Proven Fascism In WI

What happened in Wisconsin: Sen. Tiffany comments | Power Line:

I covered what happened here, breaking down doors of conservatives in the early AM hours, gag rules, illegal use of private information to target other conservatives -- exactly what was supposed to be MOST abhorrent to ALL Americans! At least "McCarthyism" was about a foreign threat -- this was ONLY about partisan politics! This is the "The Party" (TP-D) using the government against it's political opponents -- just as we see now with the Deep State attacking Trump. Unsurprisingly ...

One tidbit your non-Wisconsin readers may find interesting: the administrator of the now-defunct GAB was Kevin Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy acknowledged a few years ago he was a confidant of the IRS’s Lois Lerner. They communicated frequently. Having a front row seat viewing the Troubles in Wisconsin the past seven years, I have seen the eerie the parallels between the John Doe and the Mueller investigation in D.C.

There isn't really anything surprising at all here -- prior to Trump, Scott Walker was the only leader that has shown the courage to take on the Deep State (at the WI state level) -- he very MILDLY reduced the cronyism between TP and the public unions and was saddled with statewide strikes, vandalism, threats of violence, lawsuits and a recall election.

The Deep State of WI leaked what they considered the most damning evidence -- evidence that was legally required to be kept secret to influence the SCOTUS.

On Sept. 14, 2016, the Guardian published some 1,300 pages of court-sealed John Doe-related documents. The liberal British publication used the cherry-picked, leaked records in a story that arrived a couple of weeks before theU.S. Supreme Court decided it wouldn’t weigh in on the Wisconsin matter.

Did it work? Probably -- the SCOTUS decided to not intervene. Power Line concludes another column on the issue with this ...

Let me repeat the conclusion to my post on the report last week. The wrongdoing detailed in the WisDoJ report is of the deeply fascist variety that exceeds my poor powers of denunciation. Suffice it to say that it combines the instruments of tyranny — physical torture omitted — in the service of the suppression of conservatives. The story is shocking almost beyond belief. One might ask where the outrage is, but at this point we should probably ask if anyone is paying attention.

Democracy doesn't so much "die in darkness" as it dies when a single political party controls the media, education system, legal system, and the federal / state bureaucracies as TP does in BOistan.

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Waiting For The Ubermensch

Trump Haters Left & Right versus Trump Supporters: Civil War Field Guide | National Review:

A worthy article to read -- a sober and well written categorzation of the feelings of the chattering classes and the electorate in the age of Trump. The haters -- something like a third to a half of "The Party" (TP-D), so something like 20% of the electorate are of course the most visible.

The Trump haters dominate our media and the universities, the entertainment industries, Silicon Valley, the billionaire green classes, the foundations and the brigades of professional foot-soldier activists, identity-politics operatives, and the Bernie Sanders shock troops. They are frenzied because they think their 1,000 cuts have finally hit arteries — only to see Trump revive in Nietzschean fashion, emerging stronger for the wounds. To come so close to ending this nightmare only to realize they are at the alpha and not the omega of their efforts intensifies their hatred.

Most of these people were also Obama Zombies who in their "post god" world saw BO as a Nietzchean "value creator" (ubermensch). In a world without god, the only support for "values" is a "superman", and the left felt certain that "all reasonable people" MUST have been changed to the "values" of BO ... slaughter of millions of unborn, "gay" marriage, unknown genders, disprespect for the flag and the military, snide posuturing against people "bitterly clinging" to the Bible and the 2nd Amendement, etc

Strangely, the screaming and howling of the sheltered elite when 2016 didn't go as they were certain it would is a sound that causes the culture of the old "America" to come together -- at least a little.

Yet Trump hatred only solidifies the Trump base. It also reminds independents and wavering centrist Republicans that in a Manichean fight (and the Trump haters seem to envision the current landscape as just that), one inevitably chooses sides. If the choice is reduced to a crude rant at a public Trump rally or the rioters at Claremont, Berkeley, and Middlebury, a screaming Madonna, the “pigs in blanket” chanters of Black Lives Matter, and the masked marauders of Antifa, the Trump haters probably lose.

The BO and the Trump base are way more similar than either would like to admit. They are BOTH looking for Nietzschean "value creators" who attack their opposition and make them feel justified, moral and powerful. BO did it with snide smoothness, Trump does it with twittering bluster -- the same buttons are being pushed in either case.

Trump’s base is as loyal as was Obama’s. Obama’s puerile cluelessness (the Malvinas are the Falklands, 57 states, corpse-men), his divisiveness (get in their faces, take a gun to a knife fight, punish our enemies), and his venom (high-horse Christians, stereotyping police, bitter clingers, etc.) could never erode the Obama foundation, as long as he offered his faux-southern-accent act, quoted arc-of-history banalities, talked Final Four, and caricatured the rich, the businessman, and the successful. So too the Trump voter will stay to the bitter end with Trump — if he stays with them.

Being a Christian, I'm not very excited about the idea of any human being  (or even human being ... being! ;-) ) a "values creator" -- however, anyone with a marginal education who pays even a tiny bit of attention certainly has to observe the prescience of Nietzsche relative to the "superman" ... Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, and yes, to a much lesser extent, BO and Trump -- "lesser" so far, but without any shared values, morality is purely a matter of POWER, so eventually, one of the tribal groups shorn of Constitutional restraint and any sense of honoring tradition is nearly certain to defeat / gulag / kill the opposing tribe and pay the dues of "killing god" in blood and treasure.

As a Christian, I also believe in the willingness of God to intervene on the side of a people who will seek his will -- "America" could revive and with God's Grace become again "One Nation Under God". I want a leader -- and a people, that kneel humbly before God, and proudly salute the Flag!

As is always the case with man, we await the almighty -- or some mere human that is willing to pretend he is almighty. To date, God has been FAR more merciful than any of the other "strong men" who attempt to create values for the masses!


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Slick Willie In NY Times

Bill Clinton: Americans Must Decide Who We Really Are - The New York Times:

In case anyone had any illusions that "The Party" (TP-D) had somehow had some sort of a moral turnaround relative to the treatment of women, the NY Times putting up a column by Mr "all female employees must wear kneepads",  lets us know that the short lived "morality kerfluffel" was merely a cynical political ploy to steal a Senate seat (a successful ploy) due to the "Stupid Party" (SP-R).

We always need to remember how Slick Willie stained the oval office and provided a major push in our descent into BOistan.

**IF** anyone on the left ACTUALLY cared about "women's rights", Slick would be LONG past having any sort of political stature, and so would have Hillary. As we know, they absolutely DON'T CARE, and even more so they assume that people in this God forsaken tribal backwater of N America that used to be a great nation have no intelligence and no memory.

When trust vanishes and knowledge is devalued as an establishment defense of the status quo, anything can happen. We already see citizens being disenfranchised by the millions, targeted by race, ethnicity and age not because they are ineligible to vote, but because they favor inclusive, not tribal, nationalism.

Slick and "trust" have got to be one of the greatest oxymorons ever. "Knowledge is devalued" -- you mean like not being able to figure out what "is" means? "Anything" already DID happen -- 8 years of BO that wiped out the last vestiges of the Separation of Powers, Rule of Law (Constituition), and most of all the direct use of the Administrative State (IRS, EPA, FBI, CIA, etc) for political gain was what happened.

"Disenfranchised" ... Dog Whistle for "show an ID". Certainly everyone needs an ID to survive in their day to day life, HOWEVER, TP demands that ALL be able to vote, vote early, often, and with complete ease ... including non-citizens, felons, the dead, etc

Who wins in this kind of environment? Those who already have it made; they’ll make more. The least responsible members of the political media, who will prosper covering each new controversy and outrage. And the enemies of democracy, who feed the discord and hope that Americans will finally concede that informed self-government no longer works — and perhaps is no longer even possible — in the modern world.

How hard would a sane person not to laugh at someone who entered and left the presidency close to penniless, and is now worth N of $100 million, much of it VERY hard to track in off-short trusts and foundations, talking about "those who have it made"? See chutspah!

I'm not sure that who he thinks is going to prosper in media really is going to -- CNN, the bastion of Fake News mentioned a fake "white truck story" 23 times, while ignoring the BO administration spiking a Hezbollah investigation. Does anyone care about CNN other than fodder for jokes anymore?

Obviously the NY Times cynically believes that even in the middle of a fake politically motivated "moral outrage campaign", putting up a column by the hick that walked the halls of power with his pants around his knees is just fine. Slick may be right about "the modern world" -- largely it has been "post truth" for a very long time. Gunga Dan and the "fake but true" (according to him) story about how bad a fighter pilot W supposedly was is still my standard for fake news.

At least the "birther" question was a real question -- you supposedly DO need to be a US citizen to be president. OTOH, there actually isn't a Constitutional test for "how good a fighter pilot you were 30 years ago". Hell, believe it or not, we have actually had presidents that could not fly a jet fighter at all, and they seemed to do OK!

What DOES utterly amaze me is that even after the Blue Dress, lots of flights on "The Lolita Express", and the political disaster of 2016 for TP, the NY Times still cares, and thinks OTHERS will care what leaks out of Slick's pen. The people that he and Hildebeast have MOST played for wealth and power are papers like the WaPo and Times, plus a TON of TP rubes that just LOVE the Clintons!

I more and more suspect that a huge majority of the left really DOES love leadership like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro and the Clintons. "Hurt us AGAIN!!!! .... PLEASE!!!! ... we are nothing but sheep who love to be abused by you, ESPECIALLY when we KNOW that you will just abuse us again!"

Sane people would believe that there was no chance of Hillary in 2020, but mistaking many on the left for sane is an old problem.

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-36, It's Toasted

International Falls, Minnesota drops to record low -36F - Story | KMSP:

Frostbite Falls broke it's previous cold record set in 1924. It's coldest ever was -55 in 1909, and the coldest ever in MN was -60 February 2, 1996.

Naturally, I tend to remember -60 in Cameron WI on January 7, 1977 https://www.facebook.com/fox9kmsp/posts/588735364475559

I'm sure this fits into Climate Change with no problem ... after all, "It's Settled", which is exactly like "It's Toasted".

We live in the age of marketing -- Hope and Change, MAGA, BLM, Russia, Fake News, etc, etc ... there is more behind some of them than others, however they are all very much about marketing. They have to be -- the masses only react to marketing. The one liner, the slogan, the elevator pitch ... get your creed, cause, candidate, charity or celebrity packaged and tagged with a short label ... #metoo! and you are off to the vain and vacuous races of having your meme embedded in the shallow brains of modern man.

It took us a while to get here -- "Mad Men" is about the early '60's when Madison Avenue was rising. When society starts to slip it's moorings, the paths to destruction are legion.

Humans have always been prone to manipulation -- "Bread and Circuses" comes to mind. The issue is if their core is "settled" on something that is "a little bit more" than slogans and shallowness. GOD used to be that foundation -- here in the US, it was a solid Christian God that at the core pretty much everyone agreed on. I've written on this enough so I'll use some words from a National Review article to make the point:

In short, America is in the process of replacing a general worldview that prioritized love, hope, and truth with an individualized moral buffet that prioritizes personal satisfaction. We’re giving man back to his human nature — a nature beset by original sin and prone to tribalism. No one should assume that America can survive the change.

Civilization has understood these issues for thousands of years -- certainly very well in the few hundred years prior to the birth of Christ. Even the revolutionaries of the left now occasionally look around with alarm at what we have become, although they tend to have no understanding of what has happened.

Perhaps we need to think just a tiny bit deeper before WE'RE TOASTED!


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Nikki Haley 2024

Tweet of the Year | Power Line:

We are a LONG way away from 2024, so I know this is total rank speculation.

Having ended 2017 with "The Stupid Party" (TSP-R) barely getting it's sorry act together enough to pass a decent tax bill that included the removal of the individual mandate, along with a booming economy and stock market, one starts to imagine that the Trump Restoration has real potential.

Certainly, being a realist, there is still the Administrative/Deep State plus the entire media, educational, legal complex arrayed against Trump, with only TSP to provide a Keystone Cop political defense. Someone REALLY needs to give them lessons in how to FIGHT! However, as Scott Adams has covered relentlessly, one master communicator with a Twitter account seems to be more than equal to the arrayed forces of TP (The Party-D).

Nikki strikes me as one of the front runners for a future run. Imagine TP pointing out that NOBODY ought to vote for her "just because she is a woman", where the only reason that anyone would vote against Hildebeast was "misogyny", the most important word of 2016!

Pretty much all TP speech is really just about political gain.



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What If Tax Cuts Work?

Americans might really like the Trump tax cuts. What will Democrats do then?:

The Democrats and the MSM are sure that the D's are going to re-take the House and maybe even the Senate in 2018 -- both Trump and the Congress have terrible popularity numbers, so D / MSM alliance are certain that they will get at least the House. Just like they were certain that Hillary was going to get the White House.

The linked article observes:

"Economic growth has shifted into a higher gear. In 2016, the economy grew by just 1.5 percent, adjusted for inflation. But the past two quarters of this year have seen growth twice as fast. What's more, the New York Fed's real-time "Nowcast" model is currently forecasting 4 percent growth for the final three months of 2017 and over 3 percent growth for the first three months of 2018. Americans haven't seen such strong and sustained GDP growth since 2004."

Hmm ... the prediction of the left after Trump's election was a down market and economy FOREVER!

Will people turn out in droves in an off-year election to try to put the folks that want to waste more of their money back in power?

The Democrat MSM complex says YES!

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The Christmas Gift Of Napalm

The Salvation of ‘Napalm Girl’ - WSJ:

I grew up in a Christian home and was surrounded by Christian relatives as well as living in a US that was still largely Christian even though the decline away from God was well underway in the 1960's.

Today I spend a lot of time with people that have either never known Christ or have fallen so far away that they no longer hear that still small voice.

Christian people assume things like "do unto others", "love your enemies", "honor your father and mother", "judge not", etc as being normal human behavior. They are decidedly not! Human nature is "me, me, me", "I have negative feelings around you, therefore YOU must be bad", "I'm OFFENDED!" ... or as Paul puts in Ephesians 2:1-3, which happened to be in my Bible reading this AM.

1 As for you, you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2 in which you used to walk when you conformed to the ways of this world and of the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit who is now at work in the sons of disobedience. 3 We all lived among them at one time in the cravings of our flesh, indulging its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature children of wrath.

Those who reject Christ often assume that "they do what they want". The Bible tells us that what they do is act in accordance of the wishes of "the ruler of the power of the air" -- Satan. They are "by nature, children of wrath".

The linked article is by the now grown, little naked Vietnamese girl pictured running away from napalm ... which happened to be used by South Vietnamese forces rather than American in this case. It really makes no difference -- For as Romans 8:28 tells us

"And we knowthat God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, who are called according toHis purpose."

Do we have a clue as to HOW God uses ALL THINGS according to his purpose? No, we believe because Proverbs 9:10 tells us that "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom!" Even being napalmed can be a gift for eternal good if it leads to eternity with the savior.

We now live in the non-Chrisitan state of BOistan, so this Christmas you will likely interact with many who no longer serve Christ. Christian doctrine says that man is created to serve, so we do end up serving someone. I'll leave it up to that theologian? Bob Dillon to give his view on that ...

 No matter how angry, disrespectful, "triggered", etc those not serving Christ may be, it is certainly the season to especially show them all the love that we can muster with the help of God. Perhaps a little reflection on the thoughts of Kim Phuc will help that journey ... Merry Christmas!

"My faith in Jesus Christ is what has enabled me to forgive those who had wronged me—no matter how severe those wrongs were. Faith also inspired me to pray for my enemies rather than curse them. It enabled me not only to tolerate those who had wronged me but to love them. No matter what type of pain or sorrow you may be experiencing, as Christmas approaches, I encourage you not to give up. Hold fast to hope. It is hope that will see you through. This peace I have found can be yours as well. I pray that it finds you this Christmas. "

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Shut My Mouth! NY Times Praises Trump!

A War Trump Won - The New York Times:

Ok, it's just on the editorial page, and if you read the whole article, it is pretty tepid, however being a "Not of the Party" in BOistan means that ANY praise is hard to get!

"Not of the Party" (TP-D) always reminds me of this ...

If BO had done anything positive in foreign policy his first year in office, he would have gotten  Nobel prize! ... oh wait, he got one of those just for being elected.

Will be blogging on "Age of Reagan" soon ... after the wall fell in '89, Gorbachov was named Time's "Man of the Decade" and received a Nobel Prize ... Reagan, who forced the Soviets kicking and screaming into the end of their Evil Empire was castigated for "slowing down what everyone knew would happen", when in 1980, he was declared "insane, dangerous, ridiculous, etc" for his position that the Soviets could be defeated.

If one keeps a balanced media diet, we get to enjoy "good news" during D presidencies even if things actually suck. R presidencies are all "crisis", "the sky is falling", "the world is ending" in the media, even if things are going quite well. That is just the way the media works in BOistan.

A short quote from the article ...

I mean the war against the Islamic State, whose expansion was the defining foreign policy calamity of Barack Obama’s second term, whose executions of Americans made the U.S.A. look impotent and whose utopian experiment drew volunteers drunk on world-historical ambitions and metaphysical dreams. Its defeat was begun under Obama, and the hardest fighting has been done by Iraqis — but this was an American war too, and we succeeded without massive infusions of ground troops, without accidentally getting into a war with Russia, and without inspiring a huge wave of terrorism in the West.

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A Little Sexual Honesty

Can We Be Honest About Women?:

We live in the age of insanity, so given that we are insane, it is controversial to state that men love beautiful women and women love being desired. A little research will show that the billions of dollars spent on shoes, clothes, jewelry, makeup, breast implants, nails, plastic surgery, etc is not spent by men. Nor do married men regulary say "honey, are you SURE that you have enough shoes?"

The reason we live in the age of insanity is that we have "abandoned the natural for the unnatural" to paraphrase Romans. Our culture glorifies the unnatural -- homosexuality, strange genders without limit, pornography, and even "kink" -- I have to study "cultural awareness" for a certification at work, and "the kink community" was one of those cultures to be aware of -- google was required.

When I was in college, a "dirty book store" was a sign of a blighted area. When I came to Rochester, there were a couple on the southern (seedy) edge of downtown that the city worked hard to get removed. Now there is the "WalMart version" with the GIANT electronic sign for "Pure Pleasure" right off the I-90 / US 63 interchange south of the airport. "Progress'.

The article is worth a read through to get some more data to cover the obvious in this age where reality is the horror that may not be spoken ... "Jerusalem is the Capital of Israel"! It closes with this ...

We can’t expect people to act like machines with one another, disconnected from their own desires. Our bodies, our sexuality, and our physical longing for one another—all of these essential parts of ourselves—are beautiful. We should cultivate those aspects.

"But they are not the most important, and they can’t be acted on unchecked. We are not animals, ruled by appetites. We have deeper aspects of ourselves that need to be nurtured. We have a rational mind and moral conscience to inform us of what is right and what is wrong. We have a spirit that has a beauty all its own, and it’s a beauty that never diminishes, unlike the physical, which passes away too quickly."

I completely agree with what the author wants, however I don't think there is likely to be motion in that direction anytime soon because the spirit that IS, and is meant to be, our "true self" is denied by our modern world and we ARE expected to behave as "machines" -- machines made out of meat. Materialists (and they are a common philosophical branch in these times) believe exactly that -- there is NOTHING more to us than "meat"! We are ONLY organic machines.

The divine intention of our sexuality is to be BOTH spiritual and physical. Our insane materialist world of meat creatures celebrates strange physical sexual pairings, imaginary genders, and most of all the killing of the natural outcome of sex, children. In the insane materialist world, we have become much LESS than animals -- so we no longer understand the natural, as all animals do, and are drawn to the UNnatural.

Why? Because consciousness / spirit is decidedly not "natural" in any way that we can discern save divine intervention -- and the search for the divine, the "higher", delivers  a morality that has little to do with materialist "nature" -- red of tooth and claw. When our spirit looks up to God, we rise, when our spirit looks down to our own flesh, we fall.

Our flight from the embrace of the divine -- the transcendent, has left us to attempt to define moral structures based on power (might is right),  while feeling that the powerful "taking what they want" is somehow "immoral" according to? What? No doubt the "still small voice", but where oh where does our post modern, post truth society think that voice comes from? In confusion, many have decided to put government in the role of "god" as if humans acting in large unionized bureaucracies were somehow likely to be "virtuous".

We looked for "the good" in more government and found nothing but evil.

The "honest about men" version of this article closes with:

Much of the modern moral struggle is the war between entitlement and obligation. Raise a boy to live for himself, with a sense of entitlement, and he will often unleash that enormous inborn energy in the most destructive of ways. Raise a boy to live for others, with a sense of obligation, and that same energy can build a nation and sustain a culture. We can’t make a perfect world, but we do have a choice. Better or worse? It’s time to recognize and respond to human nature, or — despite the best of intentions — we will continue to choose to be worse.

Matt 23:11 "The greatest amoung you will be your servant". These ideas were once well understood. As we watch BOistan tear at itself like a dying animal the the words of Lincoln paraphasing the Psalm 19:9 in his second inagural comes to mind ... "The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether."

Western civilization had these answers solidly understood -- and now we are lost. 

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A Secular Age: Charles W Taylor

https://www.amazon.com/Secular-Age-Charles-Taylor/dp/0674026764/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

As I traversed this massive nearly 900 page work, I sometimes wondered; "Why does one undertake such a thing?". I had previously read "How to Not Be Secular", a "cliff notes summary", so I had the general ideas:

• 500 years ago we lived in an enchanted, embedded, hierarchical world, while today we live in a disenchanted, disembedded, flat world.
• The "standard story" of the secularists is a "subtraction story" -- "science" made it "impossible to believe" in more than matter. Taylor finds the "subtraction story" utterly lacking -- we still believe in love, beauty, justice, consciousness (spirit), and "good" ... none of which can be measured, so therefore do not exist to science. There are lots of other reasons that "subtraction" falls short.
• We live as a "Buffered Self" that is cut off from God, family, other people, the past, having "a place" ... again, a LONG list. However we are "buffeted" or "haunted" by our mortality and a sense of "something more" ... "fullness" that tugs at our hearts / souls ????
• Many are radically unhappy in this world to the point of suicide. They have FAR more "stuff" than even the kings, lords and popes of 500 years ago, yet their lives are arid -- often to the point of not being worth living. "Stuff" does not seem to be enough. 

I'll call those "the biggies" for now. My sense is that the reading of such a book vs "reviews" ... by me or others,  is a bit like the difference between being told of mountains, the ocean, falling in love, having children, grandchildren, etc and of EXPERIENCING those things. Certainly, good wordsmiths, poets, musicians, movie makers, etc can all convey significant parts of those experiences, however I doubt that any person that has experienced one of those or thousands of other things would say "I wish that I never did the real thing, I liked the descriptions of it much better"! 

Late in the millenium prior to Christ, there were a number of "higher religions" that began to replace paganism -- this is sometimes referred to as "The Axial Age" (Karl Jaspers) meaning "pivital age" because the idea of transcendence was so important to changing human thought. "More than mere matter". 

It is tempting for me to head off to read 5-10 referenced works that put even more flesh on the bones of how we have returned to essentially a pre-axial pagan view -- to make the obvious Lennon modification ... "nothing to live or die for, and no religion too ..." 

In the words of Evelyn Waugh quoted in the book ....

I think one has to look deeper before one will find the reason why in England today the Roman Church is recruiting so many men and women who are not notably gullible, dim-witted or eccentric.

It seems to me that in the present phase of European history the essential issue is no longer between Catholicism, on one side, and Protestantism, on the other, but between Christianity and Chaos… 

Today we can see [the loss of Christian faith]…as the active negation of all that western culture has stood for. Civilization – and by this I do not mean talking cinemas and tinned food, nor even surgery and hygienic houses, but the whole moral and artistic organization of Europe – has not in itself the power of survival. It came into being through Christianity, and without it has no significance or power to command allegiance. The loss of faith in Christianity and the consequential lack of confidence in moral and social standards have become embodied in the ideal of a materialistic, mechanized state… It is no longer possible, as it was in the time of Gibbon, to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis upon which it rests… 

That is the first discovery, that Christianity is essential to civilization and that it is in greater need of combative strength than it has been for centuries.

Christianity held out in the US for longer than it did in Europe, but we have descended into chaos as well -- pick what date you want, but few deny it today. Yes, the dominant culture still believes that the chaos of Obama was better than the chaos of Trump, however in a world driven only by raw power with no controlling theological, philosophical, constitutional or legal authority, secular life is  just a constant scrum for power by any means possible.

My purpose in reading works like this is to "experience the ocean" of a great mind creating a great work. The experience is one of being made both smaller and larger -- like seeing the ocean or the mountains. It isn't really about snapping a few pictures and putting down a few words. There is some minor similarity of why it is critical for a Christian to daily read their Bible -- cover to cover, then maybe just start again, or give the New Testament a second pass before going back to Genesis -- it becomes the constant EXPERIENCE of the Bible. Not "a text", but a connection to the vastness of God much larger than mere text.

Certainly, "Secular Age" pales in comparison, it is but a "shadow" as compared to the Bible -- like comparing going to Lake Mille Lacs with going to see the Pacific Ocean.

The link to "How to Not Be Secular" above, or another highly rated review of "Secular Age" will give you the "talking points", but in my view, not the "gestalt". Secular Age is clearly a labor of love for Taylor to create -- and at least a labor of "deep like" to read. It was worth it for me, and I hesitate to advise anyone else, other than to say that I would expect that anyone will be changed by the experience.

Massive Call For Moore Prosecution Today!

I assume that all BOistanis except a cynical few are rising up today in unison to call for the prosecution of failed Senate candidate Roy Moore! Clearly a ton of people found the evidence amassed against him to be terribly damning to the extent that he has been referred to as a pedophile by many mainstream media outlets and high minded social media posters (poseurs?).

I took the position that their charges were "all about political gain", which certainly many on FB found to be "cynical" as they virtue signaled their high minded morals on Moore's "crimes". Unless they were and are in fact the cynical ones,  I would expect a massive wave of demands from media outlets, Democrats and easily led Republicans alike for immediate prosecution! We all know that child molesters are nearly always repeat offenders, so there is little doubt that the prosecution will find a seamy string of sad victims over the past 40 years according to those who only did this for "justice".

OTOH, if there is no outcry -- or even a complete lack of concern for any investigation after this supposed awful man who many said would be "impossible for a Christian to support" just because the election is over,  what would that mean? Why would sane people virtue signal about how "good" they were to come out against Moore, even to the point of questioning others religious beliefs if they did not sign on to what they saw as the completely damning nature of these 40 year old charges?

My belief is that we live in an amoral age where actual standards are becoming exceedingly rare. Today's world is ruled by the left wing "Scribes and Pharisees" who are ALL about judgment and virtue signalling, however are in fact "whitewashed sepulchers" -- their only goal is POWER, political and otherwise, and they seek to make their idea of power synonymous with "virtue".

If all those who wasted time virtue signalling on FB and in the media do NOT seek to put this known (to them) child molester behind bars, I think we have pretty solid evidence what BOistan is REALLY about! Same thing with all the fake virtue signalling relative to Trump -- as the link I put above (repeat) makes very clear in the linked Village Voice article, the supposed virtuous elites are anything but!

The BEGINNING of wisdom is the fear of God! Only by constant devotion to Bible, prayer, sacraments, etc, can any of us hope to escape the snare of "the wide road" of being in agreement with the MSM, elites, "the popular ones" through the constant bombarding of media manipulation from all corners.

Perhaps I will be proven wrong and a huge outcry for Moore's prosecution is about to rise. If I'm correct however that it is not happening, do we not all KNOW that the charges were actually just a political smear job? How could they NOT be if the supposedly sanctimonious believers in those charges don't even have a twinge of thought about all the children that they MUST believe that Moore molested over 40 years, and is no doubt molesting today?

Search your heart, you KNOW it to be true at a visceral level that if denied puts your soul in eternal peril!

Intersectional Feminism, New Peak Smug

10 Things Every Intersectional Feminist Should Ask On a First Date - Everyday Feminism:

First of all, it is time to introduce "intersectionality". The link takes you to the wikipedia discussion -- the quick definition is "grievance bundling", with a special need to make sure that white women are dutifully sorry for their "white privilege" before they are really accepted by "the sisterhood".

The biggies are "racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia (country having borders in their parlance) and honoring all other religions except Christianity, with SPECIAL honor to Islam.

Think of an "Intersectional Feminist" as the opposite of a deplorable -- "secular sainthood"! I will tend to refer to them as "IFs" ... seems about right.

The other aspect that you pick up from their writing is yet another new height in arrogant smugness. To the article. I'm guessing that some readers of this blog will assume it HAS to be satire, however I looked around a bit just to be sure -- though a Christian that fears for mens (and even IFs souls), wishes it were --  it's not. No "fear of God" for these women ... er, "things"!

The imaginary vignette of this column is that a "cis male" (identifying as birth gender male) has taken an IF out for a date (hey, men think with the wrong organ sometimes!).

The list of "ten" is largely a misrepresentation ... it links off to specific grievances, each of which has their own lists of many grievances ... patriarchy, rape culture, prison-industrial complex, etc. I'll just include #8 as a representative.

We live on a tiny planet, with land and water within a galaxy surrounded by a universe with an inconceivable number of other galaxies and planets. Yet here we dictate where we are and who is allowed to be where we are. It’s mind-boggling that borders are even a thing, so to call people “aliens” or “illegal immigrants” is so inhumane and despicable.

White Americans stole this land, colonized this land, created so many borders, pushed out, killed and enslaved people of color and somehow they have the audacity to claim that this land is theirs and that black and brown immigrants are stealing their jobs, land, and homes? Miss me with that bullshit.

Well, actually they defeated their opposition by force, which in a world without transcendence is the most morality you ever get. Read the entire list of 10 -- as an IF, you DO have the right to not date anyone who doesn't agree with your opinions because there are a bunch of people that could kick your ass that will defend that right -- including me, who disagrees with pretty much everything you stand for, however still sees your right to make a dating decision without coercion of any sort as being "endowed by your and my Creator".

Transcendence was the idea that there were values beyond force -- "endowed by the Creator". For the general population, that idea is dead, therefore IFs need to find some way to defeat their opposition by force in order to get their ideas to hold sway. The traditional alternative to God is the all powerful state -- set up a bunch of secret police, military, tribunals, gulags, etc, and "re-educate" or kill people that don't bow to your "list of 10". Given the 2nd Amendment still existing even in BOistan, I'd guess the IFs are going to need A LOT of range time to have "a shot" at making much of their list of 10 a reality.

Without transcendence, ideas of "right / wrong / good / evil / better / worse ... etc" come down to might makes right. The issue of who can kick whose ass.`

The physically, intellectually, financially, etc less capable need some method to "incent / coerce / create compassion within" those with more power to protect them. In Western Culture for 2K years, that was Christian Morals -- be kind to even those who hate you, care for those that are weaker, etc -- it worked quite well in general terms.

Women got the right to vote, the lame, the sick, the mentally less abled, etc were cared for, most often in religiously based hospitals. The whole ethic that got Western civilization to the spot where a woman (or what she wants to be called ???) could have a platform to write this was Christianity -- those that lack understanding of human nature might assume that a really big "Thank You!" to Christianity and Western civilization would be in order.

Lose the battle of Poitiers (Tours)  in 732, and this woman and billions more might well be wearing burkas, not voting, not driving, not going to school, etc.

Nietzsche hated Christianity as well, especially the idea of "care of the weak".

Christianity is called the religion of pity. Pity stands opposed to the tonic emotions which heighten our vitality: it has a depressing effect. We are deprived of strength when we feel pity. That loss of strength which suffering as such inflicts on life is still further increased and multiplied by pity. Pity makes suffering contagious.

Clearly the writer of the list has FAR abandoned any concept of Christianity, so who is it that will stand up for her against those stronger than her, and WHY will they desire to do this?

Perhaps there are deeper questions for her to ponder. 

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#fakenews Is Losing

The End of Media History and the Last Honest Man | Unexamined Premises:

In the last couple of weeks we have had a a couple of major #fakenews stories that were not just glaringly wrong, they were obviously due to reporters so extremely biased that they seized what they saw as an opportunity to have a devastating "scoop" that might even take down Trump -- in whom they hate.

First we had the ABC Brian Ross report that Flynn was going to testify to being directed to talk to the Russians during the campaign by Trump -- which set twitter on fire, caused the markets to tank, and had all sorts of news outlets screaming "This is IT! We have got Trump!" !!!!!!!

Oops, Never Mind, he was directed to start talking to Russians AFTER Trump was elected -- which is of course exactly the stuff that an incoming administration does! I remember well that one of the common "news" items during the Clinton Impeachment was that "this is really really stupid, the right wingers are roiling the markets over SEX! A "private matter", even at the office, if your name is Slick Wille! Try that at YOUR place of employment and see if it flies. 

The entire "MoveOn.org" was set up to "just drop it and MOVE ON" -- nobody cared about sexual harassment, rape, perjury, obstruction of justice, etc when it applied to Slick Willie. "You will scare the markets"!!!! (or maybe the horses).


No concern for that in the MSM these days -- get Trump at ALL costs!



Then, we just had the CNN report that "there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Wikileaks"! ... oops, there wasn't, the Trump campaign got the access over a week AFTER everyone else had gotten it! Again, CNN, the leader in Fake News is the one doing the retraction this time.



Is there anything that somebody that is a critical thinker is likely to believe the MSM on these days? Certainly nothing I can think of if it is supposed to reflect badly on Trump -- their track record is just too bad!



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The Death Struggle With The Adminstrative State

Is the Deep State Attempting a Coup? | Power Line:

The following is a quote from the end of the PL link.

I agree with Professor Barnett that this is a constitutional crisis. The most powerful branch of today’s government is the Fourth: the permanent federal bureaucracy that is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution. The Trump administration can best be viewed, perhaps, as a struggle to the death between American voters and the federal employees who are paid to serve them.

The message of Watergate ought to have been "The Deep State" meets "Deep Throat" -- one of the main actors in ending America was the Administrative / Deep State. The following from this fine article ...

In other words, it looks like a low-integrity, reckless, biased bureaucrat has played an important role in two of the most important and politically charged criminal investigations of the new century. Yes, it’s good that Mueller removed Strzok when he discovered the text messages. No, Strzok is not solely responsible for the conclusions reached in either investigation. But his mere presence hurts public confidence in the FBI, and it does so in a way that further illustrates a persistent and enduring national problem: America’s permanent bureaucracy is unacceptably partisan.

Even FDR declared public sector unions to be completely unacceptable -- "It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government". If we still had a Constitution and a population that paid attention to what is happening in DC, the all-powerful, unionized Administrative State could never exist, and it CERTAINLY could not be part of "the resistance" to the duly elected president!

The following from this WSJ article on the affair ...

Oh, and the woman with whom he supposedly exchanged anti-Trump texts, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, worked for both Mr. Mueller and deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, who was accused of a conflict of interest in the Clinton probe when it came out that Clinton allies had donated to the political campaign of Mr. McCabe’s wife. The texts haven’t been publicly released, but it’s fair to assume their anti-Trump bias must be clear for Mr. Mueller to reassign such a senior agent.

An FBI agent that works to get Hillary off and then switches over to attempting by only barely camouflaged coup to remove a duly elected president.

BOistan makes 3rd world tribal states like BO's native Kenya  (see "Dreams" his claim, not mine) seem to be paragons of virtue in comparison.

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Faith and Reality Trumps Hate

Schumer says he advised Trump to declare Jerusalem Israel's 'undivided' capital | TheHill:

Naturally the MSM is downplaying NY Senator Schumer's support for Trump declaring the fact that we have all known for a few thousand years -- Jerusalem is the capital of Israel!

Schumer is of course a left winger, however for him, it appears that his faith in God, as well as his acceptance of reality actually "Trumps" his hatred of Trump! My hat is off to Chuck Schumer, and that is not something I say very often!

As we close on the season that we mark our years by (BC/AD), it might be a great time to reflect on what is more important to many than politics! Since the MSM will not generally allow you to remember, it is important to know that the congress of the US overwelmingly recognized the truth that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel in '95.

“We differ in our opinions, left and right,” he said as the speech concluded. “We disagree on the means and the objective. In Israel, we all agree on one issue: the wholeness of Jerusalem, the continuation of its existence as capital of the State of Israel. There are no two Jerusalems. There is only one Jerusalem. For us, Jerusalem is not subject to compromise, and there is no peace without Jerusalem.” 

That speech was given Oct. 25, 1995. On Nov. 4, a far-right student fatally shot him.
The evening before his speech, the Congress of the United States passed a law echoing Rabin’s assertions about the city. Spurred by the desire to act before Rabin’s visit, the House and Senate passed a bill called the “Jerusalem Embassy Act,” which formally recognized the city as the country’s capital and called for the U.S. Embassy in Israel to be moved there from Tel Aviv by 1999. 

Support for the bill was overwhelming. It passed the Senate by a 93 to 5 vote, with four Republicans and one Democrat voting no. It passed the House 374 to 37, with 153 Democrats joining most of the new Republican majority that had swept into power in 1994.

Jesus will return to Jerusalem, the capital of Israel -- if you are a Christian, you believe that. If you accept reality, you know that Israel is the capital of Israel.

Arabs don't accept Israel as even existing. Can you imagine being in a fight with someone that refuses to accept your existence? How about if your supposed ally refused to accept that your capital city from time immemorial was your capital city?

Perhaps it is too early for hatred to be "trumped", however recognizing reality is an important step in the path toward truth.