Commentary Telling It Like It Is To Those That Might Not Want To Hear It & Links To News Around The Internet
Friday, September 15, 2006
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Military To Test Microwave Gun On Unsuspecting Civilians
As the federal government grants additional rights to terrorists captured in war, the American people may find themselves increasingly used as guinea pigs in the experimentation of non-lethal weaponry.
Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne said devices such as microwave guns had to be calibrated by targeting them on our own countrymen before they could be used on the battlefield aiming them at enemy combatants for fear of the condemnation of the world community (or in other words the scumbags of the earth).
Ladies and gentleman, behold the rising curtain of the New World Order where your very government is more concerned about the hurt feelings of some homicidal heathen that didn’t like being walked around on a dog leash but doesn’t not have second thoughts about going postal on your granny with a light saber.
As the saying goes, if we had had this attitude during WWII, we’d all be speaking German now.
by Frederick Meekins
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Will Yuletide Terror & Other Holiday Terrors Remain One Of History's Worst Selling Books?
A Christian bookstore in the Washington, DC metropolitan area told me that, though an important topic, books such as my Yuletide Terror & Other Holiday Horrors do not sell and thus the retailer said they were not interested in it.
Maybe if I titled it Purpose Driven Yuletide or Why I Kissed Scrooge Goodbye or after some other bit of inane navel-gazing drivel, I might be able to sell some copies.
So if you like to collect rare books, be sure to get your copy of Yuletide Terror & Other Holiday Horrors since it seems this tome will go down as one of the worst selling books in all of history and thus an ensured classic.
Since I have spent around $175 for this project, I do not have to sell too many copies to declare the project a success and still retain the claim to one of publishing’s worst selling books.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Sunday, September 10, 2006
In Emergent Circles Da Vinci Code No Worse Than Left Behind
In the spring of 2005, I wrote a column detailing what I considered a few of the shortcomings and dangers of the Emergent Church Movement. Much to my surprise, the piece sparked more of a debate than originally anticipated, full detail of which I am not privy but it must have been a real humdinger.
According to one pro-Emergent blog called TallSkinnyKiwi, since I have dared to say my peace elsewhere about tattooing, smoking, and boozing (three things Emergophiles seem to revel in with impunity), as well as enunciated differences with Presbyterians, and Southern Baptists (as if these institutions were somehow above criticism [perhaps they should be reminded about the Protestant Reformation ]), my comments about the movement ‘s grand pooba Brian McLaren are therefore out of line and not worthy of consideration.
In the spirit of ecumenical inclusion gripping much of mainstream Evangelicalism, TallSkinnyKiwi categorized my classification of McLaren as “the worst McLaren slam” making the rounds on the Internet and “This is NOT the kind of discussion we want to have, so please...no wrangling about words, no arguing, no divisiveness...Let’s have a good productive discussion that allows us all to move ahead.” No doubt headlong into the arms of apostasy. Thus, the practitioners of liturgical diversity hold the sacrament of tolerance should only apply to those agreeing with them.
My column regarding McLaren might seem utterly bizarre to minds too small to fathom the revolutionary apocalyptic changes sweeping across certain sectors of society, but I stand by my conclusions and assessments of this aberrant movement and its foremost luminary. Yet, from what I have learned since then, the situation might even be worse.
In the May 9, 2006 Sojomail ezine of the leftwing Christian rag Sojourners, McLaren is interviewed as to his opinion of The Da Vinci Code. According to McLaren, though The Da Vinci Code is lit with fallacies and distortions, these are no more serious than those in the Left Behind Series.
Though there is room for debate among committed Christians as to the specific chronology of certain eschatological events and that some of the plot elements seem needlessly drug out or somewhat silly, overall one cannot deny that the Left Behind novels depict a milieu where Jesus is Lord of the universe. The Da Vinci Code portrays Jesus as little more than a sex fiend no more divine and thus worthy of worship than the rest of us. But since in their own words a good story is more important to the Emergent crowd than cold hard fact, all that is beside the point.
What McLaren and his disciples really can’t stand is the reasonably conservative outlook espoused by the Left Behind novels. McLaren writes, “The Religious Right has polluted the air. The name ‘Jesus’ and the word ‘Christianity’ are associated with something judgmental, hostile, hypocritical, angry, negative, defensive, anti-homosexual, etc. Many of our churches, even though they feel they represent the truth, actually are upholding something that is distorted and false.”
Encase Pastor McLaren has not been off that spacious Burtonsville church compound of his surrounded by houses pushing a million dollars in prince, there’s quite a bit to be negative and angry about in the world today. Frankly, it’s that naive brand of Christianity with the sickening grin plastered across it’s face that is so emasculated that it doesn’t get upset at anything that is upholding something distorted and false.
The McLarenite beef with the Left Behind series is the way novels “twist scripture toward a certain theological and political end.” Mind you, I doubt he’s raving about a pre-tribulation rapture or the oddity of a believer chauffeuring the Anti-Christ around the globe. Rather, what McLaren is lamenting is Left Behind’s stern warning against global government and the amalgamation of world religions into a demonic mismash.
For you see, whether he wants to admit it or not, Rev. McLaren turns out to be something of a universalist deep down. For while he will no doubt dance around the matter with the obfuscation endemic to the Emergent Church movement, McLaren is out to undermine traditional belief in the afterlife, particularly the destinations of the soul popularly known as Heaven and Hell.
According to McLarenite doctrine, it doesn’t even matter if these metaphysical realms even exist and the belief in them are actually a holdover from a more primitive time, actually hindering continued spiritual progress by fostering what has become the new boogeyman constantly harangued from the twenty-first century pulpit and Sunday school classroom (namely individualism). McLaren comes close to insinuating that Jesus didn’t even believe in Hell but simply invoked the concept to best the Pharisees at their own game of verbal one-upmanship.
Instead of fearing the eternal torments of Hell and anticipating the unending happiness of Heaven, the truly spiritual person only concerns themselves about a this-wordly COMMUNITY. Frankly, if this is all there is to the Kingdom of God, I want a refund and being a Christian is a colossal waste of time.
The hyperpious might come down with a case of the vapors for me having said that, but whether they want to admit it or not, my opinion is essentially that of the Bible as I Corinthians 15:19 says that if in this life only we have hope, we of all men are most miserable.
Interesting how those in these revolutionary movements constantly counsel how we have so much to learn from foreign cultures when these alien dogmas undermine sound doctrine, traditional liberties, and private property yet so eagerly dismiss these concepts when a degree of congruity is shared with Christian belief. So what if Zoroastrians at that time had a more vivid understanding of the after life than their Jewish counterparts?
Does the idea’s origin somehow negate any of its truthfulness as apparently Jesus wasn’t the only Biblical source to endorse the notion of a punitive realm of the after life irrespective of where the idea might have gotten its initial start as the theme received its most elaborate treatment probably in the Book of Revelation. But if McLaren is going to get his knickers in a knot over Left Behind, he’s as sure as Sheol not going to like the Book of Revelation.
What good is the COMMUNITY going to do you on your deathbed as your existence is about to be snuffed out all together if Heaven and Hell really do not exist as destinations in eternity but merely as states of mind for the few brief years that each of us trod this earth? McLaren and his ilk often claim they have taken the tack they have in the name of bringing the young people back into the church. But if his message is going to be this life is all we have, why should they bother showing up Sunday morning at all because in the grim world McLaren posits (no matter how much Emergent types might try to put a smile on it with their scented candles, nose rings, and espresso bar, one is better off patterning one’s life after Hugh Hefner than Jesus Christ if tomorrow never comes.
By Frederick Meekins
Monday, September 04, 2006
Mother Nature Like A High Maintenance Woman Jabs Knife In Croc Hunter's Heart
Just recently I wrote how wildlife documentarians hoodwinked the viewing public into believing audiences have nothing to fear from nature.
Now, one of their most famous, Crocodile Steve Irwin, will forever serve as a reminder of just how dangerous these creatures are.
Though it won't be popular to say and still quite sad, frankly everyone knew this day was coming.
And like the episode of the Lone Gunmen predicting a jetliner would be flown into an American skyscraper, I bet you'll never again see the episode of the Simpsons' were Irwin is mauled to death by a crocodile.
Yet no doubt some environmental idiot will blurt out that sickening line "At least he died doing what he loved." Try telling that one to the wife and kids.
By Frederick Meekins
Sunday, September 03, 2006
A Review Of The Case For Christ By Lee Strobel
In the field of apologetics, leadership is often taken by scholars in the discipline of philosophy as such academics are often inclined to point out the inconsistencies of various belief systems and the rational superiority of the Christian faith. While such efforts will always be at the forefront of worldview analysis, experts in the fields of history, journalism, and law more oriented towards concrete fact than theoretical reflection also have an essential role to play in defending the Christian faith and in presenting a reason for the hope that lies within the believer.
One such work exemplifying this approach that is both comprehensible to the average reader yet filled with informative detail for those of a more academic bent is The Case For Christ by Lee Strobel. Himself a former skeptic, The Case For Christ recreates Strobel’s spiritual journey where this Chicago Tribune reporter turned his journalist’s eye and trained his legal mind towards the fundamental claims regarding Jesus Christ.
Strobel recreates this process by interviewing the foremost Christian experts in the fields of ancient history, Biblical studies, and even medicine and psychology. To some, this approach no doubt reeks of a detached tedium for which many professors are infamous; however, Strobel imbues this quest with both intrigue and a touch of humanity.
Strobel assures those reluctant to commence an in depth theological inquiry that such an investigation can be exciting and does not require any esoteric mental abilities beyond the commonsense used to operate in normal everyday life. Strobel accomplishes this by beginning each chapter with an anecdote drawn from his own life.
For example, in the chapter examining the eyewitnesses for Christ, Strobel opens with the story of a teenager on a respirator, paralyzed from the neck down by a robber’s bullet, who testified to the judge and jury assembled in his hospital room of the deed done to him (48). The victim died eighteen days later.
Many of the experts interviewed by Strobel themselves have their own engaging backgrounds that the reader will find both interesting and assuring to readers that these imposing intellects are not all that different than the rest of us. For example, Lewis Lapides, interviewed as an expert on the Messiahship of Jesus, went from being born into a Jewish family, into a skeptical phase surrounded by a dope-induced haze, to embracing Christ as his savior. Particularly touching was how the Resurrection was more than an academic truth to historian Gary Habermas but rather a source of existential comfort getting him through the loss of his wife to cancer.
It is through this witty give and take that Strobel lays out the evidence of the case for Christ. Though the entire book should be read, the conclusion does an excellent job of summarizing Strobel’s main points.
Strobel comes to the following conclusions. The biographies of Jesus stand up to scrutiny as reliable history as they were not countered as being inaccurate and have been reliably preserved in that the number of manuscripts indicate 99.5% accuracy of the text (350). Furthermore, evidence regarding the existence of Christ can be found outside the Gospels such as the mention of Jesus in Josephus and archaeology confirms that the Bible is accurate in numerous small details, thus increasing the credibility of its claims in more complex matters. Strobel then proceeds from these brick and mortar issues to address the more profound theological matters such as whether Jesus was insane to claim He was the Son of God and an examination of the various alternatives to the Resurrection such as the swoon theory that fall short of both logic and evidence.
As an introductory text, The Case For Christ by Lee Strobel is bound to become an apologetic classic as it succinctly addresses the fundamental issues of the Christian faith in an engaging manner that will stimulate reflection among believers and the spiritually curious alike.
By Frederick Meekins
Friday, September 01, 2006
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Characteristics Of The New Age Movement
This audio sermon is a good summary of this spiritual danger.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Why Is The Name Of Homicidal Motorist Being Downplayed?
A driver has deliberately rundown people in 12 locations throughout the San Francisco area, killing at least one pedestrian.
Omeed Aziz Popal was arrested as a result of the incident.
But because his is hardly a good solid Irish or German name, most accounts throughout the country have deliberately omitted the moniker of the alleged perpetrator.
Had his name been Joe Bob Lumpkin, tolerancemongers would have alreadytaken to the airwaves denouncing this deed as a hate crime and called upon additional federal oversite of the attitudes espoused by motorists, especially those daring to purchase SUV's.
But because this weirdo is probably a Muslim or some kind of sympathetic foreigner, once again sensitivity has been placed above survival.
by Frederick Meekins
Monday, August 28, 2006
Less That Four Months Until Christmas: Get Your Copy Of "Yuletide Terror & Other Holiday Horrors"
Less than four months until Christmas. Get your copy of "Yuletide Terror & Other Holiday Horrors".
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Elites Endanger Humanity’s Position Atop The Food Chain
For years, enemies of mankind such as Steve Irwin and Jeff Corwin have duped the American people into believing we have nothing to fear from allowing megafauna to trundle unimpeded across the face of the continent.
On these propaganda pieces disguised as informative educational programming, we are told that alligators and black bears wouldn't harm a hair on a human head.
However, three deaths at the mouths of ravenous reptiles and the report of a child being mauled to death by a black bear makes you stop and wonder if the wrong people weren't eaten for the sake of the gene pool.
The next time citizens hear of pleas by environmentalists to reintroduce extinct species, they would do well to think back to the tragedy befalling these individuals and their families.
And this will likely become a more prominent issue in the years ahead. With the advent of sciences on par with something out of Jurassic Park, we are talking about more than a stray pack of wolves here and there.
According to one Reuters news story published in August 2005, suggestions are being made to reintroduce elephants and large cats such as lions and cheetahs to the North American continent since it is claimed such creatures roamed the countryside over 10,0000 years ago.
Couple this with the desire to conjure mammoths and sabretooth tigers from hypergenetic witchcraft, and we could have a real nightmare on our hands.
Those worshipping the creation rather than the creator will argue that in all these instances sounding like episodes of the Fox Network's "When Animals Attack", the human victims were at fault for intruding on the territory of the predator in question, and since naturalistic evolution teaches we are no better than the animals, these victims got what they deserved.
But frankly, where are humans suppose to live and if we are to be denied firearms if the gun control lobby has its way, how will we be allowed to defend ourselves?
By unleashing wild animals in the areas beyond designated human sanctuaries (a nice euphemism for relocation compounds), the government will not have to round people up or even offer them much of a payment for their property. The unprotected will be scratching at the door to get on the inside.
Already it is pretty much against the law to protect your loved ones and property from these creatures to which the elites have abdicated humanity’s rightful place at the top of the food chain.
In East Manatee, Florida, a retired lady marine was cited for hunting without a license for shooting an alligator when the ravenous reptile lunged through her doggie door on her patio in an attempt to make a quick snack of her golden retriever.
Those promoting evolution and other heresies about nature claim they advocate an equality of species.
However, unless they plan to bring up the trespassing gator on charges as well, what is really being implemented is a systematized human inferiority where we will not only be denied the right to live where we want but also the right to protect ourselves as well.
Had the gator lunged at the presidential pooch, the Secret Service detail would no doubt made quick work of the scaly assassin. If we are to maintain the perception that in the American system that there are no aristocrats or nobility, on what grounds can we deny the average citizen the same right to protect life and property?
In the NBC drama "Surface", the giant monsters prowling the depths of the sea turned out not to be creatures from outer space but rather produced in a laboratory, it was alluded to as the season drew towards its conclusion, for the purposes of a systematic campaign of depopulation where the elites would eventually emerge from their undersea bunker to reclaim a new Eden.
If people do not awaken soon, they might very well find their property, their freedom, and even their very children on the menu of the inaugural feast of the New World Order.
By Frederick Meekins
Friday, August 25, 2006
Does Mexican Archaeological Site Portend The Fate Of The White Race?
Those in favor of the cultural and demographic changes sweeping over the United States as a result of immigration would do well to consider the discovery of an archeological site in Mexico where evidence has been discovered suggesting that the Aztecs did not have the Spanish over for dinner but rather had the Spanish for dinner.
For the Mexicans pouring into the United States as part of the downplayed insurgency actually taking place draw inspiration not from the Spanish side of their ancestry but rather from the homicidal, cannibalistic savages commemorated by the name "Azatlan" which they plan to rechristen upon the triumph of their subversions.
Already in their ruminations they claim there will be no place for the White man in their paganized empire.
As in the Germany of the 1940's, it is only a few short steps from posting signs saying "Whitey Keep Out" or "Get Lost Gringo" to implementing the Final Solution to the so-called "Caucasian Problem'.
by Frederick Meekins
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Monday, August 21, 2006
Accused Child Predator Sips Champagne
Nowadays, if you glance at a police officer the wrong way, its 200,000 volts with a stun gun with the likelihood of additional shock if the cop doesn't like it that you happen to convulse and twitch after falling to the ground.
However, instead of being bound and gagged for his return trip to America, accused child killer and all around sicko John Mark Karr was subject to no such deprivations.
Instead, the aspiring predator shipped champagne and dined on roast duck and king size shrimp.
by Frederick Meekins
Saturday, August 19, 2006
Trendy Village Seeks To Banish The Pleasingly Plump
According to reports, a trendy Chicago suburb voted “the sexiest suburb in America” may be on the verge of banishing from its venues of commerce those not conforming to arbitrarily contrived body aesthetics.
Lane Bryant, a retailer known for marketing clothing to full-sized women, has been denied the opportunity to open a store in a development called “The Village Of Oak Park”.
Before the hypercapitalists decide to slit my throat as they are wont to do whenever anyone dares to question a decision made by big business, it must be noted that the decision to deny Lane Bryant the retail space was not made by a private sector firm or entrepreneur but rather by the committee managing the village, an entity quasigovernmental in nature.
The bureaucratic mouthpiece for the community association told the press that, “Lane Bryant is not the kind or quality of shop that is desire for development,” and, “We want a more broad based retailer benefiting the village, rather than a niche market.”
In other words, “Fat chicks, keep out.” For unless the Village --- a term as almost as nauseating as COMMUNITY as it is usually invoked by an insular elite out to micromangage the lives of those residing in a particular locality --- is planning to open a Wal-Mart or a Target (places these Communitarian types despise even more than the overweight), by definition the retailer would otherwise serve a niche market.
For example, does Oak Park Village plan to offer a men’s clothier? By default, such an establishment would be niche because of excluding women’s garments. Does the Village plan to have an electronics store? By definition, wouldn’t that be a niche retailer since it would not sell groceries?
The rich and snooty thinking it is their place to tell us poor working slobs how to live and how we are not quite as good as they are since the names slapped across our rearends didn’t cost quite as much as theirs will look down their elevated noses and claim that what I describe above has nothing to do with niche retailing. Rather a broad-based retailer would provide raiment for members of the retailer’s targeted genders.
Maybe so, but the person slightly above “average” in size can hardly ever find attrative clothes in these places catering to the malnourished and emaciated. One is often more likely to find the Holy Grail than a decent shoe above a size 12 in many of these places.
In a Chicago Tribune account of the dispute, it is claimed that Villagistas banished Lane Bryant because there was already a place reserved for a full size specialty store. So what?
Is it really the place of a municipal authority or even a residential association to make such economic decisions? Consumers should be the ones to decide whether the market can bear two merchants appealing to a similar demographic. If it cannot, one will eventually fold opening space for a new establishment; if it can, consumers will be all the better off as both venues will compete for customer dollars through either discounts or choices of selection.
All local authorities should do is to make sure the area surrounding the mall is crime free and to eagerly take in any tax revenue to accrue from otherwise free and unfettered commerce. However, it is this idea of consumer choice that the proponents of the “New Urbanism” cannot really stand as they use their cloak of diversity to impose a mandatory conformity.
Many advocating this perspective on public planning are appalled at the idea of the cinema multiplex where moviegoers have a selection of motion pictures to choose from. To the Communitarians, we are to have a limited media so that we are all exposed to the same thing and thus have community thrust upon us through a uniformity of thought. Seems choice is only to be allowed when promiscuous vixens decide to have their unborn children hacked to pieces.
Today, Oak Park Village conspires to retain its distinction as “sexiest suburb” by taking steps to ensure that all those fat people the anti-obesity racket has labeled “unsightly and unattractive” use these facilities at a minimum. What is to prevent them from banning such people all together?
Don’t laugh. Shu Bartholomew hosts an informative webcast called “On The Commons Radio” that catalogs episode after episode the abuses of power and unbelievable petty bylaws endemic to the system of homeowner associations sweeping across the United States like a plague of locusts devouring all the liberties stranded in their path.
On her guest appearance on Freedom 21 Santa Cruz, another eye opening broadcast warning of the dangers of contemporary community planning and the like, Shu detailed the plight of one homeowner that had to have the family dog weighed periodically to ensure that the canine did not go a few ounces over the weight stipulated for pets in the residential association regulations.
What is to stop a similar law or regulation from being promulgated that people over a certain size are not permitted to live in a particular housing development? Ridiculous, those of limited perspective might snap.
But is it? Already various community development authorities are manipulating the rules of the game to attract the kinds of people they want to allow into their own little versions of utopia.
For example, in Hyattsville, Maryland, subsidized housing is being set aside for so-called “struggling-artists” even though hardly anyone else either can afford the dilapidated housing ranging from $300,000 to $500,000 with tax bills over $3000 a year (as Dolly Parton use to quip regarding her own appearance, it sure costs a lot to look so cheap). Another program paid for at public expense around the country gives preferential mortgages to teachers.
Neither artists nor teachers make that much less than us common folks and are often found on the more shiftless end of the labor spectrum. If anything, the members of these respective occupational classes given over to the radicalism infecting much of the intelligentsia have done the most to subvert this great nation over the past few decades.
Those favoring the malnourished look wouldn’t really need to be all that openly hostile initially in their campaign to banish the portly from these oases of optimal nutrition and fitness. In the name of health, municipalities and residential associations could enact rules demanding those living in a certain area participate in COMMUNITY exercise programs and those caught snacking on certain foods or weighing over a certain amount could be forced to pay a fine (or as such assessments are called in the Owellian lexicon) an additional fee.
Already the White House is conspiring to measure the urinary byproducts of dope in various sewer systems around the nation. I am sure some clever chemist could devise some kind of test to determine what kinds of snack foods are being excreted by the eating public.
Once Americans have been conditioned to accept increased dietary oversight, additional measures could eventually be introduced. For example, those refusing to comply with the promulgated standards of body aesthetics in reference to weight despite incurring the established financial disincentives could be relocated to cellulite liquidation centers where, of course, they would never be heard from again.
Some might laugh and say that in America such action would never be taken against those failing to abide by such arbitrary standards. At one time, the very same people said a government agency would never tell a property manager what retailer might set up shop in a private facility or seize a beloved home that’s been in a family for generations just to placate the influential as evident in the threat posed be eminent domain.
By Frederick Meekins
Friday, August 18, 2006
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Then Why Bother?: X-rays Can't Detect Shoe Explosives
According to the Department of Homeland Security itself, x-ray machines that screen airline passengers cannot detect explosives.
So unless the devices are being used to further increase the risks of cancer or to further condition the American people into doing as we are told without complaint, then what's the point.
But then again, maybe those reasons are the point.
Perhaps Americans should stop and consider this before they rush headlong into implementing other measures supposedly being enacted for our own good that won't do a thing to stop an actual act of terrorism such as the Real ID Act but merely tighten the chains around the neck of the American people.
by Frederick Meekins
Monday, August 14, 2006
Local Government Land Grabs
With much attention focused on the danger posed by eminent domain, one does not hear as much about the threat posed by "wetland preservation" as you once did.
However, in this interesting discussion, Sharon Hughes points out though this environmental smokescreen governments can effectively sieze control of your property without even having to compensate you for it.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
A Review Of Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton
Over the course of the modern era, whether fairly or not, orthodoxy has come to be associated with glumness and austerity. Thus, those coming across Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton might assume they are in for a dull and obtuse recitation of doctrine and dogma. They will, however, be delightfully surprised by Chesterton’s wit, feistiness, and zest for life.
It is Chesterton’s contention that, rather than stifling the individual, it is through orthodoxy that man is liberated to both accept and embrace the contradictions of this life for what they really are in all their wonder and horror. It is the heretic that is unable to rise to a level that would give him a perspective that would enable him to appreciate things as they actually are since the heretic is ultimately beholden unto these very forces of life. Chesterton muses, “Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true (22).”
Often, believers are accused of being close minded. However, Chesterton contends that Christians are no more close minded than the adherents of any other outlook. Chesterton writes, “For we must remember that the materialist philosophy...is certainly much more limiting than any religion...The Christian is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order and inevitable development in the universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle (41).”
As a result, the heterodox mind must increasingly withdrawal from a world that declares the glory of God in order to maintain the consistency of the fiction it has constructed. For example, in illustrating views regarding the existence of sin, Chesterton offers the following humorous illustration, “If it be true...that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat (24).”
Those adverse to traditional religious notions have constructed elaborate epistemological systems in an attempt to justify their unbelief. However, Chesterton assures, such intellects (though formidable by human standards in terms of the facts such minds have accumulated) actually bear a startling resemblance to the insane.
Like the insane, rationalists view themselves as the source of all meaning. In the struggle and strain to understand everything, Chesterton notes, the consistent rationalist is actually driven mad as they end up losing everything but their reason. Chesterton observes, “The man who begins to think without the proper first principles goes mad; he begins to think at the wrong end...But we may ask in conclusion, if this be what drives men mad, what is it that keeps them sane (48)?”
The answer provided by Chesterton is none other than the mystical imagination found in religious orthodoxy. The thing about the cosmos human beings occupy is that is both physically and epistemologically too complex for the finite mind to fully comprehend. The only thing we can do is appreciate what we can and to accept that there is a power beyond us. Chesterton notes, “The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable but not quite (148).”
Chesterton further likens the spiritual realm to two wild horses threatening to bolt off into the extremities of either direction with only the church adhering to orthodoxy capable of reining in these powerful tendencies that are good and pure when kept together as a team but result in heartache and ruin if not kept working together in tandem. Ironically, Chesterton claims, though often depicted as scatterbrained the best poets (actually quite sensible and businesslike) are often the ones embodying the spirit necessary for handling this awesome responsibility. For what the average person desires above all else is a life of practical romance defined by Chesterton as “the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure (16).” And what is any more mysterious and secure at the same time than God Himself?
Written in the early years of the twentieth century, some of the authors mentioned by Chesterton might seem obscure to readers not that familiar with general literary history. However, the fact that they have been forgotten while Chesterton is still embraced as a foremost defender of the faith is a positive testament to the relevance of Chesterton’s ruminations that, though written nearly a century ago, ring with a truth that sounds as if they just rolled off the presses.
by Frederick Meekins
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Monday, August 07, 2006
Saturday, August 05, 2006
Hints Revealed Why Border Left Wide Open
Ben Franklin is attributed with saying that those desiring safety above liberty deserve neither safety nor liberty. If one particular proposal being suggested as a potential solution to the seemingly insurmountable immigration problem is implemented, those living in the United States --- both those with the right to be here as well as those that should be tossed back over the border --- will have neither safety nor liberty.
Both the chairman of Verichip and the President of Columbia are on record as suggesting that the vaunted guest workers heralded as the future backbone of the U.S. economy could be implanted with radio frequency identification chips in order to ease security concerns by tracking the movements of migrants and reliably confirming their identities.
Citizens might respond, “So? This doesn’t concern us. This only applies to those that want to come here in compliance with the law and the first thing any law-abiding person does is always comply with the law no matter what.” You know, a variation of the old why-are-you-so-concerned-about-privacy-if-you- haven’t-got-anything-to-hide thing.
The program might start off implanting only foreigners, but little will prevent this program from being expanded to include citizens once full Americans have been conditioned to accept biochips. For the proposal to inject aliens with homing devices is nothing more than a technologically sophisticated manner through which to transform citizenship into a legal and economic irrelevancy and as a way to bring about the demise as Americans as a distinct and robust people in the world
In the future when the world will no longer be characterized by independent sovereign states but instead organized around regional or hemispheric districts, the privileges (as rights will no longer exist) one will be permitted to enjoy at the whim of global planners will not be based upon the natural rights bestowed upon the individual by God Himself but whether one has bended his knee before the masters of the end of the age and submitted to their global order by accepting the identification chip.
Those whose perceptions are confined by the realities of the immediate present and unable to conceptualize anything in the future beyond getting drunk next weekend can’t imagine Americans submitting willingly to a program of such extensive control. Yet we are already well down that path. All in the name of preventing terrorism, Americans just about now do a striptease in airports, have been compelled to drink their own breast milk, think little of the government rifling through their library records, and will probably not make much of a fuss about the NSA colleting dossiers right off their MySpace profiles.
All the government has to do to get the population to accept monitoring chips is to continue to do little to deter or interdict every piece of human refuse thinking it’s their place to mosey on into the United States (without respect for our laws, language or culture) and demand we acquiesce to their inferior way of life. If the acolytes of the chip promise that the device will dramatically cut down on undesirables while ensuring that this technology will allow the sincere (both native born and newcomer alike) to be able to contribute to the American economy, the naive will flock in droves to prove their fealty to the hemispheric union and ultimately the global order.
Despite the preeminent threat biochips pose to human liberty as well as their spiritual implications described in Revelation 13, such a proposal is actually quite revealing as to what the quasi-open border crowd actually thinks of Hispanics and others coming to our shores (or perhaps more precisely right on through our shores without even stopping).
Elites claim that, if anything, they want to see an increase in the levels of immigration and to legalize most of those already here out of their compassion for the downtrodden of the earth and out of appreciation for diverse cultures. What they really want is to reduce everyone below their lofty status to the level of a glorified slave class.
At the rally on the Mall in Washington, DC lauding the wonders of illegal immigration, a litany of radical liberals aided and abetted this criminal act by complaining how, if illicit cross border migration was curtailed these, elites would lose their steady stream of cheap labor. And in all the fancy rhetoric about the wonders of legalizing those in violation of the nation’s immigration laws the politicians, activists, and bigwigs , conveniently neglected to mention how these new additions will be incorporated into the system of statutes and regulations already bearing down on the American economy.
For example, unscrupulous businessmen often employ illegals because of their below the radar status so these firms can reimburse these laborers at rates lower than that proscribed by law. But when these workers are granted an occupational legality equivalent to that enjoyed by all other citizens and properly documented aliens, won’t those now bestowed the right to remain here through the alchemy of legislative and bureaucratic hocus pocus have to be given the same pay and workplace protections as everybody else? More likely, these guidelines will be altered or overlooked in their entirety to drag us all down to the squalor and poverty characteristic of the Latin American barrio.
Been giving the boss some lip about not getting a raise; you better watch out. Not only can you be replaced with a foreigner that will work for a pittance of what you make and who will not only be beaten gladly with a rubber hose but also endure being denied potty breaks as well.
Refuse to accept that identification chip? No problem. We’ll see just how long you’re able to last excluded from all economic participation, or as Revelation 13 puts it, “...no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark.”
Whereas the globalists claim to have the best interests of the migrants at heart only to use these laborers in pursuit of their agenda to turn the entire planet into one giant slave plantation, at least those opposed to the system of immigration (both legal and illegal) as it currently stands think enough of their counterparts originating outside this nation to force them to abide by the system of laws to which all people are to be subject.
For one is dishonest with those one is dismissively contemptuous, not with those one respects as a fellow human being. Furthermore, if all men really are created equal, shouldn’t they be expected to adhere to properly constituted law irrespective of their pity parties or sob stories? To grant them a waver from these statutory expectation is an admittance that deep down one believes those of the population in question to be an inferior breed of the human species incapable of rising to the standard everyone else is expected to adhere to.
In the circles that study the methods through which freedoms are lost and nations undermined, there is a concept credited with being Hegelian in origin known as “order from chaos”. According to the strategy, those in power allow conditions to deteriorate to the point where the people clamor to have an iron fist clamp down around them.
No doubt about it, the current immigration crisis did not come about unintentionally. Rather it is part of a deliberate plan to bring about the end of the United States and to eradicate human liberty from the face of the earth.
By Frederick Meekins
Friday, August 04, 2006
When Should You Leave The Church?
Instead of buying into the new mentality that one is stuck in a bad church the way one is stuck in a bad marriage, Jan Markell does the body of Christ a service by providing a set of guidelines the believe can use to tell when it is time to break fellowship with an errant congregation.
Especially disheartening was the email she read about the elderly couple where the husband had an inoperable aortic aneurysm who was told by their "seeker sensitive" pastor (who was anything but sensitive) to basically hit the road because they would not go along with the heathen jungle music permeating so many of the houses of God today.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Pat Robertson Joins Global Warming Racket
Robertson now says, "We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels."
But while you are suppose to feel guilty about driving around in a reasonably safe and comfortable vehicle such as an SUV or even air conditioning in your home, at one time Robertson had a race horse he spent over $500,000 and lives in a mansion atop a mountain with its own airstrip.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Generations Radio Claims Those With Fewer Than Three Offspring Don't Love Children
According to Generation's Radio co-host Dave Buehner, those with fewer than three offspring don't really love children and that people refuse to have anymore for selfish reasons such as wanting additional consumer electronics.
I don't know how things are out there in the hinterlands, but some of us live in areas where it is irresponsible to procreate beyond that number as real estate prices have gone through the roof with smaller houses often going for over $300,000 with annual property tax bills topping $3000.
And if parents send even a two child family to Christian school, that's probably another 8 to 10 thousand on top of that, not to mention how we are lectured incessantly how we are greedy and irresponsible if we don’t sock away a hefty amount for retirement; maybe believers ought to cut back on their tithes to finance these expenses since they are just as much God’s work than recarpeting the sanctuary.
As homeschool operatives, Swanson and Buehner will probably retort that the children can be homeschooled; but what if the parents are more salt-of-the-earth laborers while the child's interests lie in a more bookish direction?
Being buddies with R.C. Sproul, Jr who was defrocked in part for browbeating those that dared to consider leaving his congregation, I guess these two would say those aspiring beyond the parameters of a neo-feudal class system where your place in life is determined by that of your parents should be chastised until they accept their lot.
As a parent, one's obligation lies with the children God has blessed you to have already.
If that means sacrificing your own pleasure in abstaining from having any additional children one might desire to take care of the one's you already have, that's just the way it has to be.
Does not the Bible say that he who does not provide for his own children is worse than an infidel; that dictum does not say anything about me having to pay for the kids of the guy down the street that can't seem to keep his pants on.
The number of children one produces is in no way an indicator of one's love for little one's nor is it always in the best interests of mothers to keep popping them out until she bursts.
My great-grandfather was an abusive drunk who fathered ten, with my grandfather brought into the world prematurely as a result of my great-grandmother having been kicked in the stomach. Nine children later, this once bright-eyed redhaired girl was dead by her mid forties from a heaviness of heart causing her to look as if she was in her late 60's.
By Frederick Meekins
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Revenuers Batter Creationist's Spouse
While I am a tad leery about some of Dr. Hovind's reasoning as to why he believes he should not be compelled to pay taxes like the rest of us, the treatment he and his wife recieved at the hands of IRS operatives is inexcusable.
One would think this would be a matter for accountants and tax lawyers rather than goon squads.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Crismier Continues Rush Towards Borg-Like Collectivism
Now we are a bunch of heathens if we stay to ourselves.
According to the author There Is No I In Church, God did not intend us to confide in spouces but rather in the church.
In the episode, host Chuck Crismier says, "The more togethernress that we can experience, the more we are experiencing church the way God designed."
Frankly, if it's with people outside one's immediate family, sounds more like Hell on Earth to me.
Friday, July 28, 2006
Horowitz Site Links To Column On Hillary
Discoverthenetworks.org, a reference site administered by David Horowitz serving as a database of leftwing radicals, has linked to my column on the Clintons as posted on The Conservative Voice.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Don’t Do As I Do: Clinton Duplicity Continues Into The 21st Century
As many age and grow saddened that the pleasures of this life diminish and are to soon come to an end, they often cope with this existential crisis by criticizing the young for behaviors they themselves use to participate in and wish for future generations lives of struggle and material deprivation. Normally, such disgruntled reflection provides a kind of psychological outlet through which to vent pent up frustrations and anxieties, however, it can be cause for concern when those making these kinds of complaints implement such ramblings as the foundation of public policy.
According to WorldNetDaily.com, in a commencement address at Long Island University and in a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Hillary Clinton declared to the youth of the nation that “work is not a four letter word” and that the young have a “sense of entitlement” having grown up in a “culture that has a premium on instant gratification”.
Isn’t a Clinton the last one that should be lecturing us on the perils of instant gratification as the old man pretty much wrote the book on this behavioral pathology throughout the 1990’s? However, it must be noted that what the wicked witch of the east is talking about is not so much the wastefulness and licentiousness endemic to the ruling elite but rather codespeak of revolutionary globalists that the American people enjoy too high a standard of living and must have Third World levels of squalor imposed upon them.
For in justifying her comments, the battle ax continued, “I just want to set the bar high because we are in a competition for the future.” Yet I wonder how much of her salary and book proceeds she is willing to forego for the sake of national productivity.
And it is highly doubtful she is speaking out against welfare recipients, the backbone of the contemporary Democratic Party. Rush Limbaugh observes in a quote in the WorldNetDaily account that Senator Clinton is sponsoring a bill to build 15,000 houses with high speed Internet for those on low income.
It’s bad enough to build houses for the indolent at government expense, but how can you justify giving them high speed Internet? I ask the junior witch from New York who will be getting instant gratification under such a program without working for it?
As the woman who just a few years ago realized “janitors are people to” as if this was some kind of breakthrough in the Grand Unified Theory, Hillary isn’t exactly in touch with those outside the New York/Washington loony bin. After all, her own spawn pulls down a six figure salary as a “consultant”, basically a position where she sits around doing nothing for which her primary qualification is having sprung from their loins of her progenitors.
Apparently, Hillary fails to realize that as politicians like her continue to expand education budgets to the point where almost anyone can acquire one irrespective of whether or not the actually deserve one in terms of aptitude, the value of an education has been diminished to such an extent that pursuing a degree provides the recipient with little economic advantage as college graduates today barely qualify today for jobs --- if the positions have not already been shipped overseas --- that used to be filled by high school graduates. Eventually, Americans will need a PhD in Economics just to say, “Hi, welcome to Wal-Mart.”
Maybe since Hillary has lived high on the hog for so long, it’s time she gave back to the community and all that other it takes a village drivel and herself partake of that low-paid menial labor the rest of us are suppose to be content with.
It seems she is not the only Clinton having done one thing and imposed something else on what to them are the lesser classes of the human race. Apart from his whoring around, one of the things Bill Clinton was most famous for was his love of nutritionally ambiguous snacks. However, if this former President no longer in office has his way, he will hold unprecedented power over what children in public schools will be allowed to ingest; no doubt making them fit little minions of the New World Order in that not only will they have lean bodies fit for all kinds of public project slave labor but also be of diminished critical capacity unaccustomed to questioning what is demanded of them since they will have been conditioned that it is their place to pliantly accept the decisions made for their lives by those claiming to be their betters.
According to an accord hashed out between the Alliance For A Healthier Generation (an entente consisting of the William J. Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association) and Cadbury Schwepps, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and the American Beverage Association, only low calorie and nutritious drinks are to be sold in the nation’s public schools. So while Bill Clinton spent a goodly portion of his Presidency shoving sweet things into his mouth and into the mouths of others (some while on their knees under the desk in the Oval Office where Reagan wouldn’t even remove his suit coat much less unzip his pants), if these captains of industry and institutional eleemosynary have their way, school children will be denied the decision regarding what far less offensive syrupy substances they may take into the human body.
Those hoodwinked by all the hype about an obesity epidemic relieved that someone has stepped forward to address this alleged crisis have missed the point. Encase some have forgotten or prefer to live in a liberal fantasyland, Bill Clinton is not the President anymore. Shouldn’t he be out building houses for the homeless or something?
Is it just me or is anyone else as disturbed as I am that unelected personalities not even in the government responsible to no one are able to exert such control over the lives of average Americans as to what we’ll be having for lunch? Shouldn’t the free market influenced by the decisions of individual consumers determine what is on the menu?
Those still not convinced will respond that the concordat only affects public school cafeterias and vended snacks. Students are perfectly free to bring their own junk food from home.
Maybe so for now. But once the initial details are worked out, what is to stop Clinton and his minions from conspiring together and issuing an edict that henceforward food manufacturers will only produce healthy foods such as beansprouts and seaweed? Furthermore, few will be left to resist such a decree as most will have been conditioned since childhood that theirs is not to reason why but to submit cheerfully to the plans both mundane and grandiose of the vaunted overlords.
Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. America has yet to fully recover from it’s last go-a-round with the Clintons. I doubt the country could take much more with Hillary in the White House and Bill free to impose his will upon the nation and the world beyond as either a private sector powerhouse or as even Secretary General of the United Nations, as some have proposed, and still retain what little liberty we have remaining.
By Frederick Meekins
Monday, July 24, 2006
Colson An Administration Lap Dog Over Immigration
If Brother Colson is so worked up that the compassionate thing to do is to let the illegals stay, maybe he'll invite them into his own neighborhood to toss their empty corona jugs onto the ground or perhaps give his own high-profile job to someone that will work for less.
Immigrants lose their huggability when you have 15 to 20 of them living in a single family dwelling next door.
Are They Americans Or Not?
A Puerto Rican gal has been crowned Miss Universe.
If Puerto Rico wants to enjoy the niceties of nationhood such as fielding their own Olympic team or sponsoring their own beauty pageant contestants, shouldn’t they surrender even more alluring benefits such as exemption from U.S. taxation, U.S. citizenship, and welfare payments, which according to columnist Michael Barone now top a billion dollars annually?
Diversity mongers will claim that Puerto Rico constitutes a unique culture deserving of such privileges as it enjoys a unique status keeping it distinct from Americas overall national fabric.
Then why doesn’t the District of Columbia get to field their own Miss Universe contestant since residents there have an ambiguous status in terms of Congressional representation?
For that matter, why can’t the states of Dixie field a Miss Confederacy or Southern belle since they have very little in common with lasses from New York?
After all, did not the Beach Boys elaborate the distinctions of females originating from the different parts of the country?
If so, why should Puerto Rico be allowed to have their cake and welfare too?
By Frederick Meekins
Friday, July 21, 2006
Exposing The North American Union
Irvin Baxter in this edition of Politics & Religion points out that at least with the European Union the nations and people involved got to vote on the issues whereas the Bush Administration is imposing hemispheric union without approval or legislative consultation.
The Man Is Always Wrong Mentality Infiltrates Ranks Of Evangelical Homeschoolers
From the July 18, 2006 broadcast of Generations Radio, once again it’s always the man’s fault.
In this edition, host Kevin Swanson lamented the state of the contemporary male as sexual predator, but unless he has gone over to the side of feminism like so many in the Evangelical church have, why doesn’t he also point out the deviant nature of the modern female as well as just as many of them are out to use men these days as the most lecherous of men in regards to the opposite sex.
Seems to me the Reformed perspective does not make a distinction between the degree of total depravity to be found between the sexes.
Are not both genders possessed by the same sin nature seeking to maximize its own debased desires?
Another troublesome comment was regarding how men should be willing to die for women.
Such should only be the case if the man has a wife and family for in the Bible it says a man should love his wife as Christ loved the church; not that men are to feel this way towards every gal that comes along.
For if I am not married, no woman has pledged fealty unto me as the church has done Christ.
Rather than women and children first when it comes to getting into the lifeboats, shouldn’t it be women WITH children first primarily for the sake of the children rather than for the benefit of the woman?
Why is the life of some single woman anymore valuable than that of a single man?
Frankly, unless one has volunteered for military service, one should not be expected to die for someone else’s family, especially if the woman in question has no emotional connection to you.
For while the father has a primal instinctual need to preserve his line, the single man has no such vested genetic interest. Thus once the children are aboard, why shouldn’t the women wait in line like everybody else?
Edmund Burke once said that in order to love my country, my country must be lovely. Likewise, in order to die for a woman, they must be worth dieing for and frankly nowadays, most of them are not worth the trouble.
By Frederick Meekins
Thursday, July 20, 2006
School Meal Program Causes Imbalance In Delicate Family Ecology
From ecology, it has been learned that a complex interplay of factors and forces results in the balance of nature that environmentalists insist can be easily thrown out of whack should any one of these readings stray too far from the optimal norms. As the pinnacle of the food chain, a number of these principles apply to human beings and their societies as well.
For example, one of the strongest human desires is to copulate and produce children. These urges are kept in check by the responsibility of having to provide for and take care of the offspring that could potentially result from the physical intermingling of man and woman preferably in the context of binding matrimony.
As such, most rational people discipline themselves to have no more children than they are capable of taking care of. However, Washington, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams wants to upset the delicate balance by instituting a program where government school students in the city could receive three meals per day at government expense.
Supporters say the program would “take a big step towards ending child hunger.” However, such a proposal hardly has the best interests of children at heart.
For by taking over the task of procuring and distributing the nutritional allotments of some 20,000 children, the government is unhinging from parenthood one of the fundamental reasons for this most important of human undertakings, namely providing for the kids you yourself had the fun of making.
Very few are going to have the courage to admit it, but often the families enrolled in these assistance programs are rarely ever headed by model parents. Now being freed almost entirely of the burden of expending their energies tending to the progeny they do have, by no longer having to provide three meals a day, what is to prevent parents tottering along the edge of delinquency and neglect from either spending the money freed up by not having to pick up most of the family food tab during the week on luxuries they don’t deserve such as plasma screen TV’s and nose piercings or to revel in additional promiscuity resulting in additional babies they have no intentions of raising properly?
Those wracked by the sex fever gripping our society will invoke their favorite refrain that it’s nobody’s business how those on public assistance conduct their lives. Maybe so if these people had kept their business to themselves and not come forward to suckle off the public teat with the same lack of discretion they exhibited in bedding multiple partners. But once these people come forward and admit they are unable to effectively run their own lives by demanding assorted forms of assistance despite not suffering from a crippling disability, the matter becomes the business of all taxpayers.
Another fundamental question few have the courage to ask in this overly communitarian age is why do the rest of us have to pay for other people’s kids to eat? Frankly, are these kids even starving?
Though the American people have been duped into believing these meals are all that stand between the youngsters that receive them and malnutrition, that is not necessarily the case. For you see, in DC, students are eligible for free breakfasts irrespective of income.
Theoretically, citizens of modest means could end up financing the meals of the well-to-do such as members of Congress or successful interest group functionaries. Who’s to say the expanded program won’t invite all comers to dine at the government trough?
Neither is the program simply about the bare nutrition needed to survive. With low cost stores such as Wal-Mart, Aldi’s, Save-A-Lot, and even Dollar Tree there is no reason why any self-respecting parent can’t get some kind of food into their offsprings’ bellies.
They might not eat like kings and their parents might have to delay getting that tattoo or the gold teeth they wanted, but to put it bluntly, no where are these luxuries guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution or the Declaration for those unwilling to provide for themselves. If they can work their tails in bars and nightclubs, they can work their hands on the jobsite or in the office.
One of the most memorable lines ever uttered on the Simpsons (quite an accomplishment on this television classic with so many memorable moments) was set in the future when Lisa Simpson is President. Milhaus as presidential advisor says to her that the only thing school lunches and midnight basketball got us was a generation of supercriminals that didn’t requite sleep.
In many ways, the human economy is as delicate and as beautiful as the natural environment. And like it, should any one of the components be unduly stimulated, the whole system faces the possibility of collapse with civilized man becoming yet another endangered species.
By Frederick Meekins
Red China Establishes North American Beachhead
Shouldn't there be as much fuss about this as there was over the UAE being handed a number of ports? If anything, China is a bigger threat.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Additional Analysis Of The NAFTA Highway To Hell
Particularly interesting were the comments of how a foreign power such as China could take over the Mexican ports upon which the U.S. would be dependent and essentially starve America into compliance by cutting off the food supply.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Monday, July 17, 2006
Sermon Seemingly Justifies Pawning Off Daughters As Spoils Of War
From this sermon, one get’s the impression it’s Biblical to pawn your daughter off as spoils of war since, according to Judges 1:13 Caleb offered his daughter to the first man to take a certain hill, but immoral to let single daughters having reached the age of majority live on their own.
Many sermons lament the number of broken marriages occurring within the church. Maybe if more pastors preached actual doctrine rather than invoking obbsure historical references to justify their own theological peculiarities such as the impropriety of otherwise chaste dating and condemnation upon the single for not having gotten married, maybe there would be fewer divorces within the kingdom of God since believers would then be making decisions reflective of the Lord's will for their own lives rather than being pressured into situations because the preacher did not know when to keep his mouth shut.
Masonic Rolls Declining
According to the Detroit Free Press, the numbers of Freemasons are in decline.
Given the tendency of this protocultic organization to lure members in through established churches and religious organizations, perhaps this is the reason so many across the spectrum of Christian theology are today harping COMMUNITY, COMMUNITY, COMMUNITY until they almost want to make you puke.
For in the call to thrust your nose ever more completely into the affairs and business of your neighbors, you will notice that most of these clerics harken back to the glories of a supposedly less individualistic era earlier in America history.
This alleged golden age just also happens to coincide with the time when greater numbers belonged to these quasi-occultic fraternities.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
A Review Of Mere Christianity By C.S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis is renowned as one of the foremost Christian thinkers of the twentieth century. Despite being an Anglican and exhibiting a number of tendencies making him a bit of an iconoclast among his fellow believers, C.S. Lewis has been fondly embraced by a broad swath of the church in part because of his efforts to promote a version of the Christian faith amicable towards all denominations by appealing to what all of these theological niches have in common, which could be referred to as mere Christianity.
As such, one of Lewis’ best known apologetic texts is titled none other than Mere Christianity. Originally presented as a series of broadcast talks, Lewis vetted much of his text past four members of the clergy --- an Anglican, a Methodist, a Presbyterian, and a Roman Catholic --- in order to keep denominational idiosyncrasies to a minimum. Because of such conscientious effort, the Christian finds in Mere Christianity a rational defense of the faith of considerable sophistication.
Mere Christianity begins as a recitation of what is known as the moral argument for the existence of God. According to Lewis, the moral law consists of the fundamental rules by which the universe operates and to which all residing within are bound. And even though considerable intellectual resources have been expended to deny its existence, not even those making it their life’s purpose to undermine these eternal principles can escape from them try as they might. Lewis observes, “Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him, he will be complaining ‘It’s not fair’ before you can say ‘Jack Robinson’ (5).”
The very fact that human beings are able to argue that one set of moral claims is superior to another, Lewis observes, is itself proof that some kind of higher law exists. Lewis writes, “Quarrelling means trying to show that the other man is wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that a footballer has committed a foul unless there was some kind of agreement about the rules of football (4).”
Lewis notes, “If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring...Christian morality to Nazi morality...If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something --- some real morality --- for them to be true about (11).” Thus, the standard by which human moralities are judged stem from a source apart and above them.
From establishing that natural law exists, Lewis moves on to examine where this eternal law originates from. Lewis postulates there are approximately two sources that this law could possibly originate from: the materialist view that the principles governing the universe arose through a process of chance and the religious view that the universe was established by a conscious mind. And since the law comes to us in the form of principles and instructions, this would seem to conclude that the promulgator of this law would have to be mind rather than inanimate matter.
Despite the fact that the universe was meant to run according to moral law, it is obvious from a quick look around that the moral agents operating within it fail to live up to these noble ideals as we are regularly aware of even our own shortcomings. As such, the universe requires a divine intervention to set things right. Lewis writes, “Enemy occupied territory --- that is what the world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed...and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage (36).” This king is none other than Jesus, whom from his own claims, must be God or, as Lewis famously points out, is a lunatic “on a level with a man who says he is a poached egg or a devilish liar (41).” It was the primary purpose of Jesus to suffer and die so that our sins might be forgiven so that we might be made whole in Him.
Fundamental as this message is to man’s eternal salvation, Mere Christianity is also full of practical observations less cosmic and more down to earth. Lewis writes, “Theology is practical. Consequently, if you do not listen to Theology...It will mean that you have a lot of...bad muddled, out of date ideas (120.)” Many of theology’s practical concerns manifest themselves in the form of morality.
Lewis lists morality as being concerned with three matters: harmony between individuals, the inner life of the individual, and the general purpose of human life as a whole (57). Lewis observes that different beliefs about the universe will naturally result in different behaviors and those closest to the truth will produce the best results (58).
Lewis demonstrates how this phenomena manifests itself in a number of ethical spheres, sex being one of interest to just about all people. It is this obsession with sex, Lewis point out, that shows just how out of whack contemporary morality has become. Lewis comically comments that the level to which this biological impulse has been elevated in our own society is akin to a land where the inhabitants have such a prurient interest in food beyond nourishment and wholesome pleasure that the inhabitants watch a plate containing a mutton chop that is uncovered just before the lights go out (75). Ironically, Lewis points out, such deviancy is not usually the result of starvation but rather overindulgence.
Though Lewis is witty in regards to most issues he addresses, even in regards to this beloved Oxford professor, the Christian must remember to be a Berean and measure even his formidable intellect by the standard of Biblical truth. Unfortunately, there are at least two matters that must be approached with caution.
Lewis likens the process of change we go through as Christians to the biological theory of recapitulation where it is believed an embryo passes through the various phases of evolution during development in the womb. Of the process, Lewis writes, “We were once like vegetables, and once rather like fish; it was only at a later stage that we became like human babies (159).”
One hopes that had Lewis lived until more technologically advanced times that he would have not retained this scientifically erroneous theory. For at its most innocent, it is used to justify Darwinisim and from Lewis’ statement one could very well use it to justify abortion.
From another passage, it would seem Lewis tottered dangerously close to a “proto-universalism” in his thought. Lewis writes, “There are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it (162).”
John 14:6 says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” And Acts 4:12 says, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”
In writing Mere Christianity, Lewis does a commendable job overall of balancing the theoretical and practical concerns of the faith. As such, Mere Christianity will no doubt continue as a classic apologetics text for decades to come.
by Frederick Meekins
Friday, July 14, 2006
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Up To A Million Homes To Be Seized In Construction Of NAFTA Superhighway
If this was done anywhere else, this would be called cultural genocide; but since it is the rural American middle class, it will be called "progress".
Sustainable Development & The New World Order
Freedom21 Santa Cruz examines how sustainable development is being used to curb individual liberty and implement global government.
An interesting segment also goes into detail about the proposed transnational highway being built extending through Central America, up through the United States, and into Canada.
This is of particular significance since China now controls both ends of the Panama Canal and could easily use this proposed thoroughfare predicted to be ten lanes wide in each direction to very well launch an invasion into much of North America.
The discussion also does a superb job of pointing out the movement to eliminate the gas tax and replace it with a mileage tax designed to condition the individual into the mindset that travel is a privilege granted to us by our "beneficent" overseers rather than a right.
Last Days Deception In The Church
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
White House Funnels Tax Dollars To Hispanosupremacists
According to this Michelle Malkin column, these La Raza schools don't want to drink the White man's water.
Perhaps we should force them to be consistent and refuse to give them any of the White man's money.
Use to be, those that sent their children to religious schools instead of the secularist counterpart were derided as closet racists.
Now that the most radical of minority activists have set up their own advocating Marxist revolution, we not only give them a hearty round of applause but grant them an audience with the President's own Sith apprentice as well as a hefty handout in the process.
by Frederick Meekins
Does The Cruise Progeny Even Exist
Speculation is beginning to fly whether or not the daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes even exists.
While the couple might be within their rights to withhold public photos of the baby girl, on Fox News it was insinuated that even Hollywood friends and associates have yet to see the little one and a number of discepancies have surfaced regarding the birth certificate since the document was filed late and there is some hanypanky regarding signatures on it.
Given the strange birthing rituals of the Scientologist cult, it wouldn't surprise me if the child was still-born or passed away shortly there after. The one's I feel sorry for are the parents that will probably have a baby snatched from them so Cruise and his concubine can continue this facade.
If it turns out that Cruise is perpetrating some kind of fraud, lets see him wiggle out of this one bouncing up and down on Oprah's sofa.
by Frederick Meekins
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Monday, July 10, 2006
Londonistan A Portent Of Things To Come
Larry Pratt of Gun Owners Of America discusses the Islamic conquest of Europe with the author of this pivotal work.
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Why Is David Barton's Wallbuilders Asking Questions About Race?
In websurfacing David Barton's Wallbuilders website, I clicked on the link for his organization's pastor's briefing.
At this event, Christian ministry leaders (common believers not being good enough apparently) are given a tour of the Capitol building by Barton and Christian members of Congress detailing the religious symbolism throughout the building.
Are regular Christians somehow not pious enough or simply too stupid to hear this information from the Holy Barton himself and must instead receive it second hand from their pastors?
Apart from the hypocrisy that Barton himself would not qualify to go on his own tour since he is technically not a pastor but a historian, Christians should be more concerned about something else on the Wallbuilders site.
On the site’s registration page for the tour, apart from asking for name, address, and ministerial affiliation of the applying cleric (no doubt to weed out those in the laity unworthy of an audience with such auspicious elites), one of the blanks the applicant is forced to fill out asks for race.
Why in the name of Lincoln’s beard is this any of Barton’s business?
Scripture says that in Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew. Unless Barton is looking for a spouse for his children among those gathered, what bearing should the ethnicity of those assembled have on his presentation? And for those offended that I dared to insinuate that it’s OK to take someone’s race into consideration when contemplating matrimony, shouldn’t you get even more upset it is being considered here for something less permanent or intimate?
Those conditioned to blithely accept what they are told to do without additional reflection simply because someone from behind a pulpit or on television told them to will likely conjecture, “Well, in this Post-9/11 world security at the Capitol might simply need to know who’s going to show up at the door and ethnicity is simply one of the easiest ways to initially confirm identity.”
But if that’s the only concern and someone was really up to no good, what’s to prevent the ne’er-do-well from assuming the identity of someone of a similar phenotype as themselves?
However, it is safe to assume that security played little reason in compelling those wanting to attend the briefing to reveal this information. For elsewhere on the site listing the dates of these events, web browsers find a date set aside for African American pastors underneath of which it reads, “African American Pastors Only".
As I mentioned in recent commentary, Bob Jones University lost its tax exempt status not for violating any law but for transgressing “public policy” for not allowing interracial dating even though it permitted Blacks to attend the school. Shouldn’t Barton face similar sanctions since he is going even further by denying accommodations to some of his programs solely on the basis of race, the very definition of discrimination?
The weak-minded having fallen for multiculturalism and diversity will respond that due to the unique circumstances of the Black experience that those of this particular background might not feel comfortable addressing these sensitive issues in the presence of White devils (eh, I mean people). If this is the case, will Barton dismiss himself from his own seminar since he is not Black or is this once again an example of where those in leadership are not going to abide by the same rules they wish to impose upon the rest of us?
I did not see a date set aside for “White Pastors Only”. Aren’t Whites just as entitled to discuss these matters since in mixed company nowadays Caucasians, as Shelby Steele points out in White Guilt : How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era, are likely to self-censor themselves for fear of being categorized as racist by Black malcontents ready to bounce on a misinflected word or misdirected glance like a shark waiting for the first drop of blood to hit the water to commence a feeding frenzy.
For the past several years various tolerancemongers in Evangelical circles have beat the White brethren over the head for being reluctant to attend Black churches (often because of the raucous and borderline disorderly worship services many in this ethnic group are known for) by lamenting 11 am Sunday’s is the “most segregated” hour in America. Isn’t it about time we chastise these very same leaders when they turn around and praise this behavior in other ethnic groups when the natural tendency to prefer the company of one’s own breed of man when it manifests itself in instances beyond reason or wholesomeness?
On TBN’s Praise the Lord program, David Barton gave an eloquent exposition on how the Ku Klux Klan has traditionally been more of a phenomena of the Democratic Party. Frankly, it is saddening that such an insightful historian would cave to political correctness so easily and endorse what amounts to a retread of the pernicious notion of Separate But Equal.
By Frederick Meekins
Friday, July 07, 2006
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Monday, July 03, 2006
Townhall.com To Relaunch
According to this story, conservative website Townhall.com is to relaunch July 4, 2006.
From this MSNBC/Newsweek article, this portal once overseen by the Heritage Foundation will now be under the auspices of Salem Communications and Hugh Hewitt.
Hopefully, it won't decay into a mouthpiece for high-profile GOP hosts but rather maintain the high degree of interactivity that often characterized the soapbox forums of the site since pro-conservative does not anymore mean unwavering Republican.
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: Virginia To Investigate Matriculators As Deviants
In the commonwealth where Patrick Henry intoned, "Give me liberty or give me death" there is considerably less liberty to die for.
A Virginia law is requiring colleges and universities in the Old Dominion to hand over the names and social security numbers of students to be checked against the jurisdiction's sex offender registry.
While one can understand the need to keep the perverts away from little children, why does the state need to know if these sickos are enrolled in higher education?
After all, the majority of those enrolled in these institutions are of the age of majority and are free to decide for themselves with whom they want to have conjugal relations as we are told ad nauseam by those on college campuses dishing out the condoms and scrawling in chalk all over the sidewalks just how much they love their privates.
If those engaged in these kinds of acts are so bad that authorities have a vested interest in keeping track of their whereabouts (as it is argued), why aren't they locked away with the key thrown away?
Chief sponsor of the bill Kenneth W. Stolle told the Washington Post, “I've got two kids in college right now. You're going to have a . . . hard time explaining to me why my daughter is living next door to a sexual offender. My guess is every parent out there would have the same expectation that I do."
Maybe if college-aged women dressed a bit more modestly and didn’t drink like fish, the vast majority would not have to worry all that much about these libidinous males; for while many on the list are violent from whom the innocent should be protected, since this rogues gallery of wandering hands now includes the non-violent, many are themselves now simply victims of “he said, she said” where the so-called lady had second thoughts because the fellow saw no need to send flowers the next day since what he wanted had already been so freely given.
Proponents of the law will argue that the law will inform administrators of potential offenders roaming their campuses. But is this about keeping the disturbed in check or simply yet another excuse to pry into the lives of average Americans?
For if one is by nature prurient and obsessed with doing prurient things, why would one knowingly place oneself on the radar screen of those charged with overseeing the safety of those one desires to prey upon? One would simply roam the campus without enrolling as a student; how does vetting students’ social security numbers (itself a questionable legal usage of these numerical identifiers) solve your problem there?
We could protect society from the sexually deviant by conducting raids from house to house and hold random ID checks on the streets. Maybe we should get public officials on record where they stand on such invasions of privacy and why they are appreciably different than having the various children of the Beast in the form of the different government agencies and institutions transferring vast amounts of personal data back and form between one another.
Those not enrolled in tertiary education thinking this does not involve them are in for a bit of a surprise; for this same legislation also requires that whenever a Virginia resident applies for a license or change of address their name will also be checked against the registry.
Unwilling to admit the existence of sin, personal guilt for these moral offenses has been diminished by reclassifying these misdeeds as behavioral disorders. So instead of making the errant shameful over what they have done, we rewrite the law so that we are all suspects standing in a single nationwide lineup.
By Frederick Meekins