Category: Culture

A abortion center can open and pay for itself in its first month and be a profit center every month after that. The slaughter of the unborn is a HUGE money making enterprise for those who operate and own the the clinics.

In order to drive demand for their product (abortions) the practitioners and owners of the clinics will go to schools and sell abortions to teens through the means of selling safe sex. The goal of the death merchants is 3-5 abortion per teenage girl between the ages of 13-18.

The whole family planning and sex education that is found in the schools around the nation facilitates the demand for abortion. Teaching children the hows of sex significantly spikes sexual activity among children.

Low dose birth control pills are often distributed knowing that young girls will not follow the precise instructions. The young girls, not following the precise instructions, increase their sexual activity having a false confidence in the birth control pills that they are given. The combination of increased sexual activity and a lack of precision necessary in taking the birth control pills results in increased pregnancy rates. Increased pregnancy rates helps the abortion industry reach its goal of each female having having 3-5 abortions between the ages of 13-18 thus staying profitable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1JhTJ00b_A&feature=related

R. Scott Clark wrote on Heidelblog,

One might not have expected this Department of Justice to be advocating on behalf of religious liberty and one might not look at this case as good news but arguably one might be wrong.

The Department of Justice is suing a school district in the west suburbs of Chicago for refusing to allow a Muslim teacher to make a three-week pilgrimage (Hajj) to Mecca. Before you roll your eyes or moan about the growing cultural influence of Muslims in North America consider this: how might this case affect sabbath-keeping Christians?

First, religious liberty is what God says religious liberty is. Does God call it religious liberty to allow the growth, promulgation, and approval of ant-Christ religions “liberty”? Does the God of the Bible think it is a good idea to give Allah equal time and equal consideration with Himself?

So, I question Scott’s premise that what is being advocated here is, by God’s standard, religious liberty.

Second, religious liberty has always been the pretext that is used by a religion in the ascendancy to insure that the present ascendant religion won’t snuff out it’s progress in replacing the currently ascendant religion. For example, Christianity was once the ascendant religion in these united States but by the use of the mantra of “religious liberty” humanism, as the ascending religion, has replaced Christianity as the ascendant religion.

This work by the Obama administration to invoke religious liberty on the behalf of Islam, it could be argued, is a small stepping stone on the way to America becoming Sharia compliant. Don’t laugh. Twenty five years ago could one have predicted the Muslim influence in Western Europe?

Third, note here though the God that is the god to which Scott is turning. It is the god that is the State who is going to determine whether or not Allah’s subjects will be allowed to be obedient. Scott apparently finds it good news that the State will be the god of the gods determining how seriously the subjects of the respective gods will take the requirements of their gods. This reveals, once again, that there is no religious liberty in this country that is not consistent with the demands of the god of the public square … i.e. — The State. For Scott, it is hard to see how it is not the case that we live and move and have our being in the State.

R. Scott Clark writes,

“One of the great challenges of being a Christian in a post-Christian culture is the challenge of the sabbath. If the Barna studies from a few years back are accurate, that only about 10% of Americans really attend church weekly and only 50% of those attend twice weekly, then it seems likely that most Americans have never actually met anyone who observes the Christian sabbath as prescribed by the Westminster Standards. In such a case the traditional, confessional Reformed approach to the Christian sabbath is likely to lack plausibility in a 24/7 culture.”

First, I’m pretty sure that R2Kt doesn’t believe in such a thing as Christian culture. If that is true then there is no way that I can understand what Scott means when he say’s “post-Christian.” If it is not possible, by R2Kt standards, for a culture to be Christian than how can R2Kt adherents write in terms of “post-Christian?” Does Scott’s statement that we are in a post-Christian culture mean that he admits that there is such a thing as Christian culture?

Second, my biggest problem in the above blocked paragraph is a subtle underlying assumption beneath the idea of being a Christian in a post-Christian culture. This underlying assumption seems to be that it is possible for a culture to be post-Christian without being explicitly something else. All cultures are dependent upon a faith in order to give definition to a culture. So, since this is true, if a culture is post-Christian that means it is currently pinned on some other belief system. I would argue that we are in a post-Christian culture that is pinned on the faith of religious humanism (forgive the redundancy) that still retains a ever decreasing Christian memory. However, I do think there is a desire by some to broaden the influence of Islam, as this pursuit of the Justice department indicates.

R. Scott Clark writes,

“It is certainly true that Christians committed to Reformed sabbath observance face considerable pressure from their employers to work on Sunday. Supreme Court rulings on this are mixed. In Sherbert v Verner (1963) the court overturned the Supreme Court of South Carolina in favor of a Seventh-Day Adventist who was denied unemployment benefits because she was unable to work on Saturday. One might note it was Justice Brennan who wrote the majority opinion. In Thorton v Caldor (1985), however, the court held that a private employer who opened his business on Sunday (after the laws requiring businesses to close on Sunday were revised). Thornton was a Presbyterian who invoked a Connecticut law that states:

No person who states that a particular day of the week is observed as his Sabbath may be required by his employer to work on such day. An employee’s refusal to work on his Sabbath shall not constitute grounds for his dismissal.”

It is my conviction that Scott is mistaken to try and extrapolate this Justice department pursuit of Muslim “equity” to mean that Christians might be treated better in regards to sabbath observance. I believe this is a mistake because I don’t believe that there exists a social order that does not favor the religion that of which it is the incarnation. The fact that the Justice department is pursuing “equity” for Muslims, in my estimation, should be extrapolated to be seen as an open door to greater Muslim influence and Hegemony vis-a-vis Christianity and definitely not the harbinger of greater freedom for Christians. It is my conviction that such a pursuit by the Holder Justice Department for Hagjj for school teachers portends not promising consequences for Christians but rather further casting Christianity into the brackish backwaters of the social order.

R. Scott Clark wrote,

“Nevertheless, Justice Burger, who wrote the majority opinion, held that Thornton was protected from infringement by the state but not by a private employer.

Some observations:

# It’s interesting that an ostensibly “liberal” justice wrote in favor of religious liberty and an ostensibly “conservative” justice has arguably written against the interests of religious liberty (in favor of the interests commercial liberty?). Did the founders envision that an employer would have a right to require employees to work 7 days a week? Probably not. Did the founders envision the sort of no-holds barred market capitalism that has developed in the modern period? Probably not. Did they imagine that there would be conflict between religious liberty and commercial interests? I don’t know but a society necessarily expresses some hierarchy of values in legislation and court rulings and those rulings and laws occur on some basis. Which is a higher value for a society? Religious liberty or freedom of commerce? Late modern society has restricted freedom of commerce in other instances. Since 1964 a business cannot refuse to serve customers based on the color of the customers’ skin. That’s a limit and a hierarchy of values. I’ve argued before, in that case, private property seems also to be infringed and that could be a detriment to religious freedom.

First, I’m glad Scott called a SCOTUS Justice who voted in favor of Roe vs. Wade, and who authored the Court’s opinion upholding the right of trial judges to order busing as a remedy for school segregation, and who by his infamous “Lemon Test” drove Christianity out of the public square, “ostensibly conservative.” Warren Burgher was no conservative.

Second, it is not surprise at all that a liberal Justice would vote in favor of religious liberty because the intent of such votes has always been to dilute the influence of Christianity and to dismantle the remnants of a Christian social order. We are post-Christian, in part, because of liberal Justices voting for “religious liberty.”

Third, Scott wrote something very interesting in that above blocked paragraph that needs to be isolated and examined.

a society necessarily expresses some hierarchy of values in legislation and court rulings and those rulings and laws occur on some basis.

And the “some basis” is a people’s religion, whether explicitly or implicitly stated. The fact that somebody was required to work on the Sabbath was not primarily a “commercial interest,” as Scott tries to sell, but rather it was, at its foundation, a religious interest on the part of employer to require the employee to work. The employer’s religious interest in making the employee work was so that the employer could better serve his god (Mammon). And what is really interesting here is that Scott seems to believe that the “religious liberty” of the employer to require the employee to work on the Sabbath is less important than the “religious liberty” of the employee to not want to work on the Sabbath. This is an example of how one can’t grant “religious liberty” to one group without taking them from somebody else.

When looked at this manner, it is easy to see that it is never a matter of choosing “commercial interests” over “religious interests” as Scott posits but instead always a matter of choosing which religious interests of different people will be given hegemony. The school teacher has religious interests in going on Hajj. The School teachers employer has religious interests in making sure she works. Now, we don’t typically frame it this way but if one were to get to the nub of the matter we would see this as a contest between the gods.

R. Scott Clark wrote,

“# It’s also interesting that the Obama Justice Department is pursuing this case. Some cultural-religious-Christian conservatives may see this move as an attempt to further advance a “Muslim agenda” in the USA. Perhaps but, depending on the outcome, it may also yield benefits to Christians who want to work but who also want to observe a weekly sabbath. If the courts rule that Muslims have a right to take unpaid leave to go on a Hajj then might not Christians also be granted the right to take unpaid leave to observe the Sabbath? This possibility raises the question of whether Christians are willing to place their religious commitments above their commercial and financial commitments. Would Christians take that deal?”

It is my conviction that it would be most unwise for anyone to see this as anything but a revelation of the mindset of the Obama administration to advance a Muslim agenda. Scott, assumes that his version of “religious pluralism” will prevail but no other religion suffers from the weakness of thinking that it has to play fair with the adherents of religions that are contrary to the one that is informing the prevailing social order. As Scott himself has noted, we are living in a post-Christian culture, and one of the dynamics of a post-Christian culture is that Christians aren’t treated even-handily. The fact that Muslims are given unpaid time off to go on to Hajj will not translate into employers being required to give Christians unpaid Sabbath leave anymore then it being criminal to cause a woman to miscarry by assault and battery is translated into it being criminal to abort a viable baby. One set of laws that would seemingly imply another set of laws often don’t go together.

Now the question that Scott ends with in the blocked quote above reduces down to, “Will the Christian accept the honoring of false gods in their culture if it means that they can honor, without consequence, the true God.” If Christians work on the sabbath it is not because their commercial or financial interests are above their religious interests but rather it is because their true religious interests are above their stated religious interests. The fact that they might be bribed to gain the opportunity to practice their stated religious interests at the price of allowing the religious interests of false gods to prevail is to add the insult of making room for false gods in the social order to the injury of doing something (work on the Sabbath) that they say they are against.

Overall, Scott’s main problem is he keeps wanting to compartmentalize. Religious interests are compartmentalized from financial interests or commercial interests but at bottom all interests are religiously motivated interests.

R. Scott Clark wrote,

“Look, you can have Sundays off but we’re not going to close on Sundays and I have to hire someone to take your place so you’ll have to take unpaid leave on Sundays.

# This isn’t exactly spoiling the Egyptians but maybe in between the times this is the best for which we can expect, an unexpected blessing? Will Reformed Christians be prepared to capitalize (pun intended) on this opportunity or has our piety and practice become indistinguishable from generic American Protestant mainliners and evangelicals?

One thing that is sure is that this is the best that an amillennialist can expect. If Reformed people really believed that they shouldn’t work on the Sabbath then it wouldn’t take the allowance of the honoring of false gods as incentive for them to actually do what they said they believed.

Religious pluralism is a myth. The sooner people like Scott learn this the sooner we will have a higher best to expect.

Throughout the Scriptures God eschews the self-sufficient powerful and exalts the obscure God dependent weakling. Starting with His preference for the younger brother Abel who offered a better sacrifice over proud and brooding older brother Cain, God, throughout redemptive history gives a narrative template where God refuses the proud and gives grace to the humble. God favors the younger and weaker Jacob and determines that through Jacob the promised seed would come, and this over against the natural leader and hunter Esau. In Jacob’s family it is the younger brother, Joseph, who becomes a slave and a imprisoned criminal who God lifts up over His older brothers in order to provide salvation for his people in Egypt. With Moses, God takes a weakling baby from the Bulrushes, saved from Pharaoh’s attempt to destroy God by destroying His people, and raises Moses to be the deliverer of His people out of Egypt. This same Moses apparently has a severe speech impediment so badly that he pleads that God use someone else and yet Moses becomes known as the the greatest of the Prophets. The Scriptures goes from story to story where God takes the things that are not to confound the things that are.

This story continues with the calling of David. Samuel is sent by God to anoint a new King and it isn’t until the shrimp youngest brother is called in from doing time shepherding the sheep that Samuel finds God’s intended. This same David is raised up by God to be a archetype of the Messiah who, trusting in the promises of God and completely unsupported by the strength of man, goes out to meet the enemy and crushes the head of a Giant decked out in serpent scale armor. When we come to Elijah we come upon one lonely and sometimes despairing man arrayed against the established power center of the culture with its fertility cult priest class and through Him God pulls down the pagan social order. God calls the farmer Amos from his Sycamore tree business to be His voice against the high and mighty oaks of Israel.

Isaiah speak of God’s true servant who will be the least expected of those used to advance God’s agenda. The true Servant, Isaiah tells us, will be despised and rejected by men. The true servant of God will be like a sheep led to the slaughter. The true servant will be the stone that that is rejected by the craftsmen. When the true servant comes it is asked of his origins “can anything good come from Nazareth.”

This narrative of God raising up the weak and opposing the mighty who hate Him and His people finds itself getting wove into the moral imagination of Western civilization. What other story is it but the above story that God tells when we find the West telling stories about a little boy who shouts, “The Emperor is Naked”? What other story is it but the above story that God tells when we find the West telling stories of a little crippled boy with a iron brace whose simple kindness overcomes a miser named Scrooge? What other story is it but the above story that God tells when we find the West telling stories of 300 soldiers at Thermopylae slowing up the advance of tens of thousands in defiance of the wisdom of the Oracle of Delphi? What other story is it but the above story that God tells when we find the West telling stories about a handful of Hobbits shaking the foundations of the mighty and the powerful? What other story is it but the above story that God tells when we find the West telling stories about a washed up palooka named Rocky Balboa overcoming all odds? The West’s moral imagination has been shaped by God’s revelation in Scripture.

I am the Lord thy God who delivers you from all your inconveniences, from trusting in all the lesser gods

Thou shalt not have any other gods who compete with my sway or say in your public life

Interpretation — I, the State, am the God of the gods and by my priests and by my cult I determine what shall happen in the public square in terms of Health, Education and Welfare of my people. Any of my people who insist that their private God or gods can challenge me or my fiat word in the public square will be cut off from the my provision. Biblical Christianity is thus criminalized.

“Thou shalt make for thyself only the graven images that speak of me.”

Interpretation — In the public square the God State will declare the graven images. Only images like Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and other visionaries who advanced the State agenda will be honored in the Public square. No Image of any other God that demands a obedience that is higher than the obedience required by the State will be found in the public square. Biblical Christianity is thus criminalized.

“Thou shalt not take the name of whatever I declare Holy in vain for the Lord thy God will charge thee with hate crimes if you take the name of that thing in vain that I have set aside as holy.”

Interpretation — I am the State, and whatever I, as the state sets apart as holy, shall not be glibly invoked or cursed. Biblical Christianity is thus criminalized because Biblical Christianity routinely takes in vain all that the State sets apart as holy.

“Remember the Wealth and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work but the seventh day is another Wealth day. In it you shall do your regular work so that I may excise from you all I need to keep you enslaved to working without rest and to keep you from thinking upon a God who does offer rest.”

Interpretation — Man was made to work for the State and this includes every waking moment.

“Honor thy Mother and Father by forgetting them so that it may go well in the land that I, the State am giving you.”

Interpretation — As the State is the only familial and communal reality, the worshipers who belong to the state will identify themselves against the State and not against lesser communal organization such as, what used to be called, “the family.” Parents have only the right to raise their children to be cogs in the machinery of society that the State builds. Home is to be nothing more but a bed and breakfast routine. Children are to be divided from family by school and by television when they are at home. Biblical Christianity is thus criminalized.

“Thou Shalt Not Murder …. except all those I say are useless eaters or who are living lives not worthy of life.”

Interpretation — The unborn, the aged, and the enemies who stand in the way of my “spreading of Democracy” all must be put to death. Biblical Christianity is thus criminalized.

“Thou shalt hump like dogs, breed like rats, and mate like Bees.”

Interpretation — Since all sense of individual and personal ownership and responsibility must be broken down in order that the State may be all in all in everything, all sexual mores that bespeak a standard above and outside of the State must be broken down and trammeled under foot. As such, all sexuality that promotes anarchic chaos must be pursued so that the State can be seen as the God who creates “order” on this personal chaos. Biblical Christianity is thus criminalized.

“Thou shalt not call anything the state does ‘Stealing.'”

Interpretation — As the citizen “lives, and moves, and has his being in the State,” the citizen may not have any individual claim to something as uniquely theirs. The notion of individual private property is destroyed. The destruction of individual private property shall be pursued by redistribution schemes. Biblical Christianity is thus criminalized.

“Thou shalt not bear false witness”

Interpretation — Bearing false witness is defined as speaking in such a way that would communicate that one believes in absolute truth. Only the notion of absolute truth is “false witness.” False witness can be avoided by affirming humanist and positivist understandings of truth. Truth is relative to whatever advances the social engineering goals of the state. Biblical Christianity is thus criminalized.

“Thou shalt use the state to get what you covet”

Interpretation — The State is Jehovah Jireh — the god who provides. As such you shall use the state to achieve your covetous desires. If you covet sloth you shall use the State to provide that sloth by taking 99 weeks of unemployment. If you covet money you shall use the State to get more money by having babies out of wedlock. If you covet global expansion of your company you shall use the State to take money from the citizenry to pay for your corporate welfare. If you covet not having any competition as a businessman you shall use the state to provide for you the ruination of your competition as you give kickbacks so that the State can legislate your competition out of existence. If you covet health you shall use the state to rob Doctors and Hospitals their just wage so that you can have “free” health care. Biblical Christianity is thus criminalized.

There are those among us who insist that currently we are suffering under “soft tyranny.” I take those who speak this way to mean that the tyranny that we are currently experiencing is not of the overt kind that one reads about when one reads of the Soviet Show trials, or when one reads about the German Einsatzgruppen, or when one reads about the Killing fields of Cambodia. Instead, what the phrase “soft tyranny” is supposed to communicate is the incremental tyranny that can be likened to being suffocated by a pillow as opposed to being suffocated by the butt end of a M-16.

I understand the metaphor of “soft tyranny” but I think it is time that we give it up for something harsher to describe what we are currently being subjected to in this country. We are long past the gentle coastal regions of “soft tyranny” that was in place when Woodrow Wilson and FDR were the Tyrants in Chief. Today we are well into the rugged highlands of tyranny and we really must altar our language to reflect that. Fortunately, for us, our history provides us with nomenclature that can be dusted off and used again to describe what we are currently living under and to which we are now subjected.

In our Declaration of Independence our forefathers complained of “absolute Despotism,” and “Absolute tyranny.” So, in the Spirit of 1776 I submit that we lose the “soft tyranny” language and begin to speak again like our Fathers and speak of absolute Despotism and Absolute tyranny. After all, there really is nothing “soft” about this totalitarian regime with which we are contending.

Can the tyranny we are currently living under, really only be referred to as “soft” when there is obviously a concerted attempt to destroy the dollar with all our bailouts and now with the news of “QE2.” Should the tyrannical attempt to hyper-inflate the dollar, be visited only with the sobriquet “soft?” I assure you, Dear reader, should the Feds be successful in hyper-inflating the Dollar you will not call the results, “soft.” No, only the descriptor of “absolute Despotism” will do.

Can the tyranny we are currently living under, really only be referred to as “soft” when one listens to Economic Nobel Prize winning Democrats who have the President’s ear say we will only be serious about budgetary reform when we create death panels and submit to a Value added tax? Such, policy, if achieved, would take us even beyond absolute Despotism to Stalinesque Tyranny.

Can the tyranny we are currently living under, really only be referred to as “soft” when one reads of legislation that is being moved that will restrict our ability to grow our own garden produce and own our own garden seed? What else but “absolute Despotism” can this be called? There is nothing “soft” in the tyranny that would find the State preventing people from tilling their ground and raising their food.

Can the tyranny we are currently living under, really only be referred to as “soft” when the American version of Dr. Josef Mengele is appointed as the man who will head our brand spanking new Health Control centers? Dr. Donald Berwick is a man who doesn’t think that individuals are competent enough to determine what health care they should have and insists that the State must regulate your health care,

“Today, this isolated relationship (between doctor and patient) is no longer tenable or possible… Traditional medical ethics, based on the doctor- patient dyad must be reformulated to fit the new mold of the delivery of health care…Regulation must evolve. Regulating for improved medical care involves designing appropriate rules with authority… Health care is being rationalized through critical pathways and guidelines. The primary function of regulation in health care, especially as it affects the quality of medical care, is to constrain decentralized decision making.”

Now there is a good deal of mumbo jumbo in that quote, but the gist of it is, “The medical decisions process that used to be made by you and your Doctor is passe and as such a government official is going to be part of the decision making matrix in terms of your health care … for your own good of course. These government officials, who are involved for your own good in the decision making process of your health, will have rules that you and your doctor will be forced to abide by (for everyone’s good of course). These rules will make it so that decentralized decision making (code language for you, the patient) will be constrained (code language for “you will be forced to do what we say is good for you.”) This is absolute Despotism my friends and the word “soft” blushes to be used to describe the tyranny that is described above.

Can the tyranny we are currently living under, really only be referred to as “soft” when one is forced to surrender their fourth amendment safety when they go to an Airport in order to visit Gradpa and Grandma for holiday? Is it really only “soft” tyranny when you’re getting gang banged by the state as the “I’d feel up my Sister for a paycheck” TSA, in their muted gestapo uniforms, twist your breasts and power stroke your genitalia? I’m thinking only “absolute Despotism” fits when we are talking about State sanctioned sexual assault.

Can the tyranny we are currently living under, really only be referred to as “soft” when it is clear that what the man who is called the “President” intends to do is to achieve by bureaucratic slight of hand what he couldn’t attain via legislation in terms of cap and tax? Is it only “soft” when the intent of such tyranny is to drive the coal industry out of business? Is it only “soft” when the intent of such tyranny will drive food prices through the ceiling and impoverish Americans? Is it only “soft” when the intent of such legislation will result in brownouts across America? There is nothing “soft” about such designs. This is nothing but what our founders styled “absolute Despotism … absolute tyranny.”

We could go on and on but already we have demonstrated that “soft” tyranny is just to soft of a title for what we are living under. All of this is an attempt at the undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. This is absolute tyranny and those who will not resist absolute tyranny deserve to eventually fall into Stalinesque tyranny.

Surely, no one would argue that all these expressions of absolute tyranny are anything but the result of prearranged efforts. When we see a lot of framed timbers of usurpation, of different proportions, which we know have been laid at different times and by different tyrants, and when we see these framed timbers of usurpation joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of the house of absolute Despotism, — every previous usurpation fitting exactly with the usurpation that preceded it and not a necessary usurpation missing and not a extra usurpation to be had — then we know we are well past the exit called soft tyranny and are entering into the city called absolute tyranny and absolute Despotism.

My friends, war is being made upon the citizenry of this country. Now, it can be a war where the causalities are only on the side of the citizenry or it can be a war that finds the Despots making war visited with a resistance that they find disconcerting.