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Saturday, August 31, 2019

Rejection of Moral Absolutes Continues to Plague the Modern Left

If death—anyone’s death—brings you joy, you should intently re-examine your worldview. Even the just execution of a mass murderer—which I support in every case—should not bring anyone joy. As a Christian, I often find myself opposed—spiritually, politically, and otherwise—to those outside of my faith. However, I take no joy in anyone’s death, especially those outside of my faith. Christianity teaches that “each one of us will give an account of himself to God.” Any death that results in eternal separation from God is always particularly tragic.

However, for those who have put their faith in the things of this world, who are determined to rule their own world, death usually has no such significance. Thus, for such people, like the death of an “inconvenient” child, the death of an enemy is often something to celebrate. The most recent case in point is the death of the wealthy philanthropist David Koch. After Mr. Koch died, many on the left again found themselves in a celebratory mood. We shouldn’t be surprised that those who engage in or promote the evil “shout-your-abortion!” movement would celebrate the death of a political enemy.

Nor should we be surprised that the hate-filled American left would promise political—and perhaps other forms of—apocalypse if President Trump gets the opportunity to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with someone who will actually follow the Constitution. Liberals dancing with joy over the death of Mr. Koch were soon brought back to earth with the same-day news that Justice Ginsburg underwent a fresh round of treatment for a cancerous tumor on her pancreas.

Despite our political, legal, and moral differences, I admire Justice Ginsburg for her strength and determination to do her job. As another recently noted, she has survived pancreatic cancer twice, lung cancer once, and colon cancer once. And she’s 86 years old. Many Americans—no matter their political stripes—would be very interested in getting the names of her oncologists.

In an interesting bit of irony probably lost on Justice Ginsburg and her like-minded ideologues, if the U.S. had Medicare-for-all, or some other version of single-payer healthcare—a dream of the American left—almost certainly Mrs. Ginsburg would’ve long ago departed this world. Thank God for the U.S. medical industry, right libs? (The U.S. has the world’s best cancer survival rates.)

In their foolish efforts to create “heaven on earth”—Utopia—modern liberals have often relied on the courts to give them what they could not otherwise gain by actually winning elections and passing legislation. Of course, this is why the left in the mainstream media—I repeat myself—and the U.S. Senate engaged in media malpractice and political treachery in their evil efforts to derail the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.

Many have implied that if President Trump has the opportunity to name Ginsgurg’s replacement, the battle that would erupt would make the Kavanaugh confirmation look like the Mayberry City Council debate on whether to hold a Founder’s Day parade. This shouldn’t be the case—because, as long as Senate republicans have his back, there is simply nothing democrats can do to stop President Trump from nominating and having confirmed any judge he wishes.

However, today’s Democrat Party is as far from rational as they are from moral—which is totally unsurprising as those two extremes often go hand-in-hand. Even more so than the vengeful tweets over a dead philanthropist or the angry threats over a potential Supreme Court vacancy, few things illustrate this as well as the gender debate the modern left insists we have.

After (frequently) pointing out—and being far from alone—that the stupid, evil notion of “gender fluidity” most harms females—including young girls—I keep thinking that the left will soon abandon this wickedness. Silly me. I forget how blindly stupid those corrupted by evil can be.

Recently the GOP candidate in Louisiana’s governor’s race, Ralph Abraham, made headlinesheadlines!—because he ran a 30 second ad that included the phrase “as a doctor, I can assure you, there are only two genders.” They were so aghast at MSNBC that host Chris Jansing declared that Abraham’s comments were “incendiary.” According to Newsbusters, Jansing’s guest—because, of course, the left must have their “experts” explain to us why there are not only two genders—went even further and said that to declare that there are only two genders is now “despicable” and “un-American.”

In other words, a statement that, just a few years ago, the vast majority of us would’ve considered so obvious that it was patronizing is now “incendiary” and “despicable.” Orwell was indeed a prophet.

Thus, it should come as little surprise that those who can’t tell the difference between who is a male and who is a female would choose to fight crime with euphemisms, still believes that “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!” really happened, still thinks that man-made climate change is a real problem with a political solution, believes that widespread institutional racism still exists in America, and would conclude that “Seattle Has Figured Out How to End the War on Drugs.”

The latter bit of editorial “brilliance” was recently proffered by The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristoff. I guess Kristoff missed the fact that Seattle is Dying largely because of rampant drug abuse (and because, of course, “liberalism is killing it”). If he truly didn’t know this before, he does now because many of the 1300+ comments following his piece told him as much. Many of the comments were from Seattle residents.

SKM from Seattle wrote,
I live here and you don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about. Downtown Seattle is a classic example of when inmates run the asylum. Downtown Seattle frequently feels like “Night of the Living Dead.” Quality of life issues here are outright dismissed, all in an effort to help drug addicted zombies that walk our streets. Sleeping in doorways, public defecation/urination, shooting up right in the open, blatant drug dealing w/ out any fear of incrimination, verbal abuse, etc. I can more easily get a summons for jaywalking here than dealing Fentanyl.
Another Seattle resident, “robofaust,” added,
As a 26 year resident of Seattle (and a x2 time voter for Ralph Nader and Obama), I couldn't disagree more. This city is littered with homeless drug addicts. Seattle’s choice to “decriminalize homelessness” is just another term for enabling the self-destruction of thousands of people… 
Every few days I come across people who are passed out, or worse yet, who are actively shooting up, at the foot of my home. Petty crime is rampant, and it is no longer possible to get the police to respond to a stolen bicycle or smashed car windows… 
The city’s drug addicts live in a parallel subculture that is disconnected from the lives of the locals who tolerate it in the name of social virtue. This subculture is a law unto itself, and is rife with predators who prey on the weak with violence, theft, and sexual abuse… 
There will be political reckoning in the city for this, sooner or later. Mr. Kristof’s analysis is deeply flawed.
In not just Seattle, but all over America, liberals have become “a law unto themselves.” Thus, the nastiness in Seattle is only the tip of the iceberg. Liberals think that Seattle is doing a good job with criminal drug users, that there are more than two genders, that marriage is whatever we define it to be, that killing the unborn is merely a “choice,” and so on, because the left in America long ago abandoned the idea that some things are settled for all time.

I certainly hope there is soon a political reckoning. There will certainly be a spiritual one.

(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, August 12, 2019

Larry Burkett Was Right--About A Lot of Things

If you remember the late, great financial teacher Larry Burkett, your life is likely the better for it. I worked with Larry for several years in his Gainesville, Georgia headquarters of Christian Financial Concepts (and continued to work for the organization from home for many years after my children started coming along). In my mind, he ranks right up there with some of our Founding Fathers in his wisdom, love for this country, and amazing foresight in economic and political issues. He even left this world on the same patriotic day as John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe—on Independence Day, 2003, at the young age of 63. His teachings, which were straight from Scripture, changed my life and bent the twig for my children and hopefully future generations.

The department in which I worked was tasked with answering constituents’ financial questions, so I had to be quite the student of Larry Burkett. In preparation for answering a certain e-mail, I had the opportunity to skim through the pages of Larry’s 1991 best seller, The Coming Economic Earthquake. The book was updated in 1994 to reflect the happenings of the Clinton era, and it’s amazing how accurate Larry was in his foresight of what was coming for our economy and for the nation, in general. He touched on many topics in the book, but some jumped out at me as especially relevant for today.

In light of the battles over the Common Core agenda that was shoved down the nation’s collective throat, Larry said, “Check out the curriculum being taught in your local schools and see if it is anti-free-market. It would shock most Americans to realize that a great deal of the economic information being fed their children in elementary schools, high schools, and especially state universities is blatantly socialistic, if not openly communistic.”

He went on,
The only place that communism still seems to flourish is in the American classroom. It is often labeled ‘socialism’ but, in reality, it is the same doctrine that was taught in the Soviet Union prior to the communism collapse: Government is the protector of the downtrodden; capitalism is inherently evil; people deserve decent incomes, regardless of their desire to work or not; and last, the government is a better purveyor of the nation’s resources than the wage earners are.
Sound familiar? The very issues that Larry saw as major problems 25 years ago have escalated at an alarming rate.

The government takeover of health care that was attempted during the Clinton administration was delayed only a few years until Obama came into power and had the political backing to force it onto the nation. Larry had great wisdom and forethought in this matter: “Let me say that if the federal government is allowed to take control of health care, which represents approximately 14 percent of our total economy, it will be the stake in the heart of our free enterprise system. The government cannot solve our health care problems—it is the problem!”

Larry continued,
Only twelve cents of every government dollar spent on health care now actually reaches a patient. It is a grossly inefficient system. There are two old sayings in Washington that describe what will happen to health care as soon as the political system gains control of that area too: ‘A camel is a horse designed by a government committee,’ and ‘An elephant is a mouse designed to government specifications.’
Wow. If only we had heeded his warning, maybe we wouldn’t be facing the disastrous effects of the government hijacking of our health care system.

Regarding abortion coverage, Larry said, “I rather suspect that, if abortion is accepted as a ‘necessary benefit,’ there would be heavy pressure put on those who oppose abortion to participate or be subjected to financial penalties.” Isn’t this exactly what we’re seeing today? Ministries and faith-based companies (Hobby Lobby and James Dobson’s Family Talk are some of the most recognizable) have been forced to sue the federal government over the abortion mandate in Obamacare. Larry added,
Christians will have to take a stand on this issue, regardless of the consequences. We should have acted with one voice when the Supreme Court decided that somehow an unborn human has no rights. Once abortion is funded through a national health care plan, the number of abortions will likely escalate. God’s people must wake up to this offense now! There is no nation that will survive God’s wrath for long, if and when it decides to kill its young (and old).
When writing The Coming Economic Earthquake, Larry reported that at the current rate of growth, the national debt would swell to $8.7 trillion by the year 2004. Even Larry couldn’t anticipate the rate of reckless spending by the most liberal president in the history of our nation--Barack Obama. Thanks to democrats and republicans alike, I believe Larry would be utterly shocked to know that the national debt is now nearly three times his predicted 2004 level, and it is higher than the Gross Domestic Product of our entire nation.

Writing about the forecasted 2004 national debt of $8.7 trillion, Larry said,
There has never been anything approaching this level of debt funding in the history of mankind in so short a period of time, even on a percentage basis. The effects of this will be felt throughout the U.S. and ultimately the world’s economies…..Either the government will take the necessary steps to control the budget and reduce the deficits drastically, or they will resort to monetizing the debt by printing massive amounts of new currency.
We know which option our leaders chose.

Larry went on to say that,
Logic and common sense seem to play small parts in our present society….The answer [to these and all other issues] is found in God’s Word. All of these things are but symptoms. The real problem is that we have removed God from the decision-making process in America today. When any nation does this, evil will prosper. This is not the fault of the politicians; they are responding to the wishes of the most vocal groups. It is that the unprincipled people around us seem to be more committed to their agenda than the true ‘moral majority’ is to theirs.
Larry urged us to get involved in the political process and the issues of the day so that we could make a difference for the better. I would add that if we want to leave this great nation intact for our children and grandchildren, we have no choice but to hold our leaders accountable for their foolish decisions and force them to make changes that will lead us back to the founding principles that made us exceptional.

Some wise thoughts that Larry left us:
The one certainty is that God is still in control no matter what happens….However, knowing that God is in control does not remove our responsibility to do everything possible to change what is happening or to prepare ourselves for some difficult times. As Proverbs 16:9 says, ‘The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.’ 
We are to witness to those around us that God is sufficient in all things….God desires followers who will serve Him regardless of the costs. Adversity seems to strengthen us, whereas prosperity tends to weaken us. As the Prophet said in Proverbs 30:8-9, ‘Keep deception and lies far from me, give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is my portion, lest I be full and deny Thee and say, “Who is the Lord?” or lest I be in want and steal, and profane the name of my God.’
Larry Burkett left this earth entirely too soon. We need his wisdom now more than ever.

Michelle Thomas is a Christ follower, wife to Trevor Thomas, and homeschooling mom of four. Her books include a devotional for moms, Lord, I Need You, a book about her grief journey, Through Deep Waters, and a chronicle of their financial journey, Debt-Free Living in a Debt-Filled World. Her website is KingdomCrossing.com, and her email is michelle@kingdomcrossing.com.

Monday, August 5, 2019

Baltimore Needs Revival, Not More “Reparations”

To be fair, as far as I know, no one has (yet) directly blamed the blight of Baltimore on slavery and the lack of reparations. However, one could consider the billions trillions of dollars in taxpayer funds already spent on places like Baltimore a form of reparations. In that case, it should be clear that more money from the government is not going to fix places like Baltimore.

Ever since Lyndon Johnson and the Democrat Party gave us the infamous promises of the “Great Society”—which was supposed to result in “the total elimination of poverty and racial injustice”—for decades, liberals across the U.S. have promised minorities—especially black Americans—that if they would only vote for democrats, life would be better. Fifty-five years, dozens of welfare programs, and $20-plus trillion later, modern democrats are still making the same empty promises. Even Charles Barkley sees the folly of this.

Lyndon Johnson’s famous speech touting the Great Society was the commencement address at the University of Michigan in May of 1964. It was before a massive audience of about 90,000 people. The Michigan Quarterly Review published the text of the speech. The tagline at the top of the page boldly declared the purpose of the Great Society: “To Prevent an Ugly America.”

Whether we’re talking about Baltimore, Detroit, Seattle, the homeless-lined streets of Los Angeles, the poop-filled streets of San Francisco, or the violent streets of Antifa-plagued Portland, I think everyone in his right mind can agree on how “ugly” much of America still remains—especially urban America.

What’s more, after all those programs and all that money, many U.S. cities are in much worse condition than before the Great Society was ever launched. As Ellie Bufkin—a former resident of Baltimore who refers to the city as her “cherished hometown”—recently and shockingly noted at The Federalist, “Baltimore’s homicide rate is so high that under current U.S. asylum laws, the residents could qualify for refugee status in the United States.” In other words, like so many other U.S. municipalities dominated by decades of democrat rule, Baltimore currently qualifies as one of the world’s “crapholes.”

As most well know, the Great Society gave us the so-called “War on Poverty.” More so than any other “conflict” in which the U.S. has been involved, the War on Poverty has, to a great extent, been an “abject failure.” As Edwin Feulner at The Heritage Foundation put it in 2014,
[T]he War on Poverty is an abject failure. As social critic Irving Kristol has observed, “the welfare state came gradually to be seen less as a helping hand to those in need, a ‘safety net,’ and more as a communal exercise in compassion toward an ever-expanding portion of the population.”
And yes, as Baltimore well illustrates, this “war” has had its casualties—including the loss of human life. As was reported last year, the vast majority of murders in the U.S. occur in a very small portion of the country. More than half of all murders in the U.S. occurred within just two percent of the counties. Over two-thirds (68 percent) of the murders in America occurred within only five percent of the counties.

Almost all of these counties are in large urban areas, where federal funds have flowed like lies from a liberal and where democrats have had virtually unhindered political rule for decades. As was noted a few years ago—and remains the case today—virtually all of the most dangerous cities in the U.S. have been dominated by democrats.

This danger has especially impacted the black community. Shockingly, the CDC reveals that for U.S. black males ages 15 to 34 the leading cause of death is homicide. What’s more, for American black males who die between the ages of 15 and 24, half of such deaths are from homicide. As has been often reported (but also often ignored), the vast majority (over 90%) of these homicides are the result of black-on-black violence.

Though one would never know it from the words of the race pimps that are so common among the left-wing media and the Democrat Party, such violence is of far more concern than any so-called systemic “racism” among the police. A recent study—that hasn’t received near the publicity it should have—reveals that the narrative that “racist” police are disproportionately killing black Americans to be the lie that many of us already knew it to be.

In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the University of Maryland and Michigan State University concluded:
We did not find evidence for anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparity in the police use of force across all shootings, and, if anything, found anti-White disparities when controlling for race-specific crime.
In other words, the riots we’ve seen in Baltimore, Ferguson, and the like are little more than “ugly” political theater fueled by lies from the left.

Nothing the modern left has to offer is going fix places like Baltimore. This is because what’s truly ailing Baltimore (and the like) defies a political solution, and the left is about little more than politics.

Like so many other dirty, crime-ridden areas, one of the biggest problems—if not the biggest problem—is the breakdown of the family. Along with never being able to fix such a problem, much to the contrary, the politics of the left is complicit in the destruction of the family in urban America. As The Heritage Foundation also notes,
The War on Poverty created negative incentives. Instead of promoting the growth of healthy families, the welfare system discouraged them. A single mother could receive larger payments from Uncle Sam by remaining single than by marrying the father of her child.

Over time, many fatherless children entered the world. The welfare checks showed up month after month, regardless of how their parents spent their days. As these boys and girls grew up without fathers around, they came to regard such households as natural. The social safety net, designed to be a temporary help to the people in need, instead kept them trapped in government dependency.
To end this dependency on government—on democrats—urban America must repent and return to the truth when it comes to marriage, the family, and the like. They must stop killing the unborn and stop listening to the lies of the left. To borrow from the deceived Marianne Williamson, urban America needs to awaken from their “dark days” and come to the light. For this, they need a revival.

(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, August 4, 2019

The Bible's Deborah vs. the Democrats' "Squad"

My family and I are participating with our church in reading through the Old Testament this year—a campaign called “OT19.” The last couple of weeks, we’ve been in the book of Judges. It has been a good refresher for me of the destructive pattern the Israelites developed after they wandered in the desert for 40 years and finally settled in the Promised Land. They would repeatedly disobey God, find themselves oppressed by their enemies, repent, and then come back to Him under the leadership of one of His people (a “judge”), serving Him faithfully for a few years. Then the cycle of disobedience would start again.

We are told in Judges 2:18-19,
Whenever the Lord raised up a judge for them, he was with the judge and saved them out of the hands of their enemies as long as the judge lived; for the Lord had compassion on them as they groaned under those who oppressed and afflicted them. But when the judge died, the people returned to ways even more corrupt than those of their fathers, following other gods and serving and worshipping them. They refused to give up their evil practices and stubborn ways.
It is in this context that we learn about an unusual leader that God chose during that time. Chapter 4 introduces us to the prophetess and judge, Deborah, wife of Lappidoth. I know that I’ve read the account of Deborah several times in years past, but I was particularly enthralled with her story this time, perhaps because of all of the hullabaloo in the media surrounding “women’s rights” and the “Me Too” movement.

The Israelites had been oppressed for 20 years when Deborah was first mentioned, and the Lord heard their cries for help. From what I understand, Deborah was the leader of the Israelites during that time. These were the days before Israel had a king. She heard disputes between the people and made decisions that affected them, but more impressive was that she was the military commander of the people. I’m amazed by that. It might be an indication of the deficit of leadership qualities among the males in the community at that time, but nevertheless, God raised up a female to lead His people for several decades.

The Israelites were living in bondage to the people of Canaan, and the Lord gave them instructions through Deborah to take 10,000 men and go into battle against their enemies. Deborah went with them into battle, and the Lord gave His people victory under the leadership of a woman. Another cool twist is that the Canaanite king was actually killed by another woman—Jael—a housewife! After this victory, God’s people lived in peace for 40 years. It was only when Deborah died that the people rebelled and became oppressed by their enemies once again.

Now let’s contrast the wise, godly, selfless, servant-leader who “arose as a mother in Israel,” Deborah, with some of our prominent female “leaders” of today. I’m quite baffled by the four freshman congresswomen who call themselves “The Squad.” All four of these women use race-baiting, climate alarmism, and seemingly continuous promises of free stuff to try to win voters to their way of thinking. In addition, Ilhan Omar, AOC, and Rashida Tlaib have regularly demonstrated openly hostile behavior toward Jews and the nation of Israel. Ayanna Pressley seems to believe that the only legitimate black voices are those that come from the political left. They are all pro-abortion, pro-socialism, pro-open borders, anti-gun, anti-Capitalism, anti-marriage, anti-God earth worshippers.

These four are so outside of the mainstream of the nation that I can’t figure out how they have gained the attention that they have. Maybe it’s similar to when someone has a large mole on her face or food between his teeth; you don’t mean to look but just can’t help yourself because you’re embarrassed for the person. That’s kind of how I feel about “The Squad.” As people here in Georgia like to say, “Bless their hearts!”

Matt Mackowiak of The Washington Times called them “a rabid pack of hyperliberal freshmen who are pushing the Democratic conference toward socialism.” Abraham H. Miller said, “The Squad hates this country; their only political motivation is to destroy it. The color of their skin is only important because they choose to hide behind it and make it an issue.” Senator Lindsey Graham said, “We all know that AOC and this crowd are a bunch of communists.” And Mark Levin said,
The evidence is overwhelming that these women are anti-Semite bigots and they don’t hide it. They don’t hide it. The BDS movement, their constant references to Hitler and the Third Reich and concentration camps, they have no knowledge of history. They’ve never visited these sites.
I can’t pretend to understand what makes these women tick, other than the age-old heart disease called sin. What I do know is that their political agenda could not possibly be much further from God’s heart. He values attributes like those that Deborah displayed: courage, integrity, honesty, humility, kindness, wisdom, righteousness, and “the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight” (1 Peter 3:4). “The Squad” would do well to shut their mouths, repent, and endeavor to be more like Deborah.

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.