Onward Christian Soldiers!

How does a Christian relate to war and military service.

(c) 2011 by Tom King

My good friends who like Ron Paul's foreign policy approach are a stubborn lot.  They keep sending me articles and weblinks, Youtube videos and links to documents in an effort to convince me to accept the apparent core doctrines that they hold. The main ones I've heard are

1. "George W. Bush was evil"
2. "We ought to withdraw all troops back home. No one would dare attacks us here because there's too much water separating us from them. Besides we're too big to attack."
3. "If we leave the world alone, they will love us again and everything will be hunky dory." 

Oh, you mean like detente'?  I don't remember that working out so well for us back in the 70s.

I carefully read the latest piece by a former Air Force pilot turned priest out of respect for my friend. It supports, of course, the idea that we ought to have a military, but just not use it and that Christians should probably not participate in the military at all. 

I was doing okay until he blithely cited some revisionist history about World War II and our use of nuclear weapons.  He stated flatly that Japan wanted to surrender, but would just wouldn't accept it.  He ignores the account of Japanese Army officers' attempts to kidnap the emperor to prevent him from announcing the surrender on the radio. This was after two nuclear strikes on the homeland. I have read accounts by Japanese officers and historians much closer to the action that make it clear that a last ditch, hedgerow by hedgerow fight for the homeland was, not only planned, but embraced by soldiers and civilians alike. It seems pretty obvious to me that the specter of dying uselessly in a nuclear blast, unable to take an enemy with you, completely unmanned the Samuri in the officer corps sufficiently to convince them to accept the ignominy of surrender.

 

The thing that colored the writer's opinion most, I believe, was his military experience.  The war in which he served was Vietnam - a US foreign policy disaster if ever there was one. Eisenhower warned us of the power and dangers presented by what he called the military-industrial complex in his final speech as president. He was right. Vietnam little more than a corporate war run by war profiteers and supported by both the Democrats and Republicans in Congress. It was about field testing new equipment and experimenting with "limited warfare" as a form of diplomacy by other means. Our soldiers were mistreated, hamstrung and placed in an impossible situation where most still managed to serve with honor despite the horrific conditions into which they were thrust.

 

Limited warfare is always a bad idea. War is a blunt instrument that should only be used in extreme circumstances. It is almost never used effectively by the U.S. because we are so damned ambivalent about it's use.

Were we to use total war selectively and with a clearly conceived policy behind it, we would be a far more effective "global force for good" (as the new Navy recruiting commercials put it). Orson Scott Card's fictional "Ender" novels outline what such a strategy might look like. His books are read at West Point by soldiers studying policy issues related to warfare. Card's hero, Andrew Wiggin reacts to any attack with sudden and overwhelming force and insures his attacker can do him no more harm.  The policy implications are something I could get behind. I
Extrapolated to the world stage, the policy would go something like this:

 

1. Leave your neighbors in peace. Treat others the way you would like to be treated.
2. If attacked, respond instantly and with overwhelming force instantly. Go after the instigators of the attack and remove them. Do not stop till they are no longer able to wage war against you.
3. Help clean up the damage caused by the war. Help those caught in the middle to rebuild their lives.

The writer* of the piece I read, incorrectly credits President Reagan with almost starting a nuclear war. Reagan did no such thing! He built our own military to a high state of readiness. It was the Soviet Union's leaders, seeking to preserve their own power and position that were pondering starting a nuclear war. They did not because they knew we would fall on them like a ton of bricks if they did. There was no way for them to win, so they did not fight. We came far closer to war when our nation was engaging in detente'. We looked vulnerable and the Soviets assumed they would eventually find a way to take us down.
 
Reagan wasn't always able to consistently follow his own policy. Political expediency forced him to focus on those he considered our most dangerous enemies and compromise with the diplomats and Democrats in other cases.  That intense focus on the mission at hand, he successfully eliminated an entire class of very dangerous nuclear weapons and made a "first strike" attack by either side almost impossible.

 

It is a shame that diplomat types went back to the same old confused military strategy after he left office.

 

The Hebrew language in the Old Testament's Ten Commandments probably reads less like "Thou shalt not kill" and more like, "Thou shalt preserve life". Others have suggested "Thou shalt not murder." Whatever it says, the Old Testament often suggests killing as a political solution for a nation state when it is under attack. God, Himself, wiped out whole cities. Based on my knowledge of God's character, I suspect such drastic action was done in the interest of preserving life. There was a time in recent history when a nuke on top of Hitler's mountain hideaway would have saved a lot of lives. 

The Jews did a lot of killing at God's instruction.  Sounds terrible, but remember that many of the pagan cultures of the time were slaughtering tens of thousands of innocents on pagan altars and in innumerable raids on their neighbors and wars of conquest. Israel became known for cleaning out the corrupt and evil inhabitants of the land as they settled Canaan. That's why there was a huge mixed multitude. Many of those inhabitants, like Rahab and her family, recognized that things would be better without the corrupt kings, sleazy priests and evil gods and joined the Hebrew nation and joined up with Israel.

  

Ecclesiastes suggests there is a "time to kill and a time to heal". It is difficult for a Christian to decide which time that is. It is why many Christians adopt a noncombatant role in conflict. Some Christians do, however, feel called to participate in defending our country. That's why so many join up in the aftermath of events like 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. We feel the call to protect our nation. Since we are not the president or congress, we have to rely on God to guide those men in their decision-making and do our best to serve as best our conscience dictates.

  

I know a lot of folk would like hard and fast, black and white rules that apply all the time and in all circumstances. God gives us 10 basic ones. Jesus whittled them down to two. Then God surrounded those nice black and white principles with hundreds of pages of interpretation, necessitating that a Christian spend his entire life on his knees with that book and in prayer trying to figure out how to apply what he has learned in the real world.

  

I don't know all the answers. I know from experience how to deal with thugs and bullies. I know from experience that being the one who stands in the breach and deals with those thugs and bullies can very easily turn you into one yourself if you're not careful.

 

Two presidents, I think, made an attempt to move our military policy in the right direction. They were both dragged down by politicians and pundits and never able to fully implement the kind of effective military policy that might have brought us peace. Ronald Reagan understood peace through strength and reminded the Russians that "trust but verify" was their own old adage. He defeated a real enemy and almost made them our friends if later politicians hadn't messed it up. We should have shared what we learned during our SDI program with the Russians as Reagan promised. I think we'd be better friends now. Instead, political backbiting killed SDI and left us with only the marginally effective Patriot missile system when we needed it in the Gulf War. 

 

The other president who got it, was George W. Bush. His dad didn't. When Sadaam overran Kuwait, Bush did exactly the right thing. He gathered a coalition and took back Kuwait and gave it back to its people. His mistake was not striking back with overwhelming force and eliminating Sadaam Hussein. Had we done so, there would have been relatively little further bloodshed. The Iraqi Army was defeated and unwilling to fight any further. They knew they were in the wrong and I believe that we could have taken Iraq, set up a new government and been out of there before the end of the century.

  

Instead, we reinforced a lunatic's belief that he, personally, was invulnerable. We abandoned those who revolted against Sadaam and left them to slaughter. We encouraged fanatic jihadists and made ourselves a target instead of a trusted friend. We absolutely missed an opportunity.

  

George W. knew we had to take out Sadaam and the Taliban in order to prevent a wholesale jihad against the U.S. spurred on by the successful attacks on 9/11. It was messy and not as effective as it could have been had we finished the job the first time around.

 

George W. and Donald Rumsfeld attempted to lead the military to a new "leaner, meaner" design structure which emphasized special ops troops (highly trained nation builders) over massed armor and huge formations. They tried to skip a generation of weapons and go straight to weapons that were faster, cheaper and more deadly.

 

Again, the congress, the political generals at the Pentagon (David Hackworth's "perfume princes") and the military-industrial complex launched a campaign to discredit that whole idea, continued to waste money on big ticket projects and to move massive formations around the battlefields like so many chess pieces.

  

We had an opportunity and we missed it because the powers that be in congress were addicted to a big, expensive, awkward military that spent tons of money in their districts for big defense contracts. Rumsfeld and Bush took the blame in what was, in essence, a blizzard of a snow job by big defense contractors and the stooges they support in the Congress. We could do better, but, so long as the military is run by self-serving "perfume princes" instead of warriors in service of the people, boys will die needlessly in half-cocked, ineffective fights all over the world.

 

Why do we put up with Somali pirates, for instance? A few Seal teams riding on a few ships so that the pirates didn't know where they were, could obliterate any attacking force. How long would it take for word to get around that if you wanted to spin the old "wheel o' luck" and attack a ship in the Gulf of Aden, there was no chance you would leave the scene alive?

 

Remember what Reagan did after the attack on our servicemen in Germany by the Libyans? He bombed Ghaddafi's flippin' house. Remember what happened when a couple of Libyan fighter planes decided to play chicken with US Navy Tomcats and popped off some shots at them? The Libyan Air Force was suddenly missing some planes. Remember how quiet Ghaddafi got after that? Remember how anxious he became to restore good relations with the US when our tanks rolled into Baghdad?

 

We should not play around with evil men. Removing evil people can be "destabilizing", but if done consistently, evil men become much more well behaved after only a few examples.

 

Americans, however, and Christians in particular, have no stomach for this kind of warfare. We're peaceful people and we live in hope that we can rap the knuckles of bad boys and reform them It never has worked well with bullies in our public schools it doesn't work with international bullies.

 

I saw this played out on the playground once. Eight grade thugs were making the lives of the smaller kids in the junior high school miserable. A very large young man, Charlie, who wasn't part of the "in":group anyway, was sympathetic with the oppressed kids. The got sick of it and next time it happened, he placed himself between the kids and their tormentor and politely asked them to stop. One of the bully boys laughed and took a poke at our hero. When the dust settled, he was stretched out on the ground with two black eyes, some assorted bruises and a total disinterest in persecuting his fellow many any further. Charlie took three licks from the principle for fighting. When he walked back out onto the playground, the smaller kids were his devoted followers. The bullies slunk quietly away. Word got around that Charlie would take licks if he had to in order to defend his friends and that getting a beating from Charlie was very painful. Charlie's "foreign policy" led to a very peaceful school year for everyone.

  

Maybe, that's a simplistic solution, but I do think it would work.

 

Sadly, I don't think a Pax Americana is possible in this world. Too many bullies and too few brave men and women. Thank God, Jesus is coming to rescue His own.

 

Incidentally, from my reading of Scripture, what happens to the bullies when He comes back will not be an exercise in detente'.

 

Just my opinion.

 

Tom King

 

*Making War: A Christian Perspective by Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret.

Would We Be Better Off If the South had Won the Civil War

There is a cadre of so-called conservatives - I think they're mostly Libertarians - that have been lately arguing that Lincoln was evil and that we'd all be better off if the South had won because slavery would have ended "naturally".

Really?

The problem with that idea is that the South was NOT anything like a free market, pro-liberty democracy at the start of the civil war (or as my Libertarian friends know it, the "War of Northern Aggression"). The Old South was an Oligarchy back then, much like Mexico is today.  An elitist class of plantation owners dominated a poor peasant class of small farmers and merchants, who didn't argue much with their betters. The elite ruling class also owned the serf class (black slaves who were treated as little better than cattle).


You know, I might buy the argument about the South being all about "states right"except for that pesky Confederate constitution. That thing absolutely established slavery as a cornerstone of the new nation. You don't put something like that in a CONSTITUTION if you plan on letting it "die naturally".

Slavery was wrong and needed to be ended, period. The rather sudden and violent end it came to may have been God's own judgment against the South for condoning of slavery in its most vile forms. Religious leaders of the time argued that until the Union and the President came out against slavery, God would withhold His hand from blessing the war effort. Lincoln's reluctance to come out rock solid against slavery was because, as some Libertarians point out, he first wanted to preserve the Union. It was a mistake. It was like slowly pulling a band-aid off a healing wound. Better to yank it hard and quick. The war concentrated the misery over a few years instead of stretching emancipation out a hundred years or so.  It would have been a mistake to do so.  Even though the Southern oligarchy fought tooth and nail to maintain it's "good old boy" power structure for more than a century, the Civil War greatly reduced their ability to lord over the middle class the way they had before the war.  The middle class got a really clear look at how they had been used in the antebellum South by the fancy folks in Atlanta and Richmond and the local gentry in their slave-maintained mansion houses. When it came down to it, the plain folks were the ones that did most of the dying and for what. So the massa's could have their mint juleps served to them on the veranda by servants who properly knew their place?

This country was, I believe, established and blessed by God for the purpose of providing a harbor for his children - red and yellow, black and white. We've lumbered toward the freedom and respect for the rights of others for the past 200 years, making fits and starts and occasionally backsliding. In the process, His church has grown strong and mighty, protected within the borders of the United States. My own church, established here in the U.S., has over 150 some odd years spread throughout the world so that there are many more members of our denomination outside the U.S. than there are in it. I think that's the real reason God made this country the way it is.

I think God put Abraham Lincoln where he was, knowing full well He had a tool He could use to accomplish His will. I think He put Lee in place to punish the North for tolerating slavery for its own purposes and He put Grant in place to finish the work Lincoln started with the Emancipation Proclamation (despite its obvious initial inadequacies).

He put honorable men in the Southern ranks too, to be used as He needed them. There's that great story where, after the war, a black man entered the Episcopal church in Richmond and walked bravely down the center aisle and took his place at the communion rail to receive communion. Everyone was shocked and sat rooted in their seats. This was an all white church and only months after the end of the Civil War. The pastor stood frozen in place. Then a gray haired gentleman in the congregation rose from his pew and walked straight down the aisle. He knelt at the rail beside the black gentleman and waited for the pastor to administer the rites of communion to them both.

The pastor did so. After all, how could he not. The white gentleman kneeling beside the black man was Robert E. Lee.

I will not presume to second guess God's guidance in the events of the Civil War as some of my conservativish colleagues do. It was a horrible and bloody episode to be sure and no one had pure motives.  All the same, I am not sure letting the South go in peace as has been suggested, would have created the world we have today or given us the opportunities we have. The USA and CSA would likely have both been second rate powers in the world and dominated by the likes of Britain, Germany or Japan or some combination of those old European powers.

I don't think God was quite ready for the world to end and I think that He preserved the Union for His own purposes.

I, for one, having grown up in the South and having an intimate knowledge of how the white oligarchy works, even in its faded state 150 years after the Civil War and am heartily glad those arrogant gentleman took a thorough beating and had their power much diminished. I would not want to live in the CSA had they won their war. What a horror that would have been.

Texas should never have joined the South in seceding. Sam Houston, who was wrong about a lot of things (particularly his unreasonable hatred for the Texas Navy), was right about not seceding from the Union. He wasn't alone in that sentiment and after all the bigoted idiots went off to war and had their numbers thinned dramatically, I think Texas wound up with a better quality of human being living here. So, that too may have been God's will.

At any rate, I have good evidence that God used Abraham Lincoln, shortcomings and all at a time when God needed someone to stand in the breach.

I don't think God cares about capitalism or state's rights, socialism, libertarianism or whether or not an oligarchy gets preserved in the south or an industrialist robber baron dominated culture gets preserved in the North. "The King's heart is in the hands of the Lord and He turns it whichever way He will." I believe God works whoever thinks he is in power to God's own purposes, though we may not understand those purposes.


I admire Lincoln because he came to see that he was wrong about slavery and that it cannot be tolerated and he did the right thing. I admire Lee because he helped heal the damage done in the South by his example in the years following the war. I admire Grant for his tenacity and stubborn belief in the righteousness of his cause. I admire Sherman for his magnanimity toward the Southerners in establishing surrender terms (it almost got him arrested by Congress).

If letting the South win the war had been a good thing, then I do believe God would have let them win the war. You guys who argue that He was wrong, are braver than I. I wouldn't want to try and argue that God made a mistake - not when Scripture so obviously predicts the role the US will play in the ending of the world and the Second Coming.

Obama and his ilk, the country club Republicans and their cronies are nothing more than tools in God's hands. We are commanded to pray for them. Remember, it was God who hardened Pharaoh's heart and it worked out for His own purposes. I think it was for the purpose of turning the Jews from slaves into the mule-headed independent minded people they are today. He led them for 40 years in the desert and He helped them win when it helped that process and even caused them to lose in wars and campaigns when they needed to learn a lesson. It took hundreds of years for God to teach them to be who He wanted them to be. But, as a result of all this education, when it came time to spread the gospel to the world, Jesus was able to find 12 monumentally stubborn Jewish guys who would do just that in spite of the incredible odds working against them.


I think this country was designed by God to breed and train the stubborn, muley-headed people that stand today in the breach, prepared to fight the last battle in Earth's history. I think a lot of them are in the Tea Party movement, but there are a lot of them in the Democrat and Republican parties as well. There are plenty of these folk who are in no party at all.

God bless 'em and thank God for 'em, I say. So how about let's everybody quit second-guessing our Commander on the subject of history. He knows what he's doing. Perhaps what we should be doing is studying history to figure out just what God, in His wisdom was up to. I think that's a more profitable use of our time.


Tom
(c) 2010


* I use the term "conservative" loosely here noting that the logical abbreviation for both liberal and libertarian is the same. Coincidenc or vast left-wing conspiracy? You decide.

Prophets and Unions and Socialists, Oh My!

Glenn Beck is not alone in distrusting unions....

© 2011 by Tom King

A best-selling writer (not a radio talk show host or conservative blogger) wrote the following excerpts:

“Those who claim to be the children of God are in no case to bind up with the labor unions that are formed or that shall be formed. This the Lord forbids. Cannot those who study the prophecies see and understand what is before us?"

"A few men will combine to grasp all the means to be obtained in certain lines of business. Trades unions will be formed, and those who refuse to join these unions will be marked men."

“These unions are one of the signs of the last days. Men are binding up in bundles ready to be burned.”

"Unionism has revealed what it is by the spirit that it has manifested. It is controlled by the cruel power of Satan. Those who refuse to join the unions formed are made to feel this power. The principles governing the forming of these unions seem innocent, but men have to pledge themselves to serve the interests of these unions, or else they may have to pay the penalty of refusal with their lives."

Her name was Ellen White and members of her church consider her one who had the gift of prophecy, though she did not, herself, claim to be a prophet. In fact, the church considers refusal to join unions a tenet of faith because of a whole series of these warnings to the church that unions would eventually be complicit in the actions that will confirm the power of the Anti-Christ, the so-called “Beast” of Revelation. She wrote these warnings in the late 1800s and early 20th century until her death in 1915. Whether you believe she had the prophetic gift or not, her warning against unions (and corporate monopolies) seems prescient given that at the time, unions were actually accomplishing some good on behalf of workers in areas like child labor, workplace safety and fair pay.

Today, a hundred years later, we see Union-sponsored unrest worldwide and spreading quickly. Mrs. White was not the last person to issue warnings about unions either. In the 1950s, newspaperman Victor Riesel had acid thrown in his face for warning about union corruption. The Kennedy brothers, Jack and Robert, both made efforts to address union corruption issues and faced threats on their lives for their trouble. Notably, Robert Kennedy once claimed that Americans didn't know of tenth of how corrupt the union bosses were.

Recently, radio talk show host, Glenn Beck, has drawn widespread public ridicule from mainstream media pundits for his allegations that unions are part of an unholy alliance with progressive socialists and Islamist fanatics.

Yet, many Christians find themselves increasingly uncomfortable with the behavior of unions in a world in which sweeping cultural and political changes appear to be marginalizing, if not actually threatening, the faith. Union leaders, increasingly anti-capitalist and pro-socialist with a dash of atheism thrown in for good measures, appear to be on the side of the progressive/socialist forces within our government. Many Christians fear a loss of fundamental rights like the right to freedom of religion, speech, assembly and the right to bear arms if political forces jockeying for power today have their way. With unions marching lock step with progressives, evironmentalists and even their own churches many suspect the corruption may be as deep as Robert Kennedy suggested.

A Christian church member (not my church) just yesterday, reported finding his church's bulletin board plastered with pro-progressive messages urging parishioners to “support” causes like global-warming, environmental issues, universal health care and even so-called “women's reproductive rights” causes because "that's what Jesus would do". She complained that the pastor's homily sounded more like a Democrat stump speech than a sermon.


I'm not surprised. God criticized the last historical church described in Revelation as "lukewarm" and wishy-washy (not His words - mine).  I suspect God knew we'd need further guidance and didn't stop sending messages to the human race just because the last of his disciples died off. There have been other messengers to the church time and again throughout the history of the Christian church who have steered us in the direction we should go.

Whatever does happen in the coming months, one thing is clear: Christians are becoming more aware that there are signs in the Earth that as Shakespeare put it, “Something wicked this way comes.”

Jesus said, “When you see all these things, recognize that the end is near, even at the door.” When I was a young man no one talked much about the Second Coming of Christ. Now, I find myself talking about the coming of Jesus and the end of the world with strangers in the street, the checker at the grocery store and Facebook friends.

I've always thought God would let his people know when it was time. It seems He's doing just that, albeit using some rather unusual prophetic tools. It really doesn't surprise me, though. After all, God does have a habit of working “in mysterious ways”.

Tom

No Nation an Island

Why Ron Paul is Wrong on Foreign Policy

(c) 2011 by Tom King

The US estimates more than 375,000 illegal immigrants cross the southern border annually, 31% from countries other than Mexico. If a weapon of mass destruction can be made to weigh 150 pounds or less, how many could be hidden among those 375,000 refugees that flood the US every year. That's why we have to cripple the ability of terrorists to get those weapons in the first place by attacking our enemies where they live, and why we can't wait till they reach the border.


Ron Paul and his supporters call for us to abandon foreign military bases and adopt a non-interventionist foreign policy. The idea is the same one the left has put forward. If we would only leave everyone else alone, they wouldn't bother us because we are too hard to attack being so far away over so much ocean and too strongly defended.

A modern border is almost impossible to defend as though it were a wall. No defensive wall has ever been successfully defended without being eventually breached or flanked - not Hadrian's Wall, The Great Wall of China or The Maginot Line.

If you leave the enemy unmolested in his lair and allow him time and resources to bring destruction to our borders, it is unreasonable to suppose that a determined foe is not going to be able to get those weapons across the vast, almost entirely undefended borders of this country. A dozen nukes could seriously cripple the U.S. and make us vulnerable to opportunistic nations.

Not only that, but a non-interventionist policy will leave us in the day of 24 hour news, watching helplessly as our fellow man starve, be butchered, made homeless and brutalized by whatever latest power mad dictator/terrorist gets his hands on sufficient weapons and soldiers to overcome and exploit his neighbors.

It may not be fair that we have to support the Pax Americana that currently exists in the world and the peace is not perfectly kept because we do not have the resources to police the world. We must pick and choose our battles. We can't intervene everywhere, but make no mistake about it, it could be much worse if we weren't out there. Anybody who thinks that if America just went away, peace and love and unicorns would break out across the planet, is impossibly naive.

The reason we have 375,000 people risking their lives each year (and that estimate is 5 years old), is that they look across the border and see food and peace and opportunity. Allow dictators like Saddam Hussein to overrun their neighbors and consolidate power unmolested, you create a never-ending stream of refugees looking for a haven, followed by a growing crowd of megalomaniacs leading armies. Let one real lunatic get hold of a nuke or two and smuggle it into the US with the tide of humanity that flows across our border and they can instantly reduce our vaunted ability to defend ourselves.

Militarily, Fortress America is defendable for at most a generation. Beyond that we will find waves of global strife pounding away at our defenses till they crumble. We could even be drawn into another World War, more bloody and devastating than any we have ever faced.

Ron Paul paints a beautiful picture of a peaceful world that results from his non-interventionist strategy. Unfortunately, history doesn't support that picture. It is likely we would have stand by and watch helplessly, as the Old World revives the horrific practices it has known for millenia. I'm not sure we could stand it. Americans are not that calloused. We are the finest humanitarians on the planet. Any money Mr. Paul could save us by going isolationist (another word for non-interventionist), would soon be spent cleaning up the mess that would soon be made by the heirs of people like Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, Auguste Pinoche, Baby Doc Duvalier, Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Tojo, Ferdinand Marcos and their ilk. The difference will be that the new versions of these madmen won't be hemmed in by American “intervention.


Tell me where I'm wrong on this. Give me historical evidence that this is a fallacy. I've had people say, “History shows this is a fallacy.” and yet they can give no examples except maybe Switzerland.

Switzerland? Really? That's the best you can do in 7,000 years of history? One lonely anomaly.

How about looking at Poland? No territorial ambitions there. Peaceful people by all accounts. And yet through history, the Poles have been overrun and brutalized by their neighbors time and time and time again – simply because they looked weak and vulnerable and exploitable. Do we really want to look like we are afraid and in full retreat in the eyes of a world that has a history of conquering its neighbors every time it gets the chance?

Not me, Ron.

Not this little black duck...

Not This Little Black Duck!

Why Are "Conservatives" Attacking Reagan Now?

(c) 2011 by Tom King

We're hearing from the fringes now that Reagan was part of the Bohemian Grove conspiracies and helped set up the New Word Order and internment camps and heaven knows what else. I am here to say "Balderdash" and not just because I like that word, although it has its uses, this being one of them.  I've found websites like Rex 84 and folk like Alex Jones to be a very unreliable source of information about what's "really" going on. I've studied Ronald Reagan and the whole New World Order and internment camps for troublesome Americans thing doesn't fit the vision of America I see in his writings and actions. It doesn't fit what I know of the man Reagan. I don't think anyone could lie that well.  I'm convinced Reagan really did believe all that stuff in his speeches.


I would plead with my conservative friends to please be careful with the Bohemian Grove, Bilderberg, Illuminati, New World Order stuff. The conspiracy theorist crowd really loves to credit the devil with far greater organizational ability than the self-centered denizens of hell have at their command.

My read on it is that what's going on in the world in the way of conspiracies, works out to more of a confluence of interests of the rich and powerful than any highly organized plot. The best information out there says the Bohemian Grove stuff is mostly a rich guy's play date rather than an evil conspiracy. What the country club Republicans and high level Democrats want is power. It's a big game to them and both use the same tools to play it, that's why they look so much alike when they are in power.

I've seen how things work in the halls of power personally. It's all about positioning and horse-trading influence and nobody really knows what's going on because everybody keeps secrets like a dragon hordes gold. The flow of information to our political leaders is controlled to an appalling extent by a gigantic army of black coated poli-sci interns or recently graduated doofuses that a couple of months ago were attending wet T-shift contests and all-night keggers. Washington is a chaos of self-interest and incomplete information.

All those inflated egos that show up at the Bohemian Grove party (along with that noted world leader, Jimmy Buffett, who is also a member) could never agree on a master plan for the New World Order.  They couldn't agree on what color the flag should be, much less who's going to be the Big Kahuna! These guys are tools and the one who's really doing the manipulation can be counted on to create mostly chaos and precious little order. He's orchestrating events toward a crescendo and into the chaos created, he will step to "save" us. At least that's the way Scripture paints what is to come.

Because the big tool of power is manipulation, these guys keep secrets from each other. Secrets give them the illusion of power. The beauty of the Constitution is that it has for so long limited the ability of the powerful in the U.S. to establish an oligarchy that has more than transient power. These guys are not wielding the tools, they are being wielded, and by a power that is NOT human.

We do not fight the devil using the devil's methods. We fight secrets and conspiracies and manipulation with patience, with unfailing decency and with a determined effort to teach our children and ourselves to value goodness and beauty and the creator of all of that. We do not fight evil by crawling down the hole where evil lives to take a look around.

The first time you hear someone shout the battle cry "Shoot your own side first!" you can be certain the order did not come from our Commander. It is an emmisary from the evil one who has infiltrated our ranks. We should not obey that order. We should turn and face forward and continue to strive to be better human beings - kinder, more patient with one another. We close ranks against the darkness by believing the best, expecting the best and trusting the intentions of each other.

I've long expected this very attack on this movement. The Tea Party has gathered far too many good, decent people under one banner and united their efforts to good purpose for Satan to tolerate it's continuation. He knows he cannot fracture us from without, so he seeks to defeat us from within.

My attitude toward Ronald Reagan is an example of how I believe we should respond to this very real threat to the movement we have come to cherish. I believe Reagan's own words. I believe he meant exactly what he said because I have the evidence that God blessed his efforts. I also believe the words of people like President Obama and his advisors and those words tell me what they intend to do. That's why I oppose them, not because some conspiracy theorists says they have a secret plan, but because they say what they are planning right out in the open for all to hear.

Reagan said clearly what he believed. You can see throughout his career how that belief came to be. As a result of Reagan, as president, acting on those clearly stated principles, the Soviet Union died and freed a vast host of people to turn back to God. There was a massive revival of Christianity in the days following the fall of Communism. I believe that God used Reagan as a tool to accomplish this purpose and I honor Mr. Reagan for his willingness to be used as God's tool.  I simply refuse to entertain the attacks upon his character, that I am certain are false and only intended to confuse and break down the solidarity of the growing band of good people who believe in God and the principles upon which this country was founded. And when I say that, I know some of the members of the movement don't claim to be Christians. But God knows His people whatever they call themselves and I believe He calls them to Himself in spite of their reluctance to come.

I believe we are seeing the final days of Earth played out before us. It is time we stand together. It is time we lift each other up, I don't care what faith or denomination or philosophy set you on the road home. As the old song says, "Red and Yellow, black and White, all are precious in his sight." The only way we win this final war is with kind words and loving acts, not by shooting our own.

It will not matter that Armageddon comes upon us. Reagan actually believed Armageddon was coming, but as we are called by God to do, he did all in his power to hold back the winds of strife. I believe angels stood in that oval office and guided that man in the decisions he made. Why? To buy us time to open the dark places of Earth to the Word of God. Angels stood behind John Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, FDR, Lincoln and others too, to buy us time to finish the work that must be done.

We Children of God are a ragtag, motely band with so many flaws you can't name them all, but together we are a mighty force for good. Our weapon is our love for one another and for the whole world and with that weapon, we are irresistable. We are an army that will stand for the right though the heavens fall. We will lay down our lives if God requires it. We will suffer any trial and we will not yield.

The folks that burn coffins in the Bohemian Grove could not possibly understand that and if they ever come to, they won't likely return to the grove because they will no longer have the patience to endure such foolishness. We have a choice like Joshua said. We choose this day, whom we shall serve. His commands are simple and do not include playing spy among the enemy or using Satan's methods or his tactices to manipulate our fellows. If we follow God's orders to the best of our ability, we need no tricks or deceptions. If we follow His orders, we are undefeatable.

I have seen nothing in those orders that indicate to me that shooting our own guys first is a good idea.

There's the old story of how Lie met Truth in the road, beat her up and stole her clothes. He walked around the town in Truth's clothes lying to everyone and though what he said sounded like a lie, they believed it because Lie was, after all, wearing Truth's clothes. In the meantime Truth recovered and ran after Lie to get her clothes back.

Meanwhile, Lie was teiling another whopper to an old man standing outside his store, when the old fellow glanced up the street and saw a startling thing.

"You know," he said turning back to Lie. "You look like the Truth, you're wearing Truth's clothes and I don't know but what you sound like the Truth, but I know for a fact that you lie because yonder," he pointed down the street, "Comes the naked Truth!"

When you suddenly start hearing attacks on the icons of our movement, you have to wonder why all of a sudden this stuff is coming out. In the past year, I've seen attacks ramped up on Lincoln after we countered charges of Republican racism by pointing out that Lincoln was a Republican. There were attacks on Limbaugh, Hannity and others. Then as Beck started playing tapes of what these guys were actually saying on television, they really went after him. Now it's Reagan. Do you realize they are trying to leave us without any leaders at all? And we're falling for it. That's what is incredible. We know this is right out of their playbook and still we fall for it?

"Well," to quote a certain animated waterfowl, "Not this little black duck!"

Tom King

Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain

The Ludicrously Obvious Guerrilla War on Conservatives

(c) 2011 by Tom King



Che Gorilla - Leftist Infiltrator

The left would like nothing better than to fracture conservatives into factions. Look at any conservative forum thread on potential candidates for president in 2012. We can't even remotely agree on a leader for the movement at this point.  How do you suppose we can expect to hold out against even a minority when that minority is solidly behind their latest messiah?


We can take a lesson from how they attack us. They viciously go after anyone they think is a potentially articulate and catalyzing conservative leader -- Limbaugh, Beck, Palin for example. They do it well. In the last election, they sold conservatives a bill of goods on Fred Thompson.

"No fire in the belly." was a liberal talking point that they hammered on single-mindedly ad nauseum because, frankly, the idea of Thompson in the oval office frightened them more than any candidate in the list. Then they started the Romney, Huckabee, Guiliani whispering campaigns and we wound up with the candidate they chose for us and handed us our heads in the 2008 election.

The truth is, Fred Thompson's apparent reluctance was his biggest selling point with me. It reminded me of two other reluctant presidents - Washington and Reagan. Both men initially resisted a career in politics and only took it because people convinced them they could do some good. Because Reagan took the job in order to do something good and not because he lusted to be President, the man confounded all his opponents. The slick politicians of the 70s and 80s never did understand what made that man tick.

Now, I know people will feel the need to take shots at me because I suggested Thompson over their pet true believer candidate - Ron Paul, Herman Cain or someone like that, but you don't have to. The infighting about a potential candidate only serves the purposes of the highly focused left. Conservatives will get the candidate the left maneuvers us into taking if we can't stop squabbling over little things and do like Reagan - keep our eyes on the prize.

You can bet the progressives socialists have their eyes on the prize and they are willing to do anything, no matter how repugnant to them, in order to win the power to make this country into their idealized "worker's paradise". Their pundits' and bloggers' sudden recent mass appreciation for Ronald Reagan and how much Obama is like him is proof of that. Some of them had to take massive amounts of dramamine in order to write those blog posts, you can bet. But they do know how to present a solid front.

The work of the propaganda machine is so obvious, but since all the cool people are busily pretending not to notice, we think it impolite to mention it. I am reminded of The Wizard of Oz.....

"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"

Thank God we have a few brave souls like Beck, Limbaugh, Palin and Hannity, who, like Toto, have the gumption to pull back the curtain to allow us to see what's going on behind there. They pay a heavy price for pointing out what is patently obvious -- someone's messing with us.

Unless cooler heads prevail and conservatives quit chewing on each other and everyone else, we're going to find our movement marginalized. Unfortunately, conservatives don't like stifling anyone's freedom of speech, so we don't discipline our hounds very well.

Don't get me wrong, I still think it's counterproductive, not to mention impolite, to bite the man behind the curtain on his big fat butt, but, unfortunately, some of our less disciplined hounds can't resist a fat haunch.....

I Saw Three Unclean Spirits Like Frogs.....

Self-Righteousness: the Devil's Favorite Tool

"And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.  For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the Earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty."  Revelation: 16: 13-14

Something is worrying me lately. When I see liberals on the left and conservatives on the right converging on talking points, I begin to wander what's the devil up to. Two I'm seeing a lot of just in the past few days:

1. Glenn Beck is a wacko. (Hearing it from MSNBC and the Weekly Standard)
2. Reagan and Obama aren't that far apart. (Time Magazine and conservative blogs).

A strategy the enemy uses is to confuse the issue is to create common targets and issues that his enemies can share to distract them while he does his real work. He's got liberals saying Obama is more like Reagan than Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck. In knee jerk fashion, now conservatives are pointing out that Reagan was "not so hot and made lots of mistakes" in an effort to further distance themselves from the liberal talking points. Sadly, it puts them on the same side as the liberals in muddying the character of Reagan.

The Arab proverb, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," tain't necessarily so, but it is a great way to forward an agenda - especially an evil one. Both sides figure they can agree for now and slip a dagger into the other guy's ribs later if they need to. Acquisition of power is the most important thing to people like this. The devil uses such "deals with the devil" to manipulate for his own ends. The left/right sanctimony over Reagan and Beck is really a sad commentary on how petty and naieve some folk can be.

I think the conservative community has become so enraged with how things are going that we've abandoned clear cool logical thinking. There's a reason somebody is orchestrating an attack on conservative icons like Reagan and Glenn Beck (and Abraham Lincoln for that matter). It's what you do if you want to confuse your enemy and marginalize its leaders.

If you can, you turn your enemy against its own leaders; against their own symbols.  Then, you can convince them they are more holy practitioners of their particular political philosophies - whether it's conservatism or Marxism it does not matter. Get them all puffed up with pride before you stick a pin (or a knife) in them.

If you are intent on seizing power, it's best to eliminate or marginalize anyone with passion and you do that by setting them up for a fall. That's what happened to Robespierre during the French Revolution. He became a fanatic and convinced of his own righteousness and invincibility. As a result he wound up with his own head in a basket.

There's the story of the Greek King who showed a neighboring king how to rule his people and hold his power. He had his soldiers go into a ripening cornfield and lop of the heads off any corn stalk that stood higher than the others.

It's a very effective technique for crowd control. It seems lately the strategy is to fertilize any potentially troublesome stalks so they can grow large enough to warrant pruning. We must not let them get away with it. Particularly, we need to protect our prophets and preachers from ourselves.  Any human, no matter how effective he or she is, no matter how sincere their beliefs or how righteous their cause can be found to have flaws. Let's not convince ourselves that we are so righteous we need to lop the heads off anyone who isn't as righteous as we are. "Pride goeth before destruction," it says in Proverbs, "And a haughty spirit before a fall."

The Satanic method of rule is to find flaws in your opponents and attack them, turning their own supporters against them if possible.  There's no tool quite so effective as self-righteousness for doing that. Jesus' method is to let us find those flaws in our own selves, bringing those flaws into the light of his love, where he forgives them and then forgets you ever had them.  Lots of men and women, whom I believe God called to service at key moments in history, had forgiven flaws.

• Lincoln set aside "habeus corpus" while trying to figure out how to hold the United States together in the middle of a bloody Civil War.
• FDR talked pacifist, almost lying to the American people, while building an army to fight a war he knew would come.
• Teddy Roosevelt bought into some pernicious socialist ideas, while breaking up some nasty business trusts and strengthening America's position in the world at a time when foreign powers were eyeing the Americas with thoughts of conquest.
• Reagan compromised with Democrats to accomplish things he felt were more important - like ending the nuclear threat and bringing down communism..
• Beck was a drunk who cleaned up and became a spokesman for hard work, family values, clean living smaller government and the preservation of the constitution.
• Martin Luther was an obsessive compulsive self-abuser who led the Protestant revolution against the excesses of a politicized, corrupt church.
• Joan of Arc had problems with authority, but led her nation to independence.
• Martin Luther King had indiscretions with women and inspired the civil rights movement with his "I have a dream" speech.
• So did Kennedy who pointed the way to the moon and possibly Eisenhower who quietly held us together during the darkest days of the cold war.
• The Apostle Peter used swear words under pressure, buckled under social pressure and allowed racism to raise its ugly head in the early church and yet he always admitted his guilt freely and came back to lead the fledgling church to become a great movement for good.
• St. Paul had some issues with women, admitted he had a secret problem he did not share with others that made it hard for him and admitted that he sometimes spoke on his own hook without God's express guidance on the subject, but wrote some of the most inspiring words of scripture and raised up churches far beyond the borders of Israel.
• George Washington had some impulse control issues, but didn't lie about it. He set the model for what a president and principled leader should be for every president that came after.
• Ben Franklin was a rake and dandy, but he brought a keen intellect and love of freedom to the creation of a new nation, conceived in liberty..
• Thomas Jefferson was lonely and fond of a black girl that worked for him, but he also wrote the breath-taking Declaration of Independence and made sure the constitution included a bill of rights for all Americans.

The great men and women of history have inspired us to be the best we can be. So, why all of a sudden are we going after our own icons. Why are their flaws suddenly so important? Is someone trying to take our eyes off the prize? Ships once depended on lighthouses along the coast to warn them of rocks ahead. If an enemy wanted to confuse and wreck the coastal commerce of its enemy, it burned the lighthouses so the ships could not find their way. I think that's what is happening now.  I look for more of it in the future.

It may come as a surprise to some of my readers, but I HATE POLITICS!. It's a nasty evil power game that illustrates perfectly what Satan's world would look like if he ran things - a seathing, self-dealing bureacracy intent on growing itself until it encompasses and controls all life on the planet.

 

This world may not survive much longer against the encroaching evil that Revelation talks about. Preachers will tell you they know who the three frogs are. Perhaps they do.  But it doesn't matter what powers will unite to bring the kings of Earth to Armageddon. Glenn Beck suggests three such powers that may be linking up to dominate the world. My own church believes it's a slightly different three. The mainstream media says it's all balderdash and there is no one in the world who wants to be Tolkien's "One ring to rule them all."  I'm here to say the media are wrong. Evil forces do crouch in wait, ready to pounce at any opportunity like the "roaring lion" Scripture talks about.  They walks about seeking whom they may devour. 

 

While the world lasts, it is our duty to keep the lights burning bright upon the heights. It is our mission to make clear what is right and good and beautiful.  We have to resist with all our might, being pulled down into the mud to wrestle pointlessly with one another while the devil stands over us and laughs. Let's focus on the real issues and not on whether Ronald Reagan should have signed an unbalanced budget or Lincoln sat in on a seance to appease his mentally ill wife.

 

Let's turn our eyes to the heavens from whence cometh our help and not obsess over the dirt at our feet, which only bogs us down and offers no help at all.

 

Tom King - Tyler, TX

© 2011 by Tom King

Is American Religious Freedom a Myth?

And is that an excuse to scrap it in the New World Order?

(c) 2011 by Tom King

David Sehat wrote a muddled article on the Huffington Post that seems mostly aimed at complaining that religion has too much influence in politics. When a majority of Americans belong to churches and formal religious bodies, it seems inevitable that religion should inevitably impact public policy, though that influence is an indirectly shaping influence rather than a directly controlling one because of the Constitution that prohibits the government from "establishing" a state religion..

I had difficulty identifying what Sehat's beef was with the first amendment. Sehat's complaint about America's system of religious tolerance seems to be not that people aren't allowed to attend the church of their choice, but that the way we guarantee that right makes it almost impossible to elect an atheist to public office because of the indirect effect of religion? Is he suggesting that we fracture the influence of religions like Christianity by turning churches into political parties?

There is some hint at that based on his "I'm smarter than you" toned article. He suggest that the European model is more honest in that churches participate directly in political parties. He wants us to stop congratulating ourselves and feel properly guilty about the failures of our ancestors to meet the ideal of religious separation from government.  Once we feel properly guilty, we are somehow supposed to become more honest in our political debate.

And how is that?  Will that mean we change our beliefs on size of government, spending, abortion, energy policy, global warming? 

It's ironic that he quotes de' Tocqueville for support, an author whose home country, France, murdered and persecuted religious groups like the Waldenses, the Hugenots and finally the Catholics, brutalizing the faithful via government and sometimes government/religion partnerships. Of course, the French revolution gave them an openly atheist form of government and after years of bloody pogroms, the country was left with few openly religious people. Is that what Sehat wants?  Religion minimized rather than respected and celebrated? Is that what's so insidious about the "Myth of American Religious Freedom".

The article came out on National Religious Freedom Day. Sehat doesn't think we should celebrate that.

Yes, America does have a checkered past where religious liberty is concerned as it does with every other element of the Bill of Rights. What Sehat doesn't allow for is the time it takes to change an entire culture. If you start with the ideal and make progress over time towards the ideal, you wind up with a country that is always rather better than when it started. We did that with civil rights, women's voting rights, freedom of speech, and the press and assembly. We've had to fight it out in courts and legislatures for 200 plus years. As a result we're better than we were.

I never can understand why people think that because we were once less than true to our ideals, that it gives us a reason to go backward - to accept less than the ideal we worked so hard to achieve.

My own church's members were locked up in Tennessee for farming on Sunday (we go to church on Saturday) in the early 1900s. We fought that in courts and unjust Blue Laws were ended.  Just because Americans haven't always achieved the ideals we hold sacred, doesn't mean we should scrap the whole constitution in favor of a socialsit/progressive remake that sacrifices those ideals for some sort of illusion of security.

I hope we are smarter than that.

Tom King

The Civility War - 2011

A friend wrote me a note chiding me for calling the president, "President Obama".  He suggested a particularly nasty string of epithets as an alternative.

While I might have my differences with the president, I will not use that sort of language in referring to him or to anyone, no matter his politics or religion. I unashamedly believe in the Constitutional process that elects our presidents. Our guy may lose the election, but respect should be shown to the office whoever holds it. However much I might disagree with the policies of the man holding it, I will not resort to cheap name-calling.

Every president is limited in what he can do while in office by the two other brances of the government and by the voices of the people which cannot be silenced without abolishing the constitution. I don't think that will happen any time soon.


In the meantime Mr. Obama is the president and I will speak respectfully to him. I was taught growing up to be polite to the least child of God out there....or the most powerful.

And one more thing. People who are black have asked me not to use the n-word, so out of respect for their wishes I don't. It's always been a crude word and I have always instinctively avoided it's use. My friend's use of the world is shameful if, as he seems to be, he is claiming to be a Christian and Conservative.  He blocks access to his profile information, so, for all I know, he may be a liberal. There has been a lot of race-baiting by liberals in disguise lately on the Internet. I think they are trying to lure vocal conservatives into revealing their "true racism". I don't think they will succeed. After all, we're not racist, no matter how many times the left keeps telling us we are.

Scripture warns that by beholding we become changed. The danger of obsessing over our enemies is that we are in danger of becoming like them. I will not stoop to the level that many of my liberal colleagues do when they verbally abuse me. Jesus said treat others the way I would like to be treated, not the way they deserve. That's God's business and I'll leave it to him, thank you very much.

And I appreciate my liberal friends who also believe in a polite exchange of ideas over name-calling and ridicule.  There is a fascinating debate going on between Americans of good will on both sides of the political fence that is being completely missed by extremists on both sides who prefer to flail at each other verbally to little effect.

The righteousness of your cause can often be demonstrated by the decency of its adherants. While it might feel good to "let 'em have it" verbally once in a while, it is morally wrong to do so.

At least that's what my Commander says.

And It's Up Against the Wall......Are Conservatives Fear Mongers?

(c) 2011 by Tom King

Had a liberal commentator on one of the forums today who criticized conservatives for promoting fear. They always call us fear-mongers. It's in the playbook. But it's not because they are deliberately lying about that. Folks on the left really do fear conservatives.  They fear we are going to cramp their sex lives. They fear we are going to make them go to church. They fear we're going to take away their entitlements and starve children and old people. And so they assume that we fear them in the same way they fear us and what we'd do to them if we did things our way.

I was chided by this one woman who told me our fear of the progressive movement was unfounded and that we should just sit back and "give it a chance". She promised we'd like the change.

Yep, kind of like the Russian middle class wasn't afraid of to embrace the revolutionary change that Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin brought to the Russian people. Many of them even tried to embrace the change, right up until the new government virtually obliterated the Russian middle class.  Just like the Jews dismissed any worries about the new Fuehrer as an "over-reaction". Like the Hugenots who expected the Catholic church to tolerate their beliefs because they thought that surely the Hugenots contributed so much to the economy as the core of the nation's middle class. In that, they greatly under-estimated the penchant of the powerful for cutting off their own noses to spite their faces. They dismissed any fear of the clerical authorities right up untill the Inquisition began setting fire to French Hugenot shopkeepers, forcing a mass flight to America. Hey, it was great for us, enriching  as it did, our growing economy with an influx of ready-made middle class traders and shopkeepers. I suppose Idi Amin, Sadaam Hussein, and "Baby Doc" Duvalier all seemed like they'd be okay if you just kept out of their way - till folks discovered how hard it is to stay out of the way of people like that..


History's megalomaniacs have long depended on the fact that the great majority of people in any stable culture refuse to believe anything unpleasant will every happen to them.  They use this stubborn deliberate refusal to believe the worst in order to buy time for them to secure enough power to enforce their peculiar vision of how society should be ordered. By the time the people figure out they've been duped, it's most always too late.

It was getting that way in America before the revolution, but having already been through the process back in Europe, most Americans saw what was coming and dug their heels in - rejecting an insane king and an oppressive British government that seemed intent on wringing the lifeblood from the colonies for the profit of the nobility.

ANYBODY who thinks that they know how to plan a perfect society is dangerous as far as I'm concerned. If things don't go as they plan, they never consider that something may be wrong with their plans. Then they go looking for someone to blame and it's "Up against the wall!" Too much power inevitably corrupts the holder of that power.

As to the direct accusation that I am afraid of what I believe is coming if we don't do anything about it......she's wrong.......I am not afraid at all. That's what the left doesn't get about the Tea Party. We see what's coming and we're NOT afraid. If we were afraid, we'd sit down and shut up and hope no one noticed us. That's how most of the people in the Third World do it. They try to take care of themselves very quietly and to avoid drawing any attention to themselves from the government.

Conservatives are well aware that we are painting a bulls-eye on our own chests and that historically, it's crazed leftists behind the trigger - almost ten to one on presidential assassination attempts alone.

AND WE ARE NOT AFRAID. I figure that if God is done with me, getting run over by a tank or stoned by a mob is nothing to fear. The manner of our death changes nothing. My next conscious moment after my death, I will be looking up to see Christ coming to take me home. I'm only passing through this world anyway. My only task is to do what's right. I learned a long time ago that after a while, a beating doesn't hurt anymore. Refusing to stand up for what is right - that hurts forever.

Knowing what's coming doesn't make me afraid. It makes me determined and I don't think liberals will ever get that. They see the world through their own stubborn ideology and everything must conform to that ideology, even if it obviously doesn't work like their ideology says it ought to. The fault is never with the ideology no matter what. It's particularly hard for folks who do not believe in God to accept flaws in their ideology because for them their belief system is all they have - a hollow substitute for God that doesn't quite fill the need. It's why there is such a powerful need to silence anyone who challenges their ideology.

Like I said in a previous post.  Socialist revolutions are bad about putting their own people up against the wall when they are done with them. Political ideologies are cannabalistic by nature. They devour their own to stay alive. Kind of the opposite of how God works.  The whole idea that the leaders among us would be the lowliest - the servants of all - makes no sense to those who believe in top-down rule by a privileged class of supposedly smart people. You can see why they don't understand us at all. 
 

Bullies and Cliques and Progressives.....Oh, My!

All someone has to do to get the leftists on Facebook going is to mention "Glenn Beck" and they go all conspiracy theorist and start spitting on their keyboards as they type. One guy today described Beck as a charismatic cult leader and said that those who listen to him are .  He doesn't know what he's talking about.

Glenn Beck is about as charismatic as the Pillsbury Doughboy. He makes a good argument. I listen to him sometimes. I admit it. I also listened to Ed and Keith and read the Huffington Post on occasion. When I do the background reading, though, I have to tell you. Beck has a point. Sometimes his speculation gets a little deep, but one thing he always does is give you the references and tell you to check it out yourself.

I do information research for a living and I'm here to tell you, "It's not what Glenn Beck says that frightens the bejeebers out of me." It's what Barak Obama says and has said in the past. It's what liberal leaders and presidential confidents like Dr. Piven, George Soros, Saul Alinsky, Cass Sunstein, the Stern brothers, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the rest of the crew say. It's not Glenn Beck's interpretation that gives me the willies, it's their own words that give me pause. They've been telling us what they plan to do to this country for years. We just don't want to believe it.


When I listen to liberal pundits, read liberal think tank reports and peruse the pages of the Huffington Post and Daily Kos, I see a movement afoot to fundamentally change the character of our government. That movement states very clearly that we need more government bureaucracy, more government power and a curb on free speech, assembly, religion and the right to keep and bear arms. They want to create a no-risk nanny state with an economy that is centrally planned by the federal government.

There is an arrogance in the very tone of their words that says, "I'm smarter than you so shut up. I'll tell you what you need to think." I'm getting none of that from Glenn Beck. I get that from people on the left.

When I was growing up I found myself at odds with two groups of kids in school - the bullies and the cliques. As near as I can tell they all grew up to be progressive socialists.
 
One of them said, "Even Chris Matthews thinks Beck is nutty." 
 
She said that Matthews accuses Beck of distorting history.  Wow! She really believes Matthews is an unbiased reporter. Incredible!  Chris Matthews is hardly one I'd suspect of spending a lot of time studying dusty old history. I'm telling you I've looked this stuff up. I've read it. I've seen the film of people like George Bernard Shaw, the darling of progressives to this day talking about how he thought we ought to have a local board that every 5 years we all had to appear before to justify whether we had contributed enough to the community to be allowed to continue living.  The man was dead serious.


I read the entire three volume set of HG Wells' History of the World. I have it in my library. It turned me off Wells as a writer. The books make the case that certain races and cultures and individuals are superior to others. The man was the worst sort of racial supremist and he was one of the fathers of the Progressive movement.

That's horrific, but my liberal friends quote Shaw constantly as though he was a really smart guy with all the answers. Talk about not knowing history. Glenn's turning up uncomfortable stuff under history's rocks and openly leftist people like Matthews can't disprove it, so they go after the messenger.  It's a textbook leftist tactic. It's almost cliche'.

Like I said, it's not Glenn Beck that scares me. My friend pointed out that there are thug Republicans too. They really don't get it at all.  I don't like progressive Republicans either. They compromise their principles for power and they aren't any better than those that are trying to make us a socialist nation. When they all get done, we'll be a third rate world power and they will be the new nobility.

And let me make sure I am clear. I'm not afraid of people like my liberal friends. They really believe this hopety change stuff will make us all better and that those who are resisting the holy "change" are somehow bad people. But I really don't worry about them. It's the guys in the legislatures and congress and White House that are working like bees in a tar bucket to make it happen before we can do anything about it that worry me in the night.

The sad thing is that one day we're likely to wake up in a country we don't recognize. Tragically, it's always the odd folk, the ones that flock to the progressive banner thinking the new government will protect them, that get lined up against the wall first when the revolution ends. Check your history. It's whatever religion that's out of favor, it's homosexuals, the disabled, old people, people who disagree, people the new regime considers "immoral" Look at German socialism and Russian Communism. They murdered Jews (the out of favor religion), the weaklings, those who disagreed politically went to the Gulags. They "eliminated" the elderly, disabled and infirm. They sent the decadent and the mentally ill to re-education camps and "hospitals" where they were experimented on and finally euthanized. They made soldiers and jailers out of children.  And every bit of it was done in the name of the greater good.

I hear the same rhetoric that preceded all the most heinous socialist regimes being repeated on television and radio, on news and in the papers by progressives - the same vague promises. They use marginalized and unhappy people as foot soldiers to seize power, then such regimes inevitably turn on them once they have control and no longer need them..

When the president (I heard him say it myself) says we need a special civilian law enforcement agency with all the power and equipment of the military, it frightens me. I can't help think Gestapo and KGB. Unlike many of my friends on the left, I don't trust Barak Obama any farther than I could toss him. He has given me little reason to do so.

So, unless the left succeeds in removing our right to speak, people like Beck, Limbaugh and me are going to say our peace. When they do remove our right to speak in the name of "tolerance" or "public safety", the progressive movement will stand revealed for what it is.

I could no more remain silent than I could the day on the playground in 1967 when I told a crowd of bullies to leave the little ones they were tormenting alone. Oh, I stood my ground alright. Lost a good deal of blood in the process!

I really dislike being so stubborn, but it's a lifelong habit that continues to cost me blood and a comfortable place at the table with the cool kids.

Tom