Two items of interest today.

[BTW, if you enjoy this commentary, I still have room for a few more email addresses on my daily distribution list. This list receives forwarded news items and my commentary on US and world affairs every day. It also gives you a chance to sound off to decision makers, bloggers, writers and thinking people. Choice comments and news items by list members are distributed to the rest. If you want to be added, just send me, Don Hank, an email at zoilandon@msn.com and ask to be added to my Daily Distribution List.]

Item 1

Mark Zuckerberg wants more immigrants to work cheap in his air conditioned sweat shops. He has founded FWD.us, a front org for his pro-immigration plans and is partnering with false ‘conservative’ group Americans for a Conservative Direction.

Cutting to the chase, any conservative organization at this dreadful juncture in the US economy would have to oppose the importation of labor tooth and nail. Our employment is nowhere near where the government says it is.

The government is sweeping millions of statistics under the carpet by saying that people who have given up looking for work are not unemployed. The 100 million on welfare are ‘employed’? We are probably about where Spain is now, were it not for welfare and food stamps. We certainly don’t need to import labor—even if that would make Zuckerberg richer.

To make matters worse, the plan supported by Gang of 8 ringleaders Rubio and Graham, who play the lead roles in the linked videos by Americans for a Conservative Direction, would give amnesty to the people making up over 90 percent of dangerous criminal gangs in our cities. If they said, ‘hey, let’s import more terrorists,’ that would actually be an improvement over their current plan. Gangs kill, rape, steal and deal 24-7. Terrorists only kill on special occasions.

These men need to be thrown out on their ears.

Rubio is lying through his teeth when he says that this new immigration reform plan is tough. It is not tough in any of the ways he says it is.

And that is exactly why Mort Zuckerberg supports Americans for a Conservative Direction. They are Democrats in drag.

And they think real conservatives are stupid.

Item 2

I had previously written that ABC anchor Jonathan Karl had gone on the Bill O’Reilly show and admitted that the administration’s report on the murderous Benghazi attack was full of holes. I had attributed that behavior to a certain ‘collegiality  effect,’ by which Karl would have identified with the dead ambassador and the beleaguered witnesses as colleagues. This would explain why ABC, which had never gone to bat for the little guy, would suddenly turn on their beloved leader.

Now a new report, also very damaging to Obama, comes from the same anchor Jonathan Karl. This time the collegiality effect, if present, is not nearly as prominent. Jonathan Karl seems to be defending all conservatives, both great and small.

Read more here to find out why this is just bait and what the intended switch will be:

http://www.americandailyherald.com/pundits/donald-hank/item/here-comes-the-switch-don-t-take-the-bait

[BTW, I still have room for a few more email addresses on my daily distribution list. This list receives forwarded news items and my commentary on US and world affairs every day. It also gives you a chance to sound off to decision makers, bloggers, writers and thinking people. Choice comments and news items by list members are distributed to the rest. If you want to be added, just send me, Don Hank, an email at zoilandon@msn.com and ask to be added to my Daily Distribution List.]

by Don Hank

Sen. Rand Paul, who serves on a committee called Homeland Secturity and Government Affairs, just now woke up and realized that an immigration reform bill of the kind he was touting a few weeks ago, needs to take national security concerns into account. He now backtracks with the following statement:

I believe that any real comprehensive immigration reform must implement strong national security protections. The facts emerging in the Boston Marathon bombing have exposed a weakness in our current system. If we don’t use this debate as an opportunity to fix flaws in our current system, flaws made even more evident last week, then we will not be doing our jobs.

It’s nice that Rand Paul, author of the above mentioned much touted amnesty proposal that unquestioningly presupposed a competent DHS, finally woke up to the fact that our national security is a disaster. But why did it take a national tragedy to wake him up? What have they been discussing in that Homeland Security committee Rand has been sitting on?

Most of my readers and  correspondents know–and knew long before Rand’s plan was unfurled– that illegal aliens make up about 1/3 of our federal prison population and that Mexicans are the no. 1 demographic in terms of drunken driving convictions, including all of those involving traffic deaths of third parties. And they know that a very substantial percentage of our street drugs come from south of the border and that our downtowns are in thrall to 1.4 million gang members, of which all but 9% are foreign. All of the individuals in these problem demographics would have received a blanket amnesty under Rand Paul’s proposed “reform.”

My correspondents also know that we are in the midst of an economic crisis where jobs are scarce and 100 million Americans are receiving some form of public assistance other than social security, which tallies up to a cool $1 trillion/yr — a record number by far in US history.

So, Mr. Paul, while you have shown some aptitude as a quarterback, your side is unlikely to make touchdowns if you wait until Monday morning to pick up the ball and run.

Obama’s office contacts Don Hank!

Secularists tend to be people who have dispensed with ‘religion’ altogether, and like to think that they are entirely ‘fact driven.’

When these ideas collide, we observe something very curious:  secular humanists conclude that they can advocate for anything that they want in the public sphere, because nothing they believe is ‘religious, ‘ while distinctly Christian viewpoints are forbidden from entering the public domain, since those will be, by definition, ‘religious.’  And again, even Christians gravitate to that view.

This tends to lead to debates and discussions and policy proposals that take the ‘facts’ of the secularists as the starting points.  We are expected to proceed on their terms.  And why not?  Surely without the ‘religious’ component, those ‘facts’ are as close to actually being real descriptions of the world as one could get, right?

But what if ‘religion’ and ‘fact’ are not opposites?

That leads to some very important questions:  is it really the case that Christianity consists of articles of faith that do not correspond to the real world?  Or, to put it another way, is it a fact, or not, that Jesus rose from the dead?  Or:  is it a fact, or not, that people are made in the image of God, male and female?  Is it a fact, or not, that God made ‘marriage’ in this way largely with children in mind?  Or,  is it a fact, or not, that since we are made in the image of God, we have intrinsic value that comes from Him, and not from Man?  Moreover, if it is a fact that God became man, and in Jesus redeemed mankind, is it not true, in fact, that God has doubled down on humanity, deepening the intrinsic value of each and every individual.

If, in fact, we should keep our religion out of politics, and these statements above are merely articles of faith and not grounded in reality or fact, then by all means, we should keep our views on abortion out of politics.

On the other hand, this cuts both ways.  As it happens, many of the ‘facts’ entertained by ‘secularists’ as ‘facts’ have no better basis than Christians have.  That being the case, why should the secularist be allowed to impose their ideas on us, but we don’t have the right to try to do the same to them?

At its core, the issue of abortion centers around whether or not one feels it is appropriate to make the judgment that some people are of less value than other people.  Debates about ‘personhood’ or ‘when life begins’ are important, but secondary.  This is evidenced by the fact that we can find people who support abortion on demand who nonetheless concede that life begins at conception, and perfectly willing even to accept that they are ‘persons.’  (Here is one such example)

Secularists tend to believe that society, rather than God, has the right to decide the value of a person.  I ask you, dear secularist, on what basis of fact do you have for this view?  Is it not merely your opinion that people do not have intrinsic value?  Is this not, in actuality, your own religious view?  How about you keep your religious views about abortion out of politics, too?

As it happens, secularists do believe that there is a factual basis for giving such power to ‘society,’  but they are usually very shy about making the connections explicit.  They didn’t use to be so shy–say, from about 1860 to 1945.  Some aren’t very shy today, but generally they prefer not to be to clear about that, because it would horrify most of the population.

Bottom line:  this whole idea about ‘religion’ and ‘fact’ being opposites and religion the stuff of ‘opinion’ is all a smokescreen and a tactic designed to get Christians to exclude themselves from the public domain, and giving the secularists unfettered free rein.

But the issue of abortion is literally a matter of life and death.  It is not an accident that Christians tend to be pro-life and secularists tend to be pro-choice.  Each group has its own reasons for how it views the real nature of people, as a matter of fact.

Unfortunately, as already indicated, and as many I think will agree, Christians tend to view their own assessments of  just what the facts are as ‘religious’ and fall into the trap of thinking that ‘facts’ and ‘religion’ are incompatible contradiction in terms.

This is a trap we must not allow ourselves to fall into.  The consequences if we do could be, and I believe, will be, and in fact, already are, dire.

To counteract this tendency within the Christian church, I am pleased that my ministry’s fourth annual online apologetics conference is drawing a clear line between the propositions that Christianity takes to be actual fact and the implications of those facts to life issues.  I have discovered that people are willing to advocate for something in proportion to their confidence in the validity and truthfulness of their position, so insofar as people have solid reasons for believing that Christianity is actually true, they will more likely be ‘pro-life.’  And they will also be more willing to stand up for the unborn, the handicapped, the disabled, the old, and the infirm.

Given the fact that tens of millions of unborn people have already died, I find it hard to say that this willingness is needed more than ever, but with the implementation of Obamacare and universal ‘health’ insurance (read:  rationing) right around the corner, I fear it is accurate.

And this isn’t a mere political sentiment;  the Gospel itself is at stake, because according to the Gospel, Christ died for all–including those who had not yet been born.  We cannot in good conscience allow our society to further institutionalize the notion that people’s value must be measured according to what they can offer to the state, or their burden on the same… to be dispensed with, once they no longer have utility.

And that’s a viewpoint that I think most would agree really ought to be imposed on our fellow man.

Tina Fey, impersonating Sarah Palin, joked, “I can see Russia from my house.”

I can see the next holocaust from my house, and it is no joke.

In the decades leading up to one of the most horrific chapters in human history, the leading lights of the day openly discussed bringing about those horrors.  Eugenics was posited as the rational position of all intelligent, well-meaning individuals.  In journals, newspapers, academic conferences, public health offices and elsewhere, they talked about sterilizing people with or without their consent, segregating them from society, or even exterminating them.  And that was in America.

In a book written in 1920 by two German experts and applauded by American experts, it was argued that it was allowable to destroy the ‘life unworthy of life.’

Who was regarded as ‘life unworthy of life’?  The handicapped, the disabled, the diseased, the mentally ill, the ‘feeble-minded.’  Really, just about anyone the experts decided was ‘unfit’ could be deemed ‘unworthy of life.’  When eugenics morphed into the Holocaust, many of its proponents quietly went to ground.  Some asked ‘What went wrong?’ but few arrived at the right answer.

Fast forward sixty years.  Enter Julian Savulescu.

You probably don’t know who Julian Savulescu is, just as your average American off the street in 1910 wouldn’t have known who Charles Davenport was.  You probably don’t know who Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva are, just as your average American in 1920 wouldn’t have known who Alfred Hoche and Karl Binding were.

But you may recall a few months ago when two ‘ethicists’ quietly submitted an article in an ethics magazine arguing that the logic of abortion does not cease after the child has fully exited the birth canal.  For all the reasons that abortion on demand was justified, so too, the two ‘ethicists’ Giubilini and Minerva argued, was infanticide.  Of course, they preferred to call it ‘after-birth abortion.’

I hope that nobody misunderstands me:  Giubilini and Minerva were correct in their analysis.  If they are to be faulted for anything, it is for stopping at the newborn.

When people heard about this article there was outrage, and not a little of it spilled over onto the journal that printed the article in the first place.  That journal was “The Journal of Medical Ethics.”  Flabbergasted, the editor defended the publication of the article, saying:

“As Editor of the Journal, I would like to defend its publication. The arguments presented, in fact, are largely not new and have been presented repeatedly in the academic literature and public fora by the most eminent philosophers and bioethicists in the world, including Peter Singer, Michael Tooley and John Harris in defence of infanticide, which the authors call after-birth abortion.”

Yes, that is quite right.  The arguments presented were not new, and have been ‘presented repeatedly.’

He continued, “What is disturbing is not the arguments in this paper nor its publication in an ethics journal. It is the hostile, abusive, threatening responses that it has elicited. More than ever, proper academic discussion and freedom are under threat from fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society.”

This embattled editor of a renown journal of medical ethics is named Julian Savulescu.

Whatever else Mr. Savulescu is, he’s certainly consistent.  He is an avowed (modern) eugenicist.  In 2009, he delivered a presentation at a conference called the “Festival of Dangerous Ideas” titled “Genetically enhance humanity or face extinction.”  (By the by, at the upcoming 2012 “Dangerous Ideas” conference, Minverva and Giubilini are scheduled to speak, arguing that the ‘fetus’ is not a person.  As if that matters to them, given their other arguments.)  But it is Savulescu’s latest remarks that I want to draw your attention to.  Were you even aware that he had spoken?

In the September 2012 UK edition of “Reader’s Digest” in an article titled “It’s Our Duty to Have Designer Babies” Savulescu says that he believes that “within the next five years we may be able to screen for every gene that determines who we are physically and psychologically.”

The idea of screening for ‘psychological’ features is something I recently described as ‘eumemics.’  Obviously, on his materialistic worldview, everything really does need to reduce to ‘stuff,’ including psychological attributes, thought patterns, and, I suppose, abstractions such as 2+2=4.   The irony is that earlier in his article he complains that 20th century eugenicists made their mistake when they “tried to use selective breeding to weed out criminals, the insane and the poor, based on the false belief that such conditions were caused only by genetic disorders.” (emphasis mine)

This is the same man who in the same article suggests we weed out “potential alcoholism, psychopathy and dispositions to violence.”  Indeed, he goes on and insists, ” that people have a moral obligation to select ethically better children.”

Are these caused only by genetic disorders?  The inconsistency is so brazen that only the editor of a major journal of medical ethics could fall into it.

What is particularly troubling for our present day and age is his assessment of where the Nazis went wrong:

“But what was especially objectionable about this movement was the coercive imposition of a state vision for a healthy population. Modern eugenics, from testing for diseases to deciding whether you want a girl or boy, is voluntary.”

We should thank the good doctor for at least admitting that what he is promoting is truly ‘eugenics’ but his assessment of the ‘especially objectionable’ part is way off.  First of all, after arguing that people have a ‘moral obligation to select ethically better children’ he immediately goes on to say, “They are, after all, less likely to harm themselves and others. That doesn’t necessarily imply that people should be coerced into making a choice, but we should encourage them.”

What a load of nonsense.  If the man believes what he is selling, then of course the ‘values of a liberal society’ cannot allow people to bring defective–physically or psychologically–children into the world.  He even says earlier in his article that the ‘critical question’ is:  “will it benefit the unborn child?”  If the State (read:  the medley of ‘experts’ who control the State) believes there is sufficient reason to believe the unborn child will be physically or psychologically ‘unfit’ then for its own good and society’s, obviously the parents should be more than ‘encouraged.’

Second of all, he repeats the basic mistake that 20th century eugenicists made:  thinking that a ‘compassionate’ society should ‘manage’ it’s population–guided, of course, by Science.  Savulescu thinks that by shifting this arrogant assumption from the State to parents, and making the exercise of the ‘selection’ ‘voluntary,’ the enterprise is ethically sound.

However, it is the assumption that was wrong, all along.  It is wrong for the State, it is wrong for the parent.  It is wrong for whomever you think should be given the task.  It is even wrong if the people who act on the assumption do so ‘voluntarily.’

Savulescu believes that at the minimum, this is something that a ‘liberal society’ should be ‘properly’ talking about.

Just like the 20th century American progressives and German Nazis thought a ‘progressive’ society should be having a ‘proper conversation’ about how best to exterminate Jews and blacks and the deaf and dumb and disabled.  You know, for their good, and for ours.  Right?

Ironically, while Savulescu is putting his money on the ‘voluntary’ nature of his scheme, his ethical compatriots are arguing the opposite.  I’m thinking in particular of the ‘ethicist’ Jacob Appel, who, in a 2009 article titled “Neonatal Euthanasia:  Why Require Parental Consent?” that was published in the journal “Bioethical Inquiry” wrote:

“As Western society comes to distinguish between those forms of euthanasia that are pernicious and those that are therapeutic—an inevitable consequence of our progress toward liberal humanism—expanded access to neonatal euthanasia appears likely. What is most important is that when the practice does become available, decisions are made by the most suited individuals for the most appropriate reasons. Rethinking and interrogating the need for parental consent in this process—whatever society ultimately decides—is essential for pursuing an honest and meaningful debate.” (emphasis mine)

In the article, Appel points out that the State already acts in some cases on behalf of children against the will of the parents. (see also)  The Dutch have rules for killing newborns that are born with a birth defect–such as spina bifida–but require parental consent.  (see the Groningen Protocol.) As you can infer from the quote above, Appel believes the parents, when acting on a ‘voluntary’ basis, have too much say on whether or not the disabled child should be whacked, both before and after its birth;  he prefers that “decisions are made by the most suited individuals for the most appropriate reasons.”

Hoche and Binding would concur.

But if any of the elites mentioned in my article so far were in the least consistent, they’d realize that stopping their argument at young children is irrational and just our “squeamishness.”  If the arguments hold, they hold from conception to death, and all points between.

Today’s ‘leading lights’ think that we should have “an honest and meaningful debate” over whether or not parents should kill their own children, or if instead, experts should make that call.  Savulescu does thinks we should have a “proper academic discussion” about the fact that the principles justifying abortion on demand apply equally to people who have already been born.

Savulescu says being able to talk about such things reflects the “very values of a liberal society.”

Appel believes ‘therapeutic euthanasia’ is the “inevitable consequence of our progress toward liberal humanism.”

And they are correct.

On their view of the world, they are right.

They cannot fathom the possibility that in ten or fifteen or twenty years someone might arise on the scene to put their academic conclusions into action–a future Hitler.  If history is any guide, today’s leading lights will be flabbergasted that it could have gone so far, but still won’t recognize that the main problem all along was that they were terribly, horrifically, wrong.

Their views may reflect the ‘values of a liberal society’ and killing people for their own good may be the inevitable consequence of liberal humanism, but that is all the more reason why secular humanism must be resisted at every turn.  We shouldn’t be doubling-down on this madness.  We should be fighting it tooth and nails.

Before it is too late.

Anthony Horvath is a contributor at Laigle’s Forum, Christian apologist, pro-life speaker, and publisher. To learn more about his latest project aimed at combating the philosophies discussed in the essay below and how you can help, click here.

Yes, I know. Why even mention it? In France, it’s like talking about the weather.

The talking heads in the videos linked below are reporting that the riots in Amiens Nord were caused by “young people.” But those who recall the Paris riots a while back know that, when speaking of rioters, the media, not only in France, but everywhere, use the words “young people” when referring to Muslim immigrants, whose name they dare not utter. Naming them would be the first step to a solution, but that would also be lending credence to Marine Le Pen’s Front National (the only party with any common sense there). Obviously, the French powers that be are willing to accept unlimited rioting and destruction rather than admit that opening their doors to mass Muslim immigration has caused unlimited rioting and destruction:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVhdU0llMRc&feature=player_embedded

The video itself doesn’t mention Muslims, of course. But most of the posters think they are immigrants, or at least not indigenous French. BTW, when I did the Google search to bring up these sites, I discovered that the French words for “Amiens riots”(émeutes Amiens) brought up videos of rioting in Amiens in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 as well. Thus rioting seems to be an annual event tolerated by the authorities. Next year perhaps there will be concession stands.

In another vid presentation, talking heads discuss “les jeunes” (young people) who caused the Amiens riot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz0xOF2FVXA

But, again, in the forum beneath the video, the readers frankly speak of Muslims, immigrants, etc. These were not indigenous French young people as the media would have us believe.

Translation of one post:

Before, when the idiots spoke of popular revolt, it was civil war; today, when the idiots talk about civil war, it’s actually RACIAL war! ahahahha (This poster more or less gets it. But is it really racial? Or is it religious?—Don Hank)

Quand les bobos parlaient de révolte populaire c’était une guerre civile, aujourd’hui les bobos parlent de guerre civile alors qu’il s’agit d’une guerre RACIAL ! ahahah

America has had a lot of useful discussion of the killing of the knife-wielding Darrius Kennedy by the cops in Times Square. Here is a question to ponder: If we continue to pander to the “rights” of thugs who threaten public safety and property, will we be moving toward the French policy of denial and laissez-faire–allowing the thugs to have their way with the rest of us and thus inviting, for example, annual rioting of the kind seen in Amiens since 2008 — or even worse? Or is it better to show force once in a while to protect the innocent?

Note that the Times Square incident did NOT spark a race riot in New York. People there know their limits.

Now, if a cop had killed a “young person” in France, there’d have been war. The difference? In NY, minorities still expect the authorities to do whatever it takes to keep the peace. In France the “young people” know the cops are wusses and that they are protected by the media. In fact, it looks like the French have been largely brainwashed into accepting this kind event — perhaps as a kind of tourist attraction? Served with crêpes perhaps.

Where do you prefer to live? Your vote could help determine that.

The below-linked report shows that of all factors studied, the one most strongly correlated with GDP, or national wealth, is strength of the rule of law.

http://www.capitalismwithoutfailure.com/2012/07/the-main-driver-of-gdp-growth-strong.html

Quote: …he mentioned that he had done a study based on analysis by an institution that looks at all sorts of “fuzzy” data, like how easy it is to start a business in a country, corporate taxes and business structures, levels of free trade and free markets, and the legal system. It turned out that the trait that was most positively correlated with GDP growth was strength of the rule of law. It is also one of the major factors that Niall Ferguson cites in his book Civilization as a reason for the ascendency of the West in the last 500 years, and a factor that helps explain why China is rising again as it emerges from chaos.

Amazingly, despite this strong correlation, not ONE of the 2 main parties supports the rule of law. Bush and his GOP cronies famously supported rewarding lawbreakers with amnesty. Obama has gone further, refusing to allow ICE to deport many alien felons (only the most egregious) and even suing Arizona for trying to protect itself from the invasion — even though Article 4, Section 4 of the Constitution says the federal government is supposed to protect the states from invasion, literally.

Last but not least is the Libertarian party, which basically thinks borders are bad for liberty and is not much in favor of laws at all. Like the early communists, they think the state will melt away if we can just teach enough people how to behave in a lawless society (anarchy). I’m not making it up: If you go to the Von Mises Institute site you can see a proud invitation to sign up for a course in “Anarcho-Capitalism,” the favorite ideology of site founder Lew Rockwell, who is a mentor of Ron Paul.

America has given up on law, instead falling all over itself to protect the “rights” of minority criminals, like the black panthers who violated election law by intimidating voters and siding with petty thugs like Trayvon Martin while seeking to jail law and order activists like George Zimmerman. And suspending ICE agents for arresting illegal aliens (http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/senator-ice-agent-facing-punishment-for-arresting-illegal.html). This is a reflection of the back seat that science has taken in the public discussion, in the media and politics. We prefer catchy pandering slogans to facts. Slogans and pandering ensure poll success.

But as the law goes, so does GDP. It looks like our main political parties have all chosen poverty for us all.

Funny, none of them asked us either.

The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so…

The scientific method, while still used in scientific experiments in the laboratory and clinic, has long been abandoned in the persuasive arts, notably journalism, but also in politics. Any journalist analyzing facts based on logic and science instead of accepting the interpretation of our universe handed down from above would soon lose their job. We have long lived in an anti-scientific, and hence, an anti-natural, world and are now reaping the inevitable rewards of our denial of truth.

If we were to be honest with ourselves for just a brief moment, we would admit that Western society is deeply sinful (or in secular terms, unwholesome) and even worships sin, celebrating it with carnivals and gay parades, and teaching young children how to perform sex acts in schools. And of course, the Western world routinely commits infanticide. Romans 1:25 describes the Western world to a “t” (Paul uses homosexuals as an example but this issue ranges far wider than that):

Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator…

The end of that discourse on sinners describes the outcome.

…men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.

A graphic depiction of some of that recompense for this particular group of sinners can be found here. I referenced that site in my commentary “The recompence of their error.”

So why do people deliberately engage in self-destructive practices that our otherwise superior intelligence should be telling us to avoid for the purposes of self preservation? Or for that matter, why do they pursue Keynesian economics amassing mountains of debt that no one could ever repay in a headlong rush to destroy our economy, our means of survival? No animal species would do that.

The answer is right there in Paul’s discourse, and this is the part Christians need to focus on when analyzing the causes of Western society’s failure to manage its laws, its immigration, its social ills, its fruitless wars, its finances and economy, its moral code, etc:

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.

And several verses later:

God gave them over to a reprobate mind.

Did you ever consider what that means?

GOD facilitates the destruction of the disobedient and the ungrateful by abandoning the disobedient to their own sinful desires. Paul is talking about people who worship nature instead of the Creator because they were ungrateful to Him for the blessings of life. Why would people who once worshipped nature turn around and do something unnatural, as Paul calls this behavior in this same passage? A person analyzing this without spiritual discernment might say this incongruence makes no sense and would be at a loss to explain it in rational terms. Some spiritually blind (but otherwise intelligent) analysts say that for this reason, Paul couldn’t really have meant “unnatural” when describing this behavior, and they therefore tweak the translation from the original Greek to make it say something else. (They forget that in the 4^th Century, Jerome, a fluent speaker of koine Greek, rendered this term as “contra naturam” in his translation  of the Vulgate Latin Bible).

The fact is, God routinely allows people to do the unnatural—committing acts outside the laws of nature that can’t be explained by any scientific (e.g., psychological) laws. Once you turn your back on God, He abandons you and you fall into a behavior pattern designed by Satan. There is nothing natural about sinful behavior because it was not designed by God.

So if it is not natural, then is it supernatural?

No, it is not. Since God performs supernatural works—that is, works that are above nature—then Satan’s works and the works of humans gone over to the dark side might best be considered as infranatural, or beneath nature. An animal would not destroy its own economy – its food stores, for example – the way Westerner “leaders” are now doing, most notablyin the Euro Zone and the US through irrational banking practices and eradication of home industry and cheap energy by legal and regulatory means (even as they encourage other nations, notably China, to use cheap energy and high carbon combustion in competing with the West). Nor would an animal devote itself almost solely to the pursuit of sex, especially homosex, the way many humans do (although bisexuality is known in the animal kingdom, there are no known strictly homosexual animal individuals that eschew all individuals of the opposite sex).

Such infranatural phenomena are exactly why we face an imminent worldwide economic collapse. Economists, supposedly specialists in math, no longer use mathematics in their convoluted Keynesian calculations. Likewise, otherwise educated people who understand human anatomy deliberately and routinely utilize as an inlet a bodily organ designed as an outlet, a lifestyle that often leads to horrific diseases and death (see here).

But as Paul says, amazingly, GOD facilitates this mindlessness by abandoning those who abandon God — including His scientific laws. Because people stopped trusting in Him and thought they could come up with their own answers. Look around you. How do you like the results of Western secularist, humanist political, diplomatic, economic, social, military, etc, behavior? Vote for either candidate and you will get more of the same. Look at Europe. An entire continent that thinks it is smarter than God is now drowning in debt and fighting for its economic life. If this is not sufficient evidence of the God that Paul describes, i.e., a God who deprives disobedient humans of their cognitive faculties, then I can’t imagine what is.

This is why the West does not need more laws or a better government.

It needs a spiritual revival. And that revival will not happen without Westerners accepting the love, forgiveness and righteousness that Jesus taught, making a sincere attempt to do what is morally right as dictated by our God-given conscience. Americans, including the best and otherwise most civil and decent of us, are beating each other up because we think this is about people or the lack of wisdom of individuals or leaders. If people do this or that, or if we make this or that law or elect this or that politician, then we can get back on track. “How can this group or that group be so stupid?” they say of those who disagree with them.

But again, they ignore Paul’s teachings, as recorded in another letter of his:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

If you think this is too lofty and ethereal to relate to your life and the world around you, consider the antithesis, for example, in this article on John Maynard Keynes, a homosexual and pedophile who authored our current failed economic system (bailouts rewarding bad business and banking practices and other government interventions that kill free enterprise were his brain child):

http://www.keynesatharvard.org/book/KeynesatHarvard-ch09.html

If we take to heart Paul’s message in Romans 1:25-27, we can easily see it was no coincidence that Keynes was both a sexual deviant (pedophile, homosexual, etc) and the author of the most perverted economic system known to humankind.

There can be no logical or scientific explanation for Keynes’ self-destructive lifestyle and destructive teachings, or of an entire civilization deliberately patterning itself after him, destroying itself economically and morally with no apparent justification. These examples of a West deliberately weakening and sabotaging itself are the best examples of unqestionably infranatural phenomena.

As incredible as it may seem to those imbued with the rigid doctrinaire humanism that is foisted on Western society by an incessant drumbeat in media, schools and universities, in cinema and on the street, Paul’s brief discourse on a God having given people up to a reprobate mind is emerging as the default explanation of a civilization marching resolutely to its utter economic and moral ruin.

So why is this explanation for Western civilization’s failure never raised in the churches of our nation?

Perhaps because God is giving our clergy over to the very same reprobate mind that Paul spoke of. They interpret the scriptures as though they were hopelessly outdated when  in fact, these ancient writings offer the only glimpse of sanity–and hope–that is left in our reprobate world.

by Don Hank

Ever since about the time of the Trayvon Martin incident, I have been receiving regular, roughly daily, forwarded reports of unprovoked attacks by mobs of  “young people” all around the US. A visitor from another planet would certainly infer from these reports that young people are a dangerous mutant subspecies of human and need to be monitored and strictly disciplined.

That’s because the mainstream media almost never identify racially homogeneous mobs by race unless they are white. They pretend the mobs are diverse, thinking, I suppose, that if they don’t identify the problem, it will simply go away.

By this logic, Hitler was an international citizen, not a German. Mussolini was a man without a country. Al Capone was an international business man, not a member of the Italian mafia. Pablo Escobar was a successful American merchant, not a member of the Medellin cartel. Godzilla was a troubled youth who was painfully conscious of his size and was merely overcompensating. And so forth. 

Anyway, the mobs are growing and the racially homogeneous violence is escalating, despite efforts to minimize it and pretend it is diverse and non-specific. (Say, how about we stop looking for specific bacteria that cause disease? Let’s just have a campaign to wipe out all germs? Wouldn’t that be more effective? Oh, that’s right. Some commensal bacteria are needed by the body to digest food. Never mind).

But now for the good news.

Recently, President Obama issued the statement shown below clarifying his “post-racial” position. Did you catch it? Here it is again in case you missed it:

“Shortly after I was elected I proclaimed America to be in its post-racial phase, where race has become totally irrelevant and people are judged on the noble principle set forth by Dr. Martin Luther King, namely, according to the content of their character. I meant exactly what I said.

A growing number of people of my race – and party (guess that goes without saying) – weren’t listening to King or to me and they have attacked white people simply for being white, claiming “your people” hurt “our people.” Let me be clear: There is no “your people” and there is no “our people” in post-racial America. Both blacks and whites need to follow MLK’s guidelines, without exception, if we are to get along. Your asinine presumption that someone’s ancestors harmed your ancestors does not give you the right to practice violence against that person or steal their property. Before the civil war, most northern whites, guided by Christ’s teachings, thought slavery was evil and acted accordingly. They set up the Underground Railroad to help eliminate the practice. William Wilberforce, the British activist who almost single-handedly ended the institution of slavery in his country, was a white Christian. White Christians also helped end slavery here and later helped spearhead the civil rights movement. They were so successful that slavery is virtually non-existent in the West, having survived almost solely in certain Muslim countries (like Sudan) today.

E pluribus unum means out of many one (I had mistranslated that in an earlier speech. My apologies). Throughout my 3.5 years as president I have gradually come to realize we are all one people now and the name of that people is Americans, one of the most beautiful names in the English language.

I was elected by a majority of all Americans, am grateful to each and every one of you, and as long as I am president, I will stand up for the rights of all Americans, regardless of their color. There will be no race baiting, no special rights for minorities, no legal double standards and no coddling of people who violate the law. You violate the law and you hurt me, Barack Obama.

I may take some heat for saying this, but someone had to say it, and the buck stops with me.

BTW, Eric Holder, you’re fired! Get outta here!

Thank you and may God bless America.

Oh, I omitted to say that Obama made this speech in a dream I had. Guess I shouldn’t have eaten those spicy meatballs before retiring last night.

Of interest:

The escalation of the violence all started with this speech:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57403200-503544/obama-if-i-had-a-son-hed-look-like-trayvon/

The rest (see below) was 100% predictable. The White House resident got exactly what he wanted.

http://www.wnd.com/2012/07/racial-violence-explodes-in-3-states/?cat_orig=us

http://www.wnd.com/2012/07/black-mobs-terrorize-1-of-whitest-big-cities/

One lady whose own neighborhood had been a victim of the violence objected to the fact that some referred to the black rioters as black. Maybe Hampton is getting what it asked for? 

http://www.wnd.com/2012/07/black-mob-in-the-hamptons/?cat_orig=us

“Young people” targeting Jews:

http://www.wnd.com/2012/07/black-mobs-now-beating-jews-in-new-york/?cat_orig=faith

“Young people” assault pregnant white girl
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500202_162-7159518.html

I recently read an opinion indicating the Russia is up to its old tricks of dividing the Western world and trying to destabilize the Middle East. The author cites the fact that Russia is refusing to go along with Western intervention in the Middle East. I was surprised to read this opinion because if anyone can be blamed for destabilizing that region it is the Western powers and their military adventures there.

The commentary also stated that Russia is a much bigger threat than the New World Order.

I disagree.

From what I see, the New World Order is actually an extension of the Soviet Union, but not of Russia, which is no longer a totalitarian communist state—or at least no more totalitarian than, say, the EU, whose commissioners are not elected democratically and who wield all the important power.

I think some US conservatives subconsciously conflate today’s Russian Federation with the Soviet Union. Even Reagan seemed to have a problem with seeing a Russian person in a positive light, including the Russian dissidents we should have reached out to, notably Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who was treated with suspicion. Details here:

http://laiglesforum.com/aleksander-solzhenitsyn-tragically-misunderstood-by-conservatives/298.htm

During the cold war, I believe there were millions of confused people believing that it was the Russian nation and people we were supposed to oppose, not communism. Or rather, many felt that communism came with being Russian, just as freedom comes with being American.

Americans who tenaciously stick to this suspicious attitude toward all things Russian either no longer recognize communism when they see it or they aren’t afraid of living in a totalitarian state as long as it is orderly and they have enough to eat and as long as their keepers have Anglo-Saxon names and call themselves Christians on the campaign trail.

The truth is, what has happened in recent decades is an almost complete role reversal in terms of communist totalitarianism.

At the risk of oversimplifying, I think that essentially, Russia is becoming America and the West is becoming the Soviet Union.

Here are just a few of the blatant symptoms of communism that you and I have been seeing throughout the West:

Economic communism:

1-Wealth redistribution between the rich nations, esp Germany, and the poor nations of the EU, to the extent that the euro and the European economy are being wrecked to maintain this ideology-driven scheme. Many blame this on the greed of the bankers, but there is something else going on here, not far beneath the surface, and that is the steadfast belief, even among business people and bankers, that the wealth (all but their own, that is) must be redistributed to achieve “social justice.” The CRA, which forced certain banks to lend to “underserved communities” (minorities and the poor), is a perfect example. The knee-jerk reaction when this is pointed out is to quickly assert that the CRA had little effect because only some banks were enforced upon. Nonsense. By forcing some to comply, the US government was tacitly agreeing to prop up the loans of any bank to these underserved communities, and as a result, most banks went along, driving up housing prices and causing a bubble that ultimately led to the crash. The banks that made the most reckless loans under this socialist scheme were rewarded with your money in the form of bailouts. They made out like the bandits they were.

The scheme was shoved down our throats because, despite his socialist policies, Bush was seen as “conservative.” It was perfect camouflage for a people who see politicians with white faces talking about their faith in Jesus as beyond reproach.

2-In the US, a record and vast number of people on food stamps. The “rich” (i.e., workers) are supporting America.

3-Obamacare

4-The obliteration of borders. In world socialism, which was first promoted by the Soviet Union, there were eventually to be no borders. In keeping with this idea, Obama refuses to deport illegal aliens and provides only a modicum of border protection. He and many others consider Mexico and the US to be a common territory. Particularly under G.W. Bush and Barack Obama, the 2 nations have come to be a de facto economic and political union (North American Union).

The old Soviet regime was anti-Christian.

5-Obamacare forces Catholic hospitals to pay for abortions

6-For decades, the ACLU has been winning battles all over our country to take Christian symbols out of public life

7-We are importing Muslims wholesale, who refuse to integrate and recently, have literally “stoned” Christians in Dearborn (those who are on my daily alerts list got a video link to that yesterday) while the police turned a blind eye.

8-The EU and its puppet “national” governments in Europe import millions of Muslims who do not integrate, cause trouble, have doubled and tripled the rates of crimes like rape, etc, and have created no-go zones where police, fire personnel and ambulances dare not enter. Police in Europe respond to Muslim rioters the same way as US police: they don’t. Laws and enforcement favor the Muslims and disadvantage Christians (proselytizing to Muslims, for example, is now considered a crime or misdemeanor in much of Europe).

9-The EU and the US have totally wrecked the Middle East. Except in Syria, which the West is itching to attack, there are almost no indigenous Christians left. They have been murdered or exiled, their churches burnt to the ground. 

10-The West has started making it difficult or illegal to discuss homosexual behavior from a biblical standpoint. Pastors don’t dare mention it. Canada and parts of Europe fine people for speaking against it. 11 Christians were arrested in Philadelphia in 2006 for expressing a scriptural viewpoint regarding homosexuality at a homosexual “OutFest.” They were charged with a “hate” crime that carries a sentence of 47 years in prison and a $90,000 fine for each one:

http://laiglesforum.com/federal-judge-refuses-to-release-homosexual-group-from-philadelphia-eleven-lawsuit/30.htm

Contrast this with Russia, which does not acknowledge same sex marriage and, in some jurisdictions, does not allow homosexual demonstrations.

Now let’s look at Russia:

Do you see the Russians importing Muslims? Whom are the Russians supporting in the Middle East? Do they have satellite states and do the richer ones have to send money to the poor ones? Are they obliterating the Russian border?

And here is the key: Do they interfere in the political affairs of sovereign nations to overthrow existing governments?

Here is a video of a speech by Putin on what can be called the New World Order (he didn’t mention the term explicitly). Whether or not you consider this to be propaganda, which side comes off as being right here?:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr5GxN3C8uw&feature=related

If you are interested in joining my daily alerts list, just send an email to zoilandon@msn.com and type “Daily alerts list” in the subject line.

Prime Minister, Ted Heath when he said in a Government White Paper of July 1971, “There is no question of any erosion of essential national sovereignty”. (On a TV current affairs programme in 1990, he was asked if he had known that this statement was untrue. His answer was “Of course, yes”.)

There is a bit of history to this idea of politicians lying to the public to achieve what is supposed to be a noble end, a phenomenon we see on both sides of the pond. In the 1880s a group of wealthy English met in a private home in London to discuss how best to implement socialism and eliminate Christianity (which stands in the way). The group included Karl Marx’s sister, just to give you an idea of the ideology they represented.

They met later a number of times and eventually settled on a name for themselves: The Fabian Society, after a Roman general who had successfully used stealth to gain victory, thereby saving lives. They would do likewise, preferring stealth to usurp power over the violence used later in Russia.

But is stealth necessarily harmless?

Suppose you stop your car and ask me directions to a place. I direct you over a bridge, which happens to have collapsed in a recent hurricane. I tell you that it is narrow, so in order to avoid meeting another vehicle, you should speed up as you approach it. You do so and plunge to your death in the canyon below.

I didn’t harm you directly. But I caused you great violence through my stealthy and false directions.

So it is with the EU. It was sold as a community of states that would contribute to economic stability and greater harmony in Europe. No sovereignty would be lost and there would be a net gain for all.

But this community is now called a union and is a de facto empire with central control and almost no participation of the populace, with formidable power, ever-expanding boundaries (see Sonya Porter’s article below), a court, one of the largest bureaucracies in the world, and a growing military, and its economic policies are leading, by socialist wealth redistribution, to what is expected by many economists to be the greatest economic crisis of our age.

The Soviet Union has been reborn.

Don Hank

Sonya Jay Porter on the ever-expanding, rarely-asking EU

The creation of a European union of states was considered a noble aspiration following the destruction of the continent in two world wars. First proposed in the Schuman Declaration of 1950 by the then-French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman, it aimed to transform Europe through a “step-by-step” process, leading to the unification of Europe and so ensuring that the individual nations of Europe should never go to war with one other again. But although senior politicians may have been aware of the gradual subsuming of their countries into a Federal Europe, most of their populations were not.

In Britain, for instance FCO 30/1048 which was written in 1971 by civil servants at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office but only brought to light in 2001 under the 30 year rule, shows that the FCO was definitely aware of the gradual loss of Britain’s sovereignty that entry into the Common Market would entail. However, introducing the 1972 Bill, Geoffrey Rippon, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said “there would be no essential surrender of sovereignty” and this was echoed by the Prime Minister, Ted Heath when he said in a Government White Paper of July 1971, “There is no question of any erosion of essential national sovereignty”. (On a TV current affairs programme in 1990, he was asked if he had known that this statement was untrue. His answer was “Of course, yes”.) So it would be unwise to take what the EU authorities say at face value, including the fact that it is a strictly European union of nations or that any other countries brought into its fold would be there simply as trading partners.

Turkey is not a member of the European Union, and may never be. Yet on 30^th March 2012, the members of the European Commission (who are appointed by the governments of member states rather than elected) quietly decided to grant Turkish citizens the same residency and labour rights as full members of the Union.

This accord will apply to Turkish workers who are or have been legally employed in the territory of a member state and who are or who have been subject to the legislation of one or more member states, and their survivors; to the members of the family of workers referred to above, provided that these family members are or have been legally resident with the worker concerned while the worker is employed in a member state. The text reads:

“It follows from Article 12 of the Agreement establishing an association between the European Economic Community and Turkey (the Ankara Agreement) and Article 36 of the Additional Protocol to the Ankara Agreement (the Additional Protocol) that freedom of movement for workers between the Union and Turkey is to be secured by progressive stages.”

It adds,

“This proposal is part of a package of proposals which includes similar proposals with regard to the Agreements with Albania, Montenegro and San Marino. A first package with similar proposals in respect of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Israel was adopted by the Council in October 2010.”

As a mark of their devotion to openness and transparency, the following laconic note appears under the heading “Consultation of interested parties” –

“There was no need for external expertise.”

Later still, the following difficult-to-believe statement appears:

“The proposal has no implications for the Union budget.”

Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Israel are not in the EU but many of their citizens will now be allowed to live in, and benefit from, EU countries – which could cause many problems, not least that of how the EU is going to cope with yet more unemployed at a time when the Union’s financial situation is so parlous.

Read more:

http://www.quarterly-review.org/?p=919