In the 9/20/11 issues of Sojourners magazine is an advertisement for the 2012 Gladdening Light Symposium featuring Jesus Seminar scholar John Dominic Crossan. Part of the ad copy reads, “Feed the soul, savor the beauty, and experience the communion love of Agape in the Gladdening Light of God.”

However, if Crossan is being heralded as what in show business and prize fights circles is called the main event, those in attendance will have very little to ultimately be glad about. Given the name of the symposium, the event frankly borders on false advertising.

Anyone that has subscribed to the History Channel or A&E before both networks went nearly all alien autopsy and rummage sales has no doubt seen Crossan. He is a talking head that use to get dragged out around Christmas and Easter time for those specials that posture as giving viewers the latest dirt on the events of the Bible being bantered about in the halls of respectable academia.

However, seldom do these programs confirm the accuracy of the Biblical accounts. Rather, the intended purpose is often to heap as much skepticism upon these narratives as possible.

Crossan’s ticket to never picking up a bar tab (or in this case midwinter accommodations in sunny Florida) is that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead. Instead, Crossan believes Christ’s body was instead most likely eaten by dogs.

But rather than surrendering to a life as a squeegee man if religion is such a colossal waste of time, Crossan has taken up the mission of destroying other people’s faith as well. It’s just that Crossan continues to hold onto Christian terminology to accomplish this task. And it’s quite the incentive to keep at it that mildly entertaining eccentric skeptics are invited on midwinter Florida speaking tours and squeegee men are not.

Over the centuries, most have been drawn to Christianity as a result of its hope and promise of a blissful afterlife at the conclusion of this so very brief existence of terrestrial mortality. Crossan’s vision of Christianity’s allure is markedly different.

On the surface, what Crossan and the Gladdening Light Foundation are calling for sounds quite a bit like Communism, but of a milksop variety lacking the backbone to do so without reference to God and along with the hopes that the religious buzzwords will draw in the easily duped.

The ad copy reads, “…Crossan’s vision of God’s longing for a just and loving community representative of all (‘loving thy neighbor as thyself’ from Leviticus and the Gospel of Mark).” The paragraph concludes that, along with Crossan, a number of whom couldn’t otherwise get real jobs such as a “community choreographer” will speak about “their own creative aspirations struggling for transformation beyond societies that marginalize the disenfranchised.”

This may need to be translated for those that don’t speak stoned hippy. What this really means is that your rights and property as an individual mean very little or even nothing.

It is only the group that counts since that is the only thing that lives on. In a materialistic universe without a Resurrection, we pass out of existence at death (or at best make a guest appearance as a garbled electronic voice phenomena on one of those cable TV spiritism shows that took the place of the kind programming Crossan used to be featured on when A&E and the Discovery Channel attempted to appeal to the educated).

“Struggling for transformation” is the new euphemism for the old revolutionary phrase “by any means necessary”. For now, the saps at the Gladdening Light Symposium are so naive that they think you will be so dazzled by COMMUNITY choreography (must be something like a Glee cast dance number) and Cherokee story telling that you will gladly hand everything you have over to what the ideological forbearers of these sorts of activities use to call the vanguard of the proletariat.

Of course, they will skim some extra off the top for themselves. I’m sure John Dominic Crossan didn’t come cheap and at least had his first class airfare provided while no doubt working into his lectures why the rest of us ought to flagellate ourselves over the developed world’s carbon footprint.

This still doesn’t answer the most important question. What will prevent the likes of those worked up into such a froth of imminent expectancy from turning violent when they discover you aren’t quite as moved as they thought you would be by fancy footwork and the cute little parables many American Indians seem to have a knack for?

One should not try to deny that there will not be any bashing of Western civilization in general and America in particular at the symposium. This will be an automatic given.

This can be discerned from the phrase “societies that marginalize the disenfranchised”. But is a symposium where “Pilgrims concerned with the plight of the world’s people will gather for an entire weekend of vigorous discussion, enlightened teaching, and thoughtful reflection” where the attendees don’t actually travel to assist the disenfranchised but rather to the state whose very name epitomizes delightful winter comfort and luxury really going to accomplish all that much?

About the closest any of the attendees will come to a Third Worlder is the picture of the African refugees placed in the left hand corner of the advertisement announcing the symposium. What this vigorous discussion, enlightened teaching, and thoughtful reflection will likely consist of is a bunch of moderately wealthy former hippies and their young adult children dreaming up additional ways to shame you out of your own money or how to swindle it away from you at the end of the taxman’s gun if you aren’t gullible enough to go along with the obsequious self-loathing.

I Corinthians 15:19 says in regards to the Resurrection, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” I Peter 1:16 assures, “For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” Any doubting this central teaching of the Christian message while continuing to employ the imagery and rhetoric of the faith is not out to instill hope but rather the most enslaving form of tyranny.

by Frederick Meekins

Obama insists he doesn’t want our energy needs linked to unstable parts of the world. Then why did he veto the Keystone Oil Pipeline?

Obama remarked his grandparents’ generation triumphed over fascism. Yet fascism is the very economic system that he advocates. Perhaps not yet in terms of wide scale deprivation of human rights but rather in the technical sense of the means of production remaining privately owned but strictly controlled by the government.

If we are all to play by the same set of rules, then why has it taken months for the National Park Service to do anything about the Occupy beatniks laying siege to a number of parks in Washington, DC?

Why should it be portrayed as a greater tragedy when a “single mother” loses her job rather than a man with a wife that stays at home? Seems both domestic arrangements are in similar positions without income.

In calling for a single source for the unemployed to seek information on training opportunities, doesn’t that involve the federal government assuming more control over education?

Obama insists it should be illegal for students to drop out of school before they are 18. Why should this be a matter of federal interference and what will the punishment be for those leaving prior to that age?

If no country is better than any other according to multiculturalist dogma, then why should foreign students be allowed to remain here after graduation?

If women are to earn equal pay for equal work, then make them lug the same weight around the stockroom or warehouse without having to seek masculine assistance to do so.

If lightweight vests are being developed by federal researchers that can stop any bullet, will such protective garments be made available to civilians as well or do we have an obligation to be shot by law enforcement?

Interesting how it was mentioned derisively about a company that at one time only produced yachts.

If it should be impermissible for insurance companies to charge more for women’s health coverage, then why should men have to pay more for motor vehicle policies?

Obama claimed politics is not about clinging to rigid ideologies. So why is it conservatives that must always surrender their basic ideals and ideas?

Obama claimed that government ought to only do what people are unable to do for themselves. Thing of it is, given his Frau’s desire to manipulate and meddle in your dietary intake, the First Couple doesn’t think you are really capable of doing anything for yourself.

Obama wants to grant tax credits to businesses hiring veterans. Why should the military status of a business’s employees be any business of the federal government?

The best way to insure opportunities for veterans, as well as all other Americans, is for the federal government to know the least amount possible regarding the nation’s workforce.

If it doesn’t matter in the military what color or gender you are, as Obama insists, why are certain standards lowered for females seeking advancement and White males held back because of the color of their skin rather than the content of their character. If color has no bearing in the military, why are we often reminded that Colin Powell was the first Black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as if that is suppose to immunize him against all criticism and scrutiny?

Would Bob Gates have been kept on as Secretary of Defense had he been a solid conservative Republican rather than an ardent establishmentarian compromiser?

Obama admonished the American people to look at what the nation could accomplish if the people were organized along military lines. However, the purpose of the military is to defend democracy, not practice it. In a civilian state, the average person is allowed to question the decrees and decisions of leaders elected, appointed, and bureaucratic. Such bottom up scrutiny is not allowed in the military and is punished severely.

This analyst tabulated approximately 80 rounds of applause in the 2012 State of the Union Address.

by Frederick Meekins

Use to be during the Christmas season in modern America, if the individual wanted a little buzz during the holidays, they would slip a bit of something into their eggnog. Now, all you have to do to feel that surge of agitated surliness is to turn on the news or read about those turning themselves into the hind quarters of the species the Holy Family rode into Bethlehem in order to pay the assessed tax (an existential financial matter it seems fewer and fewer could possibly relate to).

If you think it is only secularists making an overall nuisance of themselves, you are in for a bigger disappointment than finding a lump of coal in your stocking Christmas morning.

For better or worse, the Internet is widespread enough that most are aware that there is nothing in the Bible compelling believers to participate in the celebration of the birth of Christ even though His miraculous arrival is documented in the pages of Scripture and that many of the trappings such as decorations and related customs now imbedded with meanings symbolizing the spiritually profound account have (to invoke a word of sectarian irony) less than kosher origins.

However, for the most part, Christians on either side of the divide have established a kind of amicable truce where for the most part about the worst that they do to their counterparts is to look down their noses at one another and snicker how peculiar or inconsistent the ones on the side of the debate opposite their own happen to be.

That has changed in one Michigan town. There, an anonymous equivalent of Dana Carvey’s Church Lady character from Saturday Night Live sent a letter to those daring to adorn their abodes with Christmas lights.

Usually, those going to such lengths as to put the criticism of such decorations into writing make a point of accusing either the decorations or the individual putting them up of being too religious. This time, the victims of such in your face busybodyism have been accused of not being religious enough.

The note insists that the homeowners ought to reevaluate their beliefs. This is because decorative lights, mistletoe, and yule logs can be traced back to pagan origins.

While nothing should be done about the doofus posting the letter since the First Amendment is pretty much a get out of jail free card for unbridled stupidity, it makes you wonder just how much authority over what goes on in homes or on our property should be granted to those insistent upon a hardline implementation of America’s Puritan heritage.

Most years, it seems many of the Christmas time outrages such as the one detailed above occur on the local level such as a school child having their constitutional religious liberties trampled upon in the attempt to forge Christmas-free school zones or as result of the directors of homeowners associations overly eager to enforce Soviet-style architectural conformity. However, it now seems the partisans of the White Witch of Narnia are attempting to assert themselves at the center stage of U.S. national government.

Irrespective of the overall decline in respect for the body brought about by the often unconscionable behavior on the part of the institution, Congress is often looked upon as the greatest deliberative body in the world in that its members are suppose to be able to speak their consciences freely to their fellow members, their particular constituencies, and the nation as a whole.

However, it now seems that an authority within the legislative branch may be attempting to curtail expression that, to most Americans not having jumped off the cliff into one variety of fanaticism or the other, would be about one of the least partisan things one could say as such sentiments are usually enunciated freely irrespective of the party affiliation of those to whom the greeting was intended. One of the perks extended to members of Congress is the so-called franking privilege where taxpayers pick up the tab for the postal correspondence between legislators and their respective constituencies.

In exchange for this benefit, the outgoing communications are required to adhere to certain criteria regarding content. For example, these items aren’t suppose to be of a campaign nature.

It seems now though that, at least in regards to the House of Representatives, wishing someone a Merry Christmas via these official dispatches has been deemed the equivalent of saying, “Vote for me because the other guy kicks puppies.” Proponents of the prohibition insist epistolary interference is necessary as today one never knows who might be offended by the platitude.

I’ll tell you what ought to offend people. It’s that these clowns don’t only get to send any mail at someone else’s expense but that they’ll get to enjoy lavish retirements while the last words from your dieing lips will likely be “Hello. Welcome to Walmart” because Social Security will be nothing but a memory.

This snide disrespect towards the religion and customs of the vast majority of the American people on the part of parts of the Legislative Branch extends beyond the House mailroom. It has even come to infiltrate the symbols this branch of government has adopted to commemorate this particular holiday. In so doing, it has attempted to manipulate the meaning of the occasion in the minds of the American people.

On the Capitol grounds, each year a stately tree is erected. As with countless other trees the world over, this one is adorned with a variety of ornaments.

By tradition, the ornaments are donated by the residents of the state from where that year’s particular tree originated. The 2011 tree came from California. So hence the theme “California Shines”.

CNSNews correspondent Terrence Jeffery observed that, while the decoration is a Christmas tree, other than a reference to Psalm 19 symbolizing that the Word of God is more precious than gold, not a single ornament on the visible part of the tree references Christmas as the celebration of Christ’s birth. There is also an ornament declaring how much the creator of that particular bulb loves President Obama, the figure many concluded worthy of adoration as a new Christ figure for no other reason than that he emerged from his mother’s womb of racially mixed pigmentation but who came up disappointingly short perhaps even more so than many other aspiring pseudo-messiahs.

When informed of this incongruity, officials from the U.S. Forest Service and the Architect of the Capitol both sheepishly feigned an unawareness as to the nature of the tree’s adornment and insisted that there is no stipulated prohibition regarding decoration content. However, that does not mean that hullabaloo surrounding the tree will remain objective and neutral.

To get students particularly to contribute ornaments to the tree effort, a special curriculum was developed. Yet if you assumed the lesson plan was about how these trees came to be replete with Christian metaphor and symbolism, you are sadly mistaken.

Instead, the Christmas tree has become merely an additional prop in the unending effort to indoctrinate students with environmentalism. According to Jefferies, the website sponsoring the decoration contest intones, “We ask that all ornaments for the Capitol Christmas Tree be made of natural or recycled materials…There is No Away with your students when they create an ornament for the Tree. Ask students where they think that trash goes when they throw it away. Work with them until they understand that trash eventually ends up in a landfill. Show students the image of a landfill.”

Can’t the students of today simply be allowed to do something for fun without being politically browbeaten? Why ought they be made to feel guilty for simply living and enjoying their lives when greater examples of waste occur at the levels fostering environmentalism not so much as a way to steward finite resources but rather as a way to control those of us deemed to be the lesser breeds of man.

If we are to lead lives of constant ecological vigilance as epitomized by the constant admonitions to buy locally grown produce, carpool to work, and these guidelines insinuating the environment will collapse if ornaments aren’t crafted from recycled material, isn’t one of the most profound examples of unnecessary excess the annual felling of a tree and the shipping of it to Washington, DC for no other reason than to titillate Congress’s sense of Yuletide vanity?

Between 1964 and 1968, the tree decorated was one planted permanently on the Capitol grounds. So in this era where environmental concerns are suppose to triumph over other concerns such as convenience and enjoyment, shouldn’t our so-called leaders set the example by planting a permanent tree rather than harvesting one at the close of each year?

The U.S. government is divided into three branches: the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. Each of these have played their own role as a social irritant in the disputes regarding Christmas.

The courts have eroded the Judeo-Christian foundations of the legal system through rulings such as those removing Nativities and Menorahs from public land and decisions curtailing religious expression in the public school system.

In this exposition, it has already been examined the role played by the legislature in fomenting Christmas discord. Readers should not expect the executive branch to go unscathed.

Regarding the other examples examined thus far, each has been about those attempting to undermine the celebration of Christmas. However, it seems the Executive Branch may have gone overboard in commemorating Christmas 2011.

During his ascent to power as well as throughout the duration of his reign, Barack Obama has consistently called for shared sacrifice on the part of all Americans in the hopes of getting the nation through challenging economic times. One would think such a plea for austerity would result in the White House erecting only one or two trees not all that different than those enjoyed by Americans in most of our homes. And the cost for such a decoration ought to come out of the Obamas’ personal pockets given that they are multimillionaires several times over and it is doubtful they have been burdened with picking up the tab for their own Washington utility bills while we let them bunk in the servants’ quarters.

However, White House decorators didn’t exactly take the spirit of the Charlie Brown Christmas special to heart with that program’s classic message that even the scrawniest tree possesses its own form of inner beauty. Not only were thirty-plus Christmas trees jammed under the White House roof but also a gingerbread house weighing nearly 500 pounds. I am sure it wasn’t wasted and was distributed for consumption once it was no longer needed for ornamental purposes.

When this incongruity of calling upon the rest of us to give a little more up for the good of the COMMUNITY while she herself wallows and frolics amongst extravagant opulence was pointed out, Michelle Obama feigned what a burden it really was dwelling in the light of such splendor. The First Lady assured the trees are really there to uplift the spirits of the struggling in America, especially the unemployed and the families of U.S. military personnel.

But try showing up unannounced (even if you belong to one of these two unassailable classes invoked to nullify and evade nearly every form of known criticism) insisting you are there to see YOUR trees and see how far you get. The only holiday greenery you’d get to see after that would be the mold on the bread in the prison cafeteria.

The First Family spent the lion’s share of their Christmas vacation in Hawaii. So few Americans get to see the White House (as well as numerous other sites around Washington, DC) thanks in part to the security procedures put into place as a result of the Jihadist Third Worlders Obama so admires in the darkest depths of his heart.

There is really little reason for the White House to be decorated at all other than for a sprig or two of evergreen in the windows or on the pillars for the tourists to take pictures of from the sidewalk. But I doubt the common American is even allowed to do that anymore given that glorified rentacops so inebriated on their trivial amount of power that they don’t enforce properly enacted laws but rather ones pulled from their doughnut-fed backsides.

Even though fewer and fewer Christians or conservatives want to admit to the existence of the culture wars anymore either out of the weariness that inevitably results from nearly constant struggle or for fear of losing any status they might have gained as a result of silent compromise, these disputes for the most part have become a permanent feature of American society. And until the triumphant return of the King so humbly born in that simple manger, these disputes surrounding the day celebrating His birth will no doubt ring out as among that conflict’s most contentious.

by Frederick Meekins

A number of the ultrapious are attempting to promote the notion that if there are no godly candidates running in an election, then the true believer should perhaps refrain from voting all together.

What we have here is a derivative of the old bait and switch tactic.

Both Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum are both deeply motivated by their respective Christian faiths.

However, in numerous Facebook status updates posted by proponents of this perspective, it is constantly reiterated that neither of these candidates is good enough.

Those advocating such a position are not being fully open about their true position.

According to this form of Christian Reconstructionism, if a candidate disagrees on so much as a single issue not even directly related to issues of soteriology or Christology, you are not only forbidden from electing them to elected office but are also to toss them into outer darkness as one would any other unbeliever.

By Frederick Meekins

A law has been enacted by the DC city council not only requiring that must most forms of rodentine vermin be captured for rerelease, but that they must also be relocated as family units.

These creatures are not a pod of whales, a herd of elephants, or a troop of gorillas.

Given that they will even eat their young and produce another liter a few months or weeks later, I doubt they form deep meaningful bonds with their offspring.

The same fanatics that don’t want rats harmed by human hands are the same ones that decimate feral cat colonies that would otherwise keep these pests in check.

It’s not like rats are on the verge of going extinct in the nation’s Capitol (and given the nature of the city it’s doubtful that they ever will).

According to one DC health official from Pakistan, the rat problem at Occupy movement shantytowns exceed those in Third World refuge camps.

Some will snap that the law applies only to pest control officials.

But for how long?

Often as in regards to other expansive laws, eventually this dictatorial regulation will be expanded to homeowners trying to handle these vermin themselves.

And speaking of plagues and such, it wouldn’t surprise me if such laws were being enacted as a way to allow some kind of new strain of the plague to develop with the hopes of systematically eliminating vast swaths of the human population.

by Frederick Meekins

Christmas is the time of year when the thoughts of most Americans grow to be at their most devout. It is increasingly the time of year that the avowed despisers of the Almighty are at their most disrespectful.

Before now, the most culturally embarrassing thing to come out of the wastelands of the Garden State was likely Snooki and her Jersey Shore compatriots. However, it now seems even their debauched escapades have been surpassed in terms of deliberately thumbing one’s nose at God.

For decades, one municipality there has draped across a main street a banner reading that horrible bit of wordplay “Keep Christ In Christmas”. As has become customary, leftist subversives have stepped forward insisting that the banner be taken down to placate one or two discombobulated by the message.

Those holding to this position contend that the feelings of a handful must be upheld at all costs for the sake of social cohesion. So if it cannot be urged to keep Christ in Christmas, are these diversitymongers going to be consistent and call for the decoupling of “Black” from “History Month”? That commemoration is even more divisive and controversial, but most Whites are too afraid to speak up as to what they really think of it.

In what could be categorized as a battle of the banners, to express their disdain regarding public displays of belief, a gaggle of atheists have hoisted an ensign emblazoned with the following: “At this season of the winter solstice, there are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only the natural world. Religion is but a myth and a superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”

Perhaps the greatest gift such deluded infidels could be given this Christmas season would be for someone to point out that their countersign is itself fraught with a number of faith-based assumptions as ultimately improvable as anything held by the most ardent adherents of traditional religious belief.

For example, can the atheist really irrefutably prove that only the natural world exists? If one wanted to get really snotty about it, couldn’t one make the argument that, since man’s knowledge is finite, God is floating a mere two inches out of range of the most powerful telescopes ever designed?

The banner hoisted by the unbelievers attempts to strike an eminently scientific pose. However, its conclusion has nothing whatsoever to do with experimental objectivity.

Furthermore, aren’t we often chided in response to the most ludicrous postulations to keep an open mind? So why is the existence of God an invalid assumption?

The banner concludes, “Religion…hardens hearts and enslaves minds.” But if nothing exists beyond physicality and materiality, on what grounds are hard hearts and enslaved minds such a negative thing?

With power and brute force being the only true values since they promote survival and existential optimization of those that wield them, why are hard hearts and enslaved minds less than optimal states of being? You see, in a materialistic context, one cannot even use the word “bad”.

During Christmas each year, St. Matthew’s-In-The-City Church in Aukland, New Zealand sponsors a billboard that the congregation considers provocative. This year, the church went with a billboard depicting the Virgin Mary holding a home pregnancy test with an expression of shock and dismay upon her face.

This work does attempt to take the viewer beyond the quaint romanticism of the Christmas story as popularly presented to better appreciate how the lives of those involved were profoundly impacted and altered. Yet this depiction is still wrong on a number of levels.

There is one thing the observant notices right out of the gate. That is just how long would you live if you drew the portrait of the founder of a particular world religion with a proclivity for loud explosions holding a home pregnancy test?

Secondly, depicting Mary with a look of befuddlement on her face ignores the facts and implications of the Biblical account. A surprised look would indicate a couple of things.

A pregnancy test suggests that the angel did not make the announcement to Mary as chronicled in Luke Chapter 1. According to the artistic depiction in question, she would not have suspected she was with child until whatever it is that prompts a woman to suspect she might be and seeks confirmation through the highlighted pharmaceutical apparatus.

If the angel did appear as detailed, the taking of a home pregnancy test would indicate that Mary did not believe the angel. And though there were no doubt times that her heart grew heavy as did that of her child in the Garden of Gethsemane, there is no indication from Holy Writ that she ever doubted the veracity of the message sent to her and the move of God upon her. In Luke 1:38, Mary says, “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said (NIV).”

Many dismiss billboards as nothing but blights upon the landscape. But if one takes a closer look, one discovers how a number of these oversized signs can highlight the ideas clamoring for prominence in public perception and a remind Christians why they must always be ready to give an answer in response to the confusion and despair that has gripped mankind in various forms throughout history.

by Frederick Meekins

Romney insists in regards to Gingrich that “zany is not what we need in a President”.

By that, one must assume Romney considers as “zany” a willingness to at least consider approaches to issues outside of the box and observing where our time fits with the overall flow of history.

To Romney, it seems how things are going now are, to use vocabulary fitting with his own patterns of speech, “just peachy”.

But one supposes there really isn’t anyway of ascertaining such since Romney also informed us that we really didn’t need an historian either.

And just think, he could have likely gotten by with it if it weren’t for those pesky kids.

Thought I would toss that in if candidates are going to start sounding like they are doing voiceovers for Scooby-do episodes from the mid 70′s.

by Frederick Meekins

It has been observed that often a picture is worth a thousand words. By this, it is meant that often a witty image can more quickly convey an idea than a written exposition.

Another truism nearly as classic insists that the only thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn anything from history.

A prime example of these working in tandem could be found on the cover of a late 2011 edition of the New Yorker Magazine. Depicted violating the U.S. southern border were migrants adorned not in sombreros but rather in what would be considered traditional Thanksgiving pilgrim garb.

Such doodling, though admittedly humorous, displays a number of questionable assumptions.

For starters, the cartoon assumes that the illegal aliens of today are the equivalent of the Pilgrim settlers.

In addressing this issue, emphasis must be placed upon ILLEGAL.

The migrants coming here today are doing so in violation of the agreed upon governing authorities of the territorial United States.

The English Separatists voyaging here aboard the Mayflower committed no such transgression. In fact, the pioneers making that trek were so eager to see law and order established that among their first acts was to promulgate the Mayflower Compact. They are not to blame if the Indians did not have an as developed sense of property as we have in our own Western tradition or that there was not as much of a need to enforce borders back then as there is today.

The naive will likely respond but, if our Founders were all immigrants, who are we to forbid entrance to those that come here after us?

If that is the case, should those making such a case (especially if they are White) be forced to not only provide shelter to any minority squatter that crawls in through an open window but also cook daily meals and provide laundered sheets for the uninvited house guests? If not, how is amnesty and assorted social welfare benefits going to those that have not earned them any different?

Those fawning all over the border violators of today will gush incessantly how moral and family oriented these blatant criminals are just like the Pilgrim settlers coming here to start a new life. Even the likes of alleged conservatives such as Dr. Dobson of Focus on the Family have at times been duped by this as evidenced by the time he got atop his Colorado high horse and proceeded to castigate Pat Buchanan regarding the syndicated columnist’s classic “The Death Of The West”.

However, just how moral are these new arrivals when one of their foremost weekend activities is bawdy drunkenness that often results in public urination? It’s doubtful many Pilgrims blared music until 3 AM given the solemnity and austerity for which the rigorous Protestants of that era were renowned.

Often leftists like to harp on the decline that befell the American Indians once the historical paths of these people groups intersected with those of the Europeans. Then let’s draw on some lessons from that episode as to why the United States of today must curtail the numbers crossing over the nation’s frontiers.

If the migrants of today are to be construed through the prism that they are the equivalent of the Pilgrim “foreparnets” (no need to set off radical feminists among fanatic grammarians), it must be pointed out that their famed work ethic wasn’t the only thing the early Puritans brought with them. They also brought a number of diseases against which the population already residing here had little immunity.

Sadly, little can be done to prevent the suffering and death from the epidemics that swept across the New World centuries ago. But with the germ theory of disease that has developed since that time, shouldn’t we honor those passing in that tragedy by clamping down on our own borders by only granting admittance to those from beyond our borders that adhere to the most rigorous of health standards?

Don’t think this is a valid concern? Then why are not only diseases once thought conquered or at least under control such as tuberculosis but even bedbugs as well making a resurgence?

Nation-states exist primarily for the benefit of those already living within the boundaries of a particular delineated territory that have a proper legal basis for being there. Once a culture loses its wherewithal to defend this particular principle, it won’t be long until it is swept into the dung heap of history.

by Frederick Meekins

For about the past two decades, those to the left side of the sociopolitical spectrum have made such a fuss over their hostility towards traditional American holidays and celebrations that the arising disputations have themselves become an anticipated aspect of the close of each year. It was claimed such festivities promote values so vile that these sentiments must be expunged from the civic calendar and the very names seldom mentioned for fear of irrevocably harming those not participating for whatever the reason.

Though not always cognizant of the epic spiritual and philosophical struggle taking place all around them, Americans can be a remarkably stubborn and independent lot. As such, a number sympathetic to the process of communalization have realized that they might be more successful in accomplishing their goals through a subdued gradualism rather than through sudden revolutionary upheaval.

The first of the remembrances of the waning year subverted by manipulative social engineers is Thanksgiving. This holiday is despised for a number of common liberal reasons.

For starters, it is argued that Thanksgiving is racist because of the hostilities that eventually erupted between Americans of European origins and the American Indians. However, such criticism fails to recognize that, at the time of the first Thanksgiving Feast, these distinct groups were at accord with one another over the blessings shared amidst hardships and struggle.

Frankly, if you have a problem over the concept of Thanksgiving, you have a serious attitude problem. No one is saying that at points that the Indians weren’t screwed over. Yet it must be remembered that some of them gave as good as they got in terms of inflicting violence upon innocent Whites not responsible for crafting or implementing policy.

So if you can’t take a few moments to express gratitude for what you do have in this country as a result of the values set in motion there at the beginning even if they weren’t adhered to in full at every step along the way, you are yourself harboring a degree of animosity bordering on racism.

The next and probably deeper reason as to why Thanksgiving is really despised despite all the lofty platitudes regarding honoring indigenous cultures and the like is that the day expresses gratitude towards God. In this era of postmodern enlightenment, such homage is to be directed more towards terrestrial sources, the COMMUNITY being foremost among them.

Usually when given the opportunity in a public forum such as the popular press to provide words of encouragement and understanding, those holding positions as professional clergy worthy of their hirer tend to draw focus to what God has done for us, how we have fallen short of the glory of God, and how He still loves us anyway with restoration available for those placing themselves under His mercy. Interestingly, pastors of Emergent Church inclinations would rather go along with the flow rather than prevent the nation’s downward slide into tyranny and desolation.

Writing in the November 2011 edition of the Hyattsville Life & Times, pastor of the town’s First Baptist Church Todd Thomason asserts that the thing he is grateful for this Thanksgiving season is not so much his God, his freedom, or even his family but rather COMMUNITY. In other words, this pastor does not value people as individuals but rather as part of the overall group.

In his analysis, Thomason in particular reflected upon a power outage following Hurricane Irene. Commenting on what took place, the pastor observes, “But I was hardly the only person offering assistance. It was a wonderful display of community at its best.”

If this represents the kind of spiritual insight available at this particular congregation, no wonder the discerning get the impression it is becoming increasingly ensnared in the clutches of communalism.

Thomason continues, “Then the lights came back on and we all went back…to our narrower, more familiar life patterns that…keep us apart.”

What this misguided cleric fails to realize is that, by its definition, community does not include everyone and by its nature is necessarily exclusive. That is not necessarily a bad thing.

In a paragraph following this lamentation, Pastor Thomason lists a number of things that he views as obstacles to social harmony. These include categories such as economic status, political affiliation, religion, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Why aren’t these valid categories around which to in part derive one’s social identity?

G.K. Chesterton is credited with saying that one should not take a fence down until you know why it was put up. Sometimes the best way to maintain amicable relations is to limit one’s interactions with those whose values are diametrically opposed to one’s own.

Rev. Thomason, on the other hand, advocates such a compulsory and contrived degree of togetherness that one ought to willingly surrender those convictions of the heart one holds most dear. For usually in those kinds of situations where the parties involved hold to conflicting perspectives, it is the party holding to the higher standard that is forced to adopt the more lax principle.

For example, in terms of religion, if this is not to be one of the categories by which we determine those from the within from those from the without, it is usually the ones that believe that faith alone in Jesus Christ without reliance upon good works is the only means of eternal salvation and not those that believe all paths are equally valid so long as our good works outweigh our evil deeds that are forced to compromise in the name of ecumenical unity. Likewise in regards to sexual orientation, when we supposedly come together setting aside our differences, in the postmodern context that does not mean the promiscuous elevate their behavior by henceforward living lives of repentant abstinence, covenantal monogamy, or at least keep their mouths shut regarding what kinky proclivities they might be into. Rather, it ends up that those espousing a traditional morality are the ones not only shamed into silence but forced to smile and applaud in affirmation under threat of punitive denunciation.

Until recently, the disputes regarding Thanksgiving have for the most part been of a more subdued or subtle nature. Some of the really great battles of the culture war have instead broken out over Christmas.

The key to winning any conflict is controlling how that conflict is expressed in terms of language and conceptualization. Those that despise Christmas and the Christ that the celebration was originally intended to honor have gone to considerable lengths to minimize the mention of the day’s very name.

Occasionally this is accomplished under threat of some kind of punishment on the part of the state. More often, this is achieved by attempting to shame these words out of common usage by crafting elaborate reasons as to why the values given lip service by petty despots such diversity, inclusion, and hyperpluralism are to be extolled at the expense of those preferred by the average person.

For example, the Hyattsville Reporter insert of the November 2011 edition of the Hyattsville Life & Times lists a number of events to be held by the municipality throughout the month of December such as the “Annual Holiday Tree Lighting”, breakfast with Santa, and a memorial toy drive. At no point in the announcement is the reader informed as to why these events are being held this time of year rather than in the middle of the summer as Christmas is never mentioned.

In the past, it was claimed in connection with this very issue that the phraseology “holiday” has to be utilized since not everyone celebrates Christmas. If so, then why is the word invoked in the column immediately to the left?

The heading reads none other than “We’re Dreaming Of A Green Christmas”. However, what follows does not so much detail what certain individuals plan to do themselves but rather what they hope to guilt trip everybody else into.

For example, in regards to gifts, it is literally insinuated “You shouldn’t have.” Instead of traditional gifts, the responsible consumer rather gives donations to charities or purchases locally made items. In other words, things nobody really wants.

As in the case of the blurb about domestic artificial and locally grown trees, the reason behind locally produced gift items has nothing to do with bolstering the U.S. economy. Rather, it is about reducing the distance for ecological reasons the miles goods and supplies are transported. But unless an artist or craftsman forges, smelts, or mixes their own supplies, does it really matter if the assorted petrochemicals are assembled down the street or across the country since they will still have to travel the exact same distance?

In “The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe”, the tyranny imposed by the White Witch upon Narnia is categorized as it being always winter but never Christmas. It seems now the next stage of villainy has developed where the White Witches of our own time and realm instead wish to use the trappings of this celebration as a tactic in the attempt to implement their assorted agendas.

by Frederick Meekins

The next worldview examined by Geisler in “Christian Apologetics” is Theism. Theism is the belief that a transcendent God created the universe as a reality distinct from Himself but which He actively sustains through both a system of natural law which He created and through divine intervention at the moments He deems such action appropriate for the accomplishment of His divine will. It is Geisler’s intention that, since the other worldviews thus far are contradictory and therefore false, Theism is the true worldview.

However, Geisler does not leave readers dangling by requiring them to embrace Theism simply for the lack of another viable alternative. Instead, Geisler provides an argument more positive in its orientation incorporating analytical and evidential components.

The argument is stated as such: “(1) Some things undeniably exist. (2) My nonexistence is possible. (3) Whatever has the possibility not to exist is currently caused to exist by another. (4) There cannot be an infinite regress of current causes of existence. (5) Therefore, a first uncaused cause of my current existence exists. (6) This uncaused cause must be infinite, unchanging, all powerful, all knowing, and all perfect. (7) This infinitely perfect being is called “God”. (8) Therefore, God exists. (9) This God who exists is identical to the God described in the Christian Scriptures. (10) Therefore, the God described in the Bible exists.”

Borrowing from Descartes’ conclusion “cogito ergo sum”, Geisler posits that, in order to deny that one exists, one must exist in order to do so. From reflections upon the nature of our own existence, one concludes that our nonexistence is possible. For even though we do not like to admit it, there was a time when the world was at least able to hobble along crippled without us in it.

We know that whatever has the possibility of not existing is currently caused to exist by another. Each of us resulted from the physical union of the genetic material of our respective parents who in turn came from the union of their parents, etc, etc. However, physical laws such as those of thermodynamics point out that this chain must have a cause that does not need to be caused. To accomplish this, the uncaused cause would need to be infinite, unchanging, all-powerful, all-knowing, and all perfect. Anything less would be unable to be this uncaused cause.

It is appropriate to call this cause “God” since it possesses the attributes traditionally assigned to divinity. Therefore, God exists.

Geisler further argues that the God affirmed by this proof is the God described in the Bible because there can only be one infinitely perfect and changeless eternal being. However, at this point in the apologetic task Geisler is careful to point out that, “This does not mean that everything the Bible claims that this God said or did, he actually said or did. Whether or not what the Bible says about this God is another question. What we conclude here is … the God described in the Bible exists; second, whatever the Bible claims for this God that is not inconsistent with his nature, it is possible that he did indeed do and say (250).”

Having reached this conceptual plateau, the apologist can rest for just a moment before he must begin the sectarian and denominational wrangling to make the case that the Christian path into fellowship with God is indeed the correct one.

by Frederick Meekins

Speaking on a Vatican proposal to restructure world finance, a Cardinal declared, “We should not be afraid to propose ideas even if they might destabilize pre-existing balances of power that prevail over the weakest.”

And does this include the position enjoyed by the Vatican as well?

Or is this yet another example of the “don’t do as I do, do as I say” mentality that prevails among globalist elites?

Before calling for the redistribution of global wealth, shouldn’t an institution calling for such divest itself of its ostentatious finery that, despite having a certain beauty, wasn’t necessarily part of the founder’s original business plan when operating in the field?

Before lecturing the rest of us how we need a goodly portion of what we have taken away in the name of the downtrodden, how about telling the downtrodden to exercise a little control over themselves by refraining from having so many children that they can’t afford?

Isn’t that the greater act of selfishness, going through with one’s own carnal enjoyment despite knowing that the life of the resultant progeny will be likely destitution?

Shouldn’t one of the world’s foremost moral authorities instead be calling for more independent creation of wealth rather than the centralized bureaucratic redistribution of such resources?

The Vatican insists such reforms are required in order to make the world economy more responsive to democracy.

So what is going to protect Vatican assets when the enemies of all forms of Christianity vote to confiscate that institution’s vast and historically varied holdings?

For the sake of sound doctrine and human liberty, patriotic and Tea Party conservatives should be no more reluctant to speak out against the Vatican’s call for the redistribution of wealth than they would be of any other politician or institution proposing a similar policy that has historically resulted in the infringement of basic civil liberties and even the significant shedding of innocent blood.

by Frederick Meekins

On the 6/26/11 edition of Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace inquired if Representative Michelle Bachman was a flake. As justification for this line of interrogation, Wallace pointed out an instance where Bachman insinuated that certain members of Congress were anti-American.

So apparently in the eyes of those considering Bachman a flake on the grounds it is now allegedly a sign of instability to expose those facts that a number of elites would rather gloss over in the hopes that the American people won’t find out about such personalities and instances.

For example, Cynthia McKinney cannot be described in any other way than anti-American. Not only did this Georgia representative appear on Libyan state television. She also praised the Qaddaffi regime.

People of good conscience can disagree as to the propriety and prudence of U.S. and NATO intervention in this north African uprising. However, what cannot be denied is that old Muammar is one of the great scumbags of the 20th and 21st centuries.

For though Al Qaeda and Qaddaffi’s regime have come to blows in this rebellion, it must be remembered that Qaddaffi was, for a lack of a better term, a superstar of world terrorism decades before any of us ever heard of Bin Laden.

If McKinney wants to position herself as a feminist, she must be asked why would she even give this regime the time of day, much less speak favorably of it. It was reported during one point of the conflict that Libyan forces were using rape as a weapon of terror and intimidation.

It could be argued that, despite her ability to grab an occasional headline such as when she tussled with Capitol Hill police when she insisted regulations regarding members of Congress showing identification didn’t apply to her, McKinney’s subversive tendencies do not necessarily epitomize the foremost personalities of America’s national legislative body.

As one of America’s most prominent families and one of the Senate’s longest serving members, Ted Kennedy was such a part of that institution that he was referred to as the lion of the world’s greatest deliberative body because of his forcefulness in speaking out on behalf of Democratic causes. Though one can be a Democrat and a loyal American (despite this combination becoming increasingly elusive), it could be questioned exactly where Ted Kennedy’s ultimate political loyalties were to be found.

For example, one cannot necessarily cast suspicion by default upon the Massachusetts Senator simply for opposing many of the policies of President Ronald Reagan. After all, a hallmark of a free society is the opportunity to express one’s disagreement with ruling authorities without fear of reprisal.

It is a shame, though, that the youngest Kennedy brother felt the propriety of befriending a regime that epitomized the denial of basic human liberty, namely the Soviet Union.

Those still not convinced of this line of argumentation might observe that, unlike Michelle Bachman, none of these figures are currently in contention for the presidential nomination of their respective party. After all, Ted Kennedy quite literally drove his off a bridge when he fled the scene of an accident in Chappaquiddick, leaving Mary Jo Kopechne to drown. As airheaded as the press might portray her to be, it is doubtful anything that absentminded is to be found in Mrs. Bachman’s track record.

To many that would oppose someone like Michelle Bachman winning the Republican nomination and possibly even the presidency of the United States, Barack Obama represents the pinnacle of what this country has to offer in terms of political leadership. However, if one is able to get over the giddiness that the President is half Black to examine him for what he really is as a human being, one cannot avoid the conclusion that Obama is actually flakier than Michelle Bachman.

A number of her detractors will insist that Michelle Bachman does not have enough experience to be President of the United States. What was it other than emerging from his mother’s birth canal as a baby of mixed pigmentation did Barack Obama do to deserve to have the reigns of the highest elected office in the land handed over to him?

Both Bachman and Obama went on professionally to become attorneys. However, Bachman used her skills to administer her family’s farm and business, adding to the productivity of the United States. Barack Obama used these kinds of skills to become a community organizer in the Alinskyite tradition, meaning he led the downtrodden not into lives of self-sufficiency but rather into dependency on the public welfare roles all for the purposes of overburdening the system in the hopes that it would totter ever closer to the brink of violent revolutionary upheaval as detailed by the Cloward & Piven Hypothesis

Both Bachman and Obama served terms in their respective state legislatures. It was in such an environment that Obama would develop the decisive leadership style he is known for by voting “present” on a variety of issues so he would not be required to take a position one way or the other. One might not that this could be construed as a violation of the injunction in the Gospels of letting your yes be yes and your nay be nay.

The wisdom of the ages holds that you are known by the company that you keep. You can determine a pretty good measure of a man by examining those he surrounds himself with especially in terms of those that he considers advisors.

For example, former White House Director Of Communications Anita Dunn publicly admitted that Chairman Mao was her favorite political philosopher. What all is admirable about one of history’s greatest mass murders?

The affinity of this administration for the most homicidal brands of Communism did not end with that one incident. A Mao ornament was hung from the White House Christmas tree.

Some will laugh this all off. However, would these same fans of Obama be as of a good humor of a presidential underling lauded the political insights of Adolf Hitler or if an Adolf Hitler ornament was spotted dangling from a White House Christmas tree? If anything, wouldn’t a Mao ornament be even more vile since his numbers surpassed the nightmarish atrocities of the Nazi regime, or, since his victims were Chinese rather than predominantly Jewish, these actions weren’t somehow quite as bad?

Granted, somewhere along life’s path we all list among our acquaintances a number of eccentrics and scoundrels. I no doubt fill that role for a number of people. However, for Obama, those closest to him make Dick Tracey’s Rogue’s Gallery look like the Smurf picnic roster in terms of their overall contempt for human liberty.

For example, regulatory advisor Cass Sustein believes those promoting what the government categorizes broadly as “conspiracy theories” should have their freedom of speech curtailed. Sustein also believes that it is the role of the government to implement policies that nudge citizens into certain behaviors. For example, if the government does not want people to rely so much on personal automobiles, increased gasoline taxes might be levied or roads constructed designed in such a way to increase traffic congestion.

Science advisor John Holdren believes sterilants should be put into the public drinking water in order to decrease fertility rates. However, Holdren is not the only Obama minion wanting to do away with what Ebenezer Scrooge dismissed as the “excess population” before this famed miser’s Yuletide change of heart. Obama Healthcare Advisor Ezekiel Emanuel thinks that those below or above a certain age range should be denied medical treatment. Basically put a bullet in granny’s head.

Obama’s Secretary of Energy believes you should be permitted to color your roof any color you want so long as it is white. And speaking of colors, Obama’s FCC appointment Mark Lloyd believes White folks should be denied FCC licenses. Obama’s State Department Legal Advisor Harol Koh believes that Sharia law should be consulted as a source for American jurisprudence.

It could be argued that flake is a designation in the eye of the beholder. Come election day, voters will have to decide what perspective they want steering the national helm.

Do they want someone thinking that at worst you are a worthless lump to be disposed of by the government as bureaucrats or at best a witless clod needing government control in every facet of your existence. Or do they prefer someone that believes that you are better at optimizing these kinds of decisions in your own life on your own.

Frederick Meekins

Though the event displays the wonder of God and His creation, no minister can hand down an edict one way or the other whether a particular earthquake other than the ones foretold in prophetic passages of Scripture such as the Book of Revelation was an act of retribution and judgment.

Countless congregations no doubt heard from the hyperpious among their number how they were disappointed the quake didn’t result in total destruction and that any not so eager for it all to end aren’t even worthy of the chewing gum stuck under the pew.

In response to the earthquake, it has been admonished that it id God and not government that saves you. But should you need to be pulled from the rubble, is it the direct hand of God doing so or, in the vast majority of instances, is it more likely to be a policeman, firefighter, members of the National Guard or a group of average concerned citizens? Taking this mindset to its natural conclusion, is it therefore wrong to express gratitude toward parents if they do something good for you? Is it wrong to verbalize one’s love to one’s spouse if language can only be used in such an exclusivist and univocal manner? Furthermore, if we are to wait on the direct divine intervention of God to determine what happens to us in such calamitous upheavals, does that mean we should not seek medical attention during times of sickness or to even prepare a meal to stave off hunger?

If earthquakes are to be viewed as God’s judgment, is one sinning if one takes steps to save one’s life during such an event? Would hyper legalists such as Christian Reconstructionists and Dominionists advocating the perspective that natural disasters are to be understood as divine retribution insist that criminal charges be filed against those their elaborate spy network discover took steps to protect themselves?

Just because your family and spouse mean less to you than promoting your image as an uberChristian is not sufficient grounds for insinuating a lack of faith on the part of those that left work after the quake to check on loved ones and property.

A number of talk radio hosts and hyperpious individuals actually have their panties in a bundle thinking the response to the earthquake and hurricane indicate America is a nation of wimps. And what if we are? So long as you don’t trample over innocent people or take any undue handouts, it really isn’t anyone’s business. If the President’s life is valuable enough as to be guarded with excessive caution, then why can’t the rest of us exercise such care and concern over our own lives?

Speaking in reference to the earthquake, a host substituting for Rush Limbaugh insisted Sarah Palin was more of a man for killing a feral ungulate on national television than most actual men. Real men don’t get their undies in a bunch if a TV station doesn’t have a bendy straw in a particular brand of bottled water.

In part of his condemnation of the response to the earthquake, the fill in for Rush Limbaugh ridiculed so-called helicopter parents who tend to watch over their progeny rather than hand them over for exploitation by assorted social institutions such as government, education, and I suppose the purveyors of intoxicating compounds such as booze and cigarettes. It most be noted that it is the parents that are the ones that are paying the bills and thus should have ultimate say as to the training of children and what risks their progeny should be permitted to take.

It’s easy, as in the case of these various radio personalities such as Rush Limbaugh, to sneer down your nose at those that may have overreacted at the prospect of losing their homes when you no doubt own several fortified compounds scattered across the United States. Are those outraged over the nation’s alleged lack of courage themselves willing to die to prove that Americans are not wimps?

Do those losing their lives and property think the calls for emergency preparation were overkill? Are these individuals any less dead because predictions regarding the intensity of Irene didn’t pan out?

Do talk show hosts encased in padded studios out of the elements and the hyper pious criticizing “excessive” hurricane preparation intend to pay the expenses incurred in the next disaster by those persuaded by such orators that living up to some arbitrary affectation of machismo is more important than survival? Of course, some of the ostentatiously pious probably salivate at the prospect of a high casualty count in order to validate their rants regarding judgment and such.

Assorted foreigners are accusing Americans of self-absorption for paying attention to the coverage of Hurricane Irene rather than the uprising in Libya. Isn’t it an even greater act of self-absorption to fly into a homicidal rampage when someone pokes fun at your religion?

A number of posts on the Washington Post website are lamenting the fact that consumers have stockpiled their pantries with “too much” food following Hurricane Irene. For starters, who are they to determine how much food is too much for your pantry? Can’t the victuals just as well sit in your cupboard as on the store shelf? What these elitists really oppose is the notion that a food supply of your own makes you less dependent on whatever agenda they may be attempting to implement.

Technically, isn’t it a form of borderline Humanism to assume that the earthquake and hurricane were primarily a response to mankind’s behavior. God may have simply been focusing on natural processes, phenomena, and cycles with humans just being in the area when these events occur as a result of where we ourselves have decided to live.

It is interesting how those arguing that the Book of Revelation is not to be taken literally are among the most insistent that the hurricane and earthquake are God’s judgment when He has not handed down any specific decree as to why these particular events took place. At least those crazed Dispensationalists can point to a text that definitively tells them which earthquakes in history are to be viewed as retributive in nature.

God sets the weather into motion. He’s bright enough to realize why you might not have been in church last week. Church authorities might have the say so whether or not there will be services. However, you are the one that has the final veto as to what transpires from your house to the church. No need to harang a congregation if most thought it more prudent to remain home following a significant storm.

I don’t see how it logically follows that if you did not go to church last week because you did not know what the conditions were from your house to the church that you somehow don’t care about learning about God. Church will still be there the following week. I thought the strength of Protestantism was suppose to be the individual following one’s own conscience in regards to unsettled matters.

If I will be declared a heretic for thinking that the quake was not necessarily God’s judgment, so be it. They can add it as another charge at my Inquisitional hearing.

by Frederick Meekins

Those that express a Christian Reconstructionist or Dominionist perspective are in an uproar that it is imperative that Christians only vote for other Christians.

Some holding to this perspective even contend that only confirmed Christians should be allowed to run for public office and if you vote for someone that isn’t, even if none are running, your soul could very well be in danger of eternal damnation.

Yet there isn’t a single Republican candidate that hasn’t assented to at least a belief in God.

What is not often deliberately spelled out is that, if a candidate does not agree with this particular subset of the broader Evangelical spectrum nearly 100% on what in Christian thought are categorized as secondary issues, one is not considered to be a Christian at all in the eyes of this perspective’s adherents.

For example, it is not enough for a conservative presidential hopeful to pledge to stand against gay marriage.

Rather, to these fanatics, one is branded an apostate if one believes Old Testament injunctions to put homosexuals to death only applied within the context of ancient Israel and were set aside by Christ Himself when the Lord intervened at the stoning of the adulterous woman.

It must be asked, though it is doubtful they will even answer and even more likely to threaten to report you to Facebook administrators when you raise concerns about these kinds of omissions in their professed ideology, just who in a Rushdoonyian regime will decide whose belief is sincere and pure enough to be granted permission to seek elected office?

The Founding Fathers intended religion in general and Christianity in particular to exert a profound influence over American culture.

However, when the faith’s institutionalized forms end up determining who may enjoy the rights and benefits of citizenship, it has become a very pillar of the kind of tyranny that it was hoped such devotion and piety would serve as a bulwark against in the first place.

by Frederick Meekins

If the Christian has no assurance that God will triumph from the way the world appears to be going, one would be better off hedging one’s bets by siding with the Devil or sitting the whole thing out all together. There are those that attempt to do just that.

Atheism is the worldview that believes that God does not exist. Those embracing this perspective tend to do so over both objective and existential reasons.

Those claiming to embrace Atheism for objective reasons often concentrate their attacks on the more scientific approaches to the existence of God such as the cosmological argument. The cosmological argument for the existence of God holds that all contingent things must have a cause and that this cause is at the minimum Aristotle’s Uncaused Cause and preferably the God of the Christian faith as expounded by Aquinas when he adapted these propositions for Christian usage. Atheists raise their hands and say hold on a moment to what they see as presumptuous conclusions.

From the Christian perspective, since God exists beyond what we perceive as time, He is sufficient or necessary to jumpstart the universe and get the temporal ball rolling. However, the Atheist has no metaphysical problem with an infinite chain of causality. Yet the laws of thermodynamics might dictate otherwise as these fundamental principles of physics hold that there is only a finite amount of energy available within a closed system.

So even though the Atheist may not have an intellectual objection to a material universe that is infinitely old, such an assumption smashes eventually against the hard wall of reality. However, seldom has that ever stopped anyone adamant about adhering to their favored delusions no matter what the evidence might say.

The next set of arguments for Atheism against belief in God center around a set of moral objections. All must confess these have crossed our minds at low points in each of our lives.

The most objective of these centers around the nature of goodness and God’s relationship to it. This argument was developed by Bertrand Russell (218).

The moral disproof for God states that good must result because either God decrees it or He does not. If good is good simply because God says it is and no one can argue against Him since He is the biggest guy on the cosmic block, good is not really good since God has willed it so arbitrarily. However, if God declares something good because of its own inherent nature or compliance with a standard beyond Himself, doesn’t that mean that the standard rather than God is ultimate? Thus, at best, God ends up being demoted to the status of Plato’s less than omnipotent demiurge.

Geisler counters, though, that this is really putting the ethical cart before the theistic horse. Geisler writes, “Rather than flowing from God’s arbitrary will, the moral law may be seen as rooted in God’s unchangeably good and loving nature, then the apparent dilemma is resolved (226).” Thus, good is something God is rather than something God decides or does. This brings to mind verses such as John 8:58 where God proclaims “Before Abraham was, I am.”

Other moral objections to the existence of God are a bit less ethereal and considerably more visceral and marked by the pain those leveling them have experienced or witnessed living here in an obviously fallen world. One such objection raised by Albert Camus in The Plague uses the backdrop of an epidemic to make the point that theism is inherently anti-humanitarian. The story posits the dichotomy that, if one assists the suffering, one is siding against God by interfering with the work of His judgment, and if one wants to be in His will and not stand in His way, one is therefore opposed to human well being (221).

Other related objections to God over the problem of evil dismiss His existence all together. A number of Atheists deny the existence of God on the grounds that, because people often suffer disproportionately to what they have done wrong, an all powerful and all good God does not exist. It is argued a God possessing these attributes would not allow evil. But because evil is rampant, that is proof that either God is not all powerful and cannot do anything about evil or that He is all powerful but does not do anything about the evil in the world because He is not good enough to care.

Though it is not always a comfort to someone that has befallen an overwhelming tragedy such as the murder of a loved one, the existence of evil does not by default disprove the existence of God. It does, however, toss the apologetic ball into the theist’s court to provide a plausible reason as to why an all-powerful and all-good God would allow suffering to exist.

Known as “theodicy”, these explanations attempt to reconcile the simultaneous existence of both God and evil. It is at this point that the theist must counter claim that the evil in the world is solvable or redeemable. The Christian especially can point out that God has indeed done something about the evil by sending His only begotten Son into the world to do something about this tragedy in the most personable of ways.

If the Atheist presses this objection too vigorously, the wily apologist ought to turn the argument back on his unbelieving compatriot. To even make the claim that God does not exist, because the world is not as good as we think it would be if He really did, is actually an indirect argument that He really does.

For to argue that things are not good enough is to assume some kind of standard exists beyond the earthly fray we find ourselves in. If this material universe was all there ever was, the highest good we could ever know is what we see around us and we’d be unable to criticize anything as the “is” automatically becomes the “ought” in such a context.

Yet there is a deep dissatisfaction that compels most human souls onward towards a better world. Romans 2:14-15 says, “…when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts…”

Secondly, Atheists claiming disbelief in God because, in their view, He has not done enough to stop or prevent suffering in the world often want to have things both ways. These theophobes not only deny God over the imperfections they see in the world but then hypothesize that, if God existed, man would not be free because human freedom would be, as Geisler puts it, “circumscribed by his divine determination (231).”

However, it is because God loves us so much and respects us as individuals that in the vast majority of instances He does not directly interfere with most actions but rather permits their outcome to propel the world onward to His ultimate plan for all of His creation. Geisler writes, “If love is persuasive but never coercive, then allowing men to freely determine their own destiny would seem to be the loving way to make them (231).”

Unfortunately, some are in such a state of rebellion against God that they take this animus out on others. Foremost among such deeds would no doubt rank murder.

Some would respond that, if God really loved the innocent, He would intervene to prevent this crime. However, as C.S. Lewis hypothesizes in The Problem Of Pain, for our own benefit God has created a world that operates in the vast majority of instances by a series of repeatable and verifiable principles.

For example, according to this moral “steady-state theory”, I am able to pick up a knife to either slice a steak or slit my neighbor’s throat for the purposes of providing man with a rational world where we will not go mad. Faced with such, the Christian must embrace Romans 8:28 as a comfort in a world that often does not seem fair to our finite minds.

By Frederick Meekins

An associate watching a home repair show informed of an episode where an owner could not get the permit to remodel unless he promised not to remove poison ivy on the property since it is classified as a “non-invasive species”.

If the Oslo tragedy will be invoked to justify how guns and those questioning immigration are a threat to social order, can’t it also be used as an example of why you shouldn’t automatically obey someone in a police uniform since they might be an impostor?

I thought European social democracies had extensive gun control regulations.

The act of violence must remain the primary focus regarding the Oslo shooting tragedy. But isn’t it creepy that a political party is running a youth camp? Are the same tolerancemongers opposed to Promisekeepers rallies and the Answers In Genesis creation science museum going to speak out against such closed recreational associations and environments?

If one wants to hold to the relativistic multiculturalism derided by the Oslo attacker, on what grounds does one then condemn this atrocity? To do so appeals to a set of universal values above culture and individual preference.

Unlike the Palestinian mobs that took to the streets in celebration of 9/11, there are no Christians dancing in glee over the Oslo shootings.

If the Oslo gunmen did not exhibit a prominent place in his worldview for Jesus other than as an outdated phenomena, on what grounds can he be categorized as a Christian Fundamentalist?

If the Oslo shooter considers himself a Knight Templar, isn’t Dan Brown actually more responsible than Sarah Palin, talk radio, or the Tea Party movement?

If Ron Paul insinuates we bring Islamists attacks on ourselves as a result of interventionist foreign policy, is he going to claim that Muslims brought the Oslo attacks upon innocent Norwegians as a result of belligerent Islamic migrations into Scandinavia?

If the Oslo terrorist killed primarily fellow Nordics, can his rampage be described as anti-Muslim? If so, when Muslims blow apart other Muslims, shouldn’t the act be considered at attack againt Christians?

Eventually, smart meters will turn off everyone’s AC in the blistering heat. Not just those of the leftist dupes that have voluntarily signed up for these programs.

If MacDonald’s intends to decrease the serving of fries and increase the serving of fruit or vegetables in Happy Meals, are they really happy meals anymore? This ought to be borderline false advertising. It is claimed this adjustment to the menu has been made in response to the demands of parents. Or is this change more out of fear of the termagant Frau Obama? If parents are really behind it, it is likely those annoying liberal ones that stuffed their faces with whatever they pleased as youngsters but demand of their own progeny a level of asceticism similar to that of a desert hermit.

According to the July 23, 2011 issue of New Scientist, future Artificial Intelligences may herd into preserves those humans not wanting to be transformed into cyborgs.

Insurance companies will be required to provide birth control materials at no cost to policy holders. If someone wants to screw, why shouldn’t the expense come out of their own pocket since doing so is a recreational luxury rather than a biological necessity.? Those wanting particular decongestants are often now having to pay for these medicines out of their own pockets. So why is a clear Eustachian tube less of a priority than a clear Fallopian tube?

Supposedly, America is to be a system of equality before the law and in terms of access to mandated benefits. So if insurers are mandated to pick up the expense for medical screenings of female parts, shouldn’t similar screenings be made for male parts as well or has our culture become so hyperfeminized that these have shrunken to such an extent as to have withered on the vine? Are men that die of prostate or testicular cancer not as dead as women that have passed away as a result of uterine or ovarian cancer?

If the Tea Party is full of Hobbits, does that make John McCain an Orcish Troll?

In the Lord of the Rings, Hobbits were portrayed as admirable characters. This species was noted for enjoying the simple pleasures of life yet was capable of summoning considerable courage when the situation called for it. In mocking them, elites such as William Kristol and John McCain are revealing the contempt they harbor for average Americans.

Chris Matthews insists it is an inappropriate outrage for anyone holder of elected office but the President to speak from behind a podium. Too bad this crazed drunk isn’t as concerned about the actual provisions and clauses of the Constitution.

Interesting how a Muslim that wanted to be excused from duty in Afghanistan as a conscientious objector had no qualms about stockpiling weapons to be used against Americans.

A Virginia family was issued a $500 fine for rescuing a woodpecker from a cat. Next time, let the cat eat the d–n bird. This is no doubt proof that the law is not about protecting animals but about destroying liberty.

If the Fish & Wildlife Service can use VA state deputies to assist in executing warrants, why can’t Arizona law enforcement ascertain the immigration status of detainees?

By Frederick Meekins

The Federal Aviation Administration has announced plans to impose fines as high as $11,000 upon those caught shining laser pointers into airplane cockpits.

Exposure to the beam emitted by such a device can result in temporary blindness, thus theoretically resulting in a major air catastrophe if a flight crew were unexpectedly incapacitated.

In a sense, such a regulation is all good and called for.
However, one can’t but help ask the question how the perpetrators of such malfeasance can be identified at such a distance.
One account categorized the proposed penalty as civil rather than criminal in nature.

As such, it should be pointed out that the threshold to impose such are often lower and occasionally do not afford those they are leveled against with the traditional procedural protections of the judicial system.

In light of the way certain regulations regarding drug possession are implemented, these enforcement operations could end up being as much about raising revenue and seizing desired property as it is about making the skies a friendlier place to fly.
For example, under certain instances of civil penalties and forfeiture, those ultimately cleared of any criminal wrong doing in regards to the drug offenses leveled against them do not necessarily have their property returned to them despite never having been convicted as a part of due process.

Often assorted agencies end up retaining the seized objects and parcels or require those such possessions should rightly revert back to to go through additional bureaucratic procedures that consume both time and resources.   This is for the purpose of pressuring the individual to relent to the seizure of their property and to further enrich the lawyers for whom the regulatory behemoth was ultimately designed to benefit.

The reasoning is that such property could potentially be used in a future crime.  And in the case of an automobile seized from the owner despite the fact that it was being driven by someone else at the time of a contraband interdiction, the standard reply goes something like, “Well, you should have been more careful as to whom you let borrow your car so we are going to auction it off now anyway .”

Thus, will fines for the shining of laser pointers into jetliner cockpits be issued against the person actually aiming the device or rather the title holder of the land from which the beam originated?

Eventually, if an area has a disproportionate number of laser pointer incidents or even the potential for a disproportionate number of laser pointer incidents, the government will step in to preemptively snatch the property in question.  What they then decide to do with the disputed parcel may have nothing whatsoever to do with enhancing air travel safety but more about rewarding contributors in real estate development.

Vigilance against the terrorist menace out to destroy the American way of life is essential.  However, perhaps even more imperative is keeping an eye on those that would use this threat to undermine life, liberty, and property.

By Frederick Meekins

Futurist Ray Kurzweil, Former Vice President Al Gore, and Bill Maher are scheduled to take part in an all-star panel discussion titled “Transcendent Man” broadcast to select theaters across America.

The forum will in part discuss the merging of man and machine for the purposes of indefinitely extending the human lifespan.

No doubt listening to Al Gore drone on and on will definitely make it feel like an eternity has elapsed.

Apparently, overcrowding isn’t the pending calamity he often makes it out to be. That is unless of course, his friends in the New World Order are planning a culling of the human herd.

Other than a profound hatred of God and a contempt for those that believe in an omnipotent creator, what qualifications does Bill Maher posses to speak as an authority figure on such an ethically complex subject?

The fool has said in his heart that there is no God.

How else does it explain that an individual can belittle the prospect of Heaven in one breath and then grasp at straws in the hopes of delaying the inevitable by either hooking oneself up to a ghastly array of machines or somehow electrochemically uploading the memories we have accumulated our few brief years upon the earth as some kind of accumulated database that might eventually animate some android duplicate of our own visage?

G.K. Chesterton is said to have quipped that the danger when we no longer believe in God is not that we won’t believe in anything but rather that we will end up believing in anything.

by Frederick Meekins

An MSNBC analyst called Obama a BLEEP. As spineless as the President is, one shouldn’t be so sure he should be categorized as anything so distinctively male.

In the sex-dominated culture of the leftist media, wouldn’t calling Obama a BLEEP actually be the highest possible compliment?

Calling Obama a male appendage is no worse than calling anyone else that.

The President is owed no more verbal deference than anybody else.

White House propagandists insist it’s inappropriate to refer to any President as a BLEEP. Are you really going to tell me no one ever giggled at the double entnde of referring to Nixon as “Tricky Dick”. Or that Clinton was only called “Slick Willy” because of his political acumen and not his philanderous nature.

If the President is this sensitive as to be profoundly disturbed by a single reporter enunciating a reaction to what was definitely not the rhetorical high point of Obama’s public career, how can this President ever hope to stand up to Al Qaeda, the Red Chinese or the Russians?

So long as you don’t threaten violence, it is not the concern of the White House how you refer to any president.

How come our ears will shatter if we hear Obama referred to as a BLEEP but there isn’t second thought about sending out more information over the airwaves regarding feminine hygiene products and male erectile dysfunction than most members of the respective opposite sexes ever cared to know?

Why on MSNBC is it deemed an outrage to refer to Obama as a “BLEEP but referring to conservatives as “teabaggers” is worthy of a hearty chuckle?

Shouldn’t Americans be more offended that Obama minions called MSNBC in an intimidating manner rather than that Halperin called Obama a BLEEP?

There is nothing in the Constitution authorizing any branch of government to determine the propriety of what names a citizen may call the President. Seems to me one of the document’s primary provisions cautions against the government from doing such a thing.

Maybe if more Americans had the courage to tell a President he’s been acting like a BLEEP, this country wouldn’t be as in bad of shape.

Since Halperin’s elocutionary faux pas, broadcasters have been tripping over themselves as to the necessity of respecting the President. How about the President respecting the American people for a change?

by Frederick Meekins

A New York Times correspondent insists that Americans living in the middle of the country have sloping foreheads. Weren’t the Nazis also obsessed with equating cranial shape with intelligence?

The Washington Post labeled Glenn Beck as a “creature” in regards to his pending rally in Israel. I thought bastions of tolerance such as the Post use to warm that such linguistic dehumanization was the first step taken by the Nazis.

Since the average American is no longer able to go much of anywhere because of gas prices, environmentalists are now set to declare against home entertainment devices. It is claimed that these machines use too much electricity. Before it’s all over with, they will probably summarily execute those of us wearing eye glasses and march everyone else out to toil in the rice paddies. It will likely fall under Frau Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign.

Arianna Huffington heralds rampaging mobs as “democratic”. When this Communist rabble comes to loot her wealth, will she still feel as cheerful?

Is it that kiddy pools represent a threat to the youth of America or is this about creating a panic to justify a new revenue source when the permits required for large pools are extended to shackle Mr. Turtle?

The Zero Seconds Initiative insists that is how long a child should be left alone in a car. While this sounds enlightened, given the way other kinds of zero tolerance policies are enforced such as those banning plastic utensils in school cafeterias, are cops & bureaucrats on powertrips going to charge parents as negligent if the trip from the front of the car to the back takes more than one second?

If natural disasters in America are the result of the U.S. government backing a two state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as certain theologians insist, why do these tragedies strike the heartland of the country where the common folk have virtually no sway over foreign policy rather than a particular building in Foggy Bottom. You’d think an omnipotent God would have better aim.

CNN asked presidential candidates Coke or Pepsi. There will be neither when we are all living in FEMA slave camps.

Bob Ehrlich operatives that utilized robocallers to deceive Maryland Democrats into not voting could get decades in prison. Black Panthers that actually threatened at polling places those not voting for Obama were set free and likely continued to receive any assortment of public assistance programs.

Miracle Grow has been linked to pot cultivation. So will consumers be required to have their photo ID’s verified to purchase the chemical the way we are in regards to nasal decongestants?

New Yorkers should be more concerned about Commissar Bloomberg curtailing basic gastronomical liberties such salt levels rather than how Sarah Palin decides to eat a slice of pizza.

If parents are not allowed to spank children according to one Texas judge, then why should bailiffs or deputies be allowed to use physical force if a litigant in that particular judge’s courtroom gets out of line?

Since most stadiums employ facial recognition recording technology, the Immigration Service should deport every single person that booed the American team in favor of the Mexicans at the soccer match in LA.

If the USA isn’t good enough to cheer for in a soccer match, don’t leech off America economically (especially if that entails some kind of public assistance handout).

The 2011 Smithsonian Folk Life Festival is highlighting the nation of Columbia. Will this include authentic narcoterrorist kidnapping reenactments?

China ranked in a survey as the world’s happiest nation. Anyone saying that they felt otherwise has no doubt been “dealt with accordingly”.

by Frederick Meekins