mARK lEVIN: sAVING aMERICA nEEDS A bOOST

i'D WRITE YOU A PERSONAL EMAIL BUT i CAN'T DO EMAIL ANY MORE OR GET AROUND THE INTERNET MUCH AT ALL ANY MORE DUE TO BAD EYESIGHT BUT MAYBE SOMEONE WILL PASS THIS ON TO YOU.  

i THINK YOUR NEW BOOK COULD CHANGE SOME MINDS ON THE LIBERAL LEFTIST dEMOCRAT SIDE BUT i THINK YOUR TITLE IS GOING TO BE A BARRIER TO ANYONE ON THAT SIDE GIVING IT A TRY.  cOULD YOU MAYBE CHANGE THE TITLE FOR A LATER EDITION TO AIM IT MORE AT THEM?  aS YOU YOURSELF SAID RECENTLY THERE ARE dE...    THERE ARE dEMOCRATS WHO DON'T KNOW WHY THEY ARE dEMOCRATS, AND i'VE POINTED OUT HERE THAT THERE IS A WHOLE MOVEMENT OF dEMOCRATS WHO LEFT THE PARTY CALLED THE wALKAWAY MOVEMENT, WHICH WAS STARTED BY A GUY WHO WAS SUDDENLY FACED WITH THE FAFCT THAT HE'D BEEN LIED TO ABOUT dONALD tRUMP.  bRANDON sTRAT OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT.  HE RESEARCHED MORE AND FOUND OUT THAT THE LIES WERE JUST ABOUT ALL HE EVER HEARD ABOUT ANYTHING AN LEFT THE dEMOCRATIC pARTY.  sO MINDS CAN BE CHANGED.

i'VE \\\i'VE 

THERE ARE A FEW BLATANT LIES, SIMPLE LIES i'VE THOUGHT i'D LOVE A CHANCE TO TTRY TO GET ACROSS TO SOME LIBERALS/dEMOCRATS.  tHERE ARE STILL PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO DON'T KNOW THAT tRUMP DENOUNCED THE NEWOlnAZIS IN HIS cHARLOTTESVILLE SPEECH SO THEY STILL THINK HE SAID THEY ARE GOOD PEOPLE WHICH OF COURSE HE DIDN'T SAY.    tHERE ARE ALSO PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO STILL THINK THAT HE MOCKED A GUY'S DIABILITY WITH THAT ODD HAND FLAPPING GESTURE HE MAKES, BUT THAT ONE IS EASY TO MPROVE WRONG BY SHOWING VIDEOS OF THE MANY OTHER TIMES HE MADE THAT SAME GESTURE AT PEOPLE WHO DON'T HAVE A DIASABILITY.  THE GESTURE IS SOMETHING HE DOES TO MOCK A STUPID IDEA.       aND THEN THERE IS GEORGE fLOYD .  tHERE ARE PEOPLE WHO STILL THINK THAT WAS A RACIST INCIDENT BY RACIST COPS.  aLL WE HAVE TO DO IN THAT CASE IS SHOW THE VIDEO OF THE EXACT SAME THING BEING DONE TO A WHITE GUY, tONY tIMPA AND THAT VIDEO SHOULD STILL BE UP ON yOU tube.  I hope it is anyway  Also the videos of the mocking gesture and Trump's speech at Charlottesville.  Democrats who have been deceived by these mdeia deceptions are capable of changing their minds when they are faced with the trutyh.

VByt tgat 

But I didn't wstart tis post to say that.  I want to suggest that Mark Levin might change the title of his book.  To something like

Is This The Democratic Party YOu Signed Up For?  Surprising Facts From the History of the Party that May Change Your Mind about some things.

Not good examples but I'm sure your wife could come up with a good title.

fREEDOMS GIVEN TO CRIMINALS, GOOD FOR EVIL, EVIL FOR GOOD, WHAT ELSE IS NEW

tHE cONSTITUTION CONFIRMS OUR RIGHT TO ASSEMBLE TOGETHER FOR A REDERRESS OF GRIEVANCES FROM THE GOVERNMENT, BUT DOES IT GRANT US THE RIGHT TO PROTEST IN FAVOR OF AN ENEMY OF THE uNITERD STATES SUCH AS hAMAS>  dOES IT?  iS THERE ANY WAY TO MAKE ANY OF OUR FREEDOMS APPLY TO THIS SORT OF AB OMINATION LEGALLY?  sHOULDN'T THEY ALL BE ARRESTED AND HALF OF THEM THROWN OUT OF THE COUNTRY?

EneND tIMES dITHERING

nOTE:  i'M HAVING SURGERY TOMORROW AFTERNOON, mONDAY THE 16TH AND WOULD APPRECIATE ANY PRAYERS IF ANYONE SEES THIS IN TIME.  dELICATE SURGERY ON MY THROAT.  tHANKS.

cORRECTION:  vELOW i SAY THAT THE BEAST OF rEVELATION THIRTEEN IS PREFIGURED IN dANIEL NINE.  THAT'S WRONG, dANIEL'S VISION OF THE FOUR EMPRIES OF WHICH THE FOURTH IS THE BEAST OF rEVELATION, IS dANIEL SEVEN.

 I know there are some people who read my blog who get driven crazy by my inability to settle into the pre tribulation pre millennianl eschatologt which is wiatin gfor the Rapture , to be followed by the Day of the Lard on earth while we are in heaven.    There's a lot about it that seems to make wonderful sense and I want to go with it but I just can't settle some questions that nag at me no matter how I try to brush them off.

It's a very nice scenario.  The Church is not destined for wrath and w4e are promised that we will be spared His wrath when it comes on the whole world.  That explains our being raptured off the planet before it all starts.  And then there is the way the last great tribulat8ion fits into the seventieth week of Daniel.  That last week is certainly still dangling unfulfilled and the Day of the Lord fits it like a glove.  

It does look beautifully aranged that prophecy of seventy weeks that actually ended at sixty nine with Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on the donkey.  Beautifully arranged.  Jesus goes on to be crucified after the sixty nine weeks and for the next two thousand years we have the Church being built up apparently apart from the history of Israel which is the subject of the seventy weeks prophecy.  Daniel's people are the Jews and the prophecy is about their future, but that future is interrupted by the Church.  The last week of the prophecy has remained unfulfilled since Palm Sunday before Jesus was crucified.  When it resumes, as it must, it makes sense that we are again back in teh times of the Old testament or Danie'l;s people the Jews.  Hence the Book of Revelation is about the Jews, the finale of planet earth being ended with God's final dealings with His Old testaemtn people.  It all hangs together very nicely.

But but but but but ....

My buts don't challenge that basic scenario, I don't see how it can be wrong, but I nevertheless have lots of questions and buts in my head about how it is understood to play out.

Well, let me not be too hasty, since I may question some of that in the end, I don't know yet.  Nevertheless the way the Bible rounds off with a return to the Old TGestament is enormously satisfying, and that isn't just empty rhetoric, the whole overall plan of Revelation is very Old Testament in its design and characteristics, its imagery.  The beasts that are symbolic of what is being played out all relate back to the beasts of Daneil's vision in Daniel nine.  The tone is not New testament at all, it's entirely Old testament, at least after the letters to the CHurchs in the first three chapters.  It's really a jaw droppingly beautiful way to bring God's story to a close.

But but but but but

Forgive me, I have to stop here.  I'll either come back to this post and finish it or I'll continue it in another peopst.

Sunday the 15th

I hesitate about all this because I just don't want to be in the position of being at odds with te pre trib pre mill people.  I want that system to be true.  I have objected to the pre trib view of the antichrist and still have those same objections, but there are other problems I have with it that ar harder to let myself pursue.  For one thing I haven't worked them out in any satisfactory way, they pretty much remain quesionts, but they do call into question some cetral tenets of the pre trib view and that makes it hard.  But they bother me enough to want at least to toss out some half baed problems with it anyway.

My biggest problem is accepting the idea of two separate groups of saved people.  As I read the Old testament and on into the New all I see is that the people who give themselves to the Messiah are the people of God it is all aiming toward, and that is both Jew and Gentile as Paul makes clear.  The first believers in Jesus were all Jews, okay with the oaccasional Centurion here and there.  The Church was originally Jewish as it was meant to be.  When the Jewish leaders rebelled against Jesus as their Messiah it was taken out into the Gentile world and eventually became far more Gentile than Jewish.  But That to my mind doesn't make it a Gentile Church.  In fact there is no more Jew nor Gentile at all, we are all Christianas whatever our fleshly origina.  

So I have a big problem with the idea that this body of believers gets raptured while there are millions of Jews and Gentiles in the world waiting to be saved during the Great Tribulation.  How can the "times of the Gentiles" be over with the Rapture when there are all those Gentiles out there who will eventually become believers?   Just because the Book of revelation is oriented toward the Jews as God brings His dealings with them to a finale, and they are the evangelists who bring in all the Gentiles, doesn't to my mind make these new believers something other than part of the Church.   A separete Church?  I can't find that in scripture and so far I haven't heard any scribtural justification for the idea from the pre trib people, just an assertion that it is so.

But of course if it is the Church, if all believers are together the Church, the Body of Christ -- and how can He have two bodies anyway?  then the Raptaure can't happen until all the Gentiles AND Jews are saved, ALL ODF UIS AS ONE BODY.  Nothging else makes any sense to me.    Does that mean that we go through the tribulation?  I don't know how to think about all that.  I believe the pre trib emphasis on our being spared the wrath of God so I suppose I have to think of believers as being protected from God's wrath in some other way or believe in the rapture's occuring at a later date.  That is beyond my ability to sort out at this point.

But some other concerns enter into this theme.  I notice every time I read Revelation that God's wrath isn't mentioned until the sixth seal and particularly seventh.  We are told that the saints will go through harrowing times after we are introduced to the beast freom the sea in Revelation thirteen, and it is mentioned again in chapter fourteen.  

That suggests that God's wrath doesn't really begin with the opening of the first seal, but rather with the seventh. or even a later part of the seventh, that I'll have to explore more.    And if so then that is the wrath we are to be protected from.

It also seems to me that the first six seals in themselves do not suggest God's wrath but the sorts of tribulations we always encounter from time to tie on planet Earth.  False Messiahs, wars, famines, pestilences and so on, are all endemic to life in this fallen world.  But of course they are unleashed with the opening of the first seals so something about them puts them in the last days framework, but at least they are the beginning of sorros that jesus talsks about in Matthew twenty four.  The beginning of the end, the precursors to the Dayh of the Lord which is the outpouring of God's wrath.    

Is that the last half of the seventieth week of Daniel?  I think that sneeds some sorting out too.  I'm not even sure the first six seals fit into that last week.  It's nort necessary.  Jesus was qualified to open the seals right after He ascended to the right hand of God or perhaps after the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Church.  He could have begun opening them back in John's Day, leaving the Day of Wrath for the last week of Saniel which is yet future.    Just a bunch of things I hae to muddle my way through.

In all tI've also noticed that we don't hear of the marriage supper of the lamb or the giving of rewards to the saints until the end of Revelation, but according to the pre trib scenario we receive them after the rapture while we are in heaven during the great tribulation which is going on in the world while we are there.  I don't reall hearing an explanation of this anyhwayre although it's possible I've just missed it.  In Revelation nineteen or twenty or whichever it is where these are mentioned it sounds future, it's about to happen, has yet to happen, and yuet the raptured saints will already be with Jesus in hjheaven supposedly already having experienced those things.   

I still like the seventieth week of Daniel as the framework for Revelation, and can'[t think how else it could fit into history.  It works beautifully there and so does the return to God's dealings with Isreael rather than the Church.  But that doesn't have to mean that there is a strict separation between Church and Israel, it just means that God is dealing with ethnic or fleshly Israel in Revelation and when they are saved they join the Church which is the Israel of God or spiritual Israel.  Those are the two different bodies as far as I can see, unsaved and saved, fleshly and spiritual.  God can turn His focus to ethnic Israel who were the subject of the Old Testaemtn without treating them as some kind of separate entity from the Chruch.   I've alsways been bothered by this idea that those who reject the t=pre trib scenario are committing something called Replacement Theology when I know that they are simply seeing the Old Testament being fulfilled in the New and it's very hard not to look at it that way in my experience.  The only division that makes sense to me is the division between fleshly and spiritual or unsaved and saved.  Ethnic Israel is unsaved but God is dealing with them anyway in Revelation as He dealt with them throughout the Old Testgament.   But then they get saved they don'[t join some other group than the Church, they join the Church as spiritual born again believers in Messiah.  

I do object strongly to the way the anti pre trib people deny any role at all for Isarel however.  It seems like some kind of mental disorder to deny that the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 should just be brushed off as some kind of weird coincidence.  Sorry, God does not operate that way, and god is in charge of it all.  Israel is certainly God's land and He's using it in some pointed way to bring history to a close.  they aren't saved but they will be saved, or "all" Israel will be saved ultimately, but they have a presence in the fallen world as God's people nevertheless and they are the stumbling block He is going to use to make His case against all those who deny Him and violate His commandments.  Revelation whos the way all this is going to play out in the end as the world is brought to justice, the Jews are saved and Jesus returns to rule us all.  

But of course all this stuff I'm raising here amonst to a sort of theological or eschatalogical catastrophe and I don't know how to resolve it all.  All I know is that these questions keep nagging me and I think theyuare important and I don't think pre tribbers are facing them honestly.

I'll be beside myself with joy to find myself going up in the Rapture of course so I can hope I'm wrong about any of this that contradicts such a possibility.

IIt still annoyeds me to hear the pret trib idea that the antichrist has yet to be revelaed and that the reelation will be the removal of the Holy Spirit.   the Reformers revealed the Antichrist scripturally as the Pope, he sits in the temple of God as if he is God himself, takes the titles of God and Christ and Holy Spirit to hismefl and that temple is the people of God who have been defined as thaqt temple in many places in the New testament.  That's what the Reformers said and hundreds beofre them alwaready identified the Pope as the Antichrist, it isn't as if they were the first.    And it is uttery ridiculous to think that Paul would have needed to be so cryptic about the identify of the Restrainer if the Restrainer was the Holy PSirit.  there would be no reason whatever tro keep that identity assecret.   No, it had to be the Caesars who were still in power in Paul'

s time but who woulde be replaced by the Bishop of rome in some important sense when he, the zanTICHRIST, TOOK ON THAT MANTLE OF POWER AND THE SO CALLED hOLY rOMAN eMPIRE CAME INTO EXPISTENCE.  aND FOR PETE'S SAKE THEY MAKEE MARTYRS GALORE OF CHRISTIANS WHO DENIED THEIR RIGHT TO AUTHORITY OVER THEM AND RECOGNIZED THEIR APOSTATE THEOLOGY.  mILLIONS OF MARTYRS OF THE cATHOLIC iNQUISITION, THE pAPAL iNQUISITION.  tHOSE HAVE TO BE THE MARTYRS OF rEVELATION FIVE IT SEEMS TO ME WHO ARE WAITING FOR NEW MARTYRS TO ARRIVE AND JOIN THEM DURING THE GREAT TRIBULTION WHICH IS ABOUT TO COME UPON THE EARTH.  

THE BEAST OF rEVELATION THIRTEEN, THE BEAST FROM THE SEA, IS CLEARLY THE rOMAN EMPRIE THAT HARKS BACK TO THE FOURTH BEAST OF dANIEL'S FISION IN dANIEL NINE.  iT CONTAINS THE EMPLEMS OF THE THREE FORMER EMPIRES IN ITS LEOPARD CHARACTERISTICS, ITS BEAR'S PAWS AND IT'S LION'S MOUTH, THE THREE EMPIRES OF dANIE'SL VISION THAT PRECENDED THE FOURTH GREAT AND TERRIBLE BEAST WHOME WE KNOW TO BE RTHE rOMAN EMPIRE THOUGH HE CDIDN'T KNOW IT IN HIS DAY.  HE COULD ONLY SEE AS FAR AHEAD AS aLEXANDER'S gREECE.    bUT THE BEAST FROM THE SEA IS ALSO IDENTIFIED AS A MAN WITH THE NUMBER 666 AND i'LL JUST SAY IT AGAIN,  THERE IS NO OTHER POSSIBLE CALCULATION OF THAT NUMBER THAN THE ONE EMBEDDED IN THE TITLE OF THE pOPE WRITTEN IN lATIN, vICARIVS fILII dEI.  iT'S THE ONLY NAME IN WHICH THE NUMBERS ARE ACTUALLY A PART OF THE LANGUAGE IN WHICH THE NAME IS WRITTEN.  yOU CON'T HAVE TO FOOL AROUND WITH NAMES AND LOOK UP THE NUMBERS THAT ARE ASSIGNED TO THEM SOMEWHERE ELSE, THE NUMBERS ARE PART OF THE LANGUAGE ITSELF.  aND THE TITLE ITSELF means aNTICHRIST.  sUBSTITUTE FOR THE sON OF gOD?  oR iN THE PLACE OF THE SON OF gOD?  yOU AREN'T GOING TO FIND A BETTWSER DEFINITION OF THE aNTICHRIST ANYWAYRERE.  aND IT IS ANNOTYING THAT i KNOW SOME PRE TRIB PEOPLE READ MY BLOG AND HAVE SENE THIS ARGUMENT A ZILLION TIMES AND STILL IGNORE IT.  yEA i GUESS i'M SOIME KIND OF EGOIST, BUT i KNOW i'M RIGHT.

mIGHRT NOT BE fRACIS OF CORUSE, HE'S GETTING AWFULLY OLD, BUT i FIND IT HARD TO GIVE UP ON HIM JUST BECAMESE WE ARE SO CLOSE TO THE END, WE ALL FELEL IT, AND HE HAS BETTER QUALIIFCATIONS THAN MOST OTHER PEOPES, BEING A jESUSI AND BEING SELECTED ON THE THIRTEENTH DAY OF mARCH IN TH YHEAR TWENTY THIRTEEN, AND HAVING A SEAGULL, AN UNCLEAN BIRD, SITTING ON THE CHIMSENEW WHERE THE SMOKE ROSE TO ANNOUNCE HIS ELECTION.  aND HE'S A jESUIT, A jESUIT pOPLE OF ALL THINGS.  hE'S ONLY TOO WELL QUALIFIED FOR THE ROLE OF aNTICHRIST, BUT MAYBE SOMEONE ELSE WILL COME ALONG WHO IS EVEN ETERRER QUALIFIED.  wHO KNOWS?

lATER:  i WAT TO TRY TO SAY IT AGAIN.  tHE cHURCH CAN'T replace iSRAEL, THE cHURCH IS MADE UP OF SAVED PEOPLE AND iSRAEL OF THE bOOK OF rEVELATION IS unsaved iSRAEL, FLESHLY iSRAEL, eTHNIC iSRAEL.  tHE cHURCH IS THE BODY OF BELIEVERS, MADE UP OF BOTH gENTILES AND jEWS BUT TRANSFORMED, BORN AGAIN.  eTHNIC OR FLESHLY GENTILES REMAIN UNCHANGED, AND SO DOES ETHNIC iSRAEL OR ALL UNSAVED jEWS.  i DON'T THINK i'M GETTING THIS SAID AS CLEARLY AS IT NEEDS TO BE SAID BUT THIS WHOLE BUSINESS OF TWO SEPARATE BODIES IS WRONGHEADED AND HAS TO BE ANSSWERED IN SOME SUCH WAY.  

lATE sUNDAY:  aNOTHER QUESTION OCCURS TO ME.  iF jOHN WAS WRITING THIS VISION OF REVELATION AFTER THE DESTRUCTION OF 70 ad, WOULD HE HAVE PRESENTED THE TEMPLE IN THE VISION AS INTACT AS HE DOES WITHOUT SOME KIND OF QUALIFICATION THAT IT WOULD HAVE TO BE REBUILT?  bUT THERE'S NOTHING ALONG THOSE LINES.  iN rEV 11,  i HOPE i GOT THAT RIGHT, HE'S GIVEN A REED FOR MEASURING THE TEMPLE AND TOLD TO LEAVE OUT THE OUTER COURT WHICH BELONGS TO THE gENTILES UNTIL THE TIMES OF THE gENTILES ARE AT AN END.  aND HERE i HAV ETO NOTE THAT SUPPOSEDLY ACCORDING TO THE PRE TRIB SYSTEM THE TIMES OF TEH gENTILES END WITH THE rAPTURE BUT DOESN'T THIS OCCUR YEARS AFTER THE rAPTURE?    aND THE OTHER MENTION OF THE TEMPLE IS WHEN THE aNTICHRIST SETS HIMSELF UP IN IT.  THAT'S THE PHYSICAL TEMPLE, NOT THE TEMPLE AS THE PEOPLE OF GODE IN THIS CASE.  aNYWAY, QUESIONS CONINUE TO MULTIPLY AND i DON'T SEE ANY OF THEM ADDRESSED ANYWHNERE THAT i KNOW OF.

Lies in the Service of Allah

 getting anything straight and true these days is the hardest thing.  We're drowning in lies and ven when we are able for our own sake to sort the truth out we're still enmeshed in the world of lies that surrounds and presses in on us.  

Why is it that the lies abou tthe Middle East are so accepted by so many?  This histgory of the situation with Israel is available enough but the propaganda nevertheless reigns.  There is no Palestinian people.  When the Jews began settling the land in the early twentith century it was a desolate wilderness, traversed by nomads and dotted here and there with individual settlements, but it had no national identity, no political identity.  It was a piece of land belonging to the Ottoman Empire.  There were a few Arabs here and there and a few Jews as well, but otherwise there was no There there.  Mark twain visited the land in the late nineteenth century and declared it a desolate wilderness.  There was no People there.  There is no Palestinian people.

What Happened as I understand it is that when Israel began building up the land Arabs from all the surrounding nations came to work for them and their own populations built up along witht eh Jews.  When the Arabs were about to strike Israel they warned the Arab population to get out of harm's way so they fled and became the refugees that later became the so called Palestinians.  They were never Palestinians, they were different groups of Arabs from different Arab states and had no political identity in Palestine.  But the Arab states would not take them back, it served them politically to keep them in their refugee stateus to be a thornin in the side of Israel and make them into a fake nation of Palestinians so they could make demands on Israel.  

There was never any intention of making peopeace with Israel.  Even the writings of Islam make clear that it is right to lie in the service of Allah, to make treaties and break them at will in the service of Allah, to do anything underhanded that might serve what they think of as the cause of furthering Allah's ultimate goal of subjugating all peoples to himself and ending all other religions.

But instead of he facts being made known to the world, the propaganda prevails, which includes all sorts of invented explanations for the existence of this group of people and their supposed righteous claim to the land, and the nevernending accusation of Israel as the one in the wrong though from the beginning Israel did nothing wrong.  They hired Arabs to work for them.  they paid those who ownded property in the area for whthat propetry, they didn';not just take it as they are accused of doing, and so on and so forth.  

So now we have tghe latest in a \the determination to rid the land of Israel through this outrageous attack by Hamas within the boundaries of Israel proper, killing Jews with a viciousness that can't be explained in any reasonable way except as the product of the religion that teaches them to hate with that degree of furty a people who won't bow to Allah.  they are being compared ot he Nazis.  Well, the Nazis killed millions of Jews but the Nazis kept a personal fastidious distance from the killing while Hamas is able to behead babies apparently without a moment's conscience against it.  

Lies.  Lies that should and could have been exposed years ago, but instead are ruling the day, and firing up protests even in America.  

bIDEN sMEARS maga; o rEILLY sMEARS THE pURITANS

jUIST HAPPENED TO HEAR BOTH THESE ENORMITIES WITHIN A COUPLE HOURSE OF EACH OTHR ON THE RADIO AND AS i PONDERED THEM i REALIZED THERE IS A CERTAIN SYMMETRY BETWEEN THEM.  bIDEN CALLS maga "EXTREMIST" AND o rEILLY CALLED THE pURITANS "FANATICS."  bIDEN WAS MAKING A POLITICAL SPEECH, o REILLY WAS BEING INTERVIE3WED ON A TALK SHOW ABOUT HIS MOST RECENT BOOK, tHE kILLING OF THE wITCHES, ABOUT THE sALEM WITCH TRIALS IN nEW eNGLAND IN THE SEVENTEETNTH CENTURY.  tHERE'S NO CONNECTION BETWEEN THE TWO INCIDENTS OF COURSE, JUST MY OWN RECOGNITION OF THIS SIMILARITY OF JUDGMENT BY A PARTISAN OBSERVER.

mY HACKLES WERE UP IMMEDIATELY IN BOTH CASES.  tHE SMEAREING AND NAMECALLING OF THE RIGHT BY THE LEFT IS INFURIATING AND IT'S A DAILY THING NOW.  iT'S SMEARING, IT'S CENSORSHIP, IT'S CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF TRUMPED UP CHARGES, CRIMINALIZATION OF PERFECTLY NORMAL BEHAVIORS, IT'S POLITICAL TYHRANNY AND IT'S GETTING WORSE BY THE MOUR IT SEEMS.  

maga TO A maga FAN IS MERELY THE RECOVERY  OF TRADITIONAL aMERICAN PRINCIPLES, ENTIRELY MAINSTREAM, NOTHING EXTREEME ABOUT IT.  tHE EXTREMISM IS OF COURSE ON THE SIDE OF THE LEFTIST WHO AS USUAL ARE FOLLOWING THEIR RULES OFR RADICALS AND ACCUSING THEIR OPPONENTS OF WHAT THEY THEMSELVE S ARE GUILTY OF.  THEY ARE THE EXTREMISTS, THEY ARE THE DISMANTLERS OF DEMOCRACY, maga IS THE ATTEMPT TO GET US BACK TO A SANER GOVERNING FRAMEWORK, A cONSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK, AFTER THE lEFT HAS SPE NT DECAADES TEARING IT TO PIEC4ES.   iT ISN'T SYNONYMOUS WITH tRUMP'S POLICIES BUT HIS POLICIEIS CERTAINLY WENT A LONG WAY TO REESTABLISHING THE GREATNESS OF aMERICA AS WE THINK OF IT, THE LOWERING OF TAXES, THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF ENERGY INDEPENDENCE, THE SECURITY OF OUR BORDERS, THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF TRADE PLICIES THAT BENEFIT aMERICA, AND MUCH MORE BESIDES.  tRUMP IS APPRECIATED BY MANY OF US BECAUSE OF HIS AGGRESSIVE AND UNHESITATING ENACTMENT OF ALL THESE BENEFITS FOR THE NATION.  nOT A MERE EMPTY PROMISE, BUT ACTUAL FULFILLMENT.    i DON'T LIKE THAT LATELY HE SOMETIMES SAYS THINGS THAT SOUND TOO FAR LEFT, i DON'T LIKE THAT AT ALL, BUT i STILL RECOGNIZE HOS EFFECTIVE HE WAS DURING HIS TERM IN OFFICE AND AM STILL FOR A REPEAT OF THAT PRESIDENCY.  i ALSO HATED WHAT HE DID WITH covid, HIS PUSHING OF UNTESTED VACCINES ON US WHICH BECAME A TOTALITARIAN WEAPON IN THE HANDS OF bIDEN, AND i WAS DISAPOINTMENT IN HIS INABILITY TO DO ANYTHING TO QUALL THE RIOTING AFTER THE gEORGE fLOYD INCIDENT.  bUT OTHERWISE i VERY MUCH LIKE HIS POLICIES AND WOULD LIKE TO SEE A CONTINUATION OF THEM, AND i THINK i MUST HAVE \\\\ BE IN SYNCH WITH MOST tRUMP SUPPORTERS.  

\

bUT maga IS BIGGER THAN tRUMP    i'M OFTEN SHOECKED AT THE WAY IT IS CHARACTERIZED BY THE lEFT AS RACIST, AS A TOOL OF WSHITE SUPERMACIEST.  iN ITS SIMPLEST FORM i SUPPOSE THIS JUST REFLECTS THE IDEA THAT WITHO OUR HISTORY OF RACISM HOW CAN WE EVEN TALK OF A ONCE GREAT aMERICA.  iT HAS A MALICIOUS FORM TOO BUT i'M ONLY TALKING ABOUT HE SIMPLEST FORM AS i THINK OF IT.  nOBODY IS PROMOTING maga AS A RETURN TO RACISM FOR PETE'S SAKE, AND SUCH AN IDEA CAN ONLY COME OUT OF THE LAST FEW DECADES OF aMERICA HATING PROPAGANDA FROM THE mARXIST lEFT.    a PSROPEROUS SOCIETY FOR ALL CLASSES, A GOOD SOCIEITY WHICH CARES OUT THE POOR AND THE REST OF THE WORLD AS WELL AS aMERICANS BUT CARES FIRST OF ALL TO ESTRENGTHEN AND PROTECT AMERICANS, A PROSPEROUS SOECITIY, A GOOD SOCEITY, THE SOCIETY O THE gREATEST gENERATION, THAT'S maTGa in my mind and I think also in most others who support it.  America makes mistakes, but America corrects its mistakes.  It may take time but we've made quite a bit of progress and to attack us for those mistakes when we've made such progress is just unconsciousnable, but the Left has no conscience when it comes to destroying america.

Bill O Reilly just came out with a new book on the Salem witch trials and I think I'm going to try to read it if I can get it through the Services for the Blind audio books program.  I've heard more than one interview with him on the radio talk shows about the book but on one of them he called the Puritans a fanatic sect and I bridles.  No, the Puritans wer enot fantasitcs.  The Puritans, like MAGA, were attempting to recover the lost truths of Christianity after a milennium of pagan distortions in the Roman Church and the Anglican Church.  The term was used against them by their enemires but it reflects their concern to return the church to its pure form without all the pagan accretions, superstitions, totalitarianism and all the resto of ti.  No fanaticism at all.  And in keeping with this observation of similarity I'm making, I'd say the fanaticism is on the side of the pagan papaostasy although fanaticism is probably not the right word.  Not fanaticms but power mad tyranny.  

Today's Reformed churches take much inspiration from the Puritan writers of England, they are highly revered theologians.

there is another strand to this simnilarity I'm discovering as I listen to the audio version of Alexis DeToqueville's Democracy in America which I found at You tube this morning.  Wonderful stuff.    How I wish this had been required reading for us in school, even high schoo.ll but certainly college, but in the sixties they took away the courses in American instittuionas and western civilixation under the onslaught of leftist insanity and antiAmericanism.    DeTuoqueville makes it clear that Puritanism was not just a powerfujlly Christian relgionous influence but also a poltiical movement toward democracy and republicanism.  He seems the planting of thte Puritans in New England as the foundation for both democracy and republicanism in the Constitutional governemtn that eventually united the nation.  

and that's what MAGA would restrore against all the distortions =bby the Left.  

wHY wE'RE dOOMED iF wE ARE dOOMED

Government of the people, by the people, for the people, a self-governing nation, thta was the uniqueness of the founding vision of America.  The people are supposed to be the government, the government being made up of representatives of the peope.  

As 

As Eric Metaxas shows in his book about this American vision, 
If You Can Keep It," the founders understood that this people for whom they were designing this government had to be of a particular sort.  Not just any people could be a self=governing people, they had to be a religious and moral people.  John Adams put this most famously but others said the same thing as Metaxas shows.  

So when 

Althoiugh the main founders weren't Christian believers in the full sense, they were deeply imbued with Christian morality and a Christian worldview and understood these to be the essential elelments of the people who could be entrusted with this government they had finally hammered out.  

I think it's important to understnad, although perhaps the founders themselve sdidn't really understand this, that this religiosity they saw as necessary to the qualification to be a citizen of thi nation had to be the Christian religion.  Washington siaid something to the effect that even Islam would work, or I think he said something like that.  Freedom of religion was granted to all the religions as if it all amounts to the same thing and produces the same kind of person.    But of course it sdoes not.  Islam produces a completely different kind of person and a completely different kind of cujltured, and in its strictest fundamental form it is at odds with the very freedoms Amerian is known for.  And if you get into the inner workings of the Roman Catholic theology you will find a simnilar opposition to such freedoms.  Yes.  That's why they had an Inquisition whichh tortured and killed those who disagreed with its dogmas.  THAT SAME DOTGGMA PERSISTS IN ITS COREW AND GIVEN THE OPPORTUJITY WOULD BE FULLY EXPRESSED IN A REVIVED iNQUISITOIN.  tHE iNQUISITION BY THE SAY HAS PERSISTED IN SOME cATHOLIC COUNTRIES AND NEVER ENDED, THOUGH IN A HIDDEN WAY.  

sO WHILE PEOPLE OF DISPARATE RELIGIONHS DO LIVE IN aMERICA WITH FREEDOM TO PRACTICE THEIR RELIGION, AND ARE AS FAR AS ANYONE CAN TELL AS GOOD CITIZENS AS THE pROTESTANTS WHO EMBODY THE RELIGION i THINK IS THE TRUE FOUNDATION OF THE amERICAN VISION, IN REALITY THERE IS A HUGE DIFFERENC ES IN OUTLOOK AND POTENTION  POTENTIAL BEHAVIOR AMONG THE DIFERENT GROUPS.  iT MAY BE THAT THE aMERICAN VISION ITSELF CONVERTS PEOPLE AWAY FROM THE OPPOSITION OF THEIR RELIGIONS ENOUGH TO BE A BARRICADE TO THE FULFILLMENT OF THEIR INHERENT TENDENCIES WHICH ARE AT ODDS WITH IT.  i CAN SEE HOW THAT MIGHT BE THE DCASE, BUT i'M ALSO ONLY TOIO AWARE OF THAT FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENE THAT WOULD EXPRESS ITSELF IN ANTIaMERICAN WAYS IF IT HAD FREE REIN.  sO i'VE NEVER BEEN COMPLETELY HAPPY WITH THE IDEA OF FREEDOM OF RELIGION THAT EMBRACES RELIGONS SO CLEARLY INIMICAL TO THE aMERICAN VISION.    aaND OF COURSE IT'S NOT JUST iSLAM AND cATHOLICISM BUT ALL RELIGIONS IN ONE WAY OR ANORTHER.  tHE REAL RELIGION AT THE BASE OF aMERICAN FREECDOM IS pROTESTANTISM AND AS FAR AS i KNOW THAT'S NOT USUALLY RECOGNIZED.  sOME HAVE RECOGNIZED IT BUT NOT IN THE LAST CENTURY AND THIT'S THE SORT OF RECOGNIZION THAT IS EASILY SUPPRESSED IN TODAY'SC CLIMATE.

tHE RELIGIOUS NATURE THAT dEtOQUEVILLE LAUDED AS SO CONGENIAL TO THE aMERIAN FVISION OF FREEDOM WAS pROTESTANTISM.  dID HE NOTE THAT OR NOT?  tHE pROTESTANTISM THAT HAD BEEN PREACHED IN THE gREAT aWAKENING BY gEORGE wHITEFIELD AND THE wELEYS AND jONATHAN eDWARDS.  tHIS IS THE FOUNDATIONAL RELIGIOSITY THAT PERHAPS WITHOUT RECOGNIZEING IT THE FOUNDERS CONSIDERED TO BE ESSENTIAL TO THE SUCCESS OF THE rEPUBLIC THEY HAD CRAFTED.  iN THEIR DAY THAT pROTESTANTISM WAS FRESH FROM THE gREAT aWAKENING AND AT LEAST NINETY FIVE PERCENT OF THE PEOPLE OF aMERCA WOULD HAVE LIVED B IT.

wELL, WE'VE LOST IT BYNOW.  tHAT'S FOR SURE.  

sO AS i'VE BEEN PONDERING WHAT WOULD BE NEEDED TO RESTORE aMERICA TO ANYHTHING LIKE WHAT IT WAS ORIGINALLY MEANT RTO BE, TO RESTORE IT FROM THIS COLLAPSE INTO TYRANNY WE ARE NOW LIVING THROUGH, i'M RUNNING UP AGAINT THIS SENSE OF THE NATURE OF THE PEOPLE NECESSARY TO THAT ORIGINAL VISION AND THE PROBLEM OF HOW THE PEOPLE THEMSELVES COULD BE RECLAIMED.  nOT EVEN PARTICULARLY THINKING OF THE RELIGION ITSELF BUT CEWTAINLY OF A BIBLICAL WORLDVIEW, A cULTURAL cHRISTIANITY AS NECESSARY TO RESTORING THE VISION.

oDDLY ENOUGH i STARTED THIS TRAIN OF THOUGHT BY CONSIDERTING THTA WHAT IS NEEDED IS THE EDUCATION OF LIBERALS WHO HAVE BEEN LIVING IN A PROPAGANDISTIC LIE FOR DECADES NOW.  a BLITZ OF INFORMATION TO DISABUSE THEM OF THAT LIE IS WHAT i WAS THINKING IS THE MAIN THING NEEDED IF WE ARE TO RESTORE THE NATION AND SAVE US ALL FROM TOTALITARIAN BRUTALITY.  wHEN PEOPLE LEAVE TH XCDDEMOCRATIC PARTY IN THAT MOVEMENT CALLED THE WALKWAWAY MOVEMENT THEY'VE OFTEN DONE SO ON THE BSIS OF REO CCOGNIZING THE TRUTH ABOUT SOMETHING THE'D BEEN DECEIVED ABOUT BEFORE, BYU THE MEDIA OR THE GOVERNMENT AND SO ON.  tHAT'S THE SORT OF THING i WAS THINKING OF.  aND THAT LED ME TO THE GENERAL RECOGNITION THAT IT'S THE CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE THESMELVES THAT THE FOUNDERS UNDERSTOOD QUALIFIED OR DISQUALIFIED US FOR THE KIND OF GIVERNMENT THEY CREATED.

mETASXAX POINHTS OUT AMONG OTHER THINGS THAT WHEN WE TRY TO BRING DEMOCRACY TO OTHER CULTURES WE REALLY DON'T SUCCEED VERY WELL.  wE MAY SUCCEED IN GETTING A GENERATION TO HAVE ELECTIONS AND EXPRESS THEIR VOTE, BUT BECAUSE THEIR CULTURAL EXPERIENCE IS AT ODDS WITH THE LIBERTY OF THE aMERICAN VISION THEY CAN'T KEEP THEIR SUPPOSED NEW FREEDOMS FOR LONG AND QUICKLY DEVOLVE BACK INTO THEIR NORMAL TYRANNICAL FRAMEWORK.  aFGHANISTAN LIBERATED FROM sADDAM hUSSEIN.  

aMERICANS

aMERICANS TOO HAVE CULTURAL LY DEVOLVED TO A POINT THAT MAY MAKE ANY RECOVERY OF THE ORIGINAL aMERICAN VISION IMPOSSIBLE.  

sOMETGIMES i THINK IF WE LIVE IN A NATION THAT CAN BRING PORNOGRAPHY UNDER THE BANNER OF FREEDOM OF SPPEECH WE'RE DOOMED.  i DON'T WANT TO THINK THAT.  i WANT TO HTHIHNK WE CAN RECOVER THE ORIGINAL MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHARACTER NEEDED TO FULFILLE THE AMERICAN VISION,   BUT THE MORE i THINK ABOUT THAT ONE EXAMPLE THE LESS SANQUINE i AM ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF RECOVERING WHAT WE'VE LOST.

False Ideas Have Evil Consequences: Marxism

 Thomas Sowell in an interview on the program Uncommon Knoweldge, which can be found on You Tube, said the reason he wsas first attracted to Marxas its  was its simple explanation for porverty, that the rich are righ and the poor are poor because the rich take from thew poor.    

Eventually he came to see how false that idea is but it's an incredibly popular idea among many othersw, and in fact in our day is probably what runs the world.  Into the ground.  I don't know if it's the red hot center of the rpproblem it feels to me to be, but something in Marxism is certainly that red not center.   Marxism is the enemy of everything sane and real.  And it dominates everything these days, having grown over the last five or six decades into a voracious monster that is eating up everything that makes life worthiwhile.  Yes it's totalitarian and maybe the pithy red hot center lies somewhere in that term rather than the economic term, I don't know, I'm trying to find the best way to think about it.  

Recently somebodey on the Rogan show said something so irrational and evil it left my stomach in knots.  Instead of complaining about all the illegal aliens coming across our border now we should be encouraging more to come because it's just unfair that America has so much wealth and prosperity and good things that most of the rest of the world lacks that it's only right that they overrun us and take it away from us to equalize things and make things fair.  I don't know how he bput it, I've forgotten but that's the gist of it.  I don't even remember his name.  Chris something I think.

A crimninal idea.  Utterly irrational, utterly at odds with reality, a receipte for not only a total crash from that prosperity but a recipte for murder in the end, the death of millions in the end.  

I guess I'm not to call this liberalism but there are people who call themsevles liberals who hold such crazy ideas.  Ldeftists is another world for it.  Also Marxism, socialism, communism.  All of it.  The most even destructive ideas ever  allowed to increase to a dominating role in the world.  How did we let this happen?

Listen to that discussion on Uncommobn Knoweldge with Thomas Sowell.  Good stuff.  How the welfare state had a destructive effect on the black community rather than the other way around which is what is commonly thought.  Decreased prosperity, decreased success, increased crime, the whole jmess.

I've been wondering why  the thinkers who most attract my interest in recent years are blacks, the black public interllectuals as they call themselves, such as Thomas Sowell.   I think maybe it's because in their quest to understand the deteriorating condition of the black community they often arrive at this sort of recognition, that the liberal or leftist solutions are really the problem, and in arrivcing at that conclusion they illuminate the general problem of Marxism in the world these days and its destructive effect on America.  How it's the seedbed of so many of our current nightmarish insanities, so much of it traceable to this perverted idea of equality or equity or social engineering that has no understanding at all of human nature or economic or social realities and forces people into nonsensical abstract ideas that kill everything good and decent.

Marxism seems to be the perfect demented ideology to reflect the fallen condition of humanity.  As a Christian I see the Christian worldview as the intellectual frameworld for all good things in this fallen world, and the natural habits of fallen humanity as the contrasticg opposite.  Thomas Sowell has a book out titled A Conflict of Visions in which he contrasts what he called the Constrained Vision with the Unconstrained vision and I'm hopint go get it through my audible books for the blind.   

Sowell's Constrained View is apparently more or less synonymous with conservativism, and I'd like to find out how closely both views align with the Christian Worldview.  Seems to me it is this arena of thought that we could find the solutions to the destruvie trends we are suffering from these days.  But it would take bringing such ideas into focus for libersals and leftists to make suha difference.  Something I heard recently, some talk show or other I suppose, said that Constitution Day, which recnetly came and went, on September seventeenth, was oritginally conceived to ba a day in which all the schools spend the entire day studying and Constitution of the United Stes, but somehow that idea got dropped and now nobody even knmows there is such a day.  But wow, what a differnece that would have made if it had bwen practiced.  Wow.  And  think the whole nation, not just the schools, need a day like that, a day when all the tv shows and radio shows and special gatherings, conrferences and so on, are aimed at educating us on the meaning of our American institutions, which so few of us understand at all these days.  Wow do we need that.

Yes I thinki the Constitution is probably a great example of the Constrained vision  I don't know, I haven't heard Sowell say so, but as he defined the vision as far as I've heard anyway it's pretty clear the Constittuion aims at a restraining of the passions of fallen humanity so that tyranny and totalitarianism are presevented.  Of course when you just throw out all the restrains or redefine the Constitution to mean something other than what it was intended to mean, which is of course what has been going on for decades now, it exerts none of the good influences on the nation it was inteneded to do.  The amoujmt of recovery needed to bring that back is staggering.

I think Mark Levin's book The Democrat Party Hates America is going to do a good job of defining how all the destructive evil ideas we are suffering from reside in that party.  That's a playce to start.  As might be Eric Metaxas' books "If You Can Keep It" and "Letter to the American Church>"  Kind of foundational principles we need to recognize.  All of us.

As usual I feel mistakes galore getting tapped out under my fingers and I can't see so I can't go back and correct them and all I an do is hope the resultant garbling doesn't make my message incoherent beyond usefulness.