SO MANY PEOPLE---EVEN SO CALLED CHRISTIANS--- DON'T KNOW THE TRUE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST BECAUSE THEY DON'T KNOW---OR ARE UNWILLING TO LOOK AT--THE BAD NEWS ABOUT THEMSELVES AND THEIR SIN NATURE.
The prosperity gospel and many other teachings are false, based on idolatry.
This film is continuing to change lives forever.
Saturday, February 22, 2020
Sunday, February 9, 2020
Psalm 16, of David
miktam[a] of David.
1 Keep me safe, my God,
for in you I take refuge.
for in you I take refuge.
2 I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;
apart from you I have no good thing.”
3 I say of the holy people who are in the land,
“They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.”
4 Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more.
I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods
or take up their names on my lips.
apart from you I have no good thing.”
3 I say of the holy people who are in the land,
“They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.”
4 Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more.
I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods
or take up their names on my lips.
5 Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup;
you make my lot secure.
6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
surely I have a delightful inheritance.
7 I will praise the Lord, who counsels me;
even at night my heart instructs me.
8 I keep my eyes always on the Lord.
With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
you make my lot secure.
6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
surely I have a delightful inheritance.
7 I will praise the Lord, who counsels me;
even at night my heart instructs me.
8 I keep my eyes always on the Lord.
With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
9 Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
my body also will rest secure,
10 because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
nor will you let your faithful[b] one see decay.
11 You make known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand.
my body also will rest secure,
10 because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
nor will you let your faithful[b] one see decay.
11 You make known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand.
Friday, February 7, 2020
Sunday, February 2, 2020
Superbowl Ads, Winners and Losers
WHADDA THINK? I'll comment on anything that interests me. Here's a good link@ NYPOST. Getting to computer a bit late....
NO to Avocados from Mexico....and meh! J Lo's action hotel ad....Tide and Chrissy and John Legend. Nothing is moving me much;; at this point, but I'm open. Score 10-10, late second quarter
Yes to Turbo tax..
Half time with that Latino woman, JLo and Latino girls symbolized by the sign of Venus bumping and grinding as if all their lives depended on it was loud, way overly-sexualized and completely inappropriate. It was a soft porn spectacle with fireworks.
In the end, it was embarrassing for the Super Bowl and everyone who watched. Not a family affair. Shameful.
JLo is the biggest, tawdriest exhibitionist in
American. Enough already.....
Walmart ad was inspirational and well worth watching. KIA also pretty inspirational. Bud Lite Seltzer is a bust in my opinion but maybe carbonated water is a new big seller for Bud.
Nevertheless, one ad stood out and was inspirational too. And the winners are: The Kansas City Chiefs and Patrick Mahones! Congratulations! And this, Typical Americans:
Sunday, Psalm 16
PSALM 16, KJV
PRESERVE ME, O God: for in thee do I put my trust. 2 O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord: my goodness extendeth not to thee;
3 But to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent, in whom is all my delight.
4 Their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another god: their drink offerings of blood will I not offer, nor take up their names into my lips.
5 The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot.
6 The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.
7 I will bless the Lord, who hath given me counsel: my reins also instruct me in the night seasons.
8 I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope.
10 For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.
11 Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.
King James Version (KJV)
Tuesday, January 28, 2020
Sunday Weekly---Beware the god of Open Options
AS AN ENGLISHMAN, one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced in America is
automated call centers. You miss a package delivery from FedEx, and you
have to call them to arrange a new delivery time. The problem is that
when you call, you aren’t connected to a human being. You’re connected
to a talking robot programmed to recognize what you are saying in
English.
Or should I say, it’s programmed to recognize what you’re saying in American English.
Every
time I call FedEx, I end up conducting the entire conversation in an
accent that can only be described as the unholy offspring of John Wayne
and Judi Dench. The talking robot, surely trying hard not to laugh,
keeps asking me to repeat myself. For a Brit, it’s absolutely
humiliating. It’s as if someone has implemented the whole system as
payback for nearly two centuries of colonial rule.
The
last time it happened, it occurred to me that this nightmarish limbo is
a familiar place for many of us. Making choices and moving on with our
lives seems increasingly difficult. We feel paralyzed: unable to make
choices about relationships, dating, marriage, money, family, and
career. I want to suggest that if we feel unable to make these choices,
it’s not because we have the wrong accent. It may be because we’re
worshiping a false god.
God of Open Options
In 1 Kings 18:21,
we encounter a crucial moment of decision. It’s the final showdown
between the God of Israel and a false god called Baal. Elijah calls
God’s people to choose once and for all between the living God who
delivered them, and this false god who has captured their affections:
“‘How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God,
follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.’ But the people said
nothing.”
They seem unable, or unwilling, to make a choice. They want to hedge their bets, sit on the fence, keep their options open.
How
different are we in the 21st century? Would you prefer to make an
ironclad, no-turning-back choice, or one you could back out of if need
be? Do you ever find that you’re afraid to commit? Do you reply to party
invitations with a “maybe” rather than a “yes” or “no”? Do you like to
keep your smartphone switched on at all times, even in meetings, so that
you’re never fully present at any given moment? Will you focus on the
person you’re talking to after a church service, or will you look over
her shoulder for a better conversation partner?
If so, you may be worshiping the god of open options.
Paradox of Open Options
People
wait years before declaring a college major; others only go to stores
with a guaranteed return policy; and it’s not unusual for a person to
date someone for years before getting married—if they ever do get
married. From sex to spirituality, we reserve the right to keep our options open in every department of our lives....
Read the whole article @ The Gospel Coalition
Monday, January 20, 2020
Good Read Worth Repeating: Windsors Blackmailed By Their Daughter-In-Law
Over
the last one hundred years, the British Royal Family has generously
provided the world with a parade of scandals more colorful and louder
than the socks they wear with their kilts. But the Meghan and Harry
rupture is fundamentally different from any previous crisis to befall
the British monarchy. Prior to now, royal scandals have been cut from
the same petticoats as any other public ignominies — i.e., the
chin-wagging that follows uncovering some form of immoral conduct. All
the throngs of poorly hidden mistresses, caddish boyfriends, toe-sucking
on yachts, assignations in the deer park while the horses wait
patiently, even consorting with extremes of evildoing, such as found in
the company of the late J. Epstein, arose from ordinary human weakness
set against an extraordinary backdrop. They have constituted
straightforward disgraces that can unfold only among people with a
shared religious heritage and moral code.
Those days are gone.
The roadside bomb in the royal family named Meghan Markle exploded not because of immoral conduct in the conventional sense. Markle is the first duchess who hails from the American left-wing, post-Christian, anti-moral belief system that worships the journey of self-directed personal actualization. Her justification after only a few months of marriage for urging hubby away from his family? "It is not enough to survive, you have to thrive."
Apparently, Harry's fulfilling his role as prince prevents her thriving. For Meghan, thriving entails doing what you want, no matter if it hurts others or depreciates the generosity that has been heaped upon you.
Meghan Markle's psychology is affected by well managed narcissistic rage. Narcissists seek power in relationships as a substitute for the terrifying experience of offering self-sacrificing love. Markle has two sources of power over the royal family and the millions of people who love them. She has the ordinary power of a disgruntled daughter-in-law to hurt her in-laws by controlling access to their brother, son, and grandchildren. She also has the extraordinary power to blackmail the royal family with the indictment of racism! It is widely reported that Markle has been acceding to the idea that she has been mistreated due to racism and that the royals fear being called racist in a "tell-all" interview.
The melodramatic flight of Meghan and Harry is being compared to the shattering abdication of King Edward VIII in 1937. The two cases bear no resemblance. King Edward VIII faced a moral dilemma that arose from a conflict with a religiously based code of behavior. He wanted to marry his mistress. That was not acceptable to the royal family and the Church of England, so he chose to abdicate, and that was the end of it. Meghan Markle moves in a world where "organized" religion (the kind that comes with a moral code at no extra charge) is disrespected. Markle may spend a Christianish day at a baptism, but she is not guided by the teachings of any church, save perhaps the church of Oprah, whose liturgy is "What works for me?"
Meghan has followed the career of all power-seeking, disruptive daughters-in-law. She could have begun her campaign of alienating her husband from his family with vague and irremediable complaints about her dissatisfactions as soon as she joined the Firm. "They don't respect you. They don't appreciate me." Wobbly Prince Harry is only too happy to be led away from his family.
Meghan and Harry possess a potent psychobiological weapon: the cry of racism. Harry drops hints of the dread allegation. Meghan, just as she has no loyalty to her own family, discreetly ignores that ludicrous speculation against the family she chose to join. Markle is the kind of self-promoter who frames her stratospheric privilege and luxuries into a stand upon conscience, proclaiming she will not live in the U.S. while the current president is in office. Much noise, no sacrifice.
Meghan carries narcissistic rage against the father she perceives abandoned her and against her family of origin, whom she seems to despise. Harry carries the abiding trauma of helplessness to protect his mother. Meghan married an enormously rich global celebrity who is a vulnerable, emotionally unstable man, who, despite the tragic history, lived a highly protected life and whom she could control. Harry married the opposite of his mother: an older, divorced, hardened TV actress — How brave she is, overcoming all she has suffered! — who he unconsciously senses can protect herself, thereby saving him from re-experiencing traumatic helplessness.
Thus, her weaponization against his family works psychologically for them both. But not as well for Harry.
Meghan is an actress, part of a business that virtually requires self-serving narcissism. Harry was not expected to develop a career independent of his royal duties. Furthermore, he appears to be a "serve or suffer" person like his mother. He draws energy from directly serving others. It is sad to see a prince shilling for his wife to Disney. It is said that when two people marry they become as one. Harry may not know it, but that one is Meghan.
It has been said that Harry is "stepping away" from royal duties because he has PTSD and is protecting his family from the tragedy that befell his mother. If so, there would have been no need for the couple to behave badly.
Harry may discover that a fear-driven life is a thwarted existence. They ambushed and distressed a frail 97-year-old man and his 93-year-old wife as a power tactic. They could have quietly created another home in Canada. They could have skipped the public self-congratulatory remarks about financial independence, as if hustling recently bestowed royal titles constitutes independence. Meghan did not need to complain that nobody cared about her, or that the duchess gig wasn't working for her. Above all, they did not have to promote the unjustified slander against queen and country that Meghan has been mistreated due to racism.
Meghan Markle enjoys absolute melanin immunity from criticism. Any challenge, however gentle, is racist! The duchess of York was publicly pulverized for her appearance for years on end, but she's white so it was OK. A critique of Meghan's nail polish is racism!
Racism! is a justification for the elite globalist kleptocracy to loot their nation state, because that is where the money is. The E.U. didn't fix up Frogmore "Cottage" for Meghan and Harry; the British people did. Such super-rich transnational lifestylers cling to a patina of virtue in their lack of loyalty to homeland, because the British, like all white people, are racist!
This hoax, the rebuff of royal duties, and alienation from his royal family are being baked into Archie's life narrative. Concerned about carbon footprints, Meghan announced that Archie will be an only child. (Enforcing this one-child-to-jet conviction means that she will have to buy another jet if she becomes pregnant again.) It seems that everything is being done to diminish Archie's one-in-a-billion birthright. But he will not be able to escape it for an hour of his life once he is old enough to know who he is
.
So let's plan a glorious adolescent rebellion for Archie. He announces to Mom and Dad, "You people are not working for me. I am not thriving." He finally goes home to stay. The king restores Archie's titles and then some. He "Etons up," plays polo, and gets the funny socks to wear with his kilt.
Those days are gone.
The roadside bomb in the royal family named Meghan Markle exploded not because of immoral conduct in the conventional sense. Markle is the first duchess who hails from the American left-wing, post-Christian, anti-moral belief system that worships the journey of self-directed personal actualization. Her justification after only a few months of marriage for urging hubby away from his family? "It is not enough to survive, you have to thrive."
Apparently, Harry's fulfilling his role as prince prevents her thriving. For Meghan, thriving entails doing what you want, no matter if it hurts others or depreciates the generosity that has been heaped upon you.
Meghan Markle's psychology is affected by well managed narcissistic rage. Narcissists seek power in relationships as a substitute for the terrifying experience of offering self-sacrificing love. Markle has two sources of power over the royal family and the millions of people who love them. She has the ordinary power of a disgruntled daughter-in-law to hurt her in-laws by controlling access to their brother, son, and grandchildren. She also has the extraordinary power to blackmail the royal family with the indictment of racism! It is widely reported that Markle has been acceding to the idea that she has been mistreated due to racism and that the royals fear being called racist in a "tell-all" interview.
The melodramatic flight of Meghan and Harry is being compared to the shattering abdication of King Edward VIII in 1937. The two cases bear no resemblance. King Edward VIII faced a moral dilemma that arose from a conflict with a religiously based code of behavior. He wanted to marry his mistress. That was not acceptable to the royal family and the Church of England, so he chose to abdicate, and that was the end of it. Meghan Markle moves in a world where "organized" religion (the kind that comes with a moral code at no extra charge) is disrespected. Markle may spend a Christianish day at a baptism, but she is not guided by the teachings of any church, save perhaps the church of Oprah, whose liturgy is "What works for me?"
Meghan has followed the career of all power-seeking, disruptive daughters-in-law. She could have begun her campaign of alienating her husband from his family with vague and irremediable complaints about her dissatisfactions as soon as she joined the Firm. "They don't respect you. They don't appreciate me." Wobbly Prince Harry is only too happy to be led away from his family.
Meghan and Harry possess a potent psychobiological weapon: the cry of racism. Harry drops hints of the dread allegation. Meghan, just as she has no loyalty to her own family, discreetly ignores that ludicrous speculation against the family she chose to join. Markle is the kind of self-promoter who frames her stratospheric privilege and luxuries into a stand upon conscience, proclaiming she will not live in the U.S. while the current president is in office. Much noise, no sacrifice.
Meghan carries narcissistic rage against the father she perceives abandoned her and against her family of origin, whom she seems to despise. Harry carries the abiding trauma of helplessness to protect his mother. Meghan married an enormously rich global celebrity who is a vulnerable, emotionally unstable man, who, despite the tragic history, lived a highly protected life and whom she could control. Harry married the opposite of his mother: an older, divorced, hardened TV actress — How brave she is, overcoming all she has suffered! — who he unconsciously senses can protect herself, thereby saving him from re-experiencing traumatic helplessness.
Thus, her weaponization against his family works psychologically for them both. But not as well for Harry.
Meghan is an actress, part of a business that virtually requires self-serving narcissism. Harry was not expected to develop a career independent of his royal duties. Furthermore, he appears to be a "serve or suffer" person like his mother. He draws energy from directly serving others. It is sad to see a prince shilling for his wife to Disney. It is said that when two people marry they become as one. Harry may not know it, but that one is Meghan.
It has been said that Harry is "stepping away" from royal duties because he has PTSD and is protecting his family from the tragedy that befell his mother. If so, there would have been no need for the couple to behave badly.
Harry may discover that a fear-driven life is a thwarted existence. They ambushed and distressed a frail 97-year-old man and his 93-year-old wife as a power tactic. They could have quietly created another home in Canada. They could have skipped the public self-congratulatory remarks about financial independence, as if hustling recently bestowed royal titles constitutes independence. Meghan did not need to complain that nobody cared about her, or that the duchess gig wasn't working for her. Above all, they did not have to promote the unjustified slander against queen and country that Meghan has been mistreated due to racism.
Meghan Markle enjoys absolute melanin immunity from criticism. Any challenge, however gentle, is racist! The duchess of York was publicly pulverized for her appearance for years on end, but she's white so it was OK. A critique of Meghan's nail polish is racism!
Racism! is a justification for the elite globalist kleptocracy to loot their nation state, because that is where the money is. The E.U. didn't fix up Frogmore "Cottage" for Meghan and Harry; the British people did. Such super-rich transnational lifestylers cling to a patina of virtue in their lack of loyalty to homeland, because the British, like all white people, are racist!
This hoax, the rebuff of royal duties, and alienation from his royal family are being baked into Archie's life narrative. Concerned about carbon footprints, Meghan announced that Archie will be an only child. (Enforcing this one-child-to-jet conviction means that she will have to buy another jet if she becomes pregnant again.) It seems that everything is being done to diminish Archie's one-in-a-billion birthright. But he will not be able to escape it for an hour of his life once he is old enough to know who he is
.
So let's plan a glorious adolescent rebellion for Archie. He announces to Mom and Dad, "You people are not working for me. I am not thriving." He finally goes home to stay. The king restores Archie's titles and then some. He "Etons up," plays polo, and gets the funny socks to wear with his kilt.
Sunday, January 19, 2020
Sunday, The Remedy for Pride
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such
and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit” —
yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you
are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead
you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. (James 4:13–16)
James is talking about pride and arrogance and how they show up in
subtle ways. “You boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.”When you take three categories of temptation to self-reliance — wisdom, power, and riches — they form a powerful inducement toward the ultimate form of pride; namely, atheism. The safest way for us to stay supreme in our own estimation is to deny anything above us.
This is why the proud preoccupy themselves with looking down on others. C.S. Lewis said, “A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you” (Mere Christianity).
But to preserve pride, it may be simpler to just proclaim that there is nothing above to look at. “In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 10:4). Ultimately, the proud must persuade themselves that there is no God. One reason for this is that God’s reality is overwhelmingly intrusive in all the details of life. Pride cannot tolerate the intimate involvement of God in running the universe, let alone the detailed, ordinary affairs of life.
Pride does not like the sovereignty of God. Therefore, pride does not like the existence of God, because God is sovereign. It might express this by saying, “There is no God.” Or it might express it by saying, “I am driving to Atlanta for Christmas.” James says, “Don’t be so sure.” Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live, and we will get to Atlanta for Christmas.”
James’s point is that God rules over whether you get to Atlanta, and whether you live to the end of this devotional. This is extremely offensive to the self-sufficiency of pride — not even to have control over whether you get to the end of the devotional without having a stroke! The way to battle this arrogance is to yield to the sovereignty of God in all the details of life, and rest in his infallible promises to show himself mighty on our behalf (2 Chronicles 16:9), to pursue us with goodness and mercy every day (Psalm 23:6), to work for those who wait for him (Isaiah 64:4), and to equip us with all we need to live for his glory (Hebrews 13:21).
In other words, the remedy for pride is unwavering faith in God’s sovereign future grace.
Amen and amen.
Monday, January 13, 2020
The Bible Never Goes Out of Style or Veers from Truth
SINCE THE BRITISH ROYAL FAMILY HAS BEEN IN THE NEWS WITH ITS LATEST DRAMATIC CRISIS and 24-hour news coverage, a poignant Scripture verse comes to mind which is true for them, and for all of us.
Numbers 14:18
The Lord is long suffering and of abundant mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgressions; but he by no means clears the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation.
Pastor John Piper explains how God is accomplishing this truth.
Numbers 14:18
The Lord is long suffering and of abundant mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgressions; but he by no means clears the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation.
Pastor John Piper explains how God is accomplishing this truth.
Monday, January 6, 2020
A Favorite Psalm For the New Year
THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH'S FRUITS OF HERESY
PSALM 1
Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
4 The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.
5 Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
6 For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.
THE NOURISHING WORD (Commentary and prayer below by Tim Keller)
PSALM 1 is the gateway to the rest of the psalms. The 'law' is all scripture, to 'meditate' on is to think out its implications for all life, and to 'delight' in it means not merely to comply, but to love what God commands. Christian have their attitude towards God changed from one to duty to free loving self-giving because of what Jesus did for us on the cross. So to know how to meditate on and delight in the Bible is the secret to a relationship with God and to life itself. Views contrary to God's Word are no anchor in time of need. God's Word gives us the resilience of a tree with a source of living water that will never dry up.
Prayer: Lord of the Word, don't let me be seduced by the world---either naively going with the crowd or becoming a hardened cynic. Help me meditate on your Word to the point of delight. Give me stability and contentment regardless of the circumstances. How I need that! Amen
PSALM 1
Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
4 The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.
5 Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
6 For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.
THE NOURISHING WORD (Commentary and prayer below by Tim Keller)
PSALM 1 is the gateway to the rest of the psalms. The 'law' is all scripture, to 'meditate' on is to think out its implications for all life, and to 'delight' in it means not merely to comply, but to love what God commands. Christian have their attitude towards God changed from one to duty to free loving self-giving because of what Jesus did for us on the cross. So to know how to meditate on and delight in the Bible is the secret to a relationship with God and to life itself. Views contrary to God's Word are no anchor in time of need. God's Word gives us the resilience of a tree with a source of living water that will never dry up.
Prayer: Lord of the Word, don't let me be seduced by the world---either naively going with the crowd or becoming a hardened cynic. Help me meditate on your Word to the point of delight. Give me stability and contentment regardless of the circumstances. How I need that! Amen
Friday, January 3, 2020
Matt Drudge, Drama Queen of Online News
I've followed Drudge for over a decade and a half. But in the last year, I find him a giant bore who wants to hook me. Yawn.
World War 3? The beginning of the end? Oh please. It's all for hits and popularity.
Simply getting to be a predictable bore. He may not even still be in the building, but whatever, Drudge is going downhill for me.
World War 3? The beginning of the end? Oh please. It's all for hits and popularity.
Simply getting to be a predictable bore. He may not even still be in the building, but whatever, Drudge is going downhill for me.
Stuart Schneiderman Puts the Iranian Crisis Into Historical Perspective and More
STARTING OUT WITH A WALK DOWN MEMORY LANE, SS tells it like it's been, it now is and how it's going to be with Trump, the new sheriff in town.
Schneiderman writes
In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a new sheriff in town.
Gone are the days when American presidents would cower under their desks. Gone
are the days when American presidents would react to attacks against our
soldiers and citizens with empty threats. Gone are the days when attacks on American
embassies and consulates would produce more rhetoric and less action.
When Hezbollah attacked a marine barracks in Beirut, killing
nearly 300 troops, Ronald Reagan pulled our troops out of Lebanon. He
threatened harsh reprisals and did nothing.
When the Iranian regime invaded the American embassy in
Tehran and took our citizens hostage, Jimmy Carter sent a helicopter to rescue
them, only to see it crash and burn in the Iranian desert.
When American pilots caught sight of a convoy of Taliban
officials escaping the American invasion in the early days of the Afghanistan
War, American commanders consulted with lawyers-- who told them not to attack
the convoy, because someone might get hurt.
And, when terrorists attacked the American ambassador in Benghazi,
Libya the Obama administration refused to send help, but denounced and jailed a
man who had made a video.
When Iranians captured and humiliated American sailors in
the Persian Gulf, Secretary of State John Kerry eventually thanked them for
releasing the sailors unharmed.
As for the last, the Obama policy in the Middle East
involved cozying up with Iran and betraying Sunni Arabs and Israel. Now, with
President Trump’s swift and decisive retaliation for the Iran-instigated attack
on the American embassy in Baghdad, Democratic chickenshits are cowering in the
corner, fearful of the righteous might of Iran.
If you want to know why the nation is divided against
itself, look at the Democratic presidential candidates, trembling in fear,
having long since abandoned even the pretense of patriotism. Nothing can stop their will to surrender to terrorism.
Qasem
Soleimani had the blood of hundreds, if not thousands
of Americans on his hands. The Democrats are horrified that President
Trump
just reduced him to ashes. I probably don't need to mention it, but if
Obama had done exactly the same thing, these same Democrats would have
praised him as the most courageous military leader since Alexander the
Great.
Eric Nagourney got it right in the New York Times:
In July 2018, after President Trump warned
Iran’s president not to threaten the United States, a rejoinder came not from
the Iranian leader but from a military figure perhaps even more powerful.
“It is beneath the dignity of our president to
respond to you,” Maj.
Gen. Qassim Suleimani declared in a speech in western Iran. “I, as a
soldier, respond to you.”
On Friday, General
Suleimani was reported
killed in an airstrike in Baghdad.
As for who he was, this man whose death strikes such fear in
the hearts of cowardly Democrats, the Daily Mail summarizes:
Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani,
who was killed Friday in a US strike, was one of Iran's
most prominent figures and a deadly adversary to America and its allies.
As the head of the Quds - or Jersualem - Force
of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, Soleimani was officially charged
with protecting the Islamic revolution, and in practice was used to enforce the
regime's will across the Middle East.
Commonly known as the second most powerful man
in Iran, wielding more influence than the president, he was seen by many as a
future leader.
His CV included helping Shia militias to kill
hundreds of American troops during the US invasion of Iraq,
backing Assad as he slaughtered civilians by the thousands during the Syrian
civil war, and most recently overseeing the slaughter of hundreds of anti-Iran
protesters in Iraq.
Thursday, January 2, 2020
Was A Legal Fiction: In A Major Blow To Sexual Dilly Dallying/ Hocus Pocus, James Shupe Goes Back to Being the Man He Was Meant to Be In the First Place
READ THE WHOLE REMARKABLE PIECE BY TYLER O'NEIL ON JAMES SHUPE'S COURAGEOUS RETURN TO HIMSELF AND SEXUAL REALITY. A WHOLE LOT OF SUFFERING WENT INTO HIS SAGA
First Trans Person to Obtain Legal 'Non-Binary' Sex Status Changes Back to Birth Sex in Blow to LGBT Movement
ABOVE: James Shupe in front of the Gainesville, Fla. Department of Veterans Affairs.
THIS MONTH, the first person to obtain a legal "non-binary" sex designation has successfully petitioned the court originally responsible for his "non-binary" status to order that the sex on his birth certificate be restored to "male." In documents exclusively provided to PJ Media, James Shupe's petition described his "non-binary" designation as a "psychologically harmful legal fiction." He told PJ Media he hopes this decision will prevent a woman currently seeking "non-binary" recognition from following the same lies.
"The
charade of not being male, the legal fiction, it's over," James Shupe
told PJ Media on Tuesday. "The lies behind my fictitious sex changes,
something I shamefully participated in, first to female, and then to
non-binary, have been forever exposed. A truthful accounting of events
has replaced the deceit that allowed me to become America's first
legally non-binary person."
"The legal record has now been
corrected and LGBT advocates are no longer able to use my historic
non-binary court order to advance their toxic agenda," he added. "I am
and have always been male. That is my biological truth, the only thing
capable of grounding me to reality."
While
he became a hero for the transgender movement, Shupe now aims to dispel
the lies of gender identity and reverse the harm caused by the
precedent of his "non-binary" legal designation.
He referenced the case of Jones David Hollister, a woman who identifies as non-binary and is currently fighting to change her legal designation to non-binary. Hollister's brief to the Oregon Court of Appeals cites Shupe's case.
"I
hope that Hollister and all the others are denied the right to change
their sex to non-binary because it's fraud and legal fiction based on
pseudoscience," Shupe said. "I was indoctrinated to believe that I had
this thing called a gender identity and that suppressing it was causing
my mental health problems. It was all a lie."
He
said he had embraced the lie of transgender identity as a crutch while
struggling with deep psychological issues that would have been better
addressed by therapy.
"I
ended up in the psych ward three times because of hormones. I had blood
clots in my eyes because my estrogen levels were 2,585 instead of 200,
low bone density, problems controlling my bladder, and emotional
instability," Shupe said. "Blood tests indicated I was dropping into
kidney disease territory (EFGR below 60) for about 18 months, I had
chronic dermatology issues and skin reactions to estrogen patches, I
passed out on the kitchen floor from Spironolactone."
High-strength marijuana prescribed to him as he was passing through Colorado gave him hallucinations.
"The gender
transitions were supposed to fix my mental health problems, but I kept
getting worse instead. The high-powered marijuana made me psychotic. I
started hearing booming noises and having visions of being some Indian
woman," he recalled. "I started believing I was some kind of chosen one
who was picked to restore the third gender to North America, that's what
I thought the visions were telling me."
Shupe went public about his detransition in an interview with PJ Media's Bruce Bawer earlier this year after he asked for his official Florida documents to restore his legal sex to male.
Born
in 1963 in Washington, D.C., Shupe spent eighteen years (1982-2000) in
the U.S. Army. He has been married to his wife, Sandy, for three
decades, and had a daughter with her. In 2013 he began
identifying as a transgender woman, claiming that he had struggled for
years and that he had been harassed in the military because he was
perceived as gay. He lived in Pittsburgh for a year, took experimental
hormones, and changed his name — but he stopped short of a surgical sex
change. In November 2014, he moved to Portland, Oregon, which he found
more hospitable for a transgender woman. He lived there until September
2017
.
The New York Times published
a profile on him in 2015, but only a year later, he rejected his female
identity for a new one. In June 2016, Multnomah County Judge Amy Holmes
Hehn issued a court order to change his sex from female to non-binary.
He
wanted his Washington, D.C., birth certificate to reflect this gender
identity, and that required a court order. With the stroke of a pen,
Shupe became the first person in the U.S. to be legally recognized as
"non-binary." The sex on his birth certificate was changed to "X,"
meaning indeterminate. This made him a hero in the LGBT community.
USA Today reported
that Shupe's "three years of living like a woman were nearly as painful
as those spent as a man." Presenting himself as a transgender woman, he
had felt pressured "to maintain a hyper-feminine appearance 24-7," or
he would find himself "getting called sir."
Shupe
began to struggle with the concept of gender identity as something
other than biological sex. Explaining the non-binary identity, he told Oregon Live,
"I was assigned male at birth due to biology. I'm stuck with that for
life. My gender identity is definitely feminine. My gender identity has
never been male, but I feel like I have to own up to my male biology.
Being non-binary allows me to do that. I'm a mixture of both. I consider
myself as a third sex."
Yet he began to question the damage the transgender movement has caused in society. In July 2017,
he worried about "the future of transgender children," arguing that
they need "societal change," not "surgical procedures," "cross-sex
hormones," or sterilization. He supported a bathroom-privacy ballot
initiative, and Lambda Legal dropped him as a client.
In
just a manner of months, Shupe went from supporting transgender
military service to defending Trump's requirement that servicemembers
live according to their biological sex.
Suddenly,
the media was no longer interested in his opinions. "Not a single
Oregon media outlet has been willing to talk to me, let alone report
that I've reclaimed my birth sex and have denounced gender ideology," he
told PJ Media on Monday. "They dropped me after I supported Trump's ban
on gender dysphoria in the military. That got me canceled.
This
year, he took the final step. "In January 2019, I walked into the DMV
and confronted a clerk with my U.S. passport, telling her 'look, I'm a
male, I'm reclaiming my male birth sex, and I want a driver's license
with 'male' instead of 'female,'' " he recalled.
This
change would only work in Florida, where Shupe still has an ongoing
case to change his name back to "James Clifford Shupe," rather than
"Jamie Shupe." After this change, Lambda Legal dropped all mentions of
Shupe from their briefs in the case Zzyym v. Pompeo, which involves an intersex client who was denied a U.S. passport.
In
the spring of 2019, he asked the Social Security Administration to
restore his male birth sex. "Social Security refused to accept a
doctor's letter stating I was biologically male. They forced me to use
their template, claiming I had undergone a gender transition to male,"
he recalled.
While Florida
granted his request to return to "male" on his driver's license, this
change "wouldn't override the Oregon court order that made my sex
non-binary and was getting used by the LGBT advocates to advance other
cases, so we had to go back to Oregon."
On December 11, Shupe petitioned the Multnomah County Court for the order to restore his male designation.
"The
purpose of my request is to restore the original male sex designation
that I was correctly observed to be at birth and to restore the precious
name given to me at birth by my parents. I was not born in Oregon, and I
have a Florida case pending to restore my name to JAMES
CLIFFORD SHUPE," he wrote in the petition. "I am no longer pursuing
surgical, hormonal or other treatment to affirm a non-binary identity,
and I wish to reclaim my male birth sex."
"Despite six years
of hormonal treatments, my sex was immutable, and I remained the same
biological male I was at the time of my birth. In hindsight, my sex
change to non-binary was a psychologically harmful legal fiction, and I
desire to reclaim my male birth sex," he added. "Despite my documented
history of severe mental illness, my birth certificate has been changed
twice previously. ... Since receiving the 2016 non-binary court judgment
in this case, I have been correctly diagnosed with a 'sexual
paraphilia' by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the root cause of
previous confusion about my sexual identity."
Even getting that diagnosis proved to be a battle for Shupe.
"I
then began confronting the VA about rubber-stamping me with gender
dysphoria when in fact I had sexual paraphilias, a transvestic disorder
with autogynephilia and masochism. The psychologist at the VA who had
diagnosed me with gender dysphoria then dumped me as a patient when I
asked for the diagnosis to be changed. The VA finally gave me the
paraphilia diagnosis in April 2019, the endocrinologist did it," he
recalled. "The VA then outsourced me to the civilian sector to a
therapist unqualified to treat me, the only one willing to take me as a
patient."
VA doctors were all too happy to diagnose gender dysphoria, but they mostly refused to consider sexual paraphilias, which Ph.D. psychologist Ray Blanchard says is the real cause.
Shupe told PJ Media he later realized the judge who granted his "non-binary" court order had harmed him.
"The
Oregon judge physically and mentally harmed me by silently
rubber-stamping the non-binary court order to advance a transgender
agenda, to which she has ties," he said. Before the proceeding, Shupe’s
lawyer told him not to worry because the judge herself had a transgender
kid.
Although Shupe brought
doctors' letters testifying to his identity, the judge did not even ask
to look at them.
"She was negligent in her duties as a judge to not
explore my mental health and motivations as to why I was seeking the sex
change. If she had of done so, she would have uncovered my severe
mental health issues, the sexual paraphilias, and the fact that the
doctors' letters were written after a discussion with the two of them
that my sex change to female was a failure and becoming non-binary was
bailing all of us out," he recalled.
The judge even got scared afterward, according to Shupe.
He
also claimed the doctors who approved his change from female to
non-binary abused him. "Why didn't they force me to go to mental health
for an evaluation about why I felt the sex change was a failure instead
of giving me yet another one?" he asked. One doctor even gave him
psychotropic drugs. "I stayed doped up to cope with my life as a fake
woman."
It has taken
tremendous courage for Shupe to come forward with his story. His
non-binary status made him a hero in the LGBT community, and he could
have remained quiet about his detransition.
"It's
an incredibly painful thing to walk back a landmark court decision that
made you internationally famous and admit the whole thing was based on
lies and deceit," he told PJ Media. Yet he felt compelled to speak out
and warn against these destructive lies.
Follow Tyler O'Neil, the author of this article, on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
Tennessee's New Gun Carry Permits Show 20-20 Vision For 2nd Amendment Freedoms Here
WE NEED THESE NEW, EASIER TO OBTAIN CARRY PERMITS NOW MORE THAN EVER! The latest church shooting in Texas continues to prove the importance of these permit. I have the old, harder to get kind that required I go to classes two Saturdays in a row with target practice and instructors. That was fine, but next time I'll explore renewing it with this new law.
Congratulations, Tennessee. We just got safer, saner, like Texas.
To wit:
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — TENNESSEE IS NOW OFFERING, as of January 1, 2020 a new concealed carry-only handgun permit that doesn't require an applicant to demonstrate the ability to fire a weapon. The law takes effect Jan. 1.
Under the new handgun law, a permit to carry a concealed handgun could be obtained after online training of at least 90 minutes. The current handgun carry permits would still remain an option
.
Those permits require eight hours of training with live firing required, which critics say is time-consuming and burdensome. The National Rifle Association's legislative arm backed the new measure.
Congratulations, Tennessee. We just got safer, saner, like Texas.
To wit:
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — TENNESSEE IS NOW OFFERING, as of January 1, 2020 a new concealed carry-only handgun permit that doesn't require an applicant to demonstrate the ability to fire a weapon. The law takes effect Jan. 1.
Under the new handgun law, a permit to carry a concealed handgun could be obtained after online training of at least 90 minutes. The current handgun carry permits would still remain an option
.
Those permits require eight hours of training with live firing required, which critics say is time-consuming and burdensome. The National Rifle Association's legislative arm backed the new measure.
Sunday, December 29, 2019
Friday, December 27, 2019
Diana West's Must Read On Christianity and Communism and the Historical Roots of Our Current Great Political Divide
, Commentary @ The Epoch Times
CHRISTIANITY TODAY, THE MAGAZINE FOUNDED BY BILLY GRAHAM IN 1956, has called, in this week before Christmas, for President Donald Trump’s removal from office.
Franklin Graham quickly released a statement on Twitter in reply: “I hadn’t shared who my father @BillyGraham voted for in 2016, but because of @CYMagazine’s article, I felt it necessary to share now. My father knew @realDonaldTrump, believed in him & voted for him. He believed Donald J. Trump was the man for this hour in history for our nation.”
It is a beautiful statement; however, I never for a moment doubted that Billy Graham voted for President Trump. Graham’s vote for Trump was a given for important reasons and deep beliefs, which, independent of any election, are explored in “The Red Thread: A Search for Ideological Drivers Inside the Anti-Trump Conspiracy.”
The relevant chapter, reprinted below minus endnotes, follows an extensive analysis of James Comey’s lifelong homage to Marxist theologian Reinhold Niebuhr as the significant influence on his thinking, starting in his college days, when Comey describes himself as having been a communist. Comey moved to “whatever I am now,” as he put it to New York Magazine in 2003, but his affinity for Niebuhr remains unchanged to this day.
It should become clear that we are looking at a theological and political divide in American Protestantism that is an old story. What is especially relevant to the “red thread” is that so, too, is Donald Trump’s place in it.
Norman Vincent Peale and Billy Graham both were Trump family favorites. Donald Trump has spoken fondly of taking in Graham sermons with his revered father, Fred, who, Donald remembers, attended “the crusades” at Yankee Stadium. On the 2016 campaign trail at Liberty University, founded by Jerry Falwell in 1971, Donald Trump recalled watching Jerry Falwell’s TV show, The Old-Time Gospel Hour. When Billy Graham died in 2018, Donald Trump attended his funeral; five living former presidents did not.
According to the New York Times, it was Peale’s church, Marble Collegiate, that the Trump family “gravitated to” in the 1960s. Peale and Donald would develop a warm friendship. Peale officiated at Donald and Ivana’s wedding (1977) and also at the wedding of Donald’s sister Maryanne. In 1988, Donald hosted Peale’s 90th birthday party at the Waldorf-Astoria. As the Washington Post put it, “The Trump and Peale clans have [a] history.”
It’s easy to imagine heavy Niebuhrian eye-rolling over this “history,” and not a little choking on the Chardonnay and canapés. Back in the day, things could even get confrontational, as in 1955, when Niebuhr and several fellow “progressives”-of-the-cloth launched a vicious attack in a national magazine on Peale and Graham both. Their attack drew a public rebuke from President Eisenhower’s pastor, the Rev. Edward L.R. Elson, who accused these pastoral critics “of ‘sneering’ and shallow thinking,” according to a news report.
Their differences were not theological only. In August 1948, Niebuhr was counseling Christians that the churches could not take a “negative attitude” toward communism. “Churches everywhere,” Niebuhr stated, “had to recognize our involvement in injustices and insecurities Communism seeks or promises to cure.” In January 1951, Peale was carrying a very different message to the faithful: “The future belongs to Christ not Communism.” These were Cold War battle cries across the pro-Communist/anti-Communist divide.
Trump’s connection to Peale, then, not only informs the Comey-Niebuhr/Trump-Peale divide, but also throws into relief the larger national cleavage between Global Elites and the America First “Deplorables.” This is another old war in America—the “internationalists” vs. the nationstaters; the “progressives” vs. the patriots; the socialistic vs. the nationalistic. Now that Donald Trump is president, the first to reach this highest office from the ranks of “America First,” this clash may never have been so highly charged.
For much of the 20th century, Norman Vincent Peale was the nationally renowned pastor of Marble Collegiate in Manhattan. In addition to uplifting, spellbinding sermons, Peale was known for being outspoken in his opposition to all varieties of collectivism, from the socialism of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, which he sermonized against as a dire threat to liberty, to Soviet communism.
“No one has more contempt for communism than I do,” he wrote in his 1952 mega-seller, The Power of Positive Thinking. In the late 1930s, he fought against the explosion of executive powers that undergirded Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” serving as secretary of a non-partisan group called the National Committee to Uphold Constitutional Government. This committee came together under newspaper editor Frank E. Gannett to oppose Roosevelt’s infamous Supreme Court packing plan and other executive branch encroachments that were destroying the Constitution’s “checks and balances.” The same concerns drove opposition to FDR’s decision to run for an unprecedented third term in 1940, and the president’s landmark foreign aid proposal known as Lend Lease, which arrived as a bill in Congress at the beginning of 1941, eleven months before Pearl Harbor.
In most histories, Lend Lease is a barely noticed stepping-stone to America’s entry into World War II; at the time, however, the debate was loud and acrimonious. The vast war-making powers the bill gave the president galvanized its opponents in a quickly growing, grass-roots movement known as America First. Caricatured today, this anti-interventionist organization drew in a wide swath of Americans from both political parties, from all walks of life, from Frank Lloyd Wright to Gerald Ford to Kingman Brewster to Norman Thomas to Charles Lindbergh. Their main agenda was (1) steer clear of another European war and thereby save young American lives, (2) avoid building up one totalitarian monster (Stalin) to replace another (Hitler), and (3) ensure the government’s three branches survived the process “co-equal.” They failed on all counts.
Peale, as secretary of the National Committee to Uphold Constitutional Government, strongly opposed Lend Lease on well-defined constitutional grounds. Lend Lease expanded presidential powers to a point where the chief executive could send military support of any kind to any country he deemed “vital to the defense of the United States.” There were no limits. No president had ever even sought such powers. But there was even more to Lend Lease than that—and here is where the red thread pokes up and down like a hem-stitch through the rest of the “American century.”
Lend Lease was not just anti-Constitutional; it was revolutionary. This will not surprise anyone who learns that the legislation’s godfathers were Armand Hammer, Harry Hopkins, and Harry Dexter White—all three men pro-Soviet to the core, all three men variously believed to be Soviet agents, although such shocking revelations came later. We may now regard Lend Lease as the founding document of the “new world order” that arose in the aftermath of World War II, its heaviest cornerstones laid by covert Soviet agents Alger Hiss at the United Nations and Harry Dexter White at the International Monetary Fund.
The sea change came in making “any country’s defense vital” to our own. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius wrote:
Norman Vincent Peale correctly warned that Lend Lease would give the president “the power to commit the American people to any war anywhere, and without action by Congress.” Lend Lease itself may have expired but its powers have lived on in an unconstrained Executive. Such “interdependence” is the basis of the “liberal postwar order,” and the “neoconservative” mission we have known in our time as “nation-building.”
What was once controversial draws little comment today. When a President of the United States declares the destinies of foreign peoples to be “vital” to that of the United States, whether in Saudi Arabia (FDR), Iraq (Bush), or Afghanistan (Obama), he is merely carrying out the “internationalism,” or “globalism” that has been the primary purpose of U.S. foreign policy since FDR.
READ THE REST OF THIS BRILLIANT PIECE @ The Epoch Times and see again how deep and prolonged our current divide really is and how perfectly Trump fits in.
CHRISTIANITY TODAY, THE MAGAZINE FOUNDED BY BILLY GRAHAM IN 1956, has called, in this week before Christmas, for President Donald Trump’s removal from office.
Franklin Graham quickly released a statement on Twitter in reply: “I hadn’t shared who my father @BillyGraham voted for in 2016, but because of @CYMagazine’s article, I felt it necessary to share now. My father knew @realDonaldTrump, believed in him & voted for him. He believed Donald J. Trump was the man for this hour in history for our nation.”
Amen.I hadn’t shared who my father @BillyGraham voted for in 2016, but because of @CTMagazine’s article, I felt it necessary to share now. My father knew @realDonaldTrump, believed in him & voted for him. He believed Donald J. Trump was the man for this hour in history for our nation.— Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) December 20, 2019
It is a beautiful statement; however, I never for a moment doubted that Billy Graham voted for President Trump. Graham’s vote for Trump was a given for important reasons and deep beliefs, which, independent of any election, are explored in “The Red Thread: A Search for Ideological Drivers Inside the Anti-Trump Conspiracy.”
The relevant chapter, reprinted below minus endnotes, follows an extensive analysis of James Comey’s lifelong homage to Marxist theologian Reinhold Niebuhr as the significant influence on his thinking, starting in his college days, when Comey describes himself as having been a communist. Comey moved to “whatever I am now,” as he put it to New York Magazine in 2003, but his affinity for Niebuhr remains unchanged to this day.
Chapter 16. The Longest War
It was the 1980s, and Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority organization were the perfect foils for James Comey to use in his senior honors thesis to extol the socialist teachings of his hero, Niebuhr (1892-1971). In a previous generation, Comey might have juxtaposed the evangelizing Billy Graham (1918-2018) with Niebuhr’s Bible-as-myth approach to “social action.” Earlier still, Comey might have compared the anti-New Deal, anti-Communist Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993) with the socialist and “anti-anti-Communist” Niebuhr.It should become clear that we are looking at a theological and political divide in American Protestantism that is an old story. What is especially relevant to the “red thread” is that so, too, is Donald Trump’s place in it.
Norman Vincent Peale and Billy Graham both were Trump family favorites. Donald Trump has spoken fondly of taking in Graham sermons with his revered father, Fred, who, Donald remembers, attended “the crusades” at Yankee Stadium. On the 2016 campaign trail at Liberty University, founded by Jerry Falwell in 1971, Donald Trump recalled watching Jerry Falwell’s TV show, The Old-Time Gospel Hour. When Billy Graham died in 2018, Donald Trump attended his funeral; five living former presidents did not.
According to the New York Times, it was Peale’s church, Marble Collegiate, that the Trump family “gravitated to” in the 1960s. Peale and Donald would develop a warm friendship. Peale officiated at Donald and Ivana’s wedding (1977) and also at the wedding of Donald’s sister Maryanne. In 1988, Donald hosted Peale’s 90th birthday party at the Waldorf-Astoria. As the Washington Post put it, “The Trump and Peale clans have [a] history.”
It’s easy to imagine heavy Niebuhrian eye-rolling over this “history,” and not a little choking on the Chardonnay and canapés. Back in the day, things could even get confrontational, as in 1955, when Niebuhr and several fellow “progressives”-of-the-cloth launched a vicious attack in a national magazine on Peale and Graham both. Their attack drew a public rebuke from President Eisenhower’s pastor, the Rev. Edward L.R. Elson, who accused these pastoral critics “of ‘sneering’ and shallow thinking,” according to a news report.
Their differences were not theological only. In August 1948, Niebuhr was counseling Christians that the churches could not take a “negative attitude” toward communism. “Churches everywhere,” Niebuhr stated, “had to recognize our involvement in injustices and insecurities Communism seeks or promises to cure.” In January 1951, Peale was carrying a very different message to the faithful: “The future belongs to Christ not Communism.” These were Cold War battle cries across the pro-Communist/anti-Communist divide.
Trump’s connection to Peale, then, not only informs the Comey-Niebuhr/Trump-Peale divide, but also throws into relief the larger national cleavage between Global Elites and the America First “Deplorables.” This is another old war in America—the “internationalists” vs. the nationstaters; the “progressives” vs. the patriots; the socialistic vs. the nationalistic. Now that Donald Trump is president, the first to reach this highest office from the ranks of “America First,” this clash may never have been so highly charged.
For much of the 20th century, Norman Vincent Peale was the nationally renowned pastor of Marble Collegiate in Manhattan. In addition to uplifting, spellbinding sermons, Peale was known for being outspoken in his opposition to all varieties of collectivism, from the socialism of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, which he sermonized against as a dire threat to liberty, to Soviet communism.
“No one has more contempt for communism than I do,” he wrote in his 1952 mega-seller, The Power of Positive Thinking. In the late 1930s, he fought against the explosion of executive powers that undergirded Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” serving as secretary of a non-partisan group called the National Committee to Uphold Constitutional Government. This committee came together under newspaper editor Frank E. Gannett to oppose Roosevelt’s infamous Supreme Court packing plan and other executive branch encroachments that were destroying the Constitution’s “checks and balances.” The same concerns drove opposition to FDR’s decision to run for an unprecedented third term in 1940, and the president’s landmark foreign aid proposal known as Lend Lease, which arrived as a bill in Congress at the beginning of 1941, eleven months before Pearl Harbor.
In most histories, Lend Lease is a barely noticed stepping-stone to America’s entry into World War II; at the time, however, the debate was loud and acrimonious. The vast war-making powers the bill gave the president galvanized its opponents in a quickly growing, grass-roots movement known as America First. Caricatured today, this anti-interventionist organization drew in a wide swath of Americans from both political parties, from all walks of life, from Frank Lloyd Wright to Gerald Ford to Kingman Brewster to Norman Thomas to Charles Lindbergh. Their main agenda was (1) steer clear of another European war and thereby save young American lives, (2) avoid building up one totalitarian monster (Stalin) to replace another (Hitler), and (3) ensure the government’s three branches survived the process “co-equal.” They failed on all counts.
Peale, as secretary of the National Committee to Uphold Constitutional Government, strongly opposed Lend Lease on well-defined constitutional grounds. Lend Lease expanded presidential powers to a point where the chief executive could send military support of any kind to any country he deemed “vital to the defense of the United States.” There were no limits. No president had ever even sought such powers. But there was even more to Lend Lease than that—and here is where the red thread pokes up and down like a hem-stitch through the rest of the “American century.”
Lend Lease was not just anti-Constitutional; it was revolutionary. This will not surprise anyone who learns that the legislation’s godfathers were Armand Hammer, Harry Hopkins, and Harry Dexter White—all three men pro-Soviet to the core, all three men variously believed to be Soviet agents, although such shocking revelations came later. We may now regard Lend Lease as the founding document of the “new world order” that arose in the aftermath of World War II, its heaviest cornerstones laid by covert Soviet agents Alger Hiss at the United Nations and Harry Dexter White at the International Monetary Fund.
The sea change came in making “any country’s defense vital” to our own. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius wrote:
To favor limited aid to the allies as an expedient device for saving friendly nations from conquest was one thing. To declare that the defense of those nations was “vital” to our own national security was quite another. If we adopted the bill with those words, we would, in effect, declare the interdependence of the American people with the other freedom-loving nations of the world … [emphasis added].We did indeed adopt the Lend-Lease bill with those words (notwithstanding that a major recipient of Lend Lease was the Soviet Union—definitely not a “freedom-loving nation”). This makes March 11, 1941, the day the Lend-Lease bill passed, America’s Interdependence Day.
Norman Vincent Peale correctly warned that Lend Lease would give the president “the power to commit the American people to any war anywhere, and without action by Congress.” Lend Lease itself may have expired but its powers have lived on in an unconstrained Executive. Such “interdependence” is the basis of the “liberal postwar order,” and the “neoconservative” mission we have known in our time as “nation-building.”
What was once controversial draws little comment today. When a President of the United States declares the destinies of foreign peoples to be “vital” to that of the United States, whether in Saudi Arabia (FDR), Iraq (Bush), or Afghanistan (Obama), he is merely carrying out the “internationalism,” or “globalism” that has been the primary purpose of U.S. foreign policy since FDR.
READ THE REST OF THIS BRILLIANT PIECE @ The Epoch Times and see again how deep and prolonged our current divide really is and how perfectly Trump fits in.
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