Refined Carbs Might Be Making You Dumb

 I found this article, at The Federalist interesting. The meat is bad and grains and vegetables are virtuous ideas have permeated our media and our medical research since the early 1960s. Rarely does an article come out that suggests that carbohydrates and sugar are bad for you. Oh, you find books like Nina Teicholz book Big Fat Surprise, where literally half the book is footnotes, that proves that the dietary fat leads to heart attacks hypothesis is a flat out lie. The lie was created and propped up by intimidation, silencing of critical voices, by Big Pharma abd Big Food dollars to support Big Pharma and Big Food profits. In any case, the article in question is Refind Carbs Might Be Making You Dumb.

I have been on a ketogenic diet for some time. When I get off it, though, I find that I have some brain fog. But staying in ketosis is not easy, and surprising things cause your insulin to rise, kick you out. Recently, taking up Dr. Ken Berry's challenge to go full carnivore and eat nothing but beef, butter, bacon and eggs (called the BBB and E diet) for a month, I have found more energy and clarity than I have felt in a long time. I also find I am less anxious in general. I am about two weeks in, but I find I don't need to eat as often, nor as much.

According to the article, by Tristan Justice:

A new study out of France this month linked consumption of refined carbohydrates with lower cognitive function.

In their paper published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, French researchers studied the relationship between carb consumption and cognitive performance in 95 healthy young adults between 20 and 30. Of the 95 participants, 48 were women, and 47 were men.

The French team of scientists found negative impacts on cognition across both genders. The consumption of foods with a high glycemic index, mainly refined carbohydrates such as white bread and many ultra-processed foods, “is associated to a decrease of cognitive performance.” Individuals’ cognitive performances were measured by the Wechsler’s digit symbol substitution test.

Of course, looking at the study, one finds that it includes a limited data set, only 95 people. Such studies are easily dismissed, but Nina Teicholz intensive research points to a number of things that might be associated with eating a higher saturated fat diet. Weight loss if you are plagued with the typical "wheat belly" for starters, but also lowering diabetes symptoms, building stronger bones, more musculature, a bigger brain, and elimination or lessening of a number of the "diseases of civilation." Dr. Berry describes the elimination of exzema and dandruff among other complaints when he started the carnivore diet.

Now, while Berry and others talk about eating nothing but BBB and E, the real culprits are both refined carbohydrates, specifically grains and sugars, and polyunsaturated vegetable/seed oils. They point out that our brain size began to grow about the time we adopted the hunter/gatherer lifestyle and began mostly living off animals and animal fats. We spcifically went after the fattest parts of the animal including the brains, livers, and bone marrow.  Moving around with the herds of animals, we didn't grow grain crops. Furthermore, in the wilds there are very few edible plants. Anthropological studies show that our ancient ancestors became super preditors, and were large, well muscled, and had very few modern illnesses such as dental cavities. Heart attacks were unheared of.  About 10,000 years ago we began cultivating grains. Our brains shrank in size, and we began to enounter the diseases of civilization including obesity, diabetes, dental cavities and cancer. Our lifespan shortened as a result.

I am not a doctor, nor an anthropologist, so don't take my word for any of this. But as someone who has had a problem with weight gain since I was 10 years old, I have studied various diets and books about dieting for a long time. The first diet I was put on was around the age of 12, when my mother tried to put me on what was called the "Mayo Clinic Diet."  It consisted of spinach, dry toast, and hard boiled eggs. Yuck.  It was, as you might suspect a low calorie, low fat diet, and thus not very sustainable.  If one was confined to a hospital and unable to find other food, it might have worked.  

I remember reading with alacrity Dr. Atkin's Diet Revolution in the 1970s, and Drs. Michael and Mary Dan Eades Protein Power. Even then Eades tells us that his diet was really about eating more fat, but that it wouldn't have been published if it was called Saturated Fat Power. Since then I have learned that eating a diet high in saturated fats and eggs was known to physisans to induce weight loss  since...well...ever. William Banting wrote a book detailing how, using this approach, he was able to reduce the weight of his portly body, and is probably the first dieting book. It was wildly popular, as more sugar and refined grains entered the English diet in the 19th century.

I encourage you to obtain and read Nina Teicholz book, Big Fat Surprise to discover just how much various special interests have manipulated our politics for their own gain. The food industries selling your children sugar for breakfast, selling vegetable oils and trans fats, shortening and margerine, and highly processed snacks is appalling. Big Pharma selling statins, which arguably were worse for your health than the colesterol is eqully cynical. But they have made a killing on statins and other products, many of which we did not need. And in the process, sound, evidence based medicine has been sacrificed to passing out pills and surgery. It is shocking, but a necessary wake up call. As Teicholz makes abundantly clear, no one in the vast enterprise was looking out for you and me. They could care less if they ultimately killed the patient, as long as they made their billions.

We find ourselves being manipulated by these same bad actors yet again. At first it was a nudge, then a push, and soon the velvet glove will come off and we will be forced to accept yet more devastating dietary skullduggery. We will be forced to eat an even higher carb diet, soy based pseudomeats. while real food is slowly made more and more expensive until only the very rich can afford it. We will be made to eat ze bugs and like it. We will be made sick and stupid, and this is by design. This helps no one except a few billionaires at the top, and of course, Big Pharma, who will have pills for what ails us. This is all being done under the great climate scam, of course, just as it was done before under the great heart attack epidemic. Do not fall for it, guys.

This Memorial Day, Let Us Remember that Christ Won 2000 Years Ago

Some gentle readers may be dismayed that I have spent so much time of late writing about the spiritual nature of the culture war.  Some may be atheist or agnostic.  I get it.  In the Gospels, Jesus is often descibed as driving the demons out of a person.  I was told when I was young that what really happened was that Jesus healed a epileptic or someone with a mental disease.  And I believed this for a long time.  You may too.  But I have learned that demons are as real as the Three Persons of the Godhead are: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Satan is real, and does real damage here on earth.

But I am not the only one, and increasingly, Christians are coming to the realization that we all need to turn to God, to call upon His name, because what is happening is not man made evil, but rather is of the devil himself. Thus, I welcome yet another writer, at the American Thinker, Trevor Thomas, who penned an article yesterday entitled Transgenderism and its War On Truth. Thomas makes the writes that debating what is a man and what is a woman is pointless. We have known these things since Adam and Eve. The Left has muddied the water with made up words like "cisgendered," and indeed the concept of gender as a separate thing from sex. They write so called "scholarly" papers that andvance these silly concepts, and the gullible media breathlessly report this garbage.  The sex of a child "is" at the moment of conception, and not "assigned" at birth as the Left claims.

In all the conversation that is prevalent throughout the Earth today, there is almost nothing further from the truth than the absurd and evil notion that men can become women, and that women can become men, or similarly, the idea that sex (or “gender”) is not binary and rather “a spectrum.” These ideas are so absurd and so far from the truth (in line with 2 + 2 = 5) that many modern liberals refuse—or perhaps more accurately, have yet—to embrace them.

We shouldn’t be surprised that we are now having to debate what is a male and what is a female, or that sex is binary. Transgenderism, and all its fallacies, is simply what results when one abandons the notion of absolute truth. The idea that some things are settled for all time is not a tenet of modern liberalism.

...snip...

The truth about truth flies in the face of those who wish to rule their own world and write their own moral code. So you see, transgenderism—like the marriage debate—is just another battle in the war on truth. Granted, it is a battle against one of the oldest truths—even older than the truth of what is marriage—in the history of humanity. Few things have been known longer than what is a male, and what is a female, yet the left’s war on this old and foundational truth rages on.

It rages on because if doubt can be cast on the truth of sex (males/females), then doubt (and subsequent lies) can creep into virtually ANY realm of truth. This is why the enemy of all humanity; the enemy of all truth—Satan—is so hard at work here. Yes, this is indeed a spiritual war, and The Father of Lies is winning many battles.

Satan does indeed appear to be winning many battles. And those aligned with Satan are quick to tell us so. For example, the daughter of Turkish president Erdogan tells us that Islam will break the cross, meaning that Islam will win the culture war.  Paul writes in Ephesians that:

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

But we Christians know that Christ won the war 2000 years ago. Sorry Muslims, but either you stand with Him, or you lose. There is time yet to repent. In the book of Revelation we read that God will, for a time, release the devil to wreak havoc on humanity. It certainly feels like that prophesy may be coming true, though I do not know. God has not included me in His plans:-) But on this Memorial Day, it certainly doesn't hurt to include our nation in our prayers. Pray that God sweeps all of Satan's demons from our shores, and turns everyone to face God, to repent and do His will in our lives. And pray in Jesus name.

The Actual Source of Truth

 Today at the American Thinker, Richard McDonough offers a rebuttal of sorts on August Harriman's previous article on the philosophy of the Left. For that, see the post below. Harriman, remember, thought that the writings of Frederich Nietzsche undergirded the Left, or at least what the Left believed Nietzsche wrote. But McDonough points in his article entitled Frederich Nietzsche Was Not The Inspiration For The Left:

Harriman is correct that one should not make the mistake of assuming that the entirety of the psychotic Left derives from Marxism. And he may be correct that many of the Western elites may think of themselves as followers of Nietzsche. But if so, it is a bastardized Nietzsche, not the real Nietzsche, who made his “abhorrence” of the Left abundantly clear, writing:

"This overall degeneration of man down to what today appears to the socialist dolts and flatheads as their man of the future—their ideal—this degeneration and diminution of man into the perfect herd animal (… the “free society”), this animalization of man into the dwarf animal of equal rights and claims, is possible, there is no doubt of it. Anyone who has once thought through this possibility to the end no longer knows any nausea than other men, but perhaps also a new task!" - Beyond Good and Evil (para. 203)

It may be true that Nietzsche abhorred Marxism, and in essence was arguing for the rise of what can be thought of as the Platonic ideal of the philosopher-king. But if so, the current so called "elite" still view themselves as being that unbermensch, that philosopher-king who can decide better that you or me what is good for each of us. Meanwhile, the global so called "elite" are perfectly happy to allow the coalition of the Left in this country to tear us apart. At some point, they figure to rein in these grievance mongers, race huslters, trans idiots and the other malcontents, probably with a bullet to the head. That is how the Leftist totalitarians traditonally do things.

The Bible provides the only True way to live, and God defies philosophy and ideology. However one may interpret Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Kant, Nietzsche or others, is ultimately a waste of time. Go to the actual source of Truth, the Bible.

The Arrogance and Hubris of the Democrats Will Be Their Undoing...But They Will Do Much Damage In the Meantime

It has been a long time coming, but finally even the pundits are waking up to the similarities of the Democrat party to the Nazi party. Indeed, the Democrats may have given the Nazis a few lessons. This is not new, by the way. The Democrats were founded in 1828 by Andrew Jackson, and was racist and violent from the start. The Democrats were the ones who seceeded from the Unites States over slavery.  They prosecuted a rebellion against the United States over slavery.  It was they that founded and supported the KKK, and sought segregation right up until the 1960s. And while classical racism is virtually nonexistant today, it is the Democrats who keep fanning the flames of what they call racism today.

But this post is only tangentially about racism. It is really about the startling similarities between the Democrats and the Facists. For some background, let's first go to August Harriman (a pen name) at the American Thinker in an article entitled Neitzshe: The Guiding Philospher of the Global Elite. To explain Nietzsche is perhaps beyond the scope of this post, but what is obvious to everyone now is that:<.p>

De facto, we’ve had a coup in America. Granted, it merely refortified the establishment, but it was a coup. And de jure, Christianity in America is no longer a significant force.

The onset of the latter can be firmly marked: June 25, 1962. On that date the Supreme Court , ruling school prayer unconstitutional, set in motion the expungement of Christianity from America.

Like dominoes falling, society follows law. Divorced from Judeo-Christian norms, a large portion of the population, within 3 generations, would be remolded into a manipulated mass by a functionally atheist elite.

America’s elite portrays itself as progressive, but their underlying ethos can’t be rooted in Marx. Marx isn’t merely hypocrisy but a cover, a cloak. From their actions, redistribution of their wealth and a classless society where they have no more power and influence than the common man is the last thing they want.

Their motives, attitudes and values are explained best by Nietzsche. Perhaps one in ten Americans are familiar with the name; his thinking, though, describes and runs through those who run us.

Nietzsche is the unifying theory that explains what’s happened to the Western world – formerly known as Christendom – a word and world now extinct. His values were dominant in the pre-WWI German elite, leading to a war that effectively ended European dominance. Soldiers at the front received copies of his work.

Bertrand Russell put a relatively benign face on the Germans’ political agenda. “He wants an international ruling race who are to be lords of the earth, a vast new elite in which their rule will be stamped upon for thousands of years.”

You can see where this is going. While German desire to control the world was successfully fought off in WWI and WWII, it didn't die. Now it comes back, with Klaus Schwab of the WEF playing the role of Dr. Evil, while various minions such as Justin Trudeau, the CEOs of companies like Phizer and Morgan-Stanley, and many others inflicting their woke agendas on us and try to forces us to go along. They have gone from "nudging" us, to cancelling us and being more forceful. But they will, if they don't get their way, resort of violence and killing. We have already seen that with the Burning, Looting and Murder riots.

Nietzsche, in effect, centers on population control. “Mankind in the mass sacrificed to the prosperity of a single stronger species of man - that would be an advance.” “Most individuals have no right to exist…and if they were sacrificed or slaughtered that would be an improvement.”

The normative values of the world prior to Christianity ranged from the human sacrifices of Aztecs to the Helots of Sparta, with little in between. Nietzsche is the justification for the totalitarian control, Nazi and Communist, that was dominant for a significant portion of the 20th Century.

Our elite have chosen the Left as their vehicle to win and maintain power. The Left seeks the demise of the Judeo-Christian moral code, and to accomplish this intends the dissolution of the American nation and its core, white Christian America. If there is any evidence to the contrary, it has not been forthcoming. There is nothing in the Left’s agenda that fails to comport with Nietzsche.

The American masses vote Left. They are Nietzsche’s “pliant and supple instrument.” They will not respond to arguments based on moral principles. This is a post-Christian country. And much of this country’s population is of the quality of the OJ jury. They will not respond to merits of the argument. The only way to win the masses is on motive – and the motive is Nietzsche. Nietzsche is an obscure reference, but no more obscure than Mark Fuhrman was. And unlike Fuhrman, Nietzsche fits the elite like a glove. Five minutes revealing a malevolent motive can undo 20 years of propaganda and indoctrination. Not morality, not merit, but motive is the key.

You can read the rest of Harriman's article. Whether or not you may believe that Nietzsche has been misunderstood, the thinking of today's elites is certainly bound up in the idea of the superhuman, the ones that are so smart they is able not only to manage themselves, but also manage the rest of the world, right down to what and how much each person should eat, where and when he can go, why even how long he might be allowed to live...that is IF he is allowed to live. Look at New York's ban on gas stoves.  Such people put themselves in the place of and on the level of God, and for that reason are evil beyond words. Their arrogance and hubris will eventally be their undoing, but they will do much damage in the meantime.

Next up is a piece by D. Parker at the American Thinker entitled The Disturbing Similarities Between the Democrat and Nazi Parties. Parker in turn includes an article by Steve McCann detailing eight ways the Democrats and Nazis were very similar. So this article details another eight ways they are similar. I encourage you to check out McCann's article as well.

The fascist far left have always had to lie to survive. They've always been on the wrong side of history, and the only way they can remain viable is by gaslighting people on a full-time basis. For decades, their biggest lie has been that the supposedly pro-freedom side of the political spectrum, imbued in the precepts of individual liberty and limited government, is somehow connected to totalitarian collectivist regimes that displayed the exact opposite of those values.

Anyone who has debated leftists for the past few decades has been subjected to the same bluff abuse in their trying to maintain that nonsensical lie. But the close similarities between fascism and communism have been obvious for at least 75 years:

"In certain basic respects — a totalitarian state structure, a single party, a leader, a secret police, a hatred of political, cultural and intellectual freedom — fascism and communism are clearly more like each other than they are like anything in between".

—Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Associate Professor of History at Harvard, New York Times Magazine, Sunday, April 4, 1948

Note that Parker says that the fascist far Left has always had to lie to survive. This is true for the Democrats as well. Jesus described Satan as the father of lies and a murderer from the start. They tap into the sin of envy, promising people something they have no right to, and can not actually give. Often enough it is money at someone else's expense. But now they are promising to change the weather.

One of the similarities between the Democrats and the Nazis is an obsession with gun control and gun confiscation.

We'll start with the one issue the fascist far left never bring up when they try to make their absurd claims: that the Democrats and the Nazis were obsessed with gun confiscation. You will never hear them try to make this accusation of the pro-freedom right because even they know that their lies can only carry them so far. This obvious common collectivist trait also destroys the far leftist mythology of the "party switch," which supposedly took place sometime in the late '60s. This was one glaring item that didn't switch, so they avoid mentioning it.

Anyone who has been paying attention for the past few years knows that saying that the Democrats are obsessed with gun confiscation is an understatement of massive proportions. Every day, it seems they've come out with a new scheme on the national, state, and local levels to deprive the people of their commonsense civil rights.

Of course, their obsession with gun confiscation has a purpose: both Democrats and the Nazis believe in using force to achieve their political goals. They don't want anyone to have the means to push back. The only legitimate way to change someone's mind is through persuasion, using logical arguments. Democrats and Nazis try to persuade with emotional arguments, but when those fail to convince, they reort to force.

While the German people themselves were not the Nazis, enough of them bought into the lies of the Nazis to allow the Nazis to take power. And the Nazis were unspeakably dispicable and godless people. If it hasn't always been clear, it is becoming obvious now that the Democrats are equally dispicable and godless people. Who else could encourage the mutilation of childrens genitals? Who else could object to limiting the abortion of precious children, a gift from God. Who could set violebt criminals free to create chaos as a way to more power, and to impoverish the people. These are the actions of godless people determined to rule over everyone else, without the consent of the governed.

It Is Time We Threw Some Sand In The Machine

Kurt Schlichter again has an excellent wake up call for fellow conservatives at Townhall.com entited Reject the Normalcy Bias.

One of the most powerful tactics in the left’s arsenal is leveraging the reluctance of conservatives to accept that the foundational reality of our society has changed. We are not a free country in the sense we were just a decade ago – hell, the Durham Report just showed our ruling caste collectively framing a president they disliked and we all know there will be zero consequences. But part of the reason is human nature. The left exploits our normalcy bias, the tendency to assume that things right now are the same as they have always been. Yet, this is not normal. This whole political/cultural morass that America has fallen into is the opposite of normal. And some of us just can’t handle the truth.

They will not accept that this is not the society we grew up in. Hell, it’s not even the society our kids grew up in. It is something wholly other, a society where the norms and rules and guidelines that we thought existed, and that had existed right up until the left took over all of the institutions, no longer exist at all. And the fact is that many conservatives refuse to acknowledge the obvious, because to acknowledge it will require them to take action – radical action, like what Ron DeSantis is doing in Florida to the howling horror of the commies.

Here Schlichter is trying to wake conservatives up. Note too, what DeSantis has done in Florida. Every move he makes these days tightens the underwear of the Left and they squeal. But it has to be done, whether it is ESG, of taking drag queens out of the schools and public libraries, of taking away Disney's privilege to self govern. DeSantis is starting to use the sovereignty of the states to protect his citizens. Other governors should take a page out of his book.

This normalcy bias, the assumption that things still work as they used to, is what allows the left to get away with its shenanigans. But nothing works like it used to. It is beyond reasonable argument that the left has infiltrated almost all of our major institutions. Like a virus infecting a healthy cell, leftism takes over our institutions and uses the institutions’ structure to manufacture even more leftism, and that spawn goes and infects more institutions. It has taken over Hollywood, the colleges, the big corporations, and much of the government. It’s got the military, the NFL and, of course, the regime media. The left has shamelessly politicized every single one of them. They now focus not just on their jobs, but on pumping out more leftism. Yet all these institutions still demand the respect that they had back when they were non-political and were dedicated to their actual purposes. The military was about fighting our enemies. The justice system was about prosecuting criminals. The NFL was about football. The beer companies were about providing refreshment to dudes who did not pretend to be chicks.

But none of that is true now. The purpose of every one of these political institutions is now to promote leftism and all its attendant social pathologies, yet they still demand the respect and deference and obedience that they were getting back when they were actually doing their jobs. It’s all a lie. It’s all a scam. These are not the institutions that were once, if not respected, at least tolerated. They are something completely different, but they exploit that habitual, residual respect and, unfortunately, far too many conservatives still give it to them by default.

We all need to screw up our courage and begin to resist. Throw a little sand in the machine whenever you can. Oh, and if you have any doubts at all, read your Bibles. You will find out what being on God's side in all this means. Finally:

That’s why you get people when you're on the right who see something like the hero Marine subduing the lunatic mutant on the subway, and they immediately assert that we should somehow wait until the justice system grinds the hero into dust before we actually take a stand for him. “What, are we just going to assume any blue state judicial process is unjust?” Yes! Because they are – from framing an ex-president to ridiculous civil suits to this self-defense abomination to the systematic refusal to persecute actual criminals, do you need any more evidence that the justice system in NYC is totally broken? So why the hell should we give it any deference? Get it through your heads. There is no justice system. The justice system is a joke. It’s a clown show. No, strike that – clown shows are funny. This is horrifying, the persecution of American citizens for exercising their God-given rights to dissent or to protect themselves and others. Wake the hell up and smell the stench of weed and Soros Marxism.

Those kids who were screaming at the platform for Daniel Penny to be arrested and charged were not normal people. These were paid agitators. The Left has a bunch of paid agitators to go out and commit whatever they want done. We on the other hand have to go out ourselves, at the cost of time off from work. First, we must not give in to them. Second, we must insist that they get actual consequences. Blocking traffic or in this case subway trains is not legitimate protest. You say that they have a right to protest? They have a right to seek redress of grievances. That means letter writing, going down and having a meeting with your representative. That does not mean taking street action.

Why Gun Control Falls On Deaf Ears

Nathaniel Blake, at The Federalist makes an important point about guns in his article How Democrats Are Shooting Themselves In The Foot On Gun Control. He makes the case that the Left is the aggressors in the culture war, and have sowed division, mistrust, and alienation. So it is no wonder that Americans have armed up. But of course Democrats while aggitating the population, demand that we get rid of our guns.

Except for those who are already ideologically committed to it, gun control is a high-trust proposal. People keep and bear arms to defend themselves, and so persuading citizens to limit or even give up their guns requires persuading them that they do not need them for protection. But voters do not view Democrats as prioritizing a country with low crime and high social trust. Rather, Democrats are seen as the soft-on-crime party, with a left flank that is committed to insane defund-the-police policies.

When Democratic prosecutors refuse to prosecute, when Democratic politicians enact revolving-door bail policies for violent criminals, when Democratic mouthpieces insist that violent and threatening lunatics on public transit should be accepted as a normal part of life, they are telling people they are on their own. And many Americans have gotten the message; the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots sold a lot of guns, many of them to new gun owners.

If Democrats want to convince Americans of the benefits of gun control, they should start by showing they are willing and able to control crime. But they often do not even bother to enforce existing gun laws against violent criminals. The more Democratic leaders and activists tolerate crime and disorder, the more they sabotage their demands for more gun control.

...snip...

It is not guns, but the left’s hostility toward traditional values and ways of life that is driving much of the alienation in our country. And while it is most destructive for those caught up in it (fatherless children being a leading example) it is also threatening for everyone else. Part of why it is so easy for many American gun owners to envision a tyrannical government that might need to be forcefully resisted is because they can see the cultural revolution the left is waging against them.

If Bouie and the rest want some more trust, hope, and solidarity, they could start by calling off the culture war, or at least admit to waging it — one of the more surreal aspects of our political discourse is watching leftists proclaim their intention to radically remake American culture with every tool at their disposal, which they press to even the pettiest of points, and then turn around and pretend they are not the culture war aggressors.

Personally, I won't be giving up my gun. Carrying a weapon and being prepared to use it is a civic duty. But it is also a necessary tool on those once in a lifetime occasions when one must draw it to protect one's life. Please go read Blake's article.

Western Culture is Christian Culture

Is the Pope Catholic? One has to wonder with statements like this:

Recently, while apologizing to "indigenous peoples" and denouncing Christians — without the all-important historical context — Pope Francis declared, "Never again can the Christian community allow itself to be infected by the idea that one culture is superior to others[.]"

This — claiming all cultures are equal — is a dangerous position, not least as it leads to relativism and the abnegation of Truth.

Thus Raymond Ibrahim began is article at the American Thinker today entitled Is Any One Culture Superior To Others? My personal opinion, and that of Ibrahim, is that the traditional Western Culture is indeed superior to all the others. I am not ashamed to say it. And yes, the West has done many terrible things, some of them in the name of Christ; men are fallen creatures after all. But Christ is the only Truth.

An atheist once said to me "Are you condemning me to Hell? Others say I am going to Hell." My reply was that whether or not he would be saved was way above my pay grade. Only Jesus can answer that question, but Jesus said "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life." Either you believe Him or you don't.

Indeed, for some thinkers, such as essayist T.S. Elliot, "culture and religion" are inextricably linked and "different aspects of the same thing."

Culture may even be described simply as that which makes life worth living. ... [N]o culture can appear or develop except in relation to a religion. ... We can see a religion as the whole way of life of a people, from birth to the grave, from morning to night and even in sleep, and that way of life is also its culture. [From Elliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, 1943, p.100-101, emphasis in original.]

...snip...

The fact is, all values traditionally prized by the modern West — religious freedom, tolerance, humanism, monogamy — did not develop in a vacuum, but rather are inextricably rooted to Christian principles that, over the course of some two thousand years, have had a profound influence on Western epistemology, society and of course culture.

While they are now taken for granted and seen as "universal," there's a reason why these values were born and nourished in Christian — not Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or Confucian — nations. Even if one were to accept the widely entrenched narrative that the "Enlightenment" is what led to Western progress, it is alone telling that this enlightenment developed in Christian — as opposed to any of the many non-Christian — nations.

All this is missed by those ignorant of the spiritual and intellectual roots of Western civilization — including, apparently, Pope Francis.

I was talking to a fellow, a nice enough man, at church one day, when he made the claim that all religions basically teach the same thing and the same set of morals. Hmmmm. That assertion seems pretty easy to falsify. Buddists belief that man is reincarnated a number of times until his soul reaches "enlightenment' at which time he becomes god. Christianity, building on Jews roots, teachs that there is an infinite gulf between man and God. We are born in sin, and are only saved by grace through belief in Jesus Christ. Indeed Jesus sacrifice on the cross harkens back to the Jewish custom of atonement by sacrificing a lamb.

What, then, of "multiculturalism" — this word that the West is supposed to celebrate and embrace wholeheartedly? Behind it is the idea that all cultures are equal, and none — certainly not Christian or Western culture — "is superior to others," to quote Francis. In reality, multiculturalism is another euphemistic way of undermining and replacing the truths of a religion and its culture with relativism.

...snip...

One anecdote well captures this "clash of cultures." After the British colonial powers banned sati — the Hindu practice of burning a widow alive on her husband's funeral pyre — Hindu priests complained to British governor Charles James Napier that sati was their custom and therefore their right. Napier replied:

Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.

Incidentally, being opposed to "multiculturalism" — that is to say, relativism — is in no way the same thing as being opposed to other races or ethnicities, but rather being opposed to disunity and chaos.

So, Western culture, indeed Western civilation, is Christian culture. Despite current infiltrators in our Church body seeking to destroy it, Christ's words are eternal, his Church is eternal, and I stand with Him. When evil communists shout that "Western Civilation must go" what they really mean is that Christianity must go. These people are on the wrong side. Pray for them.

The Culture War Is The Only Issue

Today at The Federalist, John Daniel Davidson has an article entitled The Culture War Isn't The Most Important Issue in 2024, It's The Only Issue. While our politicians try to avoid talking about cultural issues like the hens try to avoid the fox. But it has become obvious to all that the culture of these United States has become polluted with paganism. Glenn Beck once touted that we surround them. Unfortunately, the great majority of people in the country aren't really Christians. Therefore, in a culture war fought between God and the Devil, most people will effectively be non player characters. Without a base of Giglical principles, they will eventually speak the cultures lies.

The more obvious it becomes that our domestic political struggles are actually part of a much larger spiritual war over the fate of western civilization, that we are today engaged not so much in a political fight as a religious battle between good and evil, the stronger the urge seems to be among Republican politicians to deny this reality and take refuge in the comforting political narratives of the past.

A perfect case in point was a tweet last week from Kari Lake’s permanent campaign, which managed in one fell swoop to channel the deeply misguided political analysis of the entire neocon Washington establishment: “No one is saying not to fight the culture war. But it’s simply not the most critical issue heading into 2024.” “The GOP must show the country how it plans to turn the economy around & prevent World War 3,” she added. “We need to take this country back from @JoeBiden before we can take our culture back from his friends.”

Ah, yes. The comforting fiction that if we can just show voters how we plan to turn the economy around, surely then we’ll regain power, surely then we’ll have a mandate from the people — and then (and only then) we can “take our culture back.”

What our Republican politicians do not seem to understand, or else want to avoid, is that the culture war must be won before the economy can be put right, before the crime problem can be dealt with, before the immigration invasion can be turn around, indeed before the common good can be taken into account, we must settle the culture war.

Put simply, the big mistake in thinking the culture war isn’t the most critical issue heading into 2024 is that all of American politics is now one big culture war. The culture war is the only issue because the cultural war is everything now. When one side stakes its claim to political power on offering abortion up until birth and transgender operations for 8-year-olds, and holds out these policies as proof of its moral authority, we’re way past arguing over how to get the economy back on track. There’s no going back to that kind of politics.

Tucker Carlson hit on this at the end of his big speech at Heritage recently. He compared the values of the political left to the values of the Aztecs, who sacrificed children to their bloodthirsty gods — and he wasn’t wrong. Our politics, he argued, have shifted profoundly in a relatively short period of time. Instead of arguing over the best means to bring about an agreed-upon common good, we no longer agree about what the common good is. Forget about whether Republicans or Democrats are right about the ideal marginal tax rate. We can’t even agree on whether men and women exist as meaningful categories. And if we don’t get that question right, you can forget about economic prosperity, much less anything like a republic or a constitutional system of government.

...snip...

The culture war in America is not some luxury good that Republican politicians can sample now and then. It has consumed our politics by revealing deep, uncrossable chasms in our national life. So we now find ourselves in a different kind of struggle. Call it a culture war, a religious war, a battle between good and evil, or all of the above. It’s a war for survival between two competing and irreconcilable visions of what America should be.

Any politician on the right that doesn’t understand that, who thinks we just need to show voters our plan for getting the economy back on track, needs to step aside and make room for leaders who know what time it is, that the hour is late, the day now far spent, and the time for fighting has come. The culture war is now the big tent. Those who embrace it, who delve into the fray without apology, will be the next crop of leaders on both the right and the left.

I Urge You To Pray

Two articles today at the American Thinker point to much deeper issues in our country than merely the work of man, though man can be evil. The first article, by Trish Randall is We've Forgotten What A Woman Is -- And Isn't. She asserts, not without millions of years of wisdom behind such assertions, that men and women have different skill sets. These skills need to properly combined, not used as a wedge. Then there is Richard H. Chiero writing From the 'L' Word to Cultural Marxism. both articles point out that many of our problems were spurred on by Marxist invading our nation with the intention of taking it down. I have often pointed out that the United States, as founded, stood as a rebuke to Marxism. We were literally minding our own business; they were the aggressors. The Left is still the aggressors.  But what makes the Left so powerful?  A mere philosophy can not persuade so many people.

Marxism, and those who follow it are, on the surface, the cause of much of our problems. But underneath, there is a deeper cause, which Jonathon Cahn delves deeply into in his book, The Return of the Gods. Much that plagues modern America also plagued the ancient world. I remember reading about the ancient gods Ba'al, Ashteroth, and Molech. People made idols to these gods - really demons, and worhiped them. Because the Bible places so much emphasis on not worshipping idols, I believed that these were merely mythological phenomena. But Cahn has shown that the culural plague we are witnessing, including abortions, feminism, transgenderism, the LBGTIA+ pride parades, the drag queens, the hook up culture, not to mention rampant pedophilia and more are all things that the ancient "gods" brought to ancient cultures. When Christianity began to flourish, these demons were slowly driven out.

Like a bad penny, however, when we started to kick God our Creator out of our schools, out of our public life, the "gods" came back. First Ba'al, as people became obsessed with becoming rich. They worshipped celebrities and wanted to be like them.  They wanted the fame and fortune and persued that to the exclusion of God. Then Asteroth, otherwise know as Istar came back with a vengence, stirring up again the gay and lesbian movements.   Meanwhile, while we no longer throw children into the fires of Moleck's belly, now doctors tear the unborn limb from limb while ephemistically calling it a clumb of cells, as if it were a tumor. Jesus predicted what we are going through in Matthew 12:

“When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. 44Then he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. 45Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it also be with this wicked generation.”

We will all have to pay for this, somehow. I urge you to begin praying, if you don't already.

Criminals Should Live In Fear, Not Citizens

Today, at Townhall.com Kurt Schlichter has a barn burner advising that We Must Defend Self Defense. As I have continuously reminded, when a potential conflict arises, you are your own first responders. Criminals tend to avoid committing crimes in front of police officers. Therefore you are unlikely to be saved from death or serious injury by a policeman. Instead, the police will likely draw outlines around your body, and search for the killer. You must be prepared to defend your life and the lives of your family and friends.  Schlichter writes:

There’s a war going on against our sacred right to self-defense, and we need to defend that right, ruthlessly and vigorously against the communists who want us living in fear. And they do want us living in fear – sheep are easier to shear than sheepdogs. If you look what happened in New York City, where some mutant bum decided to threaten a bunch of people on a subway car, and then some heroes subdued him, and then he vapor-locked, and then the usual cast of liars and race-pimps screeched, you can see what they are doing – not merely trying to disarm us but trying to make us fear to defend ourselves at all. They want you terrified and impotent in the face of their unofficial militia, the criminals. The right to keep and bear arms means nothing if you are going to get jammed up whenever you have to use hot lead to stop the latest trans shooter, or junkie with a knife, or carjacker, or schizo hobo, or whatever. Which is the idea.

So, it is the guys defending the citizens on the train who are being treated as criminals and the terminated criminal who is being treated as a hero. The message is clear – accept that you must accept abuse. Understand that this moral inversion is all a lie – the stiff was a scumbag who was a fugitive for attacking a 67-year-old woman; they just want to exploit his justified death. This is happening all over the country in the blue cities thanks to the Soros prosecutor conspiracy – and if you don’t like me criticizing Soros, shove it. Time to stop this madness, at least where we can at the moment. Time to clearly side with the normals over the criminals who the ruling caste is using as tyrannical catspaws.

Their wicked plan is perfectly obvious – to criminalize normal people and normalize criminals. Thieves, bums, losers, junkies, whores, and other trash – they are the heroes in this morally bankrupt morality play, and we normals are the villains. The first step to fighting back is to see the truth, and the truth is right there. You just have to be hard enough to accept it and to not allow them to leverage your empathy or compassion into tolerating having to be afraid as some sort of price you owe for the crime of not being a lowlife. They want us, quiet, complacent, and obedient. They want a society where we live in fear. Not them, though – this subway vermin did not invade the Met Gala last week. Hell, he would never get anywhere near the princes and princesses and princexxs strutting around in their zillion dollar gowns. Rubbing shoulders with social detritus is for you little people forced to ride public transportation – just wait until we ban your cars and trucks and you have no escape! The costs of the bourgeoisie's moral posturing is to be paid by you and me, and not by the preeners.

Schlichter is absolutely correct here. There is indeed a war on self defense. Lawyers (sorry Kurt) will make the argument that the penalty for, oh say, robbery or theft is not death. Therefore you should not use lethal force against a home invader. But here's the thing. By invading a home where the homeowner belongs, and the invader does not, the invader takes the risk of getting killed on himself. He was fully in control of his fate. He could have avoided being killed by not committing the crime-Q.E.D. In addition, the lawyers who say this assume, illogically, that the home owner can read minds. How does the homeowner know whether or not the invader means only to steal, and not to harm him? Clearly such lawuers are operating from a position of bad faith.

Schlichter then explains what changes red states must make to their laws to make self defense an acceptable response to the criminals currently rampaging through our cities. I will recommend to gentle readers that they study Schlicters ideas, and to the degree possible advance them to their legislatures. Here is his first recommendation:

First, we must reiterate in the law the guiding principle that self-defense is not merely tolerated but encouraged. We should clarify that self-defense can be used to protect people, pets, and property. And that the risk of unexpected or excessive harm is on the criminal, not the citizen. Certain situations should be presumed self-defense – like when a citizen is surrounded by a mob on foot or in a car. We need to stop acting as if you need an excuse for taking down a criminal. You shouldn’t be penalized or persecuted – you should be getting a medal.

The point here is that criminals should be the ones in fear, not normal citizens.

Brady Campaign Accidentally Makes Case For Guns in Private Hands

Today, at Bearing Arms Tom Knighton has a post entitled Brady tweet actually runs counter to their cause. The Brady "cause" is of course to ban guns. Oh, I realize they don't say that, but Josh Sugarmann let the cat out of the bag years ago. So what did the Brady Campiagn do? Using the Kent State riots as an example of state sanctioned gun violence, which they claim to abhor, they undercut their desire to leave the state with a monopoly on gun violence. For if state sanctioned gun violence is so bad, wouldn't you naturally want a counter balancing force to protect the citizen from state tyranny?

Now, understand that I’m not interested in talking about what happened at Kent State. I know the official story about it, but I’ve become so distrustful of official stories that I don’t actually care to recount something that may not be remotely true.

However, what is true is that Brady is talking about “state-sanctioned gun violence” while simultaneously doing everything they can to make it so the state is the only one with guns in the first place.

Let’s remember, for example, that they tend to push to include law enforcement exceptions to just about every gun control bill they support. State-sanctioned gun violence, as they call it, is so awful they want to make sure only the state can have certain guns deemed too dangerous for you or me.

We also should remember that Kent State wasn’t the police. It was the National Guard. That’s military. There’s absolutely no push by Brady to disarm or restrict the military from having certain weapons, now is there?

Yet if state-sanctioned homicide is a problem that we should be prepared to address, how in the hell are we to do that if ordinary citizens are disarmed?

Without an armed populace, Kent State would cease being a historical anomaly and become simply the first of numerous other atrocities.

I was still in high school that day. Graduation wouldn't be for another month. Kent was the next town over from Stow, where I lived. Our local Students for a Democratic Society representative was ecstatic over the fallout. They had provoked the state to violence by their own use of violence. They had set the ROTC building on fire, then prevented the fire department from putting out the fire by slashing their hoses with machetes. Of course, at the time, the student riots were seen as "mostly peaceful." And it truth, probably the majority of the mob were there to protest the war in Vietnam. But the "peaceful" mob was used by the communist infiltrators as cover to create chaos and violence. Remember that the National Guardsmen were about the same age, and no doubt felt threatened by the hostility mob.

The point of pointing that out is that the situation, as usual, is complex, yet the press presents a simple story of state bad, students, good. I think there was enough blame to go around, which is why I, like the author, don't believe anything I read without a lot of evidence. So, in such a situation, do you want the govermnent to be the only one with guns?  To want that is to be naive.  Remember that in any situation, you may be the first responder.  Do you really want to stand there with nothing in your hands?