Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. (Isaiah 1:5 AV)

Unrepented sin is a disease that gets worse and worse. In a body politic the sins of one generation, if not repented and renounced, will infect the generations to come.

"There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and is not washed from their filthiness. (Proverbs 30:12 AV)

The generation that won the war against Hitler has been called by one of their own The Greatest Generation. This generation won a great war against Hitler and continued to resist and were able to overcome Communism. They made advances against civil wrongs in this country. But they lost the most important battle of all, the war for the minds of the next generation, because they lost their own faith.

No one who wasn't ignorant of the great warriors who fought the War for American Independence would ever have allowed the name greatest to be given to another generation. This is another indictment against what has become public school education, with its bias against the past.

But the so-called Greatest Generation did not teach their children the great truth of Christianity or the morality that made this nation great. They did not expel from their churches and universities the unworthy and ignorant. They did not discipline their children but reared a lawless and rebellious generation. Their own faith had degenerated to empty moralism and dead ceremonies. They did not repent of this. They still haven't. In the place of repentance they have substituted public relations and re-definition.

The generation that followed the mis-named Greatest Generation were brought up on Dr. Spock and spoiled by one of the greatest outpouring of material goods and pleasures that any nation has ever known. They immersed themselves in drugs, sex, rebellion, and alternate religions. They lived for what made them feel good: their immoral music, perverted religions, or philosophical fancies. This could have been predicted, given their nurture on Spock and Twinkies. Fathers and Mothers surrendered en masse and as individuals.

This writer has spent his whole life in education. I graduated from high school in 1952, went to college, and got my first teaching job in 1959, seven years out of high school. I could not believe what had happened to young people. There was plenty of wickedness in the public schools I attended, but we knew how to blush, how to hide our transgressions, and how to pretend virtue, as Hamlet said. Hypocrisy is the complement that vice pays to virtue, a wise man said. But in those seven years I saw the future of America, and I was not wrong. The sin of forwardness was added to other crimes. As David wrote: Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression. (Psalms 19:13 AV)

The new justification that parents used, "Well, at least he is honest about it." so was Al Capone.

It is not true that honesty in wickedness is a virtue. Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among them that fall: at the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the LORD. (Jeremiah 6:15 AV) When I was a boy, we knew how to turn white, and then blush, when our transgressions were found out. The bible says it is a kind of virtue to be ashamed. That changed in my experience between 1952 and 1959, when the generation I speak of was in grade school. Their character was already formed, and this was in a Christian school. There was more outward morality in the public school I had attended just so few years before at the same age.

These spoiled brats never did grow up. They did not want to fight for their country, not because of high ideals, but simply because they were lazy and spoiled. If there had been no draft, there would have been no flights to Canada, no protests on the campuses. They were gutless wonders with high-sounding ideals which masked their own essential selfishness.

Like a scourge of locusts this generation of self-righteous, spoiled, and self-centered children have left barrenness behind them. Discipline disappeared in schools, because children would not endure it, and the parents would tolerate it, for Johnny couldn't sit still because he had never been made to sit still. So instead of a rap on the rear, this generation devised new diseases and syndromes to be treated by new drugs that robbed boys of their manhood and reduced them to whimpering misfits.

They could not sit still long enough to listen to a sermon that lasts more than 10 minutes, if that. So they must bring the churches up to date. Bibles must be no more than 5^th or 6^th grade level, music must not require thought. Preachers must "feel" the text--didn't matter what the text meant.

The only thing they were absolutely certain about was their right to say, do, and think whatsoever they pleased at any time and any place. It does not take centuries to destroy a civilization and a moral order; it can be done in one generation.

Because immediate gratification is what drove and drives this generation, laws against any kind of sexual gratification must be attacked, including laws against fornication, sodomy, pedophilia, bestiality. No thought must be taken for tomorrow and the results of the destruction of morals, for love me tonight is the only workable motto for degenerates. An inconvenient pregnancy can be remedied by murder. Just keep the party going. A new world is coming and the old with their hang-ups must give way. In the new world it will all "hang out," and hang out it did.

If law and tradition got in the way of instant gratification, they must be attacked also. Law, tradition, culture, decency, patriotism, and religion were mocked unmercifully by the sixties generation. The most popular television shows of this generation routinely attacked military honor, honesty, and sexual decency.

Blessed with unprecedented prosperity and scientific knowledge, America roared through the last half of the 20^th Century. We rocked and rolled, and today speak with nostalgia of the abomination of Woodstock and other degenerate revival meetings for arrogant rebels. We rewarded those who pandered to our lusts and rebellion great rewards of money and fame, many of them preachers who gave standing to our lusts and rebellion. Every aspect of America life: the lesson of the music was plain to those who knew the language: It is right to do whatever you want to do, and it is right to destroy anyone who gets in your way, including churches, schools, families, courts, business. The Age of Aquarius is upon us and we will bring it in over your dead bodies and the ruins of your institutions.

But something very precious was gone from the American soul, the fear of God and a love for righteousness. Church services became entertainment services to stoke self-worth and self-congratulation. Hell fire disappeared from the vocabulary as did repentance and the Ten Commandments. People laughed at their fornication, their lies, their thefts, and their infidelities. Newspapers that once printed the uniform Sunday School Lesson and routinely printed the sermons of famous preachers did so no more, but faithfully recorded every scandal that afflicted the church, reported the slanders of the ungodly, and warred on decency by promoting sexual license and infidelity. This generation idolized a president who used the Oval Office to satisfy his corrupt sexual desires--and still laughs at it. Thus the world ends, not with bang, but a giggle--and not even a nervous one, but the giggle of small boys behind the barn telling nasty jokes, with one set as a watchmen, lest adults come. But now the adults tell the jokes. Ho, ho, ho.

Another casualty was justice. It took just five days to convict the man who tried to assassinate FDR and who did shoot the mayor of Chicago. When the mayor died, the man was taken from prison, tried, and executed within five months of his crime. But the generation that hated responsibility and refused to suffer would not allow the courts to do their job either. They invented new rights and new "safeguards"---they learned their skill well in seeking to avoid fighting for their country in Viet Nam. Now they would make it exceeding difficult to convict a criminal. They never got real jobs but became lawyers and teachers and wove their rebellion against decency and morality into the very warp and woof on the American justice system, so that their right to break every one of the Ten Commandments could never be challenged. They learned to protect their own, while savaging their opponents.

They have never repented of these things. But we have may well have lost our ability to have a moral society, decent homes and safe schools, and protect ourselves from foreign enemies who hate us.

What a great nation this generation has given us. We send our girls to war. Boys cannot be boys in school, but must be drugged so they will behave like girls. Homosexuals are in our face. We routinely slaughter millions of people before they are born so that we don't have too many of us. Instead, we import aliens to work for us at slave wages. Sodomy, adultery, fornication, and flagrant sexual perversions are considered normal. Freedom of speech is dead on the college campus and ignorant and half-educated professors promote a political agenda of socialism and atheism, while thumbing their nose at the taxpayers that pay their salaries.

It is time to repent, not only of our own sins, but of the sins of our fathers that have brought us to this place.

I will write more on this subject.

Without faith, the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. --Solomon

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Europe's Good Intentions Have Gone Sour: "Despite a public anti-Americanism, individual Europeans extend the old warmth and friendship to American visitors. Yet beneath the veneer of the good life, there is also a detectable air of uncertainty in Europe this summer, one perhaps similar to that of 1914 or the late 1930s."

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Say, do you think that a turning away from the God of the Bible has anything to do with this? A pertinent NEW Testament passage might be: "In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power;" (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9 AV)

There is no room in the thought of the modern man for any God except the good one, and only then in the whimper, "If God is good and all powerful, how could He have let ____ happen."

The Bible knows nothing of such a God, and Christians don't worship such a wimpish conception. Yes, God is good and God is all powerful: that is exactly why bad things happen, because He cannot deny Himself but MUST punish the wicked. The real God moves His people to pray as David did in Psalm 58:6-11

"Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth: break out the great teeth of the young lions, O LORD. 7 Let them melt away as waters which run continually: when he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces. 8 As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun. 9 Before your pots can feel the thorns, he shall take them away as with a whirlwind, both living, and in his wrath. 10 The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. 11 So that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth."

This God hasn't forgotten the world, even though the world has forgotten Him. But maybe Europe and the children other nations who have forgotten God will remember. Where are the faithful preachers? Who will tell the world where the disaster comes from?

A Real Hater?

BBC NEWS UK Wales Gore in Hay climate change plea: "But Mr Gore, fresh from an appearance at the Cannes film festival, delivered a starker message that the world was now facing a 'danger which could bring the end of civilisation.' "

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But how can you believe a man who has been the purveyor of more hate than any American in the last 100 years. I speak of the hatred of George W. Bush, by the liberal elite, who took their cue from Gore that Bush stole the election in 2000.

Richard Nixon faced the same issues in 1960, when there were strong indictions that democratic shenannigans in Illinois and Texas had delivered the election to John Kennedy. Nixon refused to challenge the elections in the court [while privately vowing to do a better job of poll watching if he ever got another chance], because Nixon felt it would leave a legacy of bitterness in the American electorate, and send a very bad message to the rest of the world. Nixon loved his country. Gore refused to follow Nixon's lead, for modern liberals love power, no matter what the cost to the electorate or the public morale.

Charge you opponent with every crime that you can imagine, no matter what the residue of hate that your spread around. There is no question. The polarization of American politics and the bitterness of the left is the direct responsibility of Al Gore. Even Kerry is a better man than Gore, for he refused to pout over Ohio and make wild charges in 2004. The Gore legacy may very well be the fire of hatred and bitterness that may last for a generation and do more harm to our great nation than any Chicken Little warning of warming.

In a Dream?

Pope: How Could God 'Tolerate' Holocaust?: "Benedict walked along the row of plaques at the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex's memorial, one in the language of each nationality whose members died there. As he stopped to pray, a light rain stopped and a brilliant rainbow appeared over the camp. 'To speak in this place of horror, in this place where unprecedented mass crimes were committed against God and man, is almost impossible - and it is particularly difficult and troubling for a Christian, for a pope from Germany,' he said later. 'In a place like this, words fail; in the end, there can be only a dread silence, a silence which itself is a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?'"
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You would think that an infallible pope would know better. What do you mean, "Why did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?"

As a matter of fact, God is not silent and has never been silent. He will also certainly punish the wicked and bring every evil thought and deed into judgment as Isaiah said so succinctly: Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever:

9 That this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the LORD: 10 Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits: 11 Get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us. 12 Wherefore thus saith the Holy One of Israel, Because ye despise this word, and trust in oppression and perverseness, and stay thereon: 13 Therefore this iniquity shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instant. 14 And he shall break it as the breaking of the potters vessel that is broken in pieces; he shall not spare: so that there shall not be found in the bursting of it a sherd to take fire from the hearth, or to take water withal out of the pit." (Isaiah 30:8-14)

Where is the Third Reich? Where is Hitler? Where is the Soviet Union? Where is Mussolini? All gone and in hell, where all the nations go that forget God. And where is it written that God's people don't have to suffer? People have suffered immensely since the beginning of the world, from Abel that was slain by his brother to our Lord Jesus who was crucified by those who should have known better.

Where is it written that only the guilty suffer? that God does not have a purpose in suffering, as He did in the case of Job. I think it is terrible what Hitler did to the Jews. I also think that it is terrible what happened in Rwanda, and in Cambodia, and in the Soviet Gulag. There are still piles of bones of Germans and French from the battlefield of Verdun in World War I. I recently visited the battlefield of Fredericksburg from our own Civil War and saw the thousands of graves of Union soldiers who died there--only about one-tenth of them identified. They were mostly kids in their teens.

But this does not mean that God is silent. It rather means that God is speaking fortissimo, if we only had ears to hear. Man's end is not on this earth, and earth becomes a hell for those who seek heaven here. When the Hitlers and the Mussolinis and the Stalins and the Osamas and such like, some with American citizenship, forsake the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the Lord Jesus then comes to pass what God has clearly spoken in His word, for He would have us know that Scripture cannot be broken.

But the judgment of the world is not yet. God has other things to do right now. He is busy calling out His people to faith and hope, a people whose conversation is in heaven, who inheritance is God Himself and not the things of the world.

Psalms 76:10 "Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee: the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain." The wicked and the righteous suffer the same things on the earth, the difference is the purpose of the sufferings and their condition in eternity.

David expressed this poignantly in Psalm 73. He fretted against the Lord because their did not seem to be any difference between the godly and the ungodly. "I have cleansed my hands in vain," he pouted. In fact, it even appears that the ungodly get along better than the godly. It was very painful for him, and he didn't "get it" until he went to the sanctuary of the Lord, the place where the eternal God made His name known: Psalm 73: 16-20:

"When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me; 17 Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end. 18 Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction. 19 How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! they are utterly consumed with terrors. 20 As a dream when one awaketh; so, O Lord, when thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image."

The Pope needs to awake from his dream, too.

local6.com - Health - Lesbians' Brains May Act Like Straight Men's: "Lesbians' brains reacted somewhat, though not completely, like those of heterosexual men, a team of Swedish researchers said in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."
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Seems like a simple case of post hoc ergo propter hoc. Little Tommy says that the car turns every time the turn signals blink. This means that the turn signals make the car turn. If girls try to be men in rebellion to God might this be the reason why their brains are screwed up and not the other way around. Junk science by junk scientists cannot equal logic, can it?

'Gay History' Pushed in Calif. Textbooks: "A Senate committee approved a bill Wednesday that would require California's textbooks to include the contributions of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people to the state and nation's history. "
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Let's see now. We also should have the contribution that murderers, whores, pedophiles, thieves, and cannibals and other assorted deviates and degenerates have made to the nation and every state's history. After all, humanity is divine and every manifestation of humanity is worthy study and memorializing, isn't it?

But let us not make mention of God or prayer or such like. What does He have to do with anything?

Excite - Sports News: "Bonds hit his 712th homer in San Francisco's 5-3 loss to San Diego on Tuesday, moving him even closer to matching Babe Ruth's total for second place on the career list. "
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Yep, he probably has taken drugs. Everyone has known it for some time now, just as we knew that Sosa and Mac were taking drugs. Baseball made a lot of money on those two after the scandal of the strike year.

So why jump on Barry Bonds? Nope, he shouldn't have taken drugs, but who knew what Ruth and Aaron were taking? Ruth drank a lot of booze in his life and probably shortened his life quite some time. It wasn't fair for Aaron to take better care of himself and have so many more games than Ruth. If Ruth had played as long he might have hit 900 homers. Who knows. And what about Mantle? If he had taken care of his legs and his liver he might have hit a bunch more. What does it matter anyway? Put Rose in the Hall of Fame, give him his records. Get off Bonds back and lighten up. Baseball players have never been really respectible anyway, have they? If skateboarders can smoke pot, why not a few steroids for the baseball player? It's their body, isn't it? If a woman can kill her baby to be happier, why cannot Barry have a bit of an edge in the batter's box? Besides, how many pitchers beefed up a little? It's about happiness and self-esteem. Isn't it?

Ex-Sen. Bob Graham: Iran Strikes Could Spark World War III: "In an exclusive interview with NewsMax, Graham warns that the growing crisis in Iran is reaching a boiling point. He says military action by the United States against Iran's nuclear facilities could spark World War III."
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That's very good, Ex-senator Graham, but what do you think we are in now? The world was at war when Hitler annexed the Sudetenland following England, France, and Italy's surrender to him at Munich in 1938. Hitler knew it and a lot of smart people knew it, but a bunch of people didn't get up to speed until he attacked Poland and then his ally Russia. What will it take for the great majority of Americans to wake up. Anybody who read Hitler's writings or listened to his speeches knew what he was, and it isn't hard to find out what militant Islam is. What will it take? A nuclear cloud over America somewhere? See some pictures and read some history.

Kerry, Kerry, Quite Contrary!

DRUDGE REPORT FLASH 2006�: "Former presidential candidate John Kerry has come to the defense of a fired CIA officer accused of disclosing classified information to the press.

'I'm glad she told the truth but she's going to obviously -- if she did it, if she did it, suffer the consequences of breaking the law,' Kerry explained to ABC THIS WEEK. "
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What can you expect from the moral degenerates who have not repented of the sins of the 60's? Tell the "truth" no matter if it damages national security and harms the nation at war. It worked to get Nixon, didn't it? Stopped the Viet Nam war, resulting in the murder of millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians by the Marxist idols of the Kerryites, didn't it? Didn't apply to Clinton, though, or to Rather or ??? What is the truth anyway--but a means of forwarding a political agenda? But what do these people know about morality, truth, honor, or, yes, patiotism?

Hurrah for the Swift Boaters!! They told the truth about Hippy Kerry, and he didn't like it much, did he? But a person's own sanctimony is hard to see, especially because if it is the result of a person thinking he thinks because he thinks he feels. The same kind of people vote for them. "I feel..." replaces "I think..." But being self-conscious and thinking are not the same thing.

Kerry still feels self-righteous because he betrayed the troops in Viet Nam. "If the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness."

Question, Where are the real democrats who are ready to throw this crowd overboard?

Kerry, Kerry, Quite Contrary!

DRUDGE REPORT FLASH 2006�: "Former presidential candidate John Kerry has come to the defense of a fired CIA officer accused of disclosing classified information to the press.

'I'm glad she told the truth but she's going to obviously -- if she did it, if she did it, suffer the consequences of breaking the law,' Kerry explained to ABC THIS WEEK. "
==================

What can you expect from the moral degenerates who have not repented of the sins of the 60's? Tell the "truth" no matter if it damages national security and harms the nation at war. It worked to get Nixon, didn't it? Stopped the Viet Nam war, resulting in the murder of millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians by the Marxist idols of the Kerryites, didn't it? Didn't apply to Clinton, though, or to Rather or ??? What is the truth anyway--but a means of forwarding a political agenda? But what do these people know about morality, truth, honor, or, yes, patiotism?

Hurrah for the Swift Boaters!! They told the truth about Hippy Kerry, and he didn't like it much, did he? But a person's own sanctimony is hard to see, especially because if it is the result of a person thinking he thinks because he thinks he feels. The same kind of people vote for them. "I feel..." replaces "I think..." But being self-conscious and thinking are not the same thing.

Kerry still feels self-righteous because he betrayed the troops in Viet Nam. "If the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness."

Question, Where are the real democrats who are ready to throw this crowd overboard?

Another Question: Do you think that Contrary Kerry will come to the defense of the Chinese protester who told the truth in the presence of Presdent Bush and the Beloved Leader of Red China? Hmmmm? Don't hold your breath or bet the rent. Truth is truth is truth, I guess, and some truth is ok and other truth is not ok and some truth is lies and some lies is truth.

Excite News: "TEHRAN (Reuters) - President Bush refused on Tuesday to rule out nuclear strikes against Iran if diplomacy fails to curb the Islamic Republic's atomic ambitions."
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Of course. Iran needs to know that we might use the bomb. The advantage of nuclear is psychological. No president should ever rule out the use of them. Let the enemy tremble in the knowledge that we might have the courage.

New York Daily News - News & Views Columnists - Richard Cohen: Gore movie puts heat on Bush: "In the meantime, he is a man on a mission. Wherever he goes, he finds time and an audience to deliver his (free) lecture on global warming. It and the film leave no doubt of the peril we face and neither do they leave any doubt that Gore, at last, is a man at home in his role. He is master teacher, pedagogue, know-it-all, smarter than most of us, better informed and, having tried for and failed to gain the presidency, has raised his sights to save the world. We simply cannot afford for Al Gore to lose again. "
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Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. The sky is falling, the sky is..... No, I mean the globe is melting, the ice is melting, the little birds are going to fry, and then all of us will fry. We must elect Gore; he who invented the internet and lived the Love Story. Oh dear Al, please ride to the rescue and save us all from evil Republicans, frying oceans, melting ice caps, and New York falling into to the sea. No, forget the latter. That might be a good thing. [But what about Al Qaeda, Al? Al? Al...?]

Can we simply afford for Al to win?

Townhall.com :: Reviews :: Donkeys misbehavin' - Apr 13, 2006:

"There is a fundamental difference between the two parties: when a Democrat is involved in a scandal, he becomes a national figure for the party, but when a Republican is involved in a scandal it always ends with him resigning in disgrace.

"I highly recommend this book to liberals who want to familiarize themselves better with the party they are associating themselves with, and I also recommend it to conservatives who need to be reminded why they call themselves conservative. This book is especially helpful for young readers not familiar with the historical facts of how far back immorality and corruption really does go on the Left: since the party�s beginning. "
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I recommend this book. There is not only a political difference between the two parties, but a basic moral difference.

Ancient Manuscript: Judas Had a Secret: "For 2,000 years Judas has been reviled for betraying Jesus. Now a newly translated ancient document seeks to tell his side of the story."
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The relic worshippers strike again. Just any old rag or scrap of paper found in a waste can may be used to discredit the Bible and give license to man's modern [and ancient] desire to fornicate, lie, murder, defame and hate Christians. Hurrah for the relics! Encase them in gold and genuflect! Stroke your chin and appear wise! Hurrah for the trashcan documents, verified by modern rag-tag scholars! See blog below.

Guardian Unlimited | Science | Discovered: missing link that solves a mystery of evolution: "The find is the first complete evidence of an animal that was on the verge of the transition from water to land. 'The find is a dream come true,' said Ted Daeschler of the Academy of Natural Sciences."
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Yes, indeed. A "dream" come true, the dream of fallen man that Genesis One is not true, that there is no God, that there will be no judgment of the world, that it is all right to fornicate, sodomize, blaspheme, and hate Christians. The dream will prove to be a nightmare, and this fossil will "prove" nothing except the frantic efforts of fallen men to flee from their Creator.

In the Middle Ages the bone-worshippers were in the Roman Church and they genuflected before odds and ends and scraps of bones and relics that constituted proof of their faith. All nonsense, of course. The modern humanists do the same thing, genuflect before scraps of bones, artifacts, and odds and ends and tag ends of old pieces of ragged paper that "prove" to them that the Bible is not reliable and we don't have to pay any attention to it. The modern relic worshippers will be as discredited as the old ones were.

"Dream" come true, indeed. "The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the LORD. Is not my word like as a fire? saith the LORD; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?" --Jer. 23

I have added a link on the right side to "The Third Story." This is a web page of a good friend and ex-student of mine, AmyBeth Larson Barlow. AmyBeth works with young people at risk in the inner city of Denver and her page and blog are worth checking out. God bless you, my good friend!

RGJ.com: 'It's hard to believe it's spring'-Alpine Meadows records most snow in 35 years: "An unending series of March snowstorms pasted the Sierra in white, with one Lake Tahoe ski resort reporting more snowfall than during any other month over the last 35 years."
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It is obviously the result of global warming. What else could it be?

Al Qaeda's nuclear option�-�Commentary�-�The Washington Times, America's Newspaper: " What interests bin Laden and Zawahri beyond casualty lists is collateral damage to civil liberties, privacy and the world economy. America, as they see it, would be knocked off its pinnacle. This would be the shot heard around the world and hundreds of millions of either frightened or jubilant Muslims would flock to the Muslim world's black Jolly Roger of white skull and crossbones. "
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Yes, indeedy. So the solution? America should willingly abandon the pinnacle, elect Muslims to Congress, Zawahiri as President, and then what??? I guess we could then put rugs on our heads and shoot women on the soccer fields. We need more sheiks.

What happened to "give me liberty, or give me death"?

But Bush is really bad, although Albright said this week that there are no bad guys. Then why the campaign against Bush that has been going on for six years?

This is all so, so ..... French??

FOXNews.com - U.S. & World News - Clerics Call for Christian Convert's Death Despite Western Outrage: " Senior Muslim clerics said Thursday that an Afghan man who converted from Islam to Christianity must be executed and if the government caves into Western pressure and frees him they will incite people to 'pull him into pieces.' "
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Islam is a peaceloving and gentle religion.

Newsday.com: Clinton vows to block bill criminalizing illegal immigrants: "'It is certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the Scriptures,' Clinton said, 'because this bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself.' "
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Someone needs to tell Hil to avoid referencing the Scriptures like she would the bird flu. Jesus an illegal alien? the Good Samaritan an illegal alien? Seems like you have revealed that you don't know the Scriptures, New Testament Geography, or Who Jesus is.

FT.com / Asia-Pacific / China - China's competitiveness 'on the decline': "The competitiveness of China's manufacturing industries has suffered serious erosion over the past year, according to one of the world's largest trade sourcing companies."
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Of course. China will face two choices, either one of which will be good for the West. 1. loosen the strings of the command economy [communism] and accept more capitalism; this will put more intense pressure to expand democracy and move toward peace with the West. 2. tighten the strings of the command economy in a desperate attempt to become or to stay competitive. Result: less competitive, for communism is never competitive. Collapse.

TheStar.com - How to spot a baby conservative: "Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.
At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals."
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Yes, probably true. The insecure kid was being pushed around by the self-confident bullies in the class, and developed a distrust for government because the liberal, self-satisfied teacher had been taught by the NEA that rendering justice was evil, so the kid gave up on government and grew up to be a conservative, proud, confident and self-reliant.

On the other hand, the bully became even more bullyish when he found that government would do nothing about his bad behavior and continued to try to push his self-confident, selfish, know-it-all agenda on people, but the conservative kids had grown up and began to push back. The bully then began to whine about conspiracies and right-wing lies and deceit--all behavior that he had learned back in nursery school under the benevolent eye of his liberal, know-it-all teacher who had no standards at all and later seduced a kid in the 7th grade. His/Her [Gender uncertain] confidence was always shattered when she/he was around people who thought that abortion, murder, atheism, sodomy, and confiscatory taxes are evil. That why he/she lives in Berkeley.

He/she also became a whiner about those who believe that it is a waste of tax-payer money to fund such self-serving politically driven studies conducted by pinheads, still trying to justify beating up on the little kid in nursery school.

What else would you expect from Berkeley?

"Block admits in his paper that liberal Berkeley is not representative of the whole country..." Boy, that's an understatement.

The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town: "There is very little doubt that Bush deserves censure, not only for the warrantless wiretapping but also for the many other catastrophes his Administration has generated, including the manipulation of intelligence to justify the Iraq war, the willful failure to heed warnings of what the invasion's aftermath would entail, the sanctioning of torture, and the neglect of �homeland security to say nothing of a set of domestic policies that sacrifice solvency, safety, the environment, and elementary fairness on the altar of enriching the rich in the name of Christian compassion."
========
This is the liar's technique, especially in politics. Tell it enough times and then you can use it as a base for other arguments. But someone needs to tell Hendrik Hertzberg that just 'cause he says it, doesn't make it so.

This is the way it works. You tell a lie; one of your buddies repeats it; your buddies in the news media picks it up, and by nightfall it has become part of the public myth.

But New Yorkers are not known for deep thinking, just for thinking they think deeply.

Excite News: "But Biden, a potential 2008 presidential candidate, found little grounds for agreement with Bush as he criticized the administration's handling of Iraq and preparedness for a potential terrorism strike. The senator said if he had known how incompetent the administration would have been in running the war, he might not have voted for the resolution authorizing the president to use troops in Iraq."
======================

There is so much wrong with Biden's statement that you don't know where to begin with it. It means that unless you know the future, you can't make decisions; and it also means that whatever decision you make you can excuse yourself because of some unknown event in the future. This is why the doctrine of predestination is absolutely necessary for the freedom of the will. No one can be held responsible for his actions if blind luck controls events. If our future is not in the hands of God and everything under His personal control, then we will always have an excuse for our bad choices. Man is the victim of unforeseen events and the bad actions of others. How can I be responsible when others are such jerks? Whatever happens cannot be my fault. Others have screwed up the works. The world is a stinking place.

But then, manliness is the enemy, isn't it? Weinies can always whine about what they didn't know and excuse themselves, if not by blind bad luck, then by the stupidity of others. Blame, blame, blame. It just ain't my fault.

Success is by luck, not by good choices. Failure is victimhood. Whine, whine, whine. Start the sad music for Sen. Joseph Biden and all the wimp who support him.

Sen. John Kerry: N.Y.C., Boston Gone by 2036: "Kerry blamed the Bush administration's environmental policies for the coming destruction of New York and Boston."
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The dem-lib-nuts are losing it. How can you think that someone as dumb and ignorant and macho as Dubya can possible be responsible for so much? Now Bush is in charge of global warming.

If Iran gets nuclear bombs you will see some global warming.

Jessica Simpson snubs Bush - Yahoo! News: "The apparent final word that Simpson would be a no-show at a major Republican fund-raiser with Bush and congressional leaders on Thursday night came after a day of conflicting reports from her camp and organizers of the event."
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That does it. I am convinced. Bush is a bad guy, the war is evil, Republicans are of the devil. Jessica Simpson has spoken. Anyone who can wiggle like she can [so I've been told], cannot be ignored. Bush has got to go.

Cherry Picking Again

Pick wisely? 
God, the Chief Cherry Picker
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If you are new to this blog, you may need to scroll down or go to the "Archives" at the right hand menu, to read the other blogs on "Cherry Picking. " They form the background for this blog. Other blogs are at 2/23/06; 2/28/06; and 3/9/06. These blogs reference the blog at 2/22/06 about D. G. Hart review of Peter Charles Hoffer's Past Imperfect.

There is one area of knowledge, and only one, where we do not need to cherry pick the facts. It is also the most important of all knowledge, and the foundation of all other knowledge. It is the most controversial, because sinful man does not think that the knowledge of God is possible at all, or even necessary, or even important.

The reason they come to these conclusions is that they have made the possible of God only a matter of cherry picking the facts in experience or science or something else. Everyone picks out his own cherries and constucts his theology, or lack thereof, by the nature of the cherries he has chosen. It is therefore impossible to know for sure, for cherry picking is an art, and only an expert can make the intuitive guesses that are necssary to even come to a smart guess.

But if there is a God and He is good, then He would not have left such important knowledge up for grabs. It would be perfectly clear if we had a heart to seek it. This is exactly the case. John wrote “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.” (Joh 21:25 AV) Then again, “But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.” (Joh 20:31 AV) We do not need to know everything about Jesus Christ to have true knowledge. God has given us what is necessary.

God has already cherry picked the facts that are necessary for us to know who God is and what He requires of us. These facts are recorded and interpreted in the Bible. “11 And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. 13 These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.” (1Jo 5:11-13 AV)

God has given us a record of His Son. Eternal life and the knowledge of God is in Jesus Christ, and the record has been given to us. This is the reason that “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” (Ro 10:17 AV)

If you want to know God and want to know what to know of Him and if you want to know the Way to Him, read the Bible seriously and seek God there.

Townhall.com :: Columns :: Jay Bennish and 1973 by Mary Grabar - Mar 12, 2006: "The debate about Jay Bennish, the Colorado high school teacher who confused a diatribe against the Bush administration with a lesson in geography, is not about free speech, but about the meltdown of Western civilization.
Jay Bennish, the product of baby boomer teachers and parents, is not unlike other recent high school and college graduates. He was denied the opportunity for an education.

But come to think of it, baby boomers like me were denied educations."

=============

Because America could not find the guts to fire the ignorant communists in the schools in the last generation, we are dealing with another generation of their offspring. Colorado can not find the guts to fire people like Bennish or Ward Churchill, and that means that Colorado is not interested in education at all. Jay Bennish evidently doesn't know who Hitler was and what he did. That is inexcusable.

But don't expect the citizens of Colorado to try to find out what educator are really interested in. They would not like what they would find. Just stick you head back in the sand, fiddle while Rome burns, run around saying that the sky is falling, or any other cliche you choose. The house is burning down.

Jay Benish should have been fired. Not because of his political views, but because of his ignorance. But who gets an education when they train to become teachers? Benish was just doing what he had been trained to do, and he did it, and is now rewarded for it. Let the stupid public beware. What will the next generation do?

Variety.com - Showbiz in shackles: "After all, Europe is undergoing an unprecedented period of upheaval over how to accommodate its recent immigrant populations, mostly from the Muslim world. Whether and to what extent they will be integrated into the mainstream culture and to what extent they will conserve their own very different values is arguably the thorniest issue facing that Continent."
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Assuming, of course, that it is a good ting to "accommodate" and "integrate." Paul put it a different way, "what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?" The only accommodation you can make with someone who want you dead is to be dead. Maybe that is where Europe is headed.

Even as U.S. Invaded, Hussein Saw Iraqi Unrest as Top Threat - New York Times: "The Iraqi dictator was so secretive and kept information so compartmentalized that his top military leaders were stunned when he told them three months before the war that he had no weapons of mass destruction, and they were demoralized because they had counted on hidden stocks of poison gas or germ weapons for the nation's defense. "
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Can you imagine that diabolical George Bush? He even had Saddam's top military leaders convinced that Saddam had WMD. Isn't that something?

More Cherry Picking

Pick wisely? 
================

We all know, I guess, that Hitler was a bad guy in a Germany where everyone was taught to obey the authorities and not question the goodness of the state goals. We also know, I suppose, that anarchy is bad. You know, where everyone makes up his own rules and lives for himself and defies all authority. But in the long continuum between total anarchy and total submission where does freedom become lawlessness or submissiion become aiding and abetting tyranny?

It is easy to throw the labels around, but at what point does the truth appear? Is it tyranny for a husband to decide which friends his wife should have, choose her wardrobe, insist she stay home with the kids, refuse to allow her to go to college, and refuse to allow her a driver's license? Is it lawlessness for him to tolerate everything, including sexual affairs, bank robbery, and lesbianism? Not easy questiions.

But how do we answer them? Of course, we go cherry picking. Most of the cherries are anecdotal in cases like this: stories about Bill and Mary, Jerry and Bobbi, etc. Mary thinks Bill is a Hitler because he is concerned about an affair she is having with his best friend. Jerry thinks Bobbi is lawless because she thinks she should be able to vote in church.

But what is the truth? Are there no limits on human freedom except which I impose on myself, or are there no limits on the level of control that another person or institution can impose one? Where are those limits, and who is to decide?

It will not do for each one to decide for himself, for that is to answer the question on the side of anarchy; but neither will it do for one person or group to decide for everybody for that is to come down on the side of tyranny and we are back at square one.

In the long, long continuum between anarchy and tyranny where is truth to be found? Choose your cherries very carefully.

BREITBART.COM - Cindy Sheehan Arrested After U.N. March: "Cindy Sheehan, who drew international attention when she camped outside President Bush's ranch to protest the Iraq war, was arrested Monday along with three other women during a demonstration demanding the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. " --Paul Berkhardt, AP Writer

--------------------------------

No, Mr. Berkhardt, if you would get out of your office and off the internet and find out what America is thinking, you would realize an important truth that might change your life.

Cindy Sheehan DID NOT draw "international attention." Most people could care less about Cindy Sheehan. What she drew was liberal media reporters like flies to a cow pie. These flies had an agenda: to destroy Bush and to bring down the "arrogance" of America so that the world could be homogenized into a faceless, religionless, drab bunch of robots to be milked by the elite. America must be defeated so that there are no super-powers, and certainly not one that speaks of God and such stuff. But think: do you think that you and your crowd will escape the whirlpool of destruction that would take place if this ship goes down? Hmmmmm??

Here is another truth: You and your bunch will not be able to predestine the future, no matter how Hardt you try. Only God can do that, and He has already done it. Your cosmic dream will not happen and cannot happen.

RealClearPolitics - Commentary - Free Speech on the Run in the West by John Leo: "In Canada, a teacher drew a suspension for a letter to a newspaper arguing that homosexuality is not a fixed orientation, but a condition that can be treated. He was not accused of discrimination, merely of expressing thoughts that the state defines as improper. Another Canadian newspaper was fined 4,500 Canadian dollars for printing an ad giving the citations -- but not the text -- of four biblical quotations against homosexuality. As David Bernstein writes in his book 'You Can't Say That!': 'It has apparently become illegal in Canada to advocate traditional Christian opposition to homosexual sex.'"
==================

The ultimate target of all politically correct movement, multiculturalism if you will, is the Bible. The reason: the Bible carries its own internal proof of authority and its very own authentication as the Word of God. Multiculturalism denies that there is such a thing as self-evident truth, or truth that evidences itself. The very idea of self-evident truth is a biblical, Christian idea that is based upon the fact that the world is God's creation and carries its own imprimatur of authenticity. If there are many gods [the basic premise of multiculturalsim] then truth resides only in the eye of the beholder--worshippers of this god see truth this way; worshippers of that god see truth that way.

This is the reason why modern liberal "Christians" have no defense against the growing threat of radical Islam. They have nothing in their spiritual or intellectual arsenal to draw on. But how do you accept someone's religious view if at the foundation of that religious view is that you must be killed? As an uncle of mine used to say, "I wouldn't trust that guy, even if he was on my side."
.

Cherry Picking, II

Pick wisely? 

How do you get to truth, if you do not pick the right cherries? In the long, long continuum between knowing nothing about nothing to knowing everything about everything, which facts are relevant? During the Civil War only a fool or a desperately wounded man almost without hope would go to one of the hospitals, because it was a certain death sentence. Doctors did not know about the microbes that caused diseases and used rags to clean the wounds. These rags were moistened in buckets, spreading germs from patient to patient. Just one little fact, if known, would have saved the lives of thousands. What good was their medical knowledge if they did not know that microbes spread diseases. The work of Pasteur would come later and change medicine forever. What other facts do we not know? What other nonsense have we been spreading because of what we do not know.

What about God? How shall we gain the knowledge of God. The great religions of the world pick their cherries and, depending on their selection, they organize against those who pick other cherries. Millions have died in defense of this cherry or that cherry. Is there a hierarchy of facts? Are some more important than others? What makes a fact a fact, and what makes a fact a truth? All Christians believe that Jesus said, "This is my body." That's a fact, Jack. But what does "is" mean? If I show you a picture of my wife and say, "This is my wife," does that mean I am married to a piece of paper? Two great divisions of Chrsitianity are based upon a different interpretation of what "is" is. Who is right? or is no one right? Do we have all the facts?

Michael Polanyi would have us be tutored by masters so that we will know what facts to discard as anomalies and which facts to keep as relevant. But what if you pick the wrong guru? What if he bleieves that the world sits on the back of a great monkey? What if he believes that it is ok to do experiments on human sub-species in order to gain knowledge, as Hitler's doctors did? Rome would have us submit to her superior knowledge, for she has the right cherries. Salt Lake City insists on the superior qualities of her cherries, and Mecca is convinced that everyone should be killed that won't believe hers.

How do you know? What if it is all delusion, after all? Maybe we should take Peter's counsel and all go fishing. Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

I submit there is a better way. What if God has already picked the cherries and He has told us which facts are relevant? If He has, then it would come to us with authority, wouldn't it? And wouldn't we return to our bottomless pit if we didn't pay attention to Him? Hmmm? More on this next time.

Justice Scalia: Guns Not Just for Crime: "'I grew up at a time when people were not afraid of people with firearms,' said Scalia, noting that as a youth in New York City he was part of a rifle team at the military school he attended."
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I like this guy, but he should also say that guns are used for self defense against gangsters and tyranny. The Second Amendment is not about freedom to go hunting, but the freedom to protect liberty.

Amendment Two: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Switzerland requires all citizens to be armed and trained in the use of arms, for they are well aware that armed citizens are necessary for the defense of our homes and families.

Dead Men's Voices

You should keep up with reading Dead Men's Voices. This is really good stuff.

Cherry Picking and Truth

Cherry Picking 

This blog has been revised and updated.

This is to continue the theme of my last blog. Because it is impossible to know everything about anything we resort to "cherry picking." President Bush was accused of "cherry picking" the facts concerning intelligence prior to the war with Iraq in order to gather those facts which would justify entry into the war. Cherry picking one set of facts, some come to the conclusion that Bush is very evil and lied to get us into a war with a nation that was no threat to us. Cherry picking another set of facts, some conclude that he is a saint and a great American hero for having the courage to face evil and spare our nation from that evil.

But what else was he to do in the modern intellectual climate? Literally millions and millions of factoids are gathered every day by the sophisticated electronic and photographic intelligence, people on the ground, agents in other countries, and the intelligence of other countries that is shared with the United States. How is this organized? I suspect that it is filtered and reviewed electronically first by computers to sort out what appears to be relevant and reports are printed. These are further analyzed for "relevance." Then people look at them and put together reports for other people to look at. Along the way literally millions and millions of facts are discardeded. Who is to know what relevant factoid may be in that mass of discarded information? How is relevance decided? At what point in the long, long continuum from knowing nothing to knowing everything does the information become true? And even with our great technology, how far are we from knowing everything?

To change the illustration: in the millions and millions of factoids about people's lives, how does the historian decide what factoids are important? What filter does he use? Has he read all the books? The simple truth is that the further we go back the fewer are the sources. What do we know about the daily lives of the people of Europe in the first century after Christ? How many sources are there? How many firepits dug up, how many dwellings have been excavated? How much information is lost completely, and how much information is still buried and will never be found? How can such things be known? If we knew more about Gaul we might conclude that Caesar was justified in killing a million or so of them. At what point in the long, long continuum from knowing nothing to knowing everything does the information become the truth? If we cannot understand that, then what is the purpose for history?

Gilbert's policeman did not have a happy lot because as he put it: "When a 'coster's finished jumping on his mother, he loves to lie a-basking in the sun." If all we knew about the man was that he loved to get a good sun-tan we might think him a jolly good fellow, but one other factoid--the fact that he regularly assaults his mother--changes our perspective. On the other hand, additional information about his mother might change again our perspective on whether he might be justified in beating on his mother. At what point in the long, long continuum from knowing nothing to knowing everything does the information about the 'coster become the truth?

But what if character is revealed by what facts you choose to "believe." If I believe that my character is revealed by the facts I choose to "believe" and yours is revealed the same way, then I can be certain that I am a good guy by carefully cherry-picking. You will be convinced that you are a good guy, too, by carefully cherry-picking another set of facts, how are we ever to talk to each other? At what point in the long, long continuum from knowing nothing about ourselves to knowing everything about ourselves does the information about ourselves become the truth? If we compare ourselves among ourselves are we wise?

Still another illustration. Darwin was certain that the "fossil record" would prove the truth of evolution. So for a hundred years or so, millions and millions of dollars and man/woman hours have been spent assembling the "fossil record." It seems to be more and more elusive the farther we go. But have we only scatched the surface? How many milliions and millions of bones and petrified objects and other objects of interest lie beneath the ground and beneath the oceans, or even in the oceans. What lies fourteen thousand feet under Pikes Peak? At what point in the long, long continuum from knowing nothing to knowing everything does the information become the truth?

Still another illustration. Does the truth of a proposition lie in its utility, as "evolution is true because it enables us to explain things we couldn't explain before"? If so, then what keeps magic from being a reliable tool for explanation. Why can't a curse be the reason for the calf having two heads, or the house burning down, or the hail destroying the crops? Could homosexuality be the result of a curse, or is it a blessing? But, science doesn't permit the supernatural, does it? No, but who is to say a curse is supernatural. Why cannot a curse have a perfectly natural explanation? Is it even possible to define a curse? People lie, and may pretend to cast curses when they cannot do so. Are there those who can? Does a pretended curse have the same effect as a real curse if the person cursed believes he is cursed? Maybe, but maybe examining a curse has the same effect as observing a photon: the observation changes the properties. If that would be true we would have no way of knowing whether the curse was cast or if it was a real curse at all or not. Has all the information been gathered about curses? What effect does bad language have on plants and children and people and pets? Maybe there are forces and influences in the world that "natural" science hasn't studied and cannot study because observation changes the properties of that which is studied. Why is this unreasonable? Some work has been done on the paranormal, but what are we to make of such things? The Bible and other ancient sources say a great deal about curses. Hiel felt the effect of the curse of Joshua many years later, when he rebuilt the city of Jericho. Noah cursed the Canaanites. Have all the curses been studied? At what point in the long, long continuum from knowing nothng about witchcraft to knowing everything does the information become the truth? To reject it out of hand is to go against the testimony of a great many people. By what art is that rejection done?

Is the only solution agnosticism? Is there nothing that can be known for certain? One young postmodern expressed it this way, "There is nothing I would die for, because I might be wrong." Is this the way the world ends, not with a sigh, but a whimper?

Historical Fictions - Books & Culture

At the link above D. G. Hart reviews Peter Charles Hoffer's Past Imperfect . It is well worth the read and is a good diagnostic of the state of historical studies today.

This is an important and relevant article, in my view, but the author may be spitting against the wind in the present climate of history. I am reading David Fischer's 1970 book, Historians' Fallacies, right now. He was trying to come to a "logic of historical thought." It evidently didn't "take."

Michael Polanyi's irrationalism has had a great influence on all the "sciences" in the last half of the last century. How can you know anything if you can't know everything? If history is more than storytelling, then how do you choose which facts to tell? Polanyi denies the possibility of objective science in favor of the art of science, that the scientist must study under a master until he is instinctive about his choice of which facts to accept and which facts are "anomalies."

Do we practice theology that way? Some do, and they shelve the verses that don't "fit" or they torture them to fit. They get a bigger hammer. But IS theology an art by which we pick and choose which "fact" of the Bible or "nature" we choose and which are anomalies that can be safely discarded? I think not.

I think Hart is looking over the bottomless pit and asking himself the question "In the long, long continuum between telling everything and telling nothing, at which point does the story become a lie?" The Iraqi was will look very different from the perspective of the man whose house has just been destroyed by a terrorist bomb from that of a member of the U.S. Joint Chiefs. Everyong knows THAT, but what is TRUE?

On a more fundamental level, how can there be a logic of anything if words have no meaning? It is the crisis that Postmodernism has brought us to from Kant and the others. We are as foolish as Hart's modern historians if we take these presuppositions into theology.

"All that hate me love death" Prov. 8:36

Media Ignore Saddam's Uranium Bombshell: "Tape recordings released over the weekend show that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons program at least as recently as 2000 - but the press has decided the bombshell development isn't newsworthy."
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The Vice Presidential hunting mishap is much more worthy news, because the feckless democrats can make immediate political hay from it. If Saddam DID have WMD's and successfully hid them, that would make Dubya look like a rocket scientist, and we can't have THAT, now can we?

The problem is moral rot, of course. When too large a segment of a society cannot tell the difference between truth and error, then they are open to political and social pipedreams and conspiricy theories and the very fabric of institutions begin to unravel, and the fissures between warring factions become greater and greater. When too many people are willing to say ANYTHING and make ANY charge, no matter how irresponsible and far-fetched--in order to gain an immediate politcal advantage, everything begins to fall apart. May it not be so with us, but may the citizens of this great country understand the grave issue involved.

DRUDGE REPORT FLASH 2006�: "
MAIN PRESS PLANS ANOTHER WEEK OF CHENEY SHOOTING COVERAGE
Sun Feb 19 2006 10:57:36 ET

If the nation's top magazines have the pulse of the country -- get ready for another exhaustive week of exhaustive Cheney shooting coverage!

This just in... Both TIME and NEWSWEEK are planning high impact covers of Cheney for newsstands starting tomorrow, with each magazine rolling out top staff bylines and thousands of words on the hunting incident: TIME: With deep reporting by John Cloud, Mike Allen and Matthew Cooper/ Washington, Cathy Booth Thomas and Patricia Kilday Hart/ Austin, and Hilary Hylton. NEWSWEEK urgently brings in its big investigative guns: Evan Thomas, Michael Isikoff, Daniel Klaidman, Richard Wolffe, Holly Bailey, Mark Hosenball and Eleanor Clift in Washington and Carol Rust in Texas. "
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They are completely out of touch with reality.

Dick Cheney is a real patriot to put up with this stuff. He doesn't need the money, the stress, the foolishness, but he is faithful to his office and does his job because he loves his country.

Do these reporters who live by lies and slander love anything?

Chicken Little 
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Independent Online Edition > Environment: "A satellite study of the Greenland ice cap shows that it is melting far faster than scientists had feared"
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"The sky is falling! The sky is falling" --Chicken Little.

HBO's Gumbel: Lack of Blacks Makes Olympics 'Look Like a GOP Convention' | NewsBusters.org: "So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world�s greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention. "
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Bryant, you should have said a Clinton Cabinet. Have you looked at the Republican cabinet? Or do you have to be a democrat to be black? Isn't it racist to say that blacks all think alike?

Isn't here, y' know 

FOXNews.com - U.S. & World News - Ohio School Board Eliminates Disputed Evolution Language: "COLUMBUS, Ohio. The Ohio school board voted Tuesday to eliminate a passage in the state's science standards that critics said opened the door to the teaching of intelligent design."
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When the gospel prospered in the ancient town of Ephesus under the preaching and teaching of Paul, Aquila, and Priscilla, the religion of the worship of Diana was brought into great danger. [Acts 19] People came from all over the world to worship Diana at the famous temple there and Demetrius and others made a great deal of money selling images of Diana. It could not be tolerated that the religion of Ephesus and those around the world that worshipped Diana should be brought into disrepute. So they made a great stir, for their wealth and fortune depended upon deceiving the people about Diana.

In the same way, Intelligent design must be resisted by the educational and political establishment. Too much money is involved in the teaching of evolution and the false idea of God that spawns the foolishness. No one must ever be allowed to get close to the subject. God is like the elephant in the room that everyone pretends is not there. Government grants for everything from the study of the spotted owl to global warming to the psychology of relgion and mental disorders and chemical addition depend upon a foundation of evolutinary thinking.

No matter how foolish the presuppositions of evolution or how many facts the "science" of evolution has to disregard, it cannot be set aside. There is too much money involved. Ha!! And you thought it had to do with knowledge and fairness. Even the education of our youth must be sacrificed to the silver and golden gods of our idolatry.

They Deserved to Be Mocked

Great blog at Wheat and Chaff on mocking false gods. The true and living God can defend Himself.

New Blogs!

There are new blogs at my "Very Good Figs" and "Very Bad Figs." Click on the links at the right.

BREITBART.COM - Record-Setting Snow Buries Northeast: "The National Weather Service said 26.9 inches of snow had fallen in Central Park, the most for a single storm since record-keeping started in 1869. The old record was 26.4 inches in December 1947. "
====================
Terrible. Should be a congressional investigation. Obviously a case of global warming. Who can doubt it now? [In the 80's some would have blamed the Russian weather machines. Earlier, in the 60's and 70's it would have been a case of the coming new ice age.] But something is going on--funny stuff everywhere. Bush and Cheney are obviously up to something that probably involves oil profits.

Does Anyone Doubt It Now?

If you think that the Islamic war on the cartoons is a silly thing, you are right. In your western perspective you are right.

But you have another think coming, as my grandma used to say.

In my other think over the last few days, several rather unpleasant things intruded into the silliness.

1. There are many silly things done in the name of religion in the United States and in the other secular democracies. It is bearable because it is one of the costs of liberty. But the silly things being done in the name of Islam are not bearable. We forgive a child for being silly; we cannot bear the silliness of a murderer.

2. It is one thing for a man to be silly; it is another thing for millions to be silly. As long as Hitler was saying his silly things in beer halls he was laughable, but the world stopped laughing when he gained the power and might of Germany and the obedience of the German people. It suddenly stopped being funny. The affair of the cartoons shows that the present silliness of Islam isn't funny, either. The very existence of liberty and freedom is at risk. "To Hell with freedom" read one of the signs among the protestors. This is not the sentiments of one or two silly people, but the sentiments of millions around the world.

3. Silliness can be tolerated unless it is in possession of deadly weapons. We may tut, tut over the rantings of a child who is angry about something, but the whole business is changed if the child is holding a shot-gun, or in the case of the His Silliness in Iran, the makings of nuclear weapons. There is no tut, tut about that.

There are dangerous days ahead.

Politics News Article | Reuters.com: "Cindy Sheehan, the anti-Iraq war activist whose son was killed in the conflict there, put an end to speculation on Thursday that she would launch a long-shot bid to become a U.S. senator from California."
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aaaaah, shucks.

Some Thoughts on Cartoons

The evidence is in that the Islamic riots over some old cartoons are not a spontaneous reaction to Danish blundering, but a well staged presentation sent as a warning to the West. The message: It is for the same purpose that drove the Japanese to atrocities in Korea and the Philippines in WWII, the Nazi's to do the same in Europe, and Al Capone to bash heads with baseball bats.

You remember the bully on the playground? I remember one when I was in the third grade. He was a big dumb kid who should have been in the fifth grade, but he had failed twice in his first five years of school. [You are really old if you can remember when kids failed in school. Self-esteem sensitivity laid that practice to rest.]

Every disagreement with that big dumb kid always ended the same way, "Wanna make something out of it?" Nobody ever did, because he was twice as big as the rest of us and used terror to impose his will.

This is exactly what Islam is doing. It's bully boy tactics. Remember how effeminate Europe complained that the "Arab street will erupt" if Bush took strong military measures against Saddam. They didn't, of course, because they didn't care a bit about Saddam. This war is not about politics; it is about religion.

If the west can be painted as warring against Mohammed, the prophet, the bullies hope that they can raise enough emotional support for their beloved jihad. Won't work, of course, just as it didn't work for Capone, Hitler, or the Land of the Rising Sun.

Didn't work for the big dumb kid either. Even sixty-some years later I get pleasure remembering the day he had his clocked cleaned by a mild-manner boy in the fourth grade. Really bloodied his nose, and in those days you had lost the fight if your nose bled.

Are They Nuts?

I see that Russia has warned the rest of the world about having a nuclear confrontation with Iran. Nice and pious.

I wonder what song they would be singing if the Islamic terrorists who shot up the school a few years ago in Russia had had an atomic bomb? Hmmmmmm?

boooooooom! 

Michael Jackson Sings for the Pope. Not So Strange?

US News Article | Reuters.com: "He [Father Giuseppe Moscati] dismissed the recent controversy surrounding Jackson, who is living in Bahrain after a Californian court acquitted him of child molestation charges last June.

'He has been cleared of all charges,' Moscati said.

'As a celebrity he is perhaps a bit remote from the teachings contained in the Pope's prayers. But if he can help us put together a group of singers that fulfil the criteria of the project then we'll study the proposal,' he said.
---------------------------

Well, maybe yess, maybe no. But keep him away from the altar boys.

Go to Red Sky Brothers!

You will find an innovative and hard-hitting blog at the Red Sky link on the right. Enjoy.

Maybe the West is Winning!!

My Way News: "Thousands of Syrians enraged by caricatures of Islam's revered prophet torched the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus on Saturday - the most violent in days of furious protests by Muslims in Asia, Europe and the Middle East."
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Sort of ironic, isn't it? How could anyone get angry with Norway and Denmark? Anything goes there. Everyone and everything are loved and respected. Why get mad at vanilla pudding? Islam seems bent on self-destruction: just hit anyone handy. Why convince the wimps of Europe that you are evil afterall?

But then, Bush has done such a good job of protecting the American homeland that Islam has not been able to create an incident here--only liberals can make a nuisance of themselves, and we have learned to yawn over their activities.

If you cannot kill the one you hate, just hit anyone in sight.

But then, when fanaticism becomes sensible, it is no longer fanaticism, is it?

A Chance for Greatness

Some are born great,some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. [Shakespeare, from Twelfth Night

Very dangerous days are ahead for America and for Christianity. It is time for the church of Jesus Christ to shed the nonsense, the entertainmentism, the blatant heresies, the lust for fame and wealth, the sinfulness of our ways for the enemy that we face is fierce and implacable. What will it take for us to repent: our wives and daughters being executed in our football stadiums?

It is time to take the Bible seriously and return to the robust and manly faith of our faithers.

These are times that will thrust greatness upon Christians. The church is very weak today. False churches are strong and attract great numbers of people to their religious circuses and entertainment. There the people utter banalities or gibberish and think they are in the very heights of spirituality, as if people are edified by nonsense. Gain is confused with godliness.

I have great feelings of foreboding tonight. The war began long ago, with the birth of Mohammed in 570 AD or so. Islam's attempt at the conquest of the world was thwarted by brave Christian soldiers at Tours, France, in 732, under the command of Charles Martel. The Crusades were only a temporary part of the long war of Islam against Christianity and brought only a time of respite for Europe. Christians were put on the offensive for a while, but soon the onslaught was renewed and wave after wave beat upon Christian civilization until the fall of Constantinople in 1453 left Europe vulnerable. The history is long and complicated; war is sometimes ugly, but Christianity fought for its very life, and Islam fought to keep the gains that had been won by the force of arms at the expense of Christians. Over two hundred years of war followed the conquest of Constantinople. Only in 1683 after Islam was repulsed at the walls of Vienna did Europe know peace from those who thought they would gain heaven by slaying Christians. But Islam has never changed its fundamental faith, that the whole world must fall under the rule of the Islamic faith. There is no separation of church and state in the dogma of Islam.

The modern conflict, punctuated by the bombings of 9/11, is just a renewal of an ancient and deadly conflict. America does not realize it yet, but America has not caused the hatred nor can she do anything to assuage it. The evil is real and it is a religious evil. The only way Spain could gain religious peace was to expel Islam, and they did in 1492, after the fall of Granada. Harsh, but effective. But no harsher than the dictum of Islam to conquered Christians: Become Islamic, pay heavy tribute, or die. Spain's treatment was humane by the standards of the day.

From 1683 until 2001, a period of 318 years, the Western World was asleep, forgetting history, forgetting the deep roots of religious hatred that were being nourished in Islam. We should have known, but we disregarded the warning signs in our day. We were under a religious delusion of our own, that those who hate can be pacified by tolerance and kindness. We should have learned from the Nazis, the Fascists, and the Communists, but we didn't. We have to be hit in the head over and over again.

We forgot the words of Christ, "He that is not with me is against me," and we thought that our forbearance and kindness would evoke forbearance and kindness in others. It was wrong, of course. We should love and forbear, not because it is a good policy and will make us friends, but because it is the right thing to do. But love and forbearance does not imply that we must pretend that false religions and hateful religions are equal to the faith of our Lord Jesu Christ. We will not win men to vrtue by becoming an enemy of virtue.

But the gates of hell will not prevail upon the church of Jesus Christ, for Christ rules from heaven and is above all things [Eph. 1]. Men will have greatness thrust upon them and will do valiant deeds. The West may suffer immensely because we are a wicked people, but the future does not belong to the Crescent any more than it belonged to the Hammer or Sickle or the Swastika. Immense amounts of blood will flow and the world will be cleansed by that blood and life will spring from death. There are yet American heros in our future and we will not lose this war.

Even the evil of Islam has its purpose. It involved Charles V in so many wars in the sixteenth century and he was never able to deal with Luther and the Lutherans until it was too late and the Reformation was in full flower. God makes even the wrath of men to praise Him. God also has a purpose in this present war. This preacher hopes and prays that it will be the opening of the gospel to the Islamic world in a way that has never been seen before. What joy it would be to see northern Africa, the Middle East, Persia, and Egypt once again under the domination of Christian civilization as it was before the sword of the Prophet laid it waste. Islam should give back all the land it stole in the 7th and 8th centuries. Not to Israel, but to the people of the Lord Jesus Christ, whose land it was. Fair is fair, afterall. [These last sentences were written with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek].

Mohammed is dead. Those who worship dead prophets know nothing but death. Not only does Islam not have separation of church and state, they also do not have a Risen Lord Jesus Christ. We pity them, but must not yield our families and institutions to their dark control.

They will have no rest, and no peace, until they bow the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ. Some temporary victories may cause Islamic children to dance in the streets as they did after 9/11 but such victories will be temporary. Julian the Apostate learned the power of Christ and exclaimed after receiving his death wound, "Galilean, Thou hast conquered!"

Do you?

International News Article | Reuters.com: "German Chancellor Angela Merkel likened Iran's nuclear plans on Saturday to the threat posed by the Nazis in their early days, as top U.S. officials urged a tough line to stop Tehran from making an atomic bomb."
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I suspect that the war with Iran is coming. My guess? A bombing run by Israel, followed by invasion from France, England, the USA, Germany, and others. Russia will squawk, but they have become irrelevant. China will watch, N. Korea will sneer. India will continue to build her economy to become the major economic power of Asia. Just guessing. Not a prophet or the son of a prophet.

Congressional liberals will wet their pants but they are also irrelevant.

A most dangerous era. A lot of casualties in the future.


Thar she blows! 

Arab Cartoons Trash 9/11, Holocaust: "One knee-slapper that ran Qatar's Al-Watan newspaper nine months after the 9/11 attacks shows former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon watching as an Israeli plane crashes into the World Trade Center. The Arabic words alongside the Twin Towers are 'The Peace.'
Then there's the cartoon that appeared in the Jordanian newspaper Ad-Dustur in October 2003, which depicted the railroad tracks to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The punchline? Israeli flags have replaced the swastikas flying above the death camp - with a caption that reads: 'Gaza Strip or the Israeli Annihilation Camp.�
And for those who can't appreciate the humor in that tableau, there's always the cartoon that ran in Saudi Arabia's Arab News in April 2002, which shows Prime Minister Sharon wielding a swastika-shaped axe to chop up Palestinian children.
As Mr. Gross notes: Most print media in the Arab world are under the full or partial control of the ruling regimes. "
========
'Nuff said. A man is known by his enemies as well as by his friends. The wise man can tell the difference.

Excite News: "Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Yuri Thamrin said the dispute pitted 'the whole Islamic world vis-a-vis Denmark and vis-a-vis the trend of Islamophobia.'"
========
"Islamophobia" indeed. I know the cure. Let the Mullah renounce publicly the inlammatory language of hate, i.e. calling America the "Great Satan." Let them begin to treat their women with dignity and respect, allowing them basic God-given liberty and rights. Let them renounce war as a means of spreading Islam. Let them admit Christian ministries and churches into their lands. Let them allow Christian schools in their lands. Let them allow the free distribution of Bibles in their lands. Who is afraid of whom? When they allow as many Bibles is Islamic land as there are Korans in America and when there are as many Christian missionaries working and living safely in Islamic lands as there are Islamic missionaries living safely in America, then the talk of "Islamophobia" will not be necessary. Old debate technique: accuse your enemy of what you are yourself.

You don't build walls to defend the truth; you build walls to keep the truth out. Truth doesn't need defending and walls will not keep it out.

DRUDGE REPORT FLASH 2006�: "A woman accused of using racial epithets while waiting for food at a Connecticut Taco Bell drive-through window was arrested Wednesday."
----------
Interesting. Should we now arrest Julian Bond of the NAACP for calling Republicans "Nazis" and that Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice are "tokens"?

The trouble with using words in extreme ways is that it is always self-defeating. Calling Republicans "Nazis" will not make people think that the Republicans are nasty. They know Republicans and in the last election more Americans voted for President Bush than anyone in the history of America. But most Americans don't know the Nazis or how nasty they were because history isn't taught anymore. All they know is what they get on the history channel, and who watches that? Too many American kids don't know anything about history and cannot tell the difference between World War I and World War II. They think Martin Luther was a civil rights leader in the sixties and that Benedict Arnold is a way to fix eggs for breakfast.

So to call Republicans "Nazis" will not attach disgust to the name of the Republicans we know; instead, it will make people think that the Nazis were not so bad. After all, George Bush seems like a rather decent fellow; "I wonder what it was about Hitler?"

But believe me. Dubya is not Adolph. Do you think that a Julian Bond type could have said what he did in Hitler's Germany, saying that the Nazis were no better than Spanish Inquisition under Torquemada. And no, Torquemada was not an early model of a Ford sedan.

But turn the Bond types loose. Our black citizens can think for themselves and cannot help but respect the likes of Colin Powell, Thomas, and Rice and other distinguished black republicans. Bond's stupidity will just make more black Republicans. Amen to that.

Compare and Consider

A few days ago, Pat Robertson made some stupid remarks about the Prime Minister of Israel--something about him being punished for giving away the land. He later, under protest from CHRISTIANS, apologized for his remarks.

Where is the self-discipline among the clerics of Islam in the flap over cartoons in Denmark papers? Are they telling their firebrands to shut up and go home and stop being idiots in trying to suppress free speech? No, because Islam does not believe in free speech except in countries that do they not control. Free speech in Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or Saddam's Iraq? You have to be kidding.

There is not even any protest from the so-called American moderate Islamists about the idiocy of the protests around the world.

It is time for Europe and America to realize the nature of the enemy--yes, enemy--that we face. The religion of the Prophet dsires nothing but the political and religious oppression and suppression of Christianity. If not, then let them say so with the same vigor and energy that they use against Danish cartoons and Salmon Rushdie. If they hold Western values, then let them stand for them. Thin skins belong to Nazis and other philosophies and theologies that cannot stand the sunlight.

BBC NEWS | Europe | Muhammad cartoon row intensifies: "Newspapers across Europe have reprinted caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to show support for a Danish paper whose cartoons have sparked Muslim outrage. "
---------------

Every paper in the free world should publish them. Will Islam get to decide what is published in the papers? Europe better wake up. Those editors who waffled and ran like chickens on this issue have just surrendered their papers to the Muslim clerics.

Do you think that Christians could decide what the papers in Saudi Arabia print or don't print?

United Press International - Security & Terrorism - Some US troops question Woodruff coverage: "At least 2,242 troops have died in Iraq since the war's start, 1,753 of them killed in action. Another 16,000 have been injured, half of them seriously enough to require evacuation from the battlefield. According to the Pentagon, 60 percent of the deaths are the result of IEDs. IEDs have injured more than 9,200 troops, nine times more than gunshots.
'The point that is currently being made (is that) that press folks are more important than mere military folks,' a senior military officer told UPI Tuesday. "
-----

I am sorry Woodruff got blown up, but I wouldn't trade one of these brave Marines for ten thousand newsmen. The modern liberal newsman works against the liberty and constitutional guarantees of the American people. Our brave soldiers defend our freedoms and liberty. The fuss about the Woodruff matter shows how self-serving the newsmedia is. They report more on themselves than they do on the sucesses of the military.

Former Democratic Chief Counsel: Ted Kennedy Disgraced Himself: "In my view (as a Democrat and former chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee), Senator Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., has disgraced himself and our party by misusing his position on the Senate Judiciary Committee to achieve self-serving partisan ends"
==========
With all due respect to the former chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, how could Senator Kennedy possibly disgrace himself. Senator Kennedy has a dog named "Splash." I suppose that is to remind him of Mary Jo Kopechne who took her last gasping breath submerged in Kennedy's car which had run off a bridge in Chappaquiddick. Where was Kennedy? He had swum to safety and was with counsellors trying to think up a story that would get him off the hook. Mary Jo's family was bought off by Kennedy money, the justice system corrupted by Kennedy family and money, but Ted Kennedy was finished as a possible presidential candidate. This is only one of the sordid incidents involving drunkenness, adultery and fornication, corruption and extreme liberal politices, generated no doubt from the guilt the whole family feels from receiving the inheritance of Hitler-loving Joseph Kennedy, who made his money in bootleg liquor during prohibition. Joseph was too much even for Franklyn Roosevelt, who dismissed Joseph from his post as ambassador to England because of his [Joseph's] pro-Nazi sympathies.

Do you doubt these things? Look them up. This man is the conscience of the Democratic party?

Go read Andy McIntyre

Good quotations from Dante and others at Dead Men's Voices. Click on the link to the right.

RealClearPolitics - Commentary - Bad Law, Good Ruling by E.J. Dionne: "I believe that legalizing physician-assisted suicide is a mistake. I also believe that having federal courts and bureaucrats decide the issue is a mistake. This is a question that should be debated by the people and their representatives. "
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So why should the same logic be applied to abortion. Roe vs Wade is horrible law and horrible politics. It should be overturned and the debate should take place in the state legislatures and among the people. We have never had that debate, and we need it desperately. I guess that just makes too much sense.

Go see Wheat and Chaff

Matt has a great blog on the "God shaped hole" idea. Click on the Wheat and Chaff link to the right.

The Daily Princetonian - Sen. Clinton calls for sanctions against Iran: " Though never mentioning President Bush by name, Clinton strongly criticized the current administration's policy toward Iran. 'I believe that we lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and to outsource the negotiations,' Clinton said."
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Baby Bear said, "My Iraq porridge is too hot." Mamma Bear said, "My Iran porridge is too cold."

Goldilocks didn't say anything, for she was with the grownups.