The Shroud of Turin Exists For Me

The Shroud of Turin has been one of many interesting topics I follow on a opportunistic basis.  What do I mean by "opportunistic"?  I mean that I do not seek them out, but when I come across them, I do read about them.  So, when Myra Kahn Adams publishes articles at Townhall.com, on the Shroud, I readily read them for the latest news. Today, Adams has posted an interesting article entitled Why Does the Shroud of Turin Exist? In the article, she answers the question:

And my response is simple: The Shroud of Turin exists because HE exists. An answer that echoes what God said to Moses, “I Am Who I Am. Say this to the people of Israel: I Am has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14).

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It turns out that the many Townhall readers who commented about not needing the Shroud’s “physical evidence to underpin their faith,” represent a large swath of Christian believers. I learned this when asking Russ Breault— my fellow Shroud exhibit team colleague, and a world-renowned Shroud expert and speaker — if he had experienced similar attitudes after over 30 years of hosting his popular “Shroud Encounters” to sell-out crowds.

Breault replied:

“I get that statement all the time! When someone says, ‘I don't need the Shroud for my faith,’ I usually say, ‘That is fantastic! But that doesn't mean the Shroud was not meant for someone else.’ ”

You never know when something someone says will give you a greater understanding. I am one who has often said that I do not need relics or other physical evidence; that my faith is enough. But the truth is that I am like the father of the child with an unclean spirit in Mark 9:24, who said "Lord,I believe; help my unbelief!" It is the cry of any rational adult who does not any longer believe in magic. For anyone who has studied the laws of nature for any amount of time, there can be no breaking of these laws. And yet, I see miracles happening all the time. People are changed by their faith in Jesus. How to explain it?  Our God is an active God, intervening in the lives of everyday ordinary people to bring about His will-not mine, and not yours. 

The Shroud of Turin exists, throughout the centuries, and despite the harrowing events it has endured, for me.  Sometimes I, like Thomas (doubting Thomas) need a little bit more.

Justice Will Never Be Done

I am torn between feeling sorry for Robert Mueller, and seething at the Democrats who used him.  But, on the other hand, it was Mueller's choice to be used.  He certainly didn't need the money, as he was already well set.  So, the only thing I can think of that would drive him to undertake what is, as Trump has described, a "witch hunt," is an arrogant belief that the people came to the wrong conclusion.  The Constitution didn't work by having the people elect one of the "elite."

But look at the cost of the Mueller probe.  The lives, reputations, and the personal wealth destroyed in his single minded pursuit of Trump, to the exclusion of the real perpetrators.  He claims not to even know about the dossier or Fusion GPS!  Where has he been hiding?

Kurt Schlichter today has a scathing article on Mueller's testimony before the House committee chaired by Representative Nadler at Townhall.com entitled Good Riddance To Bob Mueller. It is clear that Mueller was not the actual architect of the report that bears his name. Indeed, that distinction belongs to Andrew Weissmann, notorious for achieving a false conviction of Alaska Senator Stevens. That conviction was later overturned, too late for the Senators re-election. Weismann was also responsible for the conviction of innocent people in the Enron case, as told by Sydney Powell in her book Licensed To Lie.

Schlichter is also of the opinion that none of these people, guilty of their own "high crimes and misdemeanors" will ever be held accountable:

Of course, Jim Comey lied and gave classified info to his media allies – and its so awesome that our glorious media allies itself with powerful officials in the alleged intelligence/justice community – but we all know he will never be held accountable for it even though if we did it we’d be busy redeeming our own personal Shawshanks. Did anyone even bother asking Mueller if he thought about indicting his buddy the Looming Doofus? I don’t recall, to quote Absent Bob. Probably no one bothered because we all know the answer. The manifest, repeated and unrepentant wrongdoing of members-in-good-standing of the elite was not within his purview.

That is the most troubling thing about the this entire episode. Nothing happens to these people who should be in jail. Weissmann should have been disbarred long ago and sent to prison for withholding exculpatory evidence that exonerated to people he prosecuted. But here he is STILL corrupting justice. Comey, Brennan, Page, Strzok, and others, to one degree or another should at the very least never be allowed near the levers of power again. They have shown they can not be trusted.

And then there is the central figures in this corruption, Hillary and Obama.  Giving Attorney General Barr the benefit of the doubt, I am highly doubtful these people will ever see the inside of a jail cell.  But that is what should happen to both of them if the American people are ever to have faith in the system of justice again. 

Why Gun Control Doesn't Work

Another very good article comes today from the United States Concealed Carry Association (USCCA) authored by Alan Korwin entitled Gun Control: Why It Doesn't Work. Korwin is outspoken in this article that gun control is not about guns, its about control.

Freedom matters.

When the government decided back in Revolutionary times that it should be in power and control the guns, free people stood up and decided we would control arms and delegate power to officials — not the other way around. It was a unique concept, never before attempted — the grand experiment of self-governance — and America was born.

It makes sense that the freest nation on Earth has the freest gun laws and best access to arms anywhere. Freedom from gun control is what led to the ongoing emancipation of every class of men and women and will continue to do so.

You can’t arm slaves and expect them to remain enslaved.

Korwin goes on to destroy the various proposals put for by the Democrats to show that these proposals will not reduce crime. Indeed, that they are not intended to control crime, because criminals will not be disuaded by laws. What they are intended to do is disarm you and me.

This fits with the previous post, and I urge readers to go read the whole article.  You should also spread it around on social media, if you don't mind being in facebook jail for a spell.

Kamala Harris Wants To Harass Gun Owners

Kamala Harris, as you may realize, has made gun control a central part of her campaign to be President.  She has said she would enact her policies by executive order if Congress fails to act.  However, John Lott has an article that points out that Kamala, Your Gun Policies Wouldn't Have Stopped Aurora over at Townhall.com.  The title of Lott's article stems from Harris's use of the seventh anniversary of the attack on an Aurora, Colorado theater to push for more gun control.

Unfortunately for Harris, Lott is correct. Most criminals obtain the guns they use by illegal means. They don't buy them from a dealer, and they don't get them at gun shows. They buy them from the black market, or they steal them, or the have a straw buyer who can do so purchase the weapon for them.  Background checks, however, only affect purchases made at a legal dealer, to include gun shows.  Therefore background checks would only affect law abiding citizens.  Frankly, this is nothing more than harassment and intimidation of people who are totally innocent of the crime.

Meanwhile the fact that mass shooters target so called "gun free zones," or what I call target rich killing zones, is beyond question.

Colorado was by no means the only time that killers targeted gun-free zones. Just this year we have seen all the attacks in gun-free zones: in a public employee-only area of a Virginia Beach municipal building; a business in Aurora, Illinois; and a Florida bank. Just seven mass public shootings since 1950 took place where at least four people died in an area where general civilians are allowed to have guns, and it was not part of some other crime.

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Gun-free zones are a magnet for those who want to kill many people quickly. Even the most ardent gun control advocate would never put “Gun-Free Zone” signs on their home. Let’s stop finally putting them elsewhere."

Please go read Lott's article. He is right. Gun free zones, whether in schools or work places have made Americans less safe, and empowered those sick individuals that believe they will become famous by killing others. (If you wonder why the Democrats have the reputation of supporting criminals, here is just one reason.) If Democrats want to control crime, getting rid of gun free zones, including schools would be a good start.

The Conceit of the Left

We have two today, out of a plethora of stories to highlight.  But I have other things to do today, so you will have to be satisfied with just two of them.  The first is a piece at the American Thinker by Abraham H. Miller entitled An Angry Old White Guy in AOC Plus Three. Miller is experiencing a bit of what I experience: exhaustion. One gets tired of having another project onto one motives that are not part of one's thinking.

While the hysteria of the current aspiring revolutionaries, or “power grabbers,” to use Ilhan Omar’s own words, is not yet at the stage where anyone is being carted off to the guillotine or sent to the gulag, the new face of the Democratic Party is devouring its parents. Its children are yet to come.

The instrument of execution is the accusation of racism. Joe Biden is a racist because decades ago he refused to endorse coerced busing to end de facto segregation, a mechanism that was so flawed that it enhanced rather than ended segregation.

Joe Biden speaks in malapropisms, used his country for his family’s enrichment, and has been wrong about nearly every foreign policy he embraced, but he is not a racist.

Nancy Pelosi, for daring to call out the raucous Hamas chorus in her party, is called a racist. Nancy Pelosi is many unsavory things, but she is not a racist.

So too, all of us who support the president are now not just called deplorables but also white nationalists, supremacists, or racists.

If that is the case, I want to know where to sign up because the only way to make this now trivialized and overworked accusation to go away is to embrace it. If they shout, witch! …then we should all stand up and say we are witches.

A note to Ms. Cortez and company.  We didn't think much of Marx and Engles though they were Northern Europeans. We didn't like Lennin of Stalin either, and they were as white as the driven snow. And even though Hitler claimed to be a pure Ayrian, whatever that is, we didn't like him either. What do these people have in common? Think hard... Why, yes, its Socialism!

And, oh, by the way, our problems with Obama were the same as our problem with the people mentioned above.  We didn't dislike Obama, because most of us didn't know him personally.  But his policies were socialistic and totalitarian.  That is our only beef with him.  Socialism!

I have often ponder the same thing that Trump said aloud the other day, namely, if you don't love this country, if you feel that your parents made a mistake coming here, why don't you leave?  I have gotten unsatisfactory responses from most of those I have asked the question.  The best one is that they stay here because their "family" is here.  But if they really feel we are so bad, why not do what their own forebears did and leave?

And, Trump is right, if you don’t love this country, you shouldn’t be here. If you think your refugee camp in Kenya made you feel more whole, I am sure there is someone in Kenya who will gladly change places with you. If you feel more Palestinian when you are in the Congress, maybe you should be experiencing that feeling in Ramallah. If you can pretend to weep over an empty parking lot at the border but not over the more than 10,000 mostly black and Latino children that will need a shelter tonight in New York City, then you should run for the Mexican legislature. If you think socialism is the answer to the nation’s problems, I am sure Raul Castro has need of you in Cuba.

As for most of us, we don’t give a damn about the color of your skin, but the content of your character leaves much to be desired. And if you keep telling us what racists we are, just maybe we’ll take you seriously and become the thing you want us to be.

The truth is that these people are malcontents because they are largely talentless and of average intelligence, who are never going to be the world shakers they aspire to be. They are legends in their own minds, but in the real world each is just another Bozo on the bus.

The second item today comes from Kurt Schichter who writes about The Nightmare of an America Ruled By AOC And Her Socialist Pals over at Townhall.com

Go read the whole article. In fact, go read BOTH articles.  Schlichter is a great story teller, and what he tells in People's Republic is a story of half the country turned into a Venezuela. One of the things that comes out loud and clear is the resentment one of the lead characters feels for the people he feels do not respect him enough for his great intellect and that he alone has the inside scoop while his fellows are mere cud chewers. This, of course, is the conceit of all totalitarians and totalitarian wannabes.  This is the conceit of AOC and her gang, of their sugar daddy Saikat Chakrabarti,  It was Marx's, Lennin's, Stalin's, and Hitler's conceit.  We must vote all such people down and never let them get close to power again.

Wondering Why Conservative Voices Are Not Heard on Social Media?

Go read Welcome To Social Government on Spinquark.com.

I have mention this before as an example of what is happening to conservatives now. It has happened before to gun owners. At the start of the 20th century (after the birth of Christ) guns were largely unregulated. The meaning of the Second Amendment was agreed by everyone say that the right to keep and bear arms was not to bee infringed. Then, progressives (disguised as Democrats) used the "crisis" of the 1930s gangster activities (which was a reaction to the passage of Prohibition) to pass the National Firearms Act.  Then they slept and waited, and let everyone calm down.  Next, they used the "crisis" of the assassination of Jack Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy to pass the even more intrusive Gun Control Act of 1968.  Since, it has been a never ending attack, based on each new mass killing.  The Gun Free School Zones Act of 1990 arguably made mass killings more frequent thus giving gun grabbers ammunition.

Each of these gun control laws were framed as "compromises."  But in fact they were nothing of the sort.  Instead, they were deliberate encroachments.  Afterward, they waited until gun owners were again asleep, at which they time they crept up again.  Now they are using the approach to take away our rights to speak.

Why Western Civilization is Not About Whiteness

This thing of calling Republicans racists and nativists by Democrats is absurd.  You know, of course that the Republican party was founded in 1854, in a Wisconsin school house as an abolitionist party.  That is, its first purpose was to end slavery, and here in America, that meant black slavery.  The first Republican president was Abraham Lincoln.  The Democrats have been the party of black slavery, of Jim Crow, of segregation, and continue to be the party of antisemitism.  It is as if by calling us racist, they hope no one looks at their own record of racism and bigotry.

So, it was with some interest that I read an article by Bradly Birzer over at The Federalist entitled Why It's Preposterous To Say Western Civilization Is About 'Whiteness'. Western Civilization is about certain ideas and concepts going back to the Greek civilization. The West was, of course, a pagan culture that was in the fullness of time, Christianized by St. Paul and other missionaries. The Wests great ideas came out of this amalgam of Greek thought and Christian morality.

One of the truly frustrating aspects of our all-too modern and post-modern era is how easily radicals dismiss anything to do with western civilization as a racialist celebration of “whiteness” and of Caucasians. To believe such a thing, one must first believe that “races” actually exist, something no scientist worth her or his salt would believe. Yet, even assuming that such a thing as “race” does exist, where does it matter in terms of history?

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The father of the Reformation and a Roman Catholic saint, Augustine serves as the most importance nexus between the ancient and medieval worlds, his magisterial “City of God” serving as the handbook of the Middle Ages. Importantly for our argument, though, St. Augustine was also from Hippo, a region of North Africa.

Just as Christ preached universal truths about the condition of mankind and offers a way out of these universal conditions, the Left rejects all of the things that make up Western thought. The ideas of Socrates and Plato, the idea that men have certain inalienable rights by virtue of their creation; these are the things the Left rejects in favor of dividing us into identity groups and pitting one identity against another.  But it is not out of a genuine love for mankind that they do it.  It is rather to secure their own power.

We can not let them have power.  In their hatred of both themselves and us, they will surely burn down the house around us.

The next time someone tells you that the West is about whiteness or racial superiority, remind them of several things: 1) that race is a modern construct, the fruits of progressivism; 2) that one of the greatest Westerners, St. Augustine, was an African; 3) that Heraclitus sought only unity; and 4) that the Spartans gave everything for dignity greater than any one people. You may very well fail to persuade them, but, at the very least, you can befuddle them.