The Left Prays After San Bernardino Shooting, To Its God Of Government - by Mollie Hemmingway

The theodicy of federal government seeks to defend the goodness of government in the face of tragedy. So just as some religious groups might blame a weather event on insufficient fealty to the relevant god, some progressives blame — before we actually know what is even going on in a given tragedy — insufficient fealty, sacrifice, and offerings to the relevant god of federal government. And so they explain that the god of good government would have been able to take care of us if only we’d given it sufficient power to do so. In this case, that power is gun control. Progressives tend to believe that government — if made to have sufficient size, scope, and proper management over the affairs of man — will fix or at least seriously mitigate the problem of evil in the world. Conservatives tend to believe that human nature is flawed and inclined toward bad things. Conservatives believe that government, being made up of humans, will also be inclined toward bad things, and therefore it must be restrained and not given a dangerous amount of power. They tend to see greater success for fixing problems in society with voluntary associations and institutions, such as families and community and organizations. Progressives tend to believe that man can be perfected, and perfected through government action. These almost cartoonish denunciations of prayer we saw yesterday, combined with the implicit praises of government action, are best understood as a sort of primitive religious reaction to the problem that growth of the state still hasn’t fixed the problem of evil in the world….

Now, many gun control advocates said they weren’t disparaging prayer — however much that was exactly what was going on — so much as calling for other action. It’s good to remember that prayer is action. But whether your God is God or the FBI (or whatever agency you hope will seize up to 300 million guns in the country), it’s also true that there is no conflict between praying to God, who, as the Founders put it, creates us and endows us with certain inalienable rights, and other action. That could be working within a community to change people’s hearts and minds from violent ideology. It could be working with your neighbors to help them avoid choices that lead to dangerous social isolation. It could be teaching Sunday School or otherwise inculcating children in the faith. It could be managing your family well. It could be gun control or efforts to help families with adult members with mental illness. It could really be any number of things.

There is no conflict between praying to God and other action.

What’s wise is to understand that there are many options for working to improve society. If, like so many journalists, your particular religious denomination is the one that’s fundamentalist on gun control, fine. But understand that not everyone is part of your religious sect or shares your  assumptions.

The bizarre outpouring from journalists of anti-Christian sentiment yesterday was not becoming. And some of it was downright alarming. But consider that many journalists didn’t really understand what they were doing. They are bad at understanding the religious practices of much of the country, of course. But they’re not particularly good at understanding their own theodicy and its attendant rites and rituals either.

Read more at:    The Left Prays After San Bernardino Shooting, To Its God Of Government

Just a quick note on the best way to search this site - from daCrush

While I try to categorize the articles by topic, it is approximate at best. 
I use this archive myself to find a matching article to an ongoing discussion I might have with someone. The best way I have found is a Key Word search on the site. It is located in the upper left corner of your view.
Try it - works for me like a charm! - CL

Aiding and abetting the Abortion-Industrial Complex - by Dr. Joel McDurmon (American Vision)

This week we have seen two examples in which the compromised, mushy, politically correct, hamstrung, “loving,” pro-life movement is exposed for the ineffective, wasteful, counterproductive money pit that it is.

No sooner was it revealed that Focus on the Family has published a virtual how-to brochure for the abortion pill than we are now treated to a Christianity Today authoress telling us that calling abortion “murder” is “unchristlike.”

With pro-life activism like this, who needs Planned Parenthood?

Earlier this week the link to the abortion pill brochure made its rounds on social media. The pamphlet is entitled “The Abortion Pill” and gives information on what happens during an abortion and steps to take to avoid making it “less safe.” Wouldn’t want “less safe” abortions now, would we? It is endorsed by Focus on the Family and hosted on its website.

Buried near the end of the brochure, the author does suggest the reader should “think about the life within you” and states that the abortion pill will result in the “death of the baby.” Good. But why bury this truth beneath pages of guidelines for abortion to be as safe as possible?

It’s an evangelical technique: let’s pretend to speak the language of the lost, pretend to be one of them, and then bashfully squeeze in a tiny bit of our own worldview at the end hoping they just might, please, please, consider the Gospel if we’re nice enough, compassionate enough, not confrontational, and do not appear too confident about our convictions. (This last part will kill any deal among this crowd: if you wield your convictions confidently, you automatically fail the first tip-toe-steps of the psychobabble-ballet. You will be deemed a flathead and Neanderthal, and if you speak intellectually, a patriarchalistic meanie.)

Ironically, the second example before us also took the step which is normally edited out of such literature. On the second page, it acknowledges that abortion “ends a precious human life.” One has to wonder, then, why she demands we not call it what it is: murder. She writes:

[R]eferring to abortion providers as “abortion ghouls,” clinic volunteers and workers as “deathscorts” or “bloodworkers,” and women who obtain abortions as “murderers” is worse than inflammatory: it is unchristlike. Calling legal abortion “murder” when it isn’t (it is, to our shame, lawful) is to say what isn’t true, at least in a civil (not church) context.

Why the disconnect? Because she’s following the same method as the brochure above: smothering truth beneath clouds and pillows of emotional softness and niceness.

For this reason, she brings forth the proverb: “The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing” (Prov. 12:18).

Would that she had read the verses before and after that one:

He who speaks truth tells what is right,
But a false witness, deceit. . . .
Truthful lips will be established forever,
But a lying tongue is only for a moment.
Deceit is in the heart of those who devise evil,
But counselors of peace have joy. . . .
Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord,
But those who deal faithfully are His delight (Prov. 12:17–22).

Those who speak the truth must tell what is right . . . not engage in watered-down deceits to make the truth more palatable to sin or those who love sin. Those who lie in such a way are involved in an abomination to the Lord.

It is just such a deceit to engage in the subterfuge that because abortion is technically legal according to American civil law, to call it “murder” is “to say what isn’t true.”

Well, technically it was “legal” to round up and kill Jews in Nazi Germany, too, eh? Guess Christians should have sat by and not called it “murder,” eh?

Oops. My bad. That’s exactly what mushy evangelical-types did do. Some things never change.

One wonders exactly what that which “ends a precious human life” should be called, after all.

I call it murder, because by God’s definition and God’s law, it is murder. To have recourse to the laws of men to the contrary in order to remove the stigma of the label is to obey men rather than God, and to refuse to confess His name before men. To call the clear declaration of God’s standards “unchristlike” is quite frankly to call evil good and good evil.

The insistence that we must suppress the clear dictates of God’s Word under some feministic emotional standard of “love” is subversion of the divinely-revealed objective with the fallen-human subjective. This satanic exchange is being made in the name of “the temperance of love.” Behold, the angel of light so comes.

Those who look upon these instances as some sort of departure from once solid organizations need not be so surprised. Some, for example, have noted that the move by Focus on the Family occurred only after Dobson left. This has sure gone downhill!

But actually, the seeds of such sell-out rebellion were sowed by Dobson himself. I confirmed my suspicions speaking with some veterans of the hard-core pro-life movement. My source assured me they spotted Dobson’s compromises with the cult of self-esteem and humanistic Behaviorism from very early on. His focus on emotional neediness and self-esteem have ruined more culture and feminized more Christians than the ministry has helped. (Read a good critique here.)

Since the general evangelical world long since abandoned God’s Law as a standard for all of life, they have filled the void with various types of humanism. Christian colleges—even purportedly conservative Reformed ones—churn out feminists faster than anything. They flood families, schools, churches, missions, parachurch ministries, publishing houses, and the general public—where they fit in.

What we see in these examples today is the fruit of a couple of generations of sell-outs to humanism. What once started as allegiance to Sola Scriptura and biblical worldview in the days of Carl F. Henry was quickly exposed as lip-service, and is now in full subversion mode. God’s Law is now declared unchristlike. God’s law is now cherry-picked to decree the declaration of God’s Law in its fullness off-limits. For these, Autonomy has trumped Theonomy.

In doing so, these gelatinous half-truthers are doing nothing—as their forefatheresses have done nothing for over 40 years—to stop abortion. They have instead all but sanctioned it by holding the hard-core at bay with their insistence on being so nice and “loving.” They aid and abet the abortion-industrial complex with their mushiness. Yet they want your donations because they’re so nice, “loving,” they love “life,” and they have made such great progress.

In doing so, they have no idea what love is. Love is defined by the dictates of God’s law. Any time we suppress or avoid that truth out of alleged love, we do not love, we lie. It is time that Christians today valued true Bible-based love over the lies institutionalized by the previous generation.

I can’t think of anything the pro-life movement needs to do more than openly declare that abortion is murder. It needs to be a loud, unified declaration. Christians need to acknowledge what the stakes really are. We should establish that point, and move forward from it only.

Aiding and abetting the Abortion-Industrial Complex

The US is supporting ISIS - (Do we have a rogue government in power?)

The US is supporting ISIS

The document trail, the lame explanations, the reports of CIA involvement, the behavior of allies, the declassified documents, and the eyewitness evidence in Iraq all tell the same story:

On the front lines of the battle against the Islamic State, suspicion of the United States runs deep. Iraqi fighters say they have all seen the videos purportedly showing U.S. helicopters airdropping weapons to the militants, and many claim they have friends and relatives who have witnessed similar instances of collusion.

Ordinary people also have seen the videos, heard the stories and reached the same conclusion — one that might seem absurd to Americans but is widely believed among Iraqis — that the United States is supporting the Islamic State for a variety of pernicious reasons that have to do with asserting U.S. control over Iraq, the wider Middle East and, perhaps, its oil.

“It is not in doubt,” said Mustafa Saadi, who says his friend saw U.S. helicopters delivering bottled water to Islamic State positions. He is a commander in one of the Shiite militias that last month helped push the militants out of the oil refinery near Baiji in northern Iraq alongside the Iraqi army.

The Islamic State is “almost finished,” he said. “They are weak. If only America would stop supporting them, we could defeat them in days.”

While U.S. military officials "say the charges are too far-fetched to merit a response", what is much more far-fetched is the idea that they cannot bomb the Islamic State's oil facilities for fear of endangering the Desert Snail Darter or whatever their lame excuses are.

The US outrage over Russia's intervention in Syria, as well as the Turkish ambush of the Russian plane, are clearly indicative of the fact that the Obama administration is allied with ISIS and wants it to succeed in taking out Assad. After all, we know US forces are not welcome there by either the Syrian government or the Iraqi government.

Before you dismiss the idea that the US is actually pro-ISIS out of hand, keep in mind that the US government also bombed the Serbs in order to keep them from defeating the Muslims in Bosnia. Or, you know, read the relevant Defense Intelligence Agency document.

“THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY [WHO] SUPPORT THE [SYRIAN] OPPOSITION… THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME…”.

The DIA report, formerly classified “SECRET//NOFORN” and dated August 12, 2012, was circulated widely among various government agencies, including CENTCOM, the CIA, FBI, DHS, NGA, State Dept., and many others.

The document shows that as early as 2012, U.S. intelligence predicted the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), but instead of clearly delineating the group as an enemy, the report envisions the terror group as a U.S. strategic asset.

Considering that the mujahideen in Afghanistan were originally envisioned and armed as a U.S. strategic asset against the Soviet Union, it should not be terribly surprising to learn that the Islamic State is a similar arrangement.

Vox Popoli: The US is supporting ISIS

10 Resources For Hack-Proofing Your Mind

In these times of growing confusion and delusion, we must learn all we can about how to keep our minds free from coercive manipulation.

People who intimidate others for speaking freely are getting a lot of ink on today’s front pages. Somewhere on one end of the spectrum are college students who agitate to fire professors and administrators who aren’t enough in line with politically correct agendas. Then, way on the other end of the spectrum, the death cult called ISIS executes those it perceives to be out of line with its agenda.

Obviously, it runs a wide gamut. But if we’re honest, we can see that these cases represent different stages along the same well-worn path of tyranny. The dynamics are similar wherever there is obstruction of the free exchange of ideas. They include: using silencing tactics to achieve conformity of thought; blind rage and intolerance towards any ideas that diverge from the agenda; and all-out efforts to eliminate perceived enemies.

But the visible actors who are shutting down freedom seem not to be free agents themselves. They act more like recruits whose behavior has been conditioned through political correctness, an effective behavior modification tool. It’s been entrenched for decades in the West, in education, media, and pop culture. With terrorists, we know that indoctrination is far more direct.

Either way, messing with your mind—or coercive thought reform—is a common denominator of any agenda that depends on shutting down real conversation. Whatever the grievance du jour, it serves mostly as a distraction from the main goal: collectivist conformity that ends up empowering an elite. Campuses are prime recruiting grounds.

Indeed, there seems to be a lot of mind-hacking going on. One example is how elites from the divestment movement recruit and mobilize college students to agitate for them and shut down free speech. The National Association of Scholars just put out a report on that, which is cited in Joy Pullmann’s insightful Federalist article, “The Anti-Speech Agitator’s Handbook.” Can we at least start trying to understand how mind-hacking works on us?.........

Ten Resources to Jumpstart Conversations about Mind-Rape Prevention

Why not start a mind-rape prevention book club? Students who wish to retain their sanity on PC-conditioned campuses should be especially interested in exploring this. But everyone should try to learn how to fight mob psychology either on their own, or, ideally, in conversations with others.

Below is a very select list of books and other materials that can help to inoculate the mind against mass delusion. None of the titles are recent. That’s partly because I’ve found the greatest clarity and respect for independent thought in material written decades ago.

http://thefederalist.com/2015/12/01/10-resources-for-hack-proofing-your-mind/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&utm_campaign=20a9e899c4-RSS_The_Federalist_Daily_Updates_w_Transom&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-20a9e899c4-83795033

2015: The Last Christmas in America

The game of enabling more debt by lowering interest rates and loosening lending standards is coming to an end.

If we define Christmas as consumer spending going up while earnings are going down, 2015 will be the last Christmas in America for a long time to come. In broad brush, Christmas (along with all other consumer spending) has been funded by financialization, i.e. debt and leverage, not by increased earnings.

The primary financial trick that's propped up the "recovery" for seven years is piling more debt on stagnating incomes. How does this magic work? Lower interest rates.

In a healthy economy, households earn more money (after adjusting for inflation, a.k.a. loss of purchasing power), and the increased earnings enable households to save, spend and borrow more.

In an unhealthy, doomed-to-implode economy, earnings are declining, and central banks enable more borrowing by lowering interest rates to zero and loosening lending standards so anyone who can fog a mirror can buy a new pickup truck with a subprime auto loan.

The problem with financialization is that it eventually runs out of oxygen. As earnings decline, eventually there's no more income to support more debt. And once debt stops expanding, the economy doesn't just stagnate, it implodes, because the entire ramshackle con game of financialization requires a steady increase in debt and leverage to keep from crashing.

The trickery of substituting financialization for earned income--the trickery that fueled the last seven years of "recovery"--is exhausted.

The incomes of even the most educated workers are going nowhere, while the earnings of the bottom 90% are sliding:

Wages as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) have been declining for decades. Note the diminishing returns on financialization and asset bubbles that always bust: wages blip up in the bubble and then crash to new lows when the bubble bursts:

Read more at: Of Two Minds - 2015: The Last Christmas in America

Grow up or get out!

Grow up or get out!

A Christian university president's message to SJWs:

This past week, I actually had a student come forward after a university chapel service and complain because he felt “victimized” by a sermon on the topic of 1 Corinthians 13. It appears that this young scholar felt offended because a homily on love made him feel bad for not showing love. In his mind, the speaker was wrong for making him, and his peers, feel uncomfortable.

I’m not making this up. Our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic. Any time their feelings are hurt, they are the victims. Anyone who dares challenge them and, thus, makes them “feel bad” about themselves, is a “hater,” a “bigot,” an “oppressor,” and a “victimizer.”

I have a message for this young man and all others who care to listen. That feeling of discomfort you have after listening to a sermon is called a conscience. An altar call is supposed to make you feel bad. It is supposed to make you feel guilty. The goal of many a good sermon is to get you to confess your sins—not coddle you in your selfishness. The primary objective of the Church and the Christian faith is your confession, not your self-actualization.

So here’s my advice:

If you want the chaplain to tell you you’re a victim rather than tell you that you need virtue, this may not be the university you’re looking for. If you want to complain about a sermon that makes you feel less than loving for not showing love, this might be the wrong place.

If you’re more interested in playing the “hater” card than you are in confessing your own hate; if you want to arrogantly lecture, rather than humbly learn; if you don’t want to feel guilt in your soul when you are guilty of sin; if you want to be enabled rather than confronted, there are many universities across the land (in Missouri and elsewhere) that will give you exactly what you want, but Oklahoma Wesleyan isn’t one of them.

You will notice that unlike Missouri president Tim Wolfe, who resigned in the face of SJW pressure, Mr. Piper will be keeping his job. About the only thing that could possibly have been better is if he announced that he had expelled the SJW student who complained. And talk about sticking the rhetorical landing!

"This is not a day care. This is a university!"

As the brand name universities succumb to social justice convergence, the Christian universities will rise in both educational value and social cachet. Which is why they need to set policies in place to defeat SJW entryism now. 

Vox Popoli: Grow up or get out!