Obama’s Misreading of History

“We are going to have to guard against a rise in a crude sort of nationalism, or ethnic identity or tribalism that is built around “an us and a them,” and I will never apologize for saying that the future of humanity and the future of the world is going to be defined by what we have in common, as opposed to those things that separate us and ultimately lead us into conflict. Take Europe, We know what happens when Europeans start dividing themselves up and emphasizing their differences and seeing a competition between various countries in a zero-sum way. The 20th century was a bloodbath.”

Barack Obama

If you ever wanted to have a more egregious misreading of History you would have to look long and hard to find one more errant than this one.

It was not Nationalism that created WW II. In point of fact, it was letting loose Bolshevik Internationalism that created WW II.

Woodrow Wilson, the Internationalist, by his boneheaded actions in WW I paved the way for the Bolshevik Internationalists to come to power. Without Wilson’s meddling in Europe, the nations in Europe would have settled their war just as the Nations had been settling wars for centuries in Europe, by negotiated peace.

However, Wilson had to stick his creepy Internationalist nose into Europe. Then he had to use US Troops to protect the Soviet Reds railroad in Russia, freeing up Red Troops to polish off the Christian White and Green Russian armies. Wilson’s actions in World War I bathed Europe in blood because those actions empowered the blood letters of the next 70 years.

Then FDR, the next Internationalist, overturned the protocol of the 4 prior US Presidents and gave diplomatic recognition to the Internationalists in Russia, thus giving them International credibility.

It was the Bolshevik Internationalists who had created a Comintern to spread Bolshevik Internationalism across the globe with the same intent as Obama … to create a New World Order as run by the International Bolsheviks in both New York and Moscow.

It wasn’t Nationalism that bloodied the 20th century. It was the damn pestilent Internationalism that let loose oceans of blood. The same Internationalism that Obama has been a creature of.

Obama’s whole presidency can be described as being built around “an us vs. them,” mentality. It is the height of hypocrisy for him to lecture anybody about that particular danger.

Finally, Obama insists that humanity needs to build on what they have in common. This is the old “Brotherhood of all men” chestnut that has been debunked a million times. All men are not Brothers, if only because of their differing faiths. Those who believe in ordered liberty have nothing in common with the International Marxists with their New World Order agenda.

A Brief Primer On Cultural Marxist’s Usage Of “Racist”

Concerning the pejorative “racist,” or “racism.”

All can concede that if racism was hating someone based upon the color of their skin that would be hatred and sin.

However, in the current cultural milieu where the words “racism” and “racist” have gained so much traction, we do not find that simple of a definition. Instead what we get in terms of definition of racism is “prejudice plus power.” This is why many people insist that it is not possible for minorities to be “racists” or to practice “racism” because, so the argument goes, minorities, while perhaps having “prejudice” certainly do not have “power.” Hence it is impossible, so the argument goes, for minorities to be “racist” or to practice “racism.”

The irony of a definition of “racist” or “racism” that has as its substance, “prejudice plus power,” is inherently ironic because in such a definition the only people who can be guilty of practicing “racism” or of being “racist” are white people since, as the argument goes, only white people have prejudice as combined with power. So, we see, the cultural Marxist definition of racism is racist. Not only is the charge “racism” or “racist” racist it is a tautology.

Just as “bald people have no hair” is a redundancy so “White people are racist” is a redundancy. In Cultural Marxist speak it goes something like this,

Q.) Who are the racists?

A.) White people.

Q.)Who are white people?

A.) They are the racists.

Hard baked into the word “racist” or “racism,” as used by the modern cultural Marxist and churchmen (is there any difference?) is the presuppositional reality that the accuser himself, is the racist. He has a prejudice against white people and the use of the word itself is a power play. Prejudice plus power. The usage of that word against somebody else involves the one using the word in a contradiction of the most startling sort.

But hey … who cares about being in contradiction anymore? After all, rationality is so over-rated.

Government Class review and assignments — 11-14-2016

Assignments

Remember the assignments given in class

Next two chapters in Carson for reading.
Presentation — Brogan-Griffin first chapter for the week
Presentation — Becca and Carter second chapter for the week

Vocabulary

pulchritudinous
abstemious
abstruse
aesthetic
bumptious
bohemian
circumlocution
debonair
cupidity
coquettish

Notes from Lecture

I.) Elecotral College

A.) How number of elecotral votes for each state is reckoned

B.) Presidential election night = 50 elections… not 1

Unity in diversity
Illustration — Baseball Season … 1960 World Series (Yankees vs. Pirates)

C.) Challenges to the electoral College

Pure democracy

D.) Founders opinion on pure democracy

E.) 17th amendment and pure democracy

How the election of Senators worked prior to 17th amendment

F.) Who gets to be President if there is an Elecotral college tie or no one gets a majority?

1.) Historical examples

1800 —  Jefferson vs. Burr
1824 — Jackson vs. John Q. Adams vs. Henry Clay vs. Crawford

2.) House’s role
3.) Senate’s role

G.) Who gets to be President if the President elect dies before the Electors meet?

H.) Who gets to be President if the President elect dies after the Electors meet?

I.) Popular vote Win… Electoral college loss

  • Five times a candidate has won the popular vote and lost the election. Andrew Jackson in 1824 (to John Quincy Adams); Samuel Tilden in 1876 (to Rutherford B. Hayes); Grover Cleveland in 1888 (to Benjamin Harrison); Al Gore in 2000 (to George W. Bush); Hillary Clinton in 2016 (to Donald J. Trump)Looking at Tilden vs. Hayes — 1876

    “Old 13-12”
    Rutherfraud
    The deal

J.) Why Electoral College review

II.) Turning the ins out

A.) Economic downturn
B.) Major foreign policy blunder
C.) Division in the party
D.) Major corruption of party in power

Hi Pastor, here is the condensed note from last class.

Different Kinds of Government:
Head of Decision Power Rule Political
state Maker source length Freedom

Military Dictator: Dictator Dictator Military Indefinite determined
by dictator

Full Monarchy: Monarch Monarch Hereditary Death Determined by monarch

Oligarchy: Small Small
Group Group $$$$ Death Small group

Republic: President Checks + Constit- Term Bill of Rights
Balances ution limit

Full Democracy: n/a Majority Majority n/a Determined by Majority

Anarchy: n/a n/a n/a When gov. Determined by everyone
est.

Communism: Dictator Dictator Seizing Indefinite Determined by Dictator
power

Corporatism: Corp. heads Corp. heads $$$$ ”

Confederacy= many states who want to make a general gov. for a few enumerated and delegated powers

Constitutional Monarchy= When monarch is limited by law

Theocracy is an INESCAPABLE category

Socialism= Takeover by evolution, when the economy is planned by the government, gov. is God

How A Bill Becomes Law:

1. The bill begins as an idea

2. It gains a sponsor, usually a sen. and a rep.

3. Bill is introduced, starts in house

4. Goes to committee

5. Bill is reported in the House (for impeachment, 2/3 vote is required for conviction. Senate becomes jury, tried by president. some of House of Representatives as attorneys.)

6. Bill is debated in the House, can be amended

7. The Senate repeats steps 4-6, sometimes put in a drawer

8. Debated again, goes back to House (sometimes with amendments)

9. If the House does not like amendments, the bill goes to a conference committee of both Sen. and Reps., decide on compromise, if approved goes to president

10. Goes to president, either signs it, veto, or pocket veto. Both the Senate and the House together can override a veto with 2/3 vote.

____________

Locate these elements in the US Gov’t and briefly explain how they function as such

Monarchy
Aristocracy
Democracy

2.) Total # of Electoral Votes in College

3.) Total # Electoral Votes need by a Presidential candidate to win

4.) Total # of Representatives in US House

5.) Total # of Senators in US Senate

6.) Total # of SCOTUS

7.) Senate has the responsibility to advise and consent on Presidential appointments to SCOTUS

8.) Turning the ins out (4)

9.)  Briefly define the purpose of the Electoral College

10.) Briefly explain why theocracy is an inescapable category

11.) T   F — It is possible to win the Presidency while losing the nation wide vote total.

12.) If this is possible name one example

 

 

 

Reformation Day 2016 Homily

I Cor. 10:31 — So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.

Colossians 3:17
And whatever you do, in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.
 
1 Peter 4:11
If anyone speaks, he should speak as one conveying the words of God. If anyone serves, he should serve with the strength God supplies, so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.

________________

With these passages we are taught that there is a distinctively Christian way to lean into life … to do all that we do from the most mundane matters to the most exalted. For the Christian nothing is done from a neutral position. For the Christian all is done to glorify God.

This mindset was captured in the Reformation byword of Sola de Gloria. To the glory of God alone.

The Reformed desired to re-order all of life in ways consistent with God’s Word for the purpose of glorifying God alone in ALL they did.

Increasingly that mindset … the mindset of doing all we do for the glory of God is absent in our thinking. The very few that remain that seek to employ that in their thinking and writing are met with the catcalls of their “brethren” saying that Christianity has nothing to do with those areas that they are thinking about how one might live for the glory of God.

There was a time for example when it was routinely understood among Reformed folk that Christianity had a doctrine that had implications for our social order.

It was not thought that Christianity was to be applied only to the matter of salvation of souls. It was understood widely that Christianity created a whole unique social order.

And so with this cry of Sola Dei Gloria Reformed Christianity reshaped the West. This is so true that

World renowned German Historian Leopold Van Ranke could write,

“John Calvin was virtually the founder of America.”

“He that will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of American liberty”

George Bancroft — Historian
History of the United States of America — Vol. 1 — pg. 464

These men were not speaking of the fact that Reformed Christianity had particular doctrines of Grace that were unique. They were speaking of the Doctrines of the Reformation that created a unique social order and way of living as a people.

So, in seeking to do whatever they did to the glory of God they approached a social order that maintained distinctions and which denied egalitarianism. They saw passages such as “Honor thy Mother and Father,” as passages that taught social hierarchy.

Westminster Confession

Q. 124. Who are meant by father and mother in the fifth commandment?
 
A. By father and mother, in the fifth commandment, are meant, not only natural parents,[649] but all superiors in age[650] and gifts;[651] and especially such as, by God’s ordinance, are over us in place of authority, whether in family,[652] church,[653] or commonwealth.[654]

Calvin echoed this,

“All are not created on equal terms … This God has testified, not only in the case of single individuals; He has also given a specimen of it in the whole posterity of Abraham, to make it plain that the future condition of each nation was entirely at His disposal.” – John Calvin

And so wanting to do all they did to the Glory of God and believing in social hierarchy the Reformation created a social order that was opposed to both a static hierarchy and the kind of egalitarianism that the much of the visible Church promotes today.

But it did not stop here. All along the social order the Reformation did all it did for the glory of God.

As another example … The idea of covenantal solidarity that we find communicated in Reformed understandings of Baptism found its way into our Constitution when the Founders wrote they were seeking to,

“secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,”

This is a very Reformed and covenantal way of thinking.

And so the Church has become silent and in becoming silent a vacuum has been created so that other worldviews have achieved a cultural hegemony that would never have been possible in cultures that were epistemologically and self consciously Reformational.

Where the Reformation once called for social heirarchy, the Church has now retreated and  so soul killing egalitarianism is all the rage. Where Reformation thinking called for a social order with Limited Governments, the modern Church has retreated and so no tocsin is sounded warning about the rise of Tyrants and Usurpers. Where the Reformation talked about the effects of man’s original sin, the modern Church has retreated and no word is spoken of how original sin manifests itself in our political, educational, aesthetic or economic programs.

In the name of saving souls the Church has become silent about doing all that is done Sola Dei Gloria. As a consequence, we have lost our social order and it is now informed and shaped by pagan religions with the effect that the Church can in no way compete with an alien messaging that is being drummed into people 24-7. Further, because Christianity has surrendered the social order people are now shaped by that social order and bring that shaping into the Church with them with the result that Christianity ends up being reinterpreted in a pagan direction.

We should not be surprised that the Church, with a Reformational message, is largely seen, by a now alien culture, as being hateful, mean, and not nice. We should not be surprised that the Church that does not carry a Reformation message are seen as the haunts of the Simpson’s Rev. Lovejoys of the world.

And God’s people love it so.

What other examples besides the few we already communicated demonstrate this Reformation desire to do all that was done to the glory of God get in and create our social order?

We could talk of checks and balances in Government. We could speak of limited and diffuse Government. We could speak of ordered liberty. We could speak of the Protestant work ethic. We could speak of the idea of male and female roles. We could speak of how the Reformation affected views of Art in the West. We could speak of the formation of a vast network of volunteer societies that sought to ameliorate the hardships of the indigent and the poor. We could speak of adoption agencies and orphanages. We could speak of the pressing need for schools and education so as to teach children to think God’s thoughts after Him. We could speak of the valuing of human life that informed our Doctors and nurses for generations. We could speak of the Trustee family and how it informed generations of family life in the West.

Some of this existed before the rise of the Reformation but all of it was reinvigorated by the Reformation and all of it and a host of other unmentioned issues worked to form a Reformed culture that existed in order to do all that was done to the glory of God.

But now we are told, even by many of the Church, that all this must be shoved aside. It is whispered that all of this is the result of cultural bigotry…. white privilege … institutional racism even. Many in the Church are insisting that this concern about the Reformation in terms of how it leaves a decided stamp on cultures and social orders is something that the Church need not be concerned with.

But as for me and my house, it remains sola deo gloria whether we eat or drink … in word or deed, in every area of life.

Baptism Charge … Psalm 22:9-10

Psalm 22:8″Commit yourself to the LORD; let Him deliver him; Let Him rescue him, because He delights in him.” 9Yet You are He who brought me forth from the womb; You made me trust when upon my mother’s breasts. 10Upon You I was cast from birth; You have been my God from my mother’s womb.…

First, note here that the Psalmist emphasizes that the relationship between himself as an infant and His God was a relationship totally established by God.

“You made me trust when upon my mother’s breasts”

The Psalmist had a redemptive relationship with God from the time he was in the womb. And this was so because God made it so.

When we baptize infants it is not primarily about what the infant has done. In Baptism we are merely echoing the Psalmist that God owns our children from birth.

Some would contend that Baptism should not be done since babies cannot have faith and yet we find here the Psalmist saying that He was made to trust when upon His mother’s breast. Clearly, if God’s revelation says that the child upon His mother’s breast trusted God, then who are we to say that such an infant trust is impossible?

But the idea of infant trust or faith is not as ridiculous as Baptists and others like to make it sound. The reasoning goes that since infants can’t trust … can’t “have faith” therefore infants should not be baptized until they can trust and can have faith.

Before unraveling this line of thought do keep in mind again that Baptism is not primarily about our actions. Baptism is about God’s actions and God’s claim upon us and our children. To argue that we should not Baptize our children because they don’t understand is like arguing that we should not give our children’s names because they don’t understand.

Having said that, we would contend however that children can have faith, can trust, and do understand. Observe the newborn who knows his mother’s voice. If an infant knows and trusts the voice of His parents and finds security in that voice and in that presence why would we think it impossible that an infant knows and trusts His covenant King?

Now, as that child grows their trust will increase as they get to know the parents but what grows must first exist in seed form. It is just so with a child’s trust in God. The child who was made to trust God upon His mother’s breast will grow in that trust of God as the years fall away.

Baptism of infants merely recognizes this reality. Baptism demonstrates that God’s claim on us is always prior to our claim on Him. Further, infant baptism does no violence to the idea that salvation is by faith alone. The God who makes us to trust upon our Mother’s breast is the God who works in infants that very real trust. God doesn’t need our expanded capacities of understanding in order to work “trust” in us. God doesn’t need for us to be older in order to be saved by faith alone. All of our experience should teach us that the passage of years most certainly does not automatically make one a riper candidate to put faith in God. Indeed, as Trust in God only happens in people who are resurrected from being cognitively and spiritually dead in their sins it seems altogether appropriate to say that Babies are prime candidates to be made to put their Trust in God from their mother’s womb and so be Baptized.

Let’s look at this infant Baptism from another angle. Nobody, I know of, argues that since infants cannot understand their parents therefore, their parents should not speak to them. When the baby is fussy, the mother will make a promise saying, “I’ll be there in just a second honey.” The mother understands that at some level her child intuitively understands. Well, in Baptism God is speaking to His and Our babies.

We might speak promises to our babies such as,

“Mommy will be there to change your diaper in a second,” or,
“Just be patient a second, and I will feed you,” or,
“I know, you’re so tired, I will put you down for a nap in just a second.”

In the Waters of Baptism God is similarly speaking His promises to His covenant seed,

“I shall be your God…”
“Lo, I am with you always,”
“I will never leave you nor forsake you,”
“Nothing shall separate you from the Love of God.”

Would any of us dare tell either a Mother or God that she or He is silly for talking to babies who don’t understand? Of course we wouldn’t and yet that is precisely what those who deny God’s sign of the covenant to His and Our babies are saying at some level.

“Those babies can’t understand, so why bother giving them the sign of the covenant?”

And yet the Psalmist contradicts such people by saying,

“You made me trust when upon my mother’s breasts. 10Upon You I was cast from birth; You have been my God from my mother’s womb.…”

And one wonderful thing about a Baptism service is that we hear again God lisping to us as Adults those same fundamental truths that He coo-cooed to us when we were babies. Though now we are advanced in years, and perhaps a little beaten up by the wear and tear of life, we hear again those delightful and soul-stirring promises as they are spoken to another generation….

“Fear not, for I am with you little flock.”

Of course, this is only the beginning of the Baptismal journey. As the years pass the children are to be spoken to repeatedly throughout their lives of God’s promises. These promises are to be spoken to them by their parents at every turn, and they are to be spoken to them by Word and Sacrament Lord’s Day by Lord’s Day. They are to be trained to continue to Trust in the God who made them to Trust Him. Baptism is not a magical talisman that relieves us from attending to a diligent usage of God’s means of Grace. Baptism is that first Grace that anticipates all future grace.

For those who deny infant Baptism, if I could I would awaken in you how backward a Christian faith it is that insists that a man must be old enough to appeal to God before God can claim a man in Baptism I would. But, alas, I do not have that capability. Only God can teach you that.