Posts Tagged → Christianity
Israel is defending Western Civilization, say thank you
Forgive my long absence. Last week I had a careless tired body-tired mind workplace accident where I got to watch my body’s hydraulic fluid spray out like a hose from my leg. That scared me, and I drove myself to the ER forty minutes away, dodging possums, porcupines, rattlesnakes, and deer in the roadway the entire way. I got stitched up and am moving around, but one thing I am beginning to accept is that while I am still very strong, I am no longer forty or even fifty. And when I feel tired now, after working hard all day, it is time to put down tools and step away from the work site.
It is a pretty good reason for being a week overdue here on the blog. Really, you should have seen my place. It looked like a murder scene…blood everywhere. Took me hours to clean it up.
So, Israel is defending Western Civilization from Iran’s nuclear hungry genocidal Islamofascists, and all of a sudden I am surrounded by the “woke right.” As if genocidal dictators who have stated for almost fifty years that their intention is to force convert or blow up, destroy, and kill America and Israel, as well as the rest of Western Civilization, all infidels, should have nuclear bombs.
“If Israel has nuclear bombs, why can’t Iran?” goes a common question. Finding moral equivalence between one of the world’s few free democracies, Israel, and one of the world’s most oppressive, cruel, destructive, war-mongering, terrorism-exporting, deceptive theocracies, Iran, requires a person to make a huge leap in rational judgment and factual observation, and do so with a healthy boost of ridiculous raw Jew hatred.
Turns out the woke right, the fake Christians like Tucker Carlson, Patrick Bet David, and Candace Owens, understand that hating Jews is a good business. They get lots of online clicks and a decent angry support mob to follow them around. To win a policy argument about nuclear proliferation among genocidal regimes, versus the democracies being targeted by them, all the woke right people have to do is malign all Jews (not just the leftist ones, who we all must admit are especially aggravating because they are especially destructive when they of all people should know better), or ascribe malice to all things Jewish and Israel.
“America must stop fighting the Jews’ wars” or “Israel’s wars” goes another refrain, as the woke rightsters strut and preen, puffing up their supposed anti war chests, pretending to be superior while our Western Civilization is burning to the ground from within and without.
Never mind Iran’s (and China’s) public plan to destroy America, the Great Satan, which they could easily do with all of the jihadis they have hidden here in America. No, apparently all wars are started by “the Jews” because you know… it’s simply just “the Jews.”
Not Iran itself. Not jihadism. Not Islamofascism and Islamosupremacism as witnessed through a tremendous amount of violent jihadism focused on Israel and Jews worldwide. No, according to Tucker Carlson and his fellow woke rightsters, we are supposed to believe that a population of maybe ten or twelve million Jews total on the entire planet is manipulating and victimizing the two billion Muslims and one and a half billion Christians and one billion Hindus and one and a half billion Han Chinese who own everything and run everything. And so, accordingly these Iran Firsters say Iran must have nukes. Because the Jews.
This is humiliatingly lame Neanderthal stuff. It is intellectually indefensible. While I am proud to be MAGA since 2015, and I have all of the MAGA hats, tee shirts, socks, underwear etc of Trump MAGA Land, I am embarrassed to have to share one inch of ideological space with these woke right people. They are making common cause with true evil, and spreading evil and hate, while claiming to be real Christians, real Americans. Tucker Carlson is a fraud, I hate to say. I had been a huge fan of his for all of the right reasons (he was an excellent journalist who asked the right questions), and now I detest the guy, for all of the right reasons.
For the past year, Tucker Carlson has been warning that an Israeli war with Iran will result in World War Three and the end of the world. In the past few days his anti Israel scaremongering has been proven wrong, but he has not relented. He wants Iran to have nukes so Israel can be bullied and blackmailed and forced out of existence, if not blown out of existence. Never mind what happens to America in the process. Carlson is a Jew hating America hating Iran Firster.
If you hate Jews, you hate Jesus, and if you hate Jesus you hate Christianity. If you hate Israel so much that you are willing to sacrifice America, like Carlson, you are not MAGA, and you are not pro America. Being an America First conservative, as I am, means putting America before all other countries. But it does not mean crawling under a rock and hiding and pretending that the world outside is not happening. That is childish.
If you are that much of an isolationist, then you are a fool and you really do hate America, because you want America to fail. America is part of this world, and we must live within it, we must engage it. That means having alliances and relationships with other countries, and occasionally defending ourselves from other countries. The planet is a chess board on which we must occasionally project power. Failing to project power means that others will project power onto us, and America is not too big to fail.
War does not need to be conducted with American boots on the ground, or even by Americans. Being anti war does not mean just laissez faire letting things happen randomly, like letting Iran get a nuclear arsenal and then them bringing America-ending nuclear war directly to us. To every thing there is a season, a time for peace, and a time for war. Sometimes we just have to give war a chance. Smart Americans can define or implement war however they want, so long as our national interests are protected and our precious military personnel are not squandered.
In 1979, Iran openly declared war on America and Israel, and they and their allies have never missed an opportunity to burn our leaders in effigy and our flags in public. Iran’s war with Israel did not start a few days ago, it started in 1979. Now on the cusp of confronting nuclear powered maniacs who hate all of us Westerners, Israel is taking huge risks and making huge sacrifices to ensure that Americans sleep comfortably at night. Israel is taking a beating to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program.
If you are truly MAGA, and truly American, then you appreciate hard work and risk taking. Say Thank You to the Israelis, who did the heavy lifting that no one else was brave enough to do. Don’t be a mean spoiled brat, like Tucker Carlson. His behavior is not American.
Without Chanuka there is no Christmas
Decades ago in graduate school, I was friends with a lovely classmate named Christine. Christine was from Kenya, studying graduate economics at Vanderbilt, with the expectation of returning to her country and taking up an important post in the Kenyan government. Smart, beautiful, articulate, kindly, Christine was the embodiment of what the rest of the world would like Africa to become, and what its leaders had hoped it could be.
One thing about Christine that surprised me was that, as religious a Methodist as she was (yes, Africa has more true blue religious Methodists than America, where Mainline Protestantism has become a Socialist anti-Christianity movement), she knew nothing of the Old Testament AKA the Torah. Christine thought that Christianity simply appeared to the world, and had its own kind of virgin birth, if you will. No connection to anything else, no roots in any other religion, or place.
One can easily blame the simple minded missionaries who taught Christine’s grandparents a Christianity devoid of its own history. As for Christine, you don’t know what you don’t know, correct? However, everyone has a responsibility for their beliefs, and now in our modern Internet age, where all questions can be answered to some degree of accuracy within a few seconds, and to a much higher degree of surety within a couple minutes, every one of us simply has to maintain some level of curiosity about the world around us, to stay informed. We must stay informed.
Christine taught me something that bears telling again today: Christmas owes its existence to the Orthodox Jews who successfully fought and won a brutal civil war against the Leftwing Democrats of their day, 2300 years ago.
Known as “Apikorsim”, Hellenists, Hedonists, whatever, the in-essence Democrat Party socialist Jews of 2300 years ago tried to impose a Godless paganism on the religious (Orthodox) Jews of Israel/Judea.
And the Orthodox Jews fought back.
Their leaders were known as the Maccabees/ Hasmoneans, largely drawn from the Jewish priests, and they prevailed against a much larger, better organized, better armed force by utilizing guerilla warfare. The Maccabees slowly whittled down the liberal Jews and their Greek allies through hit-and-run tactics and merciless head-long frontal attacks by highly motivated, battle-hardened warriors.
And so, when the Orthodox Jews prevailed on the battlefield, recaptured Jerusalem, re-dedicated the Temple there, and restarted the holy service in the Temple, Torah Judaism was saved. And because Torah Judaism was saved, a certain religiously observant Jew named Yeshua was born about 250 years later. And because that Jew went on to become a religious ascetic (a Nazirite like Samson), he became an outspoken critic of the religious ways or failings of his fellow Jews, and the occupying Romans, as he saw them.
The rest is history, if you know anything about the Second Temple period of Judaism or the early years of Christianity.
Point being, because Orthodox Jews fought the Leftist Jews of their time, Christianity was eventually born and eventually Christmas was created (observed the 25th day of December, just as Chanuka is always the 25th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev on a lunar calendar, which means Kislev 25th always floats around relative to the Gregorian calendar we use in America and Europe).
Tonight marks the beginning of Chanuka and the end of Christmas Day. Without Chanuka, there would be no Christmas. It is important for everyone to remember history, and to know how we all got here to where we stand today. I wish that Christine would have known history, or had been educated to want to know history, because that sensitivity or intellectual curiosity would have saved her life…a story for another day.
Happy Chanuka, America and world.
Judah Maccabee, the kind of unintentional but direct father of Christmas
Christians are finding out what it’s like to be “The Jew” etc.
Don’t know why I was surprised at the audacious or incredibly uneducated female “reporter” on MSNBC a couple months ago. Because MSNBC in particular is an outlet that nonstop traffics in toxic disinformation, misinformation, outright lies, crazy conspiracy theories, and partisan propaganda, as well as nonstop personal invective and racist hatemongering from its staff (Joy Reid is their chief KKK Grand Dragon). Extremist MSNBC is not a credible source for factual information, but I guess they have their audience dialed in and feeling very high on the hate juice, and so they just keep producing it and serving it up.
What surprised me was how this MSNBC/Politico “reporter,” named Heidi Przybyla, evinced genuine surprise over how so many Americans, especially Christian Americans, somehow, golly it’s so confusing why, believe that their rights come from God and not from the government.
Any American child should have been taught about America’s founding documents, including the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and subsequent amendments. Because American school children do live in America, and do go to school in America, and real basic American history starting in fifth grade does include school room introductions to our founding documents.
But Heidi Przybyla’s wide-eyed appearance on TV is probably real evidence that she honestly has no idea about America’s founding documents. Heidi Przybyla is probably representative of two generations of Americans who have absolutely zero understanding of what America is (e.g. so many young people refer to America as a democracy, when we are in fact a constitutional republic, a big difference), or what America is actually founded on, and how we got to where we are right now. This means that people like Heidi Przybyla have opinions and views that are not just uninformed, they are terribly malformed and pretzel-shaped misinformed. Hence the resulting pretzel-shaped misinformation Heidi Przybyla et al serve up to their Politico/MSNBC listeners and watchers.
Liberty, freedom, choice, small government and big citizen are all overt ideas translated into your personal rights in America’s founding documents. In fact, note to Heidi Przybyla, America is based on the idea that our own individual rights do not come from government, or from bureaucrats, or from judges, or from popular moods, but from God. This is not some “Christian nationalist” idea, but rather it comes right from America’s Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness… goes its preamble.
All people are created equal and get their rights from God, the Creator. This is not some novel idea, or even a Christian nationalist idea. It’s right there in the Declaration of Independence, from the beginning of America.
But mainstream corporate media outlet staffs either don’t know this, or they don’t want their readers and viewers to know this. And why would that be? Other than being misinformed or mal-educated when young by Marxist teachers who hate America, corporate curators of culture and information like Heidi P. are on a warpath.
Mainstream outlets and their talking heads like Heidi P. are Godless Marxists (i.e. evil people) trying to stamp out both American nationalism, which roughly translates as love of homeland and appreciation of capitalist America as the uniquely free and opportunity-driven place it is, and Christianity. And that is because Christianity is the founding religion, ethos, and source of all of America’s bedrock values and identity. Traditional Christianity undergirds and enervates all of America’s institutions. Without it, the institutions become empty shells, ready to be filled with something else, some other driving force and raison d’etre.
When Marxist Manchurian Candidate and then Jihadi-in-Chief Barack Hussein Obama declared his “fundamental transformation of America,” he really meant he intended to tear down our national foundations, our national identity, our national values, our national uniqueness, and replace it with a communist bureaucracy with no regard for personal rights. He has spent all of his years in office as a senator and as president and now as ex-president doing just that – destroying America from inside America – like a parasitic worm.
And chief among his targets was the target that the Marxist teacher’s unions and Marxist college professors had long targeted, traditional Christianity. What a great institution that would be to infest and hollow out and turn!
So here we are, a national war being made against traditional Christians and the traditional Christian values that permeate, undergird, invest, and support a free and tolerant America. The young people like Heidi P. either don’t know about Christianity’s central role in creating the America they enjoy, or they don’t care, or they are outright opposed to it and they are trying to destroy it.
If you listen to Heidi P. and the rest of the MSM assault on Christianity and Christian nationalists, you will notice that they are waging a real war on both. A war meant to destroy and eliminate both. Yes, there are Marxist Jews in the MSM, and in government like Merrick Garland, and Marxist funders like George Soros, and tons of Marxist Jews in academia, but they are a tiny percentage of this war effort, which is really dominated by and populated by ex-Christians, former Christians, sons and daughters of Christians, and funded by our arch-enemy communist China.
And so, dear Christian reader, you are now The Jew.
You the traditional and America-loving Christian are the hunted, the pursued, the irrationally hated, the ridiculously envied, the unreasonably feared Jew. And you are in real danger.
It is a terrible thing, to be hated and targeted for ridiculous reasons, but we see a silver lining here, an important opportunity. We see an enormous opportunity for the Christian community to respond to these dangerous attacks in strength, with a love more powerful than the Marxist’s hate, to reclaim what it has lost, to bring its lost sheep like Heidi P. back into the fold, and to thereby stop the destruction of America and help the suffering American People once again proclaim liberty across their land.
America does need a Great Awakening, and only loving Christians can make it happen.
Some “palestine” chants I can live with
Patriotic Americans sick and tired of genocidal maniacs chanting in our streets, demanding that Western Civilization roll over and die for them can enjoy some “palestine” chants that would make sense to me:
“Pave, pave Palestine…save, save humankind”
“Nuke, nuke Palestine…save, save humankind”
“Fake, fake Palestine…go back to your own kind”
“From the river to the sea, the Jewish People will be free”
“A billion Muslims, sittin’ in a tree…won’t you leave some space for me”
“Hey hey, ho ho…palestine has got to go”
“Palestine apartheid…means Jewish genocide”
“Palestine apartheid…means Christian genocide”
I could go on with many more creative chants, but you get the point. Way over a billion Muslims can’t make room for fifteen million Jews on Planet Earth? Really? That isn’t fair. That is genocidal. It is apartheid.
Every Western nation has to commit suicide in the name of failed multiculturalism? That is also genocidal against Christians and Caucasians.
If so-called Fakestinians are so “indigenous” to Israel, then why is their mosque sitting on top of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem? Doesn’t that ancient Temple symbol of the Jews being in Israel a long time before the imperialist and colonizing Muslims arrived kinda stick in your eye?
This Jerusalem temple thing is a problem everywhere, actually. Hindu and Sikh temples and Christian churches from Europe across India have mosques sitting on top of them. That’s not the “indigenous” people building the latest thing, that is a symbol of Islamic imperialism and colonialism claiming other people’s holy sites.
And it is this Islamic imperialism and colonialism that is at the heart of the problem in the Middle East.
Should people be able and willing to live together? Sure! I would hope so. America and European nations sure have been bending over backwards to accommodate people who really hate us. Awful lot of waiting and waiting on people to assimilate and adopt our pluralistic, tolerant values.
In Israel, a lot of Muslims live better than they live anywhere else. But outside of Israel, so far, the ancient history and the recent history both indicate that the Muslim side wants to dominate and control every place and every person on Planet Earth. That is not politically or culturally sustainable.
It is also simply not fair, and no one who thinks about this issue is going to conclude that the billion-plus Muslims are victims, because the evidence is that they are perpetrating great crimes against minority people everywhere. At some point, people in Ireland and Israel and elsewhere are going to fight back.
Personally, I think Islam is a very cool religion. And I also think it needs a reformation just as Judaism (1,800 years ago) and Christianity (500 years ago) went through reformations.
Speaker Johnson’s religious behavior
Speaker of the US House of Representatives Mike Johnson is being widely criticized in the mainstream media for kneeling in prayer while on the job the other day. I watched one mainstream media TV personality take Rep. Johnson to task in an interview, about minding the supposed “separation of church and state,” and “keeping prayer in private,” and not letting it out into the public sphere.
Pretty curious approach, given that across America and Europe hordes of bloodthirsty primitives have also recently knelt in prayer in public spaces, promoting baby butchery, baby baking, and gang rape with a huge helping of subsequent mutilation and torture on Israelis, to the great joy of mainstream media. Why all these sincere people, just look at them, bless their hearts. Get them some brown shirts and night sticks.
The Left’s love affair with radical Islam is no secret, and it is just and fair to say this love affair exists because both the Left and radical Islam seek absolute destruction of Western Civilization with a resulting dominion over everyone and every thing on Planet Earth. The Left and radical Islam have a common cause, and whatever differences they have will be settled between one another once people like Rep. Johnson and his religion are out of the way. Keep this foremost in your mind as the drumbeat about Rep. Johnson’s Christian practice goes on.
Couple of things about this Mr. Smith Goes To Washington’s religiosity.
First, Christianity is the founding belief system of America, albeit that was a nascent and broad minded Protestantism that immediately resulted in the anti-slavery abolitionist movement. America’s pilgrims and Founders also identified strongly with the Jews’ quest for freedom from evil tyrant Pharoah, and with the Torah’s value-laden story of that quest. And so thousands of towns and locales across America are named after Biblical places like Hebron, Shiloh, Judah, Bethany, and Zion. Christianity’s sacred Judaic touchstone places, and their inherent unspoken values, are interwoven into the cultural fabric of America from our very beginning.
Second, Christianity is still the main and largest repository of morality and right action in America. This is a cold numeric fact, not a defense of or advocacy for Christian theology. As sad and deflated as American Christianity is right now, it is nonetheless still the biggest single force for all things good and for learning about good values in our nation.
You oppose Christian theology? OK, so what is your suggested substitute in its absence here in America? Atheism? Well, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot, and Stalin are all great advocates for atheism and horrible, unjust places to live. Judaism? You think 200,000,000 Americans are going to convert to orthodox Judaism? Never! There would be an immediate and everlasting shortage of pickled herring, and so the rabbis would never allow it. Radical Islam will cut your throat, cut off your head, or throw you off a roof, sometimes all three, so nah, hard pass on that, right?
So, I say an occasional annoying knock on the door by some nice church ladies is a small price to pay for living happily in the most successful nation in the history of humanity.
The Left’s attacks on Christianity are strategic. If they can brow beat, shame, drown, flood, and eliminate Christianity, they will eliminate America’s renewable, sustainable, organic cultural source of opposition to the Left’s tyranny, immorality, and evil.
The Left has gotten really creative about their attack on Christianity, and they have only succeeded to date because of the long flaccid acquiescence of American traditionalists and Christians, and by the Left’s official enablers, the GOPe. By accusing Christians of establishing religion when they merely practice it, a la Rep. Johnson, the Left has appealed to the First Amendment’s clear prohibition against establishing a formal state religion for America. And yet, the truth is Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Muslims all are merely expressing their First Amendment rights when they pray in private or in public. None of their public prayer behavior establishes any of these religions as the de facto state religion of America.
What the Left really objects to is anyone actually seeing the Christian religion practiced in public. Their message is it’s a dirty practice that people ought to keep to themselves behind closed doors.
Rep. Johnson’s public prayer on the US House of Representatives floor is an in-your-face to the tyrants and cultural Marxists in the mainstream media. And of course history is on the side of Rep. Johnson, because the US House of Representatives opened with public prayer for I don’t know how long, but for the vast majority of the chamber’s existence. And when inaugurated in 1789 as America’s first president in Manhattan, New York, George Washington led a grand procession to Trinity Church on Wall Street, where he led an hours-long prayer service.
It is only when America now finds itself in the throes of hypercoagulative materialism that its own long and deep religious roots, and religion’s fruit-bearing shading branches, become anathema. So what a breath of fresh air is this Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, this cherubic Rep. Johnson.
Don’t stop, Rep. Johnson, for all our sakes, I pray you, do not stop and do not back down, and may you shine as a beacon light to Christians everywhere, and may that rallying light shine and defeat the cruel darkness that is swallowing my civilization. I may not agree with you on the particulars, but by God I will defend your right and our collective necessity to have you pray in the US House of Representatives.
Either Christianity will save America as a free constitutional republic, or America and western civilization will die.
May God bless you, Rep. Johnson.
Are Israelis being tricked into another Roman Occupation?
Disclaimer: We don’t go down any rabbit holes here. This blog is filled with well-argued opinions and occasionally those of people who I believe need to be heard. My opinions are always backed by facts and Founding Principles, and if I can’t find facts to back up my particular opinion, then I fall back on principle (e.g. America is supposed to be a small government run by Constitutionally obedient and publicly responsive public servants). If no Founding Principle is at stake, then I usually don’t take a stand. Today, if you read further, you are joining me on my first ever rabbit hole exploration. But I am doing it out of commitment to truth, and I am asking questions that are the only questions that make sense to me.
Historically, about 2100 years ago, Israel/Judea became increasingly occupied by the expanding Roman Empire, because some Jews invited the Romans in to provide some protection from the invading Parthian Empire and to give some political stability among a divided Jewish populace. The rest is history, as it is said, as over the following decades the Romans increasingly asserted their own form of political control to the point where they ended up in a civil war with the entire Jewish population. The Romans destroyed the Great Temple in Jerusalem, as well as much of Jerusalem itself, enslaved and deported about half of the Jewish population, etc.
In their destructive romp across Judea and historic Israel, the Romans also unwittingly created two new powerful religions that would go on to shape the entire Western world, Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity, but this is a subject for another time. The key here is that the Jews invited in the Romans for their promised political stability, and ended up getting destroyed by them.
Is the same process now repeating itself in modern day Israel? Is America the new Rome about to politically occupy Israel? I ask because the same historic dynamics are playing out.
Consider the following facts:
- Hamas launched a massive and massively barbaric suicide raid on southern Israel that was destined to fail itself and destined to bring huge destruction down on Hamas and Gaza in response. It is self-defeating. Makes no sense.
- Neither Hizbullah nor Syria have opened up additional fronts, though they logically should
- Israeli security along the Gaza border was essentially a Ring Doorbell camera every hundred yards? Really?
- Contrary to Military Operations 101 since organized militaries began operating about five thousand years ago, no sentries, no sentinels, no guards, no watchmen were posted along any of the Israeli outposts along the Gaza border. Not one. As a result, the few IDF soldiers posted there were literally caught asleep in their underwear and gunned down as they scrambled out of their beds.
- Apparently, reportedly, Hamas has spent the past two years practicing their invasion and giddy child murders on a large mockup Israeli village. No one in Israel noticed this? No one in Israel thought this was strange, or a precursor or a warning?
- The Biden Administration just released Six Billion Dollars to Iran, for no good or logical reason, and to America’s serious detriment, which freed up Iran to spend their existing money on things like nuclear weapons aimed at America and arming Hamas and Hizbullah terrorists killing women and children in Israel (and probably coming to America soon through Joe Biden’s wide open southern border).
- Israel’s supposed “security failure” looks and smells and walks like an inside job by the security and military elites, who oppose Prime Minister Netanyahu’s popularism (just as the American elites and their pet security agencies like the CIA, FBI, DHS etc oppose President Donald Trump’s power-to-the-people popularism). Every day this supposed “failure” at Gaza appears more and more like an inside set-up of PM Netanyahu to blame him and turn the voters against him.
- Israel’s “security failure” at Gaza makes no sense on its face nor in hindsight. Israel can and usually does walk and chew gum at the same time. The IDF has always covered all three bases and Home Base simultaneously. Way way too many important parts of the Gaza security system failed all at the same time to be a mere coincidence. There has been no explanation for this failure, and indeed other than a deliberate act of self-sabotage and self sacrifice by Israel’s military and security elites (because of their power struggle with PM Netanyahu), there is no logical explanation.
- None of the senior officials responsible for Israel’s national security or for Gaza’s border have taken responsibility and resigned, as they normally would when committing such a monstrous failure in any other time. Hmmmmm, right?
- The defeat of Netanyahu and the elevation of America in Israel’s domestic politics would essentially place Barack Hussein Obama in charge of Israel’s next government.
- If in fact Hamas was allowed to go into southern Israel by Israel’s professional watchdogs, who are almost all Leftists loyal to the leftist elites, for basic domestic political purposes, it would be in keeping with the American Left’s practice of burning America to the ground in order to get and keep control of America. Examples of such treason in America include the 2020 “Summer of Love” Democrat Party violence, looting, burning, destruction of American cities, the allowed release of covid into the American populace by American health officials (Dr. Mengele Fauci) supposedly guarding us against such viruses, the deliberate destruction of law and order in many Democrat-controlled cities which has resulted in political and societal chaos in these same places, the suspension of electoral laws in 2020 that resulted in massive and brazen vote fraud in the most important swing states like PA, MI, AZ, GA, the continuing fraudulent and even illegal lawfare against President Donald Trump by the administrative state and Democrat politicians. I could go on, but we are on a time budget here. Looks like Israel just experienced her own “Summer of Love“.
So into this situation of Hamas possibly being goaded and sacrificed by Iran into its suicidal homicide attack sails the American navy. Into the Mediterranean Sea now comes a flotilla of American ships meant to buoy Israeli spirits and signal to American Jews that not only can the Democrat Party be occasionally trusted to help Israel, but today to actually save it. Recall that just weeks ago Joe Biden’s illogical payment of Six Billion Dollars to Iran signaled that the Democrat Party hates Israel and Jews and America because it is empowering their worst enemy, a nuclear powered Iran. Lots of “how the hell can any American Jew be a registered Democrat” arguments were resounding across American synagogues.
But now? We are shown that the Democrats actually looove Israel, and the actual savior of a democratic and secure Israel, PM Netanyahu, is cast as the bad guy who failed in Gaza.
Tell me this is not the beginning of the Roman Occupation of Israel Part Two. Nothing else makes sense to me.
And tell me this isn’t just too convenient of a relationship between the Biden Administration, which has spent the past three years destroying America, and a nuclear powered Iran, which was designated by Barack Hussein Obama to be the ultimate destroyer of America.
Americans, are you paying attention?
UPDATE: Yes, I am suggesting that the Biden/Obama Administration is working closely with Iran to remove PM Netanyahu, so Biden/Obama can install a puppet leader who will follow through on the failed Oslo Accords, implement a two-state “solution” and thereby gut and ultimately erase Israel as a sovereign nation, and certainly as a Jewish nation. Iran appears to be temporarily sacrificing Hamas and Gaza to achieve this goal, but they will certainly expect to get revenge on Israel’s Jews at some point in the future.
The Spirit of the Season
Today is Christmas Day, America’s national holiday at least as much as Thanksgiving Day. It is a day of good cheer, happiness, kindness, family, acts of charity, rest and relaxation; a Sabbath of sorts. Across Western Civilization this day has played several different roles and in different formats over the past thousand years, the earliest being solely religious and quite somber. The later versions of Christmas being a non-offending marriage between Christianity and northern European paganism, and being more celebratory.
Christmas as we know it now is largely a creation of Englishman Charles Dickens, who decried the caste system’s forced poverty and lack of Christian charity in his own land, and whose 1843 book A Christmas Carol championed the triumph of kindness and generosity to all over greed and miserly wealth. A literal ghostly spirit of Christmas invaded old man Scrooge’s otherwise selfish life, and left him a changed man. Scrooge’s personal changes, in the true spirit of Christmas Day, then resulted in a domino effect of increasing happiness and beneficence spreading outward from the formerly unhappy and mean old man to all those around him and beyond.
Dickens’ powerful message was a seed that grew wildly in fertile soil, as the contemporaneous Industrial Revolution had created a great amount of wealth and also a great many have-nots. And a hundred years later downtown Manhattan USA at Christmastime was full of powerful images and themes drawn directly from Dickens’ writings. That resulting Christmas culture has spread far and wide, and is now a mix of all the good stuff, including spirituality and morality, along with some old fashioned American consumerism. This has all morphed into the modern version of Christmas most Americans practice or at least enjoy today. It is kind of a third version of Christmas.
But if we go back to its beginning, Christmas Day is closely linked to Christianity’s predecessor, Judaism, and its own festive holiday of Chanuka. Christmas Day always starts on the 25th of December, which is usually right around the Hebrew date of 25th of Kislev, the start of Chanuka. While Chanuka has eight days, Christmas has twelve (similar to Passover having eight days and Easter’s Holy Week having seven at least, and possibly more, depending upon where one lives). And if we then immediately fast-forward back to the present, we see that Christmas has profoundly influenced the practice and understanding of Chanuka. Chanuka now being a heavily mysticized and joyful celebration of a vague miracle involving some olive oil. If you dig deep, you might get an American Jew to tell you that Chanuka is generally about individual freedom, and freedom of religion specifically.
Truth is, Chanuka was indeed originally about freedom, but the kind of freedom we Westerners no longer seem to value, or which we seem to take for granted.
Chanuka is described at hebcal.com as “Hanukkah (Hebrew: חֲנֻכָּה, usually spelled חנוכה … in Modern Hebrew, also romanized as Chanukah or Chanuka), also known as the Festival of Lights, is an eight-day Jewish holiday commemorating the rededication of the Holy Temple (the Second Temple) in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt of the 2nd century BCE. Hanukkah is observed for eight nights and days, starting on the 25th day of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar, which may occur at any time from late November to late December in the Gregorian calendar.”
OK, but what was the Maccabean Revolt, you ask? Ah ha, here we have suddenly discovered the true spirit of Chanuka! And one could surmise, the true spirit of Today’s Christmas Day, as well, heir as it is to Chanuka.
The Maccabean Revolt was a true-life rebellion by a small group of totally dedicated, religiously pure Jewish families against an enormous Assyrian empire that was then occupying then-Israel/Judea, roughly 2,200 years ago. It is the triumph of the little guy over the big bad bully; the triumph of monotheism over evil paganism; morality over immorality. Chanuka is the story of winning freedom by the edge of the sword, at total risk of one’s own survival. Those Jews who then strapped on a sword and successfully fought to the death over several generations to rid themselves of the yoke of Assyrian slavery, then set in motion so many future events. Like the subsequent existence of Jesus, the eventual creation of Christianity, and the resulting creation of Christmas Day by people seeking to directly link the day with Chanuka.
Early Christmas was observed by religious Christians as a day of spiritual freedom, similar to the Chanuka celebration of national freedom and sovereignty, without which there was no spiritual freedom for the Jews, whose Temple service had been disrupted by the Assyrian occupation. Which makes one wonder, in the context of where we are right now, December 25th 2020 , as America is poised to be captured and subjugated by China through its secret treaties with Joe Biden, Big Media, and Big Tech…. what was and is the true, original spirit of Christmas Day, and does it have relevance for us right now?
Religious Christians will provide an orthodox Christian perspective, but it is no stretch to say that today’s Christmas spirit could use a heavy dose of the original Chanuka spirit. We need some of that old time religion. We need a modern equivalent of the Maccabean Revolt against the fraudulent, illegal election that just took place, in which America as we have known her for 244 years is about to collapse and be replaced by repression and slavery.
So, I will raise a glass of eggnog to everyone in the spirit of good Christmas cheer. Salud! And I will also raise the American symbol of freedom, defiance, and sovereignty in salute of the brave American citizens who we know are the last hope of restoring our republic: The American longrifle and its updated equivalent, the AR15.
Merry Christmas! May the ancient spirit of the Maccabees fill every patriot heart.
About that New Zealand mosque massacre…
Once again, liberal ideas have resulted in terrible results, and yet, the people who promote those ideas blame everyone else for their failures. Now it is a mass shooting in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand.
The massacre did not happen in a vacuum.
New Zealand has the same kind of stupid, ineffective “gun control” that anti-firearm activists have demanded for everyone everywhere: No handguns, mass registration with the goal of eventual mass confiscation for a gun-free society (except for the police and security services controlled by the liberals). Had the members of that mosque had access to handguns, like our concealed carry laws permit here in America, then they could have defended themselves against the lone attacker. But nope, anti-gun activists require these bodies and blood in the street in order to make the emotional case for yet more anti-freedom, anti-safety gun elimination.
Sorry, mosque members. I am sorry that you were martyred by the same leftists who have brought so much destruction to everyone else across the planet.
And then, so many questions come to mind, like:
Did that mosque serve as a launching point for public or private anti-Christian, anti-Jew hatred and bigotry, as so many other mosques do around the world?
Did that mosque have members who were actively engaged in denigrating and materially undermining Christianity and Western countries from within, as so many mosques do? Did they take advantage of New Zealand’s freedom and democracy to achieve non-democratic results?
Was that mosque a security risk for New Zealand? Does it harbor violent terrorists or proponents of Islamic terrorism?
Was the mosque officially silent about the non-stop bloodbath perpetrated by Islamic jihadists against innocent people around the world, notably Christians living peacefully in Paris and London and Antwerp?
Was the mosque officially silent about the obvious danger that Islamic jihad represents to the entire world?
Did that mosque serve as a center for spreading Islamic terrorism, as so many other mosques do around the world?
These questions and many similar ones must be asked, because if any of them are affirmative, then the massacre could be construed or even understood as an act of self-defense by the perpetrator, acting on behalf of his vulnerable countrymen who are paralyzed by leftist political correctness and an inactive government run by people willing to sacrifice the entire nation on the altar of “understanding” a fascist, totalitarian ideology that is mutually exclusive with the openness and tolerance New Zealand and every other Western nation stands for.
Here in America, Muslima Terrorista Suprema Linda Sarsour used the massacre to publicly explain exactly what is at the heart of this civilizational conflict. She explicitly blamed “white Christians” as the source of all evil on Earth and of being the biggest threat to all civilizations. In other words, when some mosque somewhere gets a taste of its own medicine, suddenly jihad against Christians and whites is openly justified. As if jihad against Christians and Christianity has not been ongoing for 1,300 years! No wonder Westerners are phobic of Islam; they are afraid for very good reasons.
Here in Harrisburg, the local JCC issued a Marxist screed about the shooting, decrying, among other ridiculous things, “Islamophobia” and “bigotry” (no, not the explicit anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, anti-Hindu bigotry of the Koran). One wonders if the regular, normal, hard working members of the many various JCCs and Jewish Federations around America will ever tire of underwriting the Marxist march of their institutional professionals, who seem to specialize in delivering sappy Yiddish entertainment to elderly people and Marxist-everything-else for everyone else. In the past it was Margie Adelmann, now it is Jen Ross, the “professional Jews” who represent the very worst of secularism and controlling, destructive leftism. Neither of them was or is responsive to JCC members who want them to stop politicizing everything in the name of Marxism and political correctness.
They, too, are on a jihad, parallel with Linda Sarsour, the rest of us be damned.
Billy Graham and America’s Christian Imperative
Nobody did Christianity better than Billy Graham, a quintessential American and American icon. He was definitely a man of God, a rare, beautiful thing to see.
Losing Graham last week released a flood of beautiful and well-earned words summarizing his commitment, passion, energy, focus, humility, earnestness, and non-judgmental effectiveness. These are all good things, and taken in context as just one man, they are an impressive list of achievements and accolades few of us will ever have said about us.
But Graham was more than just one good man we looked to for leadership and inspiration. Graham symbolized much of what America was in its golden age, say the 1950s, and also a great deal of the building blocks our nation is based on: Biblical at the base, and big-tent-Christianity at the top.
Graham represents America’s Christian imperative. Meaning, it is imperative that America be a Christian nation, and not atheistic or secular.
America is far better as a Christian nation than an atheistic nation. As a religious nation, America is as America was founded. A common morality, shared values. Even if it falls down, a Christian nation can be, always has the potential to be, a moral and ethical place.
On the other hand, the secular atheist nations have been Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union, today’s Red China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and so on. Not good places. Very very bad places. Cruel places. Places with no human rights, no individual liberties, no religious freedom, and unlimited state power.
Unlike Europe, American Christianity in general, and Graham’s faith in particular, did not discriminate nor judge nor exclude. It is an inclusive faith. American Christianity has always been different than the discriminatory Europe, which persecuted, burned alive at the stake, and ultimately drove out the early Protestants, our “Puritans” and Quakers. In Europe, state religions remain, such as the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, and the various Catholic churches of France and Spain and elsewhere.
You do not have to be a Christian to feel welcome in Graham’s America, or to be an outstanding American, or even to be emblematic of America. That big-tent-Christianity which our Founders believed in, which Benjamin Franklin and Jefferson so well represented, and which Graham came to represent today, is responsible for that openness, that tolerance. If Europe suffered from religious tests and requirements in order for people to fulfill public roles, America was the opposite: Come one, come all, give your best, we are a meritocracy.
Jefferson’s famous 1805 Letter to the Danbury Baptists contains the “separation of church and state” phrase which is so powerful that many people mistakenly believe is part of our nation’s First Amendment. That may be wrong in fact, but the letter captured and set the tone for the kind of religious belief America would come to represent 213 years later. We may not have had an official church, but most of our early leaders were religious Believers, and they carried that moral code with them into their official positions, where it guided their actions. They carried church around in their hearts, and not necessarily on their sleeves. A uniquely American creation.
American politics has always been about shared values, if not shared beliefs. Traditional religious views, call them the Judeo-Christian pillars of America, are that big tent in which the shared values are assembled. So it is on the shoulders of conservative Catholics, evangelical Christians and Baptists, and yes, even Mormons (please leave us out of endless theological debates, or discussions about dogma) to help right the ship of state now, to rally around the shared values, circle the wagons, and protect our most sacred freedoms and liberties.
In this day and age of confusion in the West, with abandonment of basic human traits and life, Christianity is needed more than ever. It is all-hands-on-deck right now. The Christian imperative is more clearly evident now than it has ever been in my lifetime, and Billy Graham showed us all the way.
Today’s talk with Dickinson College students
Thank you to Professor Andrea Leiber, among others, at Dickinson College, just about every year I am invited to come speak to a class about environmental issues.
Usually it is more enjoyable to go right into the Question & Answer period, because it’s there that we get the most essential points. Usually stuff like “Statistically, most of you will get married and about half of you will become divorced. Many of you will get fired from a job. Don’t fight with your boss. Pursue things that make you happy,” and so on.
These are college students who may not have ever heard facts and ideas like this before.
Today I brought a hand-out, below, that we went over before getting into the Q&A. The students, naturally, found these items tremendously provocative, which is good. That is the point. The goal is to challenge them and get them to think hard, outside their comfort zones. Kids, thank you for being so interested in our topics. I appreciate at least not being ignored.
Here is what was handed out:
Dickinson Five points:
1) your generation is becoming infantile. Don’t be offended. That’s a cop-out. Engage the world. Debate people on substantive issues. “You offend me” is bullsh*t. Don’t deal in bullsh*t. Be real.
2) listen to Rush Limbaugh. Or Hannity. Or Glen Beck. Add diverse thinking to your daily dose of diversity. Or, stop deceiving yourself that you truly embrace diversity. Listening to ideas you’re new to or unhappy about gets you outside the box. Think outside the box. Political correctness is a box.
3) climate change is not a religion, or a cult, or a science, so stop treating it that way. For 35 years we’ve been told a brand new, unproven, nascent science was already settled. Really? On what basis? By whom? Anthropogenic climate change is a corrupted political movement based on Marxism. It’s not science, yet.
4) Learn the American Constitution. It’s the basis of your life whether or not you presently understand it. It’s under assault. Eg 2nd amendment is fundamental to a free people and gun control has zero to do with crime control, FEC FCC regulation of internet, NSA spying, IRS political assault on political speech, Hillary’s private emails to conduct national security, loss of religious conscience.
5) Islam is at war with western civilization. America’s next big war will probably be with orthodox Muslims over individual liberty and freedom. Do not allow political correctness to stop you from asking questions and from saying what you believe.
Are you against Christianity but ok with Islam? Why?
Are you upset about the Israeli “occupation” but are ok with the Arab occupation of Jewish and Christian homes, farms and businesses? Why?
Be brave or kiss America and your iPhone goodbye.
Get off Facebook, have a beer [or soda] and grilled hotdogs with your real friends, instead.
Grow a small garden.
Camp out often.
Be self reliant.
Don’t let others’ expectations shape your future.
Get a gun and learn how to shoot it and store it.
Don’t smoke pot. Facebook is pot. It’s already killing your brain. Don’t add more.
Don’t be a hypocrite or have double standards. Be real.