Dueling Church Signs In Charlotte

As a general rule I hate Church signs. Not because I have some strange phobia regarding signs but rather because Church signs suffer the inevitable consequences of people reducing truths that are extraordinarily profound to something that is catchy and cute. More often than not Church signs trivialize truth. It’s like the Elementary orchestra trying to do justice to Beethoven’s fifth symphony. It’s like Barney Frank being cast as Gen. George Patton in a Movie production. It’s like attending a Detroit Tigers Baseball game and finding me starting at short-stop. No sane person can take any of it seriously. The fact that people can’t take serious anything that is on a Church sign is reason enough to not try and use Church signs for anything but announcements of things like the Lady’s Easter Tea.

However, I noticed that in Charlotte, my home, there is currently a Church sign battle going on which makes church signs even more interesting than usual.

Over at the Plymouth Brethren Church we read,

Sometimes in order to make us
God must break us

Apparently this beautiful poetry was to much for the Episcopal Church, which is just a few blocks down from the Plymouth Brethren Church for they had to offer, on their Church sign, a rebuttal in poetry that was just as arresting,

God does not break us down
Or make us frown

Now, I suppose this makes for high Theological debate in Charlotte. I’ve even thought about entering into the fray with a sign of my own that says,

Do not drink the swill
Offered up by Church Episcopal

However, I do not think the citizens of Charlotte can take three doses of such heavy poetic culture and be able to survive. As such, I am not going to compete in this theological sign derby.

I would note however that the Episcopal Church here in town is led by a woman (at least I assume she is a woman — I’ve not the courage to assume that it is a man who is cross dressing — though given that we are speaking of an Episcopalian Church here I grant you that one must be careful with their assumptions.)

On the other hand, attendance at the Plymouth Brethren church will have you hearing about Red Heifer’s in Israel and the coming re-building of the temple and projected dates for Christ return.

You picks your poison … you takes your chances.

However, touching the point on which sign warfare is closer to accuracy, I offer these scriptures. I hope the truth of these things will not make our Episcopal friends frown to much.

See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.”(Deut. 32:39)

“The LORD brings death and makes alive;
he brings down to the grave and raises up.” (I Samuel 2:6)

“For he wounds, but he also binds up;
he injures, but his hands also heal.” (Job 5:18)

“Come, let us return to the LORD.
He has torn us to pieces
but he will heal us;
he has injured us
but he will bind up our wounds.” (Hosea 6:1)

“The moon will shine like the sun, and the sunlight will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven full days, when the LORD binds up the bruises of his people and heals the wounds he inflicted.” (Isaiah 30:26)

News Coverage On The Funeral For Dr. Hannibal Lecter

Today, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, amidst solemn dignity and quite honor, was interred at Arlington National Cemetery. Lecter, youngest scion born to a import – export royal family, was posthumously feted by friend and foe alike. Born in 1932, Lecter toiled in the long shadow cast by his famous and self denying family. With great humility and self abnegation Hannibal served mankind with aplomb and earnestness.

Lecter eventually discovered the cure for Cancer and even those who tenaciously fought against his eventual discovery of Cancer’s cure eulogized him with great fondness. Dr. Orrin Snatch, one of Lecter’s competitors said; “I fought with him and loved him like a brother.” Dr. Ray Stanforth Quail, former Vice President of the AMA, and another of Dr. Lecter’s opponents rendered up this panegyric to Hannibal Lecter; “though we were enemies in the medical guild Hannibal was a man who took the time to remember the names of my children and the dates of their birthdays. My children still remember with fondness how Dr. Lecter had them for dinner on their birthdays year in and year out when they were small — always serving New England Lobster with fava beans and a nice Chianti chaser.” New York Times Magazine medical writer Dr. Fred Kline spoke of Hannibal saying, “It is just the most amazing thing about Hannibal that he could joke about his cannibalism. It’s not that he didn’t feel remorse about the death of his victims, but that he still always saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too.” Dr. Don McLean, a peer of Hannibal’s but yet another man who opposed Lecter’s search for the cure for cancer offered this encomium to the memory of Lecter, “Hannibal was an institution within an institution. Whenever there was an event or anything like that, he had a remarkable way of sending out a little note or calling your family or something like that.” Dr. Moe Sliden, current Vice President of the AMA and co-laborer with Lecter praised him by saying; “In working with Lecter I was a witness to history.”

The unfortunate thing during this time of national grieving is that some hate filled people have not been able to look past the assorted vices of Dr. Hannibal Lecter, choosing instead to nurture their hatred by refusing to understand that a man of such greatness, like Lecter, must be allowed his occasional idiosyncratic behaviors. All these hate filled people can do, while looking at greatness, is to point out the speck in the great man’s eye. It is an open question, given the presence of these hate filled people, if America will ever be able to produce another Dr. Hannibal Lecter again.

Despite the haters and naysayers there is hope that the US will be able to pass a health care bill as a memorial to Dr. Lecter. In light of all of his work for the betterment of humanity, the realization of socialized Health care was long an aspiration of Dr. Lecter’s. Lecter’s lifelong hope was that victims would be well taken care of.

Cooper on Voting

“In those countries where the suffrage is said to be universal, exceptions exist, that arise from the necessity of things, or from that controlling policy which can never safely be lost sight of in the management of human affairs. The interests of women being thought to be so identified with those of their male relatives as to become, in a great degree, inseparable, females are, almost generally, excluded from the possession of political rights. There can be no doubt that society is greatly the gainer, by thus excluding one half its members, and the half that is best adapted to give a tone to domestic happiness, from the stripe of parties and the fierce struggles of political controversies.”

James Fenimore Cooper
American Democratic Leveling

There was a time when men believed that they were protecting their female relatives by not allowing them to get in the dirt and grime of political turmoil. Our change in this regard owes much to the idea that women are just as good at being men as men are at being men. And so women vote just like men. Women candidate just like men. Women get down in the political gutter in order to advance their political careers just like men. What we have given up, if Cooper was correct, is a large share of our domestic happiness.

One result of allowing women to vote has been the tendency of women to vote for parties and candidates that promise to use the government as a mechanism to provide. If you look at women voting patterns you will see that among all women (52% of the population) the Democratic party has enjoyed a typical (though not constant) advantage of 5-8% in presidential elections. It is the natural instinct of a woman to want to be provided for and taken care of and so naturally they tend to, as a whole, vote for statist candidates.

Ironically enough, when the government takes on the role of provider, a situation is created where men are not needed as much in the home to provide. When the government becomes the provider of the family the role of the husband is undercut and his place within the family becomes far more tenuous. Familial coventantal unity is attacked also by the reality that in many homes the votes of husbands and wives in elections cancel each other out. The interests of women are no longer identified with their male relatives.

What woman’s suffrage has introduced is a conflict of interests between men and women.

Alinsky’s Obama

Saul Alinsky, the Father of community organizing, is the methodological ghost behind the Barack Obama phenomenon. One will increase their understanding of Obama’s methodological approach to advancing controversial policies only by understanding Saul Alinsky’s worldview as it is contained in his book, “Rules for Radicals.”

Alinsky was a follower of Antonio Gramsci who held, unlike traditional Marxism as interpreted through Lenin, that the overthrow of the West would not be achieved by a revolution committed to rubbing raw the economic friction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie but rather that the unraveling of the West had to pursue an agenda that was committed to exhausting the Christian capital that was informing the culture of the West. The Gramscian revolution would be culturally totalistic as well as continuous. For Gramsci, following the Hegelian dialectic that holds that progress is defined by perpetual change, the long march through the cultural institutions never ends. Revolution is perpetual.

Alinsky, taught that those radicals committed to overthrowing the status quo society must look like they grow up out of the people. This meant that though people may hold Marxist revolutionary views they must take on the look of insiders. Alinsky wrote, “true revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within. Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process.” Here we see that Alinsky taught that radicals must become moles, burrowing their way into places of influence through deception and acting.

This willingness to disguise ones true nature in order to advance a radical agenda means that Alinsky students like Obama and Hillary Clinton (and much of the Democratic party for that matter) can never be trusted in terms of what they say. The Alinsky method teaches them that, “An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth — truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing…. To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations…” Elsewhere Alinsky taught that “The end is what you want, the means is how you get it. Whenever we think about social change, the question of means and ends arises. The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work.” Notice that the Alinsky method which Obama and Hillary have swallowed teaches a purely pragmatic approach to truth and ethics. Being good Marxists and Alinskyists they will pursue their agenda dialectically. Any concession by Obama will only be granted until a better time arises to gain back what has been conceded. The thing we must note here is that when dealing with people trained in this kind of mindset there should be absolutely no expectation that these people will operate according to some kind of Christian code of truth, ethics or honor. These people are Alinsky radicals and we can only trust them to act like an Alinsky radical.

Now interestingly enough even though the Alinsky trained radical does not have a absolutist code of truth they will engage in moral argumentation to advance their agenda. The reason this is done is because they understand that the people of the West who are hearing them are not operating with the same ethical relativism with which they are. An example of this is Obama’s disingenuous moral arguments regarding death care welfare. Being an Alinskyite, Obama doesn’t have a moral bone in his body but he knows other people do so he wraps his appeal for death care welfare in the tones of virtue and morality. Obama is a man who learned from Alinsky that, “you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments.” Of course this is an appeal right out of Satan’s book as he likewise clothed his appeal to Eve with moral arguments.

Another reality that we must contend with as we are dealing with an Alinsky trained man is Alinsky’s teaching that the community agitator (organizer is a euphemism) is a man who is constantly calculating the reaction of the opposition to the agitators action. Alinsky taught, “The organizer knows that the real action is in the reaction of the opposition. To realistically appraise and anticipate the probable reactions of the enemy, he must be able to identify with them, too, in his imagination, and foresee their reactions to his actions.” Now the reason that this is so vital to understand with the current administration is that I believe Obama is sending in his Union Brown shirts into these town-hall meetings calculating that a reaction will arise from his enemies (the American people) that will allow him to take a strong-armed response under the pretense that he must protect Americans from the excesses seen in the town-hall meetings. In short I think Obama, as a Alinsky student, would love to see things get out of control at these town hall meetings, as long as the chaos can be blamed on his opposition.

Obama’s whole person and being is defined by his marxism. That Marxism has come to him through Frank Marshal Davis, Saul Alinsky, Jeremiah Wright and others. The question with Obama is not whether or not he will act in a Marxist fashion but rather the question is what kind of Marxists do we have on our hands. I believe the facts point to the reality that Obama is a Gramscian Black liberation theology Marxist. This means he will always seek to advance the Marxist agenda but with the purpose of advancing first and foremost the interests of the black population that have bought into this view of cultural Marxism. This means that the man will act duplicitously at every turn. This means that traditional Christianity will be attacked by this man at each opportunity.

The unfortunate thing in all of this is that the only real way to defeat this ideology is by 100 proof Christianity and there aren’t a good deal of people around drinking that these days.

The Greatest Generation …. Oh, Please

Tom Brokaw wrote a couple books invoking the idea that the generation prior to the Baby boomers should be referred to as “The Greatest Generation.” Now, this generation includes my parents (barely) and my grandparents. Now, I love my kin as much as the other person but to suggest that that generation is “The Greatest Generation” begs a great number of questions.

After all it was this generation that,

1.) Made communism an international phenomenon. Sure, the greatest generation contributed to victory in WW II but what kind of victory was it when we put all of Eastern and much of Central Europe behind the Iron Curtain? What kind of victory was it when we put much of Asia behind a Communistic Bamboo curtain?

2.)Gave approval and participated in the un-Christian and barbaric acts that were the bombing of Dresden, the firebombing of Tokyo and the nuking of Japan. If Christian views of warfare had been followed such a thing could have never happened.

3.) Were standing guard when abortion was legalized. I’m supposed to get all misty eyed about a generation that stood by while abortion became a sacrament of the West?

4.) Were responsible for “The Great Society,” “The Welfare – Warfare State,” and the Military Industrial complex. In short it was on the “greatest generation’s” watch that we became increasingly and perhaps irretrievably socialist.

5.) Stood by and watched while gambling became legalized, while contraception became socially approved, and while immigration laws were changed in such a way that this country was assured that it would no longer be have a singular identifiable culture. Further the greatest generation watched as laws were put into place that feminized us as a people.

Now, I’m not suggesting that the generation in question didn’t have strengths. Neither am I suggesting that my generation has done well. It’s done even worst than their parents and grandparents. What I am suggesting is that is stretches credulity to suggest that the generation prior to the boomers should be referred to as “The Greatest Generation.”

This is why I’ve never bought into the whole “Greatest generation” bumble-fumble.