There has been a flurry of speculation over who Donald Trump would endorse in the Republican race. Some reports said he was going to endorse Newt Gingrich and some said he was going to endorse Mitt Romney. There was so much fuss about this endorsement that one would think that this was the defining moment in the contest. I know I certainly was breathlessly anticipating the announcement.
Now that the announcement has been made that he is backing the former Massachusetts governor, I’m a little more certain of my selection. He said his decision was based on his tough position on China and that old bugaboo of common sense, “electability”. Now we must keep in mind that electability is defined by the polls provided by the formerly mainstream media whose agenda is far different than those of us who love freedom and love our country. Need I add that it is an atheistic, socialistic formerly mainstream media we are turning to for electability measurement.
It is good to have a confirmation of the wisdom of my choice. Many others feel the same way. A FoxNews poll showed many of the same mind. Ten percent said his support would make the candidate more appealing while twenty seven percent said Trump’s endorsement would make them less likely to support a candidate. The rest just didn’t care.
Years ago when I worked at National Religious Broadcasters. The big event of the year was the annual conventions in Washington DC. Most every well known Christian voice was heard at these gatherings. The President of the United States would usually ride up Connecticut Avenue to address the assembled crowd. This was particularly exciting as this was all happening during the Reagan years.
James Dobson tugged at the heart strings, S.M. Lockridge spoke with passion. However, for me, the most memorable speaker, was Dr. Robert A. Cook from The King’s College in Briarcliff Manor, NY. – now moved to New York City. He was a delightful gentleman who had a way of putting things into perspective. He began his address by telling us that two days before, he talked to Vice President Bush, and just the day before, he talked to the President. Then, with a twinkle in his eye, he said. “But this morning… I talked to God.”
In his own, plain spoken way, the bow tied Dr. Cook showed an unusual understanding of the what was important and where the real power rests. As great a man as Ronald Reagan was, he could not walk on water or turn water into wine… and, even though this may come as a surprise to some, neither can the man who occupies his office now nor any of those seeking to replace him.
Many years ago, our forefathers agreed that all men were created equal. This was a giant step forward as the world they lived in was dominated by a stratified society composed of the ruling class and peasants… and there was no movement between, or association with, members of the opposite class. The founders understood that the One who Created each of us did not play favorites and everyone stood before Him on equal footing.
Today, we are governed by another ruling class who, at best, gives lip service to the Creator and, at worst, wants Him banned from public discourse, lest their humanistic lies be exposed. They are the ones who determine who is favored and who is shunned. They decide who deserves the good will of the state and who requires observation.
Here is where we run into the idea of the “protected class” of citizens. These are people who don’t always have an easy time of life. It could be that they have some physical situation, or some lifestyle choice situation that is different than most. However, the common denominator is that the Democrat Party has managed to create a dependency on government in these citizens and, pretty well, takes them for granted at the polling place… sometimes multiple times in a cycle. Foolishly, the other party bought into the compassionate sounding names they gave the laws and embraced them as well.
Recently Allen West has attracted a strong and loyal following. He has the courage to speak the truth and stand against the prevailing political winds. Many of you are already fans of what may be a modern day Patrick Henry. He has been so effective at stirring up the populace that the powers that be in the Florida Republican Party are working at redistricting him out of his seat in congress so he would no longer be the standard by which they are judged.
Using Lt. Col. West as the standard for judging congress is not really a bad idea, yet there are few who would benefit by the comparison. So for those of you know about the man already… enjoy. For those who are not familiar with him… enjoy!
This past week we saw a little of what happens when people are expecting checks from the government, and they don’t come as expected. The IRS announced that due to security upgrades to the efiling systems there would be a delay in deposits of tax refunds into bank accounts. As with any announcement from our government, this may or may not have been the case. However, the reality is that many people expected to have federal dollars in their accounts, and their accounts were empty.
This did not set well with those waiting expectantly. Police were called to the Instant Tax Service in Charlotte, NC as approximately 75 angry customers descended on their office demanding the refund deposits as promised on the date promised. They wanted their money! However, was it? There is common thinking that half the people pay taxes and half do not.
This is only partially true. The part that half pay taxes is true, however, through the magic of Earned Income Credit and other creations of an overly generous congress, many who do not pay taxes actually are refunded more than they have paid into the system… thousands more! Liberals and progressives have a term for these, they are called a transfer payments. That means, money is transferred from those who have earned it to those who have not.
There is a scene in the Humphrey Bogart movie The Treasure of Sierra Madre where the treasure hunters are cornered by some pretty bad hombres who claimed to be federales. Despite the hazardous situation, Bogart asks where the badges are. In anger, the outlaw leader responds, “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges.”
This is kind of the spirit of what we heard when Barack Hussein Obama declared, “With or without this congress, I will keep taking action…” during the State of the Union message. For a President to say this of the entire legislative branch of our government shows a complete contempt for our constitution and the separation of powers the founders built into our nation’s fabric.
This is the man who considers the constitution that was designed to protect rights of individuals through restraint of government to be a hindrance to the implementation of his schemes to change the world for the good of us poor, ignorant folks who still cling to our God and our guns. That is, those of us who are too dimwitted to know any better. Never mind that we have other plans for our money, resources and our lives. The anointed one and this minions are people who know how we should live… and we should just just quietly follow them.
Many years ago, C.S. Lewis noted, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive”. We have been told that expansion of the national government power is for our own good. We are told that the power of government will keep bad things from happening. We are told that the government can give us better health care if only we are willing to sacrifice our potential well being for the good of the overall society.
Unfortunately, it is the power of government that keeps good things from happening. It is the excess of regulation and interference that has destroyed not only jobs, but entire industries. It has turned happy, prosperous cities into towns struggling with despair and joblessness. The President’s answer to this problem is to expand the unemployment insurance. This is indicative of the myopic approach to all our problems… just think about it. If city after city lands on the skids and survives on the unemployment insurance that former Speaker Nancy Pelosi says creates jobs, will there not come a point when more cities are taking than giving and driving the rest into poverty? How about us as individuals – when more of us are surviving on resources of those who earned them?
In the The Treasure of Sierra Madre, the impersonators came to a bad end. They pretended to be people with authority and power to protect the people. They were not people with authority and power to protect the people. They were liars and thieves. They paid the price and suffered the fate of an imposter. What will be the price that Barack Hussein Obama pays for the destruction of America… both now and forever.
Bernanke’s press conference announcement again booted the stock and bond markets, but did nothing to boost employment.
At his January 25, 2012, press conference, Federal Reserve Bank chairman Ben Bernanke stated that he expects the Fed to continue imposing near-zero interest rates well into 2014 on short-term Treasury securities. In response, the stock market surged, despite expectations of generally lower corporate earnings and reduced consumer spending. Loose credit and low interest rates usually facilitate stock market speculation.
However gratifying this may to individual investors and pension fund managers, it does little if anything to restore production of goods and services or to raise employment. It also continues to penalize increased savings, which alone provides a stable, long-term platform for economic growth. People living on fixed incomes have had their rates of income on saving chopped around 75% since the Fed first cut interest rates.
As Austrian school economists long have observed, central bank manipulation of interest rates and government deficit spending have an uneven impact on sectors of the economy. When unemployment is high and people are yet freighted with excessive personal debt, consumer spending will be among the last sectors to increase.
As Barack Hussein Obama kicked off his presidential campaign with a State of the Union message. The Prevaricator in Chief tried to sound much more mainstream than his actions have shown him to be. We shall look at any proposals that may actually have both merit and potential for execution at a later date, however for now, let’s look at what American patriot, Thomas Paine might tell him.
The Barack Obama administration is quietly in the process of rigging use of the US Census of 2010, which deliberately counted millions of illegal aliens, for the purpose of restructuring the apportionment of the US House of Representatives. Accordingly, as candidates for Governor and Lieutenant Governor of one of the negatively affected states (Montana), Mr. Bob Fanning and I have joined with several others in becoming amici curiae in a pending federal lawsuit brought by the State of Louisiana against the US Secretary of Commerce, et al., which was filed January, 13, 2012 in the United States Supreme Court.
What has happened is, the US Census Bureau erroneously claims that it “‘is required by the U.S. Constitution count everyone living in this country, regardless of immigration or citizenship status.’” Accordingly, they have counted millions of illegal aliens in the 2010 Census and are using those figures to apportion the US House of Representatives. If this egregious misinterpretation of the US Constitution is allowed to stand, five states (Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, and Ohio) will lose representation in the US Congress to which they are lawfully entitled, while three states (California, Texas, and Florida) will be awarded additional representation in the US Congress to which they are not lawfully entitled. And, of course, this will also directly impact the makeup of the Electoral College, which ultimately elects the President of the United States.
Of course, this manipulation of the 2010 US Census also impacts the election of the US President, as those states that are granted more seats in the US Congress are also granted more votes in the Electoral College as the Electoral College is composed of a “Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress. . . .” (Article. II. Section. I. Clause. 2. US Constitution). And, as everyone knows, under the US Constitution, it is the Electoral College that ultimately elects the President of the United States. Thus, the states of Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, and Ohio, will be unjustly denied their lawful votes in the Electoral College, while California, Texas, and Florida, are being unjustly granted unlawful votes in the Electoral College. Would it not be extraordinary if the margin by which President Obama is re-elected in the Electoral College would be provided by the manipulation of the census data under his control? Again, this would be an outrage!
Newt Gingrich’s convincing win in South Carolina has certainly opened up the GOP Presidential race considerably. Just a few days before, the formerly mainstream media, including many supposed conservative commentators were sure that Mitt Romney, after victories in Iowa and New Hampshire was on his way to a quick and decisive nomination as the Republican standard bearer.
However, as John Adams told us, “Facts are stubborn things”. The facts in this case, include the Iowa caucus results being reversed to give Rick Santorum the victory. Romney was no longer 2 – 0 in the prior contests. Another fact was that CBS News, in an obvious attempt to swing the election results, made a clumsy effort to damage the former Speaker with a hatchet job interview with his former wife.
As with many ill-conceived efforts to strong arm the public, an aggressive, confident response can turn the entire situation around. John King’s attempt to put Gingrich on the spot with an embarrassing question turned sour quickly as it was met with a surprisingly determined response that called out the network and the questioner for what they were. The crowd cheered. Instead of turning on the former Speaker, they understood this was just an attempt to dredge up old news and remove the effect of any repentance and change of heart the man may have had.
The Republican race is getting more interesting and gaining clarity as the days go by. Yet even as we see the contest settling down into four separate camps, we are looking at an artificial divide, with minimal distinctions in some areas. When we saw the first debate, there were far too many talented, but imperfect candidates. Compared to the other side, the Republicans were experiencing an embarrassment of riches.
Four recent news stories have helped bring us to the point where South Carolina could help define the future of the Republican Party and the United States of America. When it was needed to give Romney a boost toward ultimate victory, the powers that be in Iowa found the votes to give him a thin, eight vote, victory of Rick Santorum. Now, with time to reflect and review the ballots, it seems that the Pennsylvania senator now has a 34 vote lead – long after the news cycle that declared his nicely coiffed opponent the winner.
To make matters more interesting, these results may not be certified since eight units can not even find the material to verify their initial counts. Come on guys! Stolen elections and dishonest counts are a time honored tradition in the Democrat Party. When it comes to the GOP, I would like to attribute it to incompetence – given their unique ability to consistently snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, yet, even that is not very comforting. If I am wrong, however, it confirms our worst fears that those running the party care just as little about the will of the people as do the donkeys. Whatever the ultimate reason, if we ever learn it, the whole situation just does not pass the smell test.
As we observe the world around us, we see what seems to be a chaotic multiplicity of viewpoints and voices. However, when we look at them a little closer, we see what some proclaim to be fresh, new and exciting concepts, to be no more than variations on one or two age old themes.
Essentially there are two primary ways of viewing the world around us. C.S. Lewis called it the “Great Divide”. Do we live our lives with the recognition of the supreme being, or do we consider ourselves (man) to be the supreme being? There is even a perversion of the secular humanist thinking that sees man as the supreme underbeing and Mother Earth is the deity to be worshipped… in the way that these unusual people shall specify for us.
In any case, the culture war that currently engulfs our country is one that most who would claim the God centered world view are blissfully unaware of. So many, like their secular neighbors, are absorbed in their own lives and problems. They have been distracted by the small acts of goodness they can do, and totally miss the bigger picture that shows the Christian viewpoint being shuffled off to the side. Many of us have been majoring in minors, as the saying goes… fighting over hymnbook content or carpet colors.
[We live in a secularized world of nation states in which traditional religion, especially Christianity, is unwelcome. Rooted in the “Enlightenment,” this view supports a secularized and authoritarian public square enforced by government and that progress requires forcing religion ever backward into remote corners of society. In short, America has become a secular theocracy with a civic religion of national politics (nationalism) occupying the public realm in which government has replaced God.]
During the Enlightenment, nationalism became the new civic religion, in which the nation state was not merely a substitute for the church, but a substitute for God, and political religion benefited from being more tangible than supernatural religion in having the physical means of violence necessary to enforce mandatory worship and funding. Nation states provided a new kind of salvation and immortality; one’s death is not in vain if it is “for the nation,” which will live on.
This “myth of religious violence” lived on with legal theorist John Rawls who claimed that the modern problem is a theological one and the solution is political. For Rawls, since people believe in unresolvable theological doctrines over which they will kill each other, a secular state must rule. Similarly, Stanford law professor Kathleen Sullivan, a secularist, has claimed that as a necessary condition for peace to avoid a “war of all sects against all,” religion must be banished from the public square.
When you talk to so many Democrats, you hear them characterize conservatives, and Republicans in particular, as soulless, rich white folks who get their money by taking advantage of poor, working folks. They buy companies, sell companies, and, worst of all, try to squeeze more and more out of the workers, eventually firing them in cost cutting efforts to bump their stock price up a few cents a share. They live secluded lives, apart from, and looking down on the little people they use to make their fortunes.
Now, let’s think about this for a moment. Is there any candidate, front runner or back marker, who fits this stereotypical image many hold of the GOP? I’ll give you a hint. He has really nice hair. He, along with others, bought companies – made some successful and sold others just for the assets, leaving the workers to find their own way to the unemployment office.
This is not necessarily an attack on all of the practices of Bain Capital, but we really need to look past the “electability” issue the press and Republican establishment keep pushing in our faces. Is this a time for anyone so removed from the average American to run for the presidency? In some ways, it’s a lot like the question, no matter what you think of his qualifications, is it the time for Jebb Bush to run for the office?
As I was growing up, hearing about the speeches and marches of Martin Luther King, much of what I heard was that he was stirring up trouble where he had no business. In the rural northeast there was little knowledge or understanding of the situations he was fighting against. There was only one black student in my high school graduating class and she was kind of cute and fit in with everyone, so I could not comprehend what the fuss was all about.
It was only later, after Dr. King was gone, and I saw grown men with dark skin addressed as “Boy” and saw pictures of segregated facilities that I began to grasp the struggles of freedom fighters like Martin Luther King Jr and others like Medgar Evers.
Our Declaration of Independence enshrined the words “all men are created equal”. Correctly it does not specify all men of a certain color, a particular economic class or those connected to the “ruling class”. It says all men are created equal. It does not say that some are only three fifths equal as some in congress specified so as to obtain congressional representation, yet not recognize the humanity of some citizens.
Washington DC – The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously decided that under the First Amendment churches are entitled to a “ministerial exception” and thus dismissed a wrongful termination suit against the church. In Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church v. EEOC, the Court recognizes that the ministerial exception applies beyond the head of a religious congregation to others, such as the teacher in this case, who are viewed as ministers or those carrying the message of the Church.
Chief Justice John Roberts stated that, “By requiring the Church to accept a minister it did not want, such an order would have plainly violated the Church’s freedom under the Religion Clauses to select its own ministers.” He also states that to award compensation such as back pay “would operate as a penalty on the Church for terminating an unwanted minister, and would be no less prohibited by the First Amendment than an order overturning the termination.”
Looking past the press reports of Mitt Romney’s decisive victory in the Granite State primary, there are a few things that need to be considered. Using New Hampshire as a bell weather of anyone’s electability or even desirability is about as reliable as extrapolating Barack Obama’s popularity from results in the District of Columbia.
This small northeastern state, which by virtue of an accident of electoral timing, has found itself in a position of disproportional influence in the national debate. When we look at the political landscape, we find that it is as friendly to conservatives as MSNBC or CNN. How could we expect results different from those reported. We could, perhaps, expect a little deeper analysis in the reporting.
The fact that Jon Huntsman finished third says more about the character of the electorate than the quality of the candidate. When we look at the people running and representing the state, Romney and Huntsman fit right in – Gingrich, Santorum and Perry do not. Does this mean that because New Hampshire elects squishy Republicans and progressive Democrats, the rest of the country should make the same bad decisions?
[With all the chaos on the world and national stage, it may be a good time to look at the wisdom of our third president. Much of what he said would be scandalously politically incorrect today... yet, it's truth would remain. And the truth shall set us free, but only if we take heed.]
Responsibility & Effectiveness of Government
The care of human life and happiness, not their destruction, is the legitimate responsibility of a good government.
A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.
A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government.
That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
While most Americans were celebrating the holidays, President Barack Obama quietly signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), otherwise known as the “Indefinite Detention Act,” into law. Obama had initially said he would veto the bill which contains the draconian language authorizing the US military to seize and incarcerate US citizens without warrant, due process, trial, etc. Of course, Obama quickly changed his mind after the bill passed both houses of Congress.
When signing the NDAA into law, Obama issued a signing statement that in essence said, “I have the power to detain Americans… but I won’t.” See this report.
Americans should realize that, coupled with the Patriot Act, the NDAA, for all intents and purposes, completely nullifies a good portion of the Bill of Rights, turns the United States into a war zone, and places US citizens under military rule. And what is even more astonishing is the manner in which the national press corps, and even the so-called “conservative” talking heads, have either completely ignored it, or have actually defended it. The likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, et al., should be ashamed of themselves!
While I was taking down some Christmas decorations I played one of my favorite CDs. It was a digitally remastered copy of some of Glenn Miller’s finest music. It got me to thinking, this music was recorded at least seventy years ago, and it still sounds as good as anything we hear today. The legacy of Glenn Miller is a permanent place in the galaxy of musical super stars.
Yet this was not the highest achievement of his life. Considered too old for military service, he still joined the army during the dark days of World War II. He and his band traveled around boosting moral and bringing a bit of home to soldiers fighting Hitler’s fascist monster. He lost his life a few days before Christmas of 1944 on a flight across the English Channel on his way to arrange a concert for GIs in France.
He had a lucrative career turning out some of the greatest swing music of his time. He did not have to leave the comfort and safety of his homeland. Unlike many of the moral midgets we see adored by today’s teeny boppers who spend their time bellyaching, whining and complaining, he stepped up to make the soldiers lives in the field a little more tolerable.
“Why can’t we all just get along?” pleaded Rodney King after being beaten by Los Angeles police officers in March of 1991. Later actions showed the man to be not quite the innocent that the press painted him to be at the time. This, however, does not change the value of his question… why can’t we get along?
There are many reasons the academic elites offer for our inability to live peacefully with each other. It doesn’t seem to matter if the conflict is with people at work, in our neighborhood, or even in our church. We see the same conflicts in our government and among nations. It seems that each of us judges ourselves by our own good intentions… and we judge others by their actions.
We see the president self-righteously declaring his concern for downtrodden. What person with a concern for his fellow man cannot help but feel for those less fortunate. Assuming the purity of his motivation, one can almost understand his recent speech where he declared that if congress would not bend to his will, he would move toward the realization of his ideal society with out them. It doesn’t seem to matter that there are other opinions, other approaches and even other directions that the country could be moving in. More importantly, it doesn’t seem to matter that the Constitution does not grant him that power.
An evolutionary psychologist asserts that evolution in the ways humans use their brains, influenced exclusively by external, materialistic conditions, has made our era the least violent period in history.
Professor Steven Pinker’s latest book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, raises two important questions: has the world in fact become less violent, and has there been an evolutionary change in ways humans use their brains?
The Iowa Caucuses have allowed the people of the small farm state the unusual opportunity to flex their political muscles. Beyond the timing of the event, there is no reason to pay this much attention a gaggle of hopefuls crisscrossing the state in an exercise of retail politics. There is nothing earth shattering about the number of delegates awarded, yet the press, both formerly mainstream and legitimate, make this one state of good people a bell weather for the entire nation.
Talking heads, ever looking to reasons to make their learned pronouncements, want to expand on the preferences of a little over a hundred thousand Iowa Hawkeyes, into a national referendum. There is a complete lack of perspective by inflating the importance of this state in the heartland America. However, if we do want to take a sampling to apply to the whole country… Iowa is as good as any… better than most.
Considering the crucial nature of the decision at hand, one has to wonder about the wisdom of permitting any one state, or early sequence of states to do the initial paring of an unwieldy number to the top few who will carry on to the end. The results might well have been different in South Carolina or New York. However this is the process we are dealing with and anyone who wants to be President really needs to be able to work with people from all over the country.
Don’t FAIL to ask a candidate why he or she believes what he or she believes
Church leaders often are under pressure from the government (Attorneys General or IRS, to name a few departments) to not involve themselves in providing parishioners access to information to make up their own minds about candidates or ballot issues.
They claim that pastors, by doing so, are in violation of what has become known as “separation of church and state.” Typically this is done whenever someone does not want a person who professes Christ as their Lord and Savior to use the doctrine of the faith as foundation for their choosing between competing points of view or candidates.
There are two problems with this so called doctrine:
1. Pastors have a God-given right and responsibility to preach and teach “thus sayeth the Lord” from the pulpit and parishioners have a corresponding right to “choose ye this day who you will serve” relative to moral issues.
2. The term, “separation of church and state,” is a misnomer. It implies that a Christian’s faith is somehow outside of or otherwise “attached” to the follower of Christ rather than it being from within as the Holy Bible tells us, because our “body is the temple of the Holy Ghost [Spirit]” – the place where God resides within us — and “… ye are not our own.”. (1 Cor. 6:19)
Now is the time so many people feel the necessity to make New Years resolutions. Somewhere between one and six weeks into the new year most of these resolutions are broken. Why is this? I would like to propose a few thoughts for your consideration.
Let’s start with the timing. If some sort of change were really necessary and it was desired strongly enough, why wait until the beginning of a new year. If, for some reason, your doctor tells you to cut boiled artichokes from your diet, those who value our health would cut them out immediately, not wait until the end of the year.
Next we can look at the content of most resolutions. Most tend to revolve around ourselves and things we couldn’t bring ourselves to do any other way. For several years I was a member at a local fitness facility… a gym. Come January, the place would be packed, but by mid February, it would be back to normal. So many wanted to be in better shape, and they took the first step in signing up for a gym membership. Yet, when they found out about the work involved in getting into shape, enthusiasm and commitment faded rapidly.
A group of pastors and community activists from the Houston area have taken to the airwaves to complain about the irresponsibility of Nike and Michael Jordan. What have they done that is so terrible? It seems that they created a product that people want to buy. While I am not sure why people would go to such extremes to get overpriced footwear, these shoes are, indeed, valued by many people who will do most anything to get them.
It is an American success story of a man who worked at perfecting his craft to the point where he was one of the best to ever walk onto a basketball court. It is also a story about a company who produced a quality product in association with this athlete that people want to buy. As one of the critics, Malik Ingram, commented, “These shoes have always had a place of value in Black life.”
Yesterday afternoon I visited the building in Richmond, Virginia, they call the Confederate White House. It was the home of the South’s only president, Jefferson Davis. It wasn’t my first visit, and each time I learn more about the people who attempted to free themselves from the general government and the union that had been formed less than a hundred years before. It caused me to look a little deeper into the man and those around him.
Davis was not some radical psycho as many think of him today. He was a graduate of West Point. He was a United States Senator. He believed in the constitution, but, based on his observation, he had little confidence in the willingness of the industrialized, more internationalist northern states would respect it if it came in conflict with their plans and interests. In his own words:
“My devotion to the Union of our fathers had been so often and so publicly declared; I had on the floor of the Senate so defiantly challenged any question of my fidelity to it; my services, civil and military, had now extended through so long a period and were so generally known, that I felt quite assured that no whisperings of envy or ill-will could lead the people of Mississippi to believe that I had dishonored their trust by using the power they had conferred on me to destroy the government to which I was accredited. Then, as afterward, I regarded the separation of the States as a great, though not the greater evil.”
Democrats are all in a tizzy about the announcement by Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson that he would not be seeking re-election next year. If the name sounds familiar, just think back to the battle over ObamaCare and the infamous Cornhusker Kickback.
They are wringing their hands in despair as if the retirement of a supposedly “moderate” senator held the key to the retention of power by a corrupt and unresponsive administration.
As for Senator Nelson, it appears that he has the wisdom to recognize how precarious his position really is with a disenchanted electorate. There is an old tradition among the political class when faced with certain defeat… it’s called “take the money and run”.
We live in an increasingly secularized world of massive and pervasive nation states in which traditional religion, especially Christianity, is ruled unwelcome and even a real danger on the basis of a purported history of intolerance and “religious violence.” This is found in most all “public” domains, including the institutions of education, business, government, welfare, transportation, parks and recreation, science, art, foreign affairs, economics, entertainment, and the media. A secularized public square policed by government is viewed as providing a neutral, rational, free, and safe domain that keeps the “irrational” forces of religion from creating conflict and darkness. And we are told that real progress requires expanding this domain by pushing religion ever backward into remote corners of society where it has little or no influence. In short, modern America has become a secular theocracy with a civic religion of national politics (nationalism) occupying the public realm in which government has replaced God.
For the renowned Christian scholar and writer C.S. Lewis, such a view was fatally flawed morally, intellectually, and spiritually, producing the twentieth-century rise of the total state, total war, and mega-genocides. For Lewis, Christianity provided the one true and coherent worldview that applied to all human aspirations and endeavors: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” (The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses)[1]
In spite of the turmoil our country is facing today, Christmas for many was better than most. Now this can’t be said for those fixated on beating their neighbor over the head to buy some overpriced athletic shoe. In fact, it is just the opposite. The more we move away from the rush to spend money we don’t have, the more we can enjoy this holiday season.
It’s not that people were not giving gifts. I have not seen “official” figures, but I have done a little observation. Wal-Mart and K-Mart parking lots were packed. Perhaps many people were realizing that they need to get the most for their hard earned or redistributed dollar. Dollar Stores and other discount merchants seemed to be doing well.
Not too far from my home there is an “upscale” shopping area featuring all sorts of stores that people love to show their labels or shopping bags to impress their neighbors who, mostly, don’t care anyway. My wife and I strolled around the area two nights before Christmas. It was easy to find a place to park as the lot was only half full… a big difference from just a few years ago.
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