Hillary Clinton (again) Disqualifies Herself as Commander-in-Chief

(And for that matter, any elected office whatsoever.)

As if we need even more evidence, yesterday Hillary again proved herself incompetent when it comes to dealing with issues of national security, radical Islam, or even Islam in general. In a campaign speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City yesterday, Clinton went to near comical lengths (of course, nothing about liberalism and our nation's security is very funny) to avoid mentioning "Islam" with "terror" or "terrorism."

"Let’s be clear," Clinton said, "Islam is not our adversary. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people, and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism." Saying Muslims have nothing to do with terrorism is like saying the Clinton's have nothing to do with corrupt political fundraising.

According to the UK Daily Mail, she even mocked Republicans over the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism." To avoid the use of "Islam," Clinton repeatedly used the phrase "‘radical jihadism." Take note of the fact that she assumes that many of us are too stupid to link "jihadism" with Islam. What she's really doing, evidently being blind to how foolish it makes her appear (liberals can't seem to help themselves), is saying, "Look at me! I refuse to say 'Islam' when I talk about terrorism! See how tolerant I am!" And, of course, "Vote for me!"

A summary of the rest of her remarks:

Blaming ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ for vicious attacks of the sort that killed 129 people last Friday in Paris, she said, ‘isn’t just a distraction.’ Affiliating them with a religion ‘gives these criminals, these murderers, more standing than they deserve.’

In the end, Clinton insisted, the Obama administration enjoyed some success by decoupling its strategy to defeat al-Qaeda from its religious underpinnings.

‘Our priority should be how to fight the enemy,’ she said. ‘In the end it didn’t matter what kind of terrorist we called [Osama] bin Laden. It mattered that we killed bin Laden.’

She also backed the president’s call for an America open to Syrian refugees, saying that the United States can’t ‘turn our backs on those in need.’

Clinton particularly warned against ‘discriminating against Muslims,’ saying that ‘many of these refugees are fleeing the same terrorists who threaten us.’

I wonder if she would say the same of Christians and Christianity. Of course, one doesn't need to wonder long. Earlier this year, to support her "radical" views on the "right" men and women have to kill children in the womb, she did not hesitate to compare pro-life republicans to terrorist groups.

Recently, Ravi Zacharias nicely summed up the propaganda offered up by Clinton and her liberal ilk when it comes to Islam and terror:

"The masquerade is on and it is deadly. We watch hundreds die. We hear speeches full of distortions; we tolerate deceit and even reward it. Some in power and in the public eye whitewash the reality while the blood of the murdered cries out from the ground. Our children and grandchildren will inherit the whirlwind because our media pundits and misguided speech-makers have sown to the wind by trading in lives for their power."

As I summarized earlier this year, there is not a greater threat to life, liberty, and happiness in the world today than liberalism and Islam. Clinton again reminds us why.

Copyright 2015, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

The Roots of American Prosperity

(Another (unedited) excerpt from my forthcoming book.)

Ask most Americans what was the most important document produced in 1776 and almost no one would answer with Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (more commonly known as The Wealth of Nations). However, some would argue that Smith’s work had more of a global impact than even the Declaration of Independence.

The first edition of The Wealth of Nations sold out in six months. It would have an almost immediate impact on government financial policy, and is considered by many to be the most important treatise on economics ever written. Adam Smith is often called the “Founding Father” of capitalism.

American Founders soon recognized the importance of The Wealth of Nations when it came to economics and sound fiscal policy. Writing to John Norvell in 1807, Thomas Jefferson said that on “the subjects of money & commerce, Smith's Wealth of Nations is the best book to be read.” The Wealth of Nations is a collection of five books and is widely considered the world’s earliest, most comprehensive defense of a free-market economy.

Given the revival, and Revolution in America during the 18th century, and the given the amazing natural resources of America, the opportunity for incredible economic growth in the new United States was present from our founding. And as author W. Cleon Skousen put it in The 5,000 Year Leap, Smith’s doctrines of free-market economics “fit into the thinking and experiences of the Founders like a hand in a glove.”

As Skousen also points outs, the U.S. was the first nation on earth of any size or consequence “to undertake the structuring of a whole national economy on the basis of natural law and the free-market concept described by Adam Smith.”

Natural Law, or “[The] Law of Nature,” wrote English philosopher John Locke (who profoundly influenced our Founders), “stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other men’s actions must…be conformable to the Law of Nature, i.e. to the will of God…”

“True law,” as Cicero called it, is the “one eternal and unchangeable law [that] will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is God, over us all, for he is the author of this law…”

Blackstone declared in his presuppositional basis for law that, “These laws laid down by God are the eternal immutable laws of good and evil…This law of nature dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this…”

C.S. Lewis concludes that, “Natural Law or Traditional Morality [whatever one chooses to call it]…is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgments. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained.”

Throughout the early colonies, the incorporation of Natural (or “Divine”) Law was prevalent. As noted earlier, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (the first constitution written in America), as well as similar documents in Rhode Island and New Haven, specifically mentioned that their civil law rested upon “the rule of the word of God,” or “all those perfect and most absolute laws of His.”

References to, not vague religious babble, but specific biblical texts, such as the Ten Commandments, can be found in the civil law of every original U.S. Colony. It is a fact of history that throughout our pre-Colonial, Colonial, Revolutionary period and beyond, America’s lawmakers and laws were steeped in Natural Law.

When Jefferson wrote of the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” he was borrowing from Lord Bolingbroke, of whom Jefferson was a student. In a famous letter to Alexander Pope, Bolingbroke writes, “You will find that it is the modest, not the presumptuous enquirer, who makes a real, and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows nature, and nature’s God; that is, he follows God in his works, and in his word.”

Thus we see that, belief and acceptance of Natural Law, as understood by America’s founders, is exactly in line with what Scripture reveals. As Paul writes in Romans, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse (Rom. 1:18-20).”

With God’s laws as the foundation for government, and with God’s law written on the hearts of so many Americans, and with a thirst for liberty, a free-market capitalistic society was simply the logical and right direction for the United States of America. In How Christianity Created Capitalism, philosopher Michael Novak writes, “It was the church more than any other agency, writes historian Randall Collins, that put in place what Weber called the preconditions of capitalism: the rule of law and a bureaucracy for resolving disputes rationally; a specialized and mobile labor force; the institutional permanence that allows for transgenerational investment and sustained intellectual and physical efforts, together with the accumulation of long-term capital; and a zest for discovery, enterprise, wealth creation, and new undertakings.”

In other words, America did not become, and for well over a century now, remain the most prosperous nation on earth merely by the blind forces of unfettered capitalism. The Christianity practiced by millions of Americans, and the Christian principles that formed the foundation of our laws and government produced a free, moral (but not perfect), and capitalistic society unlike anything the world has ever known. Thus, a prosperity like the world has never seen resulted.

Copyright 2015, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

The World Again Taught a Hard Lesson on Islam and Liberalism

Well over 100 are dead in Paris, France this evening as Islamic terrorists again decided to show the world the "cost of crossing the devoted." In coordinated attacks across various locations in Paris, Muslim gunmen armed with explosives and AK-47s slaughtered defenseless Paris civilians.

Just as was the case when the same such Islamic gunmen attacked the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, tragically, Parisians again get to see what results when a largely liberal, unarmed populace blindly embraces Islam.

The world is full of false religions--Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and so on--and deceptive ideologies--communism, socialism, secularism, liberalism, and the like. However, and again, speaking of the world at large, there's nothing today more dangerous to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness than liberalism and Islam.

Ultimately, the battle here will not be won by soldiers or politicians, with guns or legislation. Of course, such things can be valuable, and should not be ignored, but as the Apostle Paul instructs us, "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm."

May the love, truth, power, mercy, and grace, of the Lord Jesus Christ be revealed in this wicked tragedy.

Copyright 2015, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is Bad for All Americans

Much of the left has always hated men like Ben Carson, but now that he has the lead in the Real Clear Politics polling average (as of this writing) for the republican presidential nomination, their desire to tear him down has intensified. With a recent column in Time magazine entitled Ben Carson is Terrible for Black Americans, NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar decided to weigh in.

Sounding like a bad Elaine Benes date, Abdul-Jabbar begins his piece by asking and answering his own question—twice. He concludes that a Carson presidency would “be an unmitigated disaster.” I suppose that with record numbers of Americans on welfare, record numbers of Americans not working, accumulating more federal debt than every other U.S. president combined, a perverse redefinition of marriage, granting a “God bless you” to killers of children in the womb, promoting a culture of lawlessness, inspiring hostility toward U.S. law enforcement, encouraging the invasion through our southern border, and on top of all of that, ruining school lunches for millions of American children, for Mr. Abdul-Jabbar, the last seven years constitutes something other than an “unmitigated disaster.”

Of course, such blindness and duplicity concerning the last seven years is enough to dismiss Abdul-Jabbar’s opinion as nothing more than the ramblings of a left-wing lunatic. However, his hit-piece on Carson is filled with hare-brained liberal blather and provides us with an abundance of evidence that Kareem should stick to NBA analysis instead of presidential politics.

Abdul-Jabbar says that Carson’s “repressive, muddled and pious policies and opinions often run against our Constitution.” As so often is the case with liberals, he discusses none of Carson’s specific policies or opinions. And it’s very interesting that a follower of Islam—as is Abdul-Jabbar—is so concerned with the Constitutionality of Dr. Carson’s policies and opinions. As I noted earlier this year, few things in the world are more repressive than Islam and liberalism, yet Mr. Abdul-Jabbar is an eager devotee of both.

Next Abdul-Jabbar, who gained both fame and fortune only because he was 7’2” tall and very talented with a basketball, calls into question Dr. Carson’s thinking on matters of science. Carson, a graduate of Yale and the University of Michigan Medical School, and a world-renowned neurosurgeon, draws the wrath of liberals like Abdul-Jabbar because he doesn’t toe the progressive line when it comes to Darwinian evolution, homosexuality, global warming, and the like. (Of course, as is often the case, Abdul-Jabbar totally avoids the science of life in the womb.)

Not once, but twice Abdul-Jabbar references the totally debunked “97% scientific consensus” canard when it comes to man-made global warming. He warns that Carson’s “head-in-the-sand” thinking on the climate could prove “disastrous” when it comes to the very “survival”—“survival” mind you—of the United States and the world. Amazing.

For decades, the willful moral and scientific blindness exhibited by American liberals—in other words, “head-in-the-sand” thinking—has directly led to the wanton destruction of tens-of-millions of American (hundreds-of-millions worldwide) in the womb. Likewise, for decades liberals have ignored the clear science and morality when it comes to homosexuality, marriage, and the family. Yet Dr. Carson, and the tens-of-millions of us who largely share his worldview, are the dangerous “anti-science” theocrats America should fear.

Generations of Americans have suffered horribly as the rotten fruit of liberalism has corrupted sound sexual morality and the family model that God gave to us. None in the U.S. have suffered more under such wicked perversions than have black Americans. How tragically ironic that a so-called champion of blacks in America would turn his heart and mind from such misery. It goes to show the depths of the corrupting power of liberalism.

Abdul-Jabbar also makes time to quote the United Nations and the APA, promote Obamacare, attack President George W. Bush, and lament the “institutional racism” that’s supposedly still so prevalent in the U.S.

The last paragraph of Abdul-Jabbar’s piece contains a sentence that provides us with complete clarity when it comes to politics and the modern liberal mind. He writes, “We are always striving to do better for our people by fulfilling the promise of a democratic Eden here and now.”

There is perhaps nothing that sums up modern liberalism more clearly than its dangerous pursuit of utopia. Virtually every perverse liberal policy today—their lust to maintain the “right” to kill children in the womb, their desire to destroy marriage and the family, their lust for all things homosexual, their big government economic policies and hatred of capitalism, their lust for the environment and hatred of fossil fuels, their hatred of guns and gun rights, and so on—stems from the Darwinian notion that this life is all that we have, and everything imaginable must be done in order to fill it with as much pleasure as possible.

Ben Carson’s conservatism, or rather conservatism in general—especially Christian conservatism—stands in the way of such utopian pursuits. This is why so many liberals put so much effort and energy (and anger and deception) into elections. For the most part, the hope of liberals lies only in what they can accomplish in this world. They’ve made a god of government. “In government they trust.”

As Mark Levin wrote in Ameritopia, according to modern liberalism, “A heavenly society is said to be within reach if only the individual surrenders more of his liberty and being for the general good, meaning the good as prescribed by the state.” And we all have seen “the good” that results from the edicts put forth by godless secular regimes.

Dr. Ben Carson is not bad for black Americans; he is bad for liberalism, which is good for America. It’s the liberalism preached and promoted by likes of Abdul-Jabbar that’s bad for the country.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2015, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

A Good Election Night for Conservatives

Whether gubernatorial races, or ballot measures on the moral issues, last night was a very good election night for conservatives across America.

In Kentucky, by a margin of 53-44, Republican Matt Bevin easily defeated his Democrat challenger, Attorney General Jack Conway. What makes this result most interesting is that most political experts had given the TEA Party favorite Bevin little chance of winning. Conway's Real Clear Politics ending poll advantage was +3, with no polls in Bevin's favor. As WSB's Jamie Dupree notes, all of the polling trends were in Conway's favor.

Dupree attributes Bevin's win to a recent ad that tied the Democrat Conway to President Obama:

Likewise, Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post notes the same video, and says that Bevin, who "wasn't a very good candidate," (Cillizza's a liberal and a regular on MSNBC) has Barack Obama to thank for his win. An interesting side note to Bevin's big win: his running mate, the GOP candidate for lieutenant governor, Jenean Hampton (also a TEA Party favorite), is the first black elected to statewide office in Kentucky history.

With little real opposition, Mississippi's Republican Governor Phil Bryant easily won a second term.

In a stiff rebuke to Democrat Governor Terry McAuliffe, Virginia Republicans held onto all of their state senate seats, and maintained their senate majority. The GOP dominates the Virginia House, and McAuliffe and the Democrats spent millions attempting to turn the senate.

By a nearly two-to-one margin (65-35), Ohio voters overwhelmingly rejected a ballot initiative that would have legalized recreational marijuana. 

Similarly, in liberal Houston (they have a lesbian mayor), the electorate soundly rejected the foolishly misnamed "Equal Rights Ordinance." The ordinance, which was championed by Mayor Annise Parker--did I mention that she's a lesbian?--would have allowed people to use restrooms, showers and other public accommodations based on their "gender identity," and not their biological sex. In other words, people could've simply walked into any restroom or bathhouse they so desired.

The liberals on Houston's council had, by an 11-6 vote, passed the law in May of 2014. Through the efforts of conservatives, the Texas Supreme Court ordered the law repealed or placed on the ballot. If you recall, it was this perverse law which led to Mayor Parker attempting to subpoena sermons and the like by Houston area pastors who spoke out against the law and homosexuality in general. 

As I've said before, whatever the outcome of any election, Christians should never be too elated or too downtrodden. Politics is a realm occupied by men and women, who will almost certainly let us down. This is not to say that Christians should not be involved in, or concerned with, politics. We most certainly should. However, we must live knowing that our hope is not in any individual or institution in this world. As S.M. Lockridge put it when it comes to the One Christians serve, "You can't impeach Him, and He's not going to resign." 

Copyright 2015, Trevor Grant Thomas

At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.

www.trevorgrantthomas.com

Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World

tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com