Self-defense, the Bible, and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

In our Bill of Rights, the Constitution definitely says that we have an individual right to keep and bear arms not only to defend our state and our nation, but for self-defense and other legal uses such as securing food and for sport.  The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld these rights.  But what about the Bible?  Should Christians be keeping and bearing arms?  According to Albin Sadar at the American Thinker in an article entitled Do the Bible and Our Constitution Agree That We Have a "Right to Bear Arms"?, the answer is: Yes.

Sadar is writing about a new book by John Zmirak entitled No Second Amendment, No First. As Sadar notes:

Like clockwork, every time there is a shooting, the cry rises up from the left that we need gun control. This demand occurs whether it’s a tragic school shooting or a couple of failed assassination attempts on their least favorite presidential person in the whole wide world.

The logic of a gun-free zone from coast to coast seems to suggest that without any firearms, school shootings and feisty ex-presidents would never be targets. Apparently, it is the very existence of the weapon itself that lures a person to wield it for nefarious purposes.

I grew up hearing the Right’s counterpoint to this logic, summed up in one particular mantra:

“When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”

However, when I used this gun-grab argument twenty years ago on a liberal relative of mine, he flipped the logic on me. He said, “Well, yes, of course. That means anyone possessing a firearm would then be considered a criminal—whether they are an actual criminal or just an ordinary citizen—both would be equally guilty.”

My relative was right. He was also ahead of his time.

There is a lot to unpack in these first few paragraphs. The first thing is that the gun-grabbers raise the cry because they think that emotions will win the day. They do not care about the daily occurrences of shootings in the neighborhoods of Chicago, or the barrios of Los Angeles. These killings and shootings occur regularly in every major city in the United States, yet do not disturb our gun-grabbing friends in the least. The goal is not to stop the killing, the goal is to get the guns of the law abiding.

I would note that the God of creation is also the author of the natural law.  It therefore should surprise no one that self-defense is a natural right.  As for Christians who think it is somehow Unchristian to bear arms, please remember that Jesus was true man and true God.  He said in John 8:58 "before Abraham was I AM.  What Christ is telling them, and us, is that He is the same God as the one in the burning bush.  The same as the God of creation.

The second point is that the Left is intent of repealing the natural law of self-defense. Already, in England, it is de facto illegal to defend yourself. People are treated like little children where the criminal attacker and the one defending himself get equally punished. The Left would like to bring that here, and apparently some Left-wing prosecutors are trying to do so. The solution to such is for juries to nullify such prosecutions. For if they succeed in repealing the natural right of self-defense, they can make you do anything.

Sadar's relative was confusing "mala in se" and "mala prohibita." Mala in se are crimes that are evil on their face. Murder for instance is a mala in se crime. Mala prohibita are crimes because they say they are. Banning an inanimate object because it can be used to murder people would fit the definition of mala prohibita. On that basis, even rocks CAN be used as murder weapons, so should they be banned?  Keep in mind that there are multiple legitimate uses for guns besides murder. But as you can see above, the Left is already chipping away at one of those legitimate reasons: self-defense.

Self-preservation is inherent in life itself, within every living creature, but foremost in human beings. In chapter after chapter, Zmirak points out how this simple fact of life—and of preserving life itself—eventually morphed from a proper, Biblical worldview to an anti-life, Progressive “hive mind.”

On a larger scale, Zmirak covers the historical patterns of how entire nations were able to enslave and control their populations, from the Soviet Union to Venezuela to Cuba to Cambodia to China to North Korea to many, many other countries. The pattern always began by disarming the citizens. Once the government had the guns, what they ordered was obeyed. Opposing speech would be censored—and lethally, when necessary.

...snip...

In one chapter, Zmirak sees the “Harmony of the Old Testament and the New” with this issue of proper defense. Within that “harmony Zmirak shows how many “progressive Christians” have accepted antithetical reasoning, including championing “[c]onfiscating citizens’ guns, rendering them completely dependent on Caesar for protection against violent crime and defenseless against any mob violence and possible future tyranny.”

My backlog of reading material is getting rather long. But I think I need to prioritize this one as sooner than some of the others on the list. Meanwhile, may I urge gentle readers to read Sadar's article at the American Thinker.

The Great Bush Betrayal

 A must-read at the American Thinker today is J. B. Shurk's article Dick Cheney Loves KamaLOL. I urge gentle readers to read the entire article. Those who love snark will find it aplenty. But it is the concluding paragraphs that have moved me to comment. These tell the real story.

So many patriotic Republicans went to war because George Bush and Dick Cheney told them that they were fighting evil and preserving freedom. They left their families to spend years in Afghanistan and Iraq. They sacrificed everything. Then battle turned into occupation. A Global War on Terrorism became an amorphous struggle against undefined “extremism.” At home, we got the TSA, DHS, the PATRIOT Act, and mass surveillance. By the time Barack Obama and Eric Holder retooled all of these unconstitutional abrogations of Americans’ rights into weapons for persecuting ordinary Americans for their beliefs, it was clear that a new kind of evil was destroying freedom. As Sundance over at The Conservative Treehouse once said, we should have never agreed to take off our shoes at the airport. It was all downhill from there.

Remarkably, the very patriots who reacted to 9/11 by volunteering to defend their country have become the principal targets of today’s national security surveillance state. And while the Deep State censors, harasses, and demonizes those who have given so much for their nation, George Bush and Dick Cheney have chosen to remain silent. They have turned their backs on those who had theirs. A quarter of a century after the worst attack on America since Pearl Harbor, our former Republican leaders endorse outright communists.

This kind of repugnant betrayal is why so many Americans adamantly support President Trump and why MAGA will never, ever go away.

I think all too many Republicans feel betrayed by the Bushes. Yes, Dubya seemed to be better than Al Gore, and better than John Kerry, but really, was he? The betrayal of all conservative principles by W was just too much. If the Never-Trump people want to know from whence the MAGA movement came, it came about because the Republican party repudiated the Reagan movement and joined forces with the Democrats. Today, the Democrats (read Communists and Fascists) are desperately trying to steal the Republic while the MAGA movement desparately tries to pull the Republic from dropping off a cliff.

All Religions Are a Pathway to God

 I mentioned several days ago that with the latest off the cuff pontification from Pope Francis, I wondered whether he even believed in Christ.  Today at the American Thinker Eric Utter brings up the same incident in a post entitled Pope Francis implies all religions are equivalent.

The preposterously progressive pontiff said, “Every religion is a way to arrive at God. There are different languages to arrive at God, but God is God for all. And how is God God for all? We are all sons and daughters of God. But my god is more important than your god, is that true?” He added, “There is only one God and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, they are different paths.” Huh?

Is the Hindu god Brahma the same as Sikhism’s Waheguru, and Islam’s Allah? What about Buddhism, which doesn’t really have a God? Are all these gods, and the non-god truly somehow the same? Is Christianity really no better than frisbeetarianism? Are Rastafarians truly on par with Jewish people? Should we take the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster as seriously as we take, say, Islam? Is Raelism simply a “different path” to the same God? The Church of Maradona worships soccer star Diego Maradona as if he were a god. This is obviously a different path to a different god. Should it be held in precisely the same regard and esteem as the mainline religions? Is a religion promising men the reward of 72 servile virgins in paradise for "martyring" themselves against innocent people no different than one that does not?

While our illustrious pope is galivanting all over the world promoting religions other than the one he supposedly leads, bishops and priests of the Roman church are still bitter that Martin Luther left the church and created a schism. Except Martin Luther didn't leave; he was excommunicated. He was kicked out of the church because the then pope didn't want to give up unbiblical practices such as granting indulgences for money. Rome created the schism, and Rome has yet to heal it.

One wonders, does the pope think being Lutheran is a pathway to God?

We Are Not in a Cultural War but a Spiritual War

 I have thought for some time that we, on the Constitutional side, has been in a spiritual war, but a spiritual war usually involves fighting the devil.  It involves casting out demons.  But Anthony J. DeBlasi has an article today at the American Thinker entitled The War With No Name that paints a picture of our current fight to stop the fascist far left in this country as a spiritual war. Thinking about it, I have to agree.

I have said on several occasions here that one cannot be a Christian and also be a Marxist which also means fascist, Communist, Progressive, socialist or any of their foot soldiers such as BLM or ANTIFA. These people are aggressive in imposing their views on everyone.  They are intolerant while requiring it of us.  They have slowly turned several generations of children from God and towards their atheistic secular worldview.

But in truth, nobody is an atheist. Either you worship the LORD, or you worship some idol. Those seeking wealth and power are worshipping the Baals, while those shouting their abortions and sexual perversions are worshipping Ashtaroth and Molock.  These are all the deliberately offended we call "woke."

DeBlasi's money quote is here:

I’ll continue by asking, what is it that could make a U.S. government official regard Christians as a threat to America? The idea occurs to me that anyone who thinks that way is behaving as though he/she has been drugged somehow. A silly a notion?

...snip...

Returning to the importance of Christianity in America, it is now beyond guessing that this country’s domestic enemies have made Christianity a target of annihilation. They don’t regard Christianity as just another dismissible “cult” but as an intolerable block to the transformation of America into an authoritarian state, which it cannot be as constituted.

...snip...

Karl Marx famously claimed that religion is “the opium of the people.” Was he perhaps overlooking an “opiate” of his own to win the hearts and minds of the people? I’m pointing to the promise of equal shares of the products of labor for everyone. That this total equity is unattainable is proved by the fact that it has never worked where implemented – worked for the people, I mean. Their end of the bargain turns out to be subsistence at best, more likely some form of misery. In practice, the carrot dangled in front of the people for accepting total equity is a sugar-coated lie, effective as any drug.

Moving to a bottom line, the bad news is that dictatorship in America has been steadily advancing and accelerating since Barack Obama took office. Who hasn’t noticed? The woke, most likely. The good news is that the complicit leftist media has gotten its comeuppance since Trump took office, and fewer and fewer people are buying its lies.

I think I’ve said enough to validate the growing belief that we are in a global war without troops, physical weapons, locations, and political strategies – a fight for hearts and minds that can rightly be called a spiritual war.

DeBlasi has put his finger on what we are really facing here. St. Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:12:

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Gentle readers should go to DeBlasi's article and meditate on it.

Harris Wants to Send Law Enforcement To Your Door

 Harris has been saying that she too is a gun owner, just like you.  Except, if she is, she has some pretty odd ways of proving it.  For example, according to Olivia Murray at the American Thinker Old footage reveals that Kamala Harris intends to barge into our homes to see how we store our firearms.

Kamala Harris brings a whole new energy to the nanny state, further evidenced by a damning new video making the rounds on social media which shows a younger Harris standing next to Gavin Newsom, announcing that even if someone is in “legal” possession of a firearm (and yes, she used air quotes around “legal”) in the “sanctity” of their own locked home, it doesn’t mean Big Brother’s evil next-of-kin Momala won’t be showing up unannounced to conduct surprise warrantless searches (and maybe some seizures!) if she finds that we’re not being “responsible” or “safe” in the way we exercise our right to self defense in the context of keeping and bearing arms.

And Murray has the receipts. You can watch Harris say exactly that at the embedded post. Further, this is not just a 2nd Amendment issue, as Murray lists a series of other rights that can be violated similarly. The idea being proposed is dangerous to all our rights. We already have a surveilance state, and this dials the surveilance up to 11.

Just because you “legally” possess the deed to your home, doesn’t mean we won’t be barging in to make sure you’re not using a gas stove or an incandescent light bulb—that would be irresponsible.

Just because you “legally” have the title to your car, doesn’t mean we won’t be making sure it’s an E.V. and not a combustion engine—the $cience is settled and everyone knows “fossil fuels” are not a “responsible” source of energy.

Just because you “legally” have a right to practice your Christian faith, doesn’t mean we won’t be paying y’all a visit in church to make sure you’re not engaging in “hate speech” or encouraging racist values like traditional marriage, a hierarchy between the sexes, personal responsibility, God’s government is the only legitimate one with real authority, and being fruitful and having lots of babies—this is very threatening to the progressive LGBTQers, and doesn’t make them feel very “safe.”

Just because that’s “legally” your money in the bank, doesn’t mean we won’t be surveilling you to make sure you’re not purchasing anything you shouldn’t be like ammunition, too much red meat, homeschool materials—again, irresponsible. (Of course this is debatable since these Federal Reserve notes do in fact belong to the Federal Reserve private bank, but you get the point.)

Please read Murray's post. You won't find this in the mainstream press. You're welcome!

Update: At Townhall.com Katie Pavlich has a piece on the same topice entitled Kamala's Latest Stomach Churning Fakery, in which she casts doubt that Harris is a gun owner.

Merrick Garland's Brand of (In)Justice Must Go

John Nantz at Townhall.com has an insightful piece entitled Selective Justice and the Trump Assassination Attempt: Garland's DOJ in Crisis. Nantz's central point is that either Merrick Garland is an arrogant liar, or he is incompetently and unbelievably naive. In either case, the man at the top of the Department of (in)Justice has no business being there.

Last Thursday Attorney General (AG) Merrick Garland delivered an address to the workforce titled “An Independent Justice Department.” The speech drew howls of derision from the right, and for good reason.

In a completely unaware manner, Garland stated emphatically that his Department of Justice (DOJ) operates based on norms that “treat like cases alike.” He pronounced “there is not one rule for friends and another for foes…one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans…” All of red state America waited for the laugh track to queue, but it never did. Garland made these shocking statements with complete conviction. The degree of self-deception or outright arrogance is breathtaking in this bureaucratic screed.

Nantz reminds us, as if we need reminding, of the many examples of the DOJ's many instances of unbalanced law enforcement and lawfare. They would essentially excuse one favored defendant while throwing the book at another disfavored one. The FBI targeted individuals and groups based upon their political leanings, with conservatives and Christians getting the lion's share of FBI scrutiny.

Nor will anyone forget the events that developed on Capitol Hill during the grey afternoon of January 6, 2021 (J6th). Certainly, no one can forget how Democrats have caterwauled about the protest gone awry. J6th has been compared to the Civil War by Kamala Harris, and as the greatest threat to liberty since Adolph Hitler’s march into Paris. While still on stage in front of the White House, Trump urged his constituents to move peaceably to the Capitol to peacefully protest the results of what many considered a stolen election. The vast majority of the people there that day did just that.

...snip...

Garland’s perverse brand of justice, with its partisan prosecutorial priorities, has led us to the brink of disaster as Trump narrowly escaped a second assassination attempt on Sunday. The law and order vacuum represented by Garland’s DOJ has emboldened the dangerous rhetoric which places Trump’s life in danger. By allowing reckless politicians to continue to incite violence without bringing the DOJ’s prosecutorial resources to bear on a clear violation of federal law, Garland provides tacit approval, and shares in the responsibility for enabling criminally disturbed individuals to carry out their murderous plans.

The DOJ and FBI are broken institutions. However, as Attorney General Harlan Stone proved in the 1920’s, both institutions can be reformed by powerful leaders with mandates to root out the multitudinous elements of corruption which have come to plague once great bulwarks of civil liberty. It can be done. It must be done. And, Trump is the man for the job.

I urge gentle readers to again read the whole article and consider just who you want running the nation at this time.

Does Pope Francis Even Believe in Christ?

 Before I begin, let me note for those new here that I am not Roman Catholic.  I am actually a confessing Lutheran, though Luther actually wanted churches not to be called by his name, but to call them Evangelical Catholic.  I also want to distance myself from those in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) because these days one doesn't know which god one may encounter there.  Also, I should note that if anyone reading this is stuck in an ELCA church because they think they can change it from inside, realize that your synod has been hijacked by Lucifer.  You cannot change it at this point.  All you can do is run to your nearest Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) for your salvation and sanity.

So, the current occupant of the see of Rome, Pope Francis, in a recent trip to Singapore, declared that all religions are paths to God.  This directly contradicts Jesus, who said in John 14, verse 6:

6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

Jesus here makes an exclusive claim that no one can join with others in heaven unless in this life they are baptized and believe. The Christian church has proclaimed this fundamental teaching for 2100 years.  Many Catholic news sources and podcasters immediately broadcast the news and the outrage.  It hasn't made much of a dent in the mainstream media, though that may be because of the presidential election issues.  

 I have asked on many occasions since Pope Francis was elected to be Bishop of Rome, "Is the pope Catholic?" Now I have to also ask, "Is the pope even Christian?" Or is he leading Roman Catholics into what has often been predicted as a One World Religion to go along with the One World Government?"  Does the Pope believe the teachings of the Church or not?  If not, shouldn't he resign?

I clearly have no special insight into the heart of Pope Francis, nor any special knowledge of the inner workings of the Vatican. But to my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters in Christ, I suggest you consider running to the nearest LCMS church near you to receive the true Body and Blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Communist "Unhumans"

 Yesterday's post was a call to read a book report by Ned Ryun stating that evil is a reality in this broken world.  Today, we have another book report, written by Janet Levy, about a book written by Jack Prosobiec and Joshua Lisec entitled Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (And How to Crush Them). You can find Levy's article at the American Thinker entitled How To Beat the Communists At Their Own Game.

Perhaps we should unwrap this word "unhuman" first. I have noted in the past that one cannot be a Christian and also "woke" because being woke requires the denial of God given reality. By "God given" I mean both scientifically observable facts and belief in those things that can be reasonably derived from Biblical teachings. Things like the fact of two genders and the fact of birth at conception. In the same way, one cannot be a Christian and be a Marxist/Communist/Socialist/Fascist or even a Progressive, for these world views also deny God given realities. This clash of world views was what drove Bella Dodd, for example to leave Communism and return to Christianity.

When one adopts Communism, one also adopts the tactics and the beliefs of Communists. These are purely demonic and one becomes capable of doing horrible things in the name of the new god, Lucifer. In that sense, one loses his humanity and becomes unhuman. It is only when one formally repents of these beliefs and tactics and confesses to being a sinner that one regains a sense of being human.

Levy writes:

Communism thrives on resentment, vengeance, and terror. Its chief weapon is disorder, the dismantling of existing structures, the undoing of bonds holding together families, nations, civilizations. Conservative pundits have been warning of this for decades. Why, then, have the U.S. – and the West as a result – moved to the Left?

According to Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec, authors of Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (And How to Crush Them), conservatives lose because they do not understand the Left. The authors say their book is a “software upgrade” for saving America and Western civilization. They say they are unapologetic about the epithet ‘unhumans’ because communists destroy “the human rights of life, liberty, and property – and undo their own humanity in the process by fully embracing nihilism, cynicism, and envy.”

Posobiec is a former Naval intelligence officer, a T.V. journalist, and well-known conservative voice, while Lisec is a professional ghostwriter. As staunch believers in the “God-given will of the human spirit to build a greater, better world than the one we found ourselves in,” both are committed to fighting back.

They advocate the principle of exact reciprocity: “that which is done by the communists and the regime must be done unto them.” Lawfare, naming, shaming, boycotts, cancel culture – the Left, they say, must be fought with its own weapons. Their book is no limp-wristed analysis of conservative failures; it is a clarion call for an iron-fisted counterattack – a counter-revolution, for which they lay out the strategy in the final two (12th and 13th) chapters.

The last, "exact reciprocity," is what Kurt Schlichter has called the "new rules." We must not be shy about using the new rules against the Communists, because that is the only way to stop them. But we cannot become them. We must use our newfound rules to target high profile targets to discourage everyone else. Some of this is already happening with people like Robby Starbuck pressuring companies like Harley Davidson to abandon DEI initiatives. We must double down on what Starbuck is doing and find other means to cancel, boycott, lawfare, and sometimes imprisonment when actual laws have been broken. We don't have to make stuff up. There is a host of legitimate targets out there.

At another level, the authors say, communists have unleashed anarcho-terrorism – the selective enforcement of laws against a target population. Examples given include the prosecution of Jan. 6 demonstrators protesting a fraudulent election while Antifa and BLM rioters were exonerated for the “summer of love,” in which property was destroyed, businesses were looted, and people were assaulted. Another is the villainization of police officers in the George Floyd case despite his record as a violent criminal, fentanyl addict, and heart patient. Yet another is the criminalization of self-defense, while courts take a lenient view of muggers and robbers.

Committed as they are to taking the fight back to the communists, Posobiec and Lisec say that, if necessary, conservatives must infiltrate the organizations of the unhumans. Posobiec hasn’t shied from such work himself: he has infiltrated Antifa meetings that planned attacks on Trump’s inauguration and the Seattle Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) and written a book about the conspiracies hatched there (The Antifa: Stories from Inside the Black Bloc).

They also suggest acquiring dominance over social media – creating networks of counter-influencers, for example – so that organizations such as Antifa, BLM, and NGOs profiting from illegal immigration can be exposed and shamed effectively, while lawfare against them gains wide publicity. In fact, Posobiec has written another book – 4D Warfare: A Doctrine for a New Generation of Politics – dedicated to fighting communists on social media.

I urge gentle readers to read the whole article by Levy.

Slaying the False God

J. B. Shurk has an interesting article today at the American Thinker entitled Slaying Leviathan. It is a book report of an advanced copy of Ned Ryun's American Leviathan.

If you don’t know Ned, he’s the founder of American Majority and Voter Gravity, grassroots organizations that specialize in fighting the culture war at the local level and electing America First conservatives. On cable news channels and in his writing, he’s an eloquent defender of the Constitution, limited government, and the American Republic as the Founding Fathers intended. I highly recommend that you read American Leviathan and share it with friends — especially friends who struggle to see clearly the stakes of the ideological war now raging.

Since I urge gentle readers to read the whole article, I will only quote just this, which is at the heart of Shurk's point:

In American Leviathan, Ryun succeeds by making what is complicated quite comprehensible. He takes a century and a half of mostly forgotten history and political debate and boils down all the sordidness into a digestible, if unpleasant, meal. He traces the origin of the administrative state to a group of American intellectuals who were fascinated with Hegel’s philosophical defense of authoritarianism and the absolute power of the Prussian king. He pinpoints the rise of the Uniparty in the overlapping policy preferences of leading Republicans, Democrats, and socialists at the beginning of the twentieth century. He recounts how progressive Republicans, such as Robert La Follette and Teddy Roosevelt, advocated for radical expansion of government and rejection of long-respected constitutional constraints that mirrored many of the wishes of progressive Democrats, such as Woodrow Wilson and The New Republic founder Herbert Croly. Together, these various thought leaders (at times hostile to one another as they advanced similar goals) initiated what Ryun calls a “Progressive Statist movement” demanding a fundamental transformation of the American system of government and the elevation of the State at the expense of Americans’ individual liberties.

Ryun defines the administrative state, the national security state, and the Deep State as distinct entities reflecting varying degrees of power, privilege, secretiveness, and incompetence, but he recognizes all of these unelected factions as parts of the same beast: the Leviathan. With that appellation, he refers to the political treatise Leviathan, from seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, whose inclination toward a strong, centralized government emerged during the chaos of the English Civil Wars. In the Old Testament, Leviathan is a sea serpent and demon associated with the sin of envy. The monster eats the souls of those who are damned because they remain too attached to the material world to reach God’s realm and receive His grace. Although the biblical Leviathan epitomizes chaos, Hobbes used the idea of a terrifying creature composed of myriad souls as a metaphor for an all-powerful State constantly shaping citizens and feeding from their individual energies. The frontispiece to Hobbes’s Leviathan shows a monarch clutching the symbols of earthly power in one hand and spiritual power in the other. The monarch’s body is formed from hundreds of faceless individuals who, through their actions to support the king, embody the State. At the top of the illustration is a Latin quote describing Leviathan from the Book of Job: “There is no power on earth to be compared to him.” It is in this sense that Ryun describes the American Leviathan.

Although Hobbes saw the Leviathan as a necessary force for taming violent chaos, Ryun recognizes it for what it actually is: an uncontrollable, ever-growing, and ravenous beast that devours any prospect for representative democracy or individual liberty. Interestingly, just as Hobbes saw the Leviathan State as the union of the secular and spiritual worlds, Ryun sees the American Leviathan as a usurper claiming dominion over both worlds, too. He takes great pains to show how Progressive Statists depend upon a rejection of God, so that they can claim His powers as their own. In the same way that the theological Leviathan represents the deadly sin of envy, the American Leviathan is envious of all forms of power outside its own. Ultimately, to choose the unelected administrative state over the constitutional republic and the protection of Americans’ natural rights is to worship government above all else. The American Leviathan is an obscene and false god.

Indeed

Evil Is Real

 Perhaps you have wondered why I have not posted much lately.  The truth is two fold.  First, I have been busy with other things.  One realizes that continuing to read all the news sites can become an idol in itself and take a person's focus away from God.  But the other thing is that most news sites have become about the presidential race.  One side tries to scare you that Trump is evil incarnate and will become a dictator for life, while at the same time attempting to convince you that Harris has moderated or abandoned positions she has held for years in the last three weeks.  Either she really has no core positions, or she is lying.  Trump on the other hand, while I personally feel is the best candidate right now, has all too human flaws.  In the end, it is about two different world views.

But this has always been a gun blog first.  Yes, I want all the rights and privileges afforded by our Constitution.  But they depend, ultimately, on the Second Amendment.  But even here, we see the horse race intruding, as Harris has stated she wants to severely restrict our Second Amendment rights.  According to one world view, we need the Second Amendment because people are basically sinful.  According to the other, we don't because people are basically good.  Today, Tom Knighton at Bearing Arms has a piece entitled Sorry, But Evil Actually Is Real and Banning Guns Won't Make It Go Away.  You can guess which world view Knighton takes.

The idea that every person born is born into sin was one that the ancient Israelites believed. Psalm 51:5:

"Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,

And in sin did my mother conceive me."

Saint Augustine systematized this belief as "original sin" brought about by the disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Of course, people are capable of evil acts all on their own. Rarely, people may be under demonic possession, which also exists. But in any case, calling evil by its name - and murder is evil - does not in any way "dehumanize" the perpetrator.  For he invites the devil into his heart.

Too many people, including those who claim to be Christian, have the belief that people are basically good, and this despite all the evidence around them. This belief in the goodness of people affects many policy positions they take, including about guns. Such is the case with D'Anne Witowski at Pride Source* entitled Evil Isn't Real. Guns and Murder Are. Yet Republicans Do Nothing. But, we know that murders are committed with pretty much anything that can be used as a weapon including hands and feet. Are we to ban hands and feet?

I don't intend to quote any of Witowski's piece, as the entire article is specious. based as it is on false premises. You can read it if you want. But I would ask that you read Knighton's article. which closes with:

It's. The. People.

People are the problem, and until and unless we address that issue, we're just going to have more and more events like the Apalachee High School shooting. Vance at least upping school security to try and minimize the risk to our kids. The author and Kamala Harris just want to punish people who did nothing wrong.

If you ask me, that's downright evil in and of itself.

Exactly

*The fact that the publication calls itself Pride Source

Pray and Vote

Yesterday, Sha'i ben-Tekoa had a must read article at the American Thinker in which he explains in painful, if not gory detail Islam's Psychopathic Bullies. Mostly, he illustrates from the Israeli experience of the October 7 war. But understand that the same terrorists and psychopaths are here, now in America, and they are beginning to make their presence known in Europe. Europe is thoroughly frightened of them and doesn't know what to do. Europe seems to have lost control of the hordes of Muslim immigrants.  Our so-called leaders are not going to do much either as when they lose control, it will already be too late.

In recent days, various Israeli former captives of the Muslim Brotherhood (Hamas) in the Gaza Strip have gone public in the Israeli media with their ordeal, and their reportage is uniform. Every one of their different captors comes across as a psychopathic bully. Being kidnapped and becoming a hostage to Muslims means more than just loss of freedom; it means constant, 24-7 abuse, punishment physical and psychological, in particular, endless humiliation.

Israel’s YNETnews.com quoted freed hostage Almog Meir regarding his abuser: “If he did not like how we walked around the apartment, he would say, ‘You were up, fine, now you will sit for a week and not move. If you go to the bathroom, you must crawl there. I don’t want you to stand.’” This is bullying for bullying’s sake.

Almog added, “They often just wanted to punch me. You disconnect from your feelings, from the humiliation. He would take this pen and tie our mouths around it. For days, we would have cuts in our mouths. Sometimes we were bound by chains and would have the rust wash off us when we showered. The lock on the chains would cut us to the bone.”

What the MSM never covers is the religious dimension of the cruelty that the Jewish hostages in Muslim hands in Gaza are subject to daily. The Koran mandates “oppression and humiliation” for Jews, and that was the relationship over fourteen centuries.

It is too bad that the MSM doesn't cover the religious nature of this abuse. Understand that the Jews would not acknowledge Muhammad's claims and so Muhammad in a fit of pique placed an eternal curse on them. But think for a moment. The Jews were God's chosen people. Would God have called for the killing of all Jews? He had made a covenant with them, and it was irrevocable. Whether the Jews honored it or not, God would keep his promises. Clearly God would not mandate the killing of Jews. Clearly, the Koran is the work of the Evil One.

Here's another way to tell that Christianity is from God and Islam is not. In Christianity, God first loved us, and in response we should love our neighbor as ourselves for the sake of God's love for us. God so loves us that he doesn't want to force himself on anyone. God through his great love and grace grants us faith and asks us to pray and worship Him because doing so strengthens us and improves our lives.

By contrast, Islam does not demand faith. One can become a Muslim by saying a series of words three times. What Islam demands is submission. Love has nothing to do with it, which of course is what causes such psychopathy in Muslims. It makes sense that Islam is as it is because it is the work of the Evil One, and he hates humans with an unquenchable and insatiable hatred.

You may be wondering what Marxism, Socialism, Communism and whatever other "ism" they go by today has in common with Islam. Marxism is after all atheistic, believing in no god. Islam is a totalitarian governing system masquerading as a religion. Totalitarianism then is what both have in common.  The Marxist hope to use the Muslims as their shock troops and armed attack dogs to impose totalitarian rule. I suspect the Devil has other plans, however, and he is smarter and more powerful than any human. Besides, he is also influencing the Left as well.  In the end, he is willing to give to a few people in order to make as slaves out of as many of us as possible.

What can you and I do? For now, pray fervently and every day. Oh, and vote like your life depended on it, because it does.

Movie Trailer Illustrates Hollywood Neo-Paganism

 Yesterday evening, I happened to read in intriguing post by Andrea Widburg at the American Thinker entitled A new movie trailer may be the ultimate expression of feminist neo-paganism. Sure enough, Widburg does not disappoint, though as has become quite usual, Hollywood does.

This coming weekend, a movie called Nightbitch, starring the popular Amy Adams, opens. The premise is a simple one: A frustrated career woman who becomes a stay-at-home mom transforms into a dog at night. I haven’t read the novel on which the movie is based, and I doubt I’ll see the movie. It’s the trailer that’s intriguing because it is the ultimate expression of unhappy feminism, coupled with leftism’s neo-paganism.

Regarding the unhappy feminism, I know all about that. I was utterly unprepared for motherhood, in large part because I, like most in my generation, was last around children when I was 15 and babysitting in high school. After that, I lived in a child-free world, so the reality of children when I hit my late thirties (yes, I waited that long) was a shock. I also worked from home, so I was simultaneously a mommy and a wage slave, which was a challenge I did not gracefully rise to meet.

I have always understood the feminist desire to "have it all." But I have also always realized that we cannot "have it all." We make choices, many of which are unwise choices, and some of our choices foreclose others. Men too have tried to "have it all" and have failed just as spectacularly.  Sometimes we can repent, but we can never undo the damage we have done. That is the human condition. It is why I admire Harrison Butker and he speech to the graduates of Benedictine College, because he has learned early the way to a happy life.

The trailer, though, makes it explicit that happiness is not a choice. Indeed, only a pompous, condescending man who doesn’t understand the horrors of motherhood would think it is.

Rather than embracing and celebrating what we have, the trailer goes in another direction entirely: It literally tells us to tap into our divine side. Thus, Amy Adams, the frazzled mother, announces, “We [i.e., women] are gods,” complete with the creative power of gods.

There are two things going on in that statement. First, it represents the left’s neo-paganism, which rejects the monotheistic Judeo-Christian God. Rejecting that God means that one can also reject His worldview (e.g., “male and female he created them”) and His ethical values, both large and small.

Second, the statement taps into the Marxist concept that, when people are freed from the chains of labor, they essentially become gods. Logan Lancing’s and James Lindsay’s The Queering of the American Child: How a New School Religious Cult Poisons the Minds and Bodies of Normal Kids explains that Marxism is not an economic theory; it’s a religious cult that sees the Western economic system standing in the way of each person’s apotheosis (that is, their ascendence to god-status).

I urge gentle readers to read the whole post. Widburg tells us how she came around to embrace her role as a mother, and I would suspect also how she became a conservative. She also credits some of her wisdom to Dennis Prager, a man I highly admire as well.

(As an aside: I was asked by a militant atheist once would I like it if my kids were taught by a practicing Jew? My answer surprised her. I said I wouldn't mind at all. After all, my Saviour and God was a Jew. According to the very Jewish St. Paul, all we gentiles are grafted onto the Vine of Christ, making us all now Israelites.  Of course, the modern state of Israel and the ancient Israelites are two very different things.)

Perhaps We Should Practice 'Agape' Rather Than Fake Empathy

Election season goes into overtime after Labor Day, and I cannot wait for it to be over.  One of the Democrats' great talking points is how much they care and empathize with the marginalized, the poor, the working man etc.  Reading the Bible puts one in mind of the old idea of tough love.  We, living in a Rousseauean world have come to know only one kind of love.  But the Greeks recognized love on many levels, one of which was "agape" (pronounced ag-ah'-pay) Agape was the sort of love that God had for his people, a love that sometimes punished wrong-doers to correct them for their own good.  If government is to fulfill St. Paul's notion of being God's representative on earth, then it must also fulfill agape, not fake empathy.

Yesterday, at the American Thinker Jack Hellner had a post entitled Debunking the bleeding heart of Democrats lie in which he points out that time and time again, the supposedly compassionate Democrat policies actually rain ruin and misery on the population. Oh, these policies sound good in the Democrats' telling, but they are not good for the people.  Instead, they are merely pandering to the people to get them to vote for the Democrats, while planning to do something else.

Here are a few examples, of many examples given by Hellner, and which I urge you to go read for yourselves. Helner is getting really fired up by this point in his post:

Democrats claim they care deeply about the environment, but Biden and Harris have barely recognized the environmental catastrophe in East Palestine, Ohio. Those people are clearly disposable. Democrats are too busy destroying the economy with the theoretical climate crisis which is based on computer models. They don’t care about all the birds and bats killed by wind turbines, and the obliteration of marine life when these machines break offshore.

Democrats have no empathy for newborn babies born in botched abortions. They don’t even believe these little ones deserve health care.

They have no empathy for the workers at crisis pregnancy centers when their facility is vandalized and destroyed. They hate freedom of choice for poor pregnant women.

Democrats pretend they care about children, but they were willing to destroy children by keeping them out of school based on lies from Anthony Fauci and others.

It is not empathetic when a president dictatorially and unconstitutionally pays off student loans; it is theft from taxpayers and bribery for votes.

I saw the Harris ad again last night where young women, girls really, were telling us how the other candidate had taken away their "rights" and didn't care about them. I again said to the TV that the reason I am voting for the other candidate is because in fact I DO care about them. Sure, the easy thing is to give in and tell them "Go ahead and do what feels good, and then have an abortion." It seems like an easy fix. But it turns out it is not and will harm both the mother and the child. God's commandments are there not to restrict you, but to give you abundant life. Perhaps we would do well to practice some agape when we vote instead of fake empathy.