david_sancheezy Published January 26, 2021 442,594 ViewsSUBSCRIBESHARE2869 rumbles
Rumble — Linwood finally drops the Epstein to Justice Roberts kids sale audio tape.Also death of other scotus
The End Game
By: Judd Garrett
Objectivity is the Objective
January 31, 2021(emphasis added)
Joe Biden recently signed an executive order stopping the construction the Keystone XL pipeline in the name of preventing climate change. Biden has also rejoined the Paris Climate accords, and is embracing the “Green New Deal”. It is estimated that over 70,000 jobs will be lost, directly or indirectly, as a result of the Keystone pipeline shutdown. Climate Czar John Kerry dismissed the complaints of oil and gas workers who have been laid off by saying, “go make solar panels”, or ‘let them eat cake’, it’s the same thing. We are told this is all an attempt to lower our carbon footprint in an effort to reduce climate change.
In defense of the Paris accords, John Kerry said that “almost 90 percent of all of the planet’s global emissions come from outside of US borders.” He added, “We could go to zero (carbon emissions) tomorrow and the problem (climate change) isn’t solved.” According to analysis, “the energy regulations agreed to in Paris… would destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs, harm American manufacturing, and destroy $2.5 trillion in gross domestic product by the year 2035.” And for what? According to John Kerry, nothing.
Kerry also added that the U.S. and China are the world’s largest emitters, together accounting for nearly half of global emissions. Therefore, China is responsible for at least 35% of worldwide carbon emissions. China emits more carbon than the United States and the EU combined. Yet, China does not have to start reducing emissions for another decade, and they do not have to reach the goals of Paris until at least ten years after the United States and the EU. It doesn’t appear that the Paris Climate treaty cares much about carbon emissions.
Likewise, the politicians who are the most fervent climate change activists, do not conduct their lives as if they care about carbon emissions. Al Gore lives in two mansions whose carbon footprint is more than 20 times that of the average American household. John Kerry flew around the world in private jets last year, emitting 116 metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere. The average citizen emits 4.6 metric tons for their transportation each year. So, if the most strident climate change activists don’t live their lives like there is climate change then why should we believe them? This isn’t about the climate. It’s about power. It’s about control. Just as the politicians who imposed the strictest lockdowns during Covid, were the ones who continually violated their own restrictions. It was not about Covid. It was about power and control.
How do we know this isn’t about climate? Their policy toward fracking. The Biden administration is shutting down fracking on public lands. It makes no sense. The natural gas produced through fracking is carbon neutral and is the main reason why in the last four years the United States not only became energy independent, but we led the world in reducing carbon emissions. That reduction was a result of fracking, not the Paris treaty. We should be expanding fracking, not reducing it. They want to do away with fracking because they can’t control it. Fracking means independence, and they want dependence and control.
Kerry has also said about climate, “All food needs to be climate-smart. Keep in mind, though, that agriculture is about 10% of total GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions versus 27% for transportation, 27% for power production. See what’s happening. These politicians want to control how you eat, how you drive, and the overall energy production.
The ultimate goal of Marxism is for the state to control the “means of production”. If they control the power, the energy supply, they will control the means of production. If they control the means of production, they can pick the winners and the losers based on each company’s politics, providing energy supply to the companies and people who support them and restrict the energy supply to those who do not. That’s their end game. Power. And energy is the root of power. These people want to control the power supply, so they can control you.
It is not just the energy supply; they have a multi-faceted approach to their take-over of the country and your lives. They control the information we get. They give preferential status and protections to tech companies, like Twitter, Facebook, Amazon that promote their politics and censor political dissent. But when free speech companies like Parler and Gab who espouse different politics, rise up through the free market, gaining millions of subscribers per day, they have to be shut down, for your own good, for your own protection. We were told that tech billionaires censoring the speech of conservative voices is allowed in the “free market” until true free speech companies start winning in the free market, and then the government has to step in and control the “free market”. You don’t have control over energy, the means of production, and now you don’t have control over what information you hear.
It doesn’t stop there. Joe Biden recently signed an executive order expanding the Affordable Care Act without a vote in congress. Many of those in power are not simply content with expanding the ACA, they want “Medicare for all”. Why? Hundreds of millions of people have private health insurance they like. They have doctors they prefer. So, why do these politicians so desperately need to take more than half the citizens out of private health insurance and from the doctors they prefer, and put them into the Government plan? The answer. Control. If they control your healthcare, they control your body, and they control your life.They will claim that “Medicare for all” is about providing healthcare for the poor, the people who can’t afford it. Wasn’t that what Medicaid was for? To give poor people healthcare. So, now these politicians are telling us that because Medicaid, a government-run health program for poor people, failed, everyone else should be forced into another, bigger, more expansive government-run health program. This is exactly what shouldn’t be done. If a program fails on a smaller scale, it should never be expanded to larger groups.
But the politicians who want “Medicare for all” do not care about poor people getting healthcare. They care about controlling you. Poor people’s healthcare is the trojan horse used to take over your healthcare, take over your lives by controlling your healthcare decisions.
Government wants to control every aspect of your life, so they can rig the system. Government controls the money supply and the financial markets through their “regulators”. This week when a group of independent retail day traders, “Wall Street Bets” through Reddit pulled a “short squeeze” which beat the Hedge Fund short-sellers at their own game, and they had to be stopped. “Wall Street Bets” broke no laws, they violated no regulations. They simply used foresight and intelligence to win in the stock market for a couple of days at the levels that billionaire hedge funds do regularly, and they had to be shut down. And they were. They were blocked from trading causing many of these retail traders to lose much of their legally won gains.
We are told that the “free market” is paramount, but only when the free market is rigged and manipulated for the hedge fund billionaire political donors sticking it to the little guy, but the moment that the little guy sees the market manipulation of the billionaire hedge funds and starts sticking it to them for the tune of $20 billion, they shut down trading. The hundreds of millions of political donations by Wall Street billionaires paid off handsomely this week. I don’t remember them shutting down trading to prevent market volatility in 2008 when the market went from 18,000 to 4,000 in a couple of days, and the average American lost most of their pensions and retirement. No one argued that there should be intervention into the market to stop that volatility, mainly because the hedge funds already got their money out, the average citizens were the ones who went down with the ship.
The end game is power; control the energy supply, control the means of production, control the dissemination of information, control your healthcare, control the money and financial markets. Government power will always be used against the powerless, for the benefit of the powerful. And it appears that this already corrupt system was injected with a powerful steroid on January 20, 2021.
Why Are Progressives So Illiberal?
Progressives adopted identity politics and rejected class considerations because solidarity with elite minorities excuses them from concern for, or experience with, the middle classes of all races.
January 31, 2021
One common theme in the abject madness and tragedies of the past 12 months is that progressive ideology now permeates almost all of our major institutions—even as the majority of Americans resist the leftist agenda. Its reach resembles the manner in which the pre-Renaissance church had absorbed the economic, cultural, social, artistic, and political life of Europe, or perhaps how Islamic doctrine was the foundation for all public and private life under the Ottoman Sultanate—or even how all Russian institutions of the 1930s exuded tenets of Soviet Marxism.Pan-progressivismTo be a Silicon Valley executive, a prominent Wall Street player, the head of a prestigious publishing house, a university president, a network or PBS anchor, a major Hollywood actress, a retired general or admiral on a corporate board, or an NBA superstar requires either progressive fides or careful suppression of all political affinities.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, 98 percent of Big Tech political donations went to Democrats in 2020. Censorship and deplatforming on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media companies is decidedly one-way. When Mark Zuckerberg and others in Silicon Valley donate $500 million to help officials “get out the vote” in particular precincts, it is not to help candidates of both parties.
Google calibrates the order of its search results with a progressive, not a conservative, bent. Grandees from the Clinton or Obama Administration find sinecures in Silicon Valley, not Republicans or conservatives.
The $4-5 trillion market-capitalized Big Tech cartels, run by self-described progressives, aimed to extinguish conservative brands like Parler. Ironically, they now apply ideological force multipliers to the very strategies and tactics of 19th-century robber-baron trusts and monopolies. Poor Jack Dorsey has never been able to explain why Twitter deplatforms and cancels conservatives for the same supposed uncouthness that leftists routinely employ.
Silicon Valley apparently does not believe in either the letter or the spirit of the First Amendment. It exercises a monopoly over the public airwaves and resists regulations and antitrust legislation of the sort that liberals once championed to break up trusts in the late 19th and early 20th century. As payback, it assumes that Democrats don’t see Big Tech in the same manner that they claim to see Big Pharma in their rants against it.
Wall Street donated markedly in favor of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden in their respective presidential races. Whereas conservative administrations and congressional majorities are seen as natural supporters of free-market capitalism, their Democratic opponents, not long ago, were not—and thus drew special investor attention and support from Wall Street realists.
The insurrectionist GameStop stock debacle revealed how “liberals” on Wall Street reacted when a less connected group of investors sought to do what Wall Street grandees routinely do to others: ambush and swarm a vulnerable company’s stock in unison either to buy or sell it en masse and thus to profit from predictable, artificially huge fluctuations in the price.
When small investors at Reddit drove the pedestrian GameStop price up to well over a hundred times its worth, forcing big Wall Street investment companies to lose billions of dollars, progressives on Wall Street and the business media cried foul. They compared the Reddit buyers to the mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6.
One subtext was: Why would nobodies dare question the mega-profit making monopolies of the Wall Street establishments? The point that neither the Reddit day-traders nor the hedge-fund connivers were necessarily healthy for investment was completely lost.
Surveys of “diverse” university faculty show overwhelming left-wing support, reified by asymmetrical contributions of 95-1 to Democratic candidates. The dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. to make race incidental to our characters no longer exists on campuses. Appearance is now essential. More ironic, class considerations are mostly ignored in favor of identity politics. “Equity” applies to race, not class. The general education curricula are one-sided and mostly focused on deductive -studies courses, and in particular race/class/gender zealotry that is anti-Enlightenment in the sense that predetermined conclusions are established and selected evidence is assembled to prove them.
We are also currently witnessing the greatest assault on free speech and expression, and due process, in the last 70 years. And the challenges to the First and Fifth Amendments are centered on college campuses, where non-progressive speakers are disinvited, shouted down, and occasionally roughed up for their supposedly reactionary views—and by those who have little fear of punishment.
Students charged with “sexual harassment” or “assault” are routinely denied the right to face their accusers, cross-examine witnesses, or bring in counter-evidence. They usually find redress for their suspensions or expulsions only in the courts. What was thematic in the Duke Lacrosse fiasco and the University of Virginia sorority rape hoax was the absence of any real individual punishment for those who promulgated the myths.
Indeed in these cases, many argued that false allegations in effect were not so important in comparison to bringing attention to supposedly systemic racism and sexism. In Jussie Smollett fashion, what did not happen at least drew attention to what could have happened and thus was valuable. It was as if those who did not commit any actual crime had still committed a thought crime.
Almost all media surveys of the last four years reflect a clear journalistic bias against conservatives in general. Harvard’s liberal Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy famously reported slanted coverage against Trump and his supporters among major television and news outlets at near astronomical rates, in some cases exhibiting over 90 percent negative bias during Trump’s first few months in office. Liberal editors can now be routinely fired or forced to retire from major progressives newspapers if they are not seen as sufficiently woke.
No major journalist or reporter has been reprimanded for promoting the fictional “Russian collusion” hoax—and certainly not in the manner the media has called for punishment, backlisting, and deplatforming for any who championed “stop the steal” protests over the November 2020 elections. The CNN Newsroom put their hands up and chanted “hands up, don’t shoot”—a myth surrounding the Michael Brown Ferguson shooting that was thoroughly refuted. Infamous now is the CNN reporter’s characterization of arsonist flames shooting up in the background of a BLM/Antifa riot as a “largely peaceful” demonstration. BLM, of course, has been nominated for a Nobel “Peace” Prize. After the summer rioting, one could better cite Tacitus’s Calgacus, “Where they make a desert, they call it peace”.
A George W. Bush or Donald Trump press conference was often a free-for-all, blood-in-the-water feeding frenzy. A Barack Obama or Joe Biden version devolves into banalities about pets, fashion, and food. The fusion media credo is why embarrass a progressive government and thus put millions and the planet itself at risk?
Andrew Cuomo’s policies of sending COVID-19 patients into rest homes led to thousands of unnecessary deaths. Still, the media gave him an Emmy award for his self-inflated and bombastic press conferences, many of which were little more than unhinged rants against the Trump Administration.
Anthony Fauci’s initial pronouncements about the origins of the COVID-19 virus, its risks and severity, travel bans, masks, herd immunity, vaccination rollout dates—and almost everything about the pandemic—were wildly off. Yet he was canonized by the media due to his wink-and-nod assurances that he was the medical adult in the Trump Administration room.
It would be difficult for a prominently conservative actor or actress to win an Oscar these days, or to produce a major conservative-themed film. Bankable actors/directors/producers like Clint Eastwood or Mel Gibson operate as mavericks, whose films’ huge profits win them some exemption. But they came into prominence and power 30 years ago during a different age. And they will likely have no immediate successors.
Ars gratis doctrinae is the new Hollywood and it will continue until it bottoms out in financial nihilism. When such ideological spasms contort a society, the second-rate emerges most prominently as the loudest accusers of the Salem Witches—as if correct zeal can reboot careers stalled in mediocrity. Hollywood’s mediocre celebrities from Alec Baldwin to Noah Cyrus have sought attention for their careers by voicing sensational racist, homophobic, and misogynist slurs—on the correct assumption their attention-grabbing left-wing fides prevents career cancellation.
Hollywood, we learn, has been selecting some actors on the basis of lighter skin color to accommodate racist Beijing’s demands to distribute widely their films in the enormous Chinese market. Yet note well that Hollywood has recently created racial quotas for particular Oscar categories, even as it reverses its racial obsessions to punish rather than empower people of color on the prompt of Chinese paymasters.
Ditto the political warping in professional sports. Endorsements, media face time, and cultural resonance often hinge on athletes either being woke—or entirely politically somnolent. A few stars may exist as known conservatives, but again they are the rare exceptions. For most athletes, it is wisest to keep mum and either support, condone, or ignore the Black Lives Matter rituals of taking a knee, not standing for the flag, or ritually denouncing conservative politicians. Those who are offended and turn the channel can be replaced by far more new viewers in China, who appreciate such criticism directed at the proper target.
Again, what is common to all the tentacles of this progressive octopus is illiberalism. Of course, progressivism, dating back to late 19th-century advocacy for “updating” the Constitution, always smiled upon authoritarianism. It promoted the “science” of eugenics and forced race-based sterilization and the messianic idea that enlightened elites can use the increased powers of government to manage better the personal lives of its subjects (enslaved to religious dogma or mired in ignorance), according to supposed pure reason and humanistic intent.
Many progressives professed early admiration for the supposed efficiency of Benito Mussolini’s public works programs spurred on by his Depression-era fascism, and his enlistment of a self-described expert class to implement by fiat what was necessary for “progress.”
Even contemporary progressives have voiced admiration for the communist Chinese ability to override “obstructionists” to create mass transit, high-density urban living, and solar power. Early on in the pandemic Bill Gates defended China’s conduct surrounding the COVID-19 disaster. Suggesting the virus did not originate in a “wet” market was “conspiratorial”; travel bans were “racist” and “xenophobic.” In contrast, had SARS-CoV-2 possibly escaped by accident from a Russian lab, in our hysterias we might have been on the brink of war.
So it is understandable that progressivism can end up as an enemy of the First Amendment and intellectual diversity to bulldoze impediments to needed progress. To save us, sometimes leftists must become advocates of monopolies and cartels, of censorship, or of the militarization of our capital.
The new Left sorts, rewards and punishes people by their race. And some progressives are the most likely appeasers of a racist and authoritarian Chinese government and advocates of Trotskyizing our past through iconoclasm, erasing, renaming, and canceling out. San Francisco’s school board recently voted to rename over 40 schools, largely due to the pressure of a few poorly educated teachers who claimed on the basis of half-baked Wikipedia research that icons such as Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Washington were unfit for such recognition. Absolute Power for Absolute GoodThere are various explanations for unprogressive progressivism. None are necessarily mutually exclusive. Much of the latest totalitarianism is simple hula-hoop groupthink, a fad, or even a wise career move.
Loud progressivism has become for some professionals, an insurance policy—or perhaps a deterrent high wall to ensure the mob bypasses one for easier prey elsewhere. Were Hunter Biden and his family grifting cartel not loud liberals and connected to Joe Biden, they all might have ended up like Jack Abramoff.
More commonly, progressivism offers the elite, the rich, and the well-connected Medieval penance, a vicarious way to alleviate their transitory guilt over privileges such as a $20,000 ice cream freezer or a carbon-spewing Gulfstream by abstract self-indictment of the very system that they have mastered so well.
Progressives also believe in natural hierarchies. They see themselves as an elite certified by their degrees, their resumes, and their correct ideologies, our version of Platonic Guardians, practitioners of the “noble lie” to do us good. In its condescending modern form, the creed is devoted to expanding the administrative state, and the expert class that runs it, and revolves in and out from its government hierarchies to privileged counterparts in the corporate and academic world.
Progressivism patronizes the poor and champions them at a distance, but despises the middle class, the traditionally hated bourgeoise without the romance of the distant impoverished or the taste and culture of the rich. The venom explains the wide array of epithets that Obama, Clinton, and Biden have so casually employed—clingers, deplorables, irredeemables, dregs, ugly folk, chumps, and so on.
“Occupy Wall Street” was prepped by the media as a romance. The Tea Party was derided as Klan-like. The rioters who stormed the Capitol were rightly dubbed lawbreakers; those who besieged and torched a Minneapolis federal courthouse were romanticized or contextualized.
Abstract humanitarian progressives assume that their superior intelligence and training properly should exempt them from the bothersome ramifications of their own ideologies. They promote high taxes and mock material indulgences. But some have made a science out of tax evasion and embrace the tasteful good life and its material attractions. They prefer private schooling and Ivy League education for their offspring while opposing charter schools for others.
There is no dichotomy in insisting on more race-based admissions and yet calling a dean or provost to help leverage a now tougher admission for one’s gifted daughter. Sometimes the liberal Hollywood celebrity effort to get offspring stamped with the proper university credentials becomes felonious. Walls are retrograde but can be tastefully integrated into a gated estate. They like static class differences and likely resent the middle class for its supposedly grasping effort to become rich—like themselves.
The working classes can always make solar panels, the billionaire John Kerry tells those thousands whom his boss had just thrown out of work by the cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline. It is as if the Yale man was back in the old days when the multimillionaire and promoter of higher taxes moved his yacht to avoid sales and excise taxes and lectured JC students, “You study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”
There is no such thing as “dark” money or the pernicious role of cash in warping politics when Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, and Mark Zuckerberg, both through direct donations and through various PACs and foundations—channeled nearly $1 billion to left-wing candidates, activists, and political groups throughout the 2020 campaign year.
In sum, the new tribal progressivism is the career ideology foremost of the wealthy and elite—a truth that many skeptical poor and middle-class minorities are now so often pilloried for pointing out.
Progressives have adopted identity politics and rejected class considerations, largely because solidarity with elite minorities of similar tastes and politics excuses them from any concrete concern for, or experience with, the middle classes of all races. The Left finally proved right in its boilerplate warning that the “plutocracy” and the “special interests” run America: “If you can’t beat them, outdo them.”
Self-righteous progressives believe they put up with and suffer on behalf of us—and thus their irrational fury and hate for the irredeemables and conservative minorities spring from being utterly unappreciated by clueless serfs who should properly worship their betters.
The Bourbon King
By: Judd Garrett
Objectivity is the Objective
February 3, 2021
In 1814, after the French Revolution and 25 years in exile, the Bourbon Kings, Louis XVIII and Charles X, were restored to power in France. Upon reclaiming the throne, they immediately overestimated their own popularity and underestimated the memory of the French people, and ruled with a very pro-Royalist agenda that was directly opposed to the will and sympathies of the French people that led to the Revolution in the first place. Observing all of this, French diplomat Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand said about the Bourbon Kings, “They learned nothing and forgotten nothing.”
With the impeachment of President Donald Trump moving forward, and Joe Biden signing over 40 executive orders designed to move our country further and further to the left, it appears that the people now in power in Washington, DC, those who had been in “exile” for the last 4 years, are a lot like the Bourbon Kings, they’ve “learned nothing and forgotten nothing.”
They have failed to learn why Donald Trump was elected President in the first place. It is not because the Republican party became a cult of personality. In fact, most Trump voters cringe at his over-the-top personality and endless tweets. And it is not because most Trump voters are racists and sexists and misogynists. Most of the 74 million people who voted for Trump are good, hard-working Americans who love their fellow man regardless of race or gender. And they are not “deplorables”, “clinging to their guns and bibles”, either.
Trump voters love Trump simply because Trump loves them. And that was the first time in a long time that many of these voters could say that about a Presidential candidate. When Trump said, “put America first”, he was saying put Americans first, put the hardworking middle-class Americans first, the forgotten Americans who only show up on Presidential political radar screens for about 6 months every 4 years, only to be ignored, condescended to or even chided by the very politicians they voted for, until the next election cycle.
The Trump voters are average hard-working Americans who simply want an opportunity to work and support their families. They want a chance at the American dream by having a President who cares about them and puts their country’s interests first. Trump was not going to sell out their jobs, their livelihoods, their existence to foreign interests and corporate billionaires. He was not going to disrespect or discredit their belief system, their values, and lifestyles in favor of the elitist pseudo-moralistic self-aggrandizing “woke” culture.
The Trump voter had grown tired of the elite political class that had a two-tiered system of governance, one for them, and one for the masses. Many of these voters rejected Obamacare because it was forced on them through Congress, yet at the same time, the very politicians who forced it on them exempted themselves from the law. This was no different from the Democrat politicians during the pandemic who imposed draconian lockdowns on the people that they did not follow themselves, who shutdown public schools while sending their own kids to private schools, who shutdown restaurants to the public, and then were caught hobnobbing in an elite restaurant in the same city. The 74 million Trump voters had become tired of the elitist political class and were drawn to the exact opposite.
The Democrats, like the Bourbon Kings, are back in power after being in exile, but it is evident that they have learned nothing from why they were sent into exile 4 years ago. One of Joe Biden’s initial executive orders, canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, will put over 70,000 hard-working Americans out of work. And in his elitist ‘let them eat cake’ moment, John Kerry told the displaced oil and gas workers to “go build solar panels”. Biden signed executive orders opening the southern border and giving amnesty to 20 million illegal immigrants which will only drive down wages and drive-up unemployment, a gift to his big business billionaire donors, and a slap in the face to many of the middle-class hard-working Americans.
Biden is reversing many of Trump’s policies and hard-line positions with China which will allow China to re-engage in their unfair trade practices, currency manipulation, and intellectual property theft while making it easier for big business to ship manufacturing overseas costing thousands more middle-class jobs. Joe Biden has learned nothing. Regardless of his rhetoric, it is apparent that he cares more about big business’ interests and the globalist agenda than he cares about the average working American and America interests. This was the exact position of the Obama administration for 8 years, and that is what drove millions of voters to Trump.
These new “Bourbon Kings” likewise have forgotten nothing. They plan on never forgetting the Trump voters. They are creating lists of Trump supporters and using their power and influence to prevent them from holding jobs in the future. They are also setting up a “domestic terrorist” task force and labeling anyone who voted for or supported Donald Trump as a “domestic terrorist”, so they can weaponize the FBI to go after Trump supporters on legal grounds. This will only end badly, for every citizen, and the country as a whole.
Joe Biden and the Democrats, like the Bourbon Kings, have “learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” Rather than learning the lesson of Donald Trump’s election in 2016, he and his administration are ignoring 74 million Americans and going back to the very same policies that drove voters to Trump 4 years ago. And like the original Bourbon Kings who were eventually overthrown in 1830 during the July Revolution, Joe Biden and the Democrat’s inability to learn from the events of the last four years will eventually lead to their ultimate downfall. We can only hope that their downfall will not take the rest of the country with them.
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| Can America Escape the “Cycle of Sin?” by Edward J. Barr February 2, 2021 (Edward J. Barr) – If you think the United States is in freefall, you are correct. As much as we like to view America as the beacon of freedom shining on the hill, we as a people have succumbed to the same temptations that have afflicted all peoples from the beginning. Ever since the Fall of our first parents, mankind has been caught in the grip of concupiscence. The unremitting desire for pleasure, power and possessions is a fact of human nature that challenges all of us. It also challenges a people, even those “set apart.” The Old Testament is replete with examples of the chosen people rebelling against God, despite the providence He provided them. We see the start of this ingratitude in the Garden, when the Devil tempted Adam and Eve with the promise of being like God. Of course, they were, being made in His image and likeness. Yet the sin of pride always tempts man to ask for more, to see in created things the happiness only the creator can provide. The book of Judges gives particular focus to the “Cycle of Sin” or “Cycle of Disobedience” that is repeated throughout salvation history. The Cycle begins from the corruption that idolatry brings to a rebellious people. “And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord” (Judges 3:7-31).” This evil is usually some form of the sin of idolatry. Sin punishes itself, and rebellion is soon followed by punishment, be it war or judgement. “So, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he sold them to their enemies.” (Judges 2:14). Even if a nation is or believes it is divinely graced, judgement may befall it. In salvation history punishment or judgement generally motivated the Israelites to repent. Repentance is the critical element of the cycle of disobedience. It occurs only when a people possess the humility to turn back to God. “But when the people of Israel cried out to the Lord…” (Judges 3:15). God’s mercy follows, as the repentant people receive deliverance from their travails. Before the anointing of King Saul, this deliverance entailed appointing a “judge.” “The Lord raised up a deliverer for the people of Israel.” (Judges 3:9). The Lord was the true deliverer, a fact Israel frequently forgot. Alas, even the creation of the Kingdom of Israel didn’t stop the cycle. In fact, the desire for a King was a repudiation of the requirement to put trust in God alone. For the Lord told Samuel, the last judge, that it was not him that the people were rejecting when they asked for a king, but God himself (1 Samuel 10:19). The people wanted to put their trust in things of this world, to be like others. The united kingdom of Israel and Judah started out positive, had some bumps, then some glory, but it didn’t last long. Whenever a people reject God, there are consequences. So, where does the United States in 2021 stand in relation to the cycle of sin, punishment, repentance, and deliverance?Not many would dispute that the United States today is in the midst of a steep moral decline. Though America was never perfect, it has never been so Godless. Today our society accepts as “normal” euthanasia, suicide, abortion, homosexuality, gender “fluidity,” and even infanticide is considered. These are all dipped in a putrid bath of materialism and selfishness sanctioned through a perverted view of freedom. Our idols may be different from those of the ancient Israelites, yet we may have exceeded them in our rejection of God. According to the Pew Research Religious Landscape Study, the number of American’s claiming no religious affiliation continues to grow. Those claiming to be atheists and agnostics is growing. Almost a quarter of the population claims no religion affiliation at all. Many who claim a belief in God have created God in their own image (see Christian Smith on Moralistic Therapeutic Deism). We have emphatically checked the box on the first step in the Cycle of Disobedience, sin.While many who ascribe to the above perversions may disagree, we have certainly checked the second box of the Cycle, punishment. According to multiple studies, drug overdoses, suicide, and substance abuse have had grown in sync with the movement away from God (see the Commonwealth Fund Study). Despite overwhelming evidence of the benefits of the traditional two-parent family headed by a mother and a father, American society endorses and promotes pathologies that guarantee despair. The denigration of fathers has been particularly devastating. Among the numerous snapshots of the punishment brought by modernity’s attack on the family and especially fathers, consider: 90% of the youth in the United States who decide to run away from home, or become homeless for any reason, originally come from a fatherless home; 63% of youth suicides involve a child who was living in a fatherless home when they made their final decision; 85% of all children which exhibit some type of a behavioral disorder come from a fatherless home (U.S Department of Justice), and 85% of youth who are currently in prison grew up in a fatherless home (Texas Department of Corrections). Have Americans started to recognize the despair they have created by being disobedient to God? Are we on the path to repentance? Has the era of punishment ended? Hardly. Rather than focus on the Almighty, Americans are focusing more on themselves. We seek salvation among men, be it specific men and woman in the political sphere, or among the creations of man, in material goods. Above all we continue to seek salvation in ourselves (remember Barack Obama’s “we are the ones we were waiting for?”). Even mainstream (read “anti-Christian) publications such as Newsweek recognize the growing narcissism in American culture. Social media plays a major role in the selfishness syndrome, yet it is but one of many temptations that modern society offers. Looking to government is futile. We must work to better our society, but our salvation will come only through our Savior. Our second president, John Adams, was aware of this fact. He noted that “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Today, Americans are moving away from “moral and religious” toward “other.” Is it any wonder the Constitution is marginalized?There is a foreboding convergence of complete elimination of faith in God and a secular syncretism of Christianity in American life. It normalizes evil amidst a demonic chant of “who are we to judge.” It views sacraments as “nice to have” reminders of faith rather than the normative means of salvation. We see this being played out in the Church. Some bishops have embraced a secular Christian culture in the misguided hope that not antagonizing Caesar will cause him to welcome Christ back into the public square. They don’t recognize the stakes of the spiritual battle that is roiling the souls of our countrymen. The enemy has been winning. Priests champion inherent evils and self-identified Catholic politicians who make a mockery of the faith are supported by bishops. Why would the evil one compromise when he is winning? We need to pray for our shepherds and remind them that Satan must be crushed, not appeased. The punishment will certainly continue. We have the most anti-Christian, anti-Catholic and amoral government in the history of the Republic. The quest for truth as been replaced by the quest for power – at any cost. Be prepared for a growing, more overt persecution of faithful Catholics and institutions that support Catholic teaching. That the perpetrators are frequently self-identified Catholics or supported by Catholics shows the demonic influence at work. Persecution won’t end soon. The current trends in American show that we as a people are far from embracing the key virtue that leads to repentance, humility. Without humility, the prodigal son would never have turned back toward his father, who in turned offered a joyful and heartfelt deliverance to his son. Turning to the Father is the only way we can acquire such humility. It is recognizing the reality of the spiritual realm, a critical reality lost in our culture. Paul teaches “look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:18) This is the only path for the redemption of the Republic, a conversion both of individuals and the culture. It will only succeed by obedience to the teachings of Christ and His Church. Unfortunately, that is the path less taken by Americans today. Edward J Barr is a Catechist, an attorney, an intelligence officer, a Marine, and a university faculty member. He just completed his studies for a Master’s degree in theology from the Augustine Institute. Mr. Barr is a contributing writer for the Roma Locuta Est blog (www.RomaLocutaEst.com)Edward J. Barr | February 2, 2021 at 6:49 pm | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: https://wp.me/p7YMML-6yc |
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| Dumbing Down People by Judie Brown  ShareTweetForwardRead online and share: https://all.org/dumbing-down-people/Americans are not stupid, but many of them do believe whatever they think the facts are. That is a very dangerous reality, especially today, because those facts are often pure fiction. And yes, that is called propaganda. We who defend the innocent have seen far too much of it.In the case of vulnerable human beings, believing what one is told by the elite can result in untold deaths. If you ever considered the millions of babies who have died because of their fabricated facts, you would know of what I speak.Yet, in the midst of all the propaganda, a shining light continues to brighten the otherwise darkened culture. Of course I am talking about honest science. And no matter what you may think of it, science does provide actual facts and the research to support it. According to this science—known as the Carnegie Stages of Human Development—the preborn child is a human being from his first second of life, even though pro-death puppets would suggest differently.To be sure, we owe a debt of gratitude to scientists and human embryologists, but we also owe the same appreciation to those who bring the science down to a level where even a young child can understand and learn from it that indeed a human being is a human being for as long as he or she exists.Contend Projects is one such educational organization. Its new children’s book has provoked an admission of fact over fiction from someone who is actually not against abortion.Barbara Kay recently wrote an article for the Canadian news outlet National Post in which she says: The authors of When You Became You are co-founders of Contend Projects, which describes itself as a “secular, nonpartisan, science education nonprofit with the mission to spread accurate information and awareness about the biological science of human embryology and when a human being begins to exist.” The site is chock-a-block with useful science-based material.I sympathize with their mission. Not because I am ideologically pro-life (I’m not). Only that I favor informed consent in all ethics-related decisions. And deplore any systemic dumbing down of such decisions’ gravity through pedagogical misdirection.This statement from someone in the professional media who is not a pro-life advocate should give everyone cause to pause and think about what it means when anyone actually tells the verifiable truth. Clearly it has an impact, as the leaders of Contend Projects have recently shown us.Kay’s words enlighten us to the fact that much of what the public is being told is intentionally misleading. The media do not intend to educate but rather to obfuscate. And that, my friends, is always dangerous.It leads to all manner of horrific scenarios, like the doctor in Michigan who could have fathered thousands of children through artificial methods of reproduction.It leads to Catholics in high places misleading the faithful. For example, in the leadership of the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences telling the world that they “support the theory that Biden’s election is complementary to Pope Francis’ election because both of them give a sort of new breath to Catholic social teaching.”While each scenario is overtly outrageous, neither is out of place in a world where dumbing folks down with false information seems to be the recipe of the day.The latest breakthrough that comes with Barbara Kay’s admission that truth trumps fiction reminds me of St. John Paul II’s description of Satanas “‘a liar and the father of lies.’” The pontiff goes on to say that Satan, “by deceiving man . . . leads him to projects of sin and death, making them appear as goals and fruits of life.”That is precisely what the propagandists—these slaves to deceit—have done for years in their hellish program of dumbing down the people. |
Happy Days Are Here Againfor Beijing and Moscow
By: Roger L Simon
The Epoch Times
February 2, 2021
You could almost say Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi was wasting his time when—speaking at a virtual event hosted by the National Committee on U.S. China relations— he warned “The United States should stop its interference in the affairs of Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang.”
The Obama-Biden-Harris administration (let’s call it what it really is) wouldn’t dream of such a thing.
As long as the CCP and Russia allow those now in control of the United States to fly their virtue-signaling LGBTQ flags over American embassies, Xi and Putin have nothing to worry about.
You probably can add Ayatollah Khamenei into the bargain, although he might have a little problem with the flag.
President Biden let them know how things would be straight out of the box when he shut down the Keystone pipeline forever.
For Putin this was Christmas in January, letting him know that evil Trump policy of an energy independent, even exporting, United States was a thing of the past and that his most treasured commodity—oil—would go up in value.
At the same time, the Chinese would reap the benefit of the excess Canadian supply while seeing their American adversary weakened, its negotiating position diminished.
Fracking, too, is clearly an endangered species. Not surprisingly, crude just reached a one-year high.
All this for no discernible improvement in carbon levels, in fact, likely the reverse. The oil will now be shipped via railroad cars to the Louisiana refineries, a far more risky process than the underground pipeline that has been undergoing (and passing) the most stringent environmental inspections for years.
I wonder how soon the United States will be buying oil from China and Russia.
Xi and Putin (Trump’s supposed collaborator—as if) must find this all quite amusing, especially since our new administration is now considering rejoining that most reactionary of all United Nations dumb shows, the U.N. Human Rights Council, an organization that is dominated by dictatorial regimes and could have been invented by Orwell.
But why should that be surprising? This same administration and its rabid supporters are all for censorship and for limiting free speech, not just via Big Tech but practically across the board.
Many advocate reprogramming Trump supporters. Nothing could be more communist Chinese than that!
Imagine these same crypto-fascists complaining about the CCP’s treatment of Uyghurs, Tibetans, Christians, Falun Gong, or whoever. The entire Politburo would be rolling their eyes. (Didn’t I say Yang Jiechi’s speech was irrelevant?)
And what of Taiwan? Given their current behavior, would the new administration do anything beyond the mildest lip-service to defend this vibrant, democratic island nation?
You can bet the final takeover is now under consideration in the darker corridors of the Forbidden City.
Which leads me to something more personal. Almost thirteen months ago I was a member of a small delegation that was invited to Taiwan to observe their presidential election. It was exciting and a great deal of fun.
While we were there, we were privileged to meet with a group of the brave democracy demonstrators from Hong Kong who had flown down. Among them was a particularly intelligent (they all were) and charismatic young man—Michael CK Pang— who had just been elected to their legislative council.
His knowledge of global politics was impressive, and he made me feel optimistic (then anyway) about the future of Hong Kong and possibly of China. A few of us more or less bonded with him.
Less than a month ago, another member of our delegation texted me this article from the Hong Kong Free Press — 53 Hong Kong democrats, activists arrested under security law over 2020 legislative primaries.
Our friend was among them. Who knows if and when he will ever get out.
Trump and Mike Pompeo were known for trying to help pro-democracy people in distress. Will Biden and his secretary of state Antony Blinken provide the same support for democracy activists like our friend Michael? Perhaps if he were transgendered.
Parsing Senatorial Bloviation:Rebuffing A Politician’s Explanatory Rhetoric Word by Word
by Pem Schaeffer
February 2, 2021
1 A.T.*pemster4062@yahoo.com
Introduction to What Follows:
On Tuesday, January 26th, Senator Rand Paul made a motion on the Senate Floor to effectively end Senate plans to conduct an Impeachment Trial of former President Donald Trump. His effort was defeated by a vote of 55-45, with 5 Republicans voting with the opposition to follow through with the trial.
One of the dissenting Republicans was my Republican Senator; my other Senator is a so-called Independent who caucuses with the Democrats. Irritated by her vote, I contacted state Staff whom I know and asked that the Senator provide an explicit explanation of why she opposed the move, and to please omit the usual “happy talk” common to letters of response.
I received a response the next day, and after reading it, I began to analyze more carefully each point in the justification. I concluded that virtually none were worthy or convincing and that they amounted to nothing more than the evasive language for which career politicians and their staffs are so well qualified. Making either side of an issue sound like the obvious choice without exposing the deep political calculations behind the decision.I set about responding in detail. Below is the combination of the Senator’s words, unindented, with selected highlighting by me. My personal response is indented and italicized, and inserted following the original text to which it responds.
Herewith the net result:========================================================Response to Senator Susan Collins Memo Explaining Vote Against Senator Rand Paul Motion on Senate Taking Up Impeachment Trial of Trump on 26 January 2021Opening Comment: I find Senator Collins’ explanation unsatisfactory, astonishing, and a fine example of the “my hands are clean” political rhetoric typical of high-level staffers in Congress. It smacks of after the fact rationalization; I find it hard to accept there was time to prepare such a “well-researched” analysis between the time Senator Paul made the motion and when Senator Collins had to make her vote after reviewing the memo. On the other hand, maybe the Senator had decided where she would come down on the subject before hearing any comments on the floor from her colleagues, and the backup white-paper was “a memo to file” for constituent and memoir purposes.
As I read the material, images came to mind of Rep. Adam Schiff repeatedly standing before cameras assuring us that “the evidence of Trump’s collusion with Russia is right there in plain view,” without ever revealing what the evidence “in plain view” is. And his words of insinuation: “it may very well be that” …… which infers that “it may very well not be that.” In other words, pure stagecraft without a shred of evidentiary value.And the utter lack of credible evidence that Trump fomented “insurrection.” In fact, reports are surfacing that the FBI has uncovered plans that predate the President’s speech.
Hypotheticals like “could” and “would” are routinely sustained as “drawing conclusions” in a court setting when objected to.
Pem and Bob,Here is a reply from Senator Collins-
Thank you for contacting me about the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump and my decision to support allowing the trial to begin. While the Constitution does not explicitly express Congress’ jurisdiction when the subject of impeachment is a former president, or any former officer, its text and purpose, as well as Senate precedent, support the conclusion that the trial should proceed.
“Not explicitly,” but you read it into it anyway. You are engaging in legal distraction, finding words not there, as in “penumbras.” The Constitution is what it says it is, not what you want to find hidden between the lines. Either it explicitly says something, or it doesn’t. Stating that impeachment relates to Presidents and other officers is pretty explicit to those of us who don’t look for ways to imagine hidden meanings or ways to stretch it to support situational interests. Washington is rife with those who will swear a meaning not self-evident is there anyway, in keeping with the attached cornucopia. And “Senate precedent” is a self-rationalizing phrase, which carries no Constitutional weight. “Supporting a conclusion” is a subjective term, to say the least.
I begin my analysis with the text of the Constitution itself. The Constitution provides two possible penalties for conviction. The first is removal, a consequence that flows directly from conviction by the Senate. The second penalty – which requires a separate consideration after conviction – is disqualification from holding office again. If the Senate were unable to consider disqualification after a president’s term had expired, the second penalty could lose its meaning. If the Senate dismissed this action based on a lack of jurisdiction, it would create a precedent under which a future president could avoid disqualification simply by waiting for the closing days of his term to engage in misconduct.
“Could lose its meaning?” Its meaning is its meaning, Senator! Applying the Constitution is your sworn duty, not twisting it to avoid some imagined loss of meaning! If and would are irrelevant to the situation at hand. What about you violating your promise to the Maine electorate? The second penalty consideration is dependent on qualification to consider the first, which is limited to the President, which he is not. Your own words say separate consideration AFTER conviction on the first, which clearly cannot happen because the “Defendant” is not President, and therefore not subject to impeachment.
In fact, Senate precedent already supports the notion that a trial can continue after someone has left office. Most notably, in 1876, the Senate tried William Belknap, a corrupt Secretary of War who had quickly resigned in a failed effort to escape impeachment. During the trial, former Secretary Belknap asserted that the Senate lacked jurisdiction over his case because he was a private citizen. A majority of Senators voted to reject his argument, concluding that Belknap was subject “to trial by impeachment for acts done as Secretary of War, notwithstanding his resignation of said office before he was impeached.”
What does “Senate precedent” have to do with anything? Your responsibility is to honor the Constitution, not to look for various and sundry ways to escape its clear meaning. Harking back to 1876 to make a point is a bit of a stretch, one would think. Do you take an oath to honor Senate precedent or the Constitution? Senate precedents include some shameful past history; Senator Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy come to mind, along with many others less notable. Regardless, a senate vote does not define Constitutionality. I have no doubt a search by the CRS could dig up scores of Senate votes that violated the Constitution.
The majority of scholars who have looked at this question agree that the Senate has jurisdiction over former officers. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, “most scholars who have closely examined [this] question have concluded that Congress has authority to extend the impeachment process to officials who are no longer in office.” A recent letter signed by more than 150 constitutional scholars across the ideological spectrum concludes: “the Constitution’s text and structure, history, and precedent make clear that Congress’s impeachment power permits it to impeach, try, convict, and disqualify former officers, including former presidents.”
“Majority of scholars” and “most scholars” and “more than 150 constitutional scholars” are rhetorical gambits to provide air cover for the desired outcome. If I had your resources, I could find scholars, whose qualifications are as open to interpretation as your unnamed ones, who could take the opposite view and overwhelm yours. These are silly proclamations with no substance; such fluff is unworthy of you.
A final point that leads me to believe the Senate has no choice but to accept jurisdiction in this matter is that the House impeached President Trump before his term expired, for acts committed while in office. Richard Fallon, a Constitutional Law professor at Harvard Law School, explained, “What the House did was indisputably within its jurisdiction when the House did it. Since the Senate has the authority to disqualify President Trump from future office-holding if it convicts, then going ahead with the trial would also be within its jurisdiction.”
What “acts while committed in office?” That is a claim not in evidence. No evidence was presented! What testimony was taken? Are you so gullible as to act on what others with a clear and present political agenda have claimed, but with no substantiation? Does due process mean nothing? And are you in the habit of abiding by anything a Harvard Law Professor says, or only those things that confirm a decision you had already made? I imagine Congress has perfected the fine art of Professor shopping by subject area and ideology, along with thousands of others who stand ready to famously give their learned opinion. Saying something is “indisputable” is hogwash. That’s what courts are for: to settle disputes.
While some claim that a Senate trial, in this case, would open the door to impeachments of any former officeholder, the question before the Senate was only about whether the Senate has jurisdiction over officials who have been impeached before leaving office. Because that was the case here, I believed that the Senate must accept jurisdiction over this impeachment trial and therefore I voted to allow the trial to move forward.
In summary, your argument is based entirely on rhetorical gambits of “could” and “would” and unidentified “scholars” of unknown origins in this question, whose reasoning cannot be challenged. Could and would speculate on future possibilities that are not in evidence.
In summary, I find your response specious, lacking in rigor, and constructed as typical after the fact rationale with the help of paid staff who specialize in such discourse.I believe that the Senate must not accept jurisdiction, but the vote is yours, and I shall always remember that you poll scholars to guide you in your votes.
In closing, I’m left to wonder what scholars those who voted for Senator Rand’s motion used in their deliberations. Since there were 45 of them, I’m assuming that their vast army of scholars outnumbered yours by a large measure. Wouldn’t it make a fine exhibition to have a “March of the Scholarly Debate Society” take place in the Senate Chamber before each vote? I might suggest you include some engineering scholars in the mix; they tend to be more logical and fact-based than Academics in the field of Law. Sincerely,Susan M. CollinsUnited States Senator
The following items are provided for reader edification by Pem Schaeffer……Law of the Infinite Cornucopia From WikipediaJump to: navigation, searchThe Law of the Infinite Cornucopia, put forth by Polish philosopher Leszek Kołakowski suggests that for any given doctrine one wants to believe, there is never a shortage of arguments by which one can support it.
A historian‘s application of this law might be that a plausible cause can be found for any given historical development. A biblical theologian‘s application of this law might be that for any doctrine one wants to believe, there is never a shortage of biblical evidence to support it. Scalia on Moderate Justices:Biden’s remark reminds me not only of the stakes in tomorrow’s election but also reminds me of what Justice Scalia said in 2019 about so-called “moderate” judges:You hear in the discourse on this subject, people talking about moderate, we want moderate judges. What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you’d like it to mean? There is no such thing as a moderate interpretation of the text. Would you ask a lawyer, “Draw me a moderate contract?” The only way the word has any meaning is if you are looking for someone to write a law, to write a constitution, rather than to interpret one.
| Mini-Feature: Magical Thinking The American Mind Feb 2 Why are humans so susceptible to magical thinking?People are obsessed with magic. They want it to be more real than reality and they want reality to be less real when it suits their purposes.People are also obsessed with what we might call meta magic, knowledge of how to do things that appear to be magic or feel magical even if magic itself can never be real.In a sense this is even more deranged insofar as they want to make themselves pretend that what they know is pretend is really real, not in a material sense but in the sense of using skill to make dreams matter more in our lives than reality. If reality is just a pale substrate barely visible below many layers of incredibly rich and all consuming magic—confected dreams that suspend disbelief—then how real, really, is reality?These days contrary to belief we are in the hard process of experiencing the return of reality. Some say we are in the throes of a “dream politics” where one side sees pedos everywhere and the other nazis. What is really happening is the collapse of “normie” magic—that of twentieth century movies and television and twentieth century fiat currency and twentieth century celebrity and twentieth century advertising and spin doctoring and talking heading—is creating a massive refugee crisis from dreamland and the idolization of imagination that the then-dominant technological environment fostered. Our many refugees race toward the most extreme fantasies hoping they still have enough juju to survive the mass disenchantment of televisual and televised magic.This is not happening because the magic of beamed dreams is strengthening but because it is shattering. This is why people on the right grow tired of magic incantations of “muh principles” and people on the left grow captivated by the authority woke religion possesses that John Lennon’s anti-religion of the imagination does not. This is why the Jobs-Asimov world, where any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, is giving way to one where any such technology becomes a kind of monstrous demigod—something no imagined magic is more powerful than.-James Poulos, executive editor of The American MindSome significant fraction of people who follow sports believe that their level of attention affects the outcome of the game. Anthropologists would group this kind of derangement with cargo cults, fetishes, rooster-blood propitiation, and lucky number lottery divination under the category of “magical thinking.” The idea that thoughts can produce material effects is something that children might earnestly believe. Of course, it’s no great irony anymore to observe that magical thinking is not just for animists and toddlers. It’s everywhere once you start looking for it; sometimes we call it “confirmation bias.” During our late election season, for instance, some may recall the fury with which people with no special understanding of the statistics of sampling argued over polls and their respective methodologies. The appearance of a new poll showing one’s favored candidate down 17 points in a swing state could easily be spun as a reason to exult, because only a sample that was totally divorced from reality and based on flawed reasoning could possibly be so extreme; therefore, the real numbers must be trending in the right direction.The religiously devout might take exception to the idea that prayer is a species of magical thinking, but it’s hard to think of it otherwise when strangers implore us to pray for their dying relatives, for instance. On the other hand, when you consider what thought has wrought, it’s hard not to impute some sacred mystery to the process. Anything that involves purpose, planning, and foresight—everything, basically—was sparked by thinking about it. Maybe a certain lazy slipperiness leads us to cut out the crucial second step—execution—between thought and deed, but at root we engage in magical thinking because thinking is magical.-Seth Barron, managing editor of The American MindShare American Mindset“At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.”—C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory” We fall for fairytales—they make our hearts ache and thwart our better judgment—because there is in fact magic in the world. We all know it. Or rather, not magic exactly but the reality of which the magic in stories is a symbol: there is something which can break the mechanical laws of mere nature. This “something” reaches in from outside and saves us from pure determinism—as does reason, which is form of magic if rightly used. The fact that we can not only perceive the physical world but know that we are perceiving it, and alter it based not merely on our immediate perceptions but on our understanding of the whole, suggests something about us which stands outside of time, space, and matter. Otherwise we would have no way of evaluating time, space, and matter, or using such words about about them as “good” and “bad”: there would only be “is.” The oldest realization in the book is that our capacity to evaluate things and pass judgment upon them hints at our participation in some consciousness which stands outside of nature and in whose image, to coin a phrase, we were made. Now a certain kind of magical thinking about reason—viz., that reason boils down to calculation and refers only to the physical world—has had the effect of blinding us to the higher functions of which our mind is capable and, ironically, to the real magic of the world. If you think your thoughts are just illusions belched out by your neurons, which fire exactly as they would in a machine and according to the same predictable rules, then you will think there is no magic in them except the fact that you notice them, which is an illusion. But you will still know in your heart that there is more than that, so you will go looking for magic elsewhere—you will worship it in the crudest forms, trusting shamans to predict the weather 100 years from now or mystics to pronounce you healed of invisible ailments. Ironically then, our “cold, hard rationalism” has left us vulnerable to exactly the sort of magical thinking we used to do before had thought things through—“professing [ourselves] to be wise, [we have] become fools.” This is because we denied the existence of something for which we did not cease to hunger, and so went searching for it everywhere but where it is. -Spencer Klavan, associate editor of The American Mind |
LifeNews.com Pro-Life News Report
Sunday, January 30, 2021
Dear LifeNews Readers,
Joe Biden didn’t waste any time promoting abortion.
LifeNews.com reported for months before the election that the first thing Joe Biden would do if elected president is forcing Americans to fund Planned Parenthood’s global abortion agenda. And, sure enough, during his first full week in office, Biden signed an executive order that will ultimately give Planned Parenthood hundreds of millions of YOUR tax dollars.
With your money, Planned Parenthood will kill babies in abortions in nations around the world.
And Planned Parenthood will use your funds to promote abortion and lobby pro-life nations that protect unborn children to change their laws and legalize abortions.
And Biden didn’t stop there!
He signed an executive order to start dismantling President Donald trump’s pro-life protections that cut Planned Parenthood funding here in America. In the coming weeks or months LifeNews will have to report how this rule has been scrapped entirely and YOUR tax dollars will be used to fund more of Planned Parenthood’s domestic abortion agenda as well.
And that’s not all Biden did.
His executive order also pulled the United States out of the Geneva Coalition, a group of 35 pro-life nations President Trump put together to make it clear to the UN that there is no right to kill babies in abortions.
It will NOT end there.
Biden and his radical pro-abortion allies in Congress have their sights set on the Hyde Amendment, which has protected you from directly funding abortions here in the United States for decades. The Hyde Amendment literally has saved over TWO MILLION babies from abortion. If we lose the Hyde Amendment, more babies will be killed in abortions. Period.
And that’s not all either! Biden and his pro-abortion friends are working to codify Roe and overturn every pro-life law nationwide, that want to pass the ERA and make abortion a right up to birth nationwide, and they want to pack the Supreme Court with radical pro-abortion judges who will keep abortions legal for decades to come.
We MUST stop Joe Biden’s radical abortion agenda and we DESPERATELY need your financial support today to do everything LifeNews possibly can to fight that agenda and keep millions of pro-life Americans informed and activated.
Please make the biggest donation you can today because EVERY day will be a monumental struggle against this radical abortion agenda.
If you can donate $25, $50, or $100 we would be truly thankful for your support, which allows us to reach millions of people every day with the pro-life message. If you can support LifeNews with a gift of $250 or even $500 that would be a big help.
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