Good vs. Evil

 Gentle readers may notice that I am on an anti-Islam kick, or crusade if you will.  Actually, I have been writing about Islam for a long time.  I was in Washington, DC on September 11, 2001, across the Potomac River from the Pentagon, at the Navy Yard.  When the second plane hit the Towers, I commented to those watching on television that we were now at war.  And when the third plane hit the Pentagon, I could see the rising plume of smoke. President George W. Bush, though named the wrong target of our anger.  We were not at war with "terror."  Terror was just a tool, used by an ancient enemy of the Creator, known by many names including Baal, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Satan, and others such as Zeus and Jupiter. Let us here just call him Satan.

Islam is not a religion, as we understand that word.  The founders, in writing the First Amendment were only thinking of various strains of Christian religion.  Both Islam and Christianity are all encompassing, taking over the lives of believers and informing them how they should live.  But unlike Christianity, which you are free to accept or reject, because God doesn't want to be where He is not wanted, Islam demands submission and will kill those who will not submit.

Islam requires its adherents to pray five times a day, and to kill all pagans and those who will not submit.  Christians and Jews are given the "opportunity" to live under Islam by becoming second class citizens and paying a special tax, but they are often persecuted.  Muslims may lie, if it is to advance Islam.  Christians, of course, may not.  Another feature of Islam is Sharia, the Islamic law.  Sharia seems, however, to simply be the codification of the ancient Arabian way of life.  Thus, polygamy, wife beating, honor killings, child marriages and brutal punishments for violations of Sharia are part of this so-called law.  Some of the lesser-known facts of Sharia are that dogs are considered "unclean" and therefore you can't have them.  Muslims are of course supposed to be teetotalers, and pork is absolutely verboten.

Needless to say, the Koran is a hodge podge of a book apparently written by a mad man.  And so it was.  The entity inspiring the Koran was Satan himself, disguised as the Angel Gabriel.  Look at the symbol of Islam.  It is the crescent moon.  But the moon has no light or life of its own.  The moon merely reflects of the light of the Sun.

Christians try to follow Christ, to follow the moral law laid down in the Ten Commandments, to be good husbands and wives, to be good neighbors, good citizens, and to love God with all our hearts and minds.  Faith and trust in God are the hallmarks of Christianity. As Paul wrote in an epistle, "to live is Christ and to die is gain."  Of course, we fail so often, that He sent is only begotten son to take on the sins of the world for us by dying and rising again on the third day.  It's a free gift, and all we have to do is not reject it.  Muslims do, however, reject it, and they want everyone else to reject it too.  The Bible has been called a nonfiction novel, the whole pointing to God's plan to save humanity.  It was written by various authors, all of whom were inspired by the Holy Spirit, so we consider it God's word.  Indeed, He is its main character.

This war, between Satan and God plays out in the human world.  We, all of us, are soldiers in this war.  There is no neutral ground.  You must decide.  Are you for God, who loves you and forgives your sins, or are you for Satan, who hates you and wants to rule you in hell.

Eileen F. Toplansky today, at the American Thinker has a piece asking the question never Forget? Of course, she is writing about the fact that too many have forgotten what happened on September 11, 2001. Seemingly, Islam is taking over more and more of the United States. When Jesus cast a demon out of a man, he told his disciples that unless the man turned to God, the demon would return and bring seven more, and his final state would be worse than before. This happens with nations too. We need to rededicate ourselves to God if we are to remain a free nation.

I urge gentle readers to read Toplansky's article. Please consider, if you are a atheist, isn't it better to live in a Christian nation than under barbarian rule? For Christians, it is time to use the tools of spiritual warfare (prayer) to stand against this invasion.

The Constitution Is Not a Suicide Pact

 Today, at the American Thinker Mike McDaniel has a post entitled Defining Islam to avoid national suicide. Americans must realize that Muslims are waging a special kind of jihad against us, with the eventual goal to conquer this country for Allah. It starts small. Maybe a family moves into your neighberhood who is Muslim. They seem nice. Then a few more. One day they build a mosque, hire an imam who tells them they must more fully comply with Islamic law and the Koran. Next thing you know, they are demanding Sharia in place of the laws of your community One day the city that once was yours has become theirs and you are no longer welcome. See Dearborn Michigan. We don't have to let this happen.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Note that the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Yes it says that we may not either establish a religion or prohibit the free exercise of such. But, is Islam a religion?

Christianity is a voluntary religion. No one is forced to become a believer, and there is no earthly penalty for choosing to reject belief. One willingly accepts God, or one does not. Christianity does not mandate the conquest of the world for God. It recognizes self-defense, an unalienable right acknowledged by the Second Amendment, but it does not preach hatred of anyone; quite the opposite, as the Second Commandment says:

And the second is like, namely this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

Islam is a system of political conquest and domination. It tolerates no separation of church and state because the “church” is the state. It uses religion as a means, including Sharia, to keep its adherents in line. If you are not an observant Muslim, you risk being labeled an infidel, and if you choose to leave Islam, you’re an apostate. There is only one fate Islam mandates for apostates: death.

Muslims are exhorted to kill all Jews, and to enslave or kill all infidels in Jihad—holy war—to conquer the world for Islam. Islamist Muslims often kill other Muslims they consider insufficiently fervent in their faith. And while some Muslims apparently do not want to kill or enslave anyone, it is Islamists, not they, who are living the intent and text of their faith. The saying that some Muslims don’t want to kill anyone, they just want other Muslims to do it, applies.

It should be clear that the god of Islam is not the same as our God. It should be clear that Sharia is incompatible with our laws. It should be obvious that while we are expected to love those that have a stated goal of killing us, we nonetheless can expect them to either give up their stated goal or return from whence they came. We are not required to bow to their god, who in reality is the Evil One. We already have sufficient laws to deal with Islam, the question is, do we have the spine to implement them?

More sad news for gun grabbers...

 In 1992, Florida State criminology professors Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz conducted a survey that showed around 2.5 million defensive gun uses (DGU) a year nationwide.  Most DGU involved merely brandishing the gun, not actually firing it.  Naturally, the gun grabbers tore into Kleck's results, claiming it could not be true.  The CDC did a similar study in 2018 and found similar results. A number of years ago, I had a experience of using a gun to defend myself, but in my case, I didn't even have to brandish it. Once the bad guy made himself known, I took a firing grip on the weapon but did not draw it. It remained concealed.  But the bad guy decided I was not an easy target after all.

Today, at Fox News there is an article by Amy Swearer entitle Gun control activists demanded better data. What they got surprised the heck out of them. According to the article:

A Georgetown professor just taught gun control activists an important lesson: When you criticize studies that don’t support anti-gun talking points, be careful what you wish for — you just might get it. In this case, they got an unprecedented amount of new data that obliterates their narrative.

In 2021, Professor William English published the findings of his National Firearms Survey, by far the most comprehensive assessment of gun ownership ever conducted. The data demonstrated that defensive gun uses were commonplace, that ordinary Americans really like the weapons gun control activists hate most and that longstanding stereotypes about the "sort" of Americans who exercise their Second Amendment rights were misplaced.

Gun control activists predictably hated this. They attacked the report’s conclusions and author, blasting the survey over nitpicky concerns. English explained how the alleged problems wouldn’t have significantly impacted the results. Critics categorically dismissed the report anyway.

So, English humored them. He re-administered the survey, "fixing" its alleged "mistakes."

If gun control activists hated the 2021 conclusions, they will likely lose their minds over the new ones, which English just released online. The improved and redesigned 2026 survey fails to vindicate their criticisms and deals even mightier blows to anti-gun narratives.

Gentle readers can read the whole article at the linked site. I don't expect this survey to change any minds among the gun grabbers. They are stuck in the belief that if we only banned the tool, that criminals wouldn't kill others. But the first recorded murder in the Bible was when Cain killed Able with a rock. Indeed, nearly anything can be used as a weapon. It is the criminal intent of the killer rather than the tool he uses that makes the difference. What surveys like the one conducted by English show is that guns are inanimate tools that can be used for both good and evil.

It is, of course, a utilitarian survey, but as such things go, it proves that the principle is correct.  God says you shall not murder.  But when someone chooses to break that commandment, we have the right, and even the duty to defend ourselves.

Finding Meaning in Not Being an AWFUL

 On August 27, Steve McCann had a piece at the  American Thinker entitled Why Are Liberal White Women So Angry?. You have to wonder. Not all women, mind you, but you have no doubt encountered "Karens" and "AFWULs (Affluent Female White Urban Leftists). McCann quotes Peechy Keenan:

Recently, Peachy Keenan, the pseudonym of a well-known cultural commentator, writer, and critic of modern feminism, asked a question on her X account that succinctly summarizes the state of American feminism and the white liberal woman:

Why are so many women sooo angry? They won. They got everything they wanted. Men have never been doing this badly, and women have never been doing this well. They make more, they have the majority of jobs, they are the majority of college graduates, (UCLA undergrad is 60% female), they make more money, have much lower rates of suicide, addiction, and alcoholism, and live longer. They won: they took over all men-only spaces, they took over the Boy Scouts, they ended men’s bathrooms, they can fly fighter planes and be in combat. Marriage is optional, divorce is no-fault, they win 99% of the custody battles, they can control fertility at will, and they can’t get drafted. We are all living in the female future they promised.

One of the commenters to Keenan's post noted that the feminists never wanted to win. They wanted to complain. I think this is probably partially true. McCann's article mentions a more probable reason, though. Having won, they've lost their purpose, their meaning in life. Unfortunately, the meaning they sought in life turns out to be a dead end. What does a woman do when she is old, has no husband, no children or grandchildren and is facing her mortality?

Unsurprisingly, the first post-civil rights crusade was Second Wave Feminism, a movement that began in the mid-1960s and continued throughout the 1970s. It triggered religiously passionate mindsets and achieved fleeting “meaning in their lives” moments for a vast number of white women. It set the stage for overwhelming leftist women to dominate all the so-called “civil rights” movements since the 1980s and triggered the lunacy that engulfs the country today.

Thus, this movement can never win or declare victory. The never-ending search for meaning in their lives requires not only retaining the same villain—white men—but keeping the movement alive by continuously finding increasingly ludicrous policies to promote and espouse...

Somehow, and I don't know the answer, women must find again the joy of raising a family as God intended. Gentle readers are encouraged to read McCann's article and think on it.

The Haunted Bookshop

 So, I have been enjoying a tobacco blend by Cornell and Diehl called The Haunted Bookshop.  It is a blend by the late Bob Runowski and named after a book by Christopher Morely.  In the book, Morely weaves three subplots into a surprise ending.  The book is set in 1919 Brooklyn, New York.  President Wilson is set to go to Europe.  One subplot involves the Haunted Bookshop and its pipe smoking owner.  Another involves the disappearance and reappearance of a book on the shelves of the shop.  The third involves, what else, young love.  It's a fun little whodunit.

Like The Haunted Bookshop, Runowski weaves together three types of tobacco to create a blend that the over-the-counter blends should have been.  The burleys are the most prominent tobacco.  It is high quality, without casings or toppings.  It is rare to find a blend with uncased burley.  The virginias play a secondary role.  Always present in the background, they balance the earthy Burley with their typical sweetness.  Sometimes, like an apparition, they will appear for a moment before fading again to the background.  Finally, Perique adds a peppery spicey note to the blend.  You can sense it best on retro hale, where it may tickle the nose.  You might even sneeze!

 One warning, The Haunted Bookshop has a reputation for being somewhat strong in nicotine.  I don't have any problem with it, and I could smoke it all day.  But for new pipe smokers, I suggest using a small-bowled pipe, or put it down when you start feeling it, and pick it up again later.  While I have never been sick from nicotine, it can be quite distressing.      

If they hate America so much, why don't the leave

 Susan Quinn at the American Thinker today asks something that I have wondered about for many years. She asks If You Hate America, Why Don't You Leave? It's a fair question, particularly for Muslims. There are many countries where Sharia is the law. They don't have to go back home. But instead of going where they will have more in common with the people and culture, they come here to a land where the culture and the government are in conflict with their desires. As a result, they don't assimilate.

Quinn is asking the right question, but comes to the wrong conclusion. The Muslims are here, in a non-Muslim land specifically to conquer it for Islam. They intend to use traditional means by killing the infidel. The truth is that while we are fighting a human war here on earth, the same war is raging in the spiritual realm. St. Paul tells us that the ruler of this world is the evil one. He goes by many names: Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, and of course Allah. When he tempted Jesus in the wilderness, one of his temptations was taking Jesus to a high hill and showing him all the kingdoms of the world. He would give them to Jesus (who was Yahweh in human form) if He would bow down and worship him. Jesus, of course, refused.

So, Allah thinks he owns every piece of ground in the world, and his army, the Muslims, have a duty to conquer all, killing every infidel. The Left thinks it is using Muslims as a battering ram to take us, but they are tragically mistaken. We, the Christian and Jewish people must fight back. But we can not use guns and knives. We must fight back spiritually, with prayer, self-discipline and fasting, and trust in our God, for he is the true creator of everything that is and everything that is not, and the true ruler of all.

Post Office Carry Ban Contradicts Federal Law

 Today at Bearing Arms Cam Edwards has some welcome news for gun owners. The article can be found at DOJ Says Post Office Carry Ban Contradicts Federal Law. It is not a done deal yet, but it is closer than ever to getting rid of this nasty rule.

Every time I have to go to the post office, I have to take my gun out of its holster, put it in a safe, and then walk in. Upon completion of postal business, I have to retrieve it, put it back in the holster, all without anyone noticing.  But the truth is nobody in the post office is in any danger with it in its holster, but I am at risk every time I handle it. People make mistakes all the time when in a hurry. Besides that, handling the gun in a car, while keeping everything on the down low is awkward.

Gentle readers can read about it at the embedded hyperlink.  As with everything, it takes forever, but at least here it is trending the right way.