09.07.2013

• You Can Keep It, If You Like It!

  

  If You Like Your Tyranny, You Can Keep It

  Author: Daren Jonescu
  Source: American Thinker - 11.26.2013

  2013 has been a banner year for damning self-portraits of American progressivism. Just when you thought no one could top Hillary Clinton's agonized "What difference, at this point, does it make?" -- perhaps the most concise account of the leftist strategy of incremental subversion ever recorded -- along comes President Obama's revelatory time bomb, set ticking back in 2009 for detonation on October 1 of this year: "If you like your plan, you can keep it."

  With her "What difference" outburst, Clinton told the world what the progressive elite think of their subjects. They think you are stupid, morally shallow, and have the attention span of three year olds -- exactly as progressive schooling and entertainment are designed to make you. Hence they need only wait you out, until the haze of time dulls your capacity for outrage about whether your leaders knowingly took the phone off the hook as your fellow citizens called for help with killers closing in on them. Hence they need only bide their time after passing rights-violating, spirit-diminishing legislation, and weather the storm of criticism until the majority of you get used to the new shackles, and carry on with your little lives. Hence, in all things, they need only embrace the necessity of working through their totalitarian dreams gradually, so as not to allow any particular "transformation" to seem fundamental enough to disturb your equilibrium.
  - Trusting God As Freedom Fades

  Obama, not to be outdone, has matched Clinton's bid for Self-exposed Authoritarian of the Year, and raised it several degrees of amplification. "If you like your plan, you can keep it" gives clear expression to one installment in the multigenerational bait-and-switch strategy with which progressivism has undermined modernity.

  First of all, to state the obvious, the fact that Obama spoke those words, or words extremely like them, a thousand times during the ObamaCare debate proves they were carefully scripted, and not a throwaway remark. And to state the equally obvious, Obama knew -- or at least his strategists knew -- that he was making a promise he would not keep, for at least three reasons: first, the cancelled policy wave that ObamaCare's implementation has instigated was expected and predictable; second, no politician can guarantee that you will be able to keep something over which politicians have no direct control, such as a private insurance policy; and third, that you should keep your plan was exactly the outcome they were hoping to thwart.

  Obama's scripted and oft-repeated assurance, therefore, was more than a garden variety lie. It perfectly encapsulated the progressive method of civilizational betrayal, the deliberate poisoning of the well of representative government by means of what we might call "performative politics."

  All politicians subject to election make promises. And all politicians know that keeping every promise they make will be difficult, if not impossible. But when a politician promises a certain outcome, not because he actually wishes he could provide it (realistically or otherwise), nor even because he knows it is what the voters want to hear, but rather because he desires exactly the opposite outcome, then we have entered the corrupt realm of performative politics, the grand theater of fake representative government.

  

  Regarding healthcare, you have all heard America's progressive leadership, from Obama, Reid, and Pelosi on down, state explicitly that what they want is a single-payer healthcare system, i.e., socialized medicine. You also know that the ObamaCare "compromise" was intended, and has been described by various high-ranking Democrats, as a big turn of the ratchet in the direction of a single-payer system. (That is, it is a step "forward" into the dream of comprehensive government control over your physical preservation.) The progressives were, in effect, compromising with themselves: calculating that a complete government takeover of American healthcare would cause unmanageable outrage, they settled for an interim takeover by means of a labyrinth of unfathomable regulations and advisory boards.

  

  Whether they intended this compromise to crumble under its own weight immediately, thereby opening the door right away to the "fix" of even more direct government control, is debateable. What is not debateable, however, is that their ultimate goal, the definitive aim of socialized medicine, is precisely to deny Americans the "the plan they like" -- that is, the healthcare arrangements of their own free choice. Therefore, when Obama and his various mouthpieces promised that Americans could keep those arrangements, they were not merely lying in the ordinary political sense -- making promises they knew they couldn't keep ("No new taxes," "Ten million jobs," etc.) -- but rather defrauding a nation, by pretending they were happy and eager to allow people to do the very thing these planners were dead set on preventing people from doing.

  A typical politician is a slick used car salesman. A progressive politician is Iago. The former seeks to gain his advantage within the existing political machinery, while leaving that machinery more or less intact. The latter seeks a fundamental transformation of the existing arrangements, much as Iago seeks a fundamental transformation of Othello's marriage to Desdemona. And the methods used are virtually identical: foster in the victim a trust of his destroyer through pretended loyalty against imaginary rivals, stir doubts about the virtue of the innocent through insinuation and half-truth, and finally promote the victim's self-destruction through traitorous trickery.

  

  "If you like your plan, you can keep it." This is a perfect iteration of the basic lie that has fueled modernity's "progress" down the drain of history -- or History, as progressive thinkers would have it. It is not so much a lie as a mask, the necessary first step, or thesis if you will, in each stage of the dialectical deflowering of a civilization against its better judgment and best instincts. It is the emphatic reassurance that the latest "five year plan" will in no way threaten the freedom, opportunity, and prosperity to which you have become accustomed -- a necessary buffer against reality which buys the progressives time to work their black magic, until the nasty truth arrives, obscured in the fog of time and cushioned by the human capacity for "learning to live with it." You have heard this lie, and witnessed the tyrannical dialectic it sets in motion, your whole life, as have your parents and grandparents. Variations on this theme have become the soundtrack of late modernity's decline. The theme remains the same; only the melodic details are changed to suit the collectivist totalitarian agenda item of the moment.

  "If you like your current healthcare arrangements, you can keep them" -- except that our intention is to delegitimize, denigrate, and finally outlaw all private healthcare arrangements.

  "If you like your 'negative rights,' you can keep them" -- except that the new positive rights we are gradually introducing into the political lexicon will necessarily override your life, liberty, and property, not to mention trumping all the secondary rights derived from those initial three, such as speech, association, and religion.

  "If you like your individual mind, you can keep it" -- except that our compulsory school laws are designed to enforce mediocrity, retard intellectual maturation, define universal, legally binding standards of what constitutes an educated person, and replace your years of youthful enthusiasm for knowledge and skills-acquisition with the life-draining boredom of learning in abstraction from experience, and the soul-sapping conformism of collectivist indoctrination.
  - Unlearn the Propaganda!

  "If you like your private family, you can keep it" -- except that public schools were expressly designed, and the school day and year gradually expanded, to monopolize your child's waking hours and energy, thus reducing the family home to a glorified dormitory, and parents to the state's free meal and entertainment service.
  - Zero Tolerance for Non-Compliance

  "If you like your free market economy, you can keep it" -- except that our regulatory bodies and corporate overseers will determine who gets to participate in this market and on what terms, in order to preserve our conception of the proper flow of goods and services, the proper utilization of labor, and the proper distribution of profits.

  "If you like your moral heritage, you can keep it" -- except that that heritage is being aggressively diminished, through legislation and school indoctrination, to a mere background hue in a kaleidoscope of moral relativity in which your old standbys, wisdom, courage, moderation and justice, enjoy somewhat less than equal status with our new progressive code: submission to authority, mindless thuggery, promiscuity and parasitism.

  

  "If you like your private land ownership (historically a fundamental principle of all civilized political arrangements), you can keep it" -- except that we are aggressively pursuing regulations to incentivize, and eventually to coerce, mass migration into urban housing, under the rubric of "sustainability," as promoted globally by our warmed over United Nations.

  "If you like your private life, you can keep it" -- except that we seek to collect and store information on every "private" phone call, text message, e-mail, or financial transaction in which you participate, in the name of "security" (don't ask whose security).

  In total effect, "If you like your natural freedom, self-determination, and voluntary pursuit of happiness, you can keep them," -- except that we must periodically adjust the rules just a little further, and then just a little further again, in the direction of coercion, totalitarian micromanagement, and social conditions in which your survival, your value, and any contentment you are permitted to enjoy are dependent on your universal parent and guardian, Government.
  - The Heartbreaking Account of Andrew Wordes

  

  To the defenders of this progressive view of History -- that is, of the irresistible slide into universal socialist oppression, poverty, intellectual conformism and moral surrender -- I make this promise: "If you like your tyranny, you can keep it. Period." Except that those of us around the world who still feel and think like human beings will continue to resist you, expose you, subvert you, and stab at your progressive monster when and as we can. You may have your theoretical fantasy, "History," on your side, but we have real human history on ours. And -- short term wishful thinking and Pollyanna blinders aside -- history teaches that in the long run, inexorably, somehow, nature, reason, and virtue always survive.

  You may try to fight a war of attrition against reason itself. You may even feel as though you are on the brink of ultimate victory, and at the gates of your totalitarian paradise. But history demonstrates that you are not quite where you think you are. You will get yours.
  - Is America A Free Republic?

  

  • 7:36 PM
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• One True God, One True Way????

  

  THE ONLY TRUE GOD

  Author: Dave Hunt
  Source: The Berean Call - 01.01.2008

  As we all know, the “Lord’s prayer” was never prayed by our Lord. It was a pattern for prayer: “After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name...”. (Matt.6:9) To repeat these words over and over (instead of using them as a pattern for prayer from the heart) would be to disobey our Lord and to engage in what He strictly forbade: “vain repetition” (Matt. 6:7).

  Certainly this prayer is only for those who know God as their heavenly Father. It is a grievous error common to pseudo-Christianity to assume the universal Fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man. The typical Unity church service, for example, includes this affirmation repeated in unison, “I am a child of God and therefore I do not inherit sickness.” Such “positive confessions” have led multitudes astray. Paul declared that we become “the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus”. (Gal. 3:26)

  The fact that this relationship with God as one’s Father does not come by natural birth is clear. To those who boasted of being “Abraham’s children,” Christ countered, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do”. (John 8:44) The rebellion of Adam and Eve, by which they became the followers of Satan as “the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4), made the devil the patriarch of mankind.

  That is why Christ told Nicodemus, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God”. (John 3:3) This spiritual birth is an absolute requirement, allowing no exceptions. No one will be in heaven who has not been “born again,” both “of water and of the Spirit”. (John 3:5)

  There is a common abuse of this prayer among American athletic teams. A high percentage of teams across America (especially in high school football) pray the “Lord’s Prayer” either before or after games. Attitudes of participants vary from skepticism, to suppressed ridicule, to a shrugging acquiescence to something that might now and then bring “good luck.” This American tradition is an abomination to God.

  Phil Jackson, one of the most successful coaches in NBA history, turned from the Pentecostalism in which his co-pastor parents raised him to Zen Buddhism and the occultism of Lakota Indian “spirituality.” Yet he still repeats the “Lord’s prayer” and has for years encouraged his teams to do so without knowing God or Christ. This unbiblical practice has been one of Satan’s major tools of deception.

  Confusion reigns over what it means to be “born again.” The teaching is rather common that Christ’s words, “of water,” refer to the protective amniotic water sac that breaks in natural birth, while “of the Spirit” refers to being born of the Spirit of God at the second birth. The latter is true, but the former is false.

  Everyone enters via the amniotic fluid into the human race. “Born of water” must mean more than that. It would be redundant to say that in order to be born again one must have already been born once. Furthermore, that doctrine would place an unbiblical restriction upon entrance into heaven! Such a proposition would mean that there would be no salvation for anyone who had not experienced natural birth. Thus no fetus that died by whatever means before coming to full-term delivery could be considered a real person eligible for the second birth and heaven, thus allowing abortion at any stage.

  The biblical teaching of the “new birth” (becoming a “born-again” Christian) has caused much controversy. Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and others believe this occurs at baptism. As previously noted (see TBC 8/04), every Lutheran church follows Luther’s Small Catechism . At baptism (usually as a baby), one receives a certificate stating, “In baptism full salvation has been given unto you; God has become your Father, and you have become His child through this act....”
  - Baptism Does Not Save!

  In fact, the Bible teaches that baptism (like the “Lord’s prayer”) is only for those who have believed the gospel. Baptism testifies to the faith by which one was born again. Otherwise it is meaningless. Infant baptism defies Scripture, denies the gospel, and is a major net by which “the god of this world” gathers multitudes into his kingdom, providing them with false assurance that prevents them from seeing their need to receive Christ as Savior and Lord.
  - Praying for Richmond, VA

  

  How could a church defend baptizing an infant that cannot understand or believe? It was necessary to claim some efficacy, as the Catechisms say, “in this act of baptism....” This occult lie of spiritual power innate in and released by baptism, burning a candle or incense, doing rituals, priestly hand motions, voice tones, etc., has been for thousands of years the essence of ritual magic, witchcraft, paganism, etc., which anthropologists now call shamanism.
  - Shameful Ironies!

  This pernicious delusion is also known as sacramentalism—a heresy so vital to Roman Catholicism that it has its own Latin term: ex opere operato (i.e., “in the act itself”). To deny this doctrine concerning any official sacrament is to deny Roman Catholicism, for which the penalty is automatic excommunication (tantamount to being sentenced to hell). Here it is from The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent : Seventh Session...third day of March, 1547, Decree Concerning the Sacraments...Canons on the Sacraments in General [still in full force]:

  Can. 4. If anyone says that the sacraments of the New Law are not necessary for salvation but...that without them or without the desire of them men obtain from God through faith alone the grace of justification...let him be anathema.

  Can. 8. If anyone says that by the sacraments of the New Law grace is not conferred ex opere operato, but that faith alone in the divine promise is sufficient to obtain grace, let him be anathema.

  The grievous heresy of sacramentalism continues to seduce in various forms most “Reformed” churches. R.C. Sproul, for example, justifies infant baptism by likening it to circumcision: “The scriptural case for baptizing believers’ infants rests on the parallel between [O.T.] circumcision and N.T. baptism as signs and seals of the covenant of grace....The Old Testament precedent requires it” (Geneva Study Bible, p.38).

  The Ethiopian to whom Philip had just preached Christ from Isaiah 53 (Acts:8:29-35) asked, “See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized? And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest” (Acts 8:36,37). Philip then baptized him—not by sprinkling or pouring water over him but, obviously, by immersion, for “they went down both into the water”. (Acts 8:38) Baptism publicly declares one’s faith, identifying the believer with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. One does not sprinkle dirt on a corpse. One buries it.

  If “born of water” does not refer to amniotic fluid or to baptism, what could it mean? The second birth is by the Spirit of God and by water (John 3:5), symbolic of the Word of God, as in “the washing of water by the word” (Eph. 5:26), and “Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you” (John 15:3). When we believe the gospel, we are regenerated and washed clean. “He saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost.” Peter declares: “Being born again...by the word of God...which by the gospel is preached unto you” (1 Peter 1:23-25).

  Having been brought into the family of God, we address Him as “Father” in prayer. In His high priestly prayer (the true “Lord’s prayer” that Christ prayed), He declared, “And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent” (John 17:3). So the new birth involves knowing the only true God —not being “born again” through baptism, especially of infants.

  There are millions of so-called gods and numerous prayers to each of them in the various religions they represent. The Bible condemns every one in unmistakable terms:

  "For all the gods of the nations are idols: but the Lord made the heavens....Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name....[F]ear before Him, all the earth....[H]e cometh to judge the earth: He shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with His truth." (Ps. 96:5-13)

  

  Such language is ridiculed by the “New Atheists” such as Richard Dawkins, who says the atheists must “spread the good news. Evangelism [to convert the world to atheism] is a moral imperative.” Although the Bible clearly distinguishes Christianity from all religions and separates their leaders (Buddha, Muhammad, et al.) from Christ, who is unique, atheists make no such distinction. Consequently, most of their arguments are irrelevant.
  - Hell Bound

  The Bible denounces all religions as instruments of Satan to keep mankind in darkness, shut off from the light of the gospel by which alone one can be saved, for “the god of this world has blinded the minds of them which believe not” (2 Cor. 4:4).
  - Is One Way the Only Way?

  Atheism is just one of the world’s religions, and Satanic blindness is reflected in its arguments against God and Christianity. A recent secular article about the New Atheists was titled, “The Church of the Non-Believers.” And it is a church—a church to which everyone must belong, if atheists get their way. In their religious fervor to destroy “religious faith” and to convert the entire world to their religion, they are blind to the true faith that motivates biblical Christians.

  

  Dawkins says, “Faith is one of the world’s great evils....[It is] belief that isn’t based on evidence [and] the principal vice of any religion.” Francis Collins, however (in charge of the Human Genome Project involving 2,300 scientists), who turned from unbelief to faith in Christ, says that Dawkins’ definition of faith “certainly does not describe the faith of most serious believers of history nor of most of those of my personal acquaintance.”

  Many famous scientists, Nobel Prize winners, and some of the greatest historians and legal experts have turned from atheism to faith in the resurrected Christ—not by mystical or emotional experience but from verifiable evidence. The early pioneers in science, like Kepler, claimed that it was precisely their conviction that there was a creator that inspired their science to ever-greater heights.
  - From Atheist to Christian: Kirsten Powers' Story

  “Religion is not only wrong; it’s evil,” atheists fume, unaware that biblical Christianity is not a religion but a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Leading atheists harangue against religion, blind to the fact that the Bible is not about religion. In its more than 1,000 pages, the phrase “religious faith” is not found once, the word “religion” appears only five times, and the word “religious” twice. All but two of these seven references are critical of “religion.” Furthermore, in these few times that it mentions religion, the Bible never means what atheists foolishly denounce.

  In their war against God, Dawkins and his fellow crusaders dishonestly equate Christian “fundamentalists” with murderous Muslims. In fact, atheists are themselves fundamentalists, seeking to impose their warped interpretation of the fundamentals of science on the world.
  - Creation, Evolution, and Scripture

  Nor can the New Atheists be ignorant of the fact that the fundamentals of Islam (according to the Qur’an, Hadith, the dogmas and example of Muhammad, and 1,300 years of history) teach that Islam must be forced upon the entire world by murdering all who refuse to submit to Allah. Christ taught and lived entirely otherwise. Yet the New Atheists persist in equating Islam and Christianity simply because each is considered to be a “faith.” Such irresponsible accusations permeate their arguments.
  - The Peace of Islam

  Yes, some who have called themselves Christians (Roman Catholic popes, Eastern Orthodox leaders, crusaders, numerous televangelists, et al.) have been guilty of all manner of evil. In the process, they have violated the teachings and example of Christ. But Muslim terrorists follow both Islamic teaching and the example of Muhammad and his successors who tortured and slaughtered millions from France to China for 13 centuries. Today’s terrorism is just a hint of what Islam would continue to do if it could.

  The fundamentals of true Christianity promote love, freedom of choice, and forgiveness, not hatred and violence. The latter are the trademark of fundamentalist Islam. To equate the fundamentals of Islam with those of Christianity is reprehensible.

  Atheists also perversely equate Christianity with the fanaticism and violence of the Crusades and Inquisition. Yet the crusaders were not biblical Christians; they violated everything Christ taught and slaughtered His brethren, the Jews, everywhere they went. It is gross dishonesty to attribute the crusaders’ misconduct to biblical Christianity.

  From the days of Christ, multitudes of Christians have never given allegiance to Rome but to the Bible and to Christ alone. They were martyred by the millions by the church of Rome for centuries before the birth of Luther. From the 16th-century Reformation onward, millions of Roman Catholics embraced faith in the Bible and Christ alone and were martyred by the hundreds of thousands by the popes and their armies. To fail to distinguish between martyrs and their murderers is unconscionable.

  The New Atheists, led by Dawkins, call themselves “the brights” and look upon theists as dimwits. Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg recently said, “The world needs to wake up from the long nightmare of religion....Anything we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact be our greatest contribution to civilization.” Richard Dawkins says: “I am utterly fed up with the respect we have been brainwashed into bestowing on religion.” Religion? As we’ve seen, atheists are tilting at windmills.

  In their fervor to convert the world to their religion, atheists betray their complete ignorance of biblical Christianity. The Bible is not a religious book and does not promote “religion.”

  

  Many Christians try to be “scientific” by adopting theistic evolution as compatible with Christianity. Their compromise does not impress atheists. Unashamedly, Dawkins declares that “evolution must lead to atheism” and “the atheist movement has...a moral imperative...to aggressively spread the good news....”

  Dawkins declares, “Should [theists] be free to impose their beliefs on their children? Is there something to be said for society stepping in?” This is dangerous totalitarian talk that makes one fear for parents and children alike.

  James Perloff put it well: “But remember; ‘The princess kissed the frog, and he turned into a handsome prince.’ We call that a fairy tale. Evolution says frogs turn into princes, and we call it science....Is that science? Or is it, like the fraud of Piltdown Man, the forgeries of Haeckel’s embryos, the misrepresentations of Inherit the Wind , and the coercions of the Supreme Court, merely part of a long effort to deny God?”

  Atheists who end up in hell cannot blame the God they hate for excluding them from heaven. We need to rescue as many as we can from atheism’s lies. TBC

  

  • 8:54 PM
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• Word Games

  

  Masking the Truth with Word Games

  Author: Victor Davis Hanson
  Source: investors.com - 11.22.2013

  BEWARE THE WORD GAMES DESIGNED TO DISTRACT YOU!

  The Obama administration once gave us "man-caused disasters" for acts of terrorism and "workplace violence" for the Fort Hood shootings.

  Now it has trumped those past linguistic contortions by changing words to mask the ObamaCare disaster.

  The president and his advisors apparently knew long ago that millions of the insured would face cancellations or premium hikes once ObamaCare would be fully implemented.

  Yet to get the 906-page bill passed, they had to convince the public of the very opposite scenario. So they repeated ironclad guarantees that no one would lose their coverage or doctors — "period!"

  Now the administration explains the deception by going after both the ethics of the insurers and the intelligence of the previously insured. That task required language to be altered.

  The newly canceled health plans are suddenly rebranded by the administration as "subpar." Only in autumn 2013 is the supposedly unaware public told that, years ago, "bad apple" insurance companies sold them "substandard" plans.

  According to Obama, millions of Americans were once ignorant or uninformed, and thus will soon be pleased about their cancellations: "So the majority of folks will end up being better off. Of course, because the website's not working right, they don't necessarily know it."

  

  More Equal

  By that logic, the legions of Obama supporters who desperately sought and won exemptions from ObamaCare are not "better off" now, but those stuck with it will be?

  The president was not through reinventing history. If Obama spoke untruths on more than 20 occasions in selling ObamaCare, he also made a post-facto attempt to sneak a qualifier into his serial false promises:

  "What we said was you can keep it if it hasn't changed since the law passed."

  But there is no record that Obama or his lieutenants ever publicly said such a thing. The president's attempt to airbrush history is similar to the commandments on the barn wall in George Orwell's Animal Farm.

  One day the commandment "All Animals are Equal" mysteriously appears rewritten with a new qualifier beside it, as if it had been there all along:

  "All animals are equal — but some animals are more equal than others."

  The New York Times — which not long ago gave us the new term "white Hispanic" to de-emphasize the minority status of George Zimmerman in the Travyon Martin case — is also guilty of ObamaCare-speak. The Times rebranded Obama's untruths about ObamaCare by simply declaring that Obama "clearly misspoke."

  Does the Times think a real estate agent "misspeaks" when he sells a two-bedroom house by falsely assuring that it is a three-bedroom home?

  The administration has also downplayed the disaster by claiming that the more than 30 million who lost their coverage represent only "5 percent" of the insured.

  

  Democrats Bought

  A national website that has completely failed and for nearly two months denied millions of applicants the chance to sign up for health insurance is dubbed a mere "glitch." Had the website been down for only a day or two, would that foul-up be called a "glitch-let"?

  From the very beginning, ObamaCare defied the laws of common sense and basic logic. Providing more coverage for more people cannot result in radical reductions in costs, as promised — unless a shopper normally can buy more and better groceries for cheaper prices.

  How logical was expecting indebted young people to voluntarily pay more for insurance they would rarely use in order to pay for others to use it a lot?

  Not a single Republican voted for ObamaCare. Some skeptical Democrats had to be bought off with the promise of special deals. Pet businesses, unions and congressional staffers were given exemptions not available to the public from coverage that was supposedly wonderful.

  The freebie provisions of keeping kids on parental plans until they turn 26 and ensuring coverage for those with pre-existing conditions were cynically frontloaded before the 2012 election — while the painful details and higher costs were backloaded after the president's expected re-election.

  An architect of the bill, Sen. Max Baucus, called it a "train wreck." Before full implementation, the Affordable Care Act became emblematic as the president's "signature" achievement, and thus had to be airbrushed as something successful and popular to cement Obama's legacy.

  To square that huge circle, words had to change their meanings to fabricate a reality that did not exist.

  Related Articles:

  - Liberal Media Bans Dirty Word
  - No Business Like Government Business
  - The Blackness of His Heart

  • 7:42 PM
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• The Destruction of Contradiction

  

  The Destruction of Contradiction

  Author: Daniel Greenfield
  Source: the Sultan Knish blog - 11.16.2013

  People, countries and ideas are destroyed through their inability to resolve their contradictions. The left gained a foothold in America by exploiting the country's contradiction between its insistence on moral superiority and the actual way that the sausage got made. The left did not resolve this contradiction, instead it pretended that it had transcended the contradiction because when it made the sausage and broke the omelets, it was doing it for the greater good.

  

  Under the old system, human misery was caused by the pragmatic problems of reality. Under the new system, it was caused by the idealistic necessities of the greater good.

  For example, before ObamaCare someone who couldn't get health insurance was suffering for pragmatic reasons. With the advent of ObamaCare, someone losing their doctors and getting stuck with insurance they couldn't afford was suffering for the idealism of the greater good.

  The contradiction between the aspirations of the ideal and the brutal necessities of the real were not resolved. Instead the left made the suffering of individuals and groups irrelevant.

  The left expanded its collective representation beyond the individual and even the nation. It enclosed the entire world and immunized itself against any moral challenge. By representing the welfare of the entire human race, any suffering it inflicted short of that could be justified for the sake of a majority.

  Eventually the left was also destroyed by its contradictions, the dream died leaving behind gulags and ghettos. Nothing had actually been fixed. And the left insisted that it was the impulse of the ideal that was noble, regardless of how badly it was managed. As it had all along, it chose to die on the ideal, rather than live with the real.

  The ideal is the most vulnerable to contradiction. The left exploited the ideal only to be destroyed by it. Unlike the religions that it imitated, it could offer no spiritual transcendence. Its transcendence was in the realm of the real. It promised to make the real into the ideal, exploiting the core contradiction of human nature and destroying itself through that contradiction when the real remained unideal.

  The contradiction between the real and the ideal cannot be resolved through a fanatical insistence on the ideal. That ways lies the death of individuals and of ideologies. The severity of a contradiction can be ameliorated by lessening the exigencies of the contradicting factors. But it cannot be resolved by pushing to one end or the other. It requires an external balancing factor.

  An example of this is the balance between the masculine and the feminine. Both have internal contradictions that can only be balanced out with the other. A society that is wholly one or the other is on a path to destruction. Not only is a masculine or feminine society hostile to those of the other gender, but it provides the dominant gender with no means of balancing out its contradictions.

  Muslim societies eschew the feminine. The Salafi crusades are very literally a war on women with young men hunting down unveiled women and religious variants, such as Sufism, that have more spiritual influences, to destroy them or remove them from the public square. Their religion aspires to the utter literacy of law without spirituality, a warrior religion whose only faith is in the supremacy of killing and which seeks out and destroys any spirituality and any female influences.

  And yet the Jihadis inevitably become effeminate as they strive to recreate the missing element through homosexuality and pedophilia. The dancing boys of Afghanistan are an example of what the absolute exclusion of women leads to. Having forcefully excluded all female influences, they begin forcing female gender roles on each other. The culmination of this banishment is the infamous 72 virgins who can only be accessed through a martyrdom that resolves the contradiction between the real and the ideal through the traditional method of fanatics-- suicide.

  

  The Jihad doesn't attempt to address the contradictions of Islam; instead it attempts to prevail over them through sheer force. And yet the very Jihad is innately corrupting, financed by drug dealing, sex trafficking and other sordid crimes that destroy the fabric of a society. Iran and Afghanistan, the two Sunni and Shiite linchpins of Islamic societies, are swimming in a sea of drugs and drug addicts.

  Islam, like the left, pursues the ideal at gunpoint and destroys its followers and the ideal in the process leaving behind obscenity and abomination. By the time it's all over, what is, is worse than what was. Not only is the ideal unmet, but the real has been defiled beyond all imagination.

  The West is trending toward feminine societies which are also incapable of addressing their internal contradictions without the balance of the masculine. Masculine societies compel through force, feminine societies compel through conformity. The West attempts to persuade and reassure the Muslim world that it can be part of a global club, while the Muslim world attempts to kill the West, while denying that it's doing any such thing. The outcome is a classic abusive relationship in which the woman attempts to civilize the man and the man attempts to savage the woman.

  In a society dominated by a single gender, the dominant gender attempts to change the world around it, while the other gender learns to change itself. The process has achieved some success in the West, with boys learning to be less masculine and girls being told that they have to change the world. But on a global scale, the dynamic means that the West is learning to change itself into a culture more accepting of Muslim dominance.

  The West needs to believe that it is in the right in order to fight. The Muslim world needs to fight to believe that it is in the right.

  Every time the West fights, it believes that it is undoing its "rightness". The only way for it to be certain that it is right is to masochistically accept attack and defeat. Its suffering after a terrorist attack is a self-inflicted pain that reminds it that it has the right to defend itself. Only by feeling its own pain and seeing its own dead children, does it remember that it has a right to live. And this memory has to be revived again and again. The bloody reality of the real pushing aside the dreams of the ideal.

  Rightness in the Muslim world comes from a test of strength. Its faith is on the fight and or flight response. Those who fight have faith in Allah. Those who take to flight do not, unless they make up stories about staying and fighting, as Jihadis often do. Constantly rushing into fights is an act of faith. It is the most meaningful act of faith in Islam. Everyone wins in Islam. The survivors are favored by Allah. The dead are even more favored.

  Golda Meir saying that peace would come when the Arabs loved their children more than they hated the Jews was correct... and in the way of Western thinkers completely missed the point. If the Arabs loved their children more than they hated the Jews, they wouldn't be Muslims and they wouldn't have nearly as many children or as much territory. Why would they want peace, when war serves them much better?

  The West has set aside too many masculine qualities in pursuit of peace and has become incapable of defending itself. It masochistically abases itself for the infinite guilts of its histories, scourging the vision of its ideals with the history of the real. Its contradictions express themselves in constant moral panics against which it is incapable of acting. It has become neurotic and paranoid, uncertain of itself and rushing frantically from one imaginary crisis to another, in its grandiosity it takes upon itself all the crimes of the earth... including the destruction of the planet through Global Warming.

  The contradictions that bedevil the West cannot be mediated without balancing out its feminine qualities with masculine qualities, without bringing in the real to stand side by side with the ideal. The triumph of the left has come about through the inability to resolve this contradiction between the ideal and the real. The West too eagerly embraced the ideal and is now weighed under a burden of guilt. It has become a masochistic fanatic obsessed with atoning for its own sins.

  

  Resolving these contradictions however would require more. They demand a purpose that can provide transcendence.

  The false purposes of the left displaced that sense of national progress that is so vital for harmonizing the ideal and the real. American Exceptionalism mediates the conflict between the ideal and the real only so long as it is an exceptionalism that is superior in human advancement in the qualities of the real, such as the conquest of the frontier and the building of great works, rather than the qualities of the ideal.

  An America that is exceptional in compassion or tolerance is doomed to submit the real to the ideal and to perish rather than strike a blown in its own defense.

  Contradictions come closest to resolution when they balance each other out. That is true of individuals and of nations. Marriage can harmonize the internal contradictions of male and female. National unity can likewise harmonize the contradictions of a people of different qualities because it is through other people that individuals transcend and resolve their contradictions.

  • 10:09 PM
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• I Hope They Lose....

  Sources are confirming that the unions are failing in their attempts to get employees to strike on Black Friday. In light of this information I felt it appropriate to post an older article discussing the reality of big box store employment. Watch the video clip at the end of the article which has recently been uploaded at Youtube, wherein Hitler loses his cool upon learning that the unions are having trouble getting Walmart employees to sign up for the strikes which are planned for this year's Black Friday.

  

  
  

  Why We’ll Be Better Off if the Walmart Protests Fail

  Author: Richard Vedder
  Source: The Daily Beast - 10.05.2013

  Employees of the big box store are planning a national day of protest for higher wages. Economist Richard Vedder on why we’ll all be in trouble if they get their way.

  The American economy has shown anemic, sputtering growth for several years—largely because businesses, investors, and consumers have been angry and fearful of public policies constraining their ability to operate efficiently and profitably.

  That, in part, why I’m hoping that the Walmart workers’ national protest movement will be a monumental failure.

  A group of unhappy workers at the nation’s largest private employer, joined by labor unions under a coalition called “Making Change at Walmart,” is leading a protest for higher wages and settlement of other grievances. And this when things seem to be brightening a bit; look at the rapidly rising auto sales, for example. Yet, at a time when the proportion of Americans working full-time is at a low for the 21st century, some workers are saying “We will not work unless you raise our wages dramatically—by one third or so.”

  The most basic principle in economics is the law of demand: when something becomes more expensive, people buy less of it. This is true for America’s employers. Higher wages mean fewer jobs. The history of movements in unemployment since 1900 can be explained very well by changes in inflation-adjusted wages as they relate to the productivity of workers, as Lowell Gallaway and I demonstrated at great length in Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in Twentieth-Century America; other researchers, such as UCLA’s Lee Ohanian and University of Pennsylvania’s Harold Cole, have reached the same conclusion using different data and methodologies.
  
  The retail trade industry is a low-wage industry, and probably always will be. The skill requirements for most jobs are very modest, and profit margins are extremely small. Take Walmart. Last year the company made about $17 billion on sales of $469 billion. Profits were about 3.6 cents on each dollar of goods sold. Labor costs are much larger than profits, so a large increase in those costs, such as by establishing a minimum Walmart wage of $12 an hour and insisting the company hire workers for enough hours to ensure medical benefits under Obamacare, would raise labor costs at least $10 billion a year and probably much more, reducing profits by well over half if not accompanied by price increases or other actions to try to reduce the damage to profitability.

  You might say, so what? Won’t the nearly two million workers who work for Walmart be better off, spend more and have better lives while only a few mostly rich stockholders will lose? That sounds good, but is simply not true. I would predict one or more of the following scenarios would happen. First, if the protest action somehow were successful (which I think is unlikely) and things went exactly as the organizers of the action wanted, the price of Walmart stock would fall dramatically, perhaps 50 percent, wiping out about $120 billion in stockholder wealth. About one third of that wealth is held by institutions like pension funds and mutual funds, so directly or indirectly millions of Americans would take a meaningful hit—perhaps having to receive slightly smaller pensions or have to work longer to recoup losses because of the lower value of their Walmart stock holdings.

  Alternatively, Walmart might try raising prices 3 or 4 percent to cover their higher costs. That would lead to a decline in living standards for tens of millions shopping regularly at the world’s largest retailer. They would have less money to spend on other things. Higher wages for a million or two Walmart workers would mean far more millions would have less income—their paychecks would buy less at their favorite store.

  A third scenario is that, with prices rising at Walmart under the second scenario, consumers would start shopping elsewhere, maybe Target if it were not impacted by the Walmart action, or maybe at relatively low cost Internet providers like Amazon. Walmart, facing falling sales, would lay off workers, and put far more on part-time work to avoid providing expensive medical benefits or pay Obamacare-dictated fines. Consumers would be less satisfied than before, having to go to a store that they previously had found less desirable. The price of Walmart stock would no doubt be impacted noticeably, with some of the effects noted above.

  Roughly 90 percent of American private-sector workers prefer the freedom associated with a non-union environment, and I very much doubt that Walmart workers in a fair secret ballot election would vote to demand a union, since unionization is relatively rare in retail trade and related businesses like fast-food restaurants (the same analysis, roughly, applies if we were talking about McDonald’s instead of Walmart). Union dues tend to be high relative to wages. The Obama administration, perhaps wanting to renew the class warfare it was waging before the Syria affair distracted it, might try to use its muscle to pressure Walmart into compliance, but I doubt that would work—the stakes are too high for Walmart and the administration’s powers are too limited.

  Rather than striking against iconic businesses like Walmart or McDonald’s, we should be celebrating their existence. Walmart has done more to reduce poverty than most government welfare programs. It has put a seven-digit number of Americans to work over the decades. It has made goods available at lower costs to millions of relatively low-income consumers. It has greater increased their consumer choices relative to the pre-Walmart age. Similarly, McDonald’s has provided literally hundreds of millions of consumers around the world with tasty, relatively low-cost food quickly and efficiently. It’s no wonder that sometimes economists use the Big Mac to compare prices and living standards around the world, given its worldwide appeal. And millions of Americans learned about the world of work and the discipline of doing a job and serving the public by working as teenaged employees at McDonald’s and many other restaurants and discount stores.

  Just as the American economy is seeing a little light at the end of the tunnel, we don’t need militant workers or a sympathetic government to do things that will add more tunnel.

  Watch the Youtube video HERE: http://youtu.be/WgvpJHGnodc

  • 8:05 PM
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• Blacks' Dilemma with Obama

  

  Blacks' dilemma with Obama

  Author: Star Parker
  Source: UrbanCure.org - 08.22.2011
  See also: Back On Uncle Sam's Plantation

  Election of our nation's first black president is delivering an unexpected message to our black population.

  Blacks are discovering that what a man or woman does -- their actions -- is what matters, not the color of their skin.

  It seems ridiculous to point out that this was supposedly the point of the civil rights movement. Purge racism from America.

  But blacks themselves have been the ones having the hardest time letting it go.

  It is not hard to understand why black Americans were happy that a black man was elected president of the United States. It was kind of a final and most grand announcement that racism has finally been purged from America.

  But for the highly politicized parts of black America this was certainly not the only message. Because for the highly politicized parts of black America, the point has always been to keep race in American politics.

  For black political culture that dominated after the civil rights movement, the point was not just equal treatment under the law, but special treatment under the law. Plus the assumption that more black political power -- defined by more blacks holding office -- would mean that blacks would be better off.

  In other words, post-civil rights movement black political culture embraced an agenda exactly the opposite of what the civil rights movement was about. Its agenda was to get laws and policies that were not neutral but racially slanted and to put individuals in power based on their race and not on their character and capability.

  So, according to the script of this political culture, election of a black man as president meant more than an end to racism. The conclusion had to be that if the man holding the highest political office in the nation was black, it must follow that blacks would be better off.

  Now blacks have a dilemma. We have a black president and blacks are worse off. Not just a little, but a lot worse off.

  In the words of longtime Congressional Black Caucus member Maxine Waters, D-Calif., "Our people are hurtin'..."

  Blacks now grapple with two possible conclusions.

  One, our black president is a traitor to his race. Our struggles put him in power and now he's not taking care of his folks. He's become, in the words of left wing professor and activist Cornel West, a "mascot" of Wall Street.
  - How To Keep the Poor Poor

  Or, two, that the man's performance reflects his views and his capability, not his race. He's not delivering for anyone. Blacks are hurting more because they were already in worse shape when Obama got elected. Bad policies hurt the weakest the most.

  And it happens that the bad policies that have always failed are the big government liberalism that has defined modern black politics.
  - The Welfare State and Manhood

  With further thought, blacks might realize it's this same flawed idea -- that growing government and electing black politicians would make blacks better off -- that explains why blacks have remained disproportionately "hurtin".

  Take the Congressional Black Caucus itself. The average poverty rate in Black Caucus districts is almost 50 percent higher than the national average. Yet, these black politicians have 100 percent re-election rates.

  Maybe a real bonus that will have come from electing a black president is that blacks will take seriously Dr. King's dream that we judge men by their character and not their color.

  The Civil Rights Movement took blacks to the edge of the Promised Land. But political activism can only remove barriers to freedom. It's up to the individual to embrace freedom and take on the personal responsibilities that go with it.

  Maybe blacks will realize that they should blame Barack Obama. Not because he is black, but because he is a liberal. And because he has grown government to the point where the oxygen necessary for freedom and prosperity is being squeezed out of our nation.
  - Obama's Thug America

  

  • 8:11 PM
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• God Bless America???

  

  God Bless America?

  Author/Preacher: John MacArthur
  Source: Sermon Index

  Obviously over the last number of weeks we have on Sunday nights been addressing issues that are on our minds and hearts at this time in our nation when we had been subjected to terrorists' attacks. I'm trying to keep up with all of the nuances, all of the twists and turns in the road as we go and try to shed some biblical light on the issues at hand.

  One of the new features in our country in recent weeks is this obsession with "God Bless America." In itself certainly a nice tune and a well-crafted song that was sung on many occasions for many years in our country, but now has become our sort of new national anthem, if not, our national prayer. And apparently from all that I can tell, as I see the emotion that is attached with the singing of the song, there is not just symbolism here. There is not just shallow sentimentality. I get the feeling that Americans really want God's blessing, and by that they mean protection. Blessing means, "God, don't let me die." It means, "Don't let my children die...don't let my spouse die." It means, "God, don't let the stock market keep going the way it's going." "God, stop the decline in unemployment." "God, maintain our freedoms, don't put us in a position so we have to make all kinds of laws against terrorism that wind up impinging upon our cherished liberties."

  I get the feeling that blessing then is associated with protection, it's associated with safety, it's associated with freedom and it's associated with prosperity. And it is such a loud cry currently that even the usually vocal atheists and militant agnostics have somehow sunk into the shadows, aware that if they were vocal they could actually invite a self-defeating national backlash. Even the bold and counter-productive destructive group known as the ACLU is making very meager and unsuccessful efforts to take down "God Bless America" signs in schools. And they, rather than the people who put them up, are being vilified by the populous.

  Americans are to one degree or another in a state of fear. They're afraid. And they're crying out to heaven for an invisible means of support against an invisible enemy by an invisible God. And they hope that God is not only omnipresent, not only omniscient, not only omnipotent, but even more importantly that He's interested. The cry "God Bless America" seems to be getting louder and louder every day and commanding more and more emotion.

  And as I was listening to this, it struck me as an interesting issue. The prayer is simple, "God, bless America. Keep us protected. Keep us long-term safe. Keep us free. Keep us prosperous." And I began to think about the fact that if God were to bless America as everybody seems to want Him to do, it might look very different than we would expect.
  - The Spirit of This Age

  Will God bless America? Can God bless America? Should God bless America? And if God did bless America, what would He be saying about His holiness? If God did bless America, what would He be saying about our morality? About our spiritual condition? Could God bless America and protect His reputation as holy God?
  - Reformation or Revival?

  Now, of course, God can always do whatever He wants, whenever He wants. But when it comes to blessing, He has clearly and repeatedly set down conditions. I've listened carefully to that song, "God Bless America," there is no verse in there that identifies the conditions. Nor do Americans seem to be opening their Bibles to try to find out what the conditions are. I don't hear anybody say, "God, what do we need to do to be blessed?" So I'm going to answer the question nobody's asking.
  - The Narrow Path

  In fact, I think this is a serious intrusion. I don't think they want to know the conditions. It's sort of like don't ask, just bless. We'll ask, don't ask anything of us. We just want blessing. Don't impose any conditions. Don't ask for anything from us. Give us protection. Give us safety. Give us freedom. Give us prosperity. But don't meddle with our morality. I don't hear any national cries of repentance, do you? I don't hear any national affirmations of the law of God, the Word of God. I don't hear any cries for virtue and forgiveness. I don't even hear preachers preaching like that.
  - A November Message for Richmond, VA

  We're in, frankly, no position at all to be blessed. It seems to me that this prayer is futile. We're actually in a better place to be unblessed...cursed, if you can handle that word, because blessing has always had its conditions...always. And the conditions are not hard to find, you just need to go to Scripture (Deuteronomy 28). So let's do that.

  A good starting point is the eighth chapter of Nehemiah, Nehemiah chapter 8, just to the left of Esther, Job and Psalms. At this particular point in the history of Israel they were coming to the end of a long curse. They had experienced divine judgment. That judgment had come to an end. They were ready to be blessed. They went back to the land of Israel from their captivity in Babylon where they had been for a minimum of seventy years. They went back to the land and they wanted God's blessing. Their land was a rubble. Their city was torn down. They engaged in rebuilding it, and rebuilding its wall, as you know, under Nehemiah. They needed to rebuild the temple to reconstitute their worship. They desperately wanted the blessing of God and began to move in the right direction in chapter 8. They all gathered as one man at the square which was in front of the Water Gate...a particular gate in the city. And they asked Ezra, the scribe, here's the key phrase, "To bring the book of the law of Moses which the Lord had given to Israel."

  If there was going to be blessing after cursing, if there was going to be a future of blessing, they had to go back to the book. Bring the book. "And Ezra the priest brought the law, the Torah. He brought it before the assembly of all the men and women, all who listen with understanding, the first day of the seventh month and he read from it before the scroll which was in front of the Water Gate from early morning till midday in the presence of men and women, those who could understand and all the people were attentive to the book of the law."

  He read for hours and hours and hours, just read the books of Moses. He was standing, in verse 4, at a wooden podium, just like this one, they had made for that purpose. The first pulpit in the Bible. "And Ezra, in verse 5, opened the book in the sight of all the people, he was standing above them all and he opened it, all the people stood up. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God and all the people answered, Amen, Amen while lifting up their hands. Then they bowed low and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground." Verse 8, "And they read from the book from the law of God, translating to give the sense so that they could understand the reading." This is the beginning of expository preaching. They read it and they explained it.

  If there's ever going to be blessing, the first thing that has to happen is you have to go get the book. Bring the book. In verse 18, "He read from the book of the law daily, from the first day to the last day. They celebrated the feast seven days. On the eighth day there was a solemn assembly according to the ordinance." Day after day after day after day they read the Word while the people stood and listened.

  And then in chapter 9 verse 1 it says, "On the twenty-fourth day of this month the sons of Israel," this is indicative of the collective people of Israel gathering together, "assembled with fasting, in sack cloth and dirt upon them." That is a posture and an attire of penitence and humiliation. Verse 2, "The descendants of Israel separated themselves from all foreigners, stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers." Now we're getting something done here.

  You bring the book. The book reiterates the law of God in no uncertain terms. The people hear the law of God, they now are very much aware of why they have been cursed. They recognize their sin, the very sins for which they endured this prolonged captivity. They posture themselves as penitents. They confess their sins and the sins and iniquities of their fathers. "And while they stood in their place they read from the book of the law of the Lord their God for a fourth of a day and for another fourth they confessed and worshiped their God."

  This sets up the pattern for blessing. In verse 5, "Arise, bless the Lord your God forever and ever. O may Thy glorious name be blessed and exalted above all blessing and praise. Thou alone art the Lord, Thou hast made the heaven of heavens with all their host, the earth and all that is in them." And they go on to recite the fact that God is the great sovereign creator. And then in the rest of chapter 9 you can see is a reiteration of God's powerful, sovereign work in Israel. It talks about Egypt and the Red Sea and how they were led by a pillar of fire by night and on and on it goes all the way down through that chapter.

  Go down to verse 29 and they're reminded again that they were admonished to turn them back to Thy law. Yet they acted arrogantly, didn't listen to Thy commandments, but sinned against Thy ordinances by which if a man observes them he shall live. But they turned a stubborn shoulder and stiffened their neck and would not listen. However, and this is characteristic of God who is patient and gracious, "Thou didst bear with them for many years and admonished them with Thy Spirit through Thy prophets, yet they would not give ear. Therefore Thou didst give them into the hand of the peoples of the lands. Nevertheless, in Thy great compassion Thou didst not make an end of them or forsake them for Thou art a gracious and compassionate God." And they're just going through reciting the history of the people who had the law of God, had the Word of God, didn't obey the Word of God and were therefore cursed.

  "Now therefore...verse 32...our God, the great, the mighty, the awesome God who dost keep covenant and lovingkindness. Do not let all the hardship seem insignificant before Thee, which has come upon us, our kings, our princes, our priests, our prophets, our fathers, and on all Thy people from the days of the kings of Assyria to this day. However...and I love this...Thou art just in all that has come upon us; for Thou hast dealt faithfully, but we have acted wickedly."

  Here you have a people putting themselves by the prompting of God into a position to be blessed. Bring the book. Read the law of God. Confess that you have disobeyed it. And God will bless you.

  Israel knew there was no mystery to the standards for blessing. Israel knew that even though they were a covenant people that possessed the covenant that was eternal, they had been given everlasting promises that God will fulfill eternally, they knew that God is a faithful God but they also knew that God was just to punish them because He is a holy God. Blessing begins when you admit your sin and you admit your violation of the law of God. Israel had to start there and they were a covenant people with everlasting promises. We're not. America is not a covenant nation. We are not an elect nation. We're just another nation like many nations that have come and gone through human history. We bear no eternal covenant with God as a nation. America is not a Christian nation, as such. We have no covenant to protect us. We have no eternal promises nationally that God somehow must keep.

  And so, if Israel who has those covenants and those promises cannot be blessed unless they obey the law of God and repent for their disobedience, why would we assume that the standard for us would be any different?

  And, in fact, listen to a few other scriptures from the Old Testament so that there's no mistake in your mind. Second Kings 17, this again reiterates in terms that cannot be mistaken the standard for blessing, 2 Kings 17, let's go down...well, we'll start at verse 14, we'll let's go back to verse 13. He's talking about idolatry in the prior verses. In verse 13, "Yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah through all His prophets and every seer saying, 'Turn from your evil ways and keep My commandments, My statutes according to all the law which I commanded your fathers and which I sent to you through My servants, the prophets. However, they did not listen but stiffened their neck like their fathers who did not believe in the Lord their God.'"
  - Praying for Richmond, VA and the Greater Richmond Area

  This is the problem, unbelief and disobedience. Verse 15, "They rejected His statutes, His covenants which He made with their fathers, His warnings which He warned them, they followed emptiness, or vanity, and became empty, went after the nations which surrounded them concerning which the Lord had commanded them not to be like them." In other words, they just sucked in all the idolatries of all their surrounding nations.

  Verse 16, "They forsook all the commandments of the Lord their God, they made for themselves molten images, even two calves, and made an Ashterah, which is a form of an idol, worshiped all the host of heaven, served Baal. They made their sons and daughters pass through the fire, literally incinerating their children in sacrifices to the idols. They practiced divination and enchantments and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking Him. So the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them from His sight; none was left except the tribe of Judah." And that's talking about the captivity of the northern kingdom, the kingdom in the north called Israel, the kingdom in the south called Judah...the northern kingdom taken captive by Assyria.

  Verse 19, "But also Judah did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God but walked in the customs which Israel had introduced." In other words, Judah, the more resistant to idolatry because in Judah was Jerusalem, in Jerusalem was the temple, and so because of that there was a stronger influence to stay true to the Scripture in Judah. But eventually Judah caved in. The northern kingdom taken captivity in 722, the southern kingdom taken into captivity in 586. So a hundred and some years later Judah caves in, same thing, didn't keep the commandments of the Lord their God, began to imbibe the same things which Israel, the northern kingdom, had introduced. You remember, the kingdom was divided after Solomon. "The Lord...verse 20...rejected all the descendants of Israel, afflicted them, gave them into the hand of plunderers until He had cast them out of His sight."

  The bottom line is very simple, even if you are a covenant nation, even if you are the recipients of the eternal, everlasting promises of God, you still must meet the conditions of blessing or you will be cursed. If that is true for a covenant people, it is true for a covenant-less people, which we are.

  Look at 2 Chronicles, and again this is very clear and unmistakable instruction from Scripture. Second Chronicles chapter 7, for the moment look at verse 19. The Lord has reiterated the promises of the Davidic covenant. The people are aware of the promises of the Abrahamic covenant, these eternal promises, "But...verse 19...if you turn away and forsake My statutes and My commandments which I have set before you and shall go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will uproot you from My land which I have given you and this house which I have consecrated for My name I will cast out of My sight." That's the temple. "I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples. As for this house which was exalted, everyone who passes by it will be astonished and say, 'Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?' And they will say, even the strangers will know, 'Because they forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers who brought them from the land of Egypt and they adopted other gods and worshiped them and served them, therefore He has brought all this adversity on them.'" And again I reiterate the obvious point, when Israel turned away from God, when they turned away from the Word of God, when they forsook His statutes, forsook His commandments, began to establish other idols, they forfeited God's blessing and they ended up with curses.

  Now this had been instructed to them back in the Torah, back in the Pentateuch, back in the books of Moses, Deuteronomy 28, listen to two verses, verse 58 and 63. "If you're not careful to observe all the words of this law which are written in this book, to fear this honored and awesome name, the Lord your God, it shall come about that as the Lord...listen to this...delighted to bless you and multiply you so the Lord will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you." If you meet the conditions, God will be delighted to bless you. If you don't, He will be equally delighted to curse you.

  

  What do you mean, is He delighted in that? He's delighted in the sense that He finds satisfaction enduring what is consistent with His holiness. It's a simple principle. You ascribe your life to the truth of God, to the Word of God and where you fall short, you repent, you seek His forgiveness, you then put yourself in a place of blessing. Apart from a national penitence, a national brokenness, a national contrition for having turned their backs on God, on His Word, lived in sin, disdained to worship the true and living God, there is no basis upon which God would bless a people.

  Psalm 81:11 and 12, "But My people did not listen to My voice and Israel did not obey Me. So I gave them over to the stubbornness of their heart to walk on their own devices." If you disobey God, you'll never be blessed. That's true individually, and therefore it's true collectively.

  You say, "Yeah, but that's the...that's the Old Testament standard." No, that's the universal standard. God said, "I am the Lord, I change not." It is pointless really, no matter how well intentioned to keep on saying "God bless America, God bless America," when it is crystal-clear that America is not interested in meeting the conditions of that blessing. God bring America back to the truth of Scripture. God bring America to true penitence. Pray that.
  - Judgment, Not Warning

  When I was speaking to this group of Jewish people on Sunday night, I said two things have to happen for God to bless America. One, we have to return to God and two, we have to return to guilt. I put them on a God trip and a guilt trip.

  What am I saying by that? I'm saying we have to return to a true understanding of God and a true understanding of ourselves. We have to look up to God and His truth, we have to look in to our fallenness and our wretchedness and our sinfulness. While we're seeing the truth of God's morality, we have to see the truth of our immorality.
  - Repent!

  We have a long way to go to return to the true and living God. Wouldn't you say? You want blessing? God repeatedly said in Leviticus, "Be holy for I am holy...be holy for I am holy...be holy for I am holy." Jesus repeated it in the Sermon on the Mount. Peter repeats it in his epistle. You want blessing? Then you have to go back to the holy standard.

  Joshua, turn to Joshua 1...1:8, this is such a great statement. It should be marked out in your Bible. Joshua chapter 1, Moses is dead and the people of Israel are ready to cross the Jordan and come into the land God had promised them. Verse 3, "God says every place on which the sole of your foot treads I'm going to give to you, just as I promised Moses from the wilderness and this Lebanon, even as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites as far as the great sea toward the setting of the sun will be your territory." The Mediterranean, all the way back to the middle of the Mesopotamian Valley, the Tigris/Euphrates valley, north to Lebanon all the way south down to Egypt, that's exactly what God had pledged to Abraham, reiterated that pledge to Moses, is recorded in the books of the law. And now God reminds them as they go into the land of that promise, I'm going to give it to you.

  I'm not only going to give it to you, "But nobody...verse 5...is going to be able to stand before you all the days of your life, just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you, I will not fail or forsake you. Nobody is going to be able to overthrow My ultimate purpose for you." Verse 6, "Be strong and courageous," this is speaking directly to Joshua, nobody is going to be able to withstand Joshua who was a godly leader, God's going to be with him. "Be strong, courageous, you shall give this people possession of the land which I swore to their fathers to give them." Verse 7, "Only be strong and very courageous," and here it comes, "be careful to do according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right, or to the left so that you may have success wherever you go. If you turn from the law of God, I guarantee you will not have success. You will not have prosperity. You will not enjoy safety, protection or well-being."

  What's the key? Verse 8, here's the key. "This book of the law, the Word of God, shall not depart from your mouth. You shall meditate on it day and night." Learn it, absorb it, make it your own so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it for then you will make your way prosperous, then you will have success.

  The principles haven't changed. If America wants success, if American wants prosperity, if America wants well-being, safety, protection, all of these things that are bound up in this particular fear, then the standard is established, go back to the law of God and meet the God of the law.
  - The Call To Discipleship

  I mean, it's obvious, we have God in our salute, we have God on our coins, we have God in our songs, we just don't have Him in our minds or our hearts. This is a serious situation because we have turned so seriously against God that we are far, far away from a return. We are in a kind of desperation that I think is best defined by Romans 1.

  Turn to Romans 1. This was pretty shocking to the pupil I was speaking to on Sunday night in this meeting because they were not familiar with Romans 1. Many of them not familiar, because they were Jewish, with the New Testament at all. Those who were Christians not familiar with the real intent of Romans 1. But here's what you have in Romans 1, verse 18, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men...here's the key phrase...who suppress the truth in unrighteousness." You want to put yourself as an entity, as a corporate group of people, you want to put yourself in the worst possible condition...suppress the truth...suppress the truth. Verse 19 says, "That which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them." God has revealed His truth in the human heart, man is created in the image of God, he's created with rational capabilities, moral capabilities, a conscience and built into the fabric of man, according to Romans chapter 2, is the law of God written in his heart and the attendant conscience that on the knowledge of that law accuses or excuses man. So that everybody has the knowledge of God to some degree in his heart. It's evident.
  - The Bible and Homosexuality

  How did God make it evident? Verse 20, "From the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse." Nobody has any excuse for not believing in the true God who is the creator, no one. The evidence is massive, and we've just recently gone through it in our series on Genesis. It's available to you if you want information in the new book Battle for the Beginning. Every culture can look at creation and by virtue of the simple principle of cause and effect know that there had to be a cause for this massive effect that we call the world.

  The problem is, man suppresses the truth. Verse 21, "Even though they knew God because God had planted that knowledge in them, they didn't honor Him as God, they didn't give Him thanks, they were futile, empty in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened, professing to be wise they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man, of birds, and four-footed animals and crawling creatures."

  Now that's a lot to absorb. Let me make it very simple. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against people who suppress the truth. The knowledge of God is in the human heart, it's a very part of being human. God as He's given you physical senses, the five senses, have given you spiritual senses and a rational mind so that you can reason from effect back to cause, back to cause until finally you come back to the ultimate cause and your mind demands that there be a creator God who has the capacity to create not only a material universe, but a spiritual universe who has the capacity to think and to reason and relate the way humans do. The greater cannot come from the lesser. Clearly God is revealed and certainly beyond His revelation in the physical world, He has revealed Himself in Scripture.
  - The Living Word of God

  America, we not only have that physical revelation, that theologians call natural revelation, we have special revelation, verbal revelation, the Scripture, our country has always had the Word of God. Our problem is, when we knew God, we glorified Him not as God. We have taken God out, forced Him out in the name of political correctness, in the name of conventional wisdom, in the name of tolerance, in the name of not offending somebody we have blasphemed God, the creator. We don't honor Him, verse 21. We don't give Him thanks. And we are empty in our ideas, our foolish hearts are darkened, we think we're smart, we're actually moraino, the word from which we get morons, worshiping dolphins, or spotted owls, or the new religion, eco-feminism, or whatever other bizarre kind of idolatry we can concoct in the place of the true God, or just worshiping money, power, prestige, worshiping our own physical bodies, whatever it is.

  So that's the problem in America, but it's not just us, it's everybody. Acts 14 says, "God has allowed all the nations to go their own way." That's the whole history of the world. Every nation goes this way...people are born, they know God exists, God is part of the fabric of their very being. They can know God through the law written in their hearts. They can know Him through reason. They can be responding to the revelation through their conscience. The knowledge of God is there. Every society suppresses that because of fallenness, because of wickedness, because of blindness, because of the love of iniquity. They crush the knowledge of God. They crush it lower and lower until it disappears out of their view. And that turns loose the wrath of God.
  - Biblical Theology: The Wrath of God

  Now go back to verse 18. "For the wrath of God is revealed against all who do this." Every once in a while I hear a suppose a well-intentioned and hopeful preacher say, "We're on the brink of a great revival in America." I don't know what they're looking at. I don't know why they would ever come to that conclusion. I believe America is currently experiencing the wrath of God. The wrath of God is the general reality in our nation.
  - Trusting God as Freedom Fades

  Am I saying it was an act of God's wrath to allow terrorists to kill people? I don't know why God does what He does. We've already said that. I do know that for some they were catapulted into eternal wrath. But I also know for some who were believers, they were taken into glory. God may have many purposes in what He does. I'm not talking about an incident. What I am telling you though is on a national level, I believe America is experiencing the wrath of God. And I think you'll see that here because the wrath of God is defined for us in verses 24 and following and it's very specific.

  The wrath of God, verse 18, is revealed, and then it tells against what it's revealed. But down in verse 24, you go to the therefore. Therefore, let's go back to the wrath. Here is the definition, "God gave them over." Verse 26, "God gave them over." Verse 28, the middle of the verse, "God gave them over."
  - A Bad Heart

  That's an interesting phrase. God gave them over, or God gave them up. God abandoned them. That's a fascinating statement. There are, as I would count them, five forms of God's wrath.
  First is eternal wrath, that's everlasting punishment in hell, that's one form of God's wrath, that's not in view here.
  Second, there would be what we could call eschatological wrath, that's the wrath of God that unfolds at the end of the age, during the time of the Great Tribulation when the wrath of God is poured out on the earth and all the things that are described in the book of Revelation take place. That's a future eschatological wrath.

  Thirdly, there is a cataclysmic wrath, that's the wrath of God that comes on Sodom and Gomorrah when God destroys those cities and the cities of the plain and when God destroys Bethsaida, Chorazin, Capernaum in the New Testament, there is that cataclysmic wrath that falls on Pompeii or through some massive disaster brings about the death of tens of thousands of people, cataclysmic expressions of God's wrath often on cultures that have found themselves in this position, having rejected the knowledge of God.

  Fourthly, there is what I call natural wrath. God has built into the fabric of human life consequence to sin, and some of that consequence is natural. If you sin against your body by becoming an alcoholic, the natural effect, the natural wrath that works could be called cirrhosis of the liver. If you sin in a life of immorality and you get involved in homosexuality or promiscuous sexuality, you could wind up with a sexually transmitted disease, you could wind up with AIDS and that is a built-in act of wrath. That's the sowing and reaping principle.

  We're not talking about eternal wrath here. We're not talking about eschatological wrath, cataclysmic wrath or natural wrath...there's a fifth kind of wrath, it's the wrath of abandonment...the wrath of abandonment.

  This is such a frightening thing. This is when God gives you up, steps back, let them go...let them go. No more restraining grace. Turn them over. They want their sin, let them go. We know this is going to happen in its consummate sense in the time of Tribulation when the restrainer is removed, remember? The Holy Spirit and hell belches forth the previously bound demons and all the demons of the universe come down to earth and aid the Antichrist in his satanic efforts to finally conquer the world and the Kingdom of God.
  - Crossing Paths with God

  But we get a foretaste of that, previews of that as nations turn against God and He gives them up. This is the wrath of abandonment that is true in the Old Testament. Judges 16, Samson found a Philistine woman by the name of Delilah. I never met anybody who named their daughter Delilah, such an infamous person. Well, you remember the story. She seduced Samson and so he told her that his strength was connected to his Nazarite vow which had to do with his hair. And she made him, according to Judges 16:19, sleep on her knees. She called for a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his hair, then she began to afflict him somehow, not in some severe sense, but to jostle him and his strength left him.

  And she said, "The Philistines are upon you, Samson," and he awoke from his sleep and said, "I will go out as at other times and shake myself free." He had defeated the Philistines on many occasions and by the thousands. He had defeated them single-handedly, so he said, "I will go out as at other times." Verse 20, "But he didn't know that the Lord had departed from him." Wow. So when the Philistines came, they seized him, they gouged out his eyes, they brought him down to Gaza, bound him with bronze chains and he was like a mule, grinding in a prison." God left. Turned Samson over to the consequence of his choices. Judges chapter 10 verses 13 and 14, it says, speaking of Israel, "Yet you have forsaken Me and served other gods, therefore I will deliver you no more." I'm done with you. I'm not going to rescue you, I'm not going to protect you. So verse 14 says, "God and cry out to the gods which you've chosen." You've chosen your gods, let them deliver you in the time of your distress. You leave Me, I leave you.

  

  Proverbs 1, "Because I called and you refused, I stretched out My hand and no one paid attention, you neglected all My counsel, you didn't want My reproof, I will even laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your dread comes, when your dread comes like a storm, your calamity like a whirlwind, and distress and anguish comes on you, then they will call on Me but I will not answer." Is that America? Are we saying futilely against a vaulted sky, "God bless America" and God is not going to answer? Why? "Because they hated knowledge, did not choose the fear of the Lord. They will seek Me diligently, they will not find Me. They would not accept My counsel, they spurned all My reproof so they shall eat of the fruit of their own way and be satisfied with their own devices. I'm letting them go." They can have the meal they cooked.

  Hosea 4:17, the prophet said, "Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone." Amazing, let him go. Let him go.

  Jesus said about the Pharisees, "They're blind leaders of the blind. Let them alone. Let them go. I'm done with them."

  That's the frightening wrath that God just steps back and lets sinners go to the consequence of their choices. You say, "How do you know that's going on in America?"

  Follow the sequence. Verse 24, you're familiar with this, first thing that happens, "God gave them over to the lust of their hearts to impurity that their bodies might be dishonored among them for they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever, amen." They turned their back on God. God gave them over to...what?...sexual immorality. They operate on lust. They function in impurity. They dishonor their bodies.

  You look at America, you look back at 1960, you see the sexual revolution. That's...when God lets a people go, that's the first step down...they become preoccupied with illicit sex. Here we are a few decades later, drowning in a sea of pornography, now pumped into every person on the Internet everywhere. But that's only step one.

  Step two is in verse 26, "God also gave them over to degrading passions for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural," that's Lesbianism, "in the same way also the men abandoned the function of the women and burned in their desire for one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own person the due penalty of their error."

  First, when God lets a nation go, they sink to immorality. And then they sink to homosexuality. First it's heterosexual sin and then it's homosexual sin. Does anybody question that we're there?
  - Hope, Change, and Early Death

  And then in verse 28, the third step, "God gave them over to a depraved mind." What is that? Adokimos, means one having an useless mind, a mind which is morally incapable of making a right judgment. And when you get to that point, there's no recovery. You can be moral, heterosexually, you can be immoral homosexually, and still somebody can be sane enough to call you back, but when you get to step three and the mind is morally incapable of making a right judgment, there's no way back. And you know a society has reached this when that society will not tolerate anyone making moral judgments.
  - Tolerance, Intolerance, and Truth

  

  You want to be an enemy of our culture? Start making moral judgments. Once you don't make any moral judgments, what happens? Verse 29, unrighteousness fills everything, wickedness, greed, evil, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents with understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful, everything breaks loose and the Jerry Springer show becomes funny to the degraded mind.
  - The Breakdown of Moral Discipline

  I was speaking at chapel at the college this week and I leaned over to Mark Tatlock and I said, "Mark, do you think there's anything that could happen that would shock these young people? Anything?" But if you step up and call a halt to the moral insanity and place the law of God in the public eye, believe me, you will be rejected. The same America that keeps saying "God bless America, God bless America, God bless America," is not anyway near ready to hear how God will bless America and that is, first of all, by establishing His law against which every life is measured, and against which an appropriate repentance is required. And even though people, verse 32 says, know that death is the result of these kinds of behaviors, they do them anyway. And they give hearty approval to those who practice them.

  That's where we are in this country. So if we're saying "God bless America...God bless America," on the basis of what? We've turned our back on God, we've blasphemed God, we've rejected God. In His place we've made our own idols. And now we're saying "God bless America?" I'm quite sure that if He were to bless America in the way people are now asking, it would be hard for Him to maintain His reputation as a holy God.

  So, folks, I'm not the prophet or the son of a prophet, but I will tell you this. I can't see any reason at all why God should bless this nation and a myriad why of having let go of the nation He should turn it over to the consequence of its own wickedness. We can sing that song until we're blue in the face, and it doesn't compel our holy God at all.
  - Is God Angry Anymore?

  Listen to what Scripture says again. Second Chronicles 7, familiar text, we looked at the later part of the chapter, let's go back to the earlier. Second Chronicles 7, Solomon in verse 11 finished the house of the Lord and the King's palace, successfully completed all that he had planned on doing in the house of the Lord and in his palace. And, of course, the Solomonic temple and palace were the greatest ever. "Then the Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him, 'I have heard your prayer, have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land or if I send pestilence among My people." In other words, He says I'm going to come here, I'm going to live here, but I'll tell you this, if the people sin and I have to bring judgment, drought, devastating locust plague, some other pestilence, some deadly disease, if I have to bring that, then remember this, verse 14, "My people who are called by My name, if they humble themselves and pray, seek My face, turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and heal their land."

  You say, "Is that a covenant promise for Israel?" Well, it's a promise from God to a covenant people, but the standard applies to anybody. God doesn't bless people who reject Him.

  Psalm 81 again, verses 13-16, God says, "O that My people would listen to Me, that Israel would walk in My ways. If My people would just listen, and obey, I would quickly subdue their enemies." I suppose we could extrapolate from that that the best hope for any nation to be protected and safe and secure and free and prosperous is to have God fighting their battles, subduing their enemies. And in verse 16 He says, "If My people listen to Me and walk in My ways, I will feed you with the finest of the wheat and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you." That's blessing, that's just a way to express blessing, I'll give you the best I've got, I'll give you the best blessings I have.

  There are conditions. The condition is the law of God must be put back as the standard and obeyed. That's a return to God and His Word. But secondly, there has to be a return to guilt. I have to measure my life against that law and repent. Let me use David as an illustration.

  Saul was king. He had been chosen by the people but confirmed by God. And Saul was hunting David to kill him cause he was threatened, of course, by the fact that David was going to be king. On one occasion Saul is hunting David and David stumbles across Saul in a very compromised condition. He is in a cave doing what the Old Testament very delicately calls "covering his feet," relieving himself. David could have killed him. His...his enemy, he could have killed Saul. And his men said, "Kill him...kill him...look, kill him." He wouldn't do it. He went over and he cut off a little piece of his robe, Saul's robe, to let him know he could have killed him.

  And then it says in 1 Samuel 24:5, "David's conscience bothered him because he had cut off the edge of Saul's robe because Saul was the Lord's anointed." I'm telling you, folks, that's a sensitive conscience, isn't it? That is a hyper- sensitive conscience. With all of David's failures, he sinned greatly but is there anybody in the Old Testament who had such a sensitivity to his sin as he had? David compromised again with Bathsheba and engaged in adultery with her. She was the wife of Uriah, one of his soldiers. Not only did he sin with Bathsheba, but he arranged for Uriah to be left isolated in the middle of a battle, have the ones around him retreat so that he would die and he did. David was guilty then of adultery and murder. And in response to that he came to Nathan the prophet in 2 Samuel 12:13 and he said, "I have sinned against the Lord." And he was so smitten in his conscience that he wrote two Psalms, Psalm 32 and Psalm 51. And in Psalm 32 he said, "When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away and through my groaning all day long, night and day Your hand was heavy on me, my vitality, my life's juices were drained away." It restricted his blood flow, it restricted his saliva, all the functions of his body were thrown out of whack because of the terrible guilt that he felt.

  Later on in 2 Samuel 24 he numbered Israel which essentially was a way of being proud and a way of sort of counting on the sheer force of your army to win a battle, rather than God. He numbered the people when he was told not to number the people. Second Samuel 24:10 says, "David's heart smote him." Something went through him like a spear. I hate that David sinned, I love that David responded so sensitively to it. A spear went through his heart and he said to the Lord, "I have sinned greatly in what I've done, please, O Lord, take away the iniquity of Your servant, I've acted very foolishly."

  That's what it takes. That's what it takes. It takes a recognition of the standard of God, the law of God and then an instant severe pain over having violated that law. If America, if you want to be blessed, that's the path. Return to God, return to guilt.
  - The Doctrine of Repentance

  We don't want God in our society, except as a sky-hook, a parachute. And we certainly don't want guilt in our society. Ann Landers wrote, I quote, "Guilt is a pollutant and we don't need any more of it in the world." Really? Charles Dyer in his book Your Erroneous Zones said, quote, "Guilt must be exterminated, spray cleaned and sterilized forever." MTV said, "No sin is as evil as the killjoy attitude of those who think someone's behavior is an offense to some holy God." We want self-esteem, not guilt. Guilt's intolerable. The psychologies of self-esteem and victimization are designed to silence the voice of conscience to remove guilt. That is damning and destructive. Generations are being trained that their consciences are liars and that they're really good and not evil. Psychologists have been the purveyors of that damning anthropology.
  - Spiritual Blindness

  John Owen who was Cromwell's chaplain wrote, "If you want to kill sin, load your conscience with the guilt of it." Generations are being trained that conscience is a liar, they shouldn't feel guilty, and you can do whatever you want because you have the freedom to be yourself. And don't let anybody put some guilt trip on you or make you feel bad about it.
  - They Call Us Haters

  This is the depth of the morass of twisted thinking that America is in. We've abandoned God and He's abandoned us. We've plummeted down the path from immorality to homosexuality to degraded thinking. We've slaughtered our conscience. We don't have the Word of God to inform conscience and when conscience tries to speak even weakly, we crush it into silence and tell it it has no right to tell us anything. We're good, the Twinkies made me do it. Your child has ADD, HDP, ODD, or whatever other psychologization of morality.
  - O America, Where Art Thou?

  We have a long ways to go in this country to expect blessing, don't you think? Just getting back to God is a huge, huge trek and getting back to guilt is another one. We want God but we want Him on our terms. "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. In His law he meditates day and night (Psalm 1:1-3)."

  You want to be blessed, get back to the book. Go back to the book and the God of the book. And the book will reveal God in all His magnificent, holy morality and it will reveal you in all your ugly immorality. Yes, there is blessing for the one who walks in the Word. Psalm 32, "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity." Blessed means that you've come to the Lord, you've come to the truth, you've embraced His Word, you've sought forgiveness. And you've been justified, that is no longer is iniquity imputed to you, your sin has been covered, covered, in fact, by the very righteousness of God through Christ. "Blessed, Psalm 34:8, is the man who takes refuge in the Lord."

  You want to be blessed? Return to the Lord. I'm just reading you a few that come to my mind. Psalm 40:4, "Blessed is the man who has made the Lord his trust and has not turned to the proud, nor to those who lapse into falsehood." I think it's Psalm 112, a good place to sort of conclude these references from the Psalms, yes, "Praise the Lord...this sums it up...how blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in His commandments. Wealth and riches are in his house. He will never fear evil tidings. His heart is steadfast. Trusting in the Lord, his heart is upheld. He will not fear." That's blessing.

  But there are conditions. Walking in the truth, knowing God, repenting, confessing sin. Isaiah 55, "Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call upon Him while He's near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to the Lord and He will have compassion on him and to our God for He will abundantly pardon." There is blessing, but that blessing is attached to repentance for sin and obedience to the Word of God. And that's not a national thing until it's an individual thing. The only way God could bless America as an entity is if it was dominated by individual who had stepped into His blessing.

  There's one other thing that I have to say. Believing the Bible, repenting of sin--the standard of blessing. But there's one other absolutely critical reality and that is that blessing is provided through Jesus Christ and Him alone. In 2 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 20, "There is many as may be the promises of God, all His promises of blessing, obviously, as many as may be the promises of God, in Him, that is in Christ Jesus, the Son of God, mentioned in verse 19, in Him they are yes." All the promises of God in Christ are yes. "Wherefore also by Him is our amen to the glory of God through us." Paul is saying, all the promises of God become reality in Christ.

  Galatians chapter 3 and verse 14, "In Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham comes to the Gentiles so we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith." The ultimate blessing of forgiveness, eternal life originally given in the Abrahamic covenant comes to us in Christ Jesus.

  And then a passage to end on, Ephesians 1 verse 3, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places...what are the next two words?...in Christ."

  We have a message for America. God bless America, well He will bless America if the conditions are met. But before we can be concerned about America, we need to be concerned about those who are America, that's us. And the way to blessing is back to the book, to know the truth of God and the God of the book, to repent of sin and to come to Him for forgiveness and new life and new capacity for obedience through faith in Jesus Christ. All the promises of God are yes in Christ. All spiritual blessings are ours in Christ.
  - Is Jesus the Only Way?

  I wish that all the people saying God bless America were willing to acknowledge God, His Word, their own sin and the Savior Jesus Christ. That's the only way anybody will ever be blessed by God. This is our message, folks, not just mine to you, yours to everybody else.

  Father, thank You for our time tonight. So much can be said about this and Your Word is so clear on it, perhaps it is enough tonight to be reminded of the path of blessing and the folly of expecting You to bless on terms that people establish. Bless only in a way, Father, that glorifies You. Bless, yes, we ask You to bless, bless many souls by bringing them to faith and repentance, obedience through Jesus Christ. And those who are in this nation don't come that way, then vindicate Your holiness even in Your judgment from which we will be delivered and hence have no fear. This all to Your glory in Christ's name, Amen.
  

  
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• Savages of Socialism

  

  Savages of Socialism

  Author: Daniel Greenfield
  Source: the Sultan Knish blog - 06.18.2013

  In Venezuela, savvy shoppers are hunting down scarce supplies of toilet paper with a smartphone app. The smartphones, compact packages of electronics, are several generations more advanced than the white square, but they are available when the toilet paper isn't, because unlike the toilet paper they aren't subsidized and price controlled.

  

  While Hugo Chavez did at one point unveil a Chavezphone for the poor, he succumbed to the wonders of Cuba's Socialist medicine before they could become as big as Obamaphones. But if Venezuela ever falls to the dumbphone, then there won't be a smartphone app to find a smartphone with.

  The sight of modern men and women hunting down toilet paper with smartphones seems like the Soviet Union as reimagined by William Gibson, but it's a common enough outcome in an economy that is really a patchwork of uneven subsidies.

  The Arab Spring was fueled by the social media apps of smartphones and anger over insufficient subsidies for staples such as bread and fuel. The smartphones may bring you the revolution, but it's the toilet paper and bread shortages that set them off.

  The problem is a commonplace one that Americans will shortly begin experiencing with the subsidized medicine of Obamacare.

  Most governments subsidize or price control some necessities to win over the underclass... or at least keep them from burning down everything in sight.

  The Arab Spring took place in countries where government subsidized food and fuel existed side by side with monopolies over nearly everything held by cronies if the ruling class. Bread was temporarily cheap, but nearly everything else was either substandard or nonexistent... except for the American-designed and Chinese-built smartphones being used to document the food and fuel revolution.

  A society stuck somewhere along the way in the transition between Socialism and a free economy finds itself in these savage intersections in which high technology is available, but the basic needs which the underclass is bought off with aren't.

  Manhattan, that glittering island of towers rising between the waters of two rivers that are one, values real estate above gold. A square foot of dirt in Manhattan might as well be marble for what it fetches.

  Finding an apartment in Manhattan is a challenge worthy of a treasure hunter and Bloomberg recently unveiled a plan for micro apartments that would be little more than closets with kitchen sinks.

  Manhattan is a small and narrow strip of land which accounts for some of the high prices, but its real estate is also a crazy quilt of wildly overpriced market housing and subsidized housing projects. In some tenements rent-controlled apartments that cost less than anywhere else in the city coexist with 5,000 dollar a month pads and the only difference between them is regulation.

  

  Downtown grim blocs of housing project towers crowd out riverfront views that would be worth hundreds of millions while the bankrupt city Housing Authority fights pitched battles with residents to sell a few scraps of empty land to developers to finance the welfare castles.

  Uptown, large lots sit empty and bound to a covenant of affordable housing signed during the city's lean years that now make the land worthless for anything except growing weeds.

  A booming housing market in the city is built on runaway prices caused by artificial shortages. Manhattan is really two islands, one is being built up and torn down again every few years, while the other is stuck in a state of permanent slumhood since the seventies. One pays for its organic grapes with smartphone apps and the other buys everything with food stamp cards.

  The gap between these extremes is where the shortages form and the Middle Class eventually falls into that hole between the extremes of the liberal poor who want to be subsidized and the liberal rich who want someone to do something about the poor. The welfare class is relieved not to be burdened with the slog to the Middle Class and the crony capitalists are not interested in more competition. Both agree on a static society managed with subsidies and monopolies. This system had more than a passing resemblance to the dysfunctional countries of the Middle East. The only difference is that America still has a Middle Class for the system to drink dry.

  Over in Pennsylvania, the union for liquor store workers in the state-controlled liquor monopoly is running alarmist ads insisting that privatizing the liquor industry will cause mass death.

  If you can't trust ordinary mortals with the difficult and dangerous task of selling bottles of liquor, what can you trust them with? Nothing.

  There is no reason why liquor has to be a state monopoly except that it pays better for liquor store workers. It also pays better in every other industry.

  Nationalizing industries is a bad deal for consumers and taxpayers, but a great deal for workers. And all it takes is declaring the industry a vital one that can't be entrusted to the same boobs who run nuclear power plants, design artificial limbs and build dams, but must be put in the care of the great minds responsible for forcing banks to loan money to people who couldn't afford to pay it back, an economic catastrophe that we are still recovering from.

  

  Like government toilet paper, subsidizing jobs makes jobs harder to find, but that is only of concern to the people who don't have them. Every economic system creates those who have and those who don't. Socialism creates 'have-nots' with the same system that it creates 'haves', manufacturing scarcity for social justice.

  Socialism is an economy in which the 'haves' have jobs giving out welfare and the 'have-nots' have jobs receiving it. The one truly scarce commodity under Socialism is employment because there is only so much welfare to be given out.

  Consolidating an industry improves the bargaining power of its employees while diminishing the quality of service. And then there are no longer two tiers, only the tier of the monopoly.

  Nationalize industries in parts or all the way and you end up with taxpayer funded and worker run industries that are run for the benefit of the workers. It's a Socialism of the civil service, a bureaucratic collectivism that plays at public service.

  The return of the guild system walls off more of those rivers that the Middle Class once depended on to reach the shore. Services become sinecures. Jobs are allocated based on racial representation. The number of employees is inflated while the results vanish. The system exists for the sake of the system.

  In Mexico, teachers from its powerful union pass on their jobs to their children and sell them. Soon enough it will be that way in Los Angeles too.

  When jobs are subsidized then jobs are scarce and it only stands to reason that those who are lucky
  Yes, that's a teachers' strike
  enough to get their hands on government jobs will want to pass them on to their children. In America the rallying cry of teachers' unions is that they are doing it for the children. That is also the rallying cry in Mexico, except that they mean their own children. Naturally. Why should they care about anyone else's children? They're public servants, not humanitarians.

  

  There is something medieval about public service being transformed into a family business but this sort of "privatization" is a commonplace consequence of a system in which government jobs are the ultimate commodity.

  The idealism of Socialism turns savage as the Middle Class finds it harder than ever to go up but easier than ever to go down. All you have to do is give up and a life of hopelessness is waiting for you. There will even be cheap government toilet paper... though it may take a non-government smartphone to find it and a mob to keep it.

  

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• LOVE YOUR GOVERNMENT

  

  Love Your Government

  Author: Daniel Greenfield
  Source: the Sultan Knish blog - 11.07.2013

  

  Love is in the air. There are plush teddy bears in the Capitol Hill gift shop and romantic songs playing on Air Force One. Listening tours are planned and every begging email asking for another five, ten or forty bucks to stop the Republican onslaught is addressed personally to you. To you. Love makes the world go round, or so singers have crooned for the last hundred years. And what other emotion could it be but that which makes the iron wheels of the state turn.

  With everything at stake, voters keep picking the candidates they think love them the most. The exit polls keep showing that voters choose unqualified radicals like Barack Obama or Bill de Blasio because they're "likable", "share their values" and "care about them."

  Experience came in dead last in the New York election, both literally in Lhota's case, and in the exit polls, which showed voters ranking experience somewhere between a dead zebra and a mugger on the C train. 34 percent wanted someone who shared their values. 30 percent wanted change. And an unspecified number of right-wing lunatics wanted experience.

  Voting is starting to look a lot like dating. A big chunk of the electorate doesn't just want someone to manage a government. They want someone who will make them feel special, share their values and love them back.
  - Praying for the Black Community in Richmond, VA

  Government is becoming more personal, even as it's becoming more impersonal. Newly hatched ducks develop an attachment to their wire mothers. Children neglected by their parents fixate on their nannies. And what of a generation of broken families?

  What else is there for all the Julias to do but turn to the man whom Indian chiefs used to call the Great White Father in Washington. And what is there for all the Chads to do but look for love from the bureaucratic wire mother of the Nanny State?

  The great ambition of the social reformers was to replace the unscientific and selfish family with the progressive programs of the state. And their dream has been realized.

  Within a few generations of government growth, a nation once noted for its strong nuclear family has replaced it with a cradle-to-grave state that abstractly pats all the Julias and Chads on the head, telling them they can be anything they want and then sending them the bill for its services.

  Is it any wonder that Chad and Julia just want a government that loves them and are a bit fuzzy about the differences between a politician, their father and their significant other?

  Past generations wanted to be inspired by leaders, but the definitions of inspiration and leadership have changed. In the past it meant urging others to rise to new challenges. Today it means making Chad and Julia feel good about themselves by telling them that they have great potential so that they feel like someone out there understands and cares about them without having to actually do anything.
  - To Thank A Thief

  The reelection of Bush Sr. was sunk in part because the World War II veteran was unable to field a question about how the National Debt had affected him personally. The question was senseless, but Bill Clinton understood that the questioner, who seemed to have stepped in from the Sally Jesse Raphael Show, wanted to be reassured that he cared. And so the Clinton Presidency was born.

  

  The National Debt is bigger than ever and politicians have gotten better than ever at reassuring the people that they care about the national debt, they feel the national debt's pain, share its values and want it to grow up to be the best national debt that it can be in a country where every national debt has equal opportunities to achieve regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation or national bankruptcy.

  Conservatives struggling to convince the rest of the country that Obama is the worst thing since sliced bread that had been left out for three years in the sun face the same problem as anyone trying to convince a friend that the charming sociopath that they're dating is bad for them. They can assemble an artillery of facts, hurling them one by one, waiting for the BOOM, but only hearing faint thumps, and then resort to frustrated outrages of common sense only to get nowhere.
  - The Bloody Hands of Barack Obama

  After all that, all it takes is a single "I care about you, share your values and promise never to take away your health plan again... period" teleprompter call to convince them that it truly is true love.

  And even if the voters who only want to care about a politician who cares about them first eventually realize that they've been had, that while Obama was pretending to care about their anger at Wall Street, he was also pretending to care at least as much about the concerns of Wall Street executives, and so on for every one of their values, they'll just wait for the next charmer to come along.

  Those who have been deprived of love will go on looking for it in all the wrong government places. And the Julias and Chads who associate government with love will press every politicians to tell them how the National Debt makes them feel and show them that they really truly care about them. That process will helpfully winnow most decent and competent leaders leaving behind sociopaths, car salesmen, community organizers, con men and anyone who can fake a relationship on a dime.

  Emotion is more malleable than reason. And a relationship calls forth the most self-rationalizing emotional states that can exist in the human mind.

  A politician who promises something tangible to voters and fails to deliver can be held accountable, but one who offers the intangible assurance that he cares and understands will persist until the love spell is broken and the emotional relationship is exposed as a sham beyond the ability of his victims to rationalize.

  And that's not politics. It's deprogramming.

  There is no question that most of us are in a relationship with government. It's a non-consensual relationship and an abusive one, but those are the kind most likely to lead to a bout of Stockholm Syndrome. Hostages fall in love with their hostage-takers, captives fall in love with their captors and Democratic voters fall in love with their elected officials.

  With the traditional family in bad shape, romanticizing the even more dysfunctional relationship with the state transforms an abusive relationship into a caring one. Voters search for politicians who can humanize the detached impersonal power of the bureaucracy and make them feel like they aren't living in a George Orwell or Frank Kafka novel.

  

  Likability counts more than ethics, experience, competence and actual knowledge because
  government, like everything else, has become subjective.
  There are no more clear truths. What is the definition of "sex"? What is the definition of "If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan period?"

  Every crime has an explanation and every lie is turned on its head. And when you're living in spin city, the only thing you can believe in is love because personal relationships feel more real than millions of words of federal regulations or piles and piles of government forms.

  Karl Rove understood that Republicans suffer from a "Caring Gap". It may be stupid, but in each race, George W. Bush managed to be a caring candidate going up against a stiff and out of touch Democrat. And then Obama was lucky enough to get John McCain and Mitt Romney, two men whose credentials and manners perfectly suited the old America, but who wouldn't be able to explain how the National Debt made them feel nearly as well as Obama or Bill Clinton could.

  A sizable portion of the country doesn't just want someone good or someone who has the right ideas, they want someone to love them, to care about them and to make their relationship with government feel meaningful so that they can believe that it is love, rather than dirty money, favor-trading, vote-swapping, fanatical devotion to 19th century ideologies and humanitarianism that makes the fax machines, the hard drive platters , cars and cabinet meetings of government go round and round.
  - Back On Uncle Sam's Plantation

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• Can Israel Survive Obama?

  

  Can Israel Survive Obama?

  Author: Noah Beck
  Source: American Thinker - 11.12.2013
  See also: A Dangerous Time for Israel

  Those who hoped that Obama's Middle East policies wouldn't get any worse have awakened to a nasty surprise: the Obama administration is actively making it harder for Israel to neutralize Iran's nukes, and more likely that Iran will develop a nuclear arsenal.
  - Exposing the Heart Of Barack Hussein Obama

  About a year ago, the New York Times reported that "intense, secret exchanges between American and Iranian officials [dating] almost to the beginning of President Obama's term" resulted in an agreement to conduct one-on-one negotiations over Iran's nuclear program. In those secret talks, did Obama long ago concede to Iran a nuclear capability? If so, then the current Geneva negotiations merely provide the international imprimatur for what Iran and the US have already privately agreed. That might explain why France (of all countries) had to reject a Geneva deal that would have left Iran with a nuclear breakout capability.

  An investigation by the Daily Beast also reveals that the "Obama administration began softening sanctions on Iran after the election of Iran's new president last June, months before the current round of nuclear talks in Geneva..." The report notes that Treasury Department notices show "that the U.S. government has all but stopped the financial blacklisting of entities and people that help Iran evade international sanctions since the election of its president, Hassan Rouhani, in June."
  - The 'Peace' of Islam

  Obama's desperately eager posture towards the smiling Mullahs has doomed any negotiation to failure by signaling that the U.S. fears confrontation more than anything else. Obama's pathetic approach to the world's most pressing national security threat also makes U.S. military action virtually impossible from a public relations and diplomatic standpoint because it promotes the naive idea that more diplomacy will resolve what a decade of talking hasn't. And as long as the Iranians are "talking," world opinion will also oppose an Israeli military strike, so naturally Iran will find ways to keep talking until it's too late for Israel to act.
  - Pro-Obama, or Pro-Israel?

  Obama has been downright duplicitous towards key Mideast allies. When in campaign mode or speaking to Israel supporters, Obama emphatically rejected containment as a policy option for dealing with Iranian nukes but he's now taking steps that effectively make containment the only option available (while repeating the same empty reassurance that he has Israel's back and won't be duped by the smiling Iranians).

  

  Despite his repeated reassurances, Obama rejected Israel's estimates for how much more time Iran needs to develop its nuclear capability, and accepted overly optimistic timetables that assumed at least a year for more talking. Soon afterwards, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) confirmed Israel's estimates that Iran could be just weeks away from the critical nuclear threshold. Ignoring these critical facts, Obama has given diplomatic cover to Iran's nuclear program by seizing on the cosmetic changes presented by the Iranian regime's Ahmadinejad-to-Rouhani facelift.

  That this makeover is just a ruse becomes obvious from this video, in which Rouhani boasts about masterfully manipulating diplomacy to achieve Iran's nuclear objectives. So Obama must have known all along that "talks" are a fool's errand that allow him to "fall back to" what has been his position all along: containment.

  And despite repeated assurances from Secretary of State John Kerry that "no deal is better than a bad deal," the current Geneva talks appear headed towards precisely that: a bad deal that leaves Iran with the very nuclear breakout capability that a diplomatic "solution" was supposed to prevent.

  On the other hand, after Obama's weak response to Syria's crossing of his "red line" against the use of chemical weapons, the threat of U.S. force against Iranian nukes lost all credibility, making it even harder to change Iranian nuclear behavior without force. So containing the mess produced by weak negotiations is really all that's left of Obama's Iran "strategy."

  Only epic ineptitude or anti-Israel hostility no longer checked by reelection considerations can explain Obama's moves on Iran. And the stakes couldn't be higher for the rest of the world. After all, if Iran is the world's biggest state sponsor of terrorism without nuclear weapons, what will terrorism look like once Iran goes nuclear? And there are already hints of the nuclear proliferation nightmare that will follow Iran's nuclear policy: Saudi Arabia has Pakistani nukes already lined up for purchase. Remarkably, Obama has known this since 2009 and apparently doesn't care about that consequence any more than he does about Israel's security. How else to explain his acceptance of the dreadful Geneva proposal granting Iran a nuclear weapons capability?

  Exacerbating an existential threat against Israel is bad enough, but Obama has been an abysmal ally in other respects. Despite being history's most aggressive president to punish whistle-blowers (except when they make him look good), Obama's administration has repeatedly leaked sensitive Israeli information that could have easily provoked a Syrian-Israeli war. Obama summarily dumped a decades-long alliance with Egypt (that is also key to Israeli security) over some Egyptian state violence that is dwarfed by the decades-long brutality and terrorism of the Iranian regime now enjoying Obama's overzealous courtship. And Obama's image as a multi-lateralist who subordinates U.S. interests to higher principles has been exposed as a fraud following reports that he knew that the U.S. was spying on close European allies (contrary to his denials).

  Add to that list Kerry's increasing hostility to Israel and reports that the U.S. plans to impose its undoubtedly risky vision of peace on Israel in a few months, and you have Israel's worst nightmare in the White House. The irony is that the less Israel feels secure because of Obama's betrayals, the less likely it is to behave as Obama would like. Why humor Obama's requests and take unrequited risks for peace with the Palestinians or indulge yet another round of counter-productive "talks" about Iran's nuclear program when Obama has apparently abandoned Israel anyway?

  

  As if Israel didn't face enough threats and challenges, it must now survive the Obama nightmare until he's out of office in 38 months. Isolated like never before thanks to Obama, the stark choices facing Israel's leadership are unimaginably difficult. With roughly 75 times more territory, 10 times as many people, and two times as big an economy, Iran is a Goliath compared to Israel, and has repeatedly threatened to destroy it. So what does David (Israel) do now that Obama's perfidy has been exposed? If the neighborhood bully is bigger than you, has threatened you, and is reaching for a bat, do you preemptively attack him before he gets the bat and becomes even more dangerous?
  - Why Christians Should Support Israel

  
  Noah Beck is the author of The Last Israelis, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and other geopolitical issues in the Middle East.

  

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