Liberals Long Ago Abandoned the Idea that “Truth is Truth”

At the end of 2016—and as they themselves declared, much in response to the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States—Oxford Dictionaries named “post-truth” as its 2016 “word of the year.” In other words, because Donald Trump had ascended to the White House, the largest university press in the world decided that much of the American electorate had simply abandoned the truth. Like-minded liberals the world over have decided that we who elected Mr. Trump must be taught a lesson.

Such efforts demonstrate a particularly rich hypocrisy and blind ignorance of their own condition, for in their lust to rule their own world, modern liberals long ago decided to cast aside the fundamental axioms that comprise absolute truth. For such liberals, the age-old quest for “what is truth” has been abandoned or become a foolish and fruitless exercise where “relativism” rules the day.

This is particularly true for liberals in politics, media, and academia—i.e., those leading the charge in trying to reverse the results of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. As Ravi Zacharias noted is his column addressing Oxford’s “post-truth” conclusions,

These two bastions of values, the academy and the media—where relativism flows in their veins—have become the town criers of this new word. Castigating the politicians, they untruthfully predicted the destination of the untruthful. Excoriating an electorate gone amuck, they wondered how people could be duped into a lie. Having themselves swallowed a camel, they were now straining at a gnat. They are the primary carriers of manipulation with words and repeating distortions often enough to make them into truths. They are the origin of this reality of caring not for truth but for impact and for the manipulation of all thinking. Their victory is pyrrhic.

Knowing well that those after his boss “are the primary carriers of manipulation with words and repeating distortions often enough to make them into truths,” Rudy Giuliani recently told NBC’s Chuck Todd,

…I am not going to be rushed into having him testify so that he gets trapped into perjury. And when you tell me that, you know, he should testify because he’s going to tell the truth and he shouldn’t worry, well that’s so silly because it’s somebody’s version of the truth. Not the truth.

After this statement, shaking his head, Mr. Todd laughingly concluded that “Truth is truth.” Mr. Giuliani should have asked, “Whose Truth, Chuck?” Nevertheless, and again, understanding well who he’s dealing with, Mr. Giuliani regrettably declared that “Truth isn’t truth.” Knowing they had a meme with which they could skewer President Trump and his supporters, gleeful liberals across the U.S. seized upon Giuliani’s three words and enthusiastically engaged in scurrilous scoffing and merciless mocking. In one of the greatest acts of hypocrisy in human history, it was as if in unison they were declaring, “See, we told you dupes that these guys were fools and liars!”

In spite of their recent crowing about “the truth,” few things in the universe are as blind or ambivalent as the truth detectors employed by today’s left. In other words, modern liberalism is notoriously bankrupt and decidedly lost when it comes to producing or discerning the truth.

If there is anything, there is truth. 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.

Such a conclusion is in direct contradiction with modern liberalism. John Dewey, a humanist and one of the founding thinkers behind modern liberalism, put it this way,

There is no God and there is no soul. Hence, there are no needs for the props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, then immutable truth is also dead and buried. There is no room for fixed, natural law or moral absolutes.

In other words, to admit that there is “immutable truth” is to admit that God exists. Since many want nothing to do with His moral law—especially on matters in the sexual realm—then there can be no truth. Thus, one could say that efforts of modern liberalism could be succinctly summed up as a “war on the truth.”

The consequences of such selfish pursuits have been tragically profound. Virtually every institution that truth-deprived modern liberalism has infected has been corrupted. Whether politics, education, entertainment, corporations, the church, or the family, every significant institution upon which any sound society rests becomes vulnerable to all sorts of nonsense, chaos, and evil once the godless relativism that permeates modern liberalism takes hold.

As we have so often heard, “the truth will set us free.” Sadly, many today have twisted this to mean that “I get to make my own truth so I’m free to do as I please.” No. As Dr. Zacharias reminds us, “True freedom is not the liberty to do as we please; rather, it is to do as we ought. For that we need the truth.”

Just prior to His final act on earth, at one of the most pivotal points in human history, Jesus was asked by Pilate (John 18:37): “What is truth?” Everything precious in the universe hinges on how that question is answered. If we want an honest answer, must look to the One who made the universe and who told us, “I am the truth.”

One of my graduate school mathematics texts—Roads to Geometry—begins with this declaration: “The truth of these axioms [the presuppositions upon which the mathematics is rightfully developed] is not at issue—just the readers’ willingness to accept them as true.” The Bible could end with the same.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2018, 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

The Price of Porn: It’s Probably Higher than You Think

A little over a week ago, someone attempted to blackmail me. On August 12, I received this message in an e-mail:

Hope you do not really mind my english language sentence structure, because i'm from Germany. I infected your system with a trojan and now have all of your private data out of your operating system.

It previously was set up on an adult page then you have selected the video and clicked on it, my program instantly got into your os.

And then, your cam documented you soloing, also i caught a footage that you've seen.

Just after a little while this also pulled out your device contacts. If you ever wish me to clear off your everything i have got - transfer me 450 dollars in bitcoin it is a cryptocurrency. [An account address was given.] 

At this moment you will have 24 hours. to make a decision The minute i will receive the deal i'll get rid of this footage and every little thing entirely. Otherwise, you should remember that your video is going to be submitted to all your contacts.

Though it wasn’t the case in my instance, to heighten the level of threat, sometimes these e-mail scams even contain passwords used by the recipient. This is a new type of scam dreamed up by criminals seeking to prey on those who, because of their immoral behavior, have made themselves vulnerable to such a scheme.

Having never before received such a message, I was taken aback. However, because I knew that I had not done what the accuser had claimed—and because of the bad grammar and other clues—I was never frightened that the threat was real. I suppose a clear conscience is worth at least $450.

Evidently, some have been frightened enough to fork over the money. Business Insider reports that according to analysis of bitcoin wallets, “Some scammers have even made over $50,000 from the blackmail scheme.” To paraphrase Proverbs (28:1), though the threat is empty, the guilty will pay.

The ability to hack into other digital lives, along with the rampant use of online pornography, has made such a scam possible and profitable. As I’ve noted recently (more than once), the plague of porn has resulted in obscene numbers for obscene behavior. Consider:

People watched 4,392,486,580 hours of porn on PornHub in 2015. Just to put that in perspective, that means that in one year, people around the world spent 501,425 years watching pornography—on one porn site. 

On PornHub, people watched 87,849,731,608 porn videos. As the porn site hastened to point out, that’s 12 porn videos viewed for every single person on the planet.

With numbers such as those, it’s little wonder that savvy criminals thought they could dupe more than a few into literally paying for their sin. If one sends out 10,000 threatening emails, the odds are in one’s favor that a large portion of the recipients are indeed porn users. And among the users, there’s probably no small number trying to keep their lurid online life a secret. Almost certainly there are more than a few husbands, wives, politicians, teachers, and even ministers and pastors who would gladly pay $500 to $1,000—maybe more—to keep their porn lives from becoming public knowledge.

At $500 per recipient, with 10,000 emails, the scammers have to have only a one percent “success” rate in order to net $50,000. What’s more, when our conscience is troubled, our thinking is not clear, and we become easy targets for criminals. If we’re sweating whether someone really does know our sin, we often miss clues such as bad grammar, the absence of our name in the email, and so on, that might reveal the scam.

As we’ve become a culture nearly bereft of shame, sadly, many Americans would probably not care if their porn use was publicized. As the previous link reveals, when you concoct a foolish song and dance that hails your “sex junk,” declares that “sexuality’s a spectrum,” and demands that “Sex how you want it; It’s your god*amn right!” are you really going to care if anyone knows of your porn habit?

A few have even become rich and famous because they turned their personal lives into a porno. How many so-called celebrities have become well-known millionaires because a sex tape was “leaked?” How many others will be lured into trying the same, hoping to get similar results? Either way—whether or not earthly fame and fortune are achieved—lives are ruined.

Miriam Weeks—aka Belle Knox—the infamous Duke freshman who decided to pay for college with a career in the porn industry, describes her first scene as a porn star:

“I remember getting naked, and the guy said, ‘You have cuts on your legs. You're a cutter.’ He could tell I had written the word ‘fat’ in my thigh, so he started calling me fat.” Once they called “action,” she was pushed to the ground and slapped. “And I said, ‘Stop, stop, stop. No, no.’ And then they stopped, and they were like, ‘We have to keep going.’” 

“And I was like, ‘Just please don't hit me so hard.’ But it went on like that, me getting hit, pushed, spit on. I was being told I was fat, that I was a terrible feminist, was going to fail all my classes, was stupid, dumb, a slut. But I got through it. You know how you kind of zone out sometimes? I just disassociated.’”

She just “disassociated.” Nevertheless, Miss Weeks went on to complete her brief porn “career” and graduate from Duke—where she majored in, of course, “Women’s Studies” and “Sociology.” She is now—of course—in law school in New York. Is there any doubt she will soon be donning a vagina hat, joining in the #metoo chorus, lamenting the plight of women and telling us to vote for democrats?

One of the great lies of the porn industry, whether for a participant or a consumer, is that one can simply “disassociate” such activity from the rest of one’s life and whenever you like, just leave it behind. It’s a terrible lie. Whether disease, death, or despair, for decades now, porn use has wrought havoc on an addicted American culture. Divorce, sexually transmitted diseases, sexual assault, child sexual abuse (even in the church!), and other wickedness has roots in, or ties to the use of pornography. Thus, whether or not you are duped into paying blackmail, you will pay for your porn use. There is a way out. Confess, repent, and get help from those who know well your plight.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2018, 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

What About Jerry Jones’ “Free Speech Rights?”

Whether it was his intended purpose or not, Jerry Jones just showed his team—and the rest of the NFL—how you’re supposed to conduct yourself at work when your speech is in conflict with the proper policies of your employer. As we continue to endure the foolish debate—which is rooted in a lie—over NFL players kneeling during our National Anthem, last week Jones told the Dallas Morning News that players for his team—the Dallas Cowboys—will stand during the playing of the anthem.

This declaration from Jones was somewhat contradictory to the new NFL policy adopted last May—but now in question—which allowed players who wished not to stand during the anthem to remain in the locker room while the anthem is playing. Jones’ assertion that his players stand for the national anthem also evidently violated an NFL gag order on the issue of players kneeling during the anthem.

Now, as an NFL owner, Mr. Jones is not an employee of the NFL in the same sense as are the players, but, like the players, he is subject to league policy. Thus, when the NFL told Jones to essentially “shut it” when it comes to the anthem issue, Jones obliged. According to the Star-Telegram,

Four days after seemingly defying the NFL and letting the world know about his team’s zero-tolerance policy regarding standing for the national anthem, Jones is now not talking about the issue because he has been told not to by the league.

Jones informed several local television stations who had booked him for interviews on their Sunday night show from training camp in Oxnard, Calif., that questions about the national anthem and his team’s policy were not permitted because the NFL had told him to stop speaking on the matter.

No screaming about his “First Amendment rights”—because, unlike many ignorant NFL players, he probably well knows that, in this situation, he has none; no crying about what a “bully” is the NFL; and no lying about “systemic racism” or widespread police brutality in the United States; just quiet, simple compliance—which is quite an accomplishment for Jerry Jones.

You see, it’s not so hard or complicated: employees at private owned businesses like the NFL don’t have the right to protest while on the clock. Again, unlike the ignorant NFL kneelers, Jones understands what’s best for his league and his business. The kneeling farce has become an expensive distraction for the world’s most powerful and lucrative sports league. The owners want this nonsense to end, and I don’t blame them.

They could go a long way to making this happen if they would stop pretending that those kneeling had a real cause. Of course we shouldn’t ignore police misconduct when it happens, but we certainly shouldn’t pretend that it’s a widespread problem in order to allow a handful of football prima donnas a political platform to get more democrats elected.

Copyright 2018, 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

Libertarians (Like John Stossel) Need to Stand for the Truth on Marriage

John Stossel’s recent column, “Dads Needed,” contains some timely, important, but well-known—at least within the Christian conservative community—truths. Much of the column focuses on the work of author, speaker, and former feminist, Warren Ferrell—especially Ferrell’s new book The Boy Crisis. As Mr. Stossel explains,

In “The Boy Crisis,” Farrell notes that dads routinely get passed over when it comes to custody of kids, even though kids benefit enormously if they have male role models. Boys without fathers suffer more, he says.

Why does a same-sex role model matter more for boys?

“Boys tend to not have as many skills at developing friendships and emotional connections,” answers Farrell. “So when the family connection breaks apart, it affects boys more profoundly than it does their sisters. Boys are then far more likely to be disobedient, delinquent, drop out of school.”

Along with his recent column, “Stossel on Reason” recently interviewed Dr. Ferrell. Here Ferrell notes, “Men and boys started falling behind when government began subsidizing single mothers.” He later adds, “It doesn’t make a difference whether she [a single mother] needs a man, it makes a difference that her children need a father.” Farrell also notes that children without fathers “do worse in 70 different areas,” and again declares, “They are far more likely to be disobedient, delinquent, drop out of school.”

As I implied above, almost none of this is new information. For literally decades, I, and many others, have often noted the negative outcomes not just for boys, but for all children who are raised in broken homes. What’s more, we have also long warned of the dangers that an out-of-control welfare state poses to children and families—particularly how it has contributed to the obscene rise in out-of-wedlock births in the U.S.

As most conservatives well know, the family has long been a target of liberalism, especially the militant feminist brand of liberalism. In 1973, Gloria Steinem, one of the most recognizable names and faces of feminazism, said,

We have to abolish and reform the institution of marriage…By the year 2000 we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God…We must understand what we are attempting is a revolution, not a public relations movement.

Many organizations (which should include your church!)—with the support of tens of millions of like-minded Americans—have devoted decades of time, along with mountains of money and other resources, to fighting for the truth in the war on the family.

Nothing is as fundamental in this fight as is marriage. From the beginning of humanity the union of one man and one woman has defined what is a family and has been the means by which children are to be brought into the world and properly raised to adulthood. And nothing has been as contradictory to these eternal truths as is same-sex “marriage.”

Decades of rampant divorce and out-of-wedlock births have been far more devastating to children than has the perverse, but recent, redefinition of the oldest institution in the history of humanity. However, before having to debate what is a marriage, when dealing with the brokenness of divorce and the illicit “hook-up” culture that has led to widespread out-of-wedlock births, we could at least still definitively point people to the absolute truth of marriage. No more.

Sadly, libertarians such as Stossel, Neal Boortz, and the like have been complicit in the left’s deceit when it comes to marriage and the family. In spite of the important truths on parenting, marriage, and family that Stossel has recently acknowledged, he was at best silent, and at worst openly hostile to the truth on marriage.

In his 2011 column, “The Gay Marriage Debate,” Stossel wrote,

As a libertarian, I think all consenting adults who want to commit to a life partner ought to be treated the same way… If they redefine marriage to include gays, that doesn't diminish my marriage. And if kids are taught that gay marriage is OK, so what?... I don't care if there are three fathers and six mothers. If it’s a stable relationship and the kids are connected with their parents, that's great… Sorry, but I still don’t see what divorce and unwed motherhood have to do with gay marriage.

Additionally, in 2015, on Facebook, Stossel said, “I happen to believe gay marriage is just fine, and I’ll happily join the wedding.” Of course, as his interaction with Dr. Ferrell and his teaching on children and parenting should have taught him, same-sex “marriage” is not “fine.” Among other immoral things like divorce and unwed motherhood, same-sex “marriage” results in this: in every sad situation, a helpless child is robbed of a parent. And as Dr. Ferrell—and countless others—well demonstrates, children who lose out on being raised by a mother and a father suffer.

In spite of the mountain of evidence—including, and especially, the Bible!—that reveals children need a mother and father, I can find no instance where Mr. Stossel has been critical of same-sex “marriage.” Likewise—and even more disturbing given his decades of writing and research on matters concerning children—I can find no instance where Dr. Ferrell has been critical of the perverse LGBT agenda on marriage.

Libertarians and conservatives agree, “That government is best which governs least.” Nothing promotes the smaller government that libertarians supposedly crave like the family. Strong and healthy families mean less crime, less welfare, less disease, better schools, better churches, a better economy, and so on.

A troubling trend with most libertarians is that they are often looking for science—“research,” “studies”—to tell them what sound morality has long revealed. For this reason, libertarians are often aligned with liberals on the moral issues and are quick to decry the “legislating of morality.” Of course, all good government is rooted in someone’s idea of morality. Like the rest of us, libertarians just have to decide by whose morality they wish to be governed.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2018, 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

Sex: The Supreme Issue in the City of Man

It has come to pass, that though there are very many and great issues facing our great nation—issues with marked differences—for far too many on today’s left, nothing is of greater importance than matters that impact their efforts at “four [or more] bare legs in a bed.” Like the Epicureans centuries ago, modern liberals have concluded that humanity’s highest good is achieved in physical pleasure—especially sex.

If this wasn’t clear before the election of Donald Trump, no less than the day after President Trump took office, Hillary’s hedonists made sure we understood what really matters to those who, as Augustine put it, “wish to live after the flesh.” Remember the “March of the Nasty Women?” Or maybe you recall it as the “P*ssy Riot.” Whatever designation you prefer, on January 21, 2017, hundreds of thousands of vagina-obsessed fools paraded around D.C. in their vagina hats, displaying their vulgar posters, and again reminded most everyone why Donald Trump won the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

And they continue to remind us. Whether demanding that men be allowed into women’s restrooms, that girls be allowed into boys’ clubs, that boys be allowed to take trophies from girls, that we fix homosexual infertility; whether rampant STDs (and the sick celebration of such sickness), rampant pornography use, girls with penises, little boys as drag queens, drag queen story time, pronoun bullying, normalizing pedophilia, celebrating bestiality; and of course, whether killing children in the womb, or legally redefining the oldest institution in the history of humanity, liberals have time and again demonstrated themselves to be firmly entrenched in the “City of Man.”

In his historic and magnificent work, City of God, Augustine declares that there are “no more than two kinds of human society…The one consists of those who wish to live after the flesh [those who reside in the ‘City of Man’], the other of those who wish to live after the spirit [those who reside in the ‘City of God’].” Though Augustine was clear that the “works of the flesh” are not merely sexual in nature, he also makes clear that those who are slaves to sexual lust cannot occupy the City of God.

Only a slave to lust could produce an ad entitled “Protect Our Freedom to F*ck.” It’s too vulgar to provide a link. The title, along with the knowledge that the ad comes from Planned Parenthood of New York, is enough for any discerning person to understand just how vulgar is the ad. However, LifeSite News provides a good description, noting “it’s a surreal blend of slavish adherence to the current politically-correct orthodoxy and a complete surrender to senseless vulgarity.”

Like the “nasty” women’s march, or virtually any Hollywood award show, or most every Black Lives Matter gathering, the outrageous Planned Parenthood ad is just another ugly liberal temper tantrum. This time the fit was in response to President Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. There were plenty of other similar meltdowns over Kavanaugh’s nomination.

Why the ugly outrage over the courts? Because what the court has given, the court can take away. And for decades, the courts have been a great ally to liberals and their agenda—especially their wicked sexual agenda. Most all of the angry hysterics over President Trump’s nomination of Judge Kavanaugh have been driven by the fear that courts will take away the legal cover they’ve long provided for abortion and the perverse LGBT agenda.

Of course, because such legal matters would be in the hands of the states (and legislators and voters)—where they belong—a reversal of Roe, Obergefell, and the like, would do little to eliminate abortion and sexual perversion from our culture. Thus, whatever the result of Kavanaugh’s ascension to the Supreme Court, our battles in these grave matters will continue.

However, liberals don’t see it this way. They see any reversal by the courts of any tenet of their “highest good” as an attack on their “right” to rule their own world. This is really the heart of the matter in our moral wars. In other words, the question before us is: Should we live according to our own rules and laws, or is there a higher standard to which we are held personally accountable and upon which our human laws should rest?

Instead of one who lives “after the flesh,” a more apt description of an inhabitant of the City of Man—one that Augustine also employs—is one who “lives according to himself”—or one who wants the “freedom” to rule his own world. Augustine notes that this makes mankind “like the devil. For the devil too, wished to live according to himself when he did not abide in the truth.”

Thus the City of God vs. the City of Man is a conflict rooted in competing notions of truth. The satanic City of Man is filled with those who wish to live “according to themselves,” while the City of God contains those who live “according to God.”

Along with the pervasive infection of sexual sin in our culture at large, the enemy of mankind has used sexual deceit to divide even the church. Virtually every conflict over dogma in the church today is due to the lies of the enemy on matters in the sexual realm. In a sad attempt to redefine truth, leftist Christians—if there is even such a thing—have made widespread compromise with the truth on sex.

For years now we’ve had churches willing to embrace same-sex “marriage,” and even promote the killing of children in the womb. So-called “clergy” have now stooped so low as to make preparations for making abortion available in the pews. Of course, to do such evil, the Bible has to be effectively ignored—and it is. Tragically, because of the fear to embrace fully what God has revealed when it comes to sex, even those in the evangelical church are seeking to distance themselves from the Word of God.

Ironically, modern liberals have long accused conservatives—especially Christian conservatives—of being obsessed with sex. Yet, as we can plainly see, it is liberals who are consumed with the lustful desire to have their way in the sexual realm. For the most part, it’s why they hate President Trump, it’s why they hate the GOP, it’s why they hate conservatives, and it’s especially why they hate Christians and Christianity.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2018, 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