Who'll Stop the Rain?

By Creedance Clearwater Revival:

Who'll Stop the Rain? Go and listen.

'nough said.

If only...

KrisAnne Hall is an actual lawyer so should have an understanding of the relationship of the government vs the citizen, and what that means for the right to keep and bear arms.  She writes about it at an Open Letter to Governors, Attorneys General, Legislators of these United States, and the People along with their Sheriffs and Peace Officers. I make the point that Ms. Hall is an actual attorney, rather than some schmuck who just reads the Constitution and somehow thinks it means what it says.  I also want to thank David Codrea of the War on Guns for bringing this to my attention.

Hall is here writing about the recently passed initiative 1639 in Washington State, and the more recent refusal to enforce it by a number of sheriffs throughout the state.  Apart from the arguments Hall makes, the sheriffs have more practical reasons for refusing to enforce the law.  But it turns out that refusing to enforce it is the right thing to do:

Proponents of Washington’s Initiative 1639 and those critical of the law enforcement officials cite a “duty to the Constitution” and to the “rule of law.” Yet in many respects these laws are built on the circumvention and abdication of the rule of law. The Constitution and its underlying principles define the rule of law. As such, “the rule of law” cannot be synonymous with “the will of the” majority, as Washington’s AG suggests, when the majority’s will advocates the suspension of due process and the revocation of a person’s natural rights (which all officials involved in this debate swore an oath to uphold.)

...snip...

The legislator with his delegated responsibility, cannot be exalted above the inherent rights of the individual which he is charged to protect. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because people have legislators who have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused people to entrust legislators with the power to make laws in the first place. So the justification “it was passed by the legislature,” does not and should not override an inherent individual right, even more so when the legislature is admonished by the Supreme Law to not infringe upon said right.

Ouch!

Please go read the entire piece.  It is logical and well written.  I wish the people in power would read it and take it to heart.  So much of our problems would be solved if more of our government officials humbly recognized the relationship laid out by Hall and acted upon it. 

Socialism is anything but being sociable

Eileen F. Toplansky has an excellent post today at the American Thinker entitled Exposing Socialism that is a pretty good primer on what socialism really is. The left has always used twisted language to camouflage and disguise itself. But Socialism, Communism, Progressivism, Fascism, Marxism, Peoples Republics and Collectivism are different names for the same ideology. It really isn't new, it just has better camouflage than its older cousins: kings, emperors, dictators, and tyrants:

Apart from the degradation of the spirit and the eventual loss in life, socialism costs a great deal of money. For example, "Sen. Warren's blue print for democratic socialism would cost the U.S. $42 trillion, requiring tax rates on everyone of 60% or higher." Moreover, under Ocasio-Cortez’s New Green Deal "the United States of America would certainly collapse. On the left, 'from each' comes first, and the deal takes away the people’s mobility. 'To each' comes last, and the people get only the health care the government wants them to have. Promoters such as Kamala Harris don’t even bother to lie about it." Moreover, "other deprivations would be sure to follow, as they did in the USSR, China, Cuba, and most recently Venezuela. The Green New Deal, in effect, is the Democrats’ version of the Khmer Rouge’s 'Year Zero,' a suicide note for the freest, most prosperous nation in human history."

Please go and read Ms. Toplansky's article and if you don't know any of the history about which she writes, go and study it. The internet has been described as a great sewer, which it is. but there is also a lot of useful information on it too. How you separate the good info from the bad, the hoaxes, the "fake news" is the discipline of "critical thinking." The more you do it, the better it gets. I had a boss once who talked about things passing the "smell test." The more you exercise your B.S. meter, the more sensitive it gets.

End note:

At the bottom of the American Thinker article, you will note that Ms. Toplansky has her e-mail address as "middlemarch18@gmail.com,"  This marked her to me as an English professor, which she turned out to be.  I did a paper years ago on the novel Middlemarch by English novelist George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) when I attended college myself 40 some odd years ago.  I have been reading Ms. Toplansky's articles at the American Thinker since 2010.  I hope, dear reader, you will find her writings interesting as I do.

If you are pro choice, rethink your position now, while it is not too late

Hans Fiene is a Lutheran pastor and a great story teller as well.  At The Federalist he tells us Why Infanticide Isn't A Bridge Too Far For Many Abortion Supporters. I have written about this a number of times. Abortion and infanticide are ancient pagan sins that we thought the Christian world had eliminated, only to have it come roaring back in the modern age. Fiene tells us a story, a parable about why this might be: The Parable of the Burning Building.

In the parable, a party goer is on the first floor attending a party when Captain Fire Crier barges into the room and tells them to jump out the window before the fire spreads. Being afraid to jump while it is only a 5 foot drop, the party goer goes up a floor. But Captain Fire Crier again interupts the party to announce the fire is now on their floor and they should jump.  But now the drop is 15 feet and the party goer is even more afraid.  So he escapes to the third floor, where you can imagine what happens next.  Eventually, the party goer finds himself 100 floors up, and all hope of jumping has been lost.  He is clearly doomed.

After relating how this parable fits to the pro choice movement, Fiene introduces Jesus's parable of the Prodigal Son.  It turns out that it is never to late to repent, while you yet are alive.  To repent means to rethink, and to appeal to God for Divine Mercy and Grace.  If you are pro choice, now is the time to rethink your position and pray to God for his Mercy.  God doesn't want you to be burned in the fire that sin lit.  Pray with me now Psalm 51:

Have mercy upon me, O God,
 According to Your lovingkindness;
 According to the multitude of Your tender mercies,
 Blot out my transgressions.

 2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
 And cleanse me from my sin.
 3 For I acknowledge my transgressions,
 And my sin is always before me.

4 Against You, You only, have I sinned,
 And done this evil in Your sight—
That You may be found just [a]when You speak,
 And blameless when You judge.

5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
And in sin my mother conceived me.
 6 Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts,
 And in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom.

7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Make me hear joy and gladness,
That the bones You have broken may rejoice.
 9 Hide Your face from my sins,
 And blot out all my iniquities.

10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
 And renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me away from Your presence,
 And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of Your salvation,
 And uphold me by Your generous Spirit.

And rethink you position on abortion and infanticide.  The life you save may be your own.

A better explanation to David Drake

A fellow blogger, David Drake, made a comment to the post Finally Somebody Recognizes that People Make The Difference that upon further consideration deserves an expanded explication. My response to David was, while accurate, perhaps a little short. So, here goes:

David said

I will never understand why schools, grade K-12; are so frightened to have someone on the school property who is trained on how to handle guns & trained in self-defense; and who passes all the background checks. It has to be "PC". I can't think of any other reason. Am I missing something? Is there something I'm NOT following?

I responded that the anti gun movement consists of people who fear guns, and people who want to control you and me. Let's expand on these two classes of people.

The first group consist of what Col. Jeff Cooper called "hoplophobes," people who fear guns.  There are people who fear the loud noise, have never had guns around them, and fear what they do not understand.  Many of these people only know guns from what they see on television and the movies.  Such depictions are notoriously inaccurate and untrustworthy.  They have the notion that guns are more powerful than they actually are.  They believe that guns can fire faster, farther, and do more damage than is actually possible.  Sometimes it is possible to educate these people, but it only happens when they themselves seek such education.  People like this are most susceptible to anti gun messages.

There are others who believe the world shouldn't require us to go about armed.  I can't disagree with this position.  But reality tells a different story.  The truth is that violence happens where and when you least expect it.  The average criminal may not be the sharpest pencil in the box, but they know to wait until you are distracted, or not paying attention to situational awareness to pounce.  They also pick their targets where they are least likely to have armed opposition.  Until the lion lies down with the lamb, and swords are  beaten into plowshares, men (and women) with weapons will be needed.  At the moment, and for the foreseeable future, guns will be the most effective tools.

There are also people who do not feel they can, or should bear the burden of carrying a weapon.  People tell me they know themselves to be too volatile, that they fear they will become enraged and "snap."  Of course each person should make his own decisions for himself.  My own experience is that once I started carrying a gun, I began keeping my emotions in tighter check precisely because I was carrying potentially lethal force, and that force should only be used in the gravest extreme.

I am likely to encounter a number of such people on a daily basis.  Most are harmless, having a live and let live attitude.  Most do not think twice about guns from month to month unless something happens like the Parkland shooting..  They tsk tsk at the events, perhaps cry for the parents of the dead or wounded, and move on with their lives.  If somebody suggests shortly after an incident, they are on board with the "do something" crowd, which explains why we have 23,000 gun laws in the country.  None of these laws, of course, do anything other than forcing the law abiding to jump through extra hoops.  Criminals, are by definition, atr not law abiding, so these laws mean nothing to them.

One interesting law that exists in some jurisdictions is a law that requires registration of handguns.  No less a body than the Supreme Court has ruled  in U.S. vs Haynes, 1968 that criminals may not be forced to register their guns because of the Fifth Amendment right not to self incriminate. Yet theoretically, criminals are the very ones we should be catching with such laws. If we can't stop criminals, what's the point?

This brings us to the second group of anti gun people.  This group consists of politicians and their paid lobbying groups such as Every Town for Gun Safety and Mom's Demand Action. Every Town and the Demanding Moms are largely funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, with assists from billionaires George Soros and Tom Steyer. They have few paid members, but they make a loud noise. On the other side, you have the NRA which is funded by the dues and donations from its 5 million members, the Gun Owners of America, with an additional 1,5 million members, and a host of state level groups like Grass Roots North Carolina. Gun rights groups do not have billionaire sugar daddies, so everything they do whether is is lobbying with the legislature, or manning booths at gun shows, is done by volunteers.  Politicians pay attention when someone volunteers to give up a day's pay, and travels at their own expense to speak with them about gun bills currently in the works.   That is why the NRA and similar groups are so powerful.

The real danger however comes from politicians.  A lot of politicians have an exaggerated sense of their own importance and have a huge urge to tell others what to do.  Writer Stella Morabito has coined the term "self-supremacy" which seems to fit fairly well. These people believe themselves to be part of an elite club of people who know what is wrong with the world and how to fix it. If they have to ram their prescriptions down our throats, they are going to do it.  See Obamacare.

 People with guns potentially stand in their way. That is why the Democrat party has become the anti gun party. In order to impose its socialist agenda it needs to have first eliminated the potential for an armed revolt against its machinations. They aren't worried about criminals with guns, because criminals do not act in concert with other criminals to over throw their oppressors.  Instead, they figure out how to get around their oppressors.  Often, this involves bribes, "plumba o plata," take the money or the lead.  But at its heart socialism is just a criminal organization whose purpose is to enrich those at the top by stealing from those below, and wrapped in a pretty facade so no one notices.

The founding fathers had studied the Bible, law, and history.  They were keenly aware of other forms of government and how they failed.  They had tried living under a confederation of the sovereign states, but that system was too weak.  After the Constitutional Convention, there was considerable debate among the Federalists and the Anitfederalists.  In the end, the Federalists won the day by promising a Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights became the first 10 Amendments to the new Constitution.  The Second Amendment was designed to keep us safe from both foreign invaders and from domestic tyrants.  This explains the socialists hatred of the Second Amendment, because they fear that it may be used against them.  When a judge enjoins an statutory or Constitutional exercise of the President's power, it looks all nice and legal like.  But in fact it directly contravenes the law.  In this way they hope to "sneak" up on the American people when they are not looking.  When they the deep state refuses to apply the laws to one party while throwing the book at the other, that contravenes the law.  The Second Amendment is a last resort, a doomsday provision, if all else fails to preserve our rights, our life, liberty, and property under the law.

But the Second Amendment can only work if we routinely flex it and exercise it.  We the people should be armed with the same armaments as the police and military.  The balance of fire power should be on the peoples side.  The other thing we need to do is remain vigilant.

Update:

 In a related post, Alan Korwin has an article at Townhall.com entitled Background Checks Are...Wrong. Korwin:

If you’re terrified of guns, or if you want all power to collect and reside in the hands of “the authorities,” then background checks are not the wrong thing. Background checks are a tool for control over the population. But they don’t control crime. They don’t even address crime. Democrats know this, or should.

These checks are something the organizers of this free country could not even imagine, much less sanction. Your acquisition of power (firearms) is supposed to stand totally apart from government reach. But that’s philosophical, too deep for many modern citizens. It’s hopelessly arcane for typical public school or even recent college grads.

Korwin is often brutally honest. But the time has past for saving hurt feelings. We must be brutally honest to wake people up to the danger.

Finally, Somebody Recognizes that People Make the Difference

One school, Manatee School for the Arts, in Manatee County, Florida has actually done the right thing.  According to the website Bearing Arms a Florida School Hires Combat Vet(eran)s To Protect Students. I have argued that violence can happen at any place at any time. While some have come to this conclusion based on statistical studies, my observations are based on the Christian understanding of man as fallen creature. The free will we have only allows us to do evil. Our only hope is in the Lord. But Tom Knighton makes this explicit also:

You never know when violence is going to erupt, especially when you’re talking about a mass shooting. They happen seemingly at random and in unexpected places. They’re not happening in inner-city schools with gang problems, for example. They’re happening in places where you don’t expect the wholesale slaughter of innocent people.

It thus becomes imperative that people willing to shoulder that burden should carry as frequently as the law allows, but the law should allow them to carry pretty much everywhere. That is why many gu trainers say that you should carry every where all the time.  Violence occurs when and where you least expect it to happen.  Besides, criminals certainly carry everywhere. But high school students are of course a different matter. Students shouldn't be carrying guns to school every day because a number of them do not have the maturity yet to carry them responsibly.*

So,since students can not defend themselves against and armed attacker,  the best thing is allowing teachers who want to shoulder the burden to carry concealed to protect the students under their care. But this school decided to hire combat vets. I would take that too as opposed to having the school wide open for anyone to just walk in and start shooting up the place:

First, you take veterans and give them a renewed purpose. Transitioning from military to civilian life isn’t easy, even without seeing the horrors of war, so something like this is likely to help a great deal.

Second, you put guns in the hands of people you know aren’t going to hide outside if shots start to fly. These are people who have seen the elephant already. They’ve already been through the crucible of combat.

The adage that "guns save lives" is as flawed as the notion than guns kill. Every sheriff's deputy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school had a gun. The shooter also had a gun. It is not the instrumentality that takes action, or not. It is the people themselves and their intent. Guns are just tools, no more, no less.  Choosing people who have been through actual combat, have faced down the evil and survived is a pretty smart step.  People make the difference, the tools they carry are a secondary issue.

* Note that college students are a different matter entirely. Students who are at least 21, and pass a background check should be old enough to carry on campus. However, as I remember those days myself, I couldn't afford a gun, much less the belt, holster, and training needed to carry. But legislatures who make blanket bans are doing a disservice to students and their parents. However, that is a different story for a different blog post.

The Red, White, and Blue New Deal

Once again, Kurt Schlichter has hits the nail on the head with his post entitled How About a Red, White, and Blue New Deal? at Townhall.com today. Schlichter's Red, White and Blue New Deal is rather simple:

Support your own damn self and leave me the hell alone.

This has been the battle cry all along: leave me alone! You do what you want, but leave me alone.  Of course, Leftists can not leave anyone alone because their whole reason for being is to bother everyone else.  These people are hollow, and miserable themselves, and so derive meaning by making others as miserable as they are.

Schilchter is his usual self, so expect a lot of sarcasm and irony in this piece, but it is well worth the your time to read.

One thing to think about as you consider the Green New Deal is that if these proposals made anyone more prosperous, don't you think someone would be doing them already  without being forced by the government?  Whenever the government forces you to do something, you can bet that it is not what you want to do, nor is it in your best interest to do it.  Does the government, for example, have to subsidize McDonald's?  No?  Then why does the government have to subsidize these other things if not precisely because nobody is going to pay for them.  And why won't people pay for them? because they can't make money.

Support your own damn self and leave me the hell alone

That pretty well sums it up.

The Green New Deal: Pure Evil

By now, you have no doubt heard of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's (AOC's for short)  "Green New Deal."  If you live in reality as apposed to fantasy  land, you have probably had a good giggle if not a huge guffaw.  It is the engineering equivalent of proposing to hang  a roof from "sky hooks."  Don't laugh.  Air has friction, right?  That is why things coming in from space burn up in earth's atmosphere.  In theory, the friction on a long enough object should retard that object so that you could hang a roof structure on such "sky hooks."  The problem is that any material massive enough to hold a up a roof has too much weight such that gravity would overcome the air friction.  So while one can imagine a sky hook working, it is a practical impossibility, along with the perpetual motion machine and Ayn Rand's magic machine that generates power in Atlas Shrugged.

Two articles to consider, of the many I have read so far are by Ben Shapiro and David Harsanyi.  Shapiro's, at the Daily Wire is entitled AOC's Green New Deal Proposal is One of the Stupidest Documents Ever Written. While the original proposal is no longer available Shapiro preserves it in this document. The second piece is by David Harsanyi at the Federalist entitled The 10 Most Insane Requirements of The Green New Deal. Read both articles.

I have contended that the intent of many so called environmentalists is to ratchet us back to the technological advancements of the 17th or 18th centuries. Environmentalist claim that isn't so, they just want some regulation because...the reasons vary...but usually boil down to the idea that people... not them of course... but other people, are just too stupid to handle sophisticated technology.  Their fear is the fear that drove Mary Shelley to write about Frankenstein's Monster.  It is the fear that causes people to believe in the Malthusian prediction.  Like Chicken Little, they run about screaming the sky is falling and we're all going to die unless we do what they say.

I myself have had a good chuckle over the proposal.  It is ludicrous, and the fact that it came out from a Congresswoman is almost unbelievable.  But don't make the mistake of dismissing The Green New Deal, or of dismissing AOC.  I do not know if AOC actually believes much of what she says, including her socialist pronouncements, or she just sees this as a pose to get her to more power.  I have seen too many things that derive from the Socialist/Communist/Facsist/Progressive agenda come to pass to dismiss this.  The welfare state was a New Deal idea that was not fully implemented until 1965 with Johnson's Great Society.  Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring came out in 1962. while it had a kernel of truth, the main premise was hog wash, yet by 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency was born, and has been a bane of our existence ever since. Having a single payer universal healthcare system like England's NIH was a wet dream of the Democrats since 1948, and they are closing in on it now.

No, don't dismiss The Green New Deal. It is a classic misdirection that keeps everyone arguing about climate and "saving the planet" while what it really does is take away freedom and choice. So, for instance, by getting rid of airplanes, it eliminates one choice for long distance travel. By getting rid of internal combustion engines it gets rid of one of the most used modes of short distance travel. Constricting choices for energy to wind and solar severely restricts our choices of when to do things, and how we do them. That is ultimately the goal of all these socialist proposals, to control you and me, while giving them power and wealth. Wealth is normally earned by producing a product people want. These people couldn't produce their way out of a paper bag, so they have to resort to finding a way to con you out of your wealth, thereby constricting what you can do. It is pure evil.

Tell SJW to Go Pound Sand

Kurt Schlichter has some important advice for Republicans and conservatives: Tell the Social Justice Warriors To Go Pound Sand. It is good advice, so I encourage gentle readers of this blog to go read his article at Townhall.com.  Along the way, of course, he also mocks and makes fun of Democrats and that breed of Republican that would rather throw good men and women to the wolves than to fight back.  Kurt is right to fight back, because often these SJW outbreaks of hysteria are nothing more than politically timed attempts to tar and feather someone on our side.  The fact that it is happening to Democrats today is a popcorn worthy event.

The proximate cause of the SJW outrage machine going into high gear is the "discovery" of Virginia governor Ralph Northam's medical school yearbook page showing Northam either wearing blackface or a KKK robe.  The year was 1984, around the same time that the movie Blazing Saddles was came out. Blazing Saddles was Mel Brooks' classic anti-racist spoof that included references to a number of serious Westerns and a few WWII movies. It was and is hilarious, and should be studied by students for all time along with of course Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.  Schlichter is correct that people can change in 30 years.  People can grow up and become responsible adults.

The problem for both Northam and the SJW outrage machine is that their outrage is focused on the wrong things.  Blackface?  So?  He was young and stupid, and young and stupid people do stupid things.  What should spin up this crowd is that he defended...no endorsed...infanticide in the present.  But no one was upset about that, which tells you everything you need to know about the SJW.

Schlichter closes with this:

But that’s rare. And it does not include someone who decades ago did something silly, stupid, offensive, or even ugly, that did not hurt anyone, and who has subsequently demonstrated nothing showing low character. People make mistakes. They change and grow-up. We conservatives are supposed to be the ideology based upon real world experience, which includes changing and growing, unlike the totalitarian thought police of the left who savor the opportunity to spin themselves into a social media mob.

So let the Democrat autophagy begin. Your Virginia governor is a garbage person who did garbage things and told garbage lies not only about the garbage things he did – he was merely honoring Michael Jackson, folks – but about his GOP opponents. Let them eat their own. Perhaps they will learn through pain to be better people. Perhaps they will simply devour themselves. Hey, it’s all good.

But we Republicans should be different. We should be a party both of standards and forgiveness, of perspective and judgment, not of cowardly concessions to mobs out to crucify Catholic kids for smirkcrimes in the face of drum-beating fake ‘Nam vets.

The next time the SJWs come to us with some ridiculous demand to sacrifice one of our own on their altar of arbitrary outrage, we should tell them to put on their pounding gear and head to the beach.

You be the judge

Despite countless articles point out how unjust these new "Red Flag" laws are, they keep popping up like summer mushrooms in the cow pasture.  It seems everywhere the cows drop a steaming pile of excrement, there you will find a bill waiting to be pushed.

Today's bill comes from North Dakota, where a local newspaper, the Minot Daily News has an article entitled People Targeted by Red Flag Laws Would Have to Pay for Their Own Defense. Tom Knighton at Bearing Arms makes some good points. For instance, he points out, as does the article at the Minot Daily News that if you are targeted, you must prove a negative, that you are not dangerous. Interestingly, I suspect most people are, in fact, dangerous. Is a wild cat dangerous? A rattlesnake? Of course. And people are natural predators as well. What makes a person not dangerous is how closely one hews to God's laws concerning murder of another human being.

In this case, the law is framed as a "civil proceeding," but then prosecutors are encouraged to help a person file a complaint against a target.  But the target himself has to pay to defend himself.  In a civil case, the court assumes the plaintiffs case is correct, and the jury has to decide if the defendant has proven the plaintiff wrong.  This is backassword.  Since so called Red Flag laws are taking away a persons Constitutionally protected civil rights, the law should come under the criminal statutes, where one must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a target is likely to commit murder.  Is that a more difficult thing to prove?  Of course, but what is the point of the Bill of Rights if one can run roughshod over any right one wishes.

Imagine for a moment that there was a Red Flag law on the books pertaining to freedom of the press.  Suppose all it required was to be offended by an article to file a Red Flag complaint.  Today, being offended seems to be the National Pastime of at least half the population.  So, someone reads this article, goes down to the prosecutors office, where he gets help filling out the forms, files the complaint, at which point I receive a summons to court asking me to show cause why I should be allowed to continue publishing this blog.  How would I go about it?  As for hiring a lawyer, I am a poor retiree.

And there is the point of the article.  Such laws fall more heavily on the poor, who often live in more dangerous surroundings.  And since the poor includes a fair number of minorities as well, minorities will be impacted more as well.  In the article, Mr. Port doesn't say so, but every gun control act that has ever been devised has been aimed precisely at the poor and the minorities.  In the Jim Crow South, North Carolina had a law that required a person to pay $5.00 for a pistol permit from the Sheriff of the County of residence before someone could buy a handgun.  Now in the 19th Century, $5.00 was a lot of money, and it was no less a tax on a civil right than were the poll taxes charged to vote.  But let's say that a black man saved up the pistol permit fee to buy a $25 handgun.  Would any sheriff in his right mind have given the black man a permit?  That law is still on the books in North Carolina, by the way.  Every time the Legislature brings up the idea of repealing this fossil of racism, the Sheriff's association, along with the NAACP and a host of other liberal/leftist organizations raises a hew and cry that there will be blood in the streets if they get rid of a fundamentally racist law.

You be the judge.

Infanticide is the Hallmark of a Pagan Culture

In several postings of late I have pointed out that abortion and infanticide were common practices in ancient civilizations.  The thing that changed that was the coming into the world of Jesus, and his death on the cross and resurrection.  The God of the Jews and Christianity is a God of life.  All other claimants to that throne have been death cults.

Today, at the Federalist, Georgi Boorman has an article entitled Infanticide is the Historical Hallmark of a Pagan Culture which makes the same points. I make no distinction between aborting a child during the first trimester and exposing the child after it is born, or worse. I believe a child is human at the point of conception. It can not be anything other than human, for only human genetic material went into its making.

Please go read the article.  Ms.  Boorman makes a number of excellent points.  I have to run today, as I have a number of errands, so I will leave you with Ms.  Boorman today. 

Don't let the Left live in your head rent free

Speaking of books, David Larry Correia had this to say at his blog Monster Hunter Nation, To The Book Community: Go Fuck Yourself. An Anti Apology As his title might indicate, the language is a bit on the rough side, but we are all adults here, and I doubt we have not at least heard this sort of language on occasion.

After going through chewing out the SJWs, pointing out their hypocrisy, their inconsistency, their lack of principle, and their lack of creativity themselves, he goes on to give some good advice:

If you give veto power to anyone who is offended, then guaranteed, somebody is gonna declare they are offended. When being a victim grants power and social status, then you’ve got no shortage of people saying they’re victimized. The actual facts don’t matter. You just gave random assholes a license to mess with you, they’re going to do it, simply because they’re assholes.

Basically, they can only hurt you if grant them the ability to do so (or your publisher is a spineless coward, but that’s a whole different problem!) .

This transcends politics. It doesn’t matter who is screaming at you, an abusive bully is an abusive bully. Don’t let abusive bullies run your life. That’s not just true for writing, but life in general.

This is good advice always.  And not just for writers, or for those who want to control you by screeming "racist," "homophobe," or whatever is the latest SJW obsession.  I can not be given a resentment, for example. I can only take it. I can not let others live in my head rent free. As heartless as it sounds, I have learned to not care if others take offense.  I say what I mean, and others interpret it as they see fit.  I am not responsible for how others interpret what I say.  If my conscious is clear, then I refuse to be guilted into shutting up.

Something Different: A Book Report

Nathan Blake has a book report at The Federalist concerning a book by Sohrab Ahmari about Ahmari's conversion to Christianity entitled Sohrab Ahmari Offers A Compelling Tale of an Unlikely Christian Conversion. Have I read the book? Not yet, but I am getting it based on this book report. The thing that compels me to read this book is this:

Despite the distraction of these inter-denominational quarrels, Ahmari’s testimony emphasizes what Christians have in common. The truths about God and man that he had learned through experience and instruction became a living reality for him. The heart of Christianity is the person of Jesus, for “only the self-sacrificial love of God could make right what was crooked in human nature.” Jesus is not reducible to a moral teacher, political liberator, or any other human attempt at a solution. Rather, “Jesus was God, come to bring God and reconcile man to him.”

The younger Ahmari play-acted at saving the world through revolution. The older Ahmari realized that the real problem of the human condition is not poor political or economic organization, but sin, his first of all.

Ahmari is a political commentator—and a good one—but his hope is now elsewhere. Without God, mankind will plunge headlong into Hell. “I had already accepted the Fall as the most penetrating account of what ailed the world and me…who else but the self-sacrificing God-Man could set right what had gone wrong in the Garden? None other. Nothing and no one else worked. Only Christ Jesus.”

This is what a true faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior teaches those who believe. The fundamental problems facing this country is sin, mine most of all. Whether the guns and their place in society, or the abortion debate, or education, prison reform, or...whatever...the problem is our sinfulness. The solution is Jesus. The belief that we, ourselves can fix things with laws, and more laws, is part of our sinful nature. It is realizing that we can really do nothing, only God can only God can fix our brokenness. Adding law to law, making things more illegaler can not actually fix anything.

Note that I am not saying that laws are useless, or that politicians have no use whatsoever.  Laws serve to convict us, just as the realization that we are convicted by the 10 commandments.  If our laws are in line with God's law, then they are good.  To the extent that laws are not in line with God's law, we are on dangerous ground.  Everything is ultimately in God's hands, and it is only to the extent we operate through Him that we can accomplish anything in His world.

Ahmari was raised in Iran, under the mullahs.  But, when confronted with the Truth:

There was now urgency to his knowledge that “our Lord’s gift of radical absolution on the Cross was the only thing capable of repairing the brokenness in me and around me.”

He realized that this is the most important thing, that everything else pales in comparison. That is the effect He had on me when He chose me. That is how I recognize it when I see it.

We all need to repent on abortion

At the end of the piece by Michael Brown entitled The Governor of Virginia: Let's Be Civil About Killing Newborns, he says "May the Lord grant you repentance." Many people translate the word "repent" as "to turn around." But according to my pastor, the word actually translates as "to rethink" whatever position you currently take.

In either case, the word "repent" certainly is fitting for those applauding the already immoral act of aborting babies, being extended to actual infanticide in New York and almost in Virginia. In the ancient, pre-Christian world, the Israelites were the only society that considered abortion and infanticide immoral. God's directive was to be fruitful and multiply. The Israelites therefore considered it immoral. Further, as they took over the land of Canaan, many of the people living there were followers of the various Ba'als, which were fertility gods that required in some cases child sacrifice. This was anathema to the Jews, and explains why so much of the Old Testament seems to recite tales of their attempts to wipe this from their territory.

In ancient times, a father might look at his child, see that it was sickly, and leave it out to die of exposure or to be eaten by wild animals. Indeed, such is the story of the founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus, two infant boys who were left to be exposed by their father, only to be raised by wolves and become mighty warriors. But the myth contains much truth. Often a sickly childhood allows that child to develop other skills and interests that later enhance society. God often works in this way to the benefit of mankind.

It was only after the death and resurrection of Jesus, that people began seriously, to repent, and to look at life as truly a gift from God.  As Christians began to have influence, abortion, as well as other forms of infanticide began to be seen as wrong and immoral.  The ultimate expression of this is in our own Declaration of Independence which states:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...

Note that a person's life is to be held in highest esteem, to be taken only upon conviction in a court of law, and only for certain heinous crimes. In today's world, the only thing I can think of that generates a death penalty is the case of serial murder. What crime has an unborn child committed, that makes it deserving of being executed?

Abortionists and their familiars in the press, in the government and in groups like Planned Parenthood like to throw around the notion of a "woman's right to choose."  But as our founding documents make clear, and God's word also, that is not a woman's right at all.  The only "right" a woman has is not to have sex.  There are certain medications that may reduce the risk of having a child, but none that guarantee it.  Once a child is conceived, now both the woman and the man who together conceived it have a duty, and obligation, to raise that child to become the best human being they can.

I realize all the arguments that will be thrown up.  Men shirk their duty.  A woman can not raise a child on her own.  What about rape or incest?  The woman is not ready yet to have children.  These and others have been raised since man first walked upright.  We are a sinful and stiff necked bunch, but abortion is in the end not the answer.  Indeed, liberalizing and legalizing abortion adds to the madness; does not relieve it.  We need to go back to teaching our young to be abstinent until marriage.  We need to emphasize the absolute obligation of fathers to their children. We need more liberal adoption policies that do not make the perfect the enemy of the good.  In fact, we all need to repent, to rethink our path, and yes, in this case, to turn around.  Otherwise, we will be going over the cliff.  May God yet have mercy upon us all.