Category: Culture

Somehow when the end came for Dr. George “Mengle” Tiller the setting of his death was altogether appropriate. Tiller had spent his life serving as the high priest in the sanctuary of humanism for decades, bringing murder, death and torture to tens of thousands in his abortuary. In turn, when Tiller was murdered Sunday, God returned him the favor as Tiller was murdered as he stood in God’s house. The irony shouldn’t be lost on us — it seems that even God operates with an eye for an eye ethic.

The first response we should have over the news of the Tiller murder is sympathy, quickly followed by joy. We should have sympathy and compassion for any man who was as gladly captive to sin as Tiller was. We should have sympathy and compassion due to what might have been if this man had not rejected the good life that can only be found in Christ. We should have sympathy and compassion because each of us, except for the grace of God, could have easily spent our lives as George Tillers. Every time I see a wicked man die, I feel a note of sympathy, compassion and pity. George Tiller was made for better things then what George Tiller embraced and the fact that he embraced the demons of unreality should cause all of us to be sympathetic.

But I also know joy. Not the shallow type of joy but a deep resonating joy. I feel joy that no longer will this wicked man slay the judicially innocent. I feel joy because justice, albeit of a rough variety, was visited on someone who so thoroughly opposed a culture of life and who worked so assiduously to spread the culture of death. I know joy because the truth of Scripture that those who take up the sword shall die by the sword is seen as authoritative. I know joy because I know that no longer will Dr. Tiller be sucking out the brains of people, or torturing people with saline or dismembering people in utero. How could a sane person not feel joy at the death of a mass murderer and a terrorist?

Inevitably the questions arise as to how we should view the murderer of such a wicked murderer. A few observations here,

1.) Vigilantism is justice as it is found on the black market. If the State will not use the sword to exercise just justice then the state should not be surprised when justice shows its face as vigilantism on the black market. People will only put up with the State using the sword to protect injustice for so long. Eventually, when the State will not use the sword properly the black market will use it improperly. Whoever the murderer of George Tiller is, the State should be charged as an accessory to the murder of George Tiller just as it was an accessory to all the murders that Tiller committed.

2.) I don’t know who the murderer is but I do know that you can’t kill the King’s policy by killing the King’s executioner. The King pays his executioners a handsome sum. For every George Tiller you kill five more will grow up to replace him in pursuit of all the money that can be made in the executioner business. Still, we must admit that if enough executioners find themselves “Tillered” it is going to make future executioner wannabees think long and hard about going into the executioner business.

3.) There are those who want to be outraged by this murderers act. I can’t bring myself to be outraged. Let’s pretend that instead of in uterine babies being murdered George Tiller was making a career out of the State sanctioned murder of five year old children, or even … let’s say … Jews. Would any of us be outraged and insist that it is not Christian to kill the killer of tens of thousands of five year olds or hundreds of thousands of Jews? I don’t think we would be. Does the fact that we are outraged by the murder of this murderer indicate that perhaps we really don’t see these in uterine victims as human ourselves anymore?

4.) Still, I am Reformed and Reformed people have consistently taught that we bear God’s judgments against us patiently until God raises up other magistrates that we might follow to throw off the yoke of oppression inflicted by the existing reigning magistrates. If each man took the law into his own hands, thus becoming vigilantes, anarchy and civil war would result and this would be a judgment against us even greater than the judgment of ethnocide that we are currently experiencing. If you doubt this visit Beirut.

5.) Scripture is full of examples of God raising up one wicked party to punish a second wicked party while still holding his instrument of punishment responsible for their wickedness. Assyria destroying wicked Israel doesn’t get a pass for its own wickedness. George Tiller spent a life sowing the wind and his life ended by reaping the whirlwind. The murderer of Tiller has now sown his own wind and he likewise shall reap his whirlwind.

If you’ve read this far and are thinking … “this sounds conflicted.” It is only because I am conflicted. I hate abortion and abortionists. While I am sympathetic for the reasons I stated above in the end I shed absolutely no tears over their demise. I completely understand why a person would murder a murderer in order to defend the yet unborn. And yet, I can’t bring myself to justify such anarchy that would be let loose upon us as a people if each man began to do what is right in his own eyes in a frenzied fit of vigilantism.

We must bear God’s judgments against us until God raises up other magistrates to throw off the yoke of torture and murder of the unborn. We must pray that God would either grant repentance to the wicked or that he would hear the blood of the unborn crying out from the ground for justice and send the unborn lawful relief.

And perhaps in the end we need to tell ourselves that if the wicked desire to destroy their seed … then let them.

I am captivated by the Sonia Sotomayor nomination for Supreme Court Justice because along with the election of B. Hussein Obama as President it is emblematic of what might be called the official recasting of America. For decades now there has been a push among the cultural elites to re-make America. From the 1965 immigration act to the attempt to pass the equal rights amendment to the constitution to government programs like Title IX and Title X to the continued attempts to restructure the concept of family through the normalization of sexual perversion and by the promises of politicians to adopt the UN Convention on the rights of children there has existed a push from all cultural corners to re-make America. This push to remake America has become part and parcel of the curriculum of government schools and it is romanticized and glorified in the elite media centers in America. The trained eye see’s this attempt to re-make America to be omnipresent.

Sonia Sotomayer’s nomination to the Supreme Court is but one more nail in the coffin of old America as it was built upon the tripod foundation of Christianity, European heritage, and Male leadership. Like C. S. Lewis’ contrast between the Old Narnians and the interloper Calormenes America is a nation riven by two warring parties who each desire to take to themselves the title of “true American” as well as a cast of millions who have a foot in each camp.

Sotomayor, along with Obama, can be seen as the poster child for those cultural Marxists who are attempting to re-make America in their own image. Sotomayor shares a vision of America that views the Old Narnians (Americans) as being hopelessly European. We know this because when Sotomayor was a student at Princeton she lodged a formal complaint with the Federal department of Health Education and Welfare (HEW) protesting both the lack of inclusion of Hispanic or Chicano studies at Princeton as well as the under-representation of Hispanics in the student body and the faculty at Princeton. This appeal to “fairness” and “diversity” is the guise that cultural Marxist have used for decades in order to re-make America into a nation that is no longer European or Western or Christian in its heritage. The plea is for “fairness,” and “diversity,” but underneath that plea is the play for a cultural hegemony that is non-European, non-Christian, and non-male.

It must be understood that Sotomayor was nominated for this position on the court because she shares Obama’s cultural Marxism and distaste for the Old Narnians. Sotomayor reveals her prototypical cultural Marxist bent as she exults in the preferred wisdom of a female Latina as opposed to some white guy. Remember cultural Marxism is characterized by minority ideologies (feminism, homosexuality, racial minority supremacy) and by its insistence that all people must be understood in terms of which group they belong to. Sotomayor reveals her cultural Marxist pedigree here by her membership in La Raza. For both La Raza and for all Cultural Marxists, straight White Males are the most egregious of the Old Narnians and so if America is to be re-made straight white males must be pushed aside so that “wise” Latina women, half blood Prince Presidents, and assorted perverts can take their place.

The cultural Marxism of Obama and Sotomayor requires all minorities and perverts to be part of the rank and file proletariat that pushes the Old Narnians into hiding. Whereas classical Marxism envisioned the working class to be the rank and file that would be used to crush the bourgeois the cultural Marxist creates a new proletariat comprised of a coalition of Minorities, feminists, perverts and the welfare class. Any member of this coalition that sides with the Old Narnians will be officially stripped of their minority status and be told that they are “to white.” Hence, for Cultural Marxism whiteness has become synonymous with a certain ideological stance. If a minority refuses to embrace the tenets of Cultural Marxism that minority, even though they are black or Hispanic, will be considered “whitey.” If you doubt that just ask Clarence Thomas.

Another aspect of Cultural Marxism that Sotomayor embraces is the precept of a deconstructionist hermeneutic. Sotomayor’s claim of empathy is really code language for an affirmation that she intends to deconstruct the text of the constitution in order to read it in a way that is favorable to her cultural Marxist brethren. Sotomayor’s articulated desire for diversity is code language in cultural Marxist speak that she will be an activist judge in Obama’s pursuit to re-make America.

The whole cultural Marxist agenda is to scrub clean America of her Old Narnians. All those who believe in or who have been deeply affected by Christian categories must go in the New America of the cultural Marxist. All those who are to white, whether by actual skin color or whether by ideological / theological persuasion, must be put into a ghetto where their views can be ignored. All men who are not perverts and who believe in male leadership and who will not be emasculated to believe that women are just at good at being men as men are must be ostracized in the new America.

Sotomayor’s nomination is so fascinating because what we are witnessing is Obama’s dream of remaking America. Some people see this for what it is while other people keep screaming about fairness.

It has become apparent, with the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, that empathy has become the virtue dujour in order to be seriously considered for a job as a Supreme court justice. Apparently a judge having empathy gives them the ability to be sensitive to those who appear before them and perhaps even vicariously experience the feelings, thoughts and experiences of the plaintiffs in their courtroom.

And yet one wonders, given Sotomayor’s treatment of white Fireman Ricci in the Ricci vs. DeStefano case, whether or not Ms. Sotomayor’s empathy is racially and ideologically conditioned. In that case Sotomayor had no empathy for Ricci who had been denied a promotion at his job due to New Haven’s desire to have a rainbow fire department. In other words, what we have here is what might be called selective empathy. All the empathy of Jesus for the cultural Marxist proletariat but only the empathy of Scrooge for those who are not part of the cultural Marxist rank and file.

I have no doubt that empathy is a great individual virtue to have but it is a positive albatross around the neck for someone who is a sitting judge. There is a reason that lady justice is blind and part of that reason is so that she won’t suffer the pains of empathy. Adjudicating and interpreting the law is supposed to be, by definition, non-prejudicial and non empathetic. When empathy is allowed sway in our Judges what happens is that law is used to discriminate in favor of whoever can come up with the best sob story. Justice then becomes not about applying the objective constitutional and case law to petitioners who come before the court but rather justice becomes about the vagaries and instability of emotions. Give me the coldness of Judge Solomon ordering a baby split in half over the empathy that gave us Roe vs. Wade.

But this desire to appoint someone with empathy to the High court on the part of Obama confirms something I’ve said for some time now and that is that with the election of Obama racial tensions in this country are only going to increase. Due to the vetting process that happens before these kinds of appointments we can be sure that the President made this appointment with full knowledge both of Sotomayor’s membership in a racist organizations like La Raza and of Sotomayor’s controversial comments on race. The problem that Sotomayor is suddenly having with her racist comments are serving to open a window on the soul of Barack Hussein Obama. Obama is a man who is committed to continuing the cultural Marxist long march through the institutions of this country with the intent of remaking the character of this country. For Obama America is too white, too Christian, and too privileged and Obama will use people like Sotomayor, who share his worldview, to overthrow that America. We really should not be surprised that a man who sat under the “ministry” of white hating Jeremiah Wright would appoint a woman who has said derogatory things about white men in comparison to Latina women. With Sotomayor the cultural Marxist unholy trinity of Wright, Obama, and Sotomayor is complete and with the appeal to empathy we have the sentimental means by which justice will be corrupted.

There are many people who are uncomfortable with the whole racial aspect of this discussion. These people need to remember that it is the cultural Marxist who are the ones who are playing the “race card.” Now, we can either respond to that or we can just ignore the glaring contradictions of a people who at one time chide white America for being to racist while at the another time pursue an agenda that is laden with racial assumptions. It must be kept in mind not to fault the people who are merely responding to the hypocrisy of the cultural Marxists.

Yesterday I went shopping with my wife and we visited the Gift & Bible store to pick up some Bibles for the graduates who attend our church.

While in this Christian bookstore there was a huge book display pushing a book written by Jon & Kate Gosselin. Now, I know little about this couple except that they have a bunch of kids and a reality TV show (which I’ve never watched) and that recently Jon had adultery rumors floating around. I didn’t even know, until I was in the store, that they were “Christian.”

So, here again, as in the Carrie Prejean beauty case, we have Christians making heroes out of morally suspicious people. Don’t get me wrong … I’m all for heroes. I don’t even mind if my heroes have warts. I’m not against esteeming people. What I am against is how the Christian world keeps coughing up the wrong people to be heroes. Indeed, its almost as if they are finding anti-heroes to be heroes. What we are constantly getting are heroes that are celebrities but who have little or no character.

“In an age of diminishing expectations, the Protestant virtues no longer excite enthusiasm. Inflation erodes investments and savings. Advertising undermines the horror of indebtedness, exhorting the consumer to buy now and pay later. As the future becomes menacing and uncertain, only fools put off until tomorrow the fun they can have today….In earlier times, the self-made man took pride in his judgment of character and probity; today he anxiously scans the faces of his fellows not so as to evaluate their credit but in order to gauge their susceptibility to his own blandishments. He practices the classic arts of seduction, and with the same indifference to moral niceties, hoping to win your heart while picking your pocket. The happy hooker stands in place of Horatio Alger as the prototype of personal success. If Robinson Crusoe embodied the ideal type of economic man, the hero of bourgeois society in its ascendancy, the spirit of Molly Flanders presides over its dotage.”

Christopher Lasch
The Culture Of Narcissism — pg. 52

Lasch insists that American character has shifted so as to be something that earlier Americans would have found detestable.

What Lasch saw in the culture is present in spades in the Church. The Church growth model suggests to me that Pastors are more inclined to look at people not in order to assess their character but rather to see how susceptible people are to having their pockets picked by their willingness to financially support the church.

Lasch later picks up the implication of this phenomenon,

“The latest success manuals differ from earlier ones — even surpassing the cynicism of Dale Carnegie and Peale — in their frank acceptance of the need to exploit and intimidate others, in their lack of interest in the substance of success, and in the candor with which they insist that appearances — ‘winning images’ — count for more than performance, ascription for more than achievement….Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.”

Part of the lack of American character is found in the seemingly universal pursuit of style over substance and appearance over accomplishment. Part of the problem here, as this reality has gained steam, is that people no longer have the ability to press past style and appearance in order ascertain if there exists any genuine substance and accomplishment. My experience suggests that the majority of the time there is no there “there” when one encounters those who excel at style and appearance.

Part of the evidence of all of this is found in how little Americans read. Part of the evidence of all of this is found in how easily Americans can be manipulated by both the Major Media and by Talk Radio. A people who had substance couldn’t be fooled by the ridiculous things that are said in both these formats. (Though it does remind one of the descriptions of the Gladiators in the Roman Coliseums fighting one another to the death.)

All of this, of course, is a harbinger of approaching cultural doom. There is no way that a culture can survive long when its character is all wind, and threatening clouds but no rain. Unreality can not survive long as reality.

In conclusion, I have found the result of what Lasch describes is a population that has no soul. It is as if people don’t even realize that they are alive but instead are just going through the stylistic motions of life.