The Infinite Monkey Theorem

 When I was in college, studying to become an engineer, one of the courses I took was statistics.  But since I wasn't trying to become a theoretician, I took a course in the application of statistics.  But I did learn at least enough to know that the more data points you have, the better your statistics reflect reality.  One of these theorems was called the infinite monkey theorem. There are various versions, but it goes like this:

The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys independently and at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text, including the complete works of William Shakespeare.

Of course, being young and quite full of myself, I thought this was quite clever. Actually, it points to both the power, and the limitations of statistics. The power, of course, is in the ability to tease out small signals from a great deal of data that looks like random noise. The limitation however is that there is never an infinite anything, especially time.

Of course, I thought that this was a proof that evolution was correct. Whether one believed in a god or thought that we came about through random mutations, the infinite monkey theorem seemed to prove evolution to be true. At the same time, however, I was training to become an engineer, a profession where one designed things which, we all hoped, would make people's lives better. In my defense, I didn't have a lot of time to contemplate things metaphysical as I was busy learning about the physical.

I have mentioned before that though I was raised in the Church, I was an agnostic, not sure that there was in fact a god, and in any case, I couldn't see that if He existed, that He had much sway over world affairs. Boy, was I stupid. The infinite monkey theorem may serve a useful purpose in statistics, but it bears no relation to the real world. In the real world, if I placed an infinite bunch of parts of a clock in a box and then shook it for an infinite amount of time, it would never become a clock. It is only when some craftsman specifically designs and constructs a clock that it becomes a clock.

God is the greatest mathematician, the greatest physicist, the greatest chemist, and so on. He is the Great Engineer of the Universe and the Creator of everything that is and everything that is not. Reading the Bible where Christ rebukes the Sadducees and Pharisees, people smarter than I am, it is only by His grace that my eyes have been partially opened.

SCOTUS Wrapped Around an Axle

 You have probably read by now that the Supreme Court has stabbed the Second Amendment and its supporters in the back with its recent ruling upholding the Biden era ATF ruling on so-called "ghost guns." John Woods has a post at the American Thinker mocking the SCOTUS ruling:

I have a suggestion for the nation about SCOTUS: the Supreme Court judges should be required to trade out their black robes for open-in-the-back hospital gowns and pink Crocs. The nine judges -- except for two -- seem incapable of keeping the lower court activist judges on the reservation. The SCOTUS judges should also be required to write all their opinions in red crayon, starting with their nonsensical decision on unserialized “ghost guns.” Looking at the Second Amendment with a powerful magnifying glass, I have yet to find or have overlooked the part that mentions serial numbers.

...snip...

SCOTUS should dress the part, since we seem to have a complete clown show in the Judiciary. Maybe the need to use their hands to keep their rosy red cheeks from peeking out of the hospital gown will prevent them from getting their hands on the people's rights. With their red crayon, they may want to circle and highlight the parts of the Second Amendment that mention age requirements or serial numbers.

I would like to see the return of the little red cartoon devil on the shoulders of each of these judges. He should have a baseball bat with the words “Read the amendment as it was written.” Every time these activist judges and SCOTUS add any words or additions to the amendment in the Bill of Rights, the little devil should whomp them up aside the head and scream, "Read it as it was written, Stupid!" in their ear.

I can't help but think that Woods may be onto something here. After all, where the weapon was made, or by whom, should have no bearing on a case of an unlawful shooting. In fact, serial numbers are frankly for the use of the manufacturer who needs to know when and to whom a weapon was sold for warrantee reasons. As Mike McDaniel has noted many times, neither knowing the serial number nor trace data has never solved a murder case. What has is standard police procedures. SCOTUS has apparently gotten wrapped around an axle that was spun up by anti-gun lawyers and they overlooked common sense.

Be Prepared

You may have noticed that the Left has decided to take down Elon Musk because he is pointing out all the waste fraud and abuse in the government one agency at a time.  In particular, they seem especially upset that he has pointed out the utterly ridiculous wasteful spending at the USAID, which was established by an executive order and can be eliminated by the same means. Of course, they really want to get rid of President Trump, but since he is too hard to get to, they have selected Musk, who is merely the messenger.  He can't fire anyone.

In typical manner, the Left has decided to take what they call "direct action" by committing arson on Tesla dealerships, and intimidating Tesla owners by damaging or burning their cars.  As Tom Knighton notes in a post at Bearing Arms entitled Things Are Getting Ugly. Be Ready, all patriots should upgrade their awareness. In the parlance of Col. Jeff Cooper, you should be at condition "yellow" most of the time. But these are not normal times, and you may want to go to "orange."

In 2018, I wrote a piece here at Bearing Arms about the dangers of the mob going after ideological opponents. At the time, left-leaning mobs were hounding any Republican they could find out and about, even if they were just trying to eat a meal. I was actually looking for something else I was sure I wrote here and stumbled on it, but it sort of felt important to look at it a bit in light of what we're currently seeing all around us.

At the time, I feared escalation. Sooner or later, I worried the mob mentality would kick in and someone would go too far and then things would get really ugly.

...snip...

My fears last time were misplaced, thankfully. This time, I don't know that we'll be as fortunate. The thing is, we all tend to hope for the best, prepare for the worst, so I highly recommend that you get in a little extra range time, carry anywhere and everywhere you can, and be ready if the next target of this kind of stuff--or worse--is you and yours.

If you haven't been to the range lately, and I am one who doesn't go as often as I should, recommend you all go and sharpen your skills. Also clean and do any maintenance on your weapons. Finally, keep your weapons close by at all times.

A Word About Bible Translations

 Something that I wanted to discuss yesterday, and it slipped my mind is Bible translations.  Now, I don't know either Greek or Hebrew, but these are the original languages of the Bible.  Latin is not, and as we all said in Latin class, "Latin is a dead language, dead as it can be.  It killed off all the Romans, and now it's killing me."  My point is that I am forced as probably most of you, to rely on my pastor who knows these languages.

So, the King James Version (KJV) is a fairly good translation.  Considering the date it was translated, and the limited sourcing of original materials, one can only think that the Holy Spirit was guiding the translators.  It gets most of the main points correct.  Its language is archaic and often hard to read, especially for our young people, who aren't exposed to Beowulf, Canterbury Tales, or Shakespeare.  In the early 90s, I was convinced to purchase a New International Version translation in the Oxford Study Bible, which included the Apocrypha.  This was all the rage in the early at the time.  However, this translation is heavily influenced by Calvinist theology, and one finds too many places where one has to mark through and put a better translation above the marked language. The English Standard Version, which claims to be a modern update of the original KJV misses the mark in that it translates the "seed" of Adam as "offspring."  This is an attempt to erase Christianity.

There are other translations and paraphrases of Holy Scripture.  Some are better than others.  But I have settled on the New King James Version, which preserves the all-important "seed" of Adam, while giving us a more readable Bible that maintains the majesty of the original KJV.    

The Bible in School

 Dr. Steven Cutchins has an intriguing article over at the American Thinker today entitled The Bible in Schools? Research Says It Matters. Why is it so intriguing? Well, I have some personal experience to share, but first I want to tell you what the research says.

Research from the Center for Bible Engagement’s Power of 4 study, which examined over 400,000 people, found that casual Bible reading doesn’t change lives. But engaging with Scripture four times a week or more does.

Those who did saw significant improvements in mental health, decision-making, and moral behavior -- including lower levels of loneliness, anger, substance abuse, and pornography use.

While the study analyzed individuals of all ages, its findings suggest that younger people -- who are increasingly grappling with depression, anxiety, and identity confusion -- would likely experience similar benefits.

The research found that individuals who engage with the Bible regularly experience 30% less loneliness, 32% fewer anger issues, and a 60% decrease in feelings of spiritual emptiness. Additionally, pornography use declined by 62%, substance abuse by 57%, and gambling by 74%, while participation in faith-sharing increased by 228%.

If a secular program yielded these results, every school in America would adopt it. However, since it’s the Bible, they are compelled to ignore its benefits.

I have to confess that 10 years ago I would have found these results astounding. Today, I say "But of course." When I escaped from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and joined the Missouri Synod, my new pastor suggested I start reading the Bible every day, following a program put out by the Missouri Synod. He had been following it for 37 years. I took it to heart but found I could only follow it for perhaps 4-6 months at a time. Finally, I decided made a commitment to read the entire Bible in a year following the prescribed readings each day. I will say that it has been eye opening. Each time I read a chapter, or a verse, I find new meanings. Sometimes I read a book and wonder what it has to do with me, only on a later reading it suddenly becomes clear that it was written just for me.

Daily Bible readings generally take between a half hour and 45 minutes. You read a Psalm a day (except for Psalm 119) Then you read a chapter or two or three depending. By the end of the year, you have read the entire Bible, and read the Psalms twice. For those who have only read the New Testament, you may think that God changed his mind about mankind. Nothing could be further from the truth. God appears in the Old Testament as all three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And because you read it in bite sized chunks, you form a habit; you begin to look forward to it.

I read the Bible for His truths; for religious and theological reasons. It is a great story with one central character, namely God. But it is also literature with a number of genres. It is history (and archeologists keep uncovering things that prove the Bible true), poetry, prophesy, Gospels, epistles or letters, and apocolypse. Today, our laws are ultimately grounded in God's laws presented in the 10 Commandments. But it wasn't always so. For much of human history, human life was dirty, brutal and short. And in many places where Christianity has been rejected, it still is. It was God who said that we shouldn't murder each other, that we shouldn't kill our children, that we shouldn't steal our neighbor's stuff and so on. For the first time he demanded that the Israelites exercise the same justice on strangers as they did for themselves. They must not discriminate on a someone because he was poor. This was revolutionary stuff in its day. It is only because of the spread of Christianity that we do not see it as revolutionary today.

One can teach the Bible in schools as history, as poetry, as the shaper of our culture, without teaching Christianity. Students are free to believe what they and their parents want to believe. But it is important as citizens of the United States, and the state and community in which they live to understand our place in history.

Gun Control Doesn't Work As Advertised

 How many ways can we point out that gun control doesn't work as advertised

Tom Knighton has a post at Bearing Arms entitled British Teen Getting Gun Shows Gaping Hole in Strict Gun Control System. We can all admit that (formerly) Great Britain has one of the most restrictive gun control systems in the world. And yet, a teenager managed to get around all those laws to obtain a shotgun and kill his family members. He also planned to kill his classmates at school. You can read the quote from the Tottenham and Wood Green Independent for yourself.

This is always the case though. The law-abiding people who want a gun can buy a gun, and indeed likely already have. The law abiding who want a carry permit likely again, already have one. Meanwhile, criminals do not bother to obtain a permit; but they carry anyway pretty much anywhere.  You may be disarmed but the criminal never is.

Right now, the North Carolina legislature is on track to approve a version of Constitutional carry in the state. The governor is sure to veto the bill, and the Republican majority no longer has a veto proof majority. While Paul Valone, founder and head of Grass Roots North Carolina is confident enough legislators will override the governor's veto, I have my doubts. They should have done it last year when they had a veto proof majority.

In any case, I was listening to the Democrats' objections, and it seemed to center around the notion that everybody would be carrying (and of course there would be blood in the streets.) But that did not happen in the other 29 states that have passed Constitutional carry. Indeed, there have been no problems that would not have happened anyway because...see two paragraphs above. But one wonders that supposedly smart lawyers seem to think that something written in a book with far too many laws as it is, will somehow prevent someone who isn't supposed to have a gun from acquiring one. But out here in realville it doesn't work that way.

One unfortunate impact of this, beyond the loss of innocent life, is the fact that now the rules will get tightened in England yet again, all while a teenager was able to navigate the system that's already one of the toughest in the world and would likely get past any additional rules, too.

I'm sorry, but this is really just evidence that no matter what you do, some enterprising soul will figure out a way around the system. This time, it was with something as simple as a fake ID. I'm pretty sure that happens here in the United States more often than we'd like to think, too.

An Armed Society Is a Polite Society

 At Ammoland Alan Gottlieb has an article pointing out the incredible double standard in the media of always refering to any gun use as "gun violence" but reverting to acknowledging that it is the criminal who commits violence with a knife. You can read the article Media's Shocking Double Standard, Where Are Calls to End 'Knife Violence'

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is pointing to media hypocrisy in its reporting of at least ten attacks involving knives or hatchets, most of them fatal, yet there was not a single mention of “knife violence,” indicating an appalling double-standard in how violent crime involving firearms is routinely portrayed, whether by broadcast or print media.

“We checked ten different reports regarding fatal and non-fatal knife attacks, all over the country,” noted CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “and not a single report included the term ‘knife violence’ anywhere in the text. Yet pick up any newspaper, read any online report involving the criminal use of a firearm, and by the time you’re finished, you will have seen at least one reference to ‘gun violence.’

I can only conclude the media has a deplorable double-standard when it comes to reporting homicides involving guns, yet the victims are just as injured or dead. “Underscoring this nonsense,” he said, “is the way the media is reporting the Department of Health and Human Services’ removal of a former surgeon general’s warning that ‘gun violence’ is a public health hazard. Gun ownership is not a communicable disease. Putting that warning on the HHS website was just one more effort by the Biden administration to demonize firearms and the people who own them.

The fact that the media has universally adopted the gun-grabbers' term for gun use as "gun violence" betrays a general desire of the Left to disarm the American public. They pretend that it is the guns that jump out of peoples' holsters and start shooting innocent victims. But when it comes to knives, or indeed literally any other weapon, suddenly it is the person wielding the weapon. The fact is that there is no such thing as "gun violence." There is just violence, committed by people. And there is generally no solution for violence, though by executing swift justice you may keep it down to a dull roar. Also you can keep it to a minimum by remembering that an armed society is a polite society.

Only Buy from the Outside of the Grocery Store

 Monica Showalter, at the American Thinker thinks she has happened upon the reason for our obesity epidemic in an article entitled So where'd America's obesity epidemic come from? Chef Andrew Gruel has a theory... Ms. Showalter goes on to expound on the Gruel theory that we don't teach home economics in the schools anymore. Which is true. I met my wife while working for the Navy department. We both worked for and retired from the civil service. She always said that what we needed was a wife. What she meant was that we didn't have time left to do the job that a wife formally performed of seeing to the home care and functioning. We could afford to eat out more often. Thus, we ate both more food, and richer food than we might normally have eaten. But we also ate many more carbohydrate laden foods than we would otherwise have eaten as well.

While I was in treatment for cancer, I was fed a diet that included more calories than I needed and was very high in carbohydrates. I put on easily 10 to 15 pounds while in the hospital for three weeks. I have since shed most of that excess weight by eating a carnivore diet, or as Dr. Ken Berry calls it, the Proper Human Diet. Dr. Berry along with others who have revived this style of eating have a lot of evidence that this is in fact the way humans ate for thousands of years before the agricultural revolution. Think about it; have you ever walked out in the woods and found food there for the picking? Most things, like berries, have relatively short seasons, and do not bear fruit over the long winters.

Now, a lot of claims have been made for the carnivore lifestyle. One is that it starves cancer. I will not make that claim. I will, however, say that if a person goes on it, he will, with some rare exceptions, lose weight, feel more energetic, and clear up a number of annoyances and disabilities caused by autoimmune diseases. Many skin diseases can be reversed without medication. Many cases of osteoarthritis can be reversed. Fatty liver can be cured. Diabetes in many cases can be reversed, though you can't cure it. I have personal experience with these claims that I make. Your mileage may vary, as they say.

Do you have to eat carnivore always? Well, no. Sometimes you can have a sweet potato as a treat. Or you can eat broccoli and asparagus on occasions. Everyone is different. Some people can eat heavy cream and cheeses and still lose weight. I find I cannot do that, though I keep some cream around for various reasons such as making an omelet.

Chef Andrew Gruel is onto something.  We need to teach old fashioned home economics if for no other reason that if you can't do it yourself, how are you going to know if the people you hire are doing it correctly?  The other half of that though is that we need to eat more meat and healthy vegetables, less grains and high carbohydrate foods like potatoes.  And these need to be prepared at home where you can control the ingredients.  A good rule of thumb is to only buy from the outside walls of the grocery stores and avoid the middle.

The Bird Flu Scamdemic

 Janet Levy has an important article today on the current effort to scare the public with "bird flu."  Her article can be found at Covid Redux: The Bird Flu Scare. As she notes, this has the same feel as the Covid scamdemic had. Second, it should be noted that the bird flu has apparently not affected either Mexico or Canada. What this tells me is that we are being scammed again. Rather than culling millions of birds, the government should let the flu run through the flocks to achieve herd immunity. Having naturally immune birds is far superior to the need to vaccinate the birds. In any case, please read Levy's article and consider that the expensive eggs are the result of government actions.

Be Careful Of What You Wish

 Mike McDaniel has a post today at the American Thinker entitled Dem violence and manhood. In it, he highlights a twitter post from Kurt Schlichter that asks if the Democrats really want violence and intimidation to be the new rule, because there will only be one rule. If one reads the Old Testament, one will notice that God, while long suffering, eventually lost patience with people who did not love him, and ordered the Israelites, a normally peaceful people, to kill every last one of them, men, women and children, their livestock, and burn all their possession. As Kurt Schlichter implies, they may not like the new rules.

McDaniel then points to a case of Vice President J. D. Vance walking with his 3 year old daughter when "protesters" began shouting and harassing him:

Certainly, Vance had Secret Service protection, so his daughter and he weren’t in obvious physical danger, and Vance, taking advantage of that relative safety, treated the “protestors” with the civility they denied him. But he’s absolutely right: they were s**t people. Did their parents not teach them one doesn’t terrorize little children? Were they raised by wolves, or the modern equivalent, terrorists? Or were they sufficiently intelligent to realize they were protected by the Secret Service and Vance’s position? Did they understand many a Normal American father would have done them real violence for threatening his daughter, and no jury, perhaps not even in a blue state, would have convicted him?

...snip...

While Normal Americans understand that violence unleashed on a societal scale can’t be easily put back in the bottle, D/s/c don’t. Caught up in the adrenaline rush of “direct action,” they’re learning in the second Trump Administration there might be consequences. They might even be expelled from the universities whose classes they don’t bother to attend, so busy are they building a better world through trespassing, arson, destruction of property and intimidation of innocents.

They, and the D/s/c politicians who think they control them, believe political violence is like an amplifier potentiometer. It can be dialed up to 10, down to 6 and back to 0 at will and with no consequences. Normal Americans, people who simply want to be left alone to raise their families and go about their daily business—yes, they actually go to work and produce, or they’re fired—keep that potential for violence tightly under control. For them, there are no potentiometers. They’re at zero or “kill them all”--a second civil war.

The danger D/s/c “protestors” represent is just that real. With the current reemergence of the rule of law, the danger of civil war may be reduced, but those funding and inciting those “protests” never cease wanting one.

How can Democrats/socialists/communists (D/s/cs) be so passionate about killing infants in the womb? Or assasinating Elon Musk? For that matter, how can they be so passionate about supporting Hamas when it is they who started the latest war with Israel? It seems they are on the wrong side of everything, and they are very passionate about it. But they should be reading the Old Testament and asking themselves when God will finally have enough of them. Be careful what for what you wish.

Civilians Stop More Active Shooters that Law Enforcement

 Olivia Murray has a post at the American Thinker today entitled New report: civilians stop more active shooters than law enforcement. The report comes from John Lott's Crime Prevention Research Center. For sure, Lott's methods are strictly utilitarian, but when principle is supported by practical evidence, it shows the Second Amendment is clearly correct.

I say this in all seriousness, God bless the work of the CPRC because compiled and organized data is invaluable in the gun debate, but of course armed Americans physically present for what’s fixing to be a massacre do a better job of preserving innocent life than government hires not near the coming carnage. As the saying goes, “When seconds count, police are minutes away.”

...snip...

The Center also revealed that of the 180 cases its researchers looked into, a bystander was hit in only one instance (.56%) of the time, interference with police happened zero times, armed civilians suffered injuries themselves 24.4% of the time, and “the shooting they prevented [was] likely to be a mass public shooting” in a whopping 32% of the case examples.

It’s not unknown why the Founders included the Second Amendment—unless you’re a leftist idiot—and it wasn’t because they just wanted to guarantee a person’s right to to don waders and go duckhunting, but once again, with the data in, the Second Amendment proves itself to be the best protection against undeserved violence. Not only the violence that the state would surely inflict upon us if we were unarmed (all states do), but against violence from those who should be our very neighbor.

Indeed

A Primer on Respect for Human Life

 I mentioned in the last post that I am currently reading John Zmirak's book No Second Amendment, No First: Guns and Government. The book presents the Bill of Rights, and in particular the Second Amendment, as grounded in the Christian faith in the God who has created mankind in His image. There is much that then flows from that simple statement.

Yesterday, at the American Thinker Selwyn Duke had an intensely personal piece entitled Without God, There Is No TRUE Respect for Human Life which pursues what a belief in God, the Creator and His creation of us in His image implies. For there can be no true respect for human life without this belief. When someone proposes to reduce the population of the world by some amount, you quickly see that this person has no respect for human life.

Duke writes of his youth so that you can understand the path followed to get where he is today. I can sympathize because, while I was trained in the church, I abandoned those beliefs, believing them to be mere superstitions. It was only late in life that I came to realize that the world described in the Bible is real down to the tiniest detail. People ask how God can condemn people to hell. But God doesn't, we our selves condemn ourselves to hell by not following His instructions for coming to Him. But some might say, wouldn't it be better to simply destroy a person rather than having them eternally tormented? Perhaps, but God has infinitely more respect for us than we do for ourselves, so he cannot simply destroy us. It is why he cannot destroy the Devil, though it might eliminate a lot of problems. He has respect for the Devil, who has no respect for Him.

Since my title is bound to inspire criticism that I’m a “God botherer,” I’ll preface what follows by stating that I wasn’t always the halo-adorned, floating-in-the-ether desert mystic (without the sand or heat) you behold today. I wasn’t raised with faith, and as a 12-year-old was an agnostic who’d say, “I’d never believe or disbelieve in anything there’s no proof of.” Later on I’d be rather dismissive of theists, actually, viewing them as God botherers myself, though we didn’t have that term or as many Richard Dawkins-like secularist warriors back then. I suppose we were, relatively speaking, handicapped in our exercise of supercilious anti-theism.

But that has changed — and I’ve changed. I long ago could’ve moved on to supercilious pro-theism; only, my faith instructs that Pride is the father of all sin, Humility is a virtue and warns that “he who exalts himself will be humbled.” The realization I’ll expound upon today further explains why I’ve changed, and I mention my spiritual evolution not because I’m narcissistic (though that isn’t to say I’m not!) but because maybe, just perhaps, a few non-believers will consider what follows more seriously knowing it doesn’t come from someone “raised to think that way.”

...snip...

That we are mere things under the atheistic world view is an indisputable corollary of it that has been recognized by atheists themselves. I remember a fellow online who said, perhaps lamentably, that we humans are just robots, “really cool robots.” A botanist named Lawrence Trevanion, seeming more clinical about the matter, has defined people as “objects that perceive” (thankfully, he’s responsible for the health of plants, not people. Though were I a fern, I still think I’d rather be in the care of a “God botherer” gushing with deific sentimentality). But the implications of this belief are serious.

It’s often stressed in America that “our rights come from God,” as our Founders insisted, because we know that what God has bestowed only He can rightly revoke. The logic is airtight. People ultimately yield to greater power, authority and wisdom and, unless profoundly devilish, defer completely to the Ultimate Power (upon recognizing it). How compelling it is, the belief that the Creator of the Universe and Inerrant Author of All has decreed something so. And this, by the way, involves not a matter of faith but fact: human psychology. Generally speaking, it’s how people operate, like it or not.

Is it any different with human life? People will, as a rule, respect it when considering man a divinely created being, infused with a soul and deemed sacred by God. If he’s just an organic robot, however, all bets are off.

It is important to realize that all sorts of bad things flow out of the atheistic belief that man is an organic robot: genocide, eugenics, attempts to change man's nature all flow out of this basic disrespect.  Another thing that flows out of an atheistic worldview is psychopathy.  For that is how a psychopath views other people, as objects.  But as Duke points out, most people who embrace atheism do not live as psychopaths because they have not fully examined what that position means.

To reassure my non-believer friends, and remember I once was one of you, yes, I know the vast majority of you are not psychopaths. As I’ve illustrated, however, this is because you don’t truly live your atheism and all its implications. And even insofar as a few of you might have thought matters through and concluded we’re just “really cool robots,” you (thankfully) don’t feel this on an emotional level. You don’t live down to your beliefs.

So, then, what of my article’s title? After all, some who don’t recognize God then do in practice have respect for human life. The answer lies in a twist on a George Washington saying about morality. To wit: “Let us with caution indulge the supposition that national morality [respect] for life can be maintained without religion.” (Of course, respect for life is part of morality.) As is said in commercials, “Individual results may vary.” But the national (collective) picture is clear: The more we mainstream godlessness, the more it and its corollaries will permeate not just minds but hearts. This is why a very sober atheist, whose thoughts I read decades ago, expressed concern over his creed’s wider embrace. He grasped its implications.

Watching was is happening in Europe and in England, I fear for what it portends if we, as a nation, do not turn back to God. For He will, out of love, let us go our own way if we insist. But what a miserable place we will bequeath to our children without Him at its center.

Democratic Virtue Signaling

A lot of politicians, and particularly Democrat politicians seem to have friends and family who are...let's say...prone to cross the lines between legal and illegal. That is the only explanation for why they are so protective of the criminal class. Now, California is a one-party state. Therefore, it makes sense that a one party, Democrat run state would want to protect home invaders against law abiding homeowners. Mike McDaniel has the story at the American Thinker today entitled California tries to tear down the Castle Doctrine.

McDaniel spends a couple of paragraphs reviewing the history of the concealed carry movement, and the Constitutional carry movements along with the reinforcing of the law of self-defense and Castle Doctrine. Castle Doctrine in particular doesn't require you to run from your domicile before using force to defend yourself and those in your care. With that background established, McDaniel writes:

Such laws also commonly feature the presumption that someone (un)lawfully entering a home isn’t there for good and lawful purposes, and whatever force is necessary may be used against them. They also commonly immunize citizens who defend themselves and their families from prosecution and civil liability. This is a good thing as the relatives of dead violent criminals often suddenly discover the departed were were irreplaceable assets to humanity and minutes from receiving a declaration of canonization from the Vatican.

Castle Doctrine laws arguably overlap Stand Your Ground Laws, which 27 states enjoy. They’re not residence specific and feature essentially the same benefits as Castle Doctrine laws. So long as one is legally present, there is no requirement to run away before using whatever force is necessary against criminal attack. Both laws are common sense, sane empowerments of the law-abiding and innocent against violent criminals.

Despite what anti-liberty/gun/racist cracktivists whine, neither law allows anyone to bypass laws governing lawful self-defense. They’re entirely race neutral.

So, naturally, the California legislature wants to eliminate the Castle Doctrine to empower criminals to invade more homes. This is shocking, and goes against not just our founding principles, but against God. I am reading John Zmirak's book No Second Amendment, No First: Guns and Government, and I am reminded of those principles. The first is that everyone, all mankind, is created in the image of God. That is who we are and it is also our purpose being here: to reflect His image. God, and Jesus is God in the flesh, is not a pacifist. While he commands that we do not murder our fellow images of God, he also demands that we defend ourselves, our families, and our neighbors.

Another principle, not explicitly stated, but it can be derived from reasoning about the stories in the Bible is that no man (or woman, or child) is "good." Jesus tells us that only God is good. All men are inclined to do evil, and that includes all men (and women) in government. It is no surprise then that the state run by the Democrats, who have abandoned God, the Bible, and the founding principles, want to now make self-defense a nullity.  It is a piece with the belief, in spite of all of history, that men are basically good.

Who Stole the Constitution?

 J. B. Shurk has an article today at the American Thinker that tells us just how far away from the founders Constitution we have wandered, and how far we must go to get some semblance of it back. The article is entitled Master Thieves Stole the Constitution, and in fact that is exactly correct. Some of them thought they were doing what was in our best interests, but on balance they were not. Others though knew precisely what they were doing, and why. We, the citizens who were being duped too often where unaware of just exactly what the thieves had wrought.

Everyone has a favorite adventure novel or movie in which a daring thief swaps something of immense value with something terribly fake. A forged painting hangs in lieu of the original on a museum wall. A bag of sand takes the place of a bag of jewels inside a pressure-sensitive safe. Lead bars are substituted for gold bullion in Fort Knox.

The American people are the victims of a similar kind of heist. Over the last century, master thieves have stolen their freedoms, representative government, and constitutional protections. Cheap knockoffs have replaced priceless American treasures.

The U.S. Constitution makes no mention of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Environmental Protection Agency, or the Internal Revenue Service. It says nothing at all about the hundreds of other administrative agencies and regulatory bodies that compose the federal bureaucracy. On the contrary, the Constitution is a blueprint for a small government with limited powers. Those powers are explicitly enumerated, while all other powers are explicitly reserved for the American people and the individual states.

I remember talking to someone who was planning to vote for a certain Democrat because he had made a statement about education, and she was very concerned about education having young children. I explained that education was a state and local issue and was nowhere in the Constitution. In fact, the Constitution had listed a very limited number of powers, among which education was not one. No matter.

One of the things the Department of Education does is grant money, which was taken from the taxpayers in the first place, back to the states. But of course, the grants have strings attached. You may wonder why schools now have so many adminstrators, couselors, and other non-teaching adults on the payroll. Well, blame it on the DOE. The grants government gives effectively give it control. Why would you give control of your schools and what they teach to some bureaucrat in D.C? This was supposed to be one of the things left to the states and the people.

The Environmental Protection Agency knows what’s best for your land. The Department of Education knows what’s best for your children. The Department of Health and Human Services knows what’s best for your body. Should you disagree with their “experts,” the Department of Homeland Security is eager to censor your social media messages as “disinformation.” Should you decide to defend your family and property from government intrusion, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives is ready to commandeer both. The Transportation Security Administration keeps a naughty list of citizens whose luggage must always be tossed. The Federal Bureau of Investigation loves to organize pre-dawn raids of citizens who too publicly oppose government overreach. Unelected government bureaucrats advise citizens which parts of the Bill of Rights remain in effect.

However else this system of government is described, it cannot accurately be called “representative,” “constitutional,” or “democratic.” It is not of the people, by the people, or for the people. It is of, by, and for the bureaucrats. It is a system that operates in secrecy and justifies its secrecy as the prerogative of “experts.” It looks nothing like the U.S. Constitution. It is a cheap and unimpressive forgery.

Please read all of Shurk's article.  Trump appears to be taking a wrecking ball to the deep state, but remember that we may only have a few years to undo what others have wrought.