Tuesday
READING THE HEADLINES
WE CAN OFTEN LEARN ABOUT CURRENT
EVENTS BY READING THE HEADLINES
IN OUR DAILY NEWSPAPERS
For example, here are just two headlines picked up
from Internet news sources this week: "Is America
past the point of no return? And this very concise
one, describing our present federal administration:
"Feckless, helpless, clueless."
But more definitive was this headline on the front
page of the "Parade" supplement in last Sunday's
newspapers: "America imprisons 756 inmates
per 100,000 residents, a rate nearly five times
the world's average. About one in every 31 adults
in this country is in jail or on supervised release.
Either we are the most evil people on earth or
we are doing something very wrong."
We probably -- OK, we surely don't deserve to
be called "the most evil people on earth," but the
other option is most certainly true: "we are doing
something very wrong."
To begin with, the prison population of this country is
not our No. 1 problem -- but it is a serious problem,
and it is indicative of an even more serious underlying
problem: that we have departed from ... have ignored
... have rejected the Christian principles which made
up the foundations on which this nation was built, and
in the name of "progress" have substituted a new set
of values for the moral values which have made this
the great nation it has always been.
It doesn't require much research to ascertain the
importance that the nation's founding fathers ascribed
to Scriptural principles. For example, in 1778 James
Madison said, “We have staked the whole future
of American civilization, not upon the power of
government, far from it. We have staked the
future of all our political institutions upon our
capacity to sustain ourselves according to the Ten
Commandments of God.”
And John Adams, in 1798, said of our nation, "We
have no government armed with power capable of
contending with human passions unbridled by
morality and religion. Our Constitution was made
only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly
inadequate to the government of any other."
But we have abandoned our reliance on the Ten
Commandments -- we have made legal the killing of
50 million babies . . . we are taking steps to revoke
God's plan for marriage and the home and are moving
toward the legality of homosexual ("same sex") marriage
. . . we are contemplating the legalizing of certain
drugs -- in the face of our Secretary of State's charge
that our drug use is at fault for the murder spree taking
place just south of us -- over 8,000 murders (including
beheadings) in one year on our borders with Mexico.
And those are only a few indications of our "doing
something very wrong."
What to do about this situation? We cannot rely on
the present administration or the Congress to solve our
problems. The president warned us during his campaign
what he would do if elected -- and he is doing all that.
The Congress -- well, Nancy Salvato, Senior Editor
of New Media Journal, said it well: "The definition of
a citizen is one who is ruled and can rule in turn.
We must have the capacity for both under the law.
Sadly, in today's day and age, those elected to our
legislature do not have to understand the law to
represent their electors. Consequently, this Congress
has proven to be the most constitutionally illiterate
group of people ever elected to office."
No, the response must come from Jesus Christ's own
Church, the Evangelical believers who accept His
challenge that we are salt and light in the world, and
to fulfill His Great Commission to evangelize the world.
It is probably generally agreed that in a national
political sense, the economy is our No. 1 problem.
Or at least it is one of the No 1 problems. There
appears to be a jockeying for the absolute top rank.
But this problem isn't new -- and perhaps some of
the past world leaders on both sides of the Atlantic
understood more about this problem than today's
leaders, again, on both sides of the Atlantic. They
are meeting this week in London. Hopefully some
of the ideas from these leaders of 200 years ago
might surface and be given some consideration.
"When a government is dependent upon bankers
for money, they and not the leaders of the
government control the situation, since the hand
that gives is above the hand that takes. Money
has no motherland; financiers are without
patriotism and without decency; their sole object
is gain." -- Napoleon Bonaparte, French Emperor
"I, however, place economy among the first and
most important republican virtues, and public
debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared."
-- Thomas Jefferson, US Founding Father and the
third U.S. President
It doesn't seem right to pass over and ignore the
"Global Warming" hoax, now appearing under its
new "politically correct" name: "Climate Change."
This news story from the New Media Journal needs
no comment. It makes the point perfectly clear: "A
United Nations document on 'climate change'
that will be distributed to a major environmental
conclave this week envisions a huge reordering
of the world economy, likely involving trillions of
dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses
and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new
tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments
for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon
taxes — all under the supervision of the world body
...The Obama administration has said it supports
the treaty process." Like we said -- no comment
is necessary.
A Founding Father on religion and law: "Far
from being rivals or enemies, religion and law
are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants.
Indeed, these two sciences run into each other.
The divine law, as discovered by reason and the
moral sense, forms an essential part of both. "
-- James Wilson, 1791, Signer of the Declaration
of Independence and the Constitution
Some Random Afterthoughts . . .
Because today is April 1, we felt almost compelled
to refresh your memory with the old story about the
atheists who were protesting to a local church pastor
that it wasn't fair for religionists to have so many
annual holidays, and atheists to have none. They
argued that Christians have Christmas and Easter,
and the Jews have Passover and Yom Kippur. The
pastor referred them to Psalm 14:1 and Psalm 53:1,
"The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God,"
and congratulated them for having a holiday which
is celebrated on a world-wide basis -- April 1, or
"All fools Day."
Two more in our series of notable "One liners":
"Let's face it: conservatism is in crisis. The liberal
media is gleefully pronouncing it dead, and
President Obama and his Far-Left henchmen are
doing all they can to make sure it is marginalized
and silenced." -- Human Events
"The Left’s radical environmentalist agenda is a
bizarre ideology based on anti-capitalism and
anti-humanity sentiments." -- Gary Bauer
Last week we pointed out the new term for
attacks by terrorists, as adopted by our new
Homeland Security Director, Janet Napolitano:
"man caused disasters." Now the Obama
administration has added to the politically correct
vocabulary a new term to replace "global war on
terror" -- it is "Overseas Contingency Operation."
And so our young men and women are risking their
lives, not to combat global terrorism, but to deal
with "Overseas Contingencies."
Reflecting on the UN's "Climate Change" plan:
In Great Britain, they are taking these new proposals
more seriously. Consider this excerpt from London's
Sunday Times: “Jonathon Porritt, one of Prime
Minister Gordon Brown’s leading green advisers,
is to warn that Britain must drastically reduce its
population if it is to build a sustainable society.
Porritt said: ‘Population growth, plus economic
growth, is putting the world under terrible pressure.
Each person in Britain has far more impact on the
environment than those in developing countries, so
cutting our population is one way to reduce that
impact.’” The question arises: how many of Britain's
61 million people will have to be "cut" in order to meet
the new climate control standards? And how do you
do that? Through China's one-child-per-family policy,
or through President Obama's increased abortion-on-
demand policy? Either way is frightening.
A Founding Father on government regulation:
"Wise politicians will be cautious about fettering
the government with restrictions that cannot be
observed, because they know that every break of
the fundamental laws, though dictated by necessity,
impairs that sacred reverence which ought to be
maintained in the breast of rulers towards the
constitution of a country." -- Alexander Hamilton,
writing in the Federalist, 1787
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