God each man (and each woman) seeks to be his own self-sufficient god. The fact that men and women are complimentary parts of a whole and need each other is a problem for their self-centeredness. One way of dealing with this has been for men to oppress women and regard them as lower than human, maybe somewhere between men and animals. This is common in paganism. Another more modern way is feminism, which ironically agrees with paganism that true womanhood is inferior and focuses on making women just like men. The “women in combat” gambit is just the latest example of this need for symbolic sameness. Perhaps the ultimate way is homosexuality where even the most obvious and irreducible complimentary biological functions of men and women is denied.

In addition to the married state being the image of the Godhead, it is also an image of the relationship between Christ and His Church. This is described in Ephesians 5:22-33. We note in particular Ephesians 5:25,

“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it”

It is Christ who gives his life for the Church, not the other way around. All Christian societies have always assumed that men have the duty to protect their women and if necessary give their lives for them. The men on the Titanic, and before them the men on the Birkenhead, became famous for the saying “women and children first,” willingly giving their lives to save even unrelated women, and reflecting this noble and godly ethic.

When a society turns its back on God it progressively becomes more debased, contemptible, and worthless, as God gives it up to dishonorable conduct and final destruction. Is a nation where the men think nothing of sending their women to do their fighting worth fighting for?

There is a storm of judgment coming. Yet even now there exists in America a sizeable number who morn for the ruin of our moral and spiritual state. It is not yet a time for despair and resignation. It remains a time for courage and steadfastness. Here is my verse for today:

“When the storm has swept by, the wicked are gone, but the righteous stand firm forever.” Proverbs 10:25

Posted in Current Politics, Military, Spiritual and Philosophical Questions, The Homosexual Political Agenda | 4 Comments »

Practical Atheism

January 19th, 2013

In my book Empire I cite the fact that polls consistently show only about 4% of people claiming to be atheists. But today I would like to suggest that perhaps 96% of us are atheists for practical purposes. We are “practical atheists.”

Consider when you are looking for a job. Say you apply to ten places and get ten rejections. What do you think? First you will dwell on those other people who didn’t hire you. They were unfair. They didn’t like your race or religion or age or something. They are too stupid to realize your value. They must have felt threatened by you. Then you will shift focus to yourself. What’s wrong with me? I’m too stupid. I’ll never get a job. Other people can get jobs but I can’t.

In other words it is all about men, yourself or others. You seldom think about God in such practical situations. If you do it’s just “why is God doing this to me?” You do not approach the job search in terms of “What does God want for me and my life?” You do not approach it as if God was in control of your circumstances including other people. You do not view life as the writer of Hebrews did in 4:13, saying that God is “He with whom we have to do.” In other words, even when you are dealing with a prospective employer, customer, boss, husband or wife, friend or enemy, it is ultimately God with whom you are dealing. Other people are not under your control. They are part of your circumstances, and your circumstances are totally under God’s control. What is under your control is how you act and respond to God.

Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt by his own brothers. We are told that in these circumstances “the word of the Lord tried him.” (Psalm 105:19) Then in one day God took him from prison to being the second highest ruler in the land, and used him to save his family from famine. With his understanding that it was God with whom he was dealing, he was able to say to his brothers “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Genesis 50:20) Joseph had learned to look at life as a practical believer, not as a practical atheist.

How many of us look at things this way when it comes to politics or even war? After 9/11, how many of us considered Proverbs 16:7, “When a man’s ways are pleasing to the LORD, he makes even his enemies live at peace with him.” When we rage and complain about what the President and his allies are doing to the Church and the country, how many of us take time to ask God why he has allowed these things to come upon us, and what He wants of us?

It is not enough for us to say we believe in God, or even to actually believe in Him. We also must begin looking at all of our circumstances with the realization that God is the One with whom we are actually dealing.

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The Fiscal Cliff

December 29th, 2012

As we all wait to either go over the fiscal cliff or get some last minute deal to half way avert it, I would like to go back to my posting on 40 years of Roe v. Wade and impending judgment. My own view is that this game of chicken over the fiscal cliff is far more dangerous than most people imagine owing to the underlying weakness of the national and world economy. Here is how I think things will play out.

First, it is obvious to me that President Obama is focused on the political aspect of the cliff, i.e., how he can use it to destroy Republican power so he will have a freer hand to enact his desired radical change for this country. I don’t think he is particularly concerned about the economic consequences since he believes he can successfully blame those consequences on the Republicans. He will only sign off on a deal if he gets tax increases on “the rich” with no increases on the middle class, and if the spending reductions are mostly phony or mostly on the military.

Since he is focused on the political, and the political winds favor him today, he will likely succeed. But that doesn’t mean the economic consequences are not real. If he wins politically and brags about his win, and then the economy really tanks, this may come back to bite him big time. Here is an article suggesting the world financial system is on far shakier grounds than we think, and that Obama’s failure to deal with it could damage the Democratic Party brand for a generation.

Second, I look at the complete disarray and dispiritedness of the Republican Party and conservatives in general. It has revealed a deep split between the establishment people and the movement people. We all saw this with Boehner’s failed attempt to pass a tax increase on those with incomes above a million dollars a year and his removal of some movement conservatives from key committees. We heard Newt Gingrich, someone we would have expected to stand strong, throw in the towel on gay marriage. (It made me think of the words of Jesus at the Last Supper, “This very night you will all fall away.”)

Putting these two thought together, I expect Obama to have a time of political victories and economic disasters while his opposition is divided and in disarray. To us, this will seem like the worst of times, but it may in fact be the preparing the round for future victory for the following reasons:

The policies of the Democrats will eventually be revealed as disastrous to even the most ill-informed voter.
Leadership of the Republican Party and conservatism in general may shift from the failed compromising establishment to more principled movement conservatives.

This second item of leadership change must also occur in the Church. The Church has had a parallel problem to that of the Republican Party in having leadership that more interested in public relations than fidelity to Christ. You should really think about what pastor you are supporting and where you are giving God’s money.

So in the immortal words of Jeremiah Wright, “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.” The economic consequences of our profligate ways are about to hit hard. This will discredit the whole ruling establishment and prepare people for truly radical change, either for good or for bad. What is needed is leadership for the good to be ready.

What does being ready mean? Here are some specifics.

Above all else, guard your hearts. Don’t look at what man is doing; look at what God is doing. Look for where God is moving and raising up men to lead in these times. Identify them and support them. I recommend CBR and FRC.
Get your own act together, financially and in terms of relationships. We will need each other.
Be prepared to sacrifice and help each other in the hard times.
Save money and store food.
Your email:

Posted in Current Politics, Economics | 4 Comments »

My Election Post-Mortem

November 12th, 2012

Many of us were shocked by Obama’s easy victory over Romney after being misled by our right wing pollsters. The natural reaction has been to sink into a deep funk and declare the nation finished, given over to welfare state decline and depravity. Christians in particular are dismayed at the electorate’s apparent approval of Obama’s extreme embrace of abortion and the homosexual political agenda, and are sinking into an even deeper funk, expecting an age of persecution.

During the primaries I did not support Romney. Santorum was my guy. This was not about his Mormonism; my problem with Romney was twofold: 1) his weak commitment on the social issues, and 2) his image as a corporate suit.

Let’s start with the second issue. During the 2007 primaries Governor Huckabee ran against Romney and pointed out that he, Huckabee, “looked like the guy you’d have a beer with” while Romney “looked like the guy who laid you off.” The Obama campaign understood that people vote their emotions and not their thoughts, and early on worked to define Romney as an out of touch plutocrat who only cared about rich people. While this charge is false, he does look the part. This neutralized voters who are unemployed due to Obama’s policies, or even swung them to vote for more of Obama. The big story in this election is not about all of the Latinos, blacks single women and young people who voted for Obama, but all of the people in general and white working class in particular who sat it out.

As to the first issue, Romney once again took the default position of the Republican establishment which is to run away from their social conservative base in the hopes of wooing swing voters from Democrats. Obama and the Democrats in contrast, doubled down on their base of abortion and same sex marriage advocates. It has been my observation that there is no percentage in disrespecting your true believers in order to win over some of the wishy-washy. The wishy-washy are that way precisely because they are conflicted about these issues, and are more likely to vote for leaders who look like they know their own minds whichever side they are on. The winning formula seems to be to nail down your base on the social issues with absolute positions and then fight for the middle on economic issues.

When, for example, you say you are for (or against) abortion in all cases, you take the issue off the table and can move on to the economy. When you take a “moderate” position with exceptions and qualifications, you keep the issue on the table for endless debates about “legitimate rape” or “partial birth abortion.” You do not nail down your base and can never get around to making your economic argument to the middle.

When Todd Akin made his poorly worded argument against killing children conceived in rape Romney threw him under the bus. When Richard Mourdock made a similar clumsy statement in his Indiana race, a female Romney surrogate who was coming out to campaign for him instead publically denounced him. Can anyone imagine a Democrat similarly disavowing a fellow Democrat in the midst of an election over an embarrassing choice of words? This is because, while Democrats don’t know how to run an economy or anything else, they do know how to win elections.

In conclusion, the country is far gone but not as far gone as the election results would have you think. Our problem is that the Republican Party leadership does not know what it is doing. And that is a big enough problem for now.

Posted in Current Politics | 1 Comment »

The Destructiveness of the Liberal Mind

October 21st, 2012

A video was circulating on the web this weekend concerning the Fort Hood Shooting by Army Major and Muslim fanatic Hassan. It contains passionate accounts from soldiers wounded in the attack. They are pretty upset at the government’s declaration of the atrocity as a case of “workplace violence” rather than as an act of war by an enemy combatant. This prevents the dead and wounded from getting Purple Hearts and their survivors from getting certain benefits. But what really seems to gall them is the refusal of the government to recognize a terrorist attack when they are being sent around the world to fight the “War on Terror.”

This got me thinking. The way in which our government is dealing with Hassan is a textbook case of the liberal mind in action. The liberal mind in action always results in a moral inversion, making right wrong and wrong right, showing endless compassion for the wrong-doer and complete disregard for their victims. The Army’s top General Casey showed some of this thinking when he expressed his big concern as being not the people killed and wounded but the chance that it might cause the Army to back off on diversity and ultra-political correctness. Now the big issue in Hassan’s trial, three years after his murders, is whether he has to shave or can keep his beard. This should be about his head, not his beard.

It is easy to cite examples of this strange moral inversion that characterizes the liberal mind:
1. Where convicted murderers are concerned, they will spend years, decades really, worrying about every procedural detail, and the possibility that execution might be uncomfortable for the murderer, while having the most callous disregard for the suffering of victim’s families who are dragged through endless court proceedings seeking justice.
2. Gangs can terrorize neighborhoods forever without one tear shed by any liberal anywhere. But let a policeman stop a gang member for questioning and legions of liberal lawyers descend to protect him from having his feelings hurt.
3. Heaven help the American soldier who, after three days of house to house fighting, protecting our rights, shoots an enemy combatant under circumstances at all questionable. The liberals will have him prosecuted for murder.
4. One man works sixty hours a week and earns a decent living. Another sits on the couch and ends up poor. The liberal heart bleeds for the deadbeat and demands the working man share his “excess” earnings with the slacker.
5. and here is another case of liberal mental illness

Where does this strange way of thinking come from? The liberal mind is not motivated by actual sympathy for criminals, communists, or jihadists. That would be an improvement. At least he would believe in something. The liberal mind is motivated by guilt over sin. The liberal seeks to prove to himself his own moral superiority by showing that he, unlike his moral inferiors, can not only have compassion for good people, everyone can do that, but also for the bad people that no one else cares about. After all, isn’t that what Jesus taught when he said to love your enemies? The liberal, rejecting the salvation that lies in confession, repentance, and faith in Christ, seeks to be justified by works with these preening displays of uber-compassion.

His self-justification exercise requires him to denigrate the motives of conservatives to support his sense of moral superiority. Conservatives, you see, don’t just think welfare does more harm than good. They hate the poor, they are racists, homophobes, misogynists, people who want our children to drink dirty water and breath dirty air just so they can make more profits, etc., etc. ad nauseum. It cannot be a case of people of good will who simply disagree. Oh no, no! Conservatives must be really evil to emphasize how good I am! After all, this is not a problem solving session. This is a guilt expiation exercise.

Liberalism is thus an irrational state of mind entered into by the unregenerate seeking to get rid of their guilt over sin (while continuing in sin) in order to prove their righteousness to themselves. At a societal level, it disarms civilization against its enemies and is suicidal.

The whole sorry situation around the murder of our Ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi shows how dangerous the liberal mind is to the overall society. First we learn that requests from the Ambassador for more security were turned down by a faceless State Department liberal because she thought it would not look peaceful to the Lybians. Now we hear that our military was watching the whole thing with a drone, and that military support was available but not used. Nearby airbases had jet fighters and even Specter gunships that could have been there in an hour and cleaned the streets of terrorists for a mile around the embassy, but again the liberal mind, which as we have seen has infected our military’s top brass, said no. It wouldn’t look right for big bad old America to come in with guns blazing to save our people. Better to ask the dysfunctional Lybian government to send a policeman with an apology or something.

In the battle we are facing to save our country we must understand the danger posed by the liberal mind and what lies behind it. Attempts to reason liberals out of their positions will not work as long as those positions are based on spiritual and psychological personal issues. The spiritual truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ cannot be separated from what we think are just political issues.

Election Actions

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Posted in Spiritual and Philosophical Questions | No Comments »

Forty Years

September 15th, 2012

I am finding myself having some difficulty getting into this election. I do think electing Romney and defeating Obama and the Democrats is important, and I am putting my money where my mouth is. You can do the same. But the fact that at nearly 50% of my fellow citizens are sold on the Democrat’s national suicide agenda is pretty depressing. Even if we eke out a 51% win, will it be enough to change our trajectory? Add to that the contrast between the Democrats’ full throated screaming support for industrial scale child killing and the destruction of the institution of marriage, and the Republicans’ tepid “let’s talk about the economy instead” defense of life and marriage, and I’m left feeling a little like Jeremiah.

And speaking of the economy, I also can’t help thinking we are headed for an economic catastrophe beyond our imagining. Putting the two together makes it hard to avoid the conclusion that we are already consigned to judgment.

First, the looming economic disaster: Last Friday rating agency Eagan-Jones downgraded US Treasury bonds from AA to AA-, two notches down from our historic AAA. Moody’s and S&P put Treasuries on credit watch. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke said he would print money until the cows come home. The European Central Bank said it would start Euro printing to cover government debt too. Family income and the percentage of men in the workforce are dropping more during our so-called recovery than they did during the recession. So the world and national economies are, let us say, weak.

Now consider the “fiscal cliff.” Unable to reach a deal last year for raising the debt ceiling, Congress passed a law creating large automatic cuts in both military and social spending to take effect in January 2013. Congress and the administration are also unable to reach an agreement on extending the Bush tax cuts, so they will expire in January. That this simultaneous tax increase and spending cut in January will plunge the economy into deep recession is widely agreed. No one seems likely to blink, and the election in November will not change this. Question: What will Bernanke do in response to a sharp recession? Answer: It’s not like he has two tricks. He will print even more money.

Now consider this hammer blow, this economic shock hitting the fragile world economy I have described. What could possibly go wrong? The thing I worry about is the world “going off the dollar” as the basis of international trade because of fears that it will be inflated away. What will that do? Two things: First, our price for all imports (think oil) will go up since we have to convert our Bernie Bucks to something else first. Second, everyone else will have to decide what to use instead of dollars. Euros aren’t much better, so I see all international transactions being slowed as traders try to figure out what to use for money. The volume of international trade would fall sharply, impacting all of the already hurting domestic economies. A world-wide depression of 1930s magnitude seems entirely plausible.

Such large depressions are the breeding ground for political upheaval and war. The point is this could happen suddenly and it could start in January no matter who wins in November.

That gets me to the subject of “forty years.” The number forty is associated with testing or judgment, most notably the forty years of Israel wandering in the wilderness and Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness fasting and being tempted. Jesus was crucified in 30 AD. Jesus predicted judgment on Jerusalem for “not knowing the day of their visitation.” He said no stone of the Temple would be left on another, and that all of these things would come on this generation. A biblical generation is usually taken to be forty years. Forty years following the crucifixion, in 70 AD, Jerusalem fell to Titus of Rome in a terrible siege. The Temple was burned, and Roman soldiers pried all the stones apart to get at the melted gold.

On January 22, 2013 it will be forty years since the U.S. Supreme Court “legalized” abortion in its infamous Roe vs. Wade decision. While there have been praiseworthy attempts to reverse this atrocity by a small number of people, most Americans of all ranks have accepted it and ignored the warnings of our own Jeremiahs. We will not be able to ignore our own equivalent of Titus and the Roman army.

What is to be done?

I am just sharing my thoughts here, and not claiming it as a prophecy. But it has struck me as a burden to share this with you. I would also like to share my thoughts on what the God-fearing can do:

Pray. Pray on your own, with your family, and with your Church. Cry out to God for His hand of mercy.
Vote and give money to support righteousness in this election.
There is a special opportunity to support what I consider to be the most effective pro-life organization and have your contribution matched. I am on their board and can vouch for both their integrity and effectiveness.
Prepare. Pay down debt, save money, secure your job by being the best employee you can be. Repair and maintain relationships in your life because we will need each other. Beyond that, personally, I’m looking at food storage options.

Posted in Current Politics, Economics, Spiritual and Philosophical Questions | Comments Off