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Do Not Fret

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

Here is a pertinent and perceptive quote from Dr. Benjamin Rush in light of the recent and disastrous passing of the “Healthcare” bill.

“The Constitution of this Republic should make special provision for medical freedom. To restrict the art of healing to one class will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic. … Unless we put medical freedom into the constitution the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship and force people who wish doctors and treatment of their own choice to submit to only what the dictating outfit offers.”

And if you haven’t read it yet, you need to go read Doug Wilson’s take on Obama’s healthcare failure here. Doug Wilson really hit the nail on the head at the end, though, talking about figuring out what our response this healthcare monstrosity is:

The only real alternative for us is to worship Jesus Christ, who is the only true Savior. Our response to all this must not be limited to a truncated civic activity — letters, calls, signing, voting, that kind of thing. All lawful and appropriate, of course, but utterly inadequate in themselves to the need of the hour.

Our response to this must occur on a seven-day cycle — every Lord’s Day, we and our families need to assemble before the Lord and worship Him, cry out to Him, sing praise to Him, and feed on His Word while submitting ourselves to that Word. And why? “For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; he will save us” (Is. 33:22).

And lastly, my daily reading of Proverbs happened to include these comforting verses:

Do not fret because of evildoers, Nor be envious of the wicked; For there will be no prospect for the evil man; The lamp of the wicked will be put out. — Proverbs 24: 19-20

Coram Deo~

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Bitten to Death by Ducks

Friday, March 12th, 2010

Yes, Huckabee, your tax plan is brilliant; it’s much more subtle and deadly than our current system… instead of taxing the American people up front with a 20% income tax, just tax 20% of every dollar they spend (and I know this article was written in 2008, btw, but I just ran across it, and I doubt that Huckabee’s ideas about this have changed). It’s the same thing, after all, especially if you encourage people to spend every dollar they earn in this Keynsian economy — why earn it if you’re not going to spend it? This tax plan is just a slower, less obvious form of death. It would feel a little less like a holdup, and more like pickpocketing.

I know that it’s probably too much to ask, but please, please, please don’t let Huckabee be one of the top GOP candidates for 2012, Lord. Christian ketchup and politics = slime.

According to the author of this article, “any conceivable tax system discourages work, which is unfortunate but unavoidable. But the current system also discourages saving, which is avoidable.” And he goes on to explain how great it would be if we were allowed to earn a little interest on our pretax earnings before we withdrew and spent them. Or perhaps a better plan would be if we were allowed to save our money in unlimited IRAs, but coupled that with higher tax rates on the rest of our income. So… if the government let me earn a miniscule amount of interest on every dollar in my bank account before taxing it, or let me save more of it without penalties, but taxed me higher on what I didn’t save, then that would make a difference in how I feel about the government taking that money in the first place? “Yes, this limb is gangrenous, and we’re going to have to cauterize it and cut it off with a saw, but we’ll give you some whiskey to numb the pain slightly,” is what this boils down to. Stealing is stealing is stealing.

As Murray Rothbard insightfully pointed out, “The consumption tax (aka, fair tax), on the other hand, can only be regarded as a payment for permission-to-live. It implies that a man will not be allowed to advance or even sustain his own life, unless he pays, off the top, a fee to the State for permission to do so. The consumption tax does not strike me, in its philosophical implications, as one whit more noble, or less presumptuous, than the income.”

Yes, I just paid my taxes, and I’m quite disgruntled by doing so. Can you tell?

Coram Deo~

Posted in Links, Money, Politics | 2 Comments »

Peek Behind the Curtain

Friday, March 5th, 2010

If you were to give a cursory glance over news headlines, and if you were to half-listen to the raving and screaming of neo-conservative pundits on talk radio, you might be very, very worried. Scared to death that the Democrats are finally going to carry through their evil plans; that war and terror are going to be unleashed now, and the end is near because a change in administration from a Republican president to a Democratic one *must* mean that the anti-christ is on the horizon. The earthquakes lately have been something awful, too — the most severe earthquakes in the history of the world! Or at least since we started measuring earthquakes on the Richter scale in the 1880s.

Umm, not exactly… read this, and think again. Obama’s approval ratings have dropped like a block of cement to the bottom of the ocean floor. He and his administration are just as dependent on garnering the support of the pro-war, pro-police state masses as Bush was during his administration. Even Nero feared the masses, and tried to secure their votes by giving them bread and circuses. And lately, the Senate and Congress have tied themselves into one messy knot of filibusters, resignations, and super-majorities, oh my!
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Our problems with our economy, our education, and our politics at large, have not simply been caused by shifting political winds. That’s akin to saying “the devil made us do it.” Our political problems are moral and cultural; and at the heart of everything that a truly freedom-loving, paleo-conservative Christian hates is not one big, grinning face running the whole show… If you peek behind the curtain you’ll find millions upon millions of people who have unperturbedly, and willingly, sacrificed their time, children, education, and religion in order to have bread and circuses. And a majority of these people are Christians who have embraced more subtle forms of poison, such as charter schools, soft-style feminism, and military and state glorification.

So, let’s tear down the Federal Reserve, but don’t be surprised if it’s built back up in a generation because we also failed to tear down fallacious philosophies that are deep-rooted in our culture, our churches, and our daily lives.

I do think that our current political overlords will wreak much damage. But, my greatest fear and worry is that our culture will continue its degenerate, unprincipled free-fall all the way to the bottom. Yes, people do perish for a lack of knowledge.

Coram Deo~

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Discernment

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

I’ve grown sick of hearing the names of Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, and all the rest of their ilk, being touted as great conservative heroes of today… a few daily doses of Lew Rockwell, and you’ll pretty quickly start to recognize a bloodthirsty, Fascist, Neo-Conservative the next time you see or hear one, as they try to ride on the coattails of the Tea Parties, and try to whip up the so-called “Conservative Movement.” Here’s an easy rundown list for identifying a Neo-Conservative — A Neo-Conservative only differs from true liberals insofar as he is on the right side of the left instead of being on the left, according to Bret.

Coram Deo~

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Rescue Haiti’s Children

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

Doug Phillips is headed with a team of people in the next 24 hours to Haiti.

This disaster that occurred in Haiti already ranks among the top 20 worst disasters in recorded history… please be in prayer for Doug Phillips and the team of men that are going with him as they seek to bring immediate relief to the suffering, and as they seek to rescue many of the children that are orphaned there. And, if you can, please offer them financial support, as well.

Doug Phillips: Rescue Haiti’s Children.

“Who has performed and done it,
Calling the generations from the beginning?

‘ I, the LORD, am the first;
And with the last I am He.’”
The coastlands saw it and feared,
The ends of the earth were afraid;
They drew near and came.
Everyone helped his neighbor,
And said to his brother,
“Be of good courage!”

“The poor and needy seek water, but there is none,
Their tongues fail for thirst.
I, the LORD, will hear them;
I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.
I will open rivers in desolate heights,
And fountains in the midst of the valleys;
I will make the wilderness a pool of water,
And the dry land springs of water.
I will plant in the wilderness the cedar and the acacia tree,
The myrtle and the oil tree;
I will set in the desert the cypress tree and the pine
And the box tree together,
That they may see and know,
And consider and understand together,
That the hand of the LORD has done this,
And the Holy One of Israel has created it.” — Isaiah 41: 4-6, 17-20

Coram Deo!

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To Die For

Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

So, I’m sitting here getting fatter by the minute. Yep, just packing on the pounds — if you can get fat reading and drooling over food recipes, that is. The Pioneer Woman has an entire section of her website devoted to her down-home cooking. This woman should be locked up in jail for the pure corruptness of it. Causing people to stumble by posting such heinously delicious looking recipes. To think… they might actually cook some of these recipes that call for inordinate amounts of butter, eggs, cheese, white flour, and milk… oh wait, we have cooked some of her recipes before, and they are just as delectable tasting as they look. And incredibly easy.

I’m contemplating the thought of Biscuits and Gravy; I never gave them much thought before. But now I find myself wondering, after reading her recipe, just how hard it would be to whip together an imitation of biscuits and gravy. Do we have canned biscuits on hand? Nope. Pork sausage? Nope. But we can do without… I have a few ideas as to what to substitute.

And Ribeye Steak with Blue Onion Cheese Sauce sounds like it’s to die for. I think that we may have some ribeye steak lost deep in the recesses of the freezer, and blue cheese, too. Problem is, if my thinking is correct, we only have a total of two ribeye steaks. Sorry kids. ;-)

Dinner tonight was delicious… Thai Curry Chicken with Green Beans and Sweet Potatoes. What a mouthful. Though, after I finished cooking (and eating) it, I was contemplating what I could tweak in the recipe to get it just right. More curry, less sweet potatoes, less brown sugar, more salt, and a little bit of lime. After that tweaking it should be perfected!

Goodness, I’m a little obsessed with food lately. I guess this is what happens when you’re stuck in the house for an entire week with stir-crazy kids. We really don’t eat all that much. Just enough to keep us alive; that’s the purpose of food isn’t it? Nothing more, nothing less. Don’t you be thinking about that creamy, buttery taste of homemade gravy on top of tender biscuits with crispy pork sausage on the side now, you hear?

This particular set of storms has descended on our area like an alien invasion. In times like these I learn what I’m really grateful for… mostly things I take for granted, like our generator that keeps our utilities going, even when all our neighbors have lost their power. A huge library whose rows and rows of books have provided a sizable amount of entertainment for us over the past couple of days. A well-stocked kitchen and pantry that allows me to cook creative and delicious cuisine. Oops, I’m talking about food again. The woodstove that has had a continuous fire burning in it all week long — only privileged people get to sit in the chairs right in front of it. And board games like Risk that teach children how to master the important skill of world domination. Yes, a highly important skill to possess… if you plan to get far in politics, you must make sure to have a grounded education in the rules of Risk. Cheating included.

I think tonight, as the storm howls overhead, and banshees knock on the front door, I’ll just settle cozily in with a blanket, and get back to my reading. Highly important reading, I assure you.

Posted in Excellent Blogs, Family, Links, cooking | 6 Comments »

Sharp Swords in the Hands of Madmen

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

Thank you Bret for some excellent (scary!) quotes on public education and the stupidity of Christians who think that they can play with fire and not be burned:

“The hatred of excellence is very real. Everything that points to the world of the mind and to the discipline of an ultimate moral law is despised and hated. If good and evil are valid and basic categories of thought, then the idea of an elite is inescapable. The idea can be abused, a wrong kind elite fostered; but, despite this, the concept of excellence remains.

John Dewey, however, objected strongly to orthodox Christianity because of its commitment to the ideas of right and wrong, heaven and hell, the saved and the lost, and he objected to it on the grounds that it fostered the idea of a ’spiritual aristocracy.’ ‘I cannot understand,’ said Dewey, ‘how any realization of the democratic ideal as a vital moral and spiritual ideal in human affairs is possible without surrender of the conception of the basic division to which supernatural Christianity is committed.’ More than one generation has been reared on Dewey’s philosophy. Having denied the validity of standards above man, it looks for vitality from within and below man.”

R. J. Rushdoony, Noble Savages – pg. 130

“Christianity must be a present element of all the training at all times, or else it is not a true and valuable education. The human spirit is a monad, a single unit, spiritual substance, having facilities and susceptibilities for different modifications, but no parts. Hence, when it is educated, it is educated as a unit. The moral judgments and acts of the soul all involve an exercise of reason; so that it is impossible to separate the ethical and intellectual functions. The nature of responsibility is such that there can be no neutrality… between duty and sin. It follows that any training which attempts to be non-Christian is therefore anti-Christian. God is the rightful, supreme master and owner of all reasonable creatures, and their nearest and highest duties are to him. Hence to train a soul away from him is robbery of God. He has not, indeed, committed to the State the duty of leading souls to him as its appropriate task. This is committed to the family and to His church. To educate the mind without purifying the heart is but `to place a sharp sword in the hand of a madman.’ Practically few do recognize and obey conscience except those who recognize the authority of the Bible. There can be, therefore, no true education without moral culture, and no true moral culture without Christianity.”

Robert L.Dabney, Discussions Vol. IV (1870)

That is exactly what has happened. With the exception of a few men like Hodge the pulpits of America have been filled with men who have repeatedly proven themselves to be incredibly ignorant and agonizingly dull. Obviously ignorant of the religious nature of all education and steeped in the godless idea of neutrality Minsters have failed to open the eyes of Christian parents to the dangers and has even defended the right to sacrifice their children on the educational altar of state. And after having sent their little ones to the enemy to be educated they are puzzled over why they are leaving the church. Such appalling stupidity. God help us.

Mark Chambers, Homeschooling Father of Three

Coram Deo!

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Tasty Steaks

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

Eric Rauch’s latest article about killing the sacred cow of the modern definition of luv was excellent in pointing out that love does not depend on our variating, fickle emotions — the Bible commands us to love God, and the second commandment is like unto it, which is to love our neighbors as ourselves, regardless of our emotions, environment, or situation.

Here’s an excerpt from Eric Rauch’s article The Sacred Cow of God’s Love:

Praise be to God that His love is not conditioned on emotions, but on the faithfulness of Christ. If we are “in Christ,” we are unconditionally loved by the Father, but being “in Christ” is the condition of God’s love. Salvation is an unconditional gift as a result of God’s love being directed toward us. Salvation is not conditional, as some commenters put it; salvation from God’s wrath is a direct consequence of being loved by Him. Making the claim that God’s love is unconditional but that it is actually salvation which is conditional only changes the words being used. This wordplay is similar to when certain evolutionists explain away the impossibility of abiogenesis—life coming from non-life—on earth, by claiming that life was seeded here by aliens. The problem of the scientific impossibility of abiogenesis still remains, but they push it out into space and hope that no one will notice. We are only forced into these types of word games when we begin with a faulty premise.

We must be careful to not make the Bible say what we want it to say. Although I am genuinely thankful to those of you who recommended that I read the Bible to straighten my faulty views out, I can only offer my assurance that I have read it. I would hasten to add that “read the Bible” is pretty dangerous advice. I only recommend reading the Bible to those that are willing to abandon a lifetime of preconceived and misguided notions about the character of God. Scripture changes us; we cannot change the Scripture to suit our own preferences. Although it is sometimes difficult to get our minds around biblical truths, we shouldn’t seek to redefine them. Sacred cows are hard to kill, but they sure make for tasty steaks once they’re dead.

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Humble Glory

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

This is another gem of a post from the Femina blog. Mrs. Wilson’s posts, of late, about having a humble and sacrificial love for those we don’t get along with the easiest has been convicting. These people are likely the ones that we are in contact with the most, at home, and at church. It’s easy for me to excuse treating them with a harsh and complaining attitude, when instead I should be laying aside my oftentimes petty grievances on a daily basis to sanctify and serve my neighbor, and the body of Christ at my local church.

You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.

— C.S. Lewis

Coram Deo!

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Piety at Home

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

I really enjoyed these wise words from Mrs. Wilson’s latest post about exercising charity and piety at home; it seems easier to show love to those who are far away than to show it to those whom I rub elbows with daily and who can see every spot, wrinkle, and cold emotion on my part; I can certainly raise my hand and plead “guilty” on this part. Yet, home affords endless opportunities for truly putting my piety and charity into practice. If I do not learn first at home and keep the flame of compassion and kindness alive there, then I will fail miserably at demonstrating it in the public realm and I can be certain of being exposed for the hypocrite that I am.

Our Christian faith and the Christian principles which proceed from that faith are to be lived out in our relationships. We are to love God and love our neighbor. The one must precede the other. If we love God, we are equipped to love our neighbor, and our family members are our nearest neighbors. So our piety must begin at home. It is sometimes easier to love those people with whom we have little contact. We can wave quite cheerfully out the car window at our grumpy neighbor. But loving our child or husband or parent who is grumpy is another matter.

Coram Deo~

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