Of the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their kinsmen were at their command — 1 Chronicles 12:32
This is an amazing world under our demon-possessed president:.
I want you to carefully notice that this is NOT some accident where a “teacher” (read “Obama government propaganda expert”) hastily went online and googled “Arabic sentence” and inadvertently ended up with the WORST SENTENCE IN ISLAM. No, the form specifically points out “Here is the shahada, the Islamic statement of faith, written in Arabic.”
Please write “There is no god but Allah. Mohammad is the messenger of Allah.” And we’re going to grade you on how well you do it. Just don’t you DARE ask for a Bible.”
Students at Riverheads High School in Greenville, Virginia, were told to practice calligraphy by writing out the statement “There is no god but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” The assignment was given by classroom teacher Cheri Laporte.
That statement is known as the Muslim statement of faith or the shahada. The school district defended the assignment last week when it met with outraged parents.
“Neither these lessons, nor any other lesson in the world geography course, are an attempt at indoctrination to Islam or any other religion, or a request for students to renounce their own faith or profess any belief,” the district said in a statement provided to Fox News.
Parents told The Schilling Show that their children were not given the translation of what they were writing.
Riverheads High School Principal, Max Lowe, did not directly acknowledge an inquiry requesting confirmation of the incident, clarification of policy, and disciplinary measures, if any, taken against Ms. Laporte.
The school district defended the assignment.
“The statement presented as an example of the calligraphy was not translated for students, nor were students asked to translate it, recite it or otherwise adopt or pronounce it as a personal belief,” the district stated. “They were simply asked to attempt to artistically render written Arabic in order to understand its artistic complexity.”
Further, the district said the assignment was “consistent with the Virginia Department of Education Standards of Learning and the requirements for content instruction on world monotheistic religions.”
But parents say that other religions were not represented. Parents told The Schilling Show that “the Koran was presented to students, the Bible was not. The teacher reportedly declined to provide a Bible because all the students have either read or seen a Bible.”
Female students were also encouraged to wear a hijab, it was reported.
Now, while you kiddies are practicing your taking of the oath that there IS no god but Allah and Mohammad is his Prophet with your hijabs denoting your submission to Allah, please don’t mind us as Obama takes away ANY reference to Jesus Christ or the Holy Bible.
Meanwhile, in yet another Obama government indoctrination center, a public high school football coach was suspended for praying. For praying SILENTLY. The Obama government indoctrination center – also known as a “public school” – banned prayer. They not only banned prayer, but they officially sent “a letter banning private prayer.” That’s right: PRIVATE PRAYER. Because don’t you kid yourself, the Obama officials KNEW he wasn’t praying to a politically correct god.
I simply declare as a matter of factual historical record that my title is completely true. No Bibles for anyone, girls put on your hijab, and join with me as we all recite the shahada which is the heart of religious Islam. It’s an amazing thing. And it’s going to take a while to explain why liberals are doing this.
Free speech has been abolished on liberal university campuses across the United States. And I can document that just as easily in liberal newspapers such as the Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times as I can the Wall Street Journal:
Liberals are wicked-evil-depraved-immoral people and their way is ultimately the way of Stalinism. Which is why they literally don’t mind the Islamists who harbor the same cherished goal: a totalitarian all-powerful State. Which is why I can take you back to 2007 when “San Francisco State University put its chapter of the College Republicans on trial for desecrating the name of Allah.”
Which only serves to show you the left’s embrace of Islam is hardly anything new.
We have entered a time when history repeats itself, with the hell of ideas that resulted in the Marxists who swiftly became the Stalinists and the Nazis who swiftly created the Holocaust emerged from ivory tower academia. Because ideas have CONSEQUENCES. And just as in the past, we look to our now-rabidly fascist academia system and we see the most profound tolerance to competing ideas and free speech in general every bit as bad as the Islamic State fanatics. Former Rhodes scholar and current professor emeritus of history at University of Toronto Scarborough Modris Ecksteins – who specializes in German history and modern culture – described Nazism thus: “Nazism was a popular variant of many of the impulses of the avant-garde. It expressed on a more popular level many of the same tendencies and posited many of the same solutions that the avant-garde did on the level of ‘high art.'” [Rights of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, p. 311]
Rights of Spring is an interest title because it points to what was THE birth of the movement known as “modernism” that the left embraced before they abandoned it in favor of the even MORE destructive philosophical view of Postmodernism that I previously described at length (How Postmodernism Leads To Fascism (part 1); How Postmodernism Leads To Fascism (part 2); How Postmodernism Leads To Fascism (part 3)). In 1913, Igor Stravinsky created a ballet he titled “The Rites of Spring.” Rather than the traditional (i.e. conservative) graceful, stylized music and dance of the ages, Stravinsky conducted an atonal, harsh music to which his dancers moved in a ritualistic but passionate way filled with spinning and thrashing. The idea was to portray a primitive people who had nothing to do with the “shackles” of Judeo-Christianity, who as passionate environmentalists were at one with nature and celebrating the coming of spring. The ballet culminated in human sacrifice. You know, like every single abortion does.
The spirit of fascism arose out of a disenchantment culminating in a rabid rejection of the traditional, Judeo-Christian worldview. It purported itself to be both refreshingly new and yet ancient at the same time, a return to a time before factories and oil companies and global warming, in other words. The fascists, just like their Modernist counterparts, demonized the existing Judeo-Christian civilization and proposed revolutionary new structures and values in its place. These people were not at all interested in the discovery of truth, but the creation of “truth” through the imposition of bureaucratic (e.g. the universities) and government power.
I want you to understand that back in 2008, I was pointing out that, just like the godless, Holocaust, ideas have consequences. Liberalism and now the entire Democrat Party is pathologically secular humanist, atheistic, postmodernist, existentialist, deconstructionist, you name it. And we are seeing the incredibly ugly consequences beginning to emerge. Jonah Goldberg expressed this fact very powerfully in his great book, Modern Fascism:
For more than sixty years, liberals have insisted that the bacillus of fascism lies semi-dormant in the bloodstream of the political right. And yet with the notable exception and complicated exceptions of Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom, no top-tier American conservative intellectual was a devotee if Nietzsche or a serious admirer of Heidegger. All major conservative schools of thought trace themselves back to the champions of the Enlightenment – John Locke, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Burke – and none of them have any direct intellectual link to Nazism or Nietzsche, to existentialism, nihilism, or even, for the most part, Pragmatism. Meanwhile, the ranks of left-wing intellectuals are infested with ideas and thinkers squarely in the fascist tradition. And yet all it takes is the abracadabra word “Marxist” to absolve most of them of any affinity with these currents. The rest get off the hook merely by attacking bourgeois morality and American values – even though such attacks are themselves little better than a reprise of fascist arguments.
In a seminar there may be important distinctions to be made between, say, Foucault’s “enterprise of Unreason,” Derrida’s tyrannical logocentrism, and Hitler’s “revolt against reason.” But such distinctions rarely translate beyond ivy-covered walls – and they are particularly meaningless to a movement that believes action is more important than ideas. Deconstruction, existentialism, postmodernism, Pragmatism, relativism: all of these ideas had the same purpose – to erode the iron chains of tradition, dissolve the concrete foundations of truth, and firebomb the bunkers where the defenders of the ancien regime still fought and persevered. These were ideologies of the “movement.” The late Richard Rorty admitted as much conflating Nietzsche and Heidegger with James and Dewey as part of the same grand project. — Goldberg, Modern Fascism, pp. 175-176
We talk about political correctness and many people – including those who claim to be opposed to it – have an incredibly cavalier attitude toward it. It is incredibly dangerous and it is performing exactly as those who created intended. Being politically correct is not just an attempt to make liberals feel better. It is a very large, very sophisticated, very coordinated effort to change Western culture as we know it by redefining it. Early Marxists designed their game plan long ago and the same leftists continue to execute that plan today: to control the argument by controlling the “acceptable” language. If you use the wrong words or phraseology today, you won’t just get corrected or even screamed at; you’ll lose your job and be ruined. Those with radical agendas understand the game plan and are taking advantage of an oversensitive, overly gullible, and frankly amoral public.
I’ve got news for you, liberal: Nazism was born out of YOUR vile mindset, not conservatism. It was the same damn leftist artsy-fartsy elitist avant-garders in Germany doing the same damn things the same leftist artsy-fartsy elitist avant-garders are doing today in this country.
That’s why we see the same damn thing today that we saw as Nazism rose: Then as now, those who attacked democracy, ridiculed morality and celebrated violence did so in highly sophisticated ways that ultimately boiled down to “ends justify the means” arguments that are embraced by the same thug-socialists mobs who pushed Germany into Nazism. You look at the Occupy Movement and its violent rights-abusive “occupations.” You look now at Black Lives Matter. And see how they openly violate other people’s free speech and other people’s rights on the SAME DAMN ARGUMENTS that we have seen before. It was white Aryans doing it in Nazi Germany; it is black liberals doing it now. Same abusive tactics, different screaming faces. Just imagine the Nazis who couldn’t acknowledge that “all lives matter” because of course some of those lives were Jewish lives. These people are DEHUMANISTS. It’s the inevitable product that comes from the ideology responsible for the murder of sixty million innocent human beings in the abortion mills and then selling their body parts like meat at a deli.
Which again is why I can readily display the nexus between Islamic State and the American Democrat Party as BOTH are personally and morally vested in the trafficking of HUMAN BODY PARTS as the consequence of an innocent human being’s life being brutally ended by depraved people who will all one day scream in hell for what they did to human dignity.
Any prayer in the name of Jesus makes the demons that inhabit Democrats’ crawl. It is apparently an unpleasant feeling that Democrats cannot tolerate for long unless they stop that prayer.
What is funny is how liberalism is akin to a cockroach that devours her young. Blacks, Hispanics, feminists, homosexuals, etc. think they are going to benefit from the rise of progressive liberalism (i.e., fascism), but they will ultimately be dismayed when the whip cracks down on them the way they are helping to crack the whip on Christians and conservatives and white men. The negativism, iconoclasm, race-polarizing, divisiveness that characterizes todays special interest leftist groups to attack the established order, but just you wait until the left becomes the firmly entrenched order because suddenly any new complaint from you will be subversive to their order. That’s exactly what happened to homosexuals as the Third Reich arose: Hitler rose to power on the homosexual-driven SA. But when he no longer needed them and they became an obstacle to his greater rise, he ruthlessly crushed them. And homosexuals perished in the very death camps they had helped to create. It’s going to happen to you, too, rank-and-file liberal turd. Because if you truly believe a Barack Obama or a Hillary Clinton give one damn about you, you are a true fool. You are truly a means to their ends.
And when that day comes, you will have no Judeo-Christian transcendent values to appeal to – because YOU ARE THE ONES WHO DESTROYED THOSE VALUES.
But a far more awful fate ultimately awaits you:
When you’re screaming in hell for all of eternity, Democrat, just please realize that you truly deserve to be there. YOU did all these things that unleashed hell on earth. Your voting record caused all this wickedness to happen. You are personally to blame and you WILL ultimately be held to account.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse of Revelation chapter six are coming. Any wise person can hear their approaching hoofbeats as I write these words. They’re not coming for me, liberal, because Jesus is going to return to take me to be with Him at the Rapture of believers. No, the Four Horsemen and the Antichrist you will soon be cheering for and worshiping are coming for YOU. Pretty soon you’re going to get EVERYTHING you voted for; because you voted for hell and hell is coming for you first in this world, and ultimately in the world to come.
Secular humanism – in religious terms you can label it “atheism” and in political terms you can label it “progressive liberalism” – is a shell game that tries to hide the existence of the human soul.
The soul is there, of course. It simply HAS to be there for humans to be in any meaningful way categorically different than the beasts, or for human justice to be anything other than a morbid joke as “beasts” judge one another for acting like beasts. But the project of secular humanism is to only allow as much “soul” as is absolutely necessary to allow society to function while at the same time denying it’s reality lest the people reject the atheism and the progressive liberalism that are based on the denial of the soul.
The problem is that the soul is NOT a degreed property. “Size” and “weight” are a degreed properties; a thing can have more of it or less of it and still be the thing itself. But in this case the soul must be the kind of thing (a substance) that HAS properties rather than a property that has degrees. We therefore either have souls – in which case the secular humanists are entirely wrong about the nature of humanity, the nature of religion, the nature of morality, the nature of science and the very nature of the universe – or we do NOT have souls and therefore we do NOT have “free will” in which case human society, human justice and basically everything worthwhile about “humanity” is an entirely manufactured lie.
Look, I am either a soul – created in the image of God – that has a body, or else I am nothing more than a body – and frankly a meat puppet – which was the result of random DNA conditioned by my environment. It’s one or the other; there is no middle ground. Free will becomes a logical as well as biological impossibility for the latter view – which is why secular humanist scientists and philosophers are increasingly rejecting the very possibility of free will.
The problem is that if you were to actually assume the latter was actually true, then how could you hold anybody responsible for anything? It’s really a frightening thought. After all, if I commit a brutal murder, but there really is no “me” inside of me to truly hold accountable, but rather I was conditioned by genes I didn’t choose and an environment I didn’t choose, why should I be held accountable? How is this not like holding a child responsible for what his parents did? But of course, on this view, you can’t hold the parents responsible any more than the child, because they suffer the same complete lack of moral free will that their child does. And the final result of this view is that we should no more hold a human being – who is NOTHING but an evolved monkey, after all – any more morally responsible for his or her “crimes” than we would hold a tiger responsible for killing a goat. Because in both cases, you merely do what you “evolved” to do.
Therefore, the people who claim the latter (no God, ergo sum no imago dei ergo sum no free will) is reality have to pretend for the most part that it is most definitely NOT reality in order to have any kind of functioning human society. What they have done is determined that humans are in fact “animals” (or beasts); and that, more specifically, we are “herd animals.” Mind you, we are also clearly – judging by human experience – “predator animals” who prey on herd animals. And so the secular humanists have construed for themselves a “foundation for their description of reality” in which they have appointed themselves the outside role of “the bureaucrats” and “the professors” and “the journalists” (etc.) who shape and control the behavior of the herd and attempt to keep the herd animals relatively safe from the predator animals.
And of course liberalism only becomes consistent in their anthropology when they refuse to execute murderers (after all, THAT would be holding someone accountable for their moral crimes when that man is merely a beast who merely did what his brain had evolved to do); so we house them, keep them locked up in cages. Just like animals. Because they ARE animals and nothing more than animals conditioned by DNA plus environment. Just like YOU’RE nothing more than a mindless animal purely conditioned by DNA plus environment.
I suggest that the increasing breakdown of society under the control of secular humanism is itself a refutation of their system. We are skyrocketing out of control as a species because when you treat men like beasts, like beasts men shall increasingly become. As the Bible puts it, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7). But we can offer a great deal more of an analysis than merely pointing out that “by their fruits shall ye know them” (Matthew 7:16-20).
One of the things you need to realize is the bait and switch you have received regarding science and the nature of science. You have been fed a pile of lies in the form of a narrative that science is incompatible with religion and that “science” produces open-mindedness and tolerance for new ideas whereas “religion” produces close-mindedness and hostility to new ideas. But that is simply a lie: as a matter of factual history, “science” is uniquely a product of Judeo-Christianity. It arose ONLY in Christendom as the result of belief in a Personal, Transcendent Creator God rather than anywhere else on earth. Belief in God was a necessary condition for the rise of science as not only the discoverer of the scientific method itself (Francis Bacon) but the discoverer of every single branch of science was a publicly confessing Christian who “sought appreciate the beauty of God’s handiwork” and who “wanted to think God’s thoughts after Him.”
J.P. Moreland (Source: The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer, p. 17) listed some of the philosophical presuppositions – based on the Judeo-Christian worldview – that were necessary for the foundation of science:
1. the existence of a theory-independent, external world
2. the orderly nature of the external world
3. the knowability of the external world
4. the existence of truth
5. the laws of logic
6. the reliability of human cognitive and sensory faculties to serve as -truth-gatherers and as a source of justified beliefs in our intellectual environment
7. the adequacy of language to describe the world
8. the existence of values used in science (e.g., “test theories fairly and report test results honestly”)
9. the uniformity of nature and induction
10. the existence of numbers
Good luck in starting science without all of these assumptions – of which the assumption of God according to the Judeo-Christian worldview was necessary to provide. Science could not verify or validate any of the list above for the reason that they already needed to be accepted in order for science to ever get off the ground in the first place.
To put it crassly, if it were up to secular humanists, we would still be living in caves and afraid of fire. And if it left up to secular humanists, we will ultimately be living in caves and afraid of fire again. And all you have to do to realize that society is not advancing under their standard, but degenerating, to know that.
God created the world as a habitation for the capstone of His creation, man. And then God created man in His own image and therefore able to see and fathom the world which He had created for humanity. That is the basis for science.
Gleason Archer framed an insurmountable intellectual contradiction for the “scientific atheist”:
“But it should be pointed out that consistent atheism, which represents itself to be the most rational and logical of all approaches to reality, is in actuality completely self defeating and incapable of logical defense. That is to say, if indeed all matter has combined by mere chance, unguided by any Higher Power of Transcendental Intelligence, then it necessarily follows that the molecules of the human brain are also the product of mere chance. In other words, we think the way we do simply because the atoms and molecules of our brain tissue happen to have combined in the way they have, totally without transcendental guidance or control. So then even the philosophies of men, their system of logic and all their approaches to reality are the result of mere fortuity. There is no absolute validity to any argument advanced by the atheist against the position of theism.
On the basis of his won presuppositions, the atheist completely cancels himself out, for on his own premises his arguments are without any absolute validity. By his own confession he thinks the way he does simply because the atoms in his brain happen to combine the way they do. If this is so, he cannot honestly say that his view is any more valid than the contrary view of his opponent. His basic postulates are self contradictory and self defeating; for when he asserts that there are no absolutes, he thereby is asserting a very dogmatic absolute. Nor can he logically disprove the existence of God without resorting to a logic that depends on the existence of God for its validity. Apart from such a transcendent guarantor of the validity of logic, any attempts at logic or argumentation are simply manifestations of the behavior of the collocation of molecules that make up the thinker’s brain.” — Gleason Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, 1982, pp. 55-56
Basically, if the atheist is right, then “human reason” becomes a contradiction in terms and let’s just live like the beasts they say we are and be done pretending we’re something we’re not.
What secular humanists have been trying to do – frankly for generations – is to perpetuate a fraud. It would be akin to me intercepting a great thinker’s work and trying to pass it off as my own.
But imagine – for the sake of argument – what would have happened had I done such a thing with the work of Albert Einstein. Imagine I had enough of a vocabulary to pass myself off as a great scientific mind. What would have happened to science as a result of my limiting it?
And that is what’s essentially being described in the R. Scott Smith article below. Education – the teaching of science and of how to do science, for example – would suffer more and more as fools who are “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7) hijacked the agenda.
I would like to begin this discussion with an article on the logically-entailed implications of Darwinism in crucial human pursuits by beginning with an article detailing the ramifications of Darwinism on education:
Low standard test scores, serious budget crunches and more — our public schools face daunting challenges. But perhaps they face a deeper issue, one not being mentioned in recent public discussions: What if they aren’t really teaching our youth knowledge?
Today’s education is based upon the assumption that science gives us knowledge. But other disciplines give us (at best) “inferior knowledge,” or just preferences and opinions.
And today’s scientific orthodoxy is Darwinian and naturalistic, meaning all that’s real is natural, or material; there isn’t anything real that’s supernatural or immaterial. There’s no God, souls or minds, and so no real “mental states” — thoughts, beliefs, experiences, intentions, etc.
If that seems overstated, notice what Daniel Dennett, a leading philosopher of neuroscience at Tufts University, says. He admits that according to naturalistic evolution, the dominant scientific theory, brains and physical patterns of physical forces exist. Physical stuff (matter) is real, but things like mental states aren’t.
Yet when we do science, pay our taxes or watch a football game, it seems we really think, have beliefs and experience things. So, how can that be?
According to Dennett, all that’s going on is the interpretation of the behavior of “intentional systems,” like sophisticated chess-playing computers and people. While observing them, we try to interpret and predict their behavior. For instance, we might interpret a computer’s move in a game as “intending” to checkmate its opponent, whereas the human player “thinks” or “believes” she can escape by making a certain move. We just interpret their behaviors by how we conceive of (or talk about) their behaviors as mental states — but that’s all there’s to it. There are no real beliefs, thoughts or observations.
However, suppose a person comes here from a fourth-world country. She’ll need to get a concept of what a traffic light is and that she can cross the street on a green light, not red. To learn that, she’ll need experiences and thoughts of what these things are, and then form a concept of when it’s safe to cross a street.
So, for Darwinian evolution and naturalism, there’s a crucial problem here: How could anyone make observations and form concepts and interpretations? To do these seems to require we use the very mental things we’re told don’t exist.
Yet without real observations, we don’t seem able to do any scientific experiments. Without concepts, thoughts and beliefs, how could we even form, test and accept scientific theories?
Worse, how could we have knowledge if there aren’t real beliefs we can accept as true? We also need adequate evidence for our beliefs to count as knowledge. But with Darwinian, naturalistic science, evidence from experience seems impossible.
Now, maybe Michael Tye (a philosopher at the University of Texas at Austin) could reply that we do have mental states, yet these really are just something physical, like brain states, being conceived of as being mental. But, that won’t work — to even have concepts, we need real mental states to work with.
So, it seems the assumption upon which our education system is founded — that Darwinian evolutionary, naturalistic science uniquely gives us knowledge of the facts — cannot be true. And, Darwinian evolution also is mistaken, for on it we couldn’t know anything. Yet we do know many things — for instance, that we’re alive.
Therefore, real, immaterial mental states must exist. While this essay doesn’t prove it, it suggests something very important — supernaturalism isn’t far-fetched after all. Indeed, we can infer even more. If we can have real immaterial thoughts, experiences, beliefs and more, then it seems that there must be something immaterial that is real which can have and use them. That suggests that we have minds, even souls, that are real and non-physical. So, how then do we best explain their existence? Surely not from Darwinian evolution. Instead, it seems that this short study highly suggests that God exists and has made us in a way that we can have knowledge. I am reminded of what Solomon said: “To have knowledge, you must first have reverence for the Lord” (Prov. 1:7, GNT).
Thus, fixing our education system seems to involve, in part, a repudiation of naturalism and Darwinian, naturalistic science. For on it, we lose all knowledge whatsoever. But since we do know many things, that fact strongly suggests that God exists.
R. Scott Smith (M.A. ’95) is an associate professor of ethics and Christian apologetics in Biola’s master’s program in Christian
apologetics. He holds a Ph.D. in religion and social ethics from the University of Southern California.
Science isn’t “discovering” very much. We put a man on the moon in the 1960s and we literally aren’t capable of repeating that feat today. The first computer was invented by a Christian, of course. We keep making them smaller and faster, but we haven’t had any major leaps for decades. We’ve been following Moore’s Law rather than any “scientific advance.” We’ve been very successful at “technology,” and at reducing the size of previously designed devices or at creatively marketing/engineering a device based on the success of a previous device. But contrary to your secular humanist, we’re not making giant leaps and bounds on the frontiers of science.
And that is most definitely true of education – and especially education in America relative to other nations as we plunge ever more deeply into the philosophy of secular humanism that had NOTHING to do with the origin of science or the origin of ANY OTHER MEANINGFUL THING.
I look at education and I see what many parents as well as many educators see: kids that are getting dumber and dumber.
And you have to ask yourself, why is that, given that we’re spending more per pupil than ever??? Why do we keep falling behind? And why do Christian schools run circles around the government (secular humanist education center) schools??? Because it is simply a FACT that they do:
If you want a flourishing education system – you know, the kind of system that put a man on the moon – you need to demand a return to a religion-friendly education system rather than the one that has replaced the system that made America great.
Then what turned out to be a Faustian bargain was struck. Government took over the education system, ostensibly allowing the churches and denominations to pursue other noble work such as the mission fields. It didn’t take long for the same government that had protected human slavery and created the Trail of Tears to begin systematically removing Scripture, God and prayer from the classrooms and thus from the children of each successive generation’s minds.
Christians stepped away from the work of education that they had historically devoted themselves to and began to put the overwhelming majority of their funds into their churches and their missionaries. Meanwhile, liberals began to place virtually all of their funds into the universities and thus began to increasingly shape the curricula.
Ultimately, as a result, the Christians who began the universities and schools found themselves completely shut out of their own progeny.
Look what’s happened. Liberals have purged out conservatives. The snootiest, most hoity toity, most sanctimonious lecturers about “tolerance” are THE most intolerant people of all:
College faculties, long assumed to be a liberal bastion, lean further to the left than even the most conspiratorial conservatives might have imagined, a new study says.
By their own description, 72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative, says the study being published this week. The imbalance is almost as striking in partisan terms, with 50 percent of the faculty members surveyed identifying themselves as Democrats and 11 percent as Republicans.
The disparity is even more pronounced at the most elite schools, where, according to the study, 87 percent of faculty are liberal and 13 percent are conservative.
“What’s most striking is how few conservatives there are in any field,” said Robert Lichter, a professor at George Mason University and a co-author of the study. “There was no field we studied in which there were more conservatives than liberals or more Republicans than Democrats. It’s a very homogenous environment, not just in the places you’d expect to be dominated by liberals.” […]
Rothman sees the findings as evidence of “possible discrimination” against conservatives in hiring and promotion. Even after factoring in levels of achievement, as measured by published work and organization memberships, “the most likely conclusion” is that “being conservative counts against you,” he said. “It doesn’t surprise me, because I’ve observed it happening.” The study, however, describes this finding as “preliminary.”
Because liberals are in fact the most intolerant people. Once they took over the universities, they made very certain that they would never lose that control by making certain that conservative faculty would be systematically denied tenure and purged out.
That was our strike two for us [note: I write about three strikes in the article]. Liberals got into the education system and then barricaded the door behind them.
By the way, the two fields of academia liberals most hijacked were the fields of education and law. They trained up the teachers and the lawyers who would be able to indoctrinate their students and more lawyers who would be able to basically make the Constitution an infinitely malleable document that basically means whatever liberals think it means. By taking over education, liberals were able to introduce increasingly and frankly wildly failed teaching methodologies that brainwashed kids into liberalism without bothering to teach them reading, writing, arithmetic and history. Our government school system has completely broken down and failed because liberals turned education into indoctrination. And what is even worse, the more liberal teaching methodologies fail, the more liberals exploit their failure to usher in even WORSE methodologies. It has become a vicious circle.
Johnny can’t read, at least he can’t read very well. But that’s okay; he doesn’t need to be able to read very well in order to serve the future State or the crony capitalist corporations in the progressive liberals’ fascist system in order to be a good drone worker bee. When your child is toiling away at his or her menial job, feel good in the knowledge that your child will do so believing that being a good citizen and taking your place as one of myriad cogs in the machine will keep him or her moving mindlessly forward.
In a way, I’ve already also described the rabid intolerance that is the quintessence of secular humanism in describing above the purging of conservatives by liberals. But believe me, there is way, way more than that.
One of the frightening things about the Holocaust was that only one who closely followed the theories presented in the German universities could see it coming. But those who DID follow what was being taught in the elite German universities could see it coming very clearly. Many of those who did follow what was being taught were terrified and tried to warn the free nations about what was happening. But of course nobody listened. And so it all played out exactly as the most strident voices warned it would play out unless something was done. That “play” was World War II and the death camps that accompanied it.
The lesson of history is that ideas have consequences. And terrible ideas have terrible consequences, indeed.
So with that introduction, allow me to replay a recent article written by a student of one of the most – if not THE most – prestigious of universities in America reflecting a new rabid intolerance of free speech in academia:
In its oft-cited Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, the American Association of University Professors declares that “Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results.” In principle, this policy seems sound: It would not do for academics to have their research restricted by the political whims of the moment.
Yet the liberal obsession with “academic freedom” seems a bit misplaced to me. After all, no one ever has “full freedom” in research and publication. Which research proposals receive funding and what papers are accepted for publication are always contingent on political priorities. The words used to articulate a research question can have implications for its outcome. No academic question is ever “free” from political realities. If our university community opposes racism, sexism, and heterosexism, why should we put up with research that counters our goals simply in the name of “academic freedom”?
Instead, I would like to propose a more rigorous standard: one of “academic justice.” When an academic community observes research promoting or justifying oppression, it should ensure that this research does not continue. […]
It is tempting to decry frustrating restrictions on academic research as violations of academic freedom. Yet I would encourage student and worker organizers to instead use a framework of justice. After all, if we give up our obsessive reliance on the doctrine of academic freedom, we can consider more thoughtfully what is just.
Basically, she says that free speech on campus should be abolished and professors with opposing views be fired.
Here as in so many other ways, secular humanist “liberalism” is Nazism. Period.
AN ANTONIO — Some of the world’s pre-eminent experts on bias discovered an unexpected form of it at their annual meeting.
Discrimination is always high on the agenda at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s conference, where psychologists discuss their research on racial prejudice, homophobia, sexism, stereotype threat and unconscious bias against minorities. But the most talked-about speech at this year’s meeting, which ended Jan. 30, involved a new “outgroup.”
It was identified by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who studies the intuitive foundations of morality and ideology. He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.
“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal. In his speech and in an interview, Dr. Haidt argued that social psychologists are a “tribal-moral community” united by “sacred values” that hinder research and damage their credibility — and blind them to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals.
“Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation,” said Dr. Haidt, who called himself a longtime liberal turned centrist. “But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations.”
We are now seeing a massive effort on the part of students who have been brain-washed by the above secular humanist dictatorship of academia in which they simply refuse to tolerate or even listen to any ideas that disagree with their dogma.
Students are now shouting down anyone with whom they disagree. It doesn’t matter how many other students want to hear a speaker: secular humanist liberal students and faculty are fascists who impose their will and dictate their agenda on others (even when they are in the very tiny minority): And so:
At least three prominent leaders — former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde, and former UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau — cancelled their commencement speeches this spring after a typhoon of campus activism.
Consider what happened this week with Birgeneau, who had been scheduled to speak at Haverford College, a close-knit liberal arts school just outside Philadelphia.
By some measures, Birgeneau is the perfect person to give a graduation speech: Successful, civic-minded and notable, not least for guiding Berkeley as it became the first American public university to offer comprehensive financial aid to students in the country illegally. But Birgeneau was actually far from ideal, some Haverford students and faculty decided.
Despite his left-friendly work on immigration, they said they wanted Birgeneau to apologize for how campus police brutalized Occupy Wall Street demonstrators in 2011 — or else they would protest his graduation speech.
In response, Birgeneau decided not to attend the graduation. His cancellation, the most recent of the three, is raising concerns in some quarters that campus leftist groups are putting so much emphasis on social justice issues that they’re squashing the spirit of open debate. […]
But some observers say the recent campus blow back belongs in its own category, which political writer Michelle Goldberg, in a column for The Nation, called “left-wing anti-liberalism” – the idea that some speech and some people are so politically disagreeable that their views don’t need to be heard.
Lukianoff, of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, pointed to a 2013 dust-up at Brown University in which former New York police head Ray Kelly’s speech to students had to be canceled after he was shouted down and unable to speak.
Kelly has long been despised by the left for his defense of stop-and-frisk policies and how the NYPD cracked down on Occupy Wall Street protesters. His embarrassment at Brown became a YouTube moment that other officials would likely hope to avoid. [….]
Therefore, what has happened in the colleges and universities is analogous to a wayward girl who began to date a monster and ultimately helped murder her own parents in the night. That’s what secular humanism did in purging the universities and colleges from the Christian tradition that gave BIRTH to those universities and colleges.
I compare what I’m seeing today to the French Revolution. It, like what we’re seeing today, was the result of secular humanism. And like what we’re seeing today, the French Revolution quickly degenerated from a bunch of hoity-toity pronouncements to hell on earth as the French Revolution rapidly degenerated into the Reign of Terror.
Occupy – as a symbol and a symptom of the left – believed it had the right to “occupy” private property, to destroy property, to destroy jobs, to pretty much take over. And in the case of UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, we discover that it is a sin punishable by the maximum penalty to apply law and order to the left. Better to just let them occupy and riot and vandalize, I suppose.
Liberalism is fascist intolerance when “liberalism” has been hijacked by secular humanist progressive liberalism. Liberals are simply pathologically intolerant people across the board as expressed in pretty much any way you can measure it.
Secular humanists have no answer for why this would be. After all, they’ve been talking about it and requiring more enforcement – including universities which clearly aren’t able to deal with the crisis – and punishing it more than ever. So why is it growing out of control on a liberal president’s watch?
The answer is easy. On my Judeo-Christian view, rape is wrong, wrong, WRONG. Because contrary to secular humanism, we’re NOT just DNA-plus-environment-plus nothing meat puppets; we are human beings created by God in His image. And to sexually assault another human being is to ignore, degrade and pervert the image of God in another soul.
On a secular humanist, not so much.
Oh, your liberal feminist asserts it’s wrong. But when you stop and consider the tenets of Darwinian evolution, on what grounds do they assert such a thing?
Evolutionists have long talked about rape in terms of advancing evolution. We’re equipped for fleeing, fighting and fornicating, we’re told. There’s such a thing as a “rape gene,” we’re told. And since Darwinism is all about “survival of the fittest,” and since the fittest survive precisely by passing on their DNA, well, rape is merely one of many possible pathways for an organism to strive to be the fittest in Darwinan terms. And of course the animal world abounds with examples in which humans would call it “rape” but animals would call it “reproducing.”
“rape is (in the vernacular of evolutionary biology) an adaptation, a trait encoded by genes that confers an advantage on anyone who possesses them. Back in the late Pleistocene epoch 100,000 years ago, men who carried rape genes had a reproductive and evolutionary edge over men who did not: they sired children not only with willing mates, but also with unwilling ones, allowing them to leave more offspring (also carrying rape genes) who were similarly more likely to survive and reproduce, unto the nth generation. That would be us. And that is why we carry rape genes today. The family trees of prehistoric men lacking rape genes petered out.”
Darwinism is “a scientific idea that, if true, consigns traditions of self-restraint, loyalty, the very basis of family life, to the shredder.” Now go ye and do likewise. Unless something inside of you screams “NO! I will NOT live in accordance with that terrible, wicked, demonic theory of Darwinian evolution!”
Rape isn’t wrong because secular humanists say it is. That’s not a good enough reason. Certainly not for the increasing numbers of humans committing sexual assaults it isn’t, anyway.
Why is rape wrong? Frankly, in our new system of “morality,” rape is wrong because Obama says it is wrong. That’s certainly the “logic” Obama used to first say that homosexual marriage was wrong when it was politically convenient to do so and that it somehow became right when it was politically convenient for him to say it was right. I mean, literally, gay marriage was wrong until Obama said it was right. And now it’s right. But anyone who thinks that this is the way morality works is quite literally morally insane.
And so we have insane sexual assault statistics to go with it.
If secular humanist liberalism is in any way, shape or form true, THERE IS NO REASON TO BE TOLERANT. In fact, we ought to be as vicious, as ruthless, as determined to win in our struggle for ideology – which of course is merely the result of how our brains happened to be randomly wired versus having any “truth” to them if secular humanism is true – as is necessary to prevail.
If secular humanist liberalism is true, then the struggle for “ideas” today is no different between rival packs of baboons fighting over the same turf.
And the reason the beast is coming is because God foreknew 2,000 years ago and beyond that in the last days, the most vicious pack of baboons (the secular humanist liberals) would prevail in a world in which rational argument and debate had been expunged by “liberalism.”
There was that funny joke: what do you call a million lawyers rotting on the bottom of the ocean? A good start.
Millions of lawyers rotting in the bottom of their parents’ basements would be an even better joke – other than the fact that many of them took out federal school loans and will never pay them back. That takes some of the haw-haw factor out of this story.
Liberals OWN the law schools. The bar associations overwhelmingly lean to the left. That, on top of the fact that liberals dominate the university system in general, kind of makes the issue facing these law school graduates liberals’ fault, doesn’t it?
Only when liberals get screwed, they do what most other liberals do and sue.
One of the things that surprised me is that the legal profession apparently JUST discovered that there was something called “computers” or “the internet.” Most of us, of course, have been aware of this stuff for twenty years or so. So either lawyers seriously need to update their understanding of the actual world, or the excuse you see below is a version of Obama’s “the bad economy isn’t my fault; it’s everybody and everything else’s fault.”
SAN FRANCISCO — Dozens of law graduates across the nation have joined class-action lawsuits alleging that law schools lured them in with misleading reports of their graduates’ success.
Instead of working in the law, some of the graduates were toiling at hourly jobs in department stores and restaurants and struggling to pay back more than $100,000 in loans used to finance their education. Others were in temporary or part-time legal positions.
Michael D. Lieberman decided to enroll at Southwestern Law School after reading that 97% of its graduates were employed within nine months. He graduated in 2009, passed the bar on his first try but could not find a job as a lawyer. He worked for a while as a software tester, then a technical writer, and now serves as a field representative for an elected official.
Lieberman, who earned his undergraduate degree at UC San Diego, believes his law degree may still be a “useful tool,” but he and other graduates said a suit they filed was intended to combat “systemic, ongoing fraud prevalent in the legal education industry” that could “leave a generation of law students in dire financial straits,” according to the complaint.
Nearly 20 lawsuits — five of them against California schools — are being litigated at a time of dim employment prospects for lawyers. Much of the work once done by lawyers can now be done more quickly by computers.
Online services have made law libraries largely unnecessary, allowing corporations to do more work in-house. Software has sped the hunt for information needed in discovery and other legal tasks, and Web-based companies offer litigants legal documents and help in filling them out. Even after the economy improves, some experts believe the supply of lawyers will outstrip jobs for years to come.
Although lawyer gluts come and go, “I don’t think any of them rival the situation we are seeing today,” said Joseph Dunn, chief executive of the State Bar of California, which regulates the state’s 230,000 attorneys. “The legal community in all 50 states is being dramatically impacted.”
New and inexperienced lawyers, unable to find jobs at law firms, are opening private practices, potentially putting clients at risk, according to a California bar report issued in February. To confront “serious issues of public protection,” a bar task force has recommended requiring practical experience as a condition of a license. The California Supreme Court would eventually have to approve the new rules.
Besides Southwestern, alumni have sued San Francisco’s Golden Gate University, the University of San Francisco and San Diego’s Thomas Jefferson and California Western schools of law. Each school charges about $40,000 a year in tuition.
But not everyone shares the dismal outlook. Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Irvine Law School, said his students are finding full-time jobs as lawyers even during this slow economy. “It is not the same across all law schools when you look at employment prospects,” he said.
Rudy Hasl, dean of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, said the retirement of baby boomers also would open up jobs.
Both deans said there was huge unmet demand for legal services for the poor and middle class, and the next generation of practitioners might be able to fill that demand. The state bar agrees.
“Across the country, the need for legal services among those who cannot pay or have limited ability to pay has never been higher,” the bar report said.
I submit that “the law” has degenerated into a system whereby cowards get to harass, intimidate and destroy people with virtually no risk to themselves. Just as “higher education” has degenerated into a system whereby leftist professors get to harass, intimidate and bully students with propaganda in place of where the truth ought to be. The “legal services for the poor and middle class,” of course, include cars filled with people working for trial lawyers who cut off helpless drivers and then slam on the brakes so they can sue, and disabled people who work for attorneys by going to business after business hoping to find one that isn’t fully enough complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act so they can sue. It’s not a shame at all that these liberal cockroach predators upon society have overbred themselves. The problem is that after eating their own, the surviving lawyers will keep feeding on the rest of us.
There was a scene in the Lord of the Rings in which King Theoden – finally realizing that a vast horde of darkness is coming against him and that his people’s situation is now all but hopeless – asks:
Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? They have passed like rain on the mountain, like wind in the meadow. The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow. How did it come to this?
I ask that question of America. The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow. In the Middle Earth of Sauron and in the America of Obama. And the only “Return of the King” to complete the LotR trilogy will be the physical return of Christ Jesus as King of kings and Lord of lords. And that will occur only after the world has gone through seven literal years of hell on earth otherwise known as the Tribulation.
How did it come to this?
First, liberals are the most intolerant people in America. As you read this article, realize that our crisis stems from profound liberal intolerance. And the worst thing of all about them is the way they continually demonize their opponents as “intolerant” for the speck of intolerance in the conservatives’ eyes when there’s a giant log of intolerance in the liberals’ eyes.
It’s a well-known fact that liberals are more tolerant than conservatives or moderates. Superior liberal tolerance is such a fact that they will scream at you if you dare to disagree or debate them, demand that your advertisers bail on you, and pressure the FCC to get you banned from the airwaves. Does that sound like tolerance to you? A new survey from Pew confirms that liberals are the least tolerant of differing opinions, at least on line (emphasis mine):
Politics can be a sensitive subject and a number of SNS [social networking sites] users have decided to block, unfriend, or hide someone because of their politics or posting activities. In all, 18% of social networking site users have taken one of those steps by doing at least one of the following:
10% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because that person posted too frequently about political subjects
9% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because they posted something about politics or issues that they disagreed with or found offensive
8% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because they argued about political issues on the site with the user or someone the user knows
5% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because they posted something about politics that the user worried would offend other friends
4% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because they disagreed with something the user posted about politics
Of course, that means that 82% of SNS users have not taken any steps to ignore or disconnect from someone whose views are different – or have not encountered any views that would prompt such a move.
Liberals are the most likely to have taken each of these steps to block, unfriend, or hide. In all, 28% of liberals have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on SNS because of one of these reasons, compared with 16% of conservatives and 14% of moderates.
It’s not even all that close, as their chart shows:
Not exactly shocking news for those exposed to them for years, but the respected Pew Research Center has determined that political liberals are far less tolerant of opposing views than regular Americans.
In a new study, the Pew Center for the Internet and American Life Project confirmed what most intelligent Americans had long sensed. That is, whenever they are challenged or confronted on the hollow falsity of their orthodoxy — such as, say, uniting diverse Americans — liberals tend to respond defensively with anger, even trying to shut off or silence critics. (i.e. photo above of President Obama reacting to Boston hecklers.)
The new research found that instead of engaging in civil discourse or debate, fully 16% of liberals admitted to blocking, unfriending or overtly hiding someone on a social networking site because that person expressed views they disagreed with. That’s double the percentage of conservatives and more than twice the percentage of political moderates who behaved like that.
For some full disclosure, I’ve blocked more than a few people on Twitter. I didn’t do it for disagreements, but for being unpleasant about disagreements. I consider Twitter to be a true social network; I don’t hang out with unpleasant people in real life, and so I see no need to do so in virtual life. Twitter is my water cooler, my hangout in slack time between bursts of writing. I’m happy to have a debate, but when it gets insulting, unpleasant, and intellectually dishonest, I take a pass.
Even if that counts in the Pew poll (and I’d argue that it doesn’t), I’d be in a small minority among conservatives — and to be fair, it’s a small minority among liberals too. It’s just that it’s a statistically significant larger minority among liberals. While Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda demand that the government act to silence Rush Limbaugh for challenging their orthodoxy, Forbes’ Dave Serchuk points out the irony, the hypocrisy — and the unintended consequences:
Imagine this scenario: you are a lifelong liberal. You pretty much hate everything Rush Limbaugh stands for, and says. You are really glad that the times have finally seemed to have caught up to him, and that people are outraged by his callous, gross comments. So what do you do next? You do theone thing that will make him a sympathetic figure. You call on the FCC to remove him.
Think this is just not-very-good satire? If only. Nope, I draw from this example because in an opinion piece just published on CNN.com Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem, and Robin Morgan did exactly this. In the process they seem to have played into the exact stereotype of the thin-skinned, hypocritical liberal. One who supports the First Amendment and freedom of speech … except for when they don’t.
Here is the lame excuse they offered for why the heavy hand of government sponsored censorship should come down on Limbaugh, a guy who seemed to be doing a pretty good imitation of a man hoist on his own petard anyway.
“Radio broadcasters are obligated to act in the public interest and serve their respective communities of license. In keeping with this obligation, individual radio listeners may complain to the FCC that Limbaugh’s radio station (and those syndicating his show) are not acting in the public interest or serving their respective communities of license by permitting such dehumanizing speech.”
Umm, okay. But isn’t there something called ratings that are a truer indication of what these respective communities already want? And shouldn’t that count the most? Don’t ratings (i.e. “popularity”) in fact tell the FCC just whom the public thinks serves their interest? Whether we like it or not?
Why do they go for the block rather than provide an alternative? Michael Medved says they can’t compete — and need government to intervene:
Limbaugh’s critics seem unable to accept the fact that many of their fellow citizens actually appreciate the opportunity to listen to his opinions on a regular basis, so rather than persuade those poor benighted souls to listen to something else, they mean to take away the broadcast that they enjoy.
Why not try to build an eager new audience for liberal opinion leaders and steal listeners from Rush and the rest of us who host right-leaning shows? How about recruiting the most outrageous and opinionated voices on the left, syndicating their shows in major markets, and promoting these fresh, progressive voices with a catchy moniker like “Air America”?
Oh wait, that’s been tried, starting in 2004 and proceeding (intermittently) till 2010 when chronically low ratings and bankruptcy court performed a belated mercy killing on the ill-fated experiment. It’s true that some of the Air America “stars” ultimately found their way to other opportunities—with Rachel Maddow hosting a successful TV program on MSNBC, and the insufferable Al Franken enjoying an unlikely career in the U.S. Senate.
But attempts to create viable radio alternatives to Rush and other right wingers have never gained traction, so rather than continuing to compete in the open market place, lefties merely yearn to shut down the other side with sponsor boycotts, public pressure or, most obnoxiously, the so-called Fairness Doctrine. Fortunately, Barack Obama has consistently opposed the Fairness Doctrine, but many of the Democratic colleagues have promoted it for years, with Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, and—most adamantly—that heroic public servant John Edwards providing support.
Well, it’s not exactly news that the Intolerant Tolerance Hysterics are all about choices that they want to dictate to people, too, even if (or especially if) it involved the use of “an oppressive, invidious authoritarian relic” like the Fairness doctrine. Don’t expect them to understand that irony, Mssrs. Serchuk and Medved, but thank you for pointing it out. They can unfriend and block all they want on social networking, because those are personal choices not to listen to differing opinions, and every American has that choice. The problem is when they want government to unfriend and block so that no one has that choice — and that’s the kind of intolerance that’s much more dangerous than humorous.
Don’t worry, kids at home. Liberals say that conservatives are intolerant; and if anybody else disagrees with liberals, well, those people are all intolerant, too. And according to liberals – who are the high priests of tolerance – it is perfectly okay to be tolerant and even fascist to intolerant people.
You need to understand how we got to be in such a cultural mess, where 88% of Americans think one way but the 12% who think practically opposite the majority have been able to pretty much make up all the rules. And our society is about to collapse because their rules are evil and frankly fascist to go along with failed.
Let us return to the main point: the secret for the collapse that will plunge us into a collapse unlike ever seen in history is liberal fascist intolerance.
I have come to believe that we are in the last days before the Tribulation and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Based on that view, I understand that God prophetically warned man in His Word that as we neared the end, man would increasingly turn away from God and fall into the errors that He warned us about. I also understand that the same God who told us it would happen 2,000 years ago and beyond is in control, and is allowing the last days to finally come upon the world. I’ll say that from the outset.
I’m talking to a lot of Christians who have used the word “despair” to describe how they feel about the way America is going. They somehow felt the world would just keep getting better and better and of course the exact opposite is happening. And I want you to understand that, for me, Bible prophecy is a great comfort. Again, I see so many signs that God predicted as a sign the last days were coming to pass and it makes me all the more certain and confident in my faith in God. The U.S. is now over $225 trillion in actual debt when you add in the unfunded mandates of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It is growing by about one trillion dollars every single month. And you ought to be able to see the signs that if we fall down we will NEVER get back on our feet the way we did in the years following the Great Depression (recognizing that FDR stalled that recovery by seven years according to economists) with his failed liberal policies. We were the most productive nation on earth at that time in terms of manufacturing; we were a creditor nation rather than a debtor nation at that time; our citizens were NOT consuming mass welfare the way we overwhelmingly are now, nor would they have stood for the kind of sloth that passes for normalcy today; and we had just won a world war and were frankly the only economy on earth that hadn’t been destroyed. When we fall now – and we WILL fall in the next twenty years – we will shatter into pieces and those pieces will never be reconstituted. America will be a relatively insignificant banana republic or group of banana republics. The day our economy crashes we will lose the status that has allowed us to accumulate such a super massive debt – our status as the world’s reserve currency – and it will all be over for us.
America isn’t mentioned in Bible prophecy. All the other major nations and regions – such as Russia, Europe and Asia ARE mentioned. America has largely already guaranteed that it simply will not matter in the coming years. We had a vote and literally determined to follow the path of the Dodo bird to certain extinction. There are famously nine stages of civilization. Last year we were in the seventh, but this election put us over the top of number eight – we voted for entitlements and to become a dependency-based society. In our final age, bondage will mean bondage of the very worst kind: bondage to the coming Antichrist.
I neither take comfort nor rejoice in that sad, tragic and pathetic end for America. I rejoice and take comfort in the fact that God has a plan for His people – and I am one of His people. I need neither weep nor worry. My treasure is in heaven and I don’t have to fear how much Obama or the beast who will succeed him will take away on earth.
I have another home to go to – and it will be a far grander land than this one ever was even in its brightest day of promise. And frankly, my faith in the next land (Heaven) grows stronger even as this one (America) grows weaker and weaker.
But why does it happen? How did we sink this low?
Our modern media descended from the propaganda of World Wars One And Two. Walter Lippmann and Edward Bernays were men who believed that people could and frankly SHOULD be manipulated. They believed that a class of cultural elites should anoint themselves to serve as gatekeepers and ensure that their secular humanist worldview and values would be advanced and rival worldviews and values would be defeated. You simply cannot read the writings of these fathers of journalism and media elitism and not see that common thread in their work.
What I’m saying is that when it comes to journalism and modern media, you cannot say that conservatives ever “lost control” over these institutions – because we never had any control over them to begin with. They were never anything other than secular humanist and liberal progressive in orientation. And all it took was for the technology to become sufficiently powerful and all-encompassing that their domination of the media would translate to their being able to dictate to mass culture what to think and what to believe. And here we are.
The power of media was used against Christianity in 1960 with an incredibly dishonest piece of propaganda titled Inherit the Wind (see also here). And the order of magnitude in terms of media manipulation has grown by giant leaps and bounds in the over fifty years since. Most people – the 88 percent above – understand that they are being routinely lied to with outright propaganda. The problem is that even though they know they’re being brainwashed, they’re STILL being brainwashed. The media is altering people’s perceptions much the way the constant ocean tide wears away even the rocks let alone the sand; it is the inevitable result of being washed over with lies again and again and again and again, ad infinitum.
Then what turned out to be a Faustian bargain was struck. Government took over the education system, ostensibly allowing the churches and denominations to pursue other noble work such as the mission fields. It didn’t take long for the same government that had protected human slavery and created the Trail of Tears to begin systematically removing Scripture, God and prayer from the classrooms and thus from the children of each successive generation’s minds.
Christians stepped away from the work of education that they had historically devoted themselves to and began to put the overwhelming majority of their funds into their churches and their missionaries. Meanwhile, liberals began to place virtually all of their funds into the universities and thus began to increasingly shape the curricula.
Ultimately, as a result, the Christians who began the universities and schools found themselves completely shut out of their own progeny.
Look what’s happened. Liberals have purged out conservatives. The snootiest, most hoity toity, most sanctimonious lecturers about “tolerance” are THE most intolerant people of all:
College faculties, long assumed to be a liberal bastion, lean further to the left than even the most conspiratorial conservatives might have imagined, a new study says.
By their own description, 72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative, says the study being published this week. The imbalance is almost as striking in partisan terms, with 50 percent of the faculty members surveyed identifying themselves as Democrats and 11 percent as Republicans.
The disparity is even more pronounced at the most elite schools, where, according to the study, 87 percent of faculty are liberal and 13 percent are conservative.
“What’s most striking is how few conservatives there are in any field,” said Robert Lichter, a professor at George Mason University and a co-author of the study. “There was no field we studied in which there were more conservatives than liberals or more Republicans than Democrats. It’s a very homogenous environment, not just in the places you’d expect to be dominated by liberals.” […]
Rothman sees the findings as evidence of “possible discrimination” against conservatives in hiring and promotion. Even after factoring in levels of achievement, as measured by published work and organization memberships, “the most likely conclusion” is that “being conservative counts against you,” he said. “It doesn’t surprise me, because I’ve observed it happening.” The study, however, describes this finding as “preliminary.”
Because liberals are in fact the most intolerant people. Once they took over the universities, they made very certain that they would never lose that control by making certain that conservative faculty would be systematically denied tenure and purged out.
That was our strike two for us. Liberals got into the education system and then barricaded the door behind them.
By the way, the two fields of academia liberals most hijacked were the fields of education and law. They trained up the teachers and the lawyers who would be able to indoctrinate their students and more lawyers who would be able to basically make the Constitution an infinitely malleable document that basically means whatever liberals think it means. By taking over education, liberals were able to introduce increasingly and frankly wildly failed teaching methodologies that brainwashed kids into liberalism without bothering to teach them reading, writing, arithmetic and history. Our government school system has completely broken down and failed because liberals turned education into indoctrination. And what is even worse, the more liberal teaching methodologies fail, the more liberals exploit their failure to usher in even WORSE methodologies. It has become a vicious circle.
Strike three for conservatives and for the United States of America was when liberals seized control of the government. They didn’t do it by winning elections; they did it by stacking the government employees with leftwing union thuggery.
FDR said that government employee unions were unAmerican. And of course he was right. But as far to the left as FDR was in the 1930s and 1940s, he didn’t even begin to hold a candle to just how radically far the Democrat Party would go to to undermine the United States of America. FDR said:
“All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. … Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable.”
Unions are completely dead in America in the private sector, where they have killed jobs and crushed entire industries. But they dominate government employees. And if Mitt Romney and Republicans were to have won the election, they would not have been able to significantly change the way government “works” (in quotes because in the vast majority of respects, government doesn’t “work” at all). That is because virtually every level and layer of government “service” is as dominate by liberals as the kitchen floor of a filthy house is dominated by cockroaches.
You’ve got the government as an entity unto itself whose primary purpose is to create more government, more government jobs and more government workers with more lavish government pensions and benefits that are borne on the backs of the taxpayer.
The aim of the Democrat Party and the aim of the government unions is identical: to explode the size and power of government and to make government employees an elite, privileged class of masters over the rest of society. Their collective goal is to attain government power that allows them to dominate forever by being able to be able to pick the winners and losers and the victims and villains of society.
And they have largely attained that power. Once a government bureaucracy is created, it can never be undone; the liberals who own government by what FDR said was an immoral tactic have never allowed it and WILL never allow it.
There’s a reason for this that goes to what I said above about how Christians trained their people to go into the mission field and liberals trained their people to go into government: and that is, for liberals, serving government is tantamount and in fact even greater than serving God. Liberals have simply flooded government and there is no practical way to purge the influence that even FDR said was illegitimately obtained.
There are other reasons that our culture became toxic and doomed, of course.
“Political correctness” is a huge factor.
Political correctness is not just an attempt to make people feel better. It’s a vast, coordinated effort on the part of the secular humanist, socialist left to change Western culture as we know it by using rhetoric to redefine it. Early Marxists in Russia designed this game plan long ago and liberals continue to execute the tactic today: to control the argument by controlling the “acceptable” language. Those with radical agendas understand the game plan and are taking advantage of an oversensitive and frankly overly gullible public.
With the “news” media, with academia and with government at their beck and call, to go along with liberal Hollywood culture, it was easy to tell people what to think.
Liberals have used boycotts to devastating effect; while conservatives say boycotts are wrong and refuse to call for them. The result of this disparity is that our businesses are vulnerable and exposed to incredible pressure from the left, while liberal businesses are completely safe.
I think of two recent examples of how the difference between liberalism and conservatism works in the form of two athletes.
Phil Mickelson “sinned” by saying that the tax burden that Democrats were demanding he pay – basically 63 percent of everything he makes – was far too high, and that he was fleeing the Socialist Republic of California as a result. Do you think it’s unreasonable for Mickelson to say that he disagrees that Obama is 63 percent responsible for his success and that he’s only at most 37 percent responsible for his success? This gets us right back to Obama’s, “you didn’t build that, government did” argument. Mickelson was so viciously demonized that he went out something like four times to mea culpa and say he was terribly wrong to say stuff like that. On my count he came out four separate times begging people to please quit hating him for believing he had a right to express his views in Amerikkka.
The second recent example is San Francisco 49er player Chris Culliver, who expressed his opinion that he would not personally feel comfortable having an open homosexual player on the team. And of course, he was quickly broken as liberals demanded he literally be fired for expressing his views.
How many celebrities have been celebrated and adored by the liberal media culture for saying that celebrities should “pay their fair share” with high taxes and that homosexuality is so wonderful it’s even better than sliced bread? Were they forced to do a perp walk and apologize for their remarks? Not a chance.
You see, here’s the difference between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives believe that people – even liberals – have a right to express their views and beliefs. Conservatives believe that our nation with its freedoms and liberty should not persecute people merely for expressing a viewpoint that they disagree with. Liberals, on the other hand, are fascists who brutally and viciously attack anyone who doesn’t bow down to their agenda. You do NOThave the freedom of self-expression if you use that freedom to say something that liberals don’t like. They will come after you with stunning hatred if you try to do so.
Liberals are people who routinely shout down everyone with whom they disagree. You do not have the right to say anything that offends them. They will simply come after you in full-fledged fascisti mode.
Genuine tolerance is a weapon that liberals have turned against conservatives. As liberal activist Saul Alinsky – who devoted his book to Satan – said:
“Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.”
And of course liberals like Al Gore have no “book of rules” to have to live up to. They can preach radical environmentalism and demonize oil for years. They can say that people ought to pay their “fair share” of taxes. And then – like Al Gore – they can sell out to a terrorist “journalism” network funded entirely by oil money and try to structure the deal so they don’t have to pay Obama’s sky-high tax rates. But because they always parroted the liberal vision – no matter how hypocritically – they’re on hallowed ground with the vast majority of the propaganda machine a.k.a. journalism in America.
Liberals are currently decrying guns, because everybody knows that human beings are merely farm animals incapable of exercising personal responsibility or self-restraint. Guns must be taken away from the law-abiding even if it makes them utterly helpless in a deteriorating society because that’s the only solution that liberals will allow. I submit that there aren’t too many guns; there are too many abortions. There aren’t to many guns; there’s too much pornography. There aren’t too many guns; there’s too little respect for the dignity of human life that the abortion culture and the pornography culture that liberals fought so hard to institute guarantees. There aren’t too many guns; there’s too much lawless disregard for justice that liberals (the ACLU being your classic example) have produced throughout our legal culture.
We kicked God’s butt right out of our schools, banned prayer, banned the Ten Commandments with its “Thou shalt not murder” and we’re just astonished that the children who grew up godless in liberal indocrination facilities a.k.a. our public school system would actualize the disgusting hatred of life that liberalism produced in their empty souls.
And now liberals are exploiting the gun violence that their policies produced in the first place to implement their next step in the Stalinist takeover of America.
And that’s why we’ve lost. And why the America we stood for is now basically eradicated.
And those three strikes plus are why America is going to go down and go down hard. King Theoden ultimately won; America is ultimately going to lose and then the beast will come just as God told us would happen. Theoden’s enemies were outside the walls; America’s enemies are very much within.
It’s not enough to say that the media lies. You also need to know how they lie and why they lie.
What stories are the media going to report and what stories are they going to ignore? There’s fertile grounds right there; stories that favor conservatives tend to get ignored or underreported versus stories that favor liberals getting premium coverage – which gets brought up again and again until it enters the public consciousness (e.g. “Read my lips; no new taxes” by George H.W. Bush).
Another way to maintain a bias is to use ideology to select which stories get repeated and which end up in the purge bin. When I find mainstream media articles that help conservatives, I copy and paste it to a Word file; because I have personally encountered hundreds of occasions when such stories get “purged” and I have learned from experience that you have to preserve a record. You can’t merely allude to articles that help out conservatives and insert a link to the source, because that link will lead to nowhere in short order. You’ve got to cite the relevant facts. Versus pro-liberal stories which seem to live on forever.
Then there’s the issue of “fairness” that liberals invariably like to talk about – but never actually live out in their own lives and careers. Fox News is routinely derided for it’s “fair and balanced” slogan. But the fact of the matter is that Fox News IS fair and balanced when compared to any other news outlets; they allow liberals to have a substantial representation whereas the other networks allow virtually no conservative representation.
I still remember getting into an argument with a local news reporter who defended media exclusion of conservative ideas by comparing the debate to round earth versus flat earth. With of course the “flat earth” view being held by conservatives. And on this characterization, it is simply wrong to give coverage to the flat earth view. So it wasn’t bias the media was showing in ignoring conservative positions, but simple intelligence.
It is for that reason that liberals such as John Kerry have publicly said that the media has a responsibility to NOT give equal time to conservatives:
SEN. JOHN KERRY: “And I have to tell you, I say this to you politely. The media in America has a bigger responsibility than it’s exercising today. The media has got to begin to not give equal time or equal balance to an absolutely absurd notion just because somebody asserts it or simply because somebody says something which everybody knows is not factual.”
“It doesn’t deserve the same credit as a legitimate idea about what you do. And the problem is everything is put into this tit-for-tat equal battle and America is losing any sense of what’s real, of who’s accountable, of who is not accountable, of who’s real, who isn’t, who’s serious, who isn’t?”
The problem is that a whopping load of journalists agree with this view.
When asked who would be a better president, the journalists from outside the Beltway picked Mr. Kerry 3 to 1, and the ones from Washington favored him 12 to 1. Those results jibe with previous surveys over the past two decades showing that journalists tend to be Democrats, especially the ones based in Washington. Some surveys have found that more than 80 percent of the Beltway press corps votes Democratic.
Polling of MSM journalists showed they voted 9-1 in favor of Bill Clinton over George H.W. Bush in 1992 and voted in the same margin for John Kerry versus George W. Bush in 2004. No surprise, then, that the Center for Media and Public Affairs found Kerry received 77 percent favorable coverage in 2004 while Bush received 34 percent favorable coverage — quite a chasm, in my view.
Hypothetical question: If Bush had instead received nine out of 10 votes of the MSM in 2004, does anyone really believe Kerry would have garnered that 77 percent favorable coverage compared to Bush’s 34 percent? One did not have to have a Mensa-level IQ in 2008 to ascertain the MSM were virtual cheerleaders for the Obama campaign.
Wouldn’t you like to have that kind of power to delegitimize the opposition and shut them out? Then you should be a journalist, as long as you use your power to target conservatives and help liberals.
One of the other ways that I’ve found that liberal bias reeks out of news stories is when “experts” are used. I swear these reporters will pick up a phone and call fifteen experts until they finally get the “expert opinion” they want.
We recently witnessed this with statements that Obama has repeatedly made – and which the mainstream media has repeatedly reported as fact – about the opinion of “economists.” Obama has routinely said things like:
“…this jobs bill can help guard against another downturn here in America. This isn’t just my belief. This is what independent economists have said. Not just politicians. Not just people in my administration. Independent experts who do this for a living have said that this jobs bill will have a significant effect for our economy and middle-class families all across America. But if we don’t act, the opposite will be true — there will be fewer jobs and weaker growth.”
Where has the barrage of fact checking been – you know, like there would have been if BUSH had said something like that? Or if John Boehner said something like it today?
The same media that would have jumped all over such untrue statements by a Republican have repeatedly allowed Obama to say this crap without any challenge. And that’s the Big Lie strategy that Hitler crafted and our own media propaganda perfected.
Here’s the truth. And grab it while you can because one day you’ll click on the link and you will get the message, “Article no longer available…”:
(AP) WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama gets mediocre marks for his handling of the economy, and Mitt Romney easily outpolls his Republican rivals in an Associated Press survey of economists. […]
Half of the 36 economists who responded to the Dec. 14-20 AP survey rated Obama’s economic policies “fair.” And 13 called them “poor.” Just five of the economists gave the president “good” marks. None rated him as “excellent.”
That’s zero As, five Bs, 18 Cs or Ds and 13 Fs (you know they only had four rather than five “grade” criteria so that it would be impossible to nail down a grade point average. FWIW). That’s a very low D average, friends. But that’s like a 2.2 GPA.
The media depicted Obama as the man who was somehow constantly crowned with a mystical halo of wonderfulness by the “objective” sources such as the AP and Reuters:
John McCain wasn’t quite so fortunate:
Politico had this to say about media “balance” in the coverage of Obama versus McCain:
The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s researchers found that John McCain, over the six weeks since the Republican convention, got four times as many negative stories as positive ones. The study found six out of 10 McCain stories were negative.
What’s more, Obama had more than twice as many positive stories (36 percent) as McCain — and just half the percentage of negative (29 percent).
You call that balanced?
OK, let’s just get this over with: Yes, in the closing weeks of this election, John McCain and Sarah Palin are getting hosed in the press, and at Politico.
And, yes, based on a combined 35 years in the news business we’d take an educated guess — nothing so scientific as a Pew study — that Obama will win the votes of probably 80 percent or more of journalists covering the 2008 election. Most political journalists we know are centrists — instinctually skeptical of ideological zealotry — but with at least a mild liberal tilt to their thinking, particularly on social issues.
So what?
Yeah, so what if the people calling themselves “journalists” are really just a bunch of Nazi Joseph Goebbels wannabes?
Americans have degenerated into a bunch of intellectually and morally stupid herd animals who can be told what to think just as surely as herd animals can be easily led to their own slaughtering. And that’s basically the one and only truth that the mainstream media accurately understands. Which is why you can count on them to keep shoveling manure and calling it “journalism” in this year that will determine whether America has a chance to survive or goes the way of the Dodo bird due to insane spending and the crushing debt that invariably accompanies such insane spending.
The media have been shockingly biased to the left going back to Walter Lippman, whose thoughts on mind-control is summarized as follows:
The intelligent minorities have long understood this to be their function. Walter Lippmann described a “revolution” in “the practice of democracy” as “the manufacture of consent” has become “a self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government.” This is a natural development when public opinion cannot be trusted: “In the absence of institutions and education by which the environment is so successfully reported that the realities of public life stand out very sharply against self-centered opinion, the common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialized class whose personal interests reach beyond the locality,” and are thus able to perceive “the realities.” These are the men of best quality, who alone are capable of social and economic management.
Not only is the American public of today no more intelligent than was the pre-World War II German public, but any objective evaluation would show that the people who voted for Hitler were FAR better educated and FAR more “enlightened” than we are today.
“Indeed, about one-third of the (half million) officials and leaders of the Nazi Party in 1935 were teachers by profession. Support for National Socialism, extreme nationalism and pan-Germanism was particularly marked among university students and professors (Kolinsky 1974: 87-8). One quarter of the future SS had doctorates, while in the elections to student councils in German universities during the academic year 1930-1 Nazi candidates received 40 per cent or more of the votes cast in fourteen of the eighteen universities for which such data survive, and fifty per cent or more of the votes in nine of them (Kornhauser 1960: 188). It does not necessarily follow that all highly educated people were inherently susceptible to fascism, but students and university professors were very strikingly over-represented within most of the major fascist movements…” [Robert Bideleux and Ian Jeffries, A History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and Change: p. 380].
– just as it profoundly hurts the United States of America today as the same sort of vile people with the same sorts of vile beliefs and attitudes overwhelmingly inhabit our intelligentsia today.
And then realize that it is these same arrogant elitist snobs who dominate our journalism today who both created this climate and oozed out of it like the slime they are.
The media have done the same thing that the universities have done; it is a trick the left has long practiced: demand to be included in the interest of tolerance, or fairness, or rights, or what have you, obtain a foothold in an institution – and then slam the door shut in the faces of everyone they disagree with. Because whether you’re talking about university faculty or journalists, it’s the same story: good luck getting a job if you are a conservative.
And then realize that these people have incredible power and influence over what the people think, even as they believe they have not only the right but the duty to intentionally shape what the unwashed masses think in the name of “objective journalism.”
I keep saying over and over again that the beast is coming. And there are two things to say about that: 1) the beast will be a big government leader who will unite the world exactly as liberals have always dreamed about; and 2) the same liberals who are the loudest in their unbelief of the coming last days will be the very same ones who will one day most ardently worship that beast (Revelation 13:7-8).
I wrote an article on “liberal religion,” and how said religion was utterly empty of any meaning. And pointed out that the total lack of liberalism to stand for anything outside of itself was the reason it is going the way of the Dodo bird. And why militant Islam is growing in the void created by the emptiness of Western secular humanism.
Somone responded to that article by sneering:
“The only true religion is the Napkin Religion. It says so right here on this napkin.”
Sound like anyone you know?
Obviously this is a rather pathetic way of accusing me of circular reasoning. The claim is being made, however poorly, that I believe the Bible because the Bible tells me to believe the Bible.
Aside from St Peter’s words –
“Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.” For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men” (2 Peter 3:3-7)
– Here was my response:
Actually it doesn’t.
We know more about Jesus’ death than virtually anyone else in humany history. And history has had this record to contemplate for 2,000 years.
As a result of something amazing that happened, Jesus’ disciples went from cowardly men who only wanted to hide to bold proclaimers that they had seen Him alive even at the direct risk to their own lives. These one-time cowards then proceeded to go all over the known world, with all but one dying as martyrs testifying that Jesus was the glorious living Savior just as Jesus Himself had proclaimed Himself to be.
Look into the “Lord, Liar or Lunatic” argument. Was Jesus a cynical liar from hell? Or was Jesus mentally deranged? Or was He whom He said He was? Lord and God? It is a FACT that Jesus gave the most sublime moral teaching the world has evern heard. Even Gandhi would testify to this truth about Christ:
In the cross of Christ, Gandhi found the supreme example of satyagraha: Christ was the ‘Prince of satyagrahis’. “It was the New Testament”, wrote Gandhi [on page 92 of his autobiography], which really awakened me to the value of passive resistance. When I read in the Sermon on the Mount such passages such as, ‘Resist not him that is evil: he who smiteth thee on thy right cheek turn to him the other also, and love your enemies, pray for them that persecute you, that ye may be the sons of your Father which is in heaven’, I was overjoyed.”
Do you believe that the greatest moral teaching ever heard in this world came from a demonic liar or a deranged lunatic? I don’t.
Another question: given that the disciples of Jesus were in a unique position to KNOW FOR CERTAIN that Jesus was who He claimed, and that He truly rose from the dead; and given that they basically all died testifying to His Resurrection, let me ask you this: how many people do you know who would WILLINGLY DIE FOR SOMETHING YOU KNEW FOR CERTAIN WAS A COMPLETE LIE???
History also records that Christians in the hundreds of thousands or even in the millions died during the persecutions of the Roman emperors. History clearly records as reported by the BBC (when again, these first Christians were in a unique position of being able to verify the truth, to actually talk to actual witnesses of the Resurrection):
Christians were first, and horribly, targeted for persecution as a group by the emperor Nero in 64 AD. A colossal fire broke out at Rome, and destroyed much of the city. Rumours abounded that Nero himself was responsible. He certainly took advantage of the resulting devastation of the city, building a lavish private palace on part of the site of the fire.
Perhaps to divert attention from the rumours, Nero ordered that Christians should be rounded up and killed. Some were torn apart by dogs, others burnt alive as human torches.
Over the next hundred years or so, Christians were sporadically persecuted. It was not until the mid-third century that emperors initiated intensive persecutions.
Which means the persecutions against Christianity actually went from terrible to even worse. And while Islam grew by the spread of violence and threat of death, Christianity flourished under the reality of some of the worst and most murderous persecutions in human history.
The book of Hebrews recites some of the great past martyrs of God’s Word, and says that which we also proclaim of these martyrs soon to come:
“They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated, men of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground” (Hebrews 11:37-38).
And yet, because of the ROCK of Jesus’ testimony to the truth, Christianity flourished in spite of the worst efforts of the devil to stop it. It triumphed over the Roman Empire. It has triumphed over the world, with 2.3 billion followers today, according to the statistics that I show in my article above.
And with all that said, all I have to do is look at my calender. When I see it is “2011,” I know that it is 2011 Anno Domini, “In the year of our Lord 2011.” Because the very calender that you look at every single day testifies to the power of Jesus. And while some peoples maintain separate calenders, they have to know the one that testifies to Jesus Christ.
None of this is stuff I have to depend on my Bible to know: they are all documented facts of history. I put the record of history together, and then I read my Bible, and I see that the Bible teaches the Truth that Jesus came to testify to (see John 18:37).
Good luck with your worship of napkins. I’ll stick with my Jesus who confirmed who He was in human history by rising from the dead, just as He told His disciples He would do, just as His disciples proclaimed, and just as the Word of God teaches.
The bottom line is that 1) virtually all of the basic claims of Christianity are testified to in the works of ancient historians and 2) the Bible itself has been proven over and over again to be reliable history. And while a devout Jew has other reasons for affirming the reliability of Scripture, I myself begin with the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and the transformed lives of the witnesses of His Resurrection from the dead, and then proceed to believe the testimony of the risen Christ about just Whose Word the Bible is.
“documented facts of history” Ludicrous…actually, just plain silly. It’s sad really, as you seem so lucid but for these self-corroborating delusions. Not a crumb of proof. Not a scintilla of documentation.
The holy napkins are just as likely to be true as your ancient books and prehistoric god-man.
I’m happy for you that you have found something that works for you, but the venom and vitriol you direct at others compelled me to respond.
If you really want to come off as erudite, you might want to spend a few minutes with a sixth-grade science book. Study the part about the scientific method, and someday you might come to understand why reality has such a strong “liberal” bias.
Or just ignore my advice and continue to scream obscenities in your empirical darkness. Everyone needs a hobby, I guess.
I’m left wondering just which of my “documented facts of history” aren’t documented facts of history. It’s not 2011 AD? Or what evidence there possibly is to make such an assertion that what I say in that response above isn’t true. “Not a scintilla of documentation”??? The life and the teaching of Christ. The record of the very well historically attested lives and martydoms of Jesus’ disciples. The history of the early Christian church and the intense persecution it not only survived but thrived under – until Rome itself embraced the faith it had tried and failed to destroy for three centuries. The calender that has dominated both Western Civilization and the entire world that was the result of this demonstrable triumph of Christianity. Nope; not a scintilla of documentation. One begins to wonder about the point of offering substantial arguments to someone who refuses to even acknowledge that you offered any argument at all.
And yet this sneering liberal who merely dismissively waves his hand in contempt at the clear record of history thinks he is the “objective” one.
This liberal (both secular and theological) doesn’t seem to need to acknowledge arguments. He doesn’t need to present any facts. His opinions are all he needs for his self-contained bubble. But this particular liberal proceeds to offer an assertion that the “scientific method” somehow proves his secular humanist liberal worldview to be the correct one.
That assertion runs into one small problem: it entirely lacks the virtue of having any truth whatsoever to justify it. He depends on a pure myth that somehow science erupted entirely free of Christianity, and that science somehow proceeded to replace, correct and refute Christianity.
So what is there to say about the assertion that if I just knew anything at all about the “scientific method” I would see the light? I respond to this drive-by claim as follows:
I wish you yourself would study the “scientific method” without the bias that consumes you.
The fact is that science arose only once in human history – and it arose in Europe under the civilization then called “Christendom.” Christianity provided the essential worldview foundations necessary and essential for the birth of science: The earth was not the illusion of Eastern religion and philosophy, but a physical, tangible place. And the material world was not the corrupt and lower realm of Greek religion and philosophy, but God created it and called it “good.” And God endowed the capstone of His creation, man – as the bearer of His divine image – with the reason, the curiosity, and the desire to know the truth. And God – who made the universe and the earth for man – made man the caretaker of His creation. And thus the great astronomer Johannes Kepler described his project as “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.”
And yet today, amazingly, against all history and against all truth, we are assured that science must be officially and completely atheist in order to have any legitimacy, and that God – or even the possibility of God (or even a far more intellectually neutral “Intelligent Designer” – must be purged from every element and aspect of “science.”
Tragically, genuine science has been perverted and undermined by ideologues who are attempting to impose their atheistic worldviews upon society and remake the scientific enterprise in their own image. And in their efforts, they are using the very worst and most oppressive of tactics to destroy, intimidate, and silence their opposition. Such academics cite Galileo (another confessing Christian, by the way) and the largely propagandized tale of his persecution by the Church as an example of religion being hostile to science. But how is their own behavior any different from the worst intellectual intolerance exhibited by the Church? In their overarching zeal to persecute and expunge any meaningful sign of God from the ranks of academia, they have themselves become even worse than their caricature of religion which they so despise.
The facts are that the universities from which the scientific method came themselves came from Christianity. The facts are that the “scientific method” that you point to actually came from Christians who were thinking and reasoning out of a uniquely Christian world view. We wouldn’t HAVE a scientific method if it weren’t for Christianity; nor would we have virtually any significant branch of science had it not been all those Christians who laid the foundation. Versus you, who have as your foundation your feet planted firmly in midair.
It’s actually funny that you speak the way you do. I offer fact after fact. You express your useless opinions, and like a fool ignore the facts.
Then you speak of “my venom and vitriol,” but again, the record of academia today – with the above article being merely one of many I can cite (here’s just one example) – is one of people who think like me being rabidly attacked and persecuted and fired by people who think just like you.
Now begone. I won’t continue to argue with someone who spews worthless opinions in a drive-by attack. Two such comments were enough.
Why do I block him? Am I disinterested in having debate? Well, when someone doesn’t even bother to respond to your argument, and proceeds to offer assertions in place of facts, there is little point to a “debate.”
I point out:
Mark Twain said, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can put it’s boots on.”
One of the problems with lies versus the truth is that any fool with an opinion can tell a lie. And tell it very quickly. But it takes knowledge and careful argument to present the truth and refute the lies.
I don’t have any intention of spending all my time on my blog. But if I allowed liberals to post these 3-4 sentence fact-free dismissals, and then worked on refuting them, I would end up spending ALL my time on my blog.
The book of Proverbs chapter 26 verses 4-5 teaches that one needs to respond to a fool, lest the fool become wise in his own esteem. In the same breath, it teaches that if one spends too much time arguing with a fool, others won’t be able to tell the difference between the fool and the one trying to correct the fool.
I try to strike a balance.
And I do.
The fellow posts back to my spam file to inform me that boy did he ever wipe the floor with me, and that just as my hobby is whatever he wants to imagine it, his hobby is “destroying Christians” or somesuch. I’ll let you be the judge as to whose arguments prevail, and whose are rather trivial assertions with no basis in fact. I don’t doubt for a second that unbelievers will see whatever they want to see. The question is, as Jesus Himself asked, is what do YOU think about Jesus? Who do YOU say He is?
I thought the above discussion was illustrative due to a) the facts I present and b) the galling absence of facts or truth or even the perception of the need for them by my attacker. It’s interesting that secular humanists only see the Christian’s need to win the argument, but never feel that their worldview should ever be questioned or need to be defended.
There is an interesting story that illustrates how the world thinks when it comes to Jesus and the Bible that I heard in a sermon on John 15:18-16:4:
When missionaries were first going to inland Africa, the wife of an African chief visited a missionary station. Hanging outside the missionary’s cabin, on a tree, was a little mirror. The chief’s wife had never seen her hardened features and hideous paintings on her face. (She was want we would call “one ugly momma!)” She gazed at her own terrifying countenance and then jumped back in horror, exclaiming, “who is that horrible person inside the tree?”
“Oh,” the missionary explained, “it is not the tree.The glass is reflecting your own face.”
She wouldn’t believe it until she was holding the mirror in her hand. When she understood, she said to the missionary, “I must have the glass. How much will you sell it for?” The missionary really didn’t want to sell his only mirror, but the African insisted so strongly that the missionary didn’t want to cause trouble, and so finally capitulated and sold the mirror.
The chief’s wife took the mirror, exclaiming, “I will never have it making faces at me again!” And with that she threw it down, breaking it to pieces.
And the fact of the matter is that people hate to see what they really are and hate God’s Word because it reveals their true selves. The mirror never changes. Every human being must choose how he or she will react when we take a good look at Jesus as revealed in God’s Word. Either we will repent of our sin and turn to him, or we will reject and hate him.
Given that communism is state atheism, and given that state atheism has been documented to be responsible for more than 100 million murders during the 20th century alone and during peacetime alone, one would think that secular humanists and atheists should also have to give an account for why what they believe should be accepted as true. But in our elite mainstream media culture, that challenge is never given. Meanwhile, the Bible and the historic resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead stand like twin anvils no matter who pounds on it or for how many centuries successive generations of unbelievers continue pounding.
Jesus conquered death. We know more about that death (in which Jesus gave His life to take the blame for our sins) than any other death in antiquity. And people have had two millennia to examine that perfect life and the details and results produced by that death.
We also know that more people celebrate that death than have ever celebrated the life of any other human being who ever lived. Because of the testimonies of the witnesses to that death – and the glorious Resurrection that followed – which was sealed in the blood of these martyrs – Christianity stands confirmed by history. The tomb of every other great religious leader is venerated by the followers of those religions.
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Indian spiritual guru Sri Sathya Sai Baba, revered by millions of followers as a living god, died Sunday in a hospital in southern India. He was 86.
Sai Baba, who was admitted to hospital in his hometown of Puttaparti a month ago, died of multiple organ failure, media said.
His followers, estimated to number six million, included top Indian politicians, business tycoons and Bollywoods stars.
And because of Jesus’ life, and death, and glorious Resurrection to resurrection life as the firstfruits of all who call upon His name, the world changed. And, myths and lies aside, the very science that secular humanists point to as a replacement for the ultimate Truth of the Christian Life is itself a powerful testimony to the incredible change that Christianity brought to the world.
Next, they’ll be trying to snuff out officers who are too straight, or too white…
(Gazette) A religious rights group is calling for the removal of the Air Force Academy’s top officer after a flap over a speaker planned for a February prayer luncheon at the school.
“We’re done,” said academy graduate Mikey Weinstein, the foundation’s founder and a frequent foe of religious practices at the school. “Gould needs to go.”
An academy spokesman, Lt. Col. John Bryan, defended the choice of McClary and said the planned prayer gathering is optional and inclusive of a broad spectrum of religious views.
“Nobody is being forced or coerced to go to this luncheon,” Bryan said.
McClary is a wounded Vietnam veteran who overcame his disabilities and now says he’s in the “Lord’s Army.”
Bryan said he’s heard McClary speak and came away with inspiration for overcoming obstacles rather than religious philosophy.
“He’s a nationally recognized motivational speaker,” Bryan said.
McLary’s website lists testimonials from celebrities including The Rev. Billy Graham and former Denver Broncos coach Dan Reeves.
The academy first sought retired Army general and former Secretary of State Colin Powell to speak at the luncheon, but when he couldn’t make it due to schedule conflicts, McClary was picked to keynote the annual event. He’ll be paid $2,500 and airfare reimbursement.
Weinstein points to McClary’s website for evidence that the speaker is too evangelical for the academy.
“Such statements are not only antithetical to the clear mission of the United States Air Force Academy, they are totally anathema to the purportedly globally inclusive purpose of this National Prayer Luncheon,” Weinstein wrote in a letter to Gould and Defense Department officials.
Several groups, including the Colorado branch of the American Civil Liberties Union have written Gould in support of Weinsten’s effort.
Weinstein has battled the academy in recent months over the school’s failure to include him in a conference on the school’s religious tolerance practices and the academy’s initial failure to release results of a survey that showed concerns about prosyletizing there.
Gould hasn’t responded to Weinstein’s latest letter.
The “Military Religious Freedom Foundation” is for anything but the military, or religion, or freedom. It is for atheism. It is for imposing IT’S religious ideology of secular humanism and specifically excluding anything Christian.
Let’s get this straight: atheism IS a religion. The courts have ruled that atheism is a religion, and in point of fact atheism has all the same worldview components that any religion has. There are many religions on the planet, and some (like most forms of Buddhism) don’t believe in God, while others (like Hinduism) don’t believe in a personal God. So the fact that atheists don’t believe in God, and the fact that they believe very differently from Christians, hardly disqualifies atheism from being a religion. It is one religious view among many. The same thing goes for secular humanism, which basically is the same worldview as atheism, only with a more positive myth about human nature.
So as much as the Military Religious Freedom Foundation might erupt into a frenzy at the very thought of Christian proselytizing, these hypocrites are all too willing to engage in massive proselytizing of their own. They impose their atheistic worldview in the name of “religious tolerance” or “religious neutrality” all the time. When in fact it is anything but, being a small extremist minority worldview, and when in fact it has the most gruesome history of ANY worldview in the form of state atheism, i.e. communism.
This was a voluntary and optional prayer gathering. No one was forced to go. But the fascist Military Religious Freedom Foundation is frothing at the mouth that men and women who want to pray to Jesus Christ should be able to pray to Jesus Christ. They want to force people to not be allowed to pray as they will and to whom they will. These atheists want to force others to be like them.
Want to argue with me? Try out another story going on at the same time. A homosexual activist (and homosexual activists are almost universally atheist and are universally liberal) attended a Christian event and specifically sought out a Christian psychologist who specifically told him she only used “a Christian biblical framework.” The homosexual activist told her that was exactly what he wanted. Then he proceeded to literally wear a wire so he could record her praying for him. And now he is spearheading an effort to destroy her and have her credentials revoked. It wasn’t about a Christian counselor trying to brainwash a poor unsuspecting homosexual with her religious bigotry; it is about an amoral homosexual activism movement trying to shut down and destroy anyone who doesn’t share their particular form of extreme bigotry.
People like these, wherever they’re from, love to claim that the American founding fathers – who produced the greatest, most powerful and most enduring democracy in human history – were a bunch of atheists; the only problem is that nothing can be further from the truth. The fact of the matter is that our founding fathers were overwhelmingly Christian; and the one or two who weren’t (such as Benjamin Franklin) readily acknowledged that the Christian religion was a good thing rather than a bad one.
The phrase “Founding Fathers” is a proper noun. It refers to a specific group of men, the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention. There were other important players not in attendance, like Jefferson, whose thinking deeply influenced the shaping of our nation. These 55 Founding Fathers, though, made up the core.
The denominational affiliations of these men were a matter of public record. Among the delegates were 28 Episcopalians, 8 Presbyterians, 7 Congregationalists, 2 Lutherans, 2 Dutch Reformed, 2 Methodists, 2 Roman Catholics, 1 unknown, and only 3 deists–Williamson, Wilson, and Franklin–this at a time when church membership entailed a sworn public confession of biblical faith [see John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution, 1987, p. 43].
This is a revealing tally. It shows that the members of the Constitutional Convention, the most influential group of men shaping the political foundations of our nation, were almost all Christians, 51 of 55–a full 93%. Indeed, 70% were Calvinists (the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and the Dutch Reformed), considered by some to be the most extreme and dogmatic form of Christianity.
What do you call people who deliberately distort American history in order to advance an agenda that said American history clearly reviles? I hope you don’t call such a suppression of truth “American.”
This blatant un-American attempt to deny and suppress religious freedom occurred at a place of learning, at a university. So let us see what the founding fathers thought about the cornerstone of learning in an ordinance that they passed in 1787:
Northwest Ordinance (1787), Article III:
Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged…
What makes the Northwest Ordinance even more interesting and relevant is that it was passed at the very same time the Constitution was being written and ratified. Which is to say that only a fool would argue that the very same men who passed the Northwest Ordinance in 1787 would turn around and denounce the very same idea in the Constitution at the very same time.
“We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and true religion. Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” — John Adams
Especially when these same determined men had just fought a terrible war over this statement:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” – Declaration of Independence
And yet, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God'” (see Psalm 14:1-3). Fools abound. And the defining characteristic of fools is that they aren’t particularly interested in reality.
“Of all the habits and dispositions which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars.” — George Washington
The bottom line is that the greatest of all Americans would have called the Military Religious Freedom Foundation precisely what they are: “traitorous wretches” who are trying to tear down the indispensable supports undergirding the foundation of America and American democracy.
It is time to wake up and fight for your country. History is replete with examples of majorities who had their country seized from under their feet by small determined minorities of vile usurpers. As one example, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party never won more than 37% of the vote; yet he and his Party and its loathsome ideology came to dominate Germany. And yes, Adolf Hitler was a big government socialist atheist.
Get off your butts and FIGHT for your country, Americans. FIGHT for the vision of America handed down to us by our founders that made this country the greatest in the history of the world. If you keep sitting on your butts thinking that others will do all the fighting for you, you will wake up one day and wonder what the hell happened.
Today, in universities across the country, we are seeing honored faculty fired for no better reason than that they disagree with one or another tenet of “political correctness.”Lawrence Summers was essentially fired from his position as president of Harvard University for raising the possibility that many factors apart from discrimination or bias could explain why there were more men than women in high-end science and engineering positions. Guillermo Gonzalez, as assistant professor at Iowa State, was denied tenure and fired for having written articles arguing that a purposive cause is the best explanation for certain features of our cosmic habitat. David Eaton said, “As alumni at ISU, we are appalled that the current Iowa State administration would stoop to expelling a brilliant young scientist and gifted instructor from the classroom, not for teaching about intelligent design or even mentioning it in his classroom, but for simply committing the thought crime of advocating it [in a research paper] as science.” The documentary film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed presents scientist after scientist who were fired merely for advocating the possibility of an intelligent cause to the universe. Ben Stein calls attention to the terrifying process of such a stifling of academic and scientific freedom. Fascists and Marxists had no qualms persecuting and stifling unwanted thought among their intellectuals; Western universities should have great qualms over such persecution, but increasingly do not.
Might similar restrictions to individual freedom spill over from the university campuses to the society as a whole? Bureaucracies, legislatures, and the courts are exhibiting similar “sensitivity” in their zeal to fight “harassment” and in their ever-widening application of civil rights laws. If we ever come to the point of “affirmative action laws” forcing churches to ordain women against church teachings; or “anti-discrimination laws” requiring Christian organizations to hire homosexuals; or “political-lobbying laws”; or the laws we’re even now seeing in Europe forcing churches to remain silent on social issues such as abortion or homosexuality; then religious freedom will have been extinguished. Already some postmodernist sects explicitly advocateand demandsuch measures; all they lack is the power to impose their will. Still, they are gaining more and more power every single day. Brigitte Bardot went on trial in France for the fifth time for “inciting racial hatred” for insulting Muslims. She’s hardly alone: a number of writers and journalists such as Oriana Fallaci and Michel Houellebecq have likewise been pursued by the French government over the law against “insulting Islam.” Christians there still seem to be quite fair game, however.
Postmodernist theorist Stephen Conner acknowledges that there is “a strange dialectic which pushes renunciation of authority and of unified form to a point of absolute impotence, which may then loop back into a renewed assertion of nihilistic power” (Conner, Postmodernist Culture, p. 213). In other words, for a growing number of postmodernist advocates, “There is no valid authority whatsoever, but you had still better do as we say if you know what’s good for you.” Leftist revolutions tend to follow a very predictable order: At first, the revolutionaries renounce all authority and all established structures. Once the authorities are overthrown and the structures demolished, the revolution enters a new phase. New authorities and new structures are imposed. Most revolutions, however, at least had some criteria for their new societies – the French Revolution’s Enlightenment rationalism, the Russian Revolution’s Marxist economics, the Iranian Revolution’s commitment to Islam. A postmodernist revolution, however, rejecting all such absolutes, would be completely arbitrary; self-consciously constructing a society governed only by the nihilism of power.
“Theoretical extremity,” “rage,” “nihilistic power” – such recurrent themes of postmodernism – do not bode well for maintaining a free, democratic society. Most people do not realize that the tenets of postmodernism have been tried before in a political system. Social constructivism, cultural determinism, the rejection of individual identity, the rejection of humanism, the denial of the transcendent, power reductionism, the rejection of reason, and the revolutionary critique of the existing order are tenets not only of postmodernism but of fascism. We embrace these ideas at our most deadly peril.
Many of the ideas that came together in the fascism of the 1930s survived Word War II and continued to develop in postmodernist thought, hidden away from overt identification with fascism due to a desire to put behind an ugly past. Fascists taught that reality is a social construction, that culture determines all values. Particular cultures and ethnic groups therefore constitute their own self-contained worlds, which should be kept uncontaminated, although these groups will often compete w/ each other. Individuality is a myth; particular human beings can only find fulfillment when they lose themselves in a larger group. “Humanistic values” are a myth; there are no absolute transcendent moral laws by which the culture can be judged. These are “Jewish” – i.e., Biblical – ideas that are responsible for the alienation, guilt, and instability of Western culture. Strength, not love and mercy, must be the true expression of a culture’s will to power. Collective emotion, not abstract reason (another “Jewish” contribution), must be cultivated as the culture’s source of energy.
It is interesting to ask precisely why the Nazis hated the Jews. The reflexive answer is racism, but that is not nearly adequate enough. There were many other racial groups that did not face such Nazi hatred. What did the Nazis see in the Jews that they thought was so inferior and so dangerous? What was the Jewish legacy that, in the Nazis’ minds, had so poisoned Western culture? Precisely what were the “Aryan ideals” that the Nazis sought to restore, once the Jews and their influence were purged from Western culture?
One must realize that the fascists aligned themselves not only against the Jews but against what the Jews contributed to Western culture. The idea of a transcendent God, who revealed a transcendent moral law, was anathema to the fascists. (Interestingly, it is increasingly anathema to many individuals and intellectuals again today. Political figures, actors, television personalities, and journalists routinely demonize religion as oppressive). Such transcendence, the Nazis argued, alienates human beings from nature and from themselves. Fascist intellectuals sought to forge a new spirituality, focused upon nature, human emotions, and the community as directed by the state. The fascists sought to restore the ancient pre-Christian consciousness, ancient myth sensibility, in which individuals experience unity with nature, with each other, and with their own deepest impulses and desires.
Thus fascism was essentially a spiritual revolt against the Judeo-Christian tradition and against the Bible. Those who simplistically blame Nazism on Christianity because Adolf Hitler had been baptized a Catholic as a baby could not be more wrong or – for that matter – more of an example of the very sort of propaganda that Nazis had thrived upon. Some Nazis proposed keeping Christianity as long as it was completely stripped of its “Jewishness,” but ALL Nazi intellectuals demanded a rebellion against the transcendence that is at the very heart of both Judaism and Christianity (hence the term “Judeo-Christian” to denote the worldview). George Steiner wrote, “By killing the Jews, Western culture would eradicate those who had “invented” God… The Holocaust is a reflex, the more complete for being long inhibited, of natural sensory consciousness, of instinctual polytheistic and animist needs” (In Bluebeard’s Castle: Some Notes Towards the Redefinition of Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1971), p. 41). And we are seeing the same profound hostility being directed against transcendent values and the Judeo-Christian tradition which upholds those values today.
As Hannah Arendt describes, when convicted Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann went to the gallows, “He was in complete command of himself, nay, he was more; he was completely himself. Nothing could have demonstrated this more convincingly than the grotesque silliness of his last words. He began by stating emphatically that he was a Gottglaubiger, to express in common Nazi fashion that he was no Christian and did not believe in life after death.” In her next sentence, she goes on to complete her thought, “He then proceeded: “After a short while, gentlemen, we shall meet again. Such is the fate of all men. Long live Germany, long live Argentina, long live Austria. I shall not forget them.” In the face of death, he had found the cliché, used in funeral oratory. Under the gallows, his memory played him the last trick; he was ‘elated’ and he forgot this was his own funeral. It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us – the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil” (Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (New York: Viking Penguin, 1977), 252).
The fascist rebellion against transcendence restored the ancient pagan consciousness. With it came barbarism, a barbarism armed with modern technology and intellectual sophistication. The liquidation of the transcendent moral law and “Jewish” conscience allowed the resurgence of the most primitive and destructive emotions. And as we increasingly abandon the same worldview the Nazis so utterly despised and embrace in its place the same basic worldview the Nazis sought to replace it with, we will have a similar return of just such an emotive state of rage, and just such a “word-and-thought-defying banality of evil” as intellectuals unleash the monster yet again. History repeats itself, precisely because fools refuse to comprehend the lessons of history.
Many people at the time saw fascist ideology as liberating. Just as with the postmodernism of today, fascism was the favored view of both the intellectual elite and the avant garde artistic movement of yesteryear. Martin Heidegger, Paul De Man, Ezra Pound, D.H. Lawrence, W.B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Wyndham Lewis, T.E. Hume, Roy Campbell, T.S. Elliot, Carl Jung, Margaret Sanger are among the many who supported fascism in the 1930s. Stephen Spender acknowledged, “Some of the greatest modern writers sympathized with fascism” in his introduction to Alastair Hamilton’s book, The Appeal of Fascism: A Study of Intellectuals and Fascism, 1919-1945. These intellectuals of yesterday – just as the vast majority of our present intellectuals today – simply had no idea of the consequences of the ideas they so naively embraced. But their social constructivism and social determinism, put into practice, meant totalitarian oppression. Its rejection of the individual meant the extinction of liberty. Its rejection of objective moral values meant that there could be no restraints on the actions of the state, resulting in eugenics programs, secret-police terrorism, and the euthanasia of the handicapped and “unwanted.” Its ideological hostility to the Judeo-Christian tradition led to the co-opting of the church by syncretistic theologies, the suppression of confessional Christianity, and mass extermination of the Jews.
Ideas have consequences. The worldview that resulted in the Holocaust death camps and a war that ignited the world was born in the minds of German intellectuals and supported by intellectuals across the oceans. Postmodernism – which frighteningly shares fascist presuppositions, is far more dominant today than fascism ever was. In the United States alone, we have exterminated nearly 50,000,000 human beings out of an attitude that is eerily similar to the mindset of Lebensunwertes Leben (literally, “life unworthy of life”) that led to so much horror when the worldview captured a nation last time.
“National Socialism” would institute a controlled, state-directed economy that would work for the good of the nation. The state would solve all of the people’s problems. The organic state, conceived as the source of all values and of all good, would acquire a mystical status, taking the role of God and receiving the devotion of all of its members. As in the ancient pagan societies, before the alienation brought into the West by the Bible, the culture would be fully integrated with nature and with the gods. [Compare this with the sharia-based state dreamed of by Islamic fascist jihadists to understand the linkage between fascism and this frightening understanding of Islam]To react against modernism is in many ways to revert to the primitive, the barbaric. The fascism of the 1930s was never a conservative movement (despite Marxist propaganda that polemically defined fascism as its polar opposite), but it was a reaction against the objectivity, rationalism, and alienation of the “modern world,” a reaction structurally parallel to that of the postmodernists. Fascism, like postmodernism, had its origins in romanticism, with its primitivism and subjectivity, and existentialism, with its rejection of absolutes and with its “triumph of the will.” Hitler may have failed because he was ahead of his time. He would have a much larger and much more global following were he to return today.
Which is precisely why I believe another Hitler will return, again with the cheers of the masses.
“I am writing this from cell 24. Outside a new Germany is being created. Many millions are rejoicing. Hitler is promising everyone precisely what they want. I think when they wake to their sobering senses, they will find they have been led by the nose and duped by lies.” – Journalist Stephan Laurent, who had been imprisoned for questioning the Fuhrer.
We can begin to see that the presuppositions of postmodernism lead us inexorably toward a totalitarian – and ultimately a fascist – state. And yet these philosophical principles are held by a growing number of today’s intellectuals. The fascist ideas of the 1930s and 40s did not begin in the mind of Hitler; rather, they slowly germinated in the minds of German intellectuals until the ideology attained a sufficient following such that a Hitler could ignite his culture.
To be completely clear, the vast majority of postmodernists today do not explicitly advocate totalitarianism, nor do they even want it. On the contrary, they actually intend their positions to be liberating, freeing oppressed groups from the “one truth” view proclaimed by what they suppose to be oppressive cultural forces. But it is extremely difficult to see how their premises could in any way support a free society as the implications of those premises begin to manifest themselves. Clearly, democracy rests on the precise OPPOSITE of postmodernist tenets – on the freedom and dignity of the individual, on the foundation of human values, on the validity of reason, on God rather than the state as the source of all values, on a transcendent moral law that constrains both the tyranny of the state as well as the tyranny of individual passions.
Thoughtful postmodernists are themselves becoming aware of the dangerous political implications of their ideology. Steven Conner recognizes that rejecting universal values leads either to “the adoption by default of the universal principle that might is right; or to the sunny complacency of pragmatism, in which it is assumed that we can never ground our activities in ethical principles which have more force than just saying, “this is the sort of things we do, because it suits us.” (In the end, in fact, the pragmatic option will always turn into the agonistic, since it will only work satisfactorily until somebody refuses to agree with you, or refuses to allow you to disagree with them” (Steven Conner, Postmodernist Culture: An Introduction to Theories of the Contemporary (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), pp. 243-44).
By “agonistic” Conner means struggle. (And here we arrive at the example of the typical liberal Muslim contextualizer’s blithely muddying the waters with alternative speculations regarding the word “jihad,” even as tens and even hundreds of thousands of “jihadists” openly talk about violence and/or carry out incredibly violent acts). The end result of postmodernism is necessarily violent struggle. The only alternative to transcendent values is a power struggle in which might makes right. Many postmodernists do in fact proudly claim to be pragmatists – they will work to solve particular problems and adjust to life in a flexible way, without any kind of overarching moral code. Conner realizes that pragmatism alone must turn into a power struggle whenever it confronts opposition. Conner notices also “the apocalyptic inheritance from Nietzsche… which suggests that the only form of value is to be found in the embrace of theoretical extremity” (Ibid., p. 212), which is simply another catch phrase for “violence.”
This is to say, postmodernists tend to be extremists. [We see this today in pro-abortion and pro-gay groups, who consistently steer away from objective argumentation and justify their actions simply by saying “it suits us to do this.” Then they employ crushing political and legal power in an attempt to destroy their opponents]. We are seeing such tactics with increasing frequency at universities (which are supposed to be bastions of free speech). The very people and groups who demanded a voice because of the human right to free expression now oppose by any means the right of others to have such freedom. Students are now routinely shouting down invited speakers (such as former California University of California regent Ward Connerly over his stance on affirmative action policies) or use even more aggressive measures to shut down or intimidate speech they oppose. The most terrifying development of all is that universities – once bastions of academic and intellectual freedom – are now themselves routinely shutting down conservative speech as well.
Groups opposing (and oppressing) free speech for conservative-friendly ideas claim that such speakers and organizations are “intolerant,” and thus do not deserve free speech. But they merely demonstrate their own profound intolerance; the conservatives, after all, are doing nothing more than disagreeing with them. The whole point of tolerance has always been to tolerate those with whom you disagree. But such is no longer the case. Now the “tolerant” feel perfectly justified in shouting down and intimidating the right of others to even speak.
While classical Marxism has been discredited in former communist countries, it still appeals to Western intellectuals, partly out of sheer rebellion against their own societies. But theirs is a different form of Marxism from that of Engels and Lenin. Classical Marxism believes that economic change, culminating in socialism, will transform the culture. The new Marxists – following the teachings of Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci – teach that cultural change must precede socialism. Today’s left emphasize cultural change. Changing America’s values is seen as the best means for ushering in the socialist utopia. This is why the Left today champions any cause that undermines traditional moral and cultural values and why leftists gravitate to culture-shaping institutions such as education, the arts, and the media (for influence of Gramsci on the American left, see Carl Boggs, Gramsci’s Marxism (London: Pluto Press, 1976), and S. Steven Powell, Covert Cadre: Inside the Institute for Policy Studies (Ottawa, IL: Green Hill Publishers, 1987).
Post-Marxist radicalism constructs new revolutionary ideologies by replacing Marx’s concern for the oppressed working class with other oppressed groups (such as blacks, women, and gays). Status and moral legitimacy come from being “excluded from power.” The victim has the favored role (see Charles Sykes, A Nation of Victims: The Decay of American Character (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992). As an example of this line of thinking, much current postmodernist thought views racism as a power relation, rather than as an attitude.Since blacks are not and were not in a position of power in America’s racial scheme, they claim, they cannot cause racially disparate effects and thus cannot be racist. No matter how much they might despise or even injure people merely on account of the color of their skin.
Because of the “romance of the marginal,” even affluent university professors cast themselves in the role of victim of oppressive power (take, for example, former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill. This is a man who lied about his resume, lied about his ethnic background to obtain preferential treatment, plagiarized the works of other scholars, routinely engaged in fraudulent un-American hate speech in the name of scholarship; and yet was still held up by the left as a martyr-figure, persecuted for his views). Scholarly papers today quiver with outrage, self-pity, and “theoretical extremity.” To be black, female, or gay is to enjoy a sort of secular sainthood. But even these categories are segmenting and unwinding into ever-smaller sects of victimology. Interestingly, this is a complete reversal of Nietzsche’s “eagle vs. lamb” presentation: on this view, it was weak (and frankly pathetic, on Nietzsche’s view) Christian morality using guilt and shame to attack the superior, essentially postmodernist view that he championed. Today, postmodernists – who embrace Nietzsche’s premises – have made themselves the “lambs” and those advocating Christian morality the “eagles.” That’s a rather fascinating study of self-contradiction in itself, especially given the fact that Christianity today is far less culturally influential than it was during the time that Nietzsche wrote!
Amongst postmodernists, as John Leo reporting on an academic conference at a California University (“Today’s Campus Politics Seems Right Context for Meeting on Rage,” Milwaukee Journal, 6 July 1993, p. A9) “There was a general agreement that America is inherently oppressive and that the only correct response is to organize around group victimization and rage.” Individual groups, fueled by their self-righteous indignation and recognizing no moral constraints beyond the interests of their groups, are not a genuine threat to society beyond the constant threat of terrorism (but consider tree-spiking environmentalist groups and lab-bombing animal rights organizations). However, as an entire movement, postmodernism is exerting its power and influence over society. And once its advocates are able to obtain power, they proceed to use every oppressive means to hold that power and prevent the ones they continue to call “oppressive” from having a voice.
An article in National Review by Allen Levite begins, “Is there a prevailing liberal bias among the major news media? Until now, this has been largely a matter of opinion. Conservatives typically complain of it, while liberals often deny its existence. It is usually admitted, however, that political liberals are much more heavily represented among people working for the major media than among the general public. The well-known study by S. Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda Richter, The Media Elite, based on in-depth interviews with 238 major-media journalists, found that liberals outnumbered conservatives by 54 per cent to 17 per cent. A nationwide Los Angeles Times study (August 11, 1985) administered its own poll to 3,000 reporters and editors and got almost exactly the same result: 55 per cent liberal and 17 per cent conservative. (The Times survey, which also polled 3,000 members of the general public, found that in the latter group 24 per cent were liberal, 29 per cent conservative, and 33 per cent ”neither,” a striking contrast to the findings for journalists.)” The article titled, Bias Basics: the data clearly demonstrate that liberal journalists report the news liberally, proceeds to document just that fact. While a biased media does not itself entail fascism or totalitarianism – which invariably controls the media and uses it for propaganda purposes – it does present yet another troubling sign: a willingness to allow an agenda to prevail over objectivity under the very masquerade of objectivity.
Already free speech (condemned as “B.S.” by the gay activists at the “Rage!” conference) is being restricted on campuses – both by informal pressure and by statute – in the name of sensitivity to aggrieved groups. The anti-democratic implications of postmodernism are evident in the explicit rejection of “free speech” and presumably other human rights (See Stanley Fish, “There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech and It’s a Good Thing, Too” in Debating P.C.: The Controversy over Political Correctness on College Campuses, ed. Paul Barman, (New York: Laurel, 1992)). Stanley Fish, a literary theorist and administrator at Duke University who is at the center of the “politically correct” controversies, argues that universities should censor offensive speech. Fish admits that he has no objective standards by which to judge. Robert Lundin summarizes Fish’s thinking: “Since all principles are preferences – and only preferences – they are nothing but masks for the will to power, which is the ultimate source of what we call “values.” Instead of appealing to authority outside of ourselves, we can only seek to marshal our rhetorical abilities to wage the political battles necessary to protect our own preferences and to prohibit expressions of preference that threaten or annoy us. Fish is candid about the groundlessness of his own beliefs and about his willingness to wage political battles to silence those of whom he disapproves” (Lundin, Culture of Interpretation, p. 25). “Someone is always going to be restricted next,” says Fish, “and it is your job to make sure that someone is not you” (Anderson, Reality Isn’t What It Used to Be, p. 13). In other words, scream first, scream loudest, and be willing to go to any lengths – including violence – in order to obtain your own will to power over and against competing voices.
Arthur Pontynen summarizes the connection between postmodernism and “political correctness” policies on the university campus: “Because there is no wisdom, we are told, there is no such thing as free speech (and policies are put into place to limit free speech on campus). We are told that there is no such thing as individual responsibility and dignity (and policies are advocated which promote the treatment of persons not on the basis of individual merit but on the basis of such restrictive categories as race, gender, and class…). We are even told that there is no such thing as science, only meaningful fictions; that there is no such thing as culture, only paradigms of oppression” (Arthur Pontynen, “Oedipus Wrecks: PC and Liberalism,” Measure, February 1993, p. 2).
And today’s scientific orthodoxy is Darwinian and naturalistic, meaning all that’s real is natural, or material; there isn’t anything real that’s supernatural or immaterial. There’s no God, souls or minds, and so no real “mental states” — thoughts, beliefs, experiences, intentions, etc.
Start Thinking Right 