Category: Culture

Peggy Noonan was one of Ronald Reagan’s speechwriters. She is also a neo-con Republican and so isn’t to be read without that realization. However, Mrs. Noonan has the advantage of almost always presenting her views in an attractive and convincing fashion. Because of this skill at her art I enjoy reading Noonan, even though sometimes her neo-con ideology drives me batty. Recently Noonan had a piece where, in a slight rabbit trail, she had a wonderful sentence that captured the mindset of American leadership.

“You can today go to any office of any great leader in America and Britain – business leader, church leader, political leader – and you will find the great topic of conversation, the great focus of attention, the object of daily obsession, is not the mission (making money, spreading faith, leading an anxious citizenry in the right direction) but how the mission is playing in the media. It’s all they talk about.”

The cultural gatekeepers in America have gone from a preoccupation with their calling to a preoccupation with marketers and marketing. The object no longer is being faithful to what one was called to do but rather the object has become “what kind of press can we get or are we getting for whatever fecal matter we are shoveling today.” If the mission (no matter how skewed that mission is from what it should be) is getting good press and is selling well then the conclusion is that all is well with the organization. All of life has become a literal stage, and when one is on the stage one is not concerned with anything but how the performance is being received by the audience. The media has become the audience for the cultural gatekeepers and the message and calling of the cultural gatekeepers is being changed by the medium — and that quite apart from any realization that the medium has its own agenda.

As this pertains to the Church, most Churches are more concerned with image than theology and branding over truth. The goal is to present a slick product and not to give the whole counsel of God. Spokesmen like John the Baptist, who wore camel hair and ate locusts and honey, or the Apostle Paul who was short and possibly hump-backed with bad eyes need not apply for Pastor positions. Truth that is jagged and angular is replaced in the sanctuary with movie clips and praise and drama teams. It’s all a show aimed at getting rave reviews so that when the next show starts the place will be packed again.

“Welcome to the Grand illusion
Come on in and see what’s happening
Pay the price, get your tickets for the show
Someday soon we’ll stop to ponder
what on Earth’s this spell we’re under
We watched the show and still we wonder
who the hell we are.”

“The alien who is among you shall rise above you higher and higher, but you will go down lower and lower. He shall lend to you, but you will not lend to him; he shall be the head, and you will be the tail. So all these curses shall come on you and pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you would not obey the LORD your God by keeping His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you.” ~ Deuteronomy 28

This warning of God to Israel speaks of the consequences to God’s people for disobedience to the covenant. America is not God’s covenant people as Israel was and yet all nations who flout God’s ways are subject to God’s judgments against that nation which rebels against God. One sign that God is entering into judgment against a people is the reality that the indigenous people are vomited out of the land much like the land vomited the Canaanites out of the land when God entered into judgment against a people who were not His people. The pursuit of comprehensive immigration reform (aka — Amnesty plus for Illegal immigrants) for 12-20 million illegal immigrants is a sign that God has sent a strong delusion upon our elite for the purposes of continuing to judge America.

The result of amnesty for 12-20 million illegal immigrants will be the erasure of our unique identity as a nation-state. This move takes us from citizenship as Americans to citizens of the continent of North America. Just as with the victory of the North over the South in the war of Northern Aggression deleted the notion of unique identity by regionalism or by state in favor of identity according to attachment to the Nation State so amnesty for illegal immigrants will delete the unique identity of Americans according to the nation in favor of identity according to our hemisphere. This is all part of the new world order of globalism that all people’s are being herded into.

Also, keep in mind that if amnesty (comprehensive immigration reform) goes through this means additional pressure on the social order through the certain collapse of the social safety net. There is simply no way that our social services infrastructure can accommodate the additional millions and millions of people who will come to America after amnesty is given to the 12-20 million illegal immigrants that are already here. (Remember we tried this “one time amnesty” shot once before in 1986 and 25 years later we now have another 12-20 million we for whom we are going to render up another “one time amnesty” program. If the last “one time amnesty” program ended up with 12-20 million more illegal immigrants how many more illegal immigrants will this version of the one time amnesty program yield?)

It is probably to late to stop this illegal immigration amnesty program though there are times I think that if the elite really push this it will be their Waterloo. I sometimes think that this is the issue over which the bullets could start flying.

A few random thoughts on illegal immigration.

1.)A biblical approach to immigration would be to allow untrammeled immigration AND to have provision by which unbelieving immigrants could not change a godly social order. This is what you find in the Old Testament. However, one can not say they are advocating for a Biblical basis of immigration by insisting on untrammeled immigration without the mechanisms in place to create and maintain a godly social order. To insist on the first half (untrammeled immigration) without insisting on the second half (godly social order) is like advocating for Biblical sex without a bride.

Without a bride Biblical sex is not biblical and without a godly social order advocating untrammeled immigration is not biblical. You can’t appeal to half a solution and insist that you are being true to the whole solution that Scripture warrants.

You have to have a godly social order being maintained before you can argue that untrammeled immigration is biblical. If there is not godly social order in place and being maintained then whatever you are arguing for when you argue for untrammeled immigration you are not arguing for a Biblical position.

2.) If you stop the welfare state and if you enforce the demand side of the problem by bring heavy fines against those who hire illegals then you won’t need to ask for papers. Illegal Immigration will largely take care of itself. This is important to keep in mind when people continue to insist that one certainly can’t be in favor of rounding up 15 million illegal immigrants. We won’t have to round up illegal immigrants if there is no incentive for them to stay.

3.) The idea that Leviathan will shackle American citizens if we stop illegal immigration is easily countered by the reality that if we extend amnesty to 15 million Hispanics we will guarantee Leviathan will never be brought to heel as the overwhelming percentage of these votes will be cast to permanently establish the welfare State and to fix upon us the cultural Marxist vision.

Again … enforcement can be easily settled by turning off the cash incentives. Also, we should legislate against the whole notion of anchor Babies.

4.)

Question asked,

Gentlemen, do Ex. 22:21 and 23:9 have anything to say about this situation?

Bret responds,

Scripture can not be successfully appealed to, to support illegal immigration UNLESS Scripture is also appealed to in the means it required to protect a God ordained social order. The stranger was to be treated w/ kindness BUT he was not allowed, by the mass of his numbers, to establish a social order that was contrary to God’s law Word.

So, when we have a social order that will not allow the immigrant to destroy what very little remains of a social order that still has a trace of memory of Christianity then I will be all for untrammeled immigration.

Also, keep in mind that being kind to the stranger does not mean endorsing the welfare state.

People, have to keep in mind that what is behind the call for amnesty for illegal immigrants is the desire to completely demolish the residue of Christian influence and Christian structures and Christian social order. To support this is to support the death of institutional and culture wide Christianity in support of Leviathan — a religion where the state is God in which the citizenry lives and moves and has their being.

5.) I know America is not Israel. That reality makes flat appeals to the Scriptures to be as flat as they are. This is why I insist you can’t just read the requirement for kindness to the stranger as support for the erasure of borders. We also have to think about kindness to those who are living here. It is entirely possible that a certain kindness to illegal immigrants could mean a definite hard-hardheartedness towards the citizen and the native born.

Since America is not Israel then we should not point to passages in Exodus to inform us of our position on illegal immigration and amnesty since our domestic situation is completely and utterly contrary to Israels. As such, we have to know the times and understand the ideological currents that are pushing certain immigration advocacy.

And I’m telling you, that the ideological current that is pushing amnesty for 15 million illegal immigrants is one that desires to use the votes of those new citizens to completely overthrow any remnant whatsoever of America’s founding ideology and theology.

6.) Also, this matter of amnesty for 15-20 million illegal immigrants brings us to the subject of balkanization. A case can be easily made that with comprehensive immigration reform, as it is now packaged, the result will be to turn this nation into what the former Yugoslavia was after WW II. America is increasingly turning into a nation of nations, and a culture of cultures as these are both produced by various faith systems. The only way conflicting cultures, faiths, and visions of nationhood can be tamed is by a governmental apparatus that can use the heavy hand of the nation state to police the competing interests. In such a balkanized arrangement the State becomes the mediator, policeman, judge, and executioner in order to determine the limits of the competing cultures, faiths and visions of nationhood that exist in the balkanized nation-state.

ADD — A largely imaginary disease by which both the pharmaceutical industry and the psycho-therapy industry have become rich. It’s goal is to emasculate men from the tenderest of ages thus making them compliant slaves of the state for the rest of their lives incapable of either critical thinking skills or the courage to fight back.

ADD’s diagnosis is increased by a factor of 10 by its connection to an increase in more state money for the Schools in relation to the number of ADD students they have. ADD diagnosis is further aided by how Ritalin becomes such a handy mother’s helper to coral the sons at home.

Thank you Jesus that they didn’t diagnose ADD back in 1965 or else I’d still be on Ritalin.

Political correctness speech is a Machiavellian command and control device born of cultural Marxist presuppositions. Its purpose is the imposition of cultural Marxist uniformity in thought, speech and behavior. It seeks to alter all the previously Christian influenced rules — both formal and informal — that govern relations among peoples and institutions. It desires to change behavior, language, and even a person’s thoughts, and to a significant extent it has already accomplished its goals in the West. Keep in mind that whoever controls the language controls thought.

Political correctness often comes in the form of psychologized speech. It is psychologized because it often comes selling itself as “more sensitive, caring, and humane.” Indeed, one of the main carriers of the political correctness virus is the mental health industry. Psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, and others who have (sometimes unwittingly) bought into the cultural Marxist political correct speech standards and so pass it on to their numberless clients.

Because political correctness seeks to constrain thought, speech, and behavior there is now a need more than ever to be precise, blunt and even sometimes crass in our language. When a people have been lulled to sleep by a witches words of enchantment the only thing that might wake them up are angular, razor sharp and barbed words used like a sledge hammer with the hopes that such angular, razor sharp and barbed words will come crashing through the ideological haze of those infected by political correctness in order to awaken them from their linguistically induced coma.

Carmon Friedrich, next to my own wife, is the wisest woman I know. This is a piece that absolutely nails the ugly contradiction of very public women leading the charge in the conservative family values campaign. Would to God that more women thought like Carmon.

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

The nomad and the anarchist accuse the domestic ideal of being merely timid and prim. But this is not because they themselves are bolder or more vigorous, but simply because they do not know it well enough to know how bold and vigorous it is. – G.K. Chesterton

Have you ever sat too long in the doctor’s waiting room and resorted to browsing through a children’s magazine, desperate for something to read? (For the sake of my example, we’ll assume you never even considered cracking the cover of the ubiquitous People magazine beckoning on the table.) Remember those mind-bending — to a five-year-old — puzzles which show two similar pictures, but in the second picture there are some differences which you are supposed to spot? What’s wrong with this picture? is the name of the game, and some of the changes can be quite subtle, making a mature woman spend way too much time poring over those junior periodicals and missing the nurse’s call when the examination room is finally free.

Ahem.

Life mirrors art, and I’ve been thinking of how we can get the wrong impression if we don’t carefully examine the picture we are presented by those who paint a scenario they want us to believe in.

Last January I happened to be in Washington, D.C. with my daughter and a family friend during the annual March for Life. As ardent pro-life supporters, we knew we needed to join with the thousands of others on the Capitol Mall and by our presence, at least, show that we were on the side of life and unborn babies. It was encouraging to be among so many people who oppose abortion and want to see it stopped. But as I listened to the speeches from the podium, I grew restless and frustrated. I had heard the same speeches before, many times, over the past couple of decades. “If we only elect so-and-so” or “If we only get rid of so-and-so” were the most common refrains. That seductive stick with the juicy carrot of judicial appointments which could overturn Roe v. Wade was waved about several times. Most of the speakers were women.

I turned to the girls with me and looked them in the eye, and quietly gave them my take on the things I was hearing. Abortion in all 50 states throughout all nine months of pregnancy was declared “legal” by the Supreme Court in 1973, 27 years ago. Some in the pro-life movement claim minor victories as some abortion mills close down or statistics show slight decreases at times in the number of abortions, or Congress passes a law banning partial birth abortion. But reality is that we still have the blood of over one-and-one-quarter million babies each year crying out from the ground (Gen. 4:10). I told the girls that legal action to stop those deaths would be a wonderful blessing, but I don’t believe anything will change until the hearts of women who want those abortions are changed. They don’t want their babies. Why?

I notice that more and more of the leaders of pro-life and pro-family organizations are women. They are articulate and gifted women, skilled at public speaking and good at rallying the troops, like Joan of Arc or Deborah. It doesn’t take being a Sherlock Holmes to make a reasonable deduction that in order for these women to hold those leadership positions, they have to devote a lot of time and energy to their careers. That doesn’t leave much time for home and family. I will get in trouble for saying it, but I can’t help noticing that the empress is wearing a business suit and not an apron. And these are the women who are supposed to encourage women inclined to end an inconvenient pregnancy to instead sacrifice their time and energy in order to have a baby. Titus 2 for the twenty-first century.

That is one way the picture has some subtle changes from what we ought to see: many of the spokeswomen for the blessing of babies are living a lifestyle which portrays the feminist dream of power, prestige, and leadership in the public realm, a lifestyle which is not conducive to family life, let alone so-called “traditional family values.”

This brings me to a related issue which skews the picture our conservative friends are crafting: the whole-hearted endorsement of so many women for political office in the recent elections.

The frequent mention of the anomaly of Deborah during a time when every man was doing “what was right in his own eyes” has become a din almost as annoying as those vuvuzelas at the World Cup. She was one woman called out by God when there were no men with the gumption to take the lead and fight the scary Canaanites. Today, we have numerous women stepping into positions of leadership in every realm, but the real phenomenon is the strong support of so many conservative Christians for female political leaders, to carry the banner for those “traditional family values.”

“I do not think it means what you think it means.” –Inigo Montoya

The most prominent Deborah, of course, is Sarah Palin, who is angling for the highest office in the land. She recently proudly proclaimed herself a feminist. As she travels around the country giving high-paid speeches to tea party activists anxious for political hope and change, she speaks of “empowering women” and a “a new revival of that original feminism of Susan B. Anthony.” Unfortunately, that feminism laid the ground-work for the feminism of NOW, Hillary Clinton, and Gloria “A Woman Needs a Man Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle” Steinem.

And I know I will get in trouble (again) for saying it, but what about Baby Trig, single mommy Bristol, and husband Todd? What are they doing while Sarah is taking on the liberal establishment and reclaiming feminism? Who is holding down the home fort?

We hear a lot about Deborah today, but not so much about Jael. Some friends just had their fifth baby the other day, and her middle name is Jael. That same day, I was in a store and the young woman who was the clerk had a name tag that said, “Jael.” I commented on it and told her about my friends’ baby. The clerk, who sported several tattoos, was touched and told me her parents named her for the woman in the Bible, and she said she needed to go back and read the story again. I encouraged her to do so.

Do you know the story? After Deborah rallied the troops and encouraged General Barak to stop hiding behind her skirts to go after the Canaanites (she did NOT go into battle herself), the Israelites kicked their numerous behinds (i.e., “routed their troops”), and the enemy General Sisera ran for his life. Tired and scared, Sisera was given refuge by a woman named Jael, who lured him into her tent with assurances of safety. She kindly offered him a glass of warm milk, which every woman knows has soporific effects, and this time was no different. Soon he was sawing the logs, and Jael put an end to him with a tent peg to the temple. It’s not a story often told in Sunday schools, which may be why Deborah is more well-known than Jael.

This tale set in the context of a time of great turmoil and apostasy in Israel begins and ends with a woman. Deborah herself pointed out the irony of victory coming at the hand of a woman. Not exactly an imprimatur for future generations of women leaders. And the second woman stayed home and finished the job, using her domestic skills to foil the enemy. Imagine that.

What is it we are wanting to accomplish? Do we want to address symptoms or causes in our quest to set things straight? First we need to agree on which picture is true and which is distorted. We need to portray a lovely picture of the blessings of being a woman at home, having babies, being content as the helpmeet rather than taking the lead. We need to understand the great power in that privileged position and see God’s great providence at work as He brings opportunity knocking at our door, without the need to gallivant about looking for greener pastures or quixotic quests. Faithful service over a couple generations will generate greater hope and change than dozens of political campaigns filled with the same old platitudes, wrapped in a different package for a new crop of gullible voters.

We need more Jaels, not Deborahs.