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Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Apologetics/Religion Headline Archives (2019)

For the most part, the articles/columns linked below appear in chronological order, beginning with the earliest.

2019:

Previous Apologetics/Religion headline archives are contained in a post at the end of each year and linked below:


20182017201620152014201320122011201020092008

Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Richard Jewell and Donald Trump: Both Victims of a Corrupt Media, Academia, and FBI

I still vividly recall watching the live announcement in September of 1990 by the International Olympic Committee awarding the Centennial Olympic Games (held in the summer of 1996) to the city of Atlanta. As the boisterous cheers after the initial announcement demonstrated, much of the whole state of Georgia was giddy with excitement. From Gainesville to Savannah, Olympic venues were built or otherwise prepared all over the state, and Georgia comedian Jeff Foxworthy promised the world that the Georgia Olympics would have its own distinct southern flavor.

I’m not much of a fan of the Olympics, so I didn’t get caught up in the hoopla. Instead of hosting the Olympics, I would’ve much preferred to see the 1990s Atlanta Braves win the World Series. I didn’t attend one Olympic event, and I did my best to avoid the Olympic crowds and traffic. Instead of the games, like many other Americans, what I most recall from that summer was the Olympic Park bombing and the ugly efforts of the media, law enforcement, et al that followed.

Just after 1 a.m., on July 27, 1996, an ALICE pack stuffed with three pipe bombs and numerous three-inch masonry nails—the total weight being more than 40 pounds—exploded. The blast killed one person and injured more than one hundred. The casualties would’ve been much worse if not for the efforts of AT&T security guard, Richard Jewell.

If you had forgotten about or were never very familiar with Jewell’s story, with the publicity surrounding Clint Eastwood’s film Richard Jewell, you probably now recall at least something about one of the ugliest events in modern American history. Eastwood’s film is based on the Vanity Fair piece published in February of 1997, American Nightmare: The Ballad of Richard Jewell.

As the Vanity Fair piece and Richard Jewell both reveal, while on duty just after midnight on July 27, 1996, Jewell noticed several raucous drunks littering the area he was guarding. While dealing with the drunks, Jewell noticed the ALICE pack and alerted the GBI in the area. At first, Jewell was nonchalant about the suspicious pack. Joking with GBI officer Tom Davis, Jewell asked, “Well, are you going to open it?”

Both thought the pack belonged to someone in the area. After Davis asked around and told Jewell that no one claimed it, Jewell told Vanity Fair, “[T]hat is when the little hairs on the back of my head began to stand up. I thought, Uh-oh. This is not good.” Davis, Jewell, and other security guards proceeded to clear the area near the backpack. About two to three minutes into the evacuation, the bomb exploded.

What followed was an FBI “investigative catastrophe.” According to American Nightmare, “it became common to characterize the F.B.I.'s investigation of Richard Jewell as the epitome of false accusation.” Jewell’s case led Lin Wood—one of Jewell’s attorneys (also now famous for representing Nick Sandmann of Covington Catholic)—to describe the FBI as having gone from “masters of investigation to masters of deceit.”

For example,
According to Jack Martin, the F.B.I. spent weeks on one erroneous early theory—that Richard Jewell was an enraged homosexual cop-hater who had been aided in the bombing by his lover. Jewell had purportedly planted the bomb; the lover then made the 911 phone call warning that it would go off in Centennial Park. The rationale behind this idea was that Jewell was “mad at the cops and wanted to kill other cops,” Martin told me.
In concert with the FBI’s malicious bungling of Jewell’s investigation, a media firestorm ensued. The firestorm was ignited by the efforts of Georgia’s largest newspaper—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC)—which, according to American Nightmare, since the resignation of “distinguished editor” Bill Kovach in 1988, had suffered “a severe loss of reputation.”

While covering the Olympic Park bombing, perhaps in their zeal to prove they were the “definitive paper of the New South,” the AJC operated with a “frenzy to be first.” As Vanity Fair reported in 1997, “The American Journalism Review sharply criticized The A.J.C. for the scanty confirmation and lack of skepticism in its coverage of Jewell.”

Three days after the bombing, operating from a leak from the FBI, the AJC revealed that Jewell was a suspect. What followed was what Jewell would describe as “88 days of hell.” Other media outlets rampantly and viciously reported on Jewell, often referring to him in extremely unflattering terms. As reported in American Nightmare,
The New York Post had called Jewell “a Village Rambo” and “a fat, failed former sheriff's deputy.” Jay Leno had said that Jewell “had a scary resemblance to the guy who whacked Nancy Kerrigan,” and asked, “What is it about the Olympic Games that brings out big fat stupid guys?” The A.J. C.’s star columnist, Dave Kindred, had compared Jewell to serial murderer Wayne Williams.
Vanity Fair added that, with few exceptions, “The tone many of the journalists took was accusatory and pre-determined.”

Late AJC reporter Kathy Scruggs—featured prominently in Richard Jewell—went so far as to falsely report that Jewell had in his possession a “a sample of the blown-up bomb.” What she was told by Watson Bryant—one of Jewell’s lawyers—was that Jewell “had souvenirs of the bombing” (a piece of fencing). The day after Scruggs’ false report, the AJC attempted to correct the matter, but as Vanity Fair noted, such efforts had “little impact” to change the false narrative that Jewell was the bomber.

Scruggs’ fake news “had been picked up; gathering force, it was eventually related by Bill Press on Crossfire on the evening of October 28: ‘The guy was seen with a homemade bomb at his home a few days before.’ (The next day CNN would be forced to apologize for the mistake.)” Jewell was so slimed by the media and the FBI that two of the bomb blast victims sued him.

Bryant had become so disgusted with the media’s coverage that he told CNN President Tom Johnson and correspondent Art Harris,
Who the hell are you and the rest of the media to make fun of how Richard Jewell and his mother live? Who are you to make fun of working people who live in a $470-a-month apartment? Is there something wrong with that?
As Jewell himself would note, the media and the FBI’s attack on him was of “unparalleled proportion.” Unparalleled, that is, until the candidacy and subsequent election of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. With its spying and lying—involving fake dossiers, FISA abuse, unauthorized surveillance, etc.—the FBI’s “investigation” into the President of the United States, Donald Trump, set a new standard for “false accusation” and “investigative catastrophe.” Few phrases better characterize the anti-Trump elements within today’s FBI than “masters of deceit.”

Of course, as was the case with Richard Jewell, the FBI’s nefarious anti-Trump efforts have been aided and abetted by the Main Stream Media (MSM). Because of their evil efforts against Donald Trump, the American news media is the least trusted institution in America and is perhaps at its lowest point in American history. As Breitbart’s James Pinkerton noted after the Mueller Report dropped, the “enduring damage” suffered by the MSM was because “the MSM hates Donald Trump so much that it can’t see straight; in the MSM’s collective hive-mind, the image of the president’s being frogmarched out of the White House in handcuffs was so enticing that all reality was bent to serve that goal.”

Similarly, blinded by their hatred of Trump, colleges and universities across the U.S. have become masters of bending reality in order to serve their wicked efforts. Trump is so hated by ignorant “elites” on American campuses that conservative/Christian speech in those supposed “institutions of higher learning” is under unprecedented attack. Their “safe space society” has become a “totalitarian nightmare.”

Recently, the media was ecstatic that a few hundred law professors sent a letter to the House of Representatives urging them to impeach Trump. Likewise, Richard Jewell was, himself, a victim of biased “academics.” In the daylight hours after the bombing, Piedmont College—where Jewell had worked as a campus cop—President Ray Cleere called his campus chief of police Dick Martin.

American Nightmare reveals that Cleere asked Martin, “Shouldn't they call the F.B.I. and tell them about Richard Jewell?” Cleere called the FBI and painted a very ugly picture of Jewell, calling him a “badge wearing zealot.” According to American Nightmare, Cleere helped plant within the FBI the theory that Jewell was a “hero bomber.” Because of their foolish and misguided efforts, as would NBC, CNN, and the New York Post, Piedmont College would end up paying Jewell.

Richard Jewell’s life was turned upside down by a biased media, academia, and the FBI. Because they were on the wrong side of the truth, Richard Jewell received multiple apologies and monetary settlements and was able to continue his career in law enforcement. Encouraged and enabled by democrats at some of the highest levels in American politics, and because of a biased media, academia, and FBI, Donald Trump has become only the third U.S. President to be impeached.

However, because liberals across America have been, and remain, on the wrong side of the truth, President Trump is still our President, and because of their evil efforts, he likely will remain so for the next five years.

(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 Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Monday, December 16, 2019

Foolish Liberals Accuse Army, Navy Cadets of Flashing “Racist” Hand Signs

Of all the ridiculous, baseless charges of racism taken seriously by people who ought to know better, the claim that cadets used a racist hand gesture at the Army-Navy Game last weekend is among the worst, because it slimes the best among us, who are part of the least racist institution in the United States (and the world).

I started teaching in the early 1990s. This is my 27th year of teaching high school mathematics. I’ve taught at two public schools, both of which have a large majority of students that are Hispanic or black (the population of white students at both are well under 25%). The vast majority of students at both schools qualified for free or reduced lunches.

I’ve taught at one private military academy (annual tuition around $30k). At this school there was a large population of international students—around 25%—who hailed from over two dozen foreign countries. One thing in common over all my quarter-century plus of teaching high school students, whether the twentieth century or the twenty-first century, whether rich, middle-class, or poor, whether American or foreign, and whether black, white, or brown, teenage boys love playing the silly “Circle Game.”

In case you’re unfamiliar, in this game, a person makes a circle with his thumb and forefinger, exactly as if you’re making the “okay” sign, except this finger circle is usually held low, near one’s waist, or off to the side, or wherever is needed. The circle-maker then attempts to get their target, usually a friend, to look at the finger circle. If one looks, then one gets punched in the arm.

But don’t just take my word for it. According to KnowYourMeme.com,
The Circle Game is a game of peripheral vision, trickery and motor skills. The game starts out when the Offensive Player creates a circle with their thumb and forefinger somewhere below his waist. The goal is to trick another person into looking at his hand. 
If the victim looks at the hand, he has lost the game, and is subsequently hit on the bicep with a closed fist, by the offensive player. Online, people have begun hiding hands making the circle symbols in various images to trick people into finding it.
According to Vice, the Circle Game was invented by Ohio resident Matt Nelson in the early 1980s. Nelson claims to have devised the game while in elementary school as a way to punch his friends. 
The game was popularized on November 15th, 2000 in the fourth episode of the television sitcom Malcom in the Middle's second season. In the episode, characters play the Circle Game, introducing to the show's millions of viewers.
As a teacher, I’ve even had students play the game with me. They would say something silly—“your shoe is untied”—to try to get me to look down, and they would place their finger-circle in my line of sight. If I fell for it, they wouldn’t try to punch me, but they would playfully deride me. I know, it’s dumb as dirt, but it’s a harmless, silly game—except, of course, to those corrupted by a liberal worldview.

If you need proof that modern liberalism corrupts virtually everything it touches, consider the silly game described above and the Army-Navy football game played over this past weekend. As reported by even USA Today, cadets who were merely playing this silly game are being accused of making the “White Power hand symbol during a pregame broadcast of the Army-Navy game.”
Watch a video of the so-called “disgusting act”:
Note the young cadet with the finger circle on his shoulder (made by the gloved hand) is trying hard not to look and not to laugh. I have the same feeling as I investigate for this piece and as I encounter the liberal narratives surrounding this silly, stupid saga. The libtard—yes, liberalism retards one’s thinking—outcry was so loud that, according to The Wall Street Journal, West Point and Annapolis officials are “investigating” the “possible ‘White Power’ hand sign.”

Someone with some sense and the authority to do so should instruct both academies to tell those offended to rethink their worldview, and find something better to do with their time. Our service academies certainly have better things to focus on!

Countering the evil attempts by Twitter leftists to smear these cadets, many right-minded Twitter users rightly mocked the leftist narrative of this incident:
Also, Kurt Schlichter rightly went on the warpath, declaring “This bullsh*t where liberals attempt to define innocuous gestures as hate crimes is simply their way of asserting power by causing others to take their lies seriously.” Mr. Schlichter is exactly right, and his conclusion here is exactly why the academies at West Point and Annapolis should do nothing but ignore the outcries of liberals here.

Of course, as many of us here at American Thinker have spent years revealing, liberalism is littered with lies. As we learned in the case with the Covington Catholic students, the safest bet in all of these situations is to assume the left is lying, or at least, is grossly deceived.

(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

Thursday, November 28, 2019

Be Thankful for the Puritans (Taken from The Miracle and Magnificence of America)

On November 29, 1623, two years after the first Thanksgiving, Governor William Bradford made an official proclamation for a second day of Thanksgiving. In it Governor Bradford thanked God for their abundant harvest, bountiful game, protection from “the ravages of savages…and disease,” and for the “freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience.” Well over a hundred Natives attended, bringing plenty of turkey and venison along with them.

The Pilgrims had the proper perspective. As Bradford would note with discernment, “As one small candle may light a thousand, so the light [of Jesus] kindled here has shown unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation…We have noted these things so that you might see their worth and not negligently lose what your fathers have obtained with so much hardship.”

Just a handful of years later, another group of devout believers would set out for America’s shores in search of a new home. Unlike the Separatists (Pilgrims), the Puritans did not want to break away from the Church of England. (The Puritans were very critical of the Separatists for such action.) The Puritans sought reform, however, for the most part, the Church saw no need for reform.

In general, the Puritans were more affluent than the Pilgrims. To head out for a new home, they had much more to leave behind. The decision was not as easy for them as for the Pilgrims. Furthermore, for a period of time, the Church tolerated the Puritans much more than it tolerated the Pilgrims. In order for the Puritans to get to the place they needed to be (America)—and as hindsight reveals, exactly the place where God wanted them to be—their level of suffering needed to increase.

While James I was King (1603-1625), the persecution of the Puritans was tolerable. Moreover, the Archbishop of Canterbury was sympathetic to the Puritan cause. This all changed when Charles I (1625-1649) ascended to the throne. The Puritans then began to be singled out for harassment. The King and the bishops were now making any real Church reform impossible.

Thus, for any real reform to take place—for, in spite of everything, the Puritans still desired reform—a significant distance (literally) between the Puritans and England was necessary. Therefore, America became the destiny for the Puritans as well.

On June 11, 1630, aboard the Arbella, John Winthrop, one of the leaders of America’s first Puritans, wrote and delivered A Model of Christian Charity. This work was no mere stump speech given to occupy the time of restless settlers. It was a 6,000-plus-word thesis which, for much of American history, was required reading among those in the United States who considered themselves educated. What’s more, it became a model for future constitutional covenants of the Colonies. It read:
We are a Company, professing ourselves fellow members of Christ, (and thus) we ought to account ourselves knit together by this bond of love…For the work we have in mind, it is by a mutual consent through a special overruling providence, and a more than an ordinary approbation of the Churches of Christ to seek out a place of Cohabitation and Consortship under a due form of Government both civil and ecclesiastical…

Thus stands the cause between God and us. We are entered into covenant with Him for this work. We have taken out a commission. The Lord hath given us leave to draw our own articles. We have professed to enterprise these and those accounts, upon these and those ends. We have hereupon besought Him of favor and blessing…

We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when He shall make us a praise and glory, that men of succeeding plantations shall say, “The Lord make it like that of New England.”

For we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.
Winthrop’s powerful and wise words would resonate throughout America for centuries. It was this message which first gave rise to the notion of American Exceptionalism, and the idea of America’s Manifest Destiny.

The Puritans were not the sin-obsessed, witch-hunting, killjoys in tall black hats that many modern pseudo-historians (especially those in Hollywood) have made them out to be. They were determined to build a free society around a Christianity that worked.

In June of 1630, 10 years after the Pilgrims founded the Plymouth Colony, Winthrop and 700 other Puritans landed in Massachusetts Bay, marking the beginning of the Great Migration, which over a 16-year period saw more than 20,000 Puritans leave Europe for New England. Under the leadership of their ministers, the Puritans established a representative government with annual elections. By 1641, they had a “Body of Liberties” (essentially a Bill of Rights), which was penned by the Rev. Nathaniel Ward. This document was the first legal code established by the colonists. It, too, contained over 6,000 words. It consisted of 98 declarations that governed everything from private property to capital crimes.

In 1636 the Rev. Thomas Hooker, along with other Puritan ministers, founded Connecticut. They also established an elective form of government. In 1638, after hearing a sermon by Hooker, Roger Ludlow wrote the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut. This was the first constitution written in America. It served as a model of government for other colonies and, eventually, a union of colonies. It also served as a model for the U.S. Constitution.

The opening reads,
FORASMUCH as it has pleased the Almighty God by the wise disposition of his divine providence so to order and dispose of things that we the inhabitants and residents of Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield are now cohabiting and dwelling in and upon the river of Connecticut and the lands thereunto adjoining; and well knowing where a people are gathered together the word of God requires that to maintain the peace and union of such a people there should be an orderly and decent government established according to God, to order and dispose of the affairs of the people at all seasons as occasion shall require; do therefore associate and conjoin ourselves to be as one public state or commonwealth; and do, for ourselves and our successors and such as shall be adjoined to us at any time hereafter, enter into combination and confederation together, to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the gospel of our Lord Jesus which we now profess, as also the discipline of the churches, which according to the truth of the said gospel is now practiced among us; as also in our civil affairs to be guided and governed according to such laws, rules, orders and decrees as shall be made, ordered and decreed, as follows…
However, as historian David Barton notes,
While Connecticut produced America's first written constitution, it definitely had not produced America’s first written document of governance, for such written documents had been the norm for every colony founded by Bible-minded Christians… This practice of providing written documents had been the practice of American ministers before the Rev. Hooker's constitution of 1638 and continued long after.
As noted by the renowned Alexis de Tocqueville in his seminal book Democracy in America, Puritanism was as much a political theory as it was a religious doctrine. The general principles of Puritanism, which, as Tocqueville points out, correspond “in many points with the most absolute democratic and republican theories,” laid the groundwork for future American constitutions.

The New England area of America became steeped in Puritanism, and with a lengthy period of healthy immigration from the British middle classes (as Tocqueville notes, “it was from the heart of the middle classes that the majority of the emigrants came”), prosperity soon followed. Tocqueville concluded that one of the “main causes of their prosperity” was that the government of the Puritans allowed for “greater personal and political independence than the colonies of other nations.”

Establishing a political framework that would lead to the “Miracle of America,” the governments established by the Puritans did not derive their powers from the British, or any other secular source. Instead, “We see them at all times exercising the rights of sovereignty, appointing magistrates, declaring peace or war, establishing law and order, enacting laws as if they owed allegiance to God alone.” This devoted allegiance to God was the foundation for the liberty and prosperity that would set America apart from the rest of the world.

(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, November 10, 2019

Donald Trump vs. The Lying Left-Wing Media

As I’ve noted before, I didn’t vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 GOP primary. However, I eagerly voted for him over Hillary Clinton (and everyone else on the ballot) in the 2016 general election. I almost certainly will do so again in 2020. President Trump has been a very pleasant surprise as President of the United States. He has a long list of excellent accomplishments that have made me even more eager to vote for him in 2020.

Not the least of these accomplishments is President Trump’s fulfilling his promise to remake the federal judiciary by appointing—and having confirmed—conservative judges and justices. Since 1981, when President Reagan first took office, at this point of his presidency, Mr. Trump has had confirmed more federal judges157—that any other U.S. President.

Since what much of the left holds dear—legalized abortion, same-sex “marriage,” and the like—has come via rogue federal courts that have deemed themselves “super legislatures,” this is a magnificent and important accomplishment. The remaking of the federal courts may be President Trump’s most lasting political legacy.

Likewise, President Trump has been a great ally in the pro-life cause. In early 2018, Operation Rescue named President Trump its “Pro-Life Person of the Year.” Touting President Trump’s pro-life achievements, Operation Rescue President Troy Newman declared, “He has proven to be the most pro-life president we have had in modern history and has backed up his pro-life rhetoric with action like no other before him.” In his recent book Unmasked, Brent Bozell argues that Donald Trump is “the most pro-life president in history.”

Of course, President Trump’s significant achievements also include—but are not limited to—the strong U.S. economy, sound immigration policy, and sound environmental policy. None of this means that the President and D.C. republicans couldn’t do better in many of these areas, and I certainly hope they get the chance, beginning around this time next year.

However, there is one achievement of President Trump that is almost completely due to his own efforts—often when he’s making almost no effort at all—that I’m not sure he could even improve on, and it just may be his greatest accomplishment as President of the United States: the near-complete unmasking of the dastardly, deceitful left-wing media. By this, I mean both the information and entertainment media.

Since Donald Trump soundly defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Presidential election, leftists in the mainstream media, which is to say virtually all of the mainstream media, in their evil efforts to attempt to reverse the 2016 election, have abandoned nearly every pretense about who they are, what they represent, and what are their goals.

I believe that it is safe to say that many of the problems we face in America today are directly attributable to the fact that, because of their warped worldview, the vast majority of the American media simply won’t tell the truth. This is especially troubling when one considers that the American media has lied and continues to lie on almost every moral issue debated in America.

To chronicle their decades of lies is, to say the least, a nearly impossible task. To chronicle the media’s lies during the Trump era is daunting enough! Given the words I’m allowed here, it is impossible in this piece alone (see here for a more complete recounting), but I can provide at least a hint of their deceit and the great service President Trump has provided us all. Virtually everything noted below is from 2019 alone.

President Trump has gotten media leftists so unhinged that:
In order to try to protect and further their myriad of deceitful anti-Trump, anti-conservative, anti-Christian narratives, leftists in the media (and in academia) have engaged in a widespread campaign of censorship. Google (in more ways than one), YouTube, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and the like, have all either blacklisted, banned, or otherwise tried to keep Americans from the receiving the truth.

Hate-crime hoaxes are not a completely new phenomenon, but the Trump era of politics certainly seems to have given rise to an increased number of Americans who are far too eager to be a victim in the name of bringing down Donald Trump. Universities—which, of course, are dominated by leftists—seem particularly prone to producing hate-crime hoaxes. And because they are blinded by their hatred of President Trump, the left-wing media can’t seem to help but go along.

Of course, “racism!” is the modern left’s favorite hate crime. So much so, that promising “Never To Tell The Truth Again,” this year The New York Times decided to re-write American history in order to further the narrative that America and Americans—especially Trump-voting Americans—are rabid racists unfit for polite society and unsuited for political office. Almost certainly such a “project” would’ve never have happened if Hillary Clinton had been elected President.

And don’t forget the Covington Catholic Smears, the Trump-Russia-collusion lies, the Mueller madness, the gender propaganda, and so on.

If there is anything, there is truth, or, as Thomas Aquinas put it,
The existence of truth is self-evident. For whoever denies the existence of truth grants that truth does not exist: and, if truth does not exist, then the proposition 'Truth does not exist' is true: and if there is anything true, there must be truth.
The highest aim of the press should be to tell the truth. Otherwise, evil is served. It is plain to see that for a long time now, the American media have been agents of the enemy. Kudos to President Trump for shining some light onto their nefarious efforts. 

(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 Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com