Our Books

If you enjoy this site, please consider purchasing one of our books (as low as $2.99). Click here to visit our Amazon page.

Our Books

Our Books
Books by Trevor Grant Thomas and Michelle Fitzpatrick Thomas

E-Mail Me:

NOTE: MY EMAIL ADDRESS HAS CHANGED! Trevor's new email address: trevorgrantthomas@gmail.com

Latest News/Commentary

Latest News/Commentary:

News/Commentary Archives:

News/Commentary Archives (for the current year; links to previous years archives at the bottom of each page)---PLUS: Trevor's Columns Archived (page linked at the bottom of the table below):

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

The Left’s War on Women

One of the ugliest secrets about abortion is that, worldwide, girls are much more likely to be killed in the womb than are boys. This has resulted in an alarming male-to-female ratio in multiple countries. Even the George Soros-funded Human Rights Watch has recently declared that “You Should Be Worrying about the Woman Shortage.”

The piece notes that in India and China alone, there’s “now an estimated 80 million extra men.” Surprisingly, the piece acknowledges that this gross disparity is due to the gross policy of sex-selective abortion. Unsurprisingly, instead of blaming the evil practice of the killing of any unborn child, the Human Rights Watch article blames “gender discrimination” and concludes, “When women lack equal rights and patriarchy is deeply engrained, it is no surprise that parents choose to not to have daughters.” Silly me. I thought the left supported any excuse to kill the unborn.

As most anyone with a proper worldview well knows, along with the tragic deaths of tens of millions of the most innocent and helpless among us, it turns out that the practice of abortion has other awful consequences. As Human Rights Watch notes,
The woman shortage is having harmful consequences in China and sometimes in neighboring countries. Human Rights Watch looked at one of those consequences for a report forthcoming in 2019 focused on bride-trafficking from Myanmar to China. In Myanmar’s Kachin and northern Shan states, bordering China, long-standing conflict escalated in recent years, displacing over 100,000 people. Traffickers prey on vulnerable women and girls, offering jobs in, and transport to, China. Then they sell them, for around $3,000 to $13,000, to Chinese families struggling to find brides for their sons. Once purchased, women and girls are typically locked in a room and raped repeatedly, with the goal of getting them pregnant quickly so they can provide a baby for the family. After giving birth, some are allowed to escape—but forced to leave their children behind.  
There is evidence of similar patterns of bride migration and trafficking in Cambodia, North Korea, and Vietnam, and more may emerge from other countries bordering China. Importing women doesn’t solve the shortage—it spreads it.
“Nothing like this has happened in human history,” begins a lengthy Washington Post piece from last year on the vast male to female ratio that exists in China and India. In over 6,000 words and four chapters, along with detailing the trafficking and purchasing of “brides,” the Post piece also notes the widespread loneliness and depression that grip men who have little to no hope at marriage and a family, and it rightly concludes that the sad consequences of killing unborn girls extends far beyond China and India. Yet, in all that ink, the Post mentions abortion once. Instead of pointing to abortion to explain why there are “Too Many Men,” the Post instead refers to various technologies and vague “policies.”

Just days ago, Breitbart reported on an investigation into 132 Indian villages where, over a three-month period early this year, zero girls were born. In 2016, The Daily Signal reported on a study that concluded that sex-selective abortions are a U.S. problem as well. Nevertheless, again demonstrating that they oppose any restrictions on the killing of the most helpless and innocent among us, democrats across the U.S.—including in a 2012 U.S. House vote on the matter—are near unanimous in their opposition to sex-selective abortion bans.

However, the modern left may have found a way to replace the millions of missing girls the world over: allow men to identify as women. According to current leftist-think, the millions of lonely men longing for a bride and a family should have no complaints or hesitation when it comes to dating and marrying a “trans-woman” (a gender-deluded man who’s pretending to be a woman). After all, men who refuse to date or marry a “trans-woman” would be guilty of “discrimination,” and there’s no place for that in the modern world.

Or perhaps there’s another way to solve the missing female/loneliness problem. Since the left has now decided that men can get pregnant and have abortions, and that marriage is whatever one wants it to be—and thus people can even “marry” themselves—lonely men can simply start a family by marrying themselves and having their own children—including girls!

Never mind that, among other wicked things, the absurdity of the evil trans agenda is literally taking trophies, medals, scholarships, and money away from women. As I warned years ago, whether high school, college, Olympic, or the professional ranks, women at every level of athletics are being threatened by the evil trans-agenda.

Even worse, gender-deluded men and boys invading locker rooms, bathrooms, and dressing rooms pose a great threat to women and girls. Of course, all of this is aided and abetted by leftist politicians—i.e., the Democrat Party—and courts. Thus, gender-deluded men and women continue to obtain political and legal protection for their perverse ideology. As I’ve warned (more than once), as a result of this perversion, real women and girls are chief among those who will suffer the most.

What set the trans-madness in motion was the epic and disturbing 5-4 (take note, John Roberts: liberals aren’t afraid of 5-4 rulings to overturn “precedent”) Obergefell ruling. Many warned of the wide-ranging and tragic consequences of legally redefining the oldest institution in the history of humanity. However, few imagined “married” homosexual couples using women as “breeding machines.”

Thus, and in spite of their efforts to paint conservatives as such, it is the totalitarian left who has given us real-life Handmaids. As Jennifer Hartline wisely put it,
People who are quick to fill social media with images of handmaids in red and denounce the diminishment of women to mere breeders seem to have nothing but adulation for gay men who literally use a woman — her body, time, energy, freedom, health, and her very life — in order to get what they want. These men do not need her as a person. They need her as a gestater, a human incubator. They have no real regard for the irreplaceable value and role of a mother in a child’s life. If they did, they could never contemplate what they are so pridefully pursuing.
Thus we see that it’s leftists who often have “no real regard” for mothers, or daughters, housewives, female athletes, young ladies, unborn girls, and so on. Women—and right-minded men—who vote would do well to remember this.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2019, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Sunday, July 28, 2019

Housewives: "Dependent Creatures"! "Parasites"!

In 2013, then U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to liberal “feminist,” Gloria Steinem. This is the highest honor that the U.S. bestows on civilians. Freedom for what, you might ask? Well, I’m not sure, considering that she’s a champion for abortion. Seems a tad oxymoronic (Did I just say “moronic”?!) to be for women’s “rights” while ignoring the rights of all of the unborn women in the process. But I digress.

Steinem had this to say about me and the millions of other women like me: “[Housewives] are dependent creatures who are still children…parasites.” Okay, well, I wasn’t yet born when she said that, but I still find it quite offensive and degrading, especially in today’s culture that’s all about “empowering women.” And this is the woman who was awarded a medal—BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!

Carolyn Graglia is a lawyer who left her law practice to stay home and raise her children. In an article that she wrote for The Weekly Standard, she discussed Betty Friedan, “feminist” writer and activist, who also had a negative view of homemakers. Graglia wrote,
Friedan described the housewife in The Feminine Mystique as a ‘parasite’ who lives without using adult capabilities or intelligence and lacks a real function when devoting herself to children, husband, and home. Decrying the housewife's life as a ‘waste of a human self,’ Friedan likened her and her fellow matrons to ‘male patients with portions of their brain shot away and schizophrenics.’ Housewives are ‘less than fully human,’ she said, for they ‘have never known a commitment to an idea,’ ‘risked an exploration of the unknown,’ or ‘attempted . . . creativity.’ That this could be said of women, who literally create life within their wombs, indicates the degree to which feminism has sought to denature women, to reshape them in man's image.
On housewives/homemakers, noted sociologist and “feminist” “scholar” Jessie Bernard declared,
[The] housewife is a nobody, and [housework] is a dead-end job. It may really have a deteriorating effect on her mind…rendering her incapable of prolonged concentration on any single task. [She] comes to seem dumb as well as dull. [B]eing a housewife makes women sick.
Dumb and dull? Dependent creature? Parasite? Schizophrenic? Sadly, many on the left—especially women on the left—still harbor these hateful feelings toward stay-at-home moms. Being a homemaker, I’m taken aback and highly offended that people would not only think such nonsense but would actually speak or write it for others to read and hear, and there are many more such quotes out there, as you can imagine. I studied these loonies when I was working on my own sociology degree back in the 90s, but even then, as a college kid, I knew they were nuts.

I won’t argue that being a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom is intellectually stimulating at every moment, but it is what we make of it. No doubt, these “champions” of feminism want children to be in the control of the government at the earliest ages possible. They push for taxpayer-funded daycare and preschool, in addition to the massive public K-12 education system so that children can be properly indoctrinated for their entire young lives. I suppose it’s too logical that mothers would raise their own children. Of course, many of these so-called “feminists” think that the earth is overpopulated and that we shouldn’t be having children, anyway.

I will admit that I’m pretty dependent on my husband’s income, and I’m very thankful that he’s a wonderful provider for our family. However, there are two sides to the story. On the one hand, he has much more earning potential than I do because he has two graduate degrees, and he wants to work outside the home. On the other hand, he affirms that I’m much better suited to the day-to-day duties of childrearing, cooking, budgeting, and caring for our home (as I believe most women are).

I love having the freedom (That is what Steinem, Friedan, and Bernard championed, right?) to raise our children, to educate them, to stretch our dollars by couponing, to write books, to volunteer at church, to handle our family’s finances, to feed us and clothe us, to be involved in all of my kids’ activities, to care for our home, and ultimately to “be there” for my family.

I really don’t have to justify myself to anyone except the Lord. To be quite frank, I think He’s pretty pleased with homemakers and moms. After all, this is what He had to say about us many moons ago:
A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies. Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value. She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life…She is clothed with strength and dignity, she can laugh at the days to come. She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue. She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children arise and call her blessed, her husband also, and he praises her…Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. (Proverbs 31:10-12, 25-28, 30)
(See this column at American Thinker.)

Michelle Thomas is a Christ follower, wife to and chief editor for Trevor Thomas, and a homeschooling mom to four amazing children. She is the author of the brand new devotional book for moms called Lord, I Need You, a book about her grief journey called Through Deep Waters, and a chronicle of their financial journey called Debt-Free Living in a Debt-Filled World. Her website is KingdomCrossing.com, and she can be reached by email at michelle@kingdomcrossing.com.

Monday, July 22, 2019

The Moon Race: Godless Socialism vs. Faithful Americanism

By 1927, Robert Goddard—an American physicist, engineer, and inventor—was already famous worldwide for his contributions to rocketry. In 1920, less than two decades after the Wright brothers astounded the world by flying for 12 seconds at an altitude of 10 feet, the Smithsonian Institution published Goddard’s groundbreaking paper, “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes.”

Called “The Father of the Space Age,” Goddard was the first scientist to give serious scientific treatment to the idea that space travel was possible. As is noted in The Miracle and Magnificence of America, before 1920, Goddard was successfully building rockets, rocket engines, and making rocket fuel. A staunch patriot, and with the goal of producing rockets that would assist in the war effort, in 1917 Goddard went to work for the U.S. Army. He was able to develop rockets with launchers that could be fired from trenches. He also developed hand-held launchers similar to what would later be known as the bazooka.

Goddard was the first to build a rocket engine that used liquid fuel. Fifteen years later the Nazis would use the same type of engine in their V-2 rocket weapons. With funding from Daniel Guggenheim—an American mining magnate and philanthropist—in 1935 Goddard became the first to launch a liquid-fueled rocket faster than the speed of sound. In addition to fuels and engines, in his pursuit of getting rockets into space, Goddard also invented many of the components necessary for space travel. Thus, again, America was leading the world into new frontiers.

Goddard was credited with much of the progress the Germans achieved with the V-2 rocket. In 1963, Wernher von Braun—who oversaw the development of Germany’s V-2 rocket—admitted that Goddard’s rockets “... may have been rather crude by present-day standards, but they blazed the trail and incorporated many features used in our most modern rockets and space vehicles.” He also concluded that “Goddard's experiments in liquid fuel saved us years of work, and enabled us to perfect the V-2 years before it would have been possible.”

In the fall of 1932, just prior to the Nazis coming to power in Germany, von Braun began working for the German army. With the Nazi focus on rebuilding Germany’s military, significant resources for rocket research were made available. Work was done, not only with ballistic missiles, but also “rocket-planes.”

After the defeat of the Nazis, the U.S., Great Britain, and the Soviet Union rushed to get their hands on German rocket technology. Von Braun and over 100 other V-2 personnel surrendered to the U.S. forces. A V-2 engineer famously said: “We despise the French; we were mortally afraid of the Soviets; we do not believe the British can afford us, so that leaves the Americans.” Also, von Braun reasoned that the United States “was the nation most likely to use its resources for space exploration.”

After their surrender to the Americans, Dr. von Braun declared,
We knew that we had created a new means of warfare, and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision more than anything else. We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through, and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured.
A nation “guided by the Bible” would have a life-changing impact on Wernher von Braun. Born into a Lutheran family in what is now Poland, while gaining prominence as a rocket scientist in the German empire of the late 1930s and early to mid-1940s, von Braun led a life that was mostly devoid of any real faith in God. That changed shortly after he entered the U.S. As Darrin Rodgers notes,
In Texas, while living at Fort Bliss, a neighbor invited [von Braun] to church. He went, expecting to find the religious equivalent of a country club. Instead, he found a small white frame building with a vibrant congregation of people who loved the Lord. He realized that he had been morally adrift and that he needed to surrender himself to God. He converted to Christ and, over the coming years, became quite outspoken in his evangelical faith and frequently addressed the complementarity of faith and science.
By 1946, V-2s were being launched from American soil. Such efforts led to the United States achieving many of the world’s firsts in space travel. On October 24, 1946, a 35-mm motion picture camera placed aboard a V-2 took the first ever photo from space. The U.S. was the first to put animals into space. On June 14, 1949, the U.S. put the first mammal in space.

On October 14, 1947, in the rocket-powered Bell Aircraft X-1, at an altitude of about 45,000 feet, traveling at Mach 1.07, Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager became the first human to travel faster than the speed of sound. Supersonic flight soon became a regular occurrence. In spite of all the technological, industrial, and human resource advantages held by the United States, with the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik (Russian for “satellite”) 1, on October 4, 1957, the Soviets, not the Americans, ushered in the space age. The news shocked the world.

On January 31, 1958, America joined the Soviets in space. Under the direction of Dr. von Braun, launched aboard the Juno I rocket, the Explorer I was the first satellite of the United States. However, through the next several years the Soviets achieved a number of other notable firsts in the space race.

The Soviets were the first to have a satellite to reach the vicinity of the Moon and the first to have a satellite reach heliocentric orbit (orbit around the Sun). They were also the first nation to land a man-made object on the Moon. In August of 1960, Sputnik 5 was the first space flight to carry animals into orbit and return them safely to earth. On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in outer space.

On May 5, 1961, aboard the space capsule Freedom 7, Alan Shepard became the first American to travel into space. In August of 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov manned the first space flight lasting over 24 hours. Significantly, Titov would soon tell the world, “Sometimes people are saying that God is out there. I was looking around attentively all day but I didn’t find anybody there. I saw neither angels nor God.” The Soviets were quick to use this in their anti-religious propaganda.

By the 1960s, the godless Soviets also quickly fell far behind America in the race to put a man on the moon. In a stark contrast to the atheist Titov, von Braun, the technical architect of the Saturn V vehicle that took men to the moon and back, is quoted as saying,
[T]he more we learn about God’s creation, the more I am impressed with the orderliness and unerring perfection of the natural laws that govern it. In this perfection, man—the scientist—catches a glimpse of the Creator and his design for nature.
As has been the case throughout American history, there’s little doubt that such a humble, biblically based worldview played no small role in the U.S. beating the Soviets to the moon. Only one nation on earth—the United States of America—had the taxpayer funding, the technical capability, the infrastructure, the many thousands of private contractors, and the moral character necessary to rise to the near-impossible challenge of the Apollo space program.

In December of 1968, almost exactly seven months prior to the Apollo 11 moon mission, the three astronauts of Apollo 8, in what was the most-watched television broadcast of its time, read word-for-word the first 10 chapters of the book of Genesis. During the Apollo 11 mission, after landing on the moon, Buzz Aldrin, a devout Christian, took Holy Communion on the moon. A year later, Aldrin said that he chose to do such to symbolize “the thought that God was revealing Himself there, too, as man reached out into the universe. For there are many of us in the NASA program who do trust that what we are doing is part of God’s eternal plan for man.”

Notably, only twelve men, all Americans, have walked on the surface of the moon. I believe the humility and reverence the USA displayed during the Apollo program was one of the reasons God blessed it. If we wish to accomplish similar things as a nation, we would do well to remember such.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2019, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Monday, July 15, 2019

Sorry Ladies; It’s Just Biology, Psychology, and Economics

Just like probably 90 percent or so of those virtue signaling in favor of “pay equality” for the American women who won the FIFA Women’s World Cup, I’ve never paid to attend a women’s soccer game. In fact, as best I can recall, I’ve never paid to attend ANY women’s sporting event. The only girl I’ve ever paid to watch compete in sports is the beautiful and talented Caroline Thomas—the (now) 13-year-old karate champion:


Yeah, that’s my girl, and she has about 15 of those first-place trophies—in both karate fighting (which involves contact, but is not very violent) and forms, or “kata.” Caroline also plays in a co-ed basketball league. Like most other fathers, I would pay (up to a point) to watch my daughter show off her talents in almost any venue—whether in sports, performing on stage, or in a cooking contest (Caroline also likes to cook). However, it doesn’t mean that the public at large is interested in forking over their hard-earned dollars to watch my daughter perform—especially in the realm of athletics.

The “inequality” that exists in women’s sports is nothing new, and in spite of what many on the left would have us believe, involves nothing nefarious. As I noted several years ago, the fact that consumers overwhelmingly prefer men’s sports to women’s sports is merely a matter of biology and psychology and not due to some mythical misogynistic plot. The facts and the data clearly bear this out.

Just as was the case in 2015—the latest data available when I last wrote about this issue—in 2018, when examining sports audiences, men’s sports dominated television ratings. Of the 50 most-watched sporting events in 2018, 43 of them were men’s football—40 NFL games and three college football games. The other seven were events from the Winter Olympics.

According to Sports Media Watch, including pre-game coverage, Fox earned a 7.7 rating and had 12.98 million viewers for the Women’s World Cup final. These number are nowhere close to what was needed to make the top 50 most-watched sporting events of 2018. The 50th place event—Winter Olympics night 6—had an 11.4 rating and 19.3 million viewers. There’s virtually no doubt the Women’s World Cup final will not make 2019’s top 50 list either.

If you exclude the NFL and the Winter Olympics, women’s sports are still nowhere to be found among the most-watched sporting events in 2018. Again, as was the case in 2015, even non-humans outperform women’s sports in viewership—two of the 2018 non-NFL/Winter Olympics top 50 were horse racing events. The Kentucky Derby was 16th on this list with an 8.5 rating and 15 million viewers.

When it comes to television audience and paid attendees, the women’s professional sports that compete annually are not in the same universe as men’s sports—or even horse racing. In 2018, the top-rated women’s tennis event was the U.S. Open Women’s final. It earned a 1.9 rating with 3.1 million viewers. The top-rated women’s golf event for 2018 was the U.S. Women’s Open Final Round. It earned a 0.6 rating with 878,000 viewers. The top-rated WNBA event for 2018 was the WNBA All Star Game. It earned a 0.5 rating with 709,000 viewers.

Thus, as such consumer data implies, according to Forbes—from boxer Floyd Mayweather ($285 million) to basketball player Nicolas Batum ($22.9 million)—of the world’s 100 highest paid athletes in 2018, not a single female athlete made the list. Again, there is nothing evil at work here; it is simply a matter of economics. Whether in person or through television or live streaming on their phone or computer, fans simply prefer to watch men compete than women.

Of course, this does not mean that fans are “discriminating” against women. Fans are discriminating, just not in the way the “equal pay” loons of the left would have us believe. I’ve jokingly told the left before how to make women’s sports more interesting: allow men to compete as women. Forgetting that the left takes jokes and makes them into policy, I never thought they would take me up on it.

Given the pay disparity that already exists among male and female athletes, and given how the left is determined to convince us that this is “unfair,” the fact that liberals are now allowing men to take trophies and dollars from women is the height of absurdity. It just goes to show how tragically devoted to the perverse LGBT agenda is the modern left.

Unless the left continues down this road where gender-deluded (or financially savvy?) men are allowed to compete as women, there will never be “equal pay” or “gender equality” when it comes to athletics, because human genders are not—and will never be—equal. Men are bigger, faster, and stronger than women. And “bigger, faster, and stronger” makes for more exciting and interesting sports.

What’s more, as most anyone not devoted to a liberal worldview who has observed human beings for at least 15 minutes was already aware, men are naturally more physically aggressive than are women. As Psychology Today points out:
The fact that males are more aggressive and more violent is reflected by their anatomy itself; in many animals species they are heavier, more muscular, better armed with means of attack and defense. In humans, for example, the arms of men are, on average, 75 percent more muscular than those of women; and the top of a male body is 90 percent stronger than the top of a female body [Bohannon, 1997; Abe et al., 2003, apud Goetz, 2010, p. 16]. Also, men are taller, they have denser and heavier bones, their jaw is more massive, their reaction time is shorter, their visual acuity is better, their muscle/fat ratio is greater, their heart is bulkier, their percentage of hemoglobin is higher, their skin is thicker, their lungs bigger, their resistance to dehydration is higher etc. In other words, from all points of view, men are more suited for battle than women, and these skills are native.
As Ann Coulter noted over a decade ago, “Competitive sports are ritualized forms of fighting, and boys like to fight.” In other words, sports—especially those involving heavy contact—is a form of battle, and in spite of what the foolish left would have us believe, men are much more suited for battle than are women. No amount of legislation, legal wrangling, or whining is going to change these facts.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2019, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Sunday, July 14, 2019

“Pride” Goes Before Destruction

My husband Trevor and I recently took our four children to Washington, D.C. for the first (and likely last) time. It was amazing to see the historic monuments and to tour the Capitol building and the museums. It is truly rich with history and tradition and grandeur.

What was not so amazing were the rainbow flags all over the city and the homeless encampments and the ghetto-like areas and the sirens at night and the filth. D.C. is a liberal cesspool, and it shows. I did all of the driving while we were there because Trevor was struggling with a pinched nerve. I wonder if the many, many honks that I received while driving around the city were the result of my “Choose Life” license plate or my driving skills. I’ll never know. But as you might imagine, we had some wonderful opportunities to teach our children about the very visible and tangible differences between our wonderful, conservative Northeast Georgia district versus life in the most liberal area of the country. I don’t think they will forget those lessons any time soon.

I have been sickened lately by all of the commercials and signs and shows touting “Pride” for the LGBT lifestyles. I get a bit confused by all of the initials that they use, and it seems that they keep adding more and more. Maybe when they’re finished we could just sing the “ABCs” to describe all of their various lifestyle “choices.”

I logged onto my AT&T account the other day and saw a rainbow globe as their new logo. A commercial for cosmetics company Sephora that airs multiple times during one of the shows that we watch is filled with men pretending to be women. Various commercials flash scenes of homosexual couples in their ads, seemingly to kowtow to that miniscule, militant portion of our population. Even an email that I received from our local grocery store, Kroger, the other day had a “Pride” section in it, detailing what Kroger is doing to help celebrate sin. And it seems that nearly every show and movie these days—even kids’ shows—have inserted some sort of transvestite character or homosexual or other similar perversity. Big companies and Hollywood are forcing this issue before our eyes in the hopes that we will begin to accept it as “normal.”

I recently read a quote by pastor and author, Francis Chan. He said, “In a postmodern culture obsessed with feelings and political correctness, the Church must stop apologizing for ‘the way that God thinks and acts and what He says is right and wrong.’” Pastor Chan is absolutely right. The rabid LGBTQXYZ movement is trying to browbeat those of us who agree with what God says about their lifestyle, and I’ve had enough. It doesn’t matter how much “pride” they show; their lifestyle choices will remain perverse, wrong, gross, and above (or below) all, sinful.

As parents and grandparents, we must be diligent in teaching our children and grandchildren that what God says is wrong is really wrong. They are being pulled away from the truth on these issues right and left. They are being indoctrinated in our public schools, and they are inundated with messages in the media that celebrate repulsive lifestyles.

When I pray with our children at night before bed, I often pray that God will help us to love what He loves and hate what He hates. We know from His Word that He loves people but hates sin. We need to follow His lead by loving those who are so miserable that they feel the need to look for acceptance and affirmation in perversity. I’ve read stories and watched interviews with people who came out of the evil LGBT lifestyle, and almost without fail, each one who turned to that lifestyle did so because of abusive situations in their childhoods. They felt so damaged and dirty that they turned to those with whom they felt they could be accepted and loved.

Maybe instead of celebrating and defending something that is destructive and harmful and immoral, we as a nation and as states and as communities and as individuals should put more value on counseling these people and praying for them and helping them to find true healing and hope. Some states are going so far as to make it illegal even to provide counseling for people struggling with these issues. What insanity!

Sometimes I feel like we are living in the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes, in which everyone sees that the emperor is really naked, but no one wants to speak up and tell him. Finally, a small child honestly and accurately exclaims, “But he hasn’t got anything on.” Even children know the truth about the LGBT agenda. They know that men and women go together and that men aren’t supposed to wear makeup and dresses. Let’s not be duped by the pressure of the crowd into supporting and believing in wickedness.

God said in Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” The rainbow was God’s idea and a symbol of His mercy for all mankind. Let’s take it back for purposes that are good and noble and pure. When it’s all said and done, I’d much rather stand by God’s side for all of eternity than on the side of political correctness on this earth.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2019, Michelle Fitzpatrick Thomas
Michelle is a Christ follower, wife to and chief editor for Trevor Thomas, and a homeschooling mom to four amazing children. She is the author of the brand new Through Deep Waters: Finding Healing and Hope in Devastating Grief, Debt-Free Living in a Debt-Filled World, and a soon-to-be-released devotional book for moms called Lord, I Need You. Her website is KingdomCrossing.com, and she can be reached by email at michelle@kingdomcrossing.com.

Thursday, July 4, 2019

“Ancient Principles” Birthed the Greatest Nation the World Has Ever Known

(The following is taken from The Miracle and Magnificence of America.)

On the same day that the Declaration of Independence became official, an extremely telling event further reveals that our founders understood well the “ancient principles” upon which our republic must be built. On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress appointed a committee—consisting of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams—to design an official seal for the United States. Adams proposed an image of Hercules contemplating the persuasions of Virtue and Sloth.

Franklin proposed a biblical theme:
Moses standing on the Shore, and extending his Hand over the Sea, thereby causing the same to overwhelm Pharaoh who is sitting in an open Chariot, a Crown on his Head and a Sword in his hand. Rays from a Pillar of Fire in the Clouds reaching to Moses, to express that he acts by Command of the Deity. Motto: Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.
Nineteenth Century Artistic Rendition of Franklin’s Proposed Design for the U.S. Seal

Likewise, Jefferson preferred a biblical theme. According to a letter from John Adams to his wife Abigail, Jefferson proposed:
The Children of Israel in the Wilderness, led by a Cloud by day, and a Pillar of Fire by night, and on the other Side Hengist and Horsa, the Saxon Chiefs, from whom We claim the Honour of being descended and whose Political Principles and Form of Government We have assumed.
Our founders understood well that the story of Moses embodied what they hoped would be the story of America. Bruce Feiler, author of America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story, says that, more than any other ancient figure, “Moses embodies the American story. He is the champion of oppressed people; he transforms disparate tribes in a forbidding wilderness into a nation of laws; he is the original proponent of freedom and justice for all.”

The committee agreed on an image of thirteen linked shields, each bearing the designation of a state and the motto “E Pluribus Unum,” along with the all-seeing eye of the Creator inside a triangle. On the reverse side was the biblical scene and the motto “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”

However, Congress tabled the matter for several years and eventually adopted the seal and the motto as we have them today. On the reverse side of the seal is a 13-step pyramid, with the year 1776 in Roman numerals along the base. At the top of the pyramid is the Eye of Providence with the Latin motto ANNUIT COEPTIS (“[God] has favored our undertakings”) in the sky above. As the coming Revolutionary War would further prove, God had indeed “favored” the undertakings of the United States. Such favor was no doubt due to the firm faith demonstrated by those who sought to build a nation that, as Puritan leader John Winthrop would envision nearly a century-and-a-half earlier, would serve the world as a “City upon a Hill.”

After defeating the British, the trouble for the new United States of America was far from over. Winning a war was one thing; creating a functioning and thriving nation was quite another. It was becoming clear that the U.S. was not going to survive under the Articles of Confederation. After the Declaration of Independence, the United States of America would wait another 11 years (13 years before it would actually go into effect) for the strong charter of liberty called the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution would provide the enduring legal strength necessary for the U.S. to survive and thrive as a republic.

On December 6, 1787, by unanimous consent, Delaware became the first state to ratify the new Constitution. New Jersey and Georgia soon followed, also by unanimous consent. On December 12, 1787, by a vote of 46 to 23, Pennsylvania approved the Constitution. In 1788, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, and South Carolina made it eight states.

New Hampshire was the last of the necessary nine states needed to ratify the Constitution. As I note in The Miracle and Magnificence of America, in order to persuade his fellow delegates to vote in favor of the U.S. Constitution, Samuel Langdon, a distinguished theologian and scholar, delivered an “election sermon” entitled, The Republic of the Israelites an Example to the American States.

After beginning by quoting Deuteronomy 4:5-8 in his sermon, Langdon noted,
[T]he Israelites may be considered as a pattern to the world in all ages; and from them we may learn what will exalt our character, and what will depress and bring us to ruin. Let us therefore look over their constitution and laws, enquire into their practice, and observe how their prosperity and fame depended on their strict observance of the divine commands both as to their government and religion.
Langdon then gave an account of how Moses, upon the wise counsel of his father-in-law Jethro, “the priest of Midian,” set up a republican form of government, with representatives (“leaders,” “rulers,” “judges,” depending on the biblical translation) from groups of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. In addition, 70 elders, or wise-men—a type of national Senate as described by biblical and Jewish scholars—were selected by Moses and approved by the consent of the people.

Langdon added,
A government thus settled on republican principles, required laws; without which it must have degenerated immediately into aristocracy, or absolute monarchy. But God did not leave a people, wholly unskilled in legislation, to make laws for themselves: he took this important matter wholly into His own hands, and beside the moral laws of the two tables, which directed their conduct as individuals, gave them by Moses a complete code of judicial laws.
Langdon goes on to describe how this republican form of government helped the nation of Israel grow from a “mere mob” to a “well regulated nation, under a government and laws far superior to what any other nation could boast!” After detailing Israel’s later struggles—they would eventually “[neglect] their government, [corrupt] their religion, and [grow] dissolute in their morals”—Langston exhorted his fellow citizens to learn from the nation of Israel.
That as God in the course of his kind providence hath given you an excellent constitution of government, founded on the most rational, equitable, and liberal principles, by which all that liberty is secured which a people can reasonably claim, and you are empowered to make righteous laws for promoting public order and good morals; and as he has moreover given you by his son Jesus Christ, who is far superior to Moses, a complete revelation of his will, and a perfect system of true religion, plainly delivered in the sacred writings; it will be your wisdom in the eyes of the nations, and your true interest and happiness, to conform your practice in the strictest manner to the excellent principles of your government, adhere faithfully to the doctrines and commands of the gospel, and practice every public and private virtue. By this you will increase in numbers, wealth, and power, and obtain reputation and dignity among the nations: whereas, the contrary conduct will make you poor, distressed, and contemptible.
On September 21, 1788 the Constitution and the new government of the United States went into effect. Just over three years later, the Bill of Rights would be added. By 1790, when Rhode Island joined the Union, it was unanimous.

On July 4, 1837, in a speech delivered in the town of Newburyport, Massachusetts, John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams, and the sixth U.S. President, proclaimed,
Why is it that, next to the birthday of the Savior of the World, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day? Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth?
Witnessing the events of the Revolution as a boy, and no-doubt hearing from his father of the raucous debates that gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and then going on to serve his country in many various capacities, John Quincy Adams saw that Christmas and Independence Day were fundamentally linked. He understood well that the Founders took the principles that Christ brought to the world and incorporated them into civil government. This is what makes the U.S. government so distinctive, why it has been so durable, and why, to this day, we are the greatest nation the world has ever known.

(Read this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2019, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Monday, July 1, 2019

Our So Called “Rights” Are Expensive!

One of the fastest ways to make things more expensive is for the government to provide easy access to money to pay for such things. Nothing illustrates this better than the cost of a college education. As has been widely reported for years now, the costs of a college education have skyrocketed.

A Forbes headline last year noted that the cost of college in the U.S. is increasing nearly eight times faster than wages are increasing. As Forbes reported,
The price of going to college has been increasing since the 1980s. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average cost per year for the 2015-2016 academic year was just over $19,000 for a public four-year university. The figure jumps to nearly $40,000 for a private university. These totals include tuition, fees, room and board. 
The average for all four-year institutions comes out to $26,120 per year. This brings the total cost of attendance to an astronomical total of $104,480 over four years. The comparable cost for the same four-year degree in 1989 was $26,902 ($52,892 adjusted for inflation). This means that between the academic years ending in 1989 and 2016, the cost for a four year degree doubled, even after inflation.
As we’ve also heard often the last few years, these rising costs have resulted in astronomical student loan debt. With the total now north of $1.5 trillion, student loan debt for Americans is nearly equal to the total amount of auto loan debt and credit card debt combined. There’s little doubt that the easy supply of federal funds is almost completely responsible for the catastrophic rise in student loan debt. As Kevin Williamson recently put it,
If you make a few gazillion dollars available to finance tuition payments with underwriting standards a little bit lower than those of the average pawn shop, you create a lot of potential tuition inflation. Another way of saying this is that if Uncle Stupid puts a trillion bucks on the table, there are enough smart people at Harvard to figure out a way to pick it up.
What’s even more stupid—and expensive—than a mountain of easy money from “Uncle Stupid” is for “Uncle (or Aunt) Stupid” to declare wants or needs a “right.” A parade of democrats—including many of the score-plus running for president—have now decided that education is a “right.” Of course, in a leftist’s mind, if something is a “right” then it almost always should be “free.” And of course, as I noted a few years ago, the quickest and surest way to make things more expensive for most of us is for someone in our government to attempt to make such things “free” for some.

If you think a college education is expensive now, just wait until it’s “free.” Big Education already reaps billions of dollars under the current college scam. If democrats are allowed to make college “free,” the college scam will only grow, and U.S. taxpayers will be swindled out of even more money.

Healthcare in the U.S. is the lesson here. Most of the problems with U.S. health care come down to two issues, and of course, both are the result of Big Government and the foolish idea that healthcare is a “right” and that it should often be “free.” First of all, almost no one knows what anything in healthcare really costs—including the doctors who provide it.

As Dr. David Belk, MD, notes in “The True Cost of Healthcare,”
[U]nlike any other business in America, almost all of the financial transactions in healthcare are hidden from the providers as well as the patients. We order tests, procedures and medications to manage our patients, but very few doctors, or other healthcare providers, have any idea how much any of those things cost.
As an indication of the mystery surrounding health care costs in the U.S., Belk highlights medications:
Anytime you go to a store you expect to see all of the products being sold with their prices plainly displayed. When you go to the checkout, that’s the price you expect to be charged. You also expect to be able to check the price of the same or a comparable product in competing stores so you can shop around. That’s how the free market works.
Now imagine your trip to the grocery store were more like a trip to the pharmacy. As Belk points out,
Imagine what it would be like if a grocery store never displayed the price of anything. And the price you’re charged might be totally different from the price the next customer is charged for the same product. In fact, suppose you couldn’t even pick your own groceries. A grocery list would be handed to you by a food expert and you’d be billed based on your particular ‘grocery plan.’ Eggs might cost you $5, the next person $10 and some poor guy who doesn’t have a grocery plan would have to pay $50 for the same carton. Don’t even think about shopping around.
The first issue with health care costs is a result of the second (and Belk’s analogy brings this out): the manner in which we purchase health care differs greatly from how Americans purchase any other item. The vast majority of Americans with health insurance obtain it through a Third Party Payer System—whether an employer or the government. Of course, under Obamacare, the government also has a large say in employer healthcare plans.

This is not how we purchase homes, automobiles, gas, groceries, entertainment, or even other forms of insurance. As usual, when our free-markets falter, look no further than our government. In 1960, Americans paid over 55% of their medical care costs out of pocket, while the government covered just over 21% of such costs. According to the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) in 2010, for the health care system as a whole, Americans paid only 12% out of pocket. For hospital care, it was only 3%, while 97% was paid by a third party.

NCPA also notes that, “Prior to the advent of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, health care spending never exceeded 6 percent of gross domestic product. Today [2010] it is 17 percent.” In 2019 that number is about 18%. In other words, once Big Government got deep into our healthcare industry, costs significantly increased.

Along with education and healthcare, many democrats are also now campaigning on the notion that Americans have “a right to a home” or “a right to housing” or that “having a decent and safe place to live should be…a basic human right.” According to the Huffington Post, new legislation proposed by Elizabeth Warren would increase annual spending on the National Housing Trust Fund from $200 million to $4.5 billion. That’s a 2150% increase! Of course, this massive increase would be paid for by higher estate taxes on the “super rich.”

Cory Booker wants to commit a staggering $40 billion a year to the Housing Trust Fund. According to Politico, Booker has also proposed a “Baby Bonds” plan that
would help future generations with down payments by establishing a federally funded savings account with $1,000 for every American child at birth, with future government contributions determined by income. According to Booker’s staff, that plan would give 45 percent of account holders sufficient funding for a 20 percent down payment on the national median starter home.
According to Politico, this plan would cost $134 billion a year—but almost certainly would cost significantly more—and would be paid for “by raising the estate tax and closing ‘loopholes’ that benefit the wealthy.” Of course, as with education and healthcare, a vast increase of taxpayer funds into the housing industry will do nothing to make things more “affordable.”

On the contrary, as we’ve seen with education and healthcare, the more government involvement with housing, the more expensive housing will become. This is almost always true of anything we should be responsible for purchasing for ourselves, but that politicians have declared a “right,” and certainly true of anything politicians want to make “free.”

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2019, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com