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
Rev 19 presents the stark contrast of two feasts, two responses and two rewards representing the fruits of two worldviews. On one worldview, you are preparing for the most anticipated and blessed feast in history: the marriage supper of the Lamb; you have a spontaneous thunder of praise and adoration for the Messiah who made your attendance at that Millennium Kingdom feast possible; and you have the reward of a dazzling white robe as Jesus’ worshipers enter their new heavenly forever. Representing the fruits of the other worldview is a grotesque feast of vultures feeding on the flesh of armies united against God (Rev 19:18); you have a hail of bullets, missiles and curses hurled at Jesus as He returns as King of kings and Lord of lords; and you have a river of blood and hundreds of millions of souls bound for hell to join the billions waiting for their sentence. For sheer drama, it doesn’t get any better than that!
In terms of chronology, ch. 19 picks up where ch. 16 left off. Recall that we saw hundreds of millions of demonized troops deployed along a battle line from Turkey to the Sinai Peninsula and attacking one another in a war of total annihilation. Hundred pound hailstones are slamming into the earth, and most of the great cities on earth are leveled as the greatest earthquake in the history of the human race tears across the planet. Jesus said if these days went on not one human being would be left alive (Matt 24:21-22). As utterly hopeless as things look on earth, God is actually about to end the problem of human suffering.
In the eyes of unbelieving mankind, God is denounced as unreal until His existence is past undeniable; then He is blasphemed as unfair. When sinful man suffers the just consequences of rejecting God’s grace and forgiveness through His Lamb, they will call Him unjust no matter how many times He was warned them. This willful blindness and hardness of heart is seen in Rev 9:20, 21 and 16:21. Contrast this with the attitude expressed in the fivefold hallelujahs as Christ prepares to return to earth as King of kings. Rather than being unfair or unjust, Christ’s judgment is true and just (19:2). As J. Vernon McGee put it, “You might have a better plan than God, but what you don’t have is your own universe.” Since Christ assumed a human nature so He could share in all the experience of humanity, and since Christ literally accepted the blame for every sin of every sinner who would confess His need for Christ’s free gift of salvation, Christ more than has the right to now judge the world who instead spat in His face.
Rev 19:7-10 presents the raptured Church as the bride who has made herself ready. If we men don’t love the analogy as much as women, remember that we’ll all be like the angels in heaven (Mark 12:25); there’s no sexual context. In heaven, ALL believers will be one in submitting to Christ – and resurrection believers will be united in their submission to Christ (Eph 5:22-24), NOT in “femininity.” We’ll be dressed in the “fine linen, bright and clean” which will be made according to our “righteous acts” (19:8). The lavishness of this robe will be determined by what we did on earth; we’re literally weaving our heavenly garment this very moment! They may be elaborately studded with gold and silver and precious stones or they may smell like smoke from all the wood, hay and straw of our unspiritual lives on earth (1 Cor 3:10-15). It’s all up to YOU. But there is simply no question that God rewards us for our righteousness that comes from living our lives in faith and acting out that faith in our attitudes/conduct.
Here’s a good question: when does the wedding feast of the Lamb occur? Jesus Himself tells us that He won’t drink wine with His disciples until He drinks it with us in His Father’s Kingdom (Matt 26:29). And when is that? At the beginning of the Millennium after the battle of Armageddon and the separation of the sheep and the goats (Matt 25:31ff). I believe the Old Testament saints (who will be resurrected at the end of the Tribulation cf. Dan 12:2) will join Tribulation martyrs (Rev 20:4) as well as Raptured believers at this feast. The guests of honor will be those Tribulation saints who survived. Had you asked me prior to my study of this chapter, I would have confidently told you that this feast occurred in Heaven during the Tribulation. But think of all the great company we’d miss out on if that were true!
John is so overwhelmed by all the glory he sees that he falls down before the angel – whom we were told in 18:1 “had great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor” – who tells him to knock that junk off right away. Because only God is EVER to be worshiped. And THAT’S how we can know that Christ is no angel and no created being of ANY kind, but our Savior, our Lord, our God, and our Creator. As beautiful and majestic as the angels are, Jesus is as superior to them (Heb 1:3-4) as He is to all of His creation (John 1:1-3,10, Colossians 1:16) which He also sustains (Heb 1:3) and holds together (Col 1:17).
If you want to shock yourself, enter the question in your search engine, “Will Jesus physically return to earth?” and note all the preterists who call themselves “Christians” who deny that He will. They make Jesus out to be a liar (e.g. Matt 24:30). Heb 9:28 assures us that Christ “WILL appear a second time.” When Jesus Ascended, His disciples stood gawking up at Him as He was physically taken up to heaven until an angel appeared and told them, “This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). We’re assured that Christ will first set foot on the Mount of Olives when He returns to earth (Zechariah 14:4-8). Which btw is exactly where the disciples were standing when the angel told them to quit gawking at Jesus (Acts 1:12)! And if all that isn’t clear enough, Rev 19 most certainly is. And Jesus doesn’t just physically return to earth, He physically wipes out His enemies. Jesus fulfills Isaiah 63:1-4 in singlehandedly destroying His enemies. Our robes will be white (19:14); His will be red from treading the winepress (Isa 63:2-3 cf. Rev 19:15). And so we say “buh-bye” to Antichrist and the false prophet.
So why is Satan bound for a thousand years only to be released in Rev. 20? Just as God gives sinful man his chance to “have it his own way” in order to reveal in history that man simply cannot make it without Jesus Christ, so also does God give the human race in the Millennial Kingdom this “opportunity” to turn their backs on Jesus. By releasing Satan, God demonstrates in human history that as long as man has a choice – even with Christ physically ruling over him in Jerusalem – sinful man will always choose evil. Sin is not the unfortunate result of poverty or our environment; it is the result of our fallen nature apart from Christ. And so even the Millennium Kingdom – as idyllic as it is compared with the world Christ just saved at the end of the Tribulation – is not ultimately adequate. We need the ultimate state of heaven where God will confirm us in our righteousness and where no Satan can ever tread. That’s why.
Again, marvel at the silliness of people who call themselves “Christians.” SIX TIMES in Rev 20 we are told that this literal kingdom on earth will last for one thousand years. In Latin, “mille” means “one thousand” and “annum” means, “year.” One thousand years. Did God promise such an earthly Kingdom? Yes, repeatedly to His people the Jews. The very heart of the Old Testament prophetic message is the coming of Messiah to set up an earthly kingdom over which He would rule from the throne of David in Jerusalem. Will God fulfill His promises literally? Yes, just as He always has before. When God said Messiah would be born of a virgin, He was born of a virgin. When God said Messiah would physically suffer and die, He physically suffered and died. And when God says that Messiah would rule from Jerusalem for a thousand years, He will rule from Jerusalem for a thousand years. In Acts 1:6 Jesus’ disciples asked if He was going to restore the kingdom to Israel now. Why would they have asked this if Jesus was NOT going to restore the kingdom to Israel? Remember the Road to Emmaus (see Luke 24:27) where Jesus explained everything to the disciples? That had already happened forty days BEFORE Acts 1:6; and Luke and Acts were both written by Luke to demonstrate that continuity. But more importantly, why wouldn’t Christ have not corrected them and explained that they had it all wrong and there would never be such a kingdom for Israel to begin with? This is not rocket science. And yet it seemingly would be easier for some people to build a rocket ship and land it safely on the surface of the sun than to figure out that “a thousand years” means “a thousand years.”
So Satan is bound for how long? A thousand years (Rev 20:2,3). Which interestingly corresponds to the time between the revelation through Moses (~1400 BC) and the final OT revelation through Malachi (~400 BC). The Messianic Kingdom prophesied in the Old Testament is a time of universal righteousness and peace (Isa 11:6-9), but that won’t happen if Satan is allowed to incite man to sin and to follow his base nature and defy God. Basically, the Tribulation saints – including the 144,000 Jews and their Jewish converts who fled to Petra (see Rev 12:14) – who survive will inherit the Millennial Kingdom. Every single human being on earth on Day One of the Millennium will be a saved believer. But they will have children. During the Millennium human beings will live an incredibly long time (see Isaiah 65:20 and understand that this prophecy makes no sense whatsoever apart from the Millennium Kingdom). And some of these children will simply harden their hearts against Jesus just as we saw so many others do during the Tribulation.
We have the first resurrection – here composed entirely of believers who were martyred during the Tribulation (Rev 20:4-6). This resurrection actually completes the fourth of four phases of this “first resurrection.” Christ was the first fruits of this first resurrection (1 Cor 15:20-25). In phase 2, raptured Christians living and dead received their resurrection bodies (1 Thess 4:13-18) before the Tribulation. In phase 3 of this first resurrection the Old Testament saints receive their new bodies at the end of the Tribulation before the Millennium so they can see God’s Word to them LITERALLY FULFILLED and they could witness God’s faithfulness in their flesh (see Job 19:25-27). That btw validates the 40 times the word “resurrection” is used in the New Testament, which is always a bodily resurrection (see John 5:28).
Near the end of the Millennium Satan is loosed and allowed to stir up what will be the very last rebellion in the entire history of the human race. God will destroy it and throw Satan into hell for all eternity.
The second resurrection (Rev 20:11-15) consists ONLY in those whose names had not been written in the Book of Life. They aren’t resurrected prior to the Millennium because they have no part in it and will have no part in anything other than hell. Jesus – who spoke more about hell than ANYONE – told us there would be a resurrection of life and a resurrection of damnation (see John 5:29). And it’s going to be at this time that God will respond, “I never knew you” to those who assure Him there must have been some kind of clerical error. God will open up His Law and demonstrate how they ignored it (Gal 3:10). And God will open up the Book of Works (Eccles 12:14) and show that they stand condemned as sinners. And then He will open up the Book of Life and show that at no time did they ever truly accept His Son as Savior (John 3:18). The entire meaning of life consists in FINDING life in the Son of God.
As I write this, Mitt Romney is yet hours away from giving his RNC convention speech later this evening. That said, his speech is obviously already written, and moreover he and his speechwriters wouldn’t have listened to a pissant like me, anyway.
So I’m not really writing this to Mitt Romney; I’m writing it to his audience – especially to his evangelical audience (of which I happen to be a member).
Should Mitt Romney talk about his [Mormon] religion? My answer is, “Yes and no.” Let me talk about the “no” part first.
What should Romney NOT say to the evangelicals who make up a whopping portion of his voters?
Mitt Romney should not try to convince evangelicals – who know better – that he is a Christian just like they are. He simply isn’t; Mormonism has a very different understanding of the Person and Work of Jesus Christ than do orthodox, Trinitarian, evangelical Christians.
If Mitt Romney tries to tell evangelicals that Mormonism – which holds that “God” Himself was merely once a created being (punting on the question of who created our particular “God”), and that this same “God” who was Himself created then later created Christ who is only an angel (and in fact the spirit brother of Lucifer the devil) – is no different from evangelical Christianity, he will do nothing more than offend us and actually LOSEour vote.
This is where the more troubling aspects of Mormonism come into play:
“When our father Adam came into the garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his wives, with him. He helped to make and organize this world. He is MICHAEL, the Archangel, the ANCIENT OF DAYS! about whom holy men have written and spoken—He is our FATHER and our GOD, and the only God with whom WE have to do. Every man upon the earth, professing Christians or non-professing, must hear it, and will know it sooner or later.”
and:
“When the Virgin Mary conceived the child Jesus, the Father had begotten him in his own likeness. He was not begotten by the Holy Ghost. And who is the Father? He is the first of the human family”. Young explained that Adam “was begotten by his Father in heaven” in the same way that Adam begat his own sons and daughters, and that there were “three distinct characters, namely, Eloheim, Yahovah, and Michael.” Then, reiterating, he said that “Jesus, our elder brother, was begotten in the flesh by the same character that was in the Garden of Eden, and who is our Father in Heaven.”
Hey, Mitt, whatever you do, please don’t tell me you’re a Christian just like I am. Because I will be legitimately offended and start wondering what else you might be lying about.
18 My object in going to inquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join. No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself, so as to be able to speak, than I asked the Personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects was right (for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong)—and which I should join.
19 I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: “they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.”
20 He again forbade me to join with any of them; and many other things did he say unto me, which I cannot write at this time.
Joseph Smith very specifically said that no orthodox, historical Christian denomination was valid. Which is to say that from the very beginning, Mormonism recognized the gulf between Mormons and those who had called themselves “Christian” for 2,000 years before Mormonism.
Please don’t contradict your own Mormon history and tell us that you’re a “Christian,” Mitt. Because unless you repudiate your Mormonism, you just aint a Christian by any orthodox or historical standard. And if you just flat-out try to deny the crucial and critical differences between Mormonism and Christianity, you will outrage the very people you need to depend upon most for your election.
That’s the “no” part to the question, “Should Mitt Romney talk about his religion.” What about the “yes” part?
Mitt Romney should talk about faith in the generic sense of the term; not the specific content of his faith, and not that his “faith” is a Christian faith. Mitt Romney should indicate that he is a religious person with a religious worldview.
And I submit that Mitt Romney should – without directly claiming himself a “Christian” – affirm a Judeo-Christian worldview.
Because while Mormons do NOT embrace the same theology as historic, orthodox Christianity as understand by evangelicals, Mormons most certainly DO have a Judeo-Christian view of the world and have a Judeo-Christian view toward morality in general.
And given that, I am comfortable having a “Mormon” who isn’t going to do anything in any way, shape or form to propagate his Mormonism, as my president. Especially given the fact that the man he is running against has a form of “Christianity” that is even FURTHER away from historic, orthodox Christianity than Mormonism.
When the militant homosexual agenda is “Christian,” as it is on Obama’s view; when the militant abortion agenda that has murdered 54.5 million babies since Roe v. Wade was imposed in 1973 is “Christian,” as it is on Obama’s view; when “Christianity” is a Marxist core with a candy coating of “liberation theology,” as it is on Obama’s view; when “Christianity” allows you to spend some 25 years in a Marxist, racist, anti-American “church” as Obama’s “Christianity” allowed him to do in Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church” (and see here); when “Christianity” means explicitly rejecting individual salvation by faith in Jesus Christ alone into a Marxist “collective salvation” as Obama’s “faith” does; you are very far from “Christian,” indeed.
“… working on issues of crime and education and employment and seeing that in some ways certain portions of the African American community are doing as bad if not worse, and recognizing that my fate remain tied up with their fates, that my individual salvation is not going to come about without a collective salvation for the country.
Any orthodox Christian can tell you – and quote the Bible to prove it – that individuals are saved by their individual and personal faith in Jesus Christ in a dependence upon His righteousness and His substitutionary death in our place on the Cross. My faith – regardless of the color of my skin – is not “tied up” in ANYTHING other than the Person and Work of Jesus Christ, God the Son, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, who shares in and participates in the divine essence of the eternal Father.
Barack Obama does NOThave a Judeo-Christian worldview in any way, shape or form.
Obama’s “Christianity” is Jeremiah Wright’s “them Jews” Christianity:
And it most definitely is NOT “Judeo-Christian.”
This will very probably be the very first election in American history in which neither major party candidate is a true Christian.
That said, I am FAR more comfortable as a Christian and particularly as an evangelical Christian voting for Mitt Romney than I am voting for a radical Marxist heretic like Barack Hussein Obama.
Mitt Romney needs to convey those significant ways that he thinks just like evangelical Christians without insulting us by saying he’s no different than we are. He needs to focus on morality and on worldview and get away from specific content of the Christian – or Mormon – faith.
Ever hear about the Milgram Experiment? It was a rather famous – or infamous – 1962 experiment that measured the willingness of ordinary Americans to brutalize or even torture another human being under the auspices of a white-coated authority. Milgram found that 62 percent of Americans would pull a switch that delivered what they believed was progressively high doses of electricity that ultimately reached what would have been a fatal dose of 450 volts.
Milgram said by way of conclusion to what he had learned through his experiment that, “If a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would be able to find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium-sized American town.” [But allow me to point out at the very outset that Milgram’s initial experiment actually measured garden varietyConnecticut liberals and the subsequent verifications of his experiment mainly measured liberals located in liberal university towns].
That thought frankly ought to scare the crap out of you as you survey your neighbors and your friends and consider what kind of hell they would willingly support in the event of a political change. You ought to realize you could very quickly end up being the next “Jew” in the next Nazi Germany. And if you claim that the fundamental decency of the American people would preclude that from happening, the title of “fool” belongs to you.
I was watching a program about a repeat of that experiment that ended up showing that ordinary Americans are as willing to follow a white-coated authority figure’s instructions to brutalize as they EVER were. You can skim through this to familiarize yourself with the experiment and the findings:
Would You Have Been A Nazi? A new test of Milgram’s obedience experiment asks if it can still happen here.
Ronald Bailey | January 6, 2009
Don’t answer too hastily, but have you ever wondered what you would have done if you grew up in Nazi Germany? Of course, we all hope that we would have had the moral strength to stand against that monstrous regime, but can we be so sure? After all, times were tough and both important politicians and leading intellectuals supported Nazi theories and policies. And then there were the ordinary Germans, friendly neighbors like Karl and Lötte down the street. They had joined the Party and were sending little Wolfgang and Gretchen to healthful Party-sponsored summer camps. Being a Nazi was normal for many Germans. Would things have been any different for you or me if we had been unfortunate enough to grow up at that time and in that place?
The most horrific feature of Nazi and Communist regimes, of course, was their industrial-scale savagery. The Nazis managed to murder six million Jews and 22 millionother Europeans. The Soviet Communists exterminated 62 millionand the Chinese Communists killed 35 million. While these murders were ordered by vicious dictators, they were actually carried out by ordinary people like Karl and Lötte. Which brings us to the famous obedience studies conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram.
In 1961, Milgram did research involving ordinary residents of New Haven, Connecticut, who participated in an experiment that ostensibly aimed at determining the effect of punishment on learning. Along with the experimenter, the situation involved two subjects, one a “teacher” and the other a “learner.” The learner was a confederate of the experimenters, so the teacher was the only actual participant. In the experiment, the learner was supposed to memorize a list of word associations. The learner was strapped down to a chair with an electrode attached to his wrist. To encourage learning, the teacher was to pull switches that would supposedly increase electric shocks from 15-volts up to 450-volts in 15 volt increments. Before the experiment began, both the teacher and the learner were given 45-volt shocks. In addition, the switchers were labeled with warnings such as Slight Shock, Moderate Shock, and so forth, all the way up to Danger: Severe Shock. The final two switches were marked XXX.
As the experiment proceeded, the learner (experimental confederate) would keep making wrong answers. The teacher (experimental subject) would then be instructed by the expermenter to progressively pull the switch for ever higher levels of shock. The learner would begin to make noises expressing pain at 75-volts increasing in loudness until 150-volts, at which point he would urgently demand to be released, complaining of heart palpitations. His complaints would grow louder until 300-volts were reached. At 330-volts the learner fell silent. If the teacher showed signs of wanting to discontinue, the experimenter offered a series of prompts:
“Please continue”
“The experiment requires that you continue”
“It is absoulutely essential that you continue”
“You have no other choice, youmust go on”
The appalling results of these obedience experiments was that 65 percent of participants eventually pulled all of the switches, ultimately reaching the 450-volt level. But perhaps modern Americans would be less susceptible to the demands of authority. After all, the intervening years have seen the rise of the civil rights, peace, and gay rights movements, right? Not necessarily. Last month, Santa Clara University psychologist Jerry Burger reported the results of replicating Milgram’s experiment. He excluded people who had heard of the original experiments and found that the average rate of obedience remained the same at around 65 percent. In addition, there was no difference between men and women.
In 1965, Milgram wrote, “With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter’s definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts.” In 1979, Milgram’s judgement was more severe: “If a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would be able to find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium-sized American town.”
But can it really happen here? It’s a giant step from a Yale psychology lab to Auschwitz and the Gulag. What Milgram showed was that ordinary people are deferential to authority figures in laboratory settings. The exact nature of the authority wielded by experimenters is controversial, but it seems based on both perceived legitimacy and expertise. It doesn’t take too much imagination to think that even more people would have gone all the way to 450-volts if the experimenter had the power to punish disobedience. Leaders of governments, militaries, religions, corporations, universities, and gangs all arguably exercise these types of authority. Hierarchy is a universal feature of human societies.
As obedience experiments show, Americans are not really any better at resisting the claims of authority than other people, yet there was no Gulag and no Auschwitz here. True, there was the immense moral evil of slavery, the destruction of Native Americans,Woodrow Wilson’s imprisonment of thousands of dissidents, Franklin Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese Americans, and more recently, the Abu Ghraib cruelties. Leaders at all levels can persuade some Americans to participate in immoral activities. However, the arc of American history has been toward correcting old evils and the commissioning of fewer atrocities over time. Why? Because our institutions of freedom have maintained and expanded the norms that limit the powers wielded by authorities.
For example, a free press is able to criticize practices like slavery and racial discrimination and help establish new norms. If Bill and Joanne down the street send their kids Joe and Kathy to an ethnically mixed school, in other words, it must be OK. In addition, American governmental powers are fragmented and in competition with one another. As another Milgram experiment showed, if two experimenters disagreed about continuing the experiment, the majority of participants sided with the one who argued for stopping it. In other words, when people could refer to an authority figure who agreed with their moral views, they were much more likely to act on them. Similarly, dividing up governmental power increases the chances that some authorities will act ethically and thus inspire people to act on the dictates of their consciences.
Milgram didn’t really explore why it was that Germans created death camps while Americans did not. The answer is liberty. In 1974, Milgram more generously noted, “It is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act.” Americans have not escaped the natural human tendency to defer to authority. Instead, we have had the good fortune to find ourselves in the situation where our social institutions have traditionally limited what authorities can get away with. The institutions of liberty are what enable people to act on what Lincoln called, “the better angels of our nature.”
Well, this is what occurred to me as I watched the program: this shocking experiment could easily be rephrased as a measurement of one’s commitment to liberalism.
Why would I say that?
Which political ideology WANTSa state possessing limitless power (see here and here for examples)? Which ideology is only too über-willing to commit itself to every new pseudo-scientific trend that appears under the sun? Which ideology is constantly trying to expand the role and power of government to have the ability to shape and control peoples’ lives? Which ideology has the frightening tendency to worship its leaders in what I argue is a shockingly similar to the adoration that the German people accorded to their Führer?
Let me begin with my last question first: let’s consider the Obama worship that I argue conservatives would NEVER have applied to George W. Bush.
You show me government school teachers indoctrinating precious American schoolchildren (including REPUBLICAN PARENTS’ children) like this:
And of course this liberal propaganda-in-public-school crap goes on ALL the time, as government and union teachers exploit their positions as opportunities to try to indoctrinate, as we again recently saw. Leftwing political meddling in the guise of “education” goes on all the time because the essence of the left is fascist propaganda.
“You are the instruments that God is gonna use to bring about universal change, and that is why Barack has captured the youth. And he has involved young people in a political process that they didn’t care anything about. That’s a sign. When the Messiah speaks, the youth will hear, and the Messiah is absolutely speaking.”
I’d like to see rightwing conservative media figures appearing on rightwing news sources such as Fox News or the Wall Street Journal the way Newsweek editor Evan Thomas appeared on MSNBC to say something like this about George Dubya Bush:
“I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.”
You show me the mainstream media smiling happily while George Bush claimed, “There are no red states or blue states, just BUSH states.” You show me that.
There is a worship of Barack Obama from the left – even after the years of abject failure – that we never saw coming from the right for George W. Bush. Not only would the mainstream media – which is overwhelmingly dominated by liberalism which dives into ideological propaganda – never allow this, but conservatives themselves are simply not the kind of people who would so blatantly succumb to messiah-worship from its political leaders no matter how much we might respect a Ronald Reagan or a Margaret Thatcher. It’s just not in our DNA.
It sure is in the DNA of the left.
I also asked, “Which ideology is only too über-willing to commit itself to every new pseudo-scientific trend that appears under the sun?” I think of global warming that got morphed into the even more nebulous category of “climate change” and the answer is again blatantly obvious: it is the essence of the left to take the marching orders coming from the white coats while we conservatives are shaking our heads in skepticism and dismay at all the liberal “sheeple.”
“My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world.” – Dave Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!
“Mankind is the most dangerous, destructive, selfish and unethical animal on the earth.”
– Michael Fox, vice-president of The Humane Society
“Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs.”
– John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal
“Humans on the Earthbehave in some ways like a pathogenic micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor.”
– Sir James Lovelock, Healing Gaia
“The Earth has cancer and the cancer is Man.”
– Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point
“A reasonable estimate for an industrialized world society at the present North American material standard of living would be 1 billion. At the more frugal European standard of living, 2 to 3 billion would be possible.”
– United Nations, Global Biodiversity Assessment
“A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions.”
– Prof Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb
“A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
– Ted Turner, founder of CNN and major UN donor [and major DEMOCRAT PARTY DONOR]
Hitler wanted to exterminate Jews and other “racial inferiors.” But for the liberals in global warming establishment of today, NEARLY THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE IS THE NEW “JEW” TO BE VIEWED AS A DANGER TO BE EXTERMINATED.
Please don’t think for a nanosecond that these people wouldn’t gladly up your voltage when they electroshock you to death. AND THEY ARE LIBERALS, LIBERALS, LIBERALS!!!
You can look at my articles and see the mindset of the left: how DARE you be against global warming! The guys in the white coats tell me to believe it and if they tell me to turn that knob and deliver a fatal dose of electricity then the only reasonable thing to do is turn that damn knob and push that damn button!!!
Just a few days ago we larned that the arctic sea ice is the thickest it has been in more than a decade:
Heavy ice could delay start of Shell Alaska’s Arctic drilling
May 28, 2012 The heaviest polar ice in more than a decade could postpone the start of offshore oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean until the beginning of August, a delay of up to two weeks, Shell Alaska officials said.
Unveiling a newly refurbished ice-class rig that is poised to begin drilling two exploratory wells this summer in the Beaufort Sea, Shell executives said Friday that the unusually robust sea ice would further narrow what already is a tight window for operations. The company’s $4-billion program is designed to measure the extent of what could be the United States’ most important new inventory of oil and gas. […]
“We’re seeing multiyear ice that they’ve not seen in such large quantities in over a decade, and it could impact our ability to start the well,” Slaiby said. Of particular concern, he said, is the region of the Chukchi Sea around the company’s Berger Prospect – potentially the crown jewel of the company’s offshore oil inventory – which in normal years would be accessible by mid-July. This year, it may be unreachable until late July or early August. […]
Compare that to the dire warnings just five years ago from the left that there would be NOarctic ice by now:
An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer—a sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point.
One scientist even speculated that summer sea ice could be gone in five years. […]
“The Arctic is screaming,” said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government’s snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colorado. […]
That’s an Associated Press screech that was re-screeched by National Geographic.
On the one hand you have actual facts and reality and legitimate science and on the other hand you have the Associated Press, National Geographic and “senior government scientists” PUTTING THEIR EARS TO THE ICE AND CLAIMING TO HEAR IT SCREAMING.
I frankly don’t give a damn how many diplomas are on these fools’ walls. They have abandoned “science” in favor of a fanatic religious committment. And they will use the raw, naked power of government force and – if they get their way – exterminate human beings by the BILLIONSto force the world to bow down before their global warming gods.
Global warming has been utterly refuted and the motives and methods of its white-coated priests have been discredited time and time again. But these people – liberals – cannot even theoretically ever possibly be proven wrong to their satisfaction. And that is only because they have a worldview that is totally divorced from reality.
And this love of death and complete fanatic insanity that today’s liberalism has embraced isn’t new. We can go back to Darwinism and eugenics – and the Holocaust was nothing more than applied Darwinism – and see a history of liberalism, liberalism, liberalism.
On large families:
“The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” (Women and the New Race, Eugenics Publ. Co., 1920, 1923)
On blacks, immigrants and indigents:
“…human weeds,’ ‘reckless breeders,’ ‘spawning… human beings who never should have been born.” Margaret Sanger, Pivot of Civilization, referring to immigrants and poor people
On sterilization & racial purification:
Sanger believed that, for the purpose of racial “purification,” couples should be rewarded who chose sterilization. Birth Control in America, The Career of Margaret Sanger, by David Kennedy, p. 117, quoting a 1923 Sanger speech.
On the right of married couples to bear children:
Couples should be required to submit applications to have a child, she wrote in her “Plan for Peace.” Birth Control Review, April 1932
On the purpose of birth control:
The purpose in promoting birth control was “to create a race of thoroughbreds,” she wrote in the Birth Control Review, Nov. 1921 (p. 2)
On the rights of the handicapped and mentally ill, and racial minorities:
“More children from the fit, less from the unfit — that is the chief aim of birth control.” Birth Control Review, May 1919, p. 12
On the extermination of blacks:
“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population,” she said, “if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.” Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America, by Linda Gordon
Margaret Sanger had other things to say, too. About the birth control that the left wants (Sanger said it would lead to a “cleaner race”); about sterilization (“to prevent multiplication of this bad stock”); about hell on earth which she demonically believed was a Utopia.
I don’t believe I have to say a further word about how genuinely EVILthis hero of liberalism, who was not only a Nazi sympathizer but whose work was cited as justification for the Nazis’ own extermination program, truly was. Her own volume of words and her entire life’s work betray her.
OH, HILL NO Obama’s indecision on Libya has pushed Clinton over the edgeh
By Joshua Hersh Thursday, March 17, 2011 Fed up with a president “who can’t make his mind up” as Libyan rebels are on the brink of defeat, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is looking to the exits.
At the tail end of her mission to bolster the Libyan opposition, which has suffered days of losses to Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s forces, Clinton announced that she’s done with Obama after 2012 — even if he wins again.
“Obviously, she’s not happy with dealing with a president who can’t decide if today is Tuesday or Wednesday, who can’t make his mind up,” a Clinton insider told The Daily. “She’s exhausted, tired.”
He went on, “If you take a look at what’s on her plate as compared with what’s on the plates of previous Secretary of States — there’s more going on now at this particular moment, and it’s like playing sports with a bunch of amateurs. And she doesn’t have any power. She’s trying to do what she can to keep things from imploding.”
Clinton is said to be especially peeved with the president’s waffling over how to encourage the kinds of Arab uprisings that have recently toppled regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, and in particular his refusal to back a no-fly zone over Libya.
In the past week, former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton’s former top adviser Anne-Marie Slaughter lashed out at Obama for the same reason.
The tension has even spilled over into her dealings with European diplomats, with whom she met early this week.
When French president Nicolas Sarkozy urged her to press the White House to take more aggressive action in Libya, Clinton repeatedly replied only, “There are difficulties,” according to Foreign Policy magazine.
“Frankly we are just completely puzzled,” one of the diplomats told Foreign Policy magazine. “We are wondering if this is a priority for the United States.”
Or as the insider described Obama’s foreign policy shop: “It’s amateur night.”
Clinton revealed her desire to leave yesterday in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, responding four times to his questions about whether she would accept a post during a potential second Obama administration with a single word: “No.”
Philippe Reines, an adviser and spokesman for Clinton, downplayed the significance of the interview, saying, “He asked, she answered. Really that simple. [It] wasn’t a declaration.”
But her blunt string of four “no’s” followed a period of intense frustration for the secretary, according to the insider, who told The Daily that Clinton has grown weary of fighting an uphill battle in the administration.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates came out against a no-fly zone almost two weeks ago, while Clinton grew closer to the Libyan opposition.
Last week, excommunicated members of Libya’s embassy to the United States set up shop in an office inside the State Department.
Obama himself made light of her strong feelings for supporting the opposition in a speech last week at the Gridiron Club Dinner, an annual gathering that traditionally features a stand-up comedy act by the president.
“I’ve dispatched Hillary to the Middle East to talk about how these countries can transition to new leaders — though, I’ve got to be honest, she’s gotten a little passionate about the subject,” Obama said to laughter from the audience.
“These past few weeks it’s been tough falling asleep with Hillary out there on Pennsylvania Avenue shouting, throwing rocks at the window.”
And to some, the firing last week of State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley over disparaging remarks he made about the Pentagon detention policies had the appearance of a power move by the Defense Department more than anything else.
While the stakes in Libya could not be higher, the insider said that something far more domestic was on Clinton’s mind after she leaves the State Department: “She wants to be a grandmother more than anything.”
— With Anthony DeCeglie
I can’t believe I’m saying this: but I’m with Hillary Clinton. And it is truly despicable that Obama would actually make light of a powder-keg about to explode in the heart of the Arab world. Only a true fool would do that. Even as that same fool further undermines and trivializes his own Secretary of State.
Senate Democrats were less pointed in their comments, but expressed similar concerns about the Obama administrations handling of the crisis. At one point, Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J. lamented all that the international community said but didnt do about the Qaddafi regimes military assault, and wondered aloud whether the presidents national security team was ever serious about trying to shape the outcome of the Libyan conflict.
I read the statements [from administration officials] and I almost get a sense it’s like a Texas two-step, Menendez said. I’m still not sure what we are supporting. It seems to me that it is a dangerous proposition to urge people to seek democracy and revolt and then basically not to help them. And so, you know, I am concerned as I listen to your answers, including what happens if Qaddafi prevailsI think we’re going to miss an opportunity to promote democracy with a small ‘d’ throughout the region, and to be seen on the side of those who have aspirations of that.
Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) Reaffirmed That Obama Was Not Ready To Be Commander In Chief. ABC‘s George Stephanopoulos: “You were asked is he ready. You said ‘I think he can be ready, but right now I don’t believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.’” Sen. Biden: “I think that I stand by the statement.” (ABC’s “This Week,” 8/19/07)
Sen. Biden: “Having talking points on foreign policy doesn’t get you there.” (“Biden Lashes Out At Obama,” ABC News’ “Political Radar” Blog, blogs.abcnews.com, 8/2/07)
Democrats are between a rock and a hard place in the sense that they can’t point out overly-loudly what a disaster Obama is, because the obvious result of their abandonment of Obama would be a conservative (and probably very conservative) president in 2012 to go with a Republican-controlled House and a Republican-controlled Senate. Which means that while Obama goes from one “dangerous proposition” to another, they have to be bobbing-head dolls.
And Hillary – probably with Bill’s advice – is getting the hell out of Dodge before this total disaster and disgrace of a White House drags her down to hell with it. Because this community agitator is very clearly is not up to this job, and we are one genuine crisis away from a total disaster.
For what it’s worth, it isn’t as though Libya is the first time Obama has failed in foreign policy. Just off the top of my head, I can add articles I’ve written detailing Obama’s total failure in Egypt, in Iraq, in Afghanistan (not to mention all three combined), In Iran (and see here), in Russia and in North Korea.
I remember several years ago watching a fascination PBS program on presidential leadership. The documentary’s poster-boy for pathetic presidential leadership was Jimmy Carter. Obviously the man was intelligent, but the experts on leadership said “intelligence” does not a leader make. Jimmy Carter was particularly faulted for not empowering his subordinates with enough power to do their jobs; he micromanaged and undermined through a tiny cadre of close advisors. And as a result the nation drifted like a ship without a rudder. That is clearly what is being described by Hillary Clinton now.
The PBS program did not make mention of the fact that Jimmy Carter was (and clearly still is) a fool with a totally bogus worldview. A false worldview makes it impossible to act intelligently because, no matter how intelligent one is, one cannot possibly comprehend reality. And I would submit that Both Carter and Obama have tragically and truly flawed views of the world. Both of these men view the world through a set of theories that are simply totally false. And from their poor foundations, all of their intelligence goes into the fruitless process of endlessly rationalizing and justifying their erroneous worldview.
The funny thing is that all of these incredibly radical and fundamentally intolerant university faculty almost certainly support the construction of the Islamic mosque/community center right next to Ground Zero. That very much seems to be the liberal position, after all. Even though the central imam in the Ground Zero mosque advocates the extremely intolerant Sharia law.
So one can only wonder if the American secular humanist liberal is advancing the cause of Islam out of fanatic hatred for Christianity, or whether like-minded intolerant fascists merely think alike.
Thought Control at Augusta State University
August 11, 2010 – Herbert London
It often seems as if political correctness hasn’t any boundaries. Recently an Augusta State University counseling student filed a lawsuit against her university claiming it violated her First Amendment rights when she was allegedly told to change her traditional Christian views on homosexuality or leave.
The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) filed suit on behalf of Jennifer Keaton seeking to prevent the expulsion from her master’s degree program.
According to David French, the ADF attorney representing Keaton, “They (college officials) made a cascading series of presumptions about the kind of a counselor she would be and have consequently… tried to force her to change her beliefs. It’s symbolic of an educational system that has lost its way.”
The suit claims that program officials were upset that Ms. Keaton stated her belief that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice and not a “state of living.” According to the suit, the university wants her to undergo “thought reform” intended to alter her perception. Most significantly, she faces expulsion unless she complies.
To exacerbate matters within the department, Ms. Keaton argued the “conversion therapy” for homosexuals should be entertained, a point of view that departed significantly from accepted norms within the program and according to program officials, from “psychological research.” It is noteworthy that the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) defends the practice Keaton advocates and notes opponents of conversion therapy are often criticized by politically motivated biases, albeit, in fairness, the reverse accusation might also be made.
The Augusta State University counseling program required Ms. Keaton to attend at least three pro-gay sensitivity training courses, read pro-gay peer reviewed journals and participate in Augusta’s gay pride parade. She was also asked to familiarize herself with the Association of Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Issues in “Counseling” webpage, which defines homosexual behavior as healthy and an appropriate way of life. In addition, her professors required “a two page reflection” each month on how her participation in pro-gay activities “has influenced her beliefs” and how future clients might benefit from her experience.
Without getting into the merits of the case and the claims in the lawsuit, it seems to me that if even a portion of the allegation is accurate the Augusta counseling program is engaged in a form of thought control that hasn’t any place in the Academy. As I see it, if there are diametrically different positions on the nature – nurture argument regarding homosexuality both points of view – with empirical evidence marshaled for each side – should be entertained and given a fair hearing. It is not as if one position is dispositive, notwithstanding the position taken by the counseling program.
In far too many instances a university orthodoxy is confused with the rational exegesis of an idea. Proponents of the orthodoxy act as if they are the American version of the Red Guard, incapable of even giving a fair hearing to an alternative point of view; in fact, often going to the extreme of requiring a reeducation program.
Here is the rub: university life predicated on the free and open exchange of opinion has often become a filtering mechanism for politically correct ideas. Those who do not share this view are chastised or, in Ms. Keaton’s case, put through a thought control exercise.
It is interesting that Ms. Keaton’s religiously based view of homosexuality is disregarded, even though one could argue her First Amendment rights are being violated. In the way the university is constituted today, some designated groups have more rights than others. You don’t need a program to know which groups fall into that category; the university catalogue is likely to offer that information.
Liberalism = communism = fascism. Pure and simple. What do you even say about a faculty of a university – which at the same time prides itself on its openness – demanding that a student undergo “thought reform” that could well have come right out of a program by Chairman Mao?
Being politically correct is not just an attempt to make people feel better. It’s a large, coordinated effort to change Western culture as we know it by redefining it (or, to put it into Obama’s terminology, by “fundamentally transforming” it). Early Marxists designed this tactic a long ago and continue to execute it today — and now liberals are picking up the same game plan: 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.
The left – and increasingly the radical left – that so dominates our education system is incredibly hostile to the religious worldview, and seeks to purge it much the way that Stalin sought to purge those who disagreed with him:
“How can we ever know how many children had their psychological and physical lives irreparably maimed by the compulsory inculcation of faith? Religion … has always hoped to practice upon the unformed and undefended minds of the young… If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.” – Christopher Hitchens
“If scientists can destroy the influence of religion on young people, then I think it may be the most important contribution we can make.” – Steven Weinberg
How much do we regard children as being the property of their parents? It’s one thing to say people should be free to believe whatever they like, but should they be free to impose their beliefs on their children? Is there something to be said for society stepping in? What about bringing up children to believe manifest falsehoods? Isn’t it always a form of child abuse to label children as possessors of beliefs that they are too young to have thought out?” – Richard Dawkins
“[S]ome children are raised in such an ideological prison that they willingly become their own jailers… Parents don’t literally own their children the way slaveowners once owned slaves, but are, rather, their stewards and guardians and ought to be held accountable by outsiders for their guardianship, which does imply that outsiders have a right to interfere.” – Daniel Dennett
“Parents, correspondingly, have no god-given license to enculcate their children in whatever ways they personally choose: no right to limit the horizons of their children’s knowledge, to bring them up in an atmosphere of dogma and superstitition, or to insist they follow the straight and narrow paths of their own faith.” – Nicholas Humphrey
Kenneth Miller admits that “a presumption of atheism or agnosticism is universal in academic life… The conventions of academic life, almost universally, revolve around the assumption that religious belief is something that people grow out of as they become educated.”
And philosopher Richard Rorty argued that secular professors in the universities ought “to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like their own.” He noted that students are fortunate to find themselves “under the benevolent Herrschaft of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents.” He said to parents who send their children to college, “we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than reasonable.”
Only a true fool would be unable to see how dangerous and corrosive this building trend is. Christianity created the very idea of the university (universities emerged from the monasteries). Oxford, Cambridge, and all the great universities of Europe had their beginnings as Christian monasteries. And yet fundamentalist atheists are trying to purge universities and society of the intellectual and creative spirit which were these institutions’ foundations in the first place. And in doing so, they corrupt, pervert and destroy the very meaning of the open university system that they now deceitfully claim to defend.
We are entering a world in which teachers and professors no longer believe that parents have a basic right to educate their own children. We are entering a world in which students no longer have a right to their own worldview if it is not the worldview of the left. And if a student tries to express or stand up for his or her religious worldview, well, to quote another leftist totalitarian ideologue named Nikita Khrushchev, “We will bury you.”
U.S. purposefully mismanaged by President Andy Stern
The 2008 election was aimed, as Barack Obama said, “to fundamentally change America.” The American people did not do their homework. They thought he believed in the original paradigm. They were intentionally misled, but this could have been prevented.
Ask the leaders of the Democratic party who Saul Alinsky is and you will likely get obfuscation. They will tell you Barack Obama spent three years teaching Alinsky’s philosophy and methods but he likely will not answer questions about Alinsky. Hillary Clinton wrote her college dissertation on Alinsky but you won’t likely get a peep out of her.
Bluntly put, Alinsky is opposed to freedom. He is an elitist. He believed in communism and atheism. The fundamental values, as stated at the beginning of this column, are seen by Alinsky as horrors that have created mass inequities and careless behavior. What makes Alinsky dangerous is that he is insidious.
Alinsky’s primary approach to politics is deceit. The ends justify the means. He would create a communist Utopia dominated by his friends but not through open and honest debate. Therefore, they disguise themselves as believers in the republic and democracy. Gaining control is objective No. 1. This was the beginning of their revolution. The goal, then, for Alinsky was “to take from the haves and give to the have-nots.”
Obama taught this. He “community organized” under this philosophy. He has surrounded himself with people of like mind. John Holdren, Cass Sunstein, Anita Dunn, Valerie Jarrett, and Van Jones are just a few of the core conspirators.
Alinsky knew the core beliefs of the American people. He knew they had to be deceived and manipulated. His opinion was they were too selfish to give up the America that was constructed by the founding fathers. His followers have taken over the Democratic Party although many Republicans also are participating in the movement under the guise of progressivism.
The change they want will fundamentally eliminate freedom, representative government, democracy, free enterprise, private ownership, individual responsibility and religious faith. I have no problem with them telling you that and putting it up for debate but they will not because they would be thrown out of office.
This strategy has been known since the late 1960s. Since they cannot challenge those positions successfully, the next best thing is to get into the current system through deceit. Tell people you are something you are not. Then destroy people’s belief in the system by destroying it from within. This is the strategy employed by the disciples of Alinsky.
Alinsky said, “Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, nonchallenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution.”
One of the fundamental “disappointments” that independents – who have massively abandoned Obama and his agenda – have is that Obama misrepresented himself (i.e., he lied) about who he was and what he would be about if he were elected president.
Too many people did not see Obama’s anti-free market agenda (Obama’s demagoguery of banks, of car companies, of insurance companies, of the Chamber of Commerce, of Fox News, etc.) coming. They should have seen it, and they would have had they paid better attention, or had the mainstream media attempted to do its constitutionally-appointed duty. But now they are left fearful. Now they and the businesses they work for are being inundated with fundamentally hostile attacks against business. And as a result we are forced to live through a period in which fully 77% of investors view their president as “anti-business.”
An American Thinker piece ties Obama’s relationship with the pedophile communist Frank Marshall Davis to an early indoctrination in the philosophy of Saul Alinsky.
“To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.”
To cite Dr. Raymond Stantz from Ghostbusters, I wouldn’t have touched these people with a ten meter cattle prod. And few Americans would have.
Generally speaking, we get the joke. We know that the free market is nonsense. We know that the whole point is to game the system, to beat the market or at least find someone who will pay you a lot of money, ’cause they’re convinced that there is a free lunch.
We know this is largely about power, that it’s an adults only no limit game. We kind of agree with Mao that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun. And we get it that if you want a friend you should get a dog.”
Unions – whether public or private sector – are breaking the back of this country. They are breaking down our society. They are fundamentally destroying our American way of life.
And they now have someone who is helping them do it in the White House.
You start throwing out radical names of dangerous people that Obama has been associated with and a pattern emerges: the aforementioned Davis, Jeremiah Wright (see also here and here and here), Khalid al-Mansour (more here), Rashid Khalidi, Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers. And you realize that Obama has been steeped in a profoundly Marxist worldview. Obama isn’t stupid; he knows that the American people don’t want that ideology. But no one can conceal his worldview completely. Critical observers saw it clearly.
And they accurately understood what it would portend if he was elected president.
Obama underscores the self-concealment of his worldview in his book which bears its title in inspiration of a Jeremiah Wright sermon that described his view that “white folks’ greed runs a world in need” (The Audacity of Hope):
Barack Obama has decided it was time to pack up the campaign bus and move on. But before pulling out this time, Obama finally decided to throw his pastor under it.
“I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday,” Obama said in a last-minute press conference today. The candidate said that after watching Wright’s appearance from Monday, “What became clear to me was that he was presenting a world view that contradicts what I am and what I stand for.”
I’d sure like to know whether Barack Obama was in his church – as so many Americans were – the Sunday following 9/11 when Wright offered one of his most inflammatory ravings of all. But this issue has exploded beyond such questions.
It’s frankly way past time Obama repudiated Jeremiah Wright. He should never have attended the extremely radicalized Trinity United Church in Chicago in the first place. He should have walked away in outrage twenty years ago.
Given full, repeated opportunites to show how he had been “taken out of context,” Jeremiah Wright instead demonstrated that he stood by every “sound bite” he had spoken exactly as it had been depicted. He does believe America is a terrorist nation who deserves terrorist attacks to be directed against it. He does believe that white America created AIDS as a genocide against people of color. He didn’t back away or in any way change the context of any of his radical statements.
By speaking out, Rev. Jeremiah Wright reveals that the “spin” that much of the media – and Barack Obama himself – had been putting on the story for the last couple months was a flat-out lie. These were not sound bites taken out of context. It was malicious to claim that Wright’s sermons had been deliberately taken out of context, because the charge was an attempt to assasinate the characters and reputations of men and women who are now revealed to have been right all the time.
You may despise Fox News’ Sean Hannity and love PBS’ Bill Moyers, but Hannity has been demonstrated to be the objective source, and Moyers the biased ideologue.
Conservatives keep saying that the elite media is biased to the left, and the elite media keeps proving that the allegation is completely true. You have only to go back and review every story that characterized Jeremiah Wright’s remarks as “soundbites” and “thirty second loops” spun “out of context” to see that the media was doing its own spinning out of a pro-liberal and pro-Obama agenda.
For the most part, there was simply no possible context that could have made most of these remarks palatable. America with three Ks, America as a terrorist state, America as a racist developer of genocidal death-viruses. Good luck with that, “What-the-Reverend-really-meant-to-say”-project.
But we still have another spin on this story. We still have the excuse that somehow Barack Obama never heard any of this stuff, and just didn’t know it was going on for all these years.
I can see it now:
Several thousand people settle into their pews as the worship team finishes leading the music. Rev. Wright steps into the pulpit to preach. The auditorium quiets down.
“Is he here?” The doormen charged with monitoring Barack Obama’s attendance shake their heads.
“Well, then, America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. . . . We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers . . . We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Ghadhafi . . . We put Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.! We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost!”
And then a security radio crackles in with a report that Barack Obama has driven in and is walking toward the auditorium.
“And Jesus said, love your enemies. Do good to them that hate you,” Wright sweetly and sublimely preaches as Obama files in and takes a pew.
The rest of the congregation smiles knowlingly. And the vast conspiracy, which has succeeded in keeping Barack Obama completely in the dark for twenty years, has succeeded yet again.
The problem with this scenario is that the facts simply say otherwise. Allow me to quote myself from 19 April:
First of all, it is a frankly incredible claim. Barack Obama spent 20 years in this church, and 20 years in an intimate personal mentoring friendship with Jeremiah Wright. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. has been well-known for being a fiery radical way out of the mainstream ever since he coming to the church in 1972. The fact that Wright married Barack and Michelle and baptized their children are only embarrasing details. And Barack Obama had no idea what his mentor for twenty years stood for? When the Reverend Wright delivered a particularly offensive, hateful and anti-American sermon, no one ever told Obama about it? The fact is, in his 1993 memoir “Dreams from My Father,” Barack Obama himself reveals this argument for the lie it is. In a vivid description recalling his first meeting with Wright back in 1985, the pastor warned Barack Obama that getting involved with Trinity might turn off other black clergy because of the church’s radical reputation. And when Obama disinvited Jeremiah Wright to give the convocation speach at his announcement of his presidential campaign last year, he essentially told his pastor that he was too extreme for Barack to openly associate himself with him. Obama knew.
When the video of Rev. Wright’s hateful, racist, anti-American rants first became public, the Obama campaign indignantly indicated that there was nothing worthy of bothering itself about. They had no problem with anything Wright had said. Later in the day, as the video of the ranting pastor spread, the campaign offered a lame dodge. A little after that, Obama himself offered that he’s never heard any of the remarks. Then he gave his speech saying, “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother — a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”
And, of course, the left-leaning media swooned over the speech.
Well, I guess now he’s disowning the black church. Sorry grandma. You gotta go.
Obama personally records the warning that Wright gave him about the church’s radicalism. The only thing that changed since that day in 1985 was that Barack Obama’s political ambitions have grown to the point where his twenty-year “association” (a word the liberal media loves to use to imply a bogus “guilt by association”) is no longer expedient for a man who had used the influence of Trinity United and its pastor to climb the ladder in Chicago politics. Obama had found the church offered him street credibility with common black folk as well as powerful local connections. And now he finds it politically expedient to bite the hand that fed him.
Obama chooses some interesting words to describe his reason for distancing himself from Wright. “What became clear to me was that he was presenting a world view that contradicts what I am and what I stand for.”
Jeremiah Wright’s worldview has not changed. He is presenting the same worldview that he has been presenting for twenty years.
Let me quote myself again from 15 April, and note that I specifically refer to Jeremiah Wright’s worldview:
When revelations of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s racist, anti-American remarks first began to surface, Democratic supporters of Barack Obama quickly claimed that these were just a few comments that were taken out of context. But when one considers black liberation theology, and when one listens to the words of numerous other black liberation theology theologians, this defense quickly becomes untenable.
When Jeremiah Wright talked about “white greed” in his now-famous “Audacity of Hope” message, he was perfectly expounding on black liberation thought. When he claimed that white America deliberately created the AIDS virus as a genocide against blacks, he was accurately exegeting black liberation ideology of class based warfare against the oppressed black class. Or, expressed negatively, when he said that anti-crack cocaine penalties were instituted by racist legislators for the purpose of incarcerating as many blacks as possible, how was that in any way contrary to his central theological beliefs? When Wright denounced Israel as a Zionist state that imposed “injustice and … racism” on Palestinians, how was this not in perfect accord with his theology? When Wright railed against “AmeriKKKa” in his sermons, just how was that contrary to black liberation thought? And when Wright lectured American society that it deserved 9/11, was this in any way out of bounds with either the teachings of black liberation theologians or the Marxism from which they derived their message?
Has Barack Obama, the Harvard Law School graduate, the former editor of the Harvard Law Review, and full-fledged elitist intellectual snob, somehow been totally unaware of black liberation theology? Was he totally unaware of the teachings of his church? Was he completely ignorant of the beliefs of the man who led him to his faith, who married him, who bapatized his children, and who taught him and mentored him for twenty years?
Get real.
Now the Obama campaign is pitching itself as the poor victim of this crazy Jeremiah Wright. And the media is just gobbling it up. But a New York Post story coming out today quotes a source that is problably closer to the mark; that the pastor felt betrayed by a man who had once embraced him as a friend, a mentor, and a spiritual guide. That the pastor feels betrayed that Obama is now distancing himself from views that he knew Wright had had for years and years.
Joe Scarborough is claiming that now that Obama has finally come out and denounced Wright that no one can bring this up any more, as though by sheer brute force of ultra-left-wing will can overcome every question and doubt that this relationship so justifiably raises. What is this guy putting in his coffee?
The media spins, and most of the media spins fast and furiously left. But the truth of the matter is that Barack Obama’s central campaign theme is, and has always been, a fraud. There’s nothing new about him, he isn’t the candidate of hope, and the change he will bring will only be for the worse.
Barack Obama’s close and long-term relationship with Jeremiah Wright calls his character, his honesty, his integrity, and his own beliefs into open question. Should we believe his current campaign spin, or should we believe his actions over the last twenty years?
The computer game Grand Theft Auto IV was released today to the standard irrational hype surrounding these game introductions, with buyers lining up around the store for their chance to be the first ones to own the game. Drive-by-shootings, acts of prostitution, and car thefts make up just some of the activities players participate in during the game. I have not played the game, but I understand that players receive the sexual services of prostitutes, and then beat them up to get their money back. Advancing means continually committing criminal acts while trying to stay alive.
One of the issues that constantly arises with the release of one of these violent games is the outcry against the reality that many of these games end up in the hands of children and young adolescents. So let’s start with that.
What happens physically and emotionally when children and adolescents spend a great deal of time exposed to these activities?
Children are concrete thinkers, and generally aren’t yet capable of understanding the consequences of their actions. In real life, children have shot other children without realizing that the act results in actual death. Games such as Grand Theft Auto IV reinforce this mode of concrete thinking by means of a series of behaviors that have no consequences. It’s the prescription for creating a moral monster.
There is also a very real, and very damaging impact on adolescents. Psychologists use the term “vicarious traumatization” to describe the measurable physical reactions a person can have after simply viewing a traumatic event on television or on a video game. What researches have documented is that habitual exposure to vicarious violent events can cause a person to experience the identical physical effects – such as heightened blood pressure, racing heart beat, etc. – as if that person were actually experiencing the event in real life.
Craig A. Anderson, the author of the book, Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents, detailed in a peer-reviewed article written for the American Psychological Association the effects of violent games on children. He noted that repeated exposure to media violence generates and legitimizes more aggressive behavior even as it “decreases the normal negative emotional reactions to conflict, aggression, and violence.”
The younger one is, the more intense the effect. When children play these games for hour after hour, it seriously distorts their worldviews.
I think that any responsible adult will acknowledge these facts, and act accordingly by limiting children’s exposure to such games. The problem is there are way too many irresponsible adults who either don’t know or simply don’t care about the psychological damage that is being inflicted by children under their care or supervision.
I do not propose a solution for this growing problem. Banning the games is decried as an act of censorship, and regulating or restricting the games is decried in almost the same tones as a form of censorship. Frankly, by the time a culture is determined to bring this kind of junk into their lives, it is probably too late to do anything about it. And at this point in the life of American culture, we are determined to have all kinds of crap in our society and in our homes.
My real objective in writing about games such as Grand Theft Auto IV is to address the effects of these games on adults, because there IS an effect on adults.
The typical response of the above reasoning with an adult “gamer” is, “I’ve played these games for years, and I’ve never killed anybody.”
Most of the time, that’s true, of course. Adults experience many of the same symptoms that children and adolescents experience playing games over time; however, their superior impulse control, sense of identity, and grasp on reality enables them to resist effects that can tear younger minds apart.
while I would argue that playing violent video games is the psychological equivalent to using drugs or alcohol (i.e. it messes up the mind, but most adults can handle the effects unless they really go overboard), I want to focus on a whole other impact of these video games.
I want to address a pattern of thinking that very often comes to characterize the minds of adults who spend a significant period of time “gaming.” It is also increasingly consuming postmodern culture. It boils down to three key characteristics: Cynicism, Skepticism, and a Dislike for reality.
Cynicism is the intelligent but lazy mind’s shortcut to genuine philosophy. When the world seems to make no sense, the simplest thing to do is to say the world makes no sense, and to give up on searching for sense, purpose, or meaning in the world. For an increasing number of people, this cynicism seems superior to the “simple” belief that the world does make sense, when one cannot explain why it does. Frankly, it is easier to stand on the sidelines and ridicule what is going on around you than it is to get in the trenches and work toward a better reality. Cynicism sneers at such hope.
Skepticism is – in modern secular society – a replacement for faith. But skepticism cannot serve for long as a replacement for faith, because if you teach people to believe in a thing, you have to adopt a specific position. And in a secular and pluralistic society, we can’t adopt a position (as that would disfavor other competing positions!). So we present a smorgasborg of worldview positions. This is not a Socratic education, but rather Socrates gone insane. Skepticism is a useful epistemological tool but it cannot be foundational. Why? Because if turned on itself it collapses by its own standards: what if we become skeptical about skepticism? Do we then have to become skeptical about being skeptical about skepticism? Frankly, the world would have been a much better place had Descartes realized this and abandoned his project.
Ultimately skepticism and cynicism are self-consuming. They can’t produce even a vacuous culture; they can simply mock and parody it. So ultimately, culture runs out of ideas, and from that point on, it simply relies on marketing to sell. Take the fact that we are talking about Grand Theft Auto IV as a case in point.
A Dislike of reality, or a rejection of reality for virtual reality. In video games you are a hero, the savior of the world, desired by women and loved or feared by everyone. People are relying on virtual reality to give them a feeling of joy. We are frankly seeing too many young people who are too intelligent to fall for the trap of incoherence, and yet our incredibly incoherent education system has made them immune to normal apologetics against their worldview. Having grown up with no genuine or coherent worldview, there is simply no worldview to attack or correct.
But they also unconsciously recognize the real effects of the fall and sin in the real world. In the real world, people get hurt, people suffer, people have meaningless dead-end lives. And then they die. They recognize instinctively at the very core there is something that should be in the world but is not. And yet the cynicism and skepticism of our age (the one thing that they have picked up) have left them completely unable to embrace the notion that change can matter. And so they replace physical reality with virtual reality. It very quickly becomes a form of addiction.
(Part 2 will address the spiritual components of this worldview, and offer a Christian perspective and response).
Start Thinking Right 
