Happy Easter

Jerry Newcombe has an article over at Townhall.com entitled On the Resurrection...Just the Facts, Ma'am making the case, in a short article, for the fact of Jesus' death and resurrection. It is sort of a very short version Lee Strobel's book A Case for Christ, which I recommend highly. Living in American society today, one can even believe that the facts, as outlined in Newcombe's article are true, and not "get" why these facts are of earth shattering importance. If the average person today was to put the things he is most concerned about in order, Jesus death and resurrection would not even make the list. Yet, it is the most important thing ever done, and it was done by God, because man could not do it for himself.  Indeed, God so wanted us to know the truth, that he spent thousands of years telling us that the Christ was coming, and after He had done his work, wanted us to know what He had done and why.  For a good book telling that story, I suggest The Emmaus Code by David Limbaugh.

Easter, celebrating the resurrection of the Christ is the most important holiday in the Christian calendar.  Everything leading up to that moment was important for God to be able to reconcile a sinful world to Himself.  It was only by the sacrifice of a perfect man, the spilling of his blood, that man's sins could be forgiven.  And only God Himself could serve as the "perfect man."  So, God determined to enter His creation, become flesh and blood, live a perfect life, be executed, only to rise again, triumphant.

Jesus died on that cross to save the world from itself.  Today we celebrate the living God.  Christ Died, Christ is risen.  He is risen indeed!

NC Legislature does the right thing

After reading this article, I was reminded of the gay activist (I don't know his name) I heard protesting the passage in the North Carolina legislature of a bill that would take away the ability of cities like Charlotte to pass ordinances that make it legal for so called transgender men to enter and use the women's bathrooms in public places like restaurants. He said something to the effect that the "transgendered were our friends and neighbors, and deserved equal rights." Of course, anyone looking at this definition of equal rights can see that they have turned the term into its very opposite. What they have now is equal. Men go to the Men's bathroom, women go to the Womens's bathroom. What they want are special rights, rights the rest of us do not have, because they are special, and different, and...well just special.  They also want to destroy the culture,  Because of rage over their own alienation for society, they want to burn the entire edifice down.

Let me tell you, pal, the entire world is filled with people who have a fundamentally spiritual illness, that manifests itself in all sorts of perverse ways.  Your particular way of manifesting that sickness is no different in kind from mine, or, indeed anyone's.  It is why He came into the world and took upon Himself the role of the sacrificial Lamb, that He might reconcile man to Himself.  Too many who need Him desperately despise Him.  I will pray for you, that you come to know Him, and repent.

Anyone with half a brain can see where this was going, and it wasn't good.  Pedophiles and rapists would have hung out in the women's room waiting for their prey.  Since it was legal to do so, no body could stop them.  No mother in her right mind would have allowed their girls to go to the women's room alone..  Indeed, most women would lose the convenience of women's rest rooms because of fears of exactly the things I mentioned.  The legislature has done right by the people of North Carolina, The City Council of Charlotte should be ashamed of themselves.  

When the Last American Leaves, Turn out the Lights and Shut the Door. Thankyou.

As if Selwyn Duke was reading my post yesterday (he wasn't, by the way) he offers up a bit of horror here at the American Thinker entitled Death of America: Why the Presidential Election Isn't as Important as People Think. Duke:

Do you really want to save America? Okay, then completely transform the media, academia and entertainment so they’re not brainwashing citizens 24/7 with anti-American, anti-Christian, multiculturalist, socialist, feminist and a multitude of other lies. End legal immigration, which, via the importation of massive numbers of Third Worlders, is changing our country into a socialistic non-Western culture. Even more significantly, convince the 70-plus percent of Americans who are moral relativists to believe in Truth; these are people who, as the Barna Group research company put it, believe that what we call “truth is always relative to the person and their situation” and whose most common basis for moral decision-making is “doing whatever feels right….”

Why does this matter? Well, if we saw a child who didn’t obey rules and simply made up his own “rules” — changing them as was convenient — would we say that he was governed by anything worthy of being called “rules” (principles)? Or would we conclude that the word had simply become a euphemism for flights of fancy and feelings-based decisions? Alright now, is it any different when an adult does it? Furthermore:

Is it any different when large groups of adults do it — even country-size groups?

This gets at the heart of the effect of the Lefts long march through the institutions; that they now dictate what most people "think" or more importantly, feel. Our only hope, and it will take generations to achieve, is a long march back through them to take them back. It will be more costly for us, though. Like an army taking back a position once held, but turned over without a fight, the Left knows the value of these institutions, and they will not let go so freely. But, Duke is not so sanguine about the prospects, and frankly, history shows him to very probably be right. Duke concludes:

We can echo Donald Trump echoing Ronald Reagan and say “Make America great again!” But as an apocryphal quotation oft repeated by Reagan goes, “America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”

And we can bellow “Freedom!” Braveheart-style. But as British philosopher Edmund Burke noted, “It is written in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."

Intemperate minds abound. Passions we’ve got. Fetters we’re getting. Of course, I’ll choose to, if possible, add a few more pages to the American republic’s story. But I know that, even now, her last chapter is being written..

As always, Selwyn Duke writes well, but don't read it unless you are prepared to face the truth. My eyes watered up.

Conservatism is Dead

At least for now, conservatism, meaning fealty to the Constitution of the United States, as written... you know,  the black markings on the page, not the white spaces in between...is a dead letter. We have finally gotten a candidate, in the form of Ted Cruz, who is wicked smart, principled, and happy to stand and fight, and that candidate is rapidly losing ground in the race. Instead, Republican voters seem to be flocking to Trump, a candidate who will say anything he thinks voters want to hear. But, as always, another says it all better than I can. Ben Shapiro, formerly of Breitbart News, has an article today over at Townhall.com entitled What Trump Nomination Means for Conservatives. Shapiro writes:

For years, conservatives have told themselves the pretty bedtime story that they represent a silent majority in America -- that most Americans want smaller government, individual rights and personal responsibility. We've suggested that if only we nominated precisely the right guy who says the right words -- some illegally grown Ronald Reagan clone, perhaps -- we'd win.

Donald Trump's impending nomination puts all of that to bed.

There can be no doubt: The Republican Party has successful(ly) killed the legacy of Ronald Reagan. By consistently moving to the left in every presidential election, by granting the left its general premise that government is generally a tool for good rather than a risky potential instrument of tyranny and by teaching Americans that the problem isn't government itself, but who runs it, Republicans have ensured that the vast majority of Americans no longer hold to conservative principles.

Glenn Beck spent a year assuring us that "We Surround Them," based on polls that showed huge number of self identified conservative voters. In retrospect, what we didn't do in these polls is ask them what it means, in their minds, to be "conservative." We didn't drill down and find out whether they believed the words written in the Constitution were the best way to govern a nation with so many individuals holding divergent views. I have heard people tell me that they are pretty conservative, and then start spouting the most far left talking points one could imagine. Jeb(!) Bush and a number of other Republican Governors championed the Common Core, for crying out loud. The truth is that Leftist often live conservatively because if they lived as they preached, the consequences would be disastrous. As an example, when Joe Biden was trying to argue that Republicans wanting to pay less taxes was Un-American, the address for sending more tax money to the Treasury was advertised. Anyone who felt that the IRS didn't take a big enough bite could send whatever they wanted into the Treasury. Nobody did.

The meaning of conservatism as a political philosophy has more a specific meaning, and we conservatives have failed miserably to convince the average voter that it is the only way we can survive as a nation.  Conservative means we must be "conserving" something, and not just standing athwart history while the train runs over us.

So, let's look at the facts. Today, at low ebb, Trump garners approximately 4 in 10 Republican voters. Let's assume that at least half of those Americans aren't conservative -- a fair guess, given that many have admitted bias in polls in favor of government interventionism in the economy, a sneaking love for government entitlement programs and a strong position against immigration -- not for safety reasons, but to prevent economic competition. Meanwhile, more than 4 in 10 Americans support Democrats outright.

This means that at least 6 in 10 Americans support a big government vision of the world.

Which means conservatives have failed.

I have long argued that conservatives should take a page out of the Leftist handbook, and begin our own "march through the institutions." We need to take back the education establishment, the legal profession, the media, and the cultural establishment. Conservatives do not have to be a bunch of frowning Carrie Nation types harshing everyone's mellow, and worrying that someone, somewhere, might be having a good time, as we are often parodied. That is not what conservatism is about, and the public scolds will get as many tomatoes thrown at them for my direction as from the Leftists. And while conservatives believe in the rights of the individual over the rights of the collective, we hardly advocate narcissistic endeavors that hurt or run roughshod over others.  Mainly, we want the Federal Government to stay within the bounds set by the Constitution, which means a much smaller, much cheaper to operate, less active in interfering in our daily lives government.  Today the Federal Government sucks the oxygen out of every room it enters.  There is no room left for people to try different things, to experiment, and innovate.

Trump claims to want "Make America Great Again."  What made America great was the dynamism of its people.  Each individual had the opportunity to discover his or her own potential, and each individual made his or her place in society on his own merits.  Today we are smothered in myriad Federal Regulations so numerous and all encompassing that it is beyond the power of anyone to know.  Trump can't make American great, nor Hillary or Bernie, or for that matter Cruz.  But only Cruz seems to recognize it, and is humble enough to want to stay within the Constitutional bonds.

A Take on Global Warming from a Toxicologist

Jack Hellner has a blog post at the American Thinker entitled A Few Simple Question for Climate Fanatics that asks the same questions I was asking years ago when I first became involved with it. My employer asked me to "keep an eye on it," and soon enough I was attending conferences and talking to "experts" in the field. This was the at the time of the run up to signing Kyoto Protocol by Al Gore (inventor of the interwebs.)  I asked exactly these kinds of questions, not being an expert myself, and wanting my employer to have the best knowledge available to him. The answers I got could be all boiled down to "I don't know, but I am sure we are causing global warming now." The natural follow up question of course is, "If you don't understand these past climate conditions, how can you be so sure?" The answers I got back followed a circular reasoning pattern that struck me as participating in a religious experience more than a scientific inquiry.

Since that time, I have followed global warming, read about the previous scare, global cooling, and when the predicted warming didn't materialize, the strategic change to "climate change."  I have read much that Fred Singer, Richard Lindzen, Willie Soon, and others, who have made a convincing, scientific case that the entire global warning/global cooling/ climate change enterprise can best be described as an elaborate hoax perpetrated on a scientifically ignorant population by people hoping to derive money from fleecing that population.  Big money as it turns out.  Literally trillions of dollars.

Today I discovered Frank Schnell.  Oh, he hasn't been missing: I just never ran across his work before.  Frank is a retired Toxicologist from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a part of the CDC. So, writing about Climate Science is a bit out of his comfort zone, as it was out of mine.  But Schnell seems to have the same attitude of following the evidence, and where it leads must lie the truth.  Frank has written a very lucid article for the layman entitled The Greenhouse Effect Fallacy. After going through an extensive discussion of just how a greenhouse gas works, he says this:

The important point here is that the interception and re-emission of ground-emitted IR by “greenhouse” gases does not add any energy to the initial packet of incoming solar radiation; it merely slows the dissipation of that packet of energy. The IR that is returned to the Earth’s surface does not represent a new source of energy in addition to the original packet of incident solar radiation. It is just a continually diminishing fraction of that original solar radiation. Thus, the “Greenhouse effect” does not result in the accumulation of energy beyond what the sun supplies. Rather, it merely slows the rate at which that energy is inexorably lost to outer space.

For those curious, the First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created or destroyed, only changed in form. Since the only energy source the Earth receives is delivered by the Sun, the Earth fits pretty accurately the conditions needed to satisfy the First Law of Thermodynamics.  More over, water vapor in the atmosphere makes up, by far, the great majority of the greenhouse gas.  Carbon Dioxide only accounts for 400 parts per million, or around 0.04 percent.  Have you ever noticed that on a muggy day, the temperature doesn't seem to go down much after sunset?  On the other hand, the temperature drops pretty quickly when the humidity is low.  The difference is the latent heat captured by the water vapor, which is released slowly to the atmosphere and re-radiated out into space.  But, water vapor also has the effect of forming clouds, that re-radiate a significant fraction of the solar heat load before it ever gets to earth.  Interestingly enough, "space" is a vast heat sink with a temperature near absolute zero.  So, the more IR our atmosphere absorbs, the faster it radiates it into space.  Thus, the idea of a runaway greenhouse effect is not possible.

The result is a moderation of both daytime and nighttime temperatures, not a multiplying of the warming effect of the sun. In fact, the oft promoted specter of “tipping points” and “runaway greenhouse effects” represent nothing less than violations of the First Law of Thermodynamics.

Schnell includes a chart going back to the Cambrian epoch, that shows the estimated average temperatures versus the average levels of carbon dioxide. As you can see from the chart, there is no correlation between temperature and carbon dioxide, and concludes with:

Therefore, while the scientifically bankrupt concepts of “Tipping Points” and a man-made, “runaway greenhouse effect” have obvious political applications, the mere existence of the Earth’s oceans make it an impossible, and obscene fantasy.

Scientists specialize because by specializing, they can probe more deeply into an area of study and thus be more useful to mankind. But specialization has a built in weakness. By studying one very narrow area, you are inclined to forget, or ignore other areas that may prove you wrong. Its the idea of not seeing the forest for the trees. It sometimes helps to have people from other disciplines picking apart your work just to make sure you haven't overlooked something obvious, like the First Law of Thermodynamics. Of course, that applies to actual scientists looking for actual truths. When big money, and politics enter the picture, the search for truth becomes collateral damage.

If you want to be afraid, be my guest...but don't bleat to me about it.

Update:  The Jerusalem Post has an article expressing the same sentiments on banning guns as I have in this post.  Note the picture of the machine.  This type of machine, for turning metal, is available in any machine shop in America.  The article is here.

So, down in Florida, a woman who has made of herself the poster girl for gun rights was accidentally shot with her own weapon by her 4 year old son. She will recover (thank God), but has taken down her Facebook page "Jamie Gilt for Gun Sense" As Mark Griswold says, over at the American Thinker in an article entitled Another Senseless Shooting, Another Senseless Response from the Anti-gun Crowd, the whole affair is tragic.  Apparently she left her gun in the back seat of her car, unattended, and when her 4 year old son got in the car, as children are wont to do, he got a hold of it and pulled the trigger. It was sheer stupidity on her part.

Equally stupid was the response from the anti-gun crowd, as expressed in Lindy West's Guardian article. West constantly states her unreasoning and unreasonable fear of guns, all pointing apparently at her, and her children. West writes:

I grew up with the same persistent, low-grade fear of gun violence as any American – my middle school was once locked down because of a shooting at the high school up the street, and I was a junior at that same high school when we watched the Columbine massacre unfold on TV – but my family didn’t have guns, and we lived in a liberal city so most of my friends’ parents didn’t either. Guns were scary, but for the most part they felt far away.

West, in her article projects the same "low-grade fear of gun violence" on all Americans, as if we lived in a society of mutually assured destruction. In her telling, America is an armed camp, a kind of OK corral, where the only solution is more laws, because heaven knows, the 23,000 laws on the books are not enough. But most of us do not grow up with such a low-grade fear, and most of us do not seem to have West's neuroses. Rather than look at the world through a set of rose tinted glasses, most of us try to look at things as the really are. Most of the time, most of us will not be assaulted by a criminal, but when it does happen, most of us would like to have a fighting chance.  Most of us know that criminals, by definition, do not obey laws, and so they will be armed if they think they can get away with it, and they usually can.

Griswold goes on to write:

Anti-gun folks like the author, Lindy West, enjoy trotting out the old canard that the U.S. has too few laws regulating guns so their answer is to pass more laws. (More laws is de rigueur for the Left; it’s the ultimate cure for personal responsibility.) But let’s just explore that in the case of Gilt.

The law preventing children from having access to firearms didn’t work in this case. Maybe we should require gun owners to go through training? That’s fine. I think you’ll find that the vast majority of gun owners are well trained and strongly advocate that anyone using a gun be welled trained as well. But considering that Gilt runs a Facebook Page about gun “sense”, I’d be shocked if she hadn’t gone through training and, clearly, the training failed in this case. Yet, as tragic as the outcome was, let he who is without blame cast the first stone. We’re all guilty of disregarding our training at one point or another. If we weren’t, there wouldn't be more than 5 million auto accidents per year. And this is key.

West's fear, and thus hatred, of guns, as opposed to disgust for people's occasional failures, causes her to seek out "facts" to back up her fears. She cites these "facts" from, of all places, Mother Jones News. Where will she go next, the National Enquirer?  While both papers have done some good work, I would not trust either of them implicitly.

As for "banning guns," the West article did not explicitly propose it, which allows her to deflect if pressured upon that point, but the general air of fear implies that she wants to see less ownership of guns, perhaps an outright ban.  Let's explore that for a minute.

Banning things, particularly easy to make things, has never worked out as planned.  Remember Prohibition?  Well, alright, so prohibition took place even before I was born, but, I have read about it and studied it.  The Constitutional Amendment, the 18th, in 1920, banned the sale, distribution and manufacture of alcohol, but strangely not the consumption.  The problem was that alcohol is just too easy to make.  Corn, wheat, rice, any grain can be malted, which turns the starch into sugar, and the sugar is fermented into alcohol by the action of yeast, which in the 1920s, every woman had access to for making bread.  A few more steps and you have beer.  Fruits have natural sugars, which can be fermented to produce wine.  With grapes, the wine almost makes itself.  Of course, having people making wine and beer for their own consumption was hardly the problem.  The real problem came when organized gangs began smuggling distilled spirits out of Canada.  Just as drug gangs today can not expect the law to protect them, so organized crime then had to protect themselves and their product with gun fire, resulting in many who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time being killed as well.  I think the term of art is "collateral damage."  So, Prohibition was happily (for most) ended in 1933, a failed experiment in changing people by legislation.

Then we made the same mistake with drugs, because...I suspect we forgot a good history lesson.

Now, onto banning guns.  Once again, we have forgotten the lesson.  Despite what people who never made anything may think, guns are fairly simple machines.  Quite usable guns were built in the pre-industrial age, with rifling.  The pistol is actually easier to build that the revolver that preceded it.  Any well equipped machine shop has the tools and know how to build a working handgun,  It may not run for 50,000 rounds before breaking down, but if guns were banned, a person needing a gun wouldn't be too picky.  The lesson of Prohibition applies.  Where there is demand, someone will supply it, and the other lesson, if it is easy to make, more people will supply it.  Which means that you really can not "ban" guns any more than you could "ban" alcohol, or "ban" drugs.  Such "bans" are legal fictions, and have no basis in reality.

Remember those rose colored glasses West is wearing?  She need to take them off and look around.  Some few of us feel entitled, if they even think at all, to the goods of others.  These people are known as criminals (yes, I'm looking at you Bernie supporter).  They don't obey laws, they don't fight fair, It's your job as the first responder to make sure you live to tell it to second to respond, the police when they show up.  As for Ms. Gilt, I am sure she knows exactly what she did wrong,  Guns can be dangerous unless handled correctly.  So can gasoline, automobiles, chain saws, drain cleaner...the list is endless.  If you want to be afraid all the time, be my guest, but don't come bleating to me about it.

What's Eating the Trump Supporters

In 2010, six years ago I wrote a post that now seems prescient.  The post was entitled When necessity becomes a moral imperative. I cited in that post an article by Christopher Chantrill over at the American Thinker entitled Off the books America. Chantrill pointed to the innumerable, and increasing onerous regulations that strangle businesses, and make it difficult or impossible for a person to start up a new business on his own.

 If you have never thought about starting up a business, you do not realize that the odds are against you. To start up a legal (meets all the regulatory hurdles) franchise bakery for selling bagels and coffee will cost you $100,000 to $200,000. A franchise operation of course has the personnel to evaluate locations, fund the up front costs of meeting regulations, finance construction, and train both you and your employees. They have access to bulk ingredients and many other features that make franchising in a highly regulated economy practical. If you, just you, decided you had a recipe for a great bagel, and wanted to get into the bagel business, the costs would be substantially higher, because you would have to learn all these things as you go. Financing? Forget about it. Only your relatives might give you a little money to get started. Have any millionaire relatives? Didn't think so.

This strangling of business and opportunity by onerous and over reaching regulation at all levels of government is what is driving the Trump supporters.  They are justifiable angry.  They have been lied to, betrayed, and had the rug pulled out from under them, and they are frustrated.  The American dream was never a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence.  That was some politician's take on it.  The American dream has always been that you could make anything of yourself that you desired, and that government, at whatever level, would leave you alone to do it.  But today, people find themselves hedged in at every turn by a seemingly overbearing government that has no sympathy for the struggle that is the individual's life.

I could cite many instances of abuse and over reach by the Federal government alone, but  this will suffice. A family, as a way to teach their teenage son about responsibility set up rabbit raising. They sold meat to family and friends, and sold rabbits to a pet store for pets. They kept the rabbits environment clean, and local experts extolled the quality of their rabbits. They had sold over the course of years according to the USDA some 619 rabbits and made a total profit of $200 to $400, yet were fined $90,000. They are not being fined for abuse, or mistreatment, but for failing to obtain a license. These realities lead to what Chantrill calls an "off the books" economy, separate from the legal, and highly regulated one. People work for under the table cash payments. Of course, no one knows that dimensions of this underground economy, but CNBC has estimated it at $2 trillion dollars. It also lead to this:

Every time the government enacts a new benefit or tax or economic regulation, it increases the cost of doing business for ordinary, law-abiding businesses. Every marginal business affected by the new tax or regulation has to make a decision: does it try to obey the law, or does it go "off the books"? Of course, our liberal rulers understand the problem. That is why they often exempt small businesses from the latest regulation. But what they are admitting, every time they do it, is that their high-tax social-benefit state is profoundly unjust.

One of these days, some right-wing demagogue is going to turn the general disgust with liberal injustice into a national political movement of bitter clingers.

Of course, Trump is not a true conservative, and has no particular love for, or understanding of, the Constitution. But many people simply don''t care. They are willing to burn down the house to get even. What they may find however, is that the American Revolution has become the French Revolution.