Rabbit Trails

“The Emerging American Empire: Mammon Versus Allah” by Douglas Wilson

2011-02-07T09:33:00.000-08:00

“The Emerging American Empire: Mammon Versus Allah”

by Douglas Wilson

This essay was originally published in the June 2005 issue of Chronicles, a paleoconservative magazine of American culture published by the Rockford Institute.

Let us begin by assuming that we agree that Islam is

inherently militant. The words

Muslim and Islam are derived from the Arabic word for “submission.” Submission to the absolute authority of Allah is essential. The heart of Islam is submissi

on to the central credo that there is only one god, Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet. At the center of all Islamic thought is the driving necessity of submission to power. Christians should understand that the Koran is a revelation of Allah’s will and not a giving of Allah himself. Allah is unknowable by creatures. He may be obeyed, but he cannot be known. This is in radical distinction to the Christian Faith, where the central act of obedience is to know God by faith in His revealed Son.

This religion of total submission is very different from the emerging (and polytheistic) American empire that is currently in conflict with radical Islam. It seems strange to most Americans to speak of an American empire, but an acknowledgement of the facts is long overdue. Americans are willing to admit that our nation is a superpower, and, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it happens that we are the sole remaining superpower. But, for all that, we still think of ourselves as a reluctant superpower. For numerous reasons, this is not quite true. As Charles Beard once noted, empires are not built in fits of absent-mindedness. In American Empire, his compelling treatment of this subject, Andrew Bacevich notes that nothing is served by denying the facts. And facts they are, stubborn as usual. America has entered her imperium.

There are two different kinds of empire, however. The first kind is ideological, as the attempt at Marxist empire was. The god of such systems is overtly solitary. Things are run by the Party, the Party line is put out by the Newspaper, and ideological lockstep is the order of the day. The grand idea, whatever it is, is necessarily “unitarian.”

The second kind of empire is an economic empire, as ancient Rome was. America is becoming such an economic, pragmatic empire, only without the formalization of proconsuls and tributary states. In other words, American hegemony is being exerted with a great deal more finesse than was seen with the old-fashioned empires, but our cultural influence, economic domination, and military presence are not any less real for all that. We may call it “global leadership,” but this does not alter what is actually happening on the ground. You can still get a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt from just about anywhere, and the U.S. Marines will help to keep it that way.

In many ways, economic empires can be far more benign than the empires built and run by ideologues. The commies wanted to haul us off to the Gulag and take all our stuff. The Americans just want the opportunity to sell us a Windows upgrade. Rightly understood, free trade can be a great blessing and benefit. Empires built by merchants are generally not the world-class human-rights disasters that ideological empires are. At the same time, they are empires, and this means the use of force to protect future sales. Establishing democracies may be the stated goal, but establishing markets is a close corollary. Nevertheless, by God’s common grace, empires of this kind can provide the Church with multiple opportunities. The Apostle Paul was not at all hesitant to use the perks of empire — from roads to citizenship — as he sought to establish churches upon the Gospel throughout the Roman Empire. Neither should we be shy about it.

With such opportunities, however, come many temptations. What does it profit a man, Jesus asked, if he gain the whole world but lose his own soul? Gaining the whole world is what empire is all about. Seeking first the Kingdom of God is what the Christian Faith is all about. The early returns do not indicate that American Christians are preparing themselves to see the discrepancy.

The public worship of such economic empires always includes an affinity for the pantheon. Many gods are necessary to keep all of the customers happy. A good example of this kind of thing was the interfaith deism on display at the National Cathedral after the September 11 attack. The worship was self-consciously polytheistic, and, consequently, participating Muslims and Christians were both compromised. The real god of this worship service was the god called America, the guarantor of economic stability.

There was no real commitment to any of the gods honored or invoked, but only a commitment to the bottom line. While ideological empire is overtly unitarian, economic empires have a unifying principle, too, though it is less obvious. Think of them as gigantic yard sales, with everything imaginable laid out for the shoppers. The most apparent thing about the yard sale is the incredible diversity. “Look!” one might say, getting out of the car, “Pluralism!” The avid yard saler can buy canning jars, water skis, jigsaw puzzles, tablecloths, and so on. Even here, however, there is a unifying principle — there is only one cash box.

In economic empires, the unifying principle is the economic vitality of the empire itself — the cash box. This is the implicit unitarian god of the system, the god that will be defended against blasphemy. The diversity and tolerance are only apparent in those things that are for sale; the right to sell anything is a right that will be defended to the death.

This also reveals why the theological currents within the Church have been running the way they have throughout the course of the last century. Despite all Her problems, the Church in America is still a thriving force in our public life. It is therefore important to do something that will prepare our nation’s millions of Christians for their assigned role in the empire. That “something” is to neutralize the Faith by making it just one more item in the yard sale. What is the unifying principle behind our current theological battles? What do openness theology, seeker-sensitive worship, and dumb evangelical T-shirts all have in common? All of them represent a shift from the worship of Jesus, King of kings and Lord of lords, to Jesus, competitor for market share. Modern evangelicals want the shoppers to buy Jesus instead of the old lampshade, and they do not care who runs the cash box.

The American commitment to the bottom line is real and abiding. It would, therefore, be a great error to suppose that America’s conflict with Iraq has been a conflict tantamount to a war between the Christian Faith and Islam. This is not a second Battle of Tours. Something far more complicated is going on. In recent years, the United States has armed and/or tacitly supported Muslims in their conflicts with Christians in Indonesia, the Sudan, Bosnia, Chechnya, etc. We have also supported Jews against Muslims (and Christians) in Israel. We have also supported Muslim against Muslim. The reason for all of this is ultimately the bottom line, Mammon, America’s great idol. This includes obtaining resources, such as oil, and establishing markets in which we may compete — otherwise known as “spreading democracy.” Because Money is our great idol, we want all the customers to stay contented, and one good way to do this is by honoring their household deities — the kind of gods that can be kept on a shelf.

The one rule is that all the customers must go along with this and not complain when the economic empire honors the tiny gods of the other customers. If we agree to have our God demoted, the merchants of empire will see to it that all the other traditional gods are demoted, too. The empire’s name for this kind of unctuous flattery is pluralism.

Think of the empire as a huge Wal-Mart that sets aside Mondays as Christianity Day; Tuesday, as Hindu Day; Wednesday, as Buddhism Day; and so forth. But every day is Money Day.

Of course, America is largely despised throughout the Muslim world for her residual Christianity, and this places Americans who want to be consistent Christians in an awkward position. We defend our civilization from this Islamic attack from outside because we are a Christian people. We critique our civilization from within because we are not a Christian people. Combining these two, we see that we must call our people back to our earlier covenants, the covenants we have broken. We are like ancient Israel just before the book of the Law was found in the days of Josiah. The Gospel message is constant: Repent and believe.

This means that consistent American Christians must refuse to worship any god within the pantheon, including our own. Within the pantheon, our own God retains His name but has become an idol. This demand places consistent Christians at complete odds with pluralism, our civic polytheism. Christians may certainly accept the pluralistic society around them as a fact, just as Saint Paul knew that Athens was full of idols. By contrast, the pluralist push is for American Christians to accept this state of affairs as principled and desirable.

It is certainly lawful for Christians to occupy various positions within idolatrous empires. Daniel was the chancellor of the University of Babylon; Joseph was Pharaoh’s chief of staff; and the centurion that Jesus praised beyond all the men of Israel was a military man in a pagan military machine. Such participation is possible, but it presents great challenges. One is the need to refuse to worship any of the other gods in the pantheon or to accept that it is legitimate for others to worship them. The stopping point is always on the question of worship, a point that was quite clear to Daniel’s three friends. They cooperated with their enforced scholarships to the University of Babylon, but they would not bow down and worship. It is lawful for a Christian to be in President Bush’s Cabinet, but he must refuse to participate in any way in the jumbled and corrupting world of syncretism.

In order to honor God’s name in such civil settings, Christians need to recover a right approach to Christian worship. We will not get out of this mess by seeking to “recover” the Constitution. We should not idolize the Constitution but should regard it as an exemplary document, now deceased. As one writer has observed, our current rulers treat the Constitution as the Queen Mum of American politics. She gets trundled out on the balcony periodically to wave at the crowds, but she has no real power. Case in point: We went into Iraq to topple the regime of another country. This was an old-fashioned war, pure and simple. The Constitution says that Congress, not the President, declares such wars. The Constitution, for all intents and purposes, is a dead letter, although certain parts of it are still arbitrarily observed because they are part of our unwritten constitution. The best thing would be to quit pretending.

Still, to acknowledge the development of an American empire, even a polytheistic one, is not to say that everything that comes out of it has to be bad. God extends His common grace in all sorts of ways. Such an empire is not necessarily wicked in everything it does, but a consistent Christian cannot give any fundamental religious allegiance to it. And, as American Christians participate (necessarily) in the growing fight between the open markets desired by our government and the closed minds desired by Islam, we must not see this battle as one between light and darkness. This is not a religious war, except in the sense that it is a war between two idols, Mammon and Allah. Christians may be present in the fray — there are many believers in the American military — but all Christians everywhere must not give way to the pressure to conform to the prevailing idolatry.

Neither may Americans on the home front give way to a quasireligious patriotic fervor whenever the shooting starts. I have seen more than one red-white-and-blue example of blasphemy in a Christian bookstore. One was a clever rendition of the ubiquitous “Jesus Saves,” but with the letters run together in a string of nine — Jesusaves. The middle three letters — usa — were inappropriately done up in red, white, and blue. But the worst image I have seen in this respect was one with Jesus holding a shepherd’s hook and extending His left hand in a compassionate gesture. Draped over His head, like a prayer shawl or something, was an American flag. What is to be done with people who think up things like this? One of the reforms that Christendom desperately needs is a return to stocks in the town square, with a ready supply of ripened vegetables and dead cats.

An important word of commendation is needed here. One thing that radical Muslims can do is follow an argument. If Allah is god, then other gods are not. It is precisely this ability to follow an argument that brings them into conflict with Christians who also can follow an argument. If the Triune God of Scripture is God, then Allah is not.

Radical Islam has not succumbed to the Hellenistic dualism that relegates faith to an internal compartment of the heart and therefore allows secularism to reign elsewhere. There was a time when Christians (considered generally) understood this as well, and the results of that understanding were called Christendom. The Christian Faith was thought of as a package deal. It was a different package from Islam, but they had this in common — they were both packages. Because of this common understanding of the total nature of all religious claims, and because Christendom and the realm of Islam bordered each other, the result was conflict and war over the course of many centuries.

If a Muslim who accepts the relegation of Allah to one option among many in our pluralistic marketplace is a compromised Muslim, then it follows that a Christian who accepts the same thing is a compromised Christian. A consistent Christian and a consistent Muslim are, in a strange way, in a state of agreement when they are at war. And when they agree to serve the idol of Mammon together, each is at war with his own foundational assumptions. Religious claims are total. If the Triune God is God, then serve Him. If Allah is god, serve him. If Mammon is god, then get ye to the mall.

Christianity proclaims the crown rights of Jesus Christ over all creation. There is no realm where His authority and glory are not felt. Jesus Himself declared this in the Great Commission, when He told His disciples that all authority in Heaven and on Earth had been given to Him (Matthew 28: 18-20). A key word in this commission is the word therefore. It is not enough for Christians to go: They must “therefore go.” The basis for the task is the fact that universal authority has been given to Jesus Christ, declared with power to be the Son of God by His Resurrection from the dead (Romans 1:4). In the second Psalm, God promised the Son that all He had to do was ask, and God would make the nations His inheritance, the ends of the earth His possession.

Because this is true, and only because this is true, the nations belong to Him. He purchased Saudi Arabia with His Blood, as well as Iraq, Libya, and Iran. He requires us to be disciples to these nations, baptizing them and teaching them what it means to be a Christian nation. Of course, we cannot teach them that until we know what it means ourselves. And this means that we have some idols to topple at home before taking the show on the road. •

Douglas Wilson is pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, senior fellow of theology at New St. Andrews College, and the author of several books, including Angels in the Architecture: A Protestant Vision for Middle Earth, which he coauthored with Douglas Jones.
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Stuck in My Head: "When I'm Sixty-Four"

2010-05-04T10:18:00.000-07:00

Radios, iPods, etc. are not allowed in my workplace. But that's not too big a deal for me, as my brain is filled with numerous tunes from a broad variety of genres, acquired in my 48 years of life. Consequently, I tend to sing or whistle — lots — throughout my day, whether I'm at work or not.

One day last week, a co-worker of mine got me whistling the Beatles' "When I'm Sixty-Four." As is often the case, I didn't know the lyrics, so when I got home, I pulled up the lyrics and a YouTube video of the song. It's really a cute and infectious little tune.

Ah yes, infectious.

The next day, a coworker I don't know said sardonically, "Thanks for the song yesterday." After hearing me whistle "When I'm Sixty-Four" in the locker room the night before, the tune was stuck in his head all day. Funny thing is, my manager at Pizza Hut often complains about the same thing when I start to sing or whistle a tune there: "That song had better not get stuck in my head!" (Well, sorry pal!)

Anyhow, their sad refrains have inspired me to launch this friendly (mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!) little blog feature called "Stuck in My Head," in which I share with you the music and lyrics that have been plaguing ... er, stuck with me for the last day or so.

Should prove to be quite an eclectic collection ... Enjoy!

"When I'm Sixty-Four" (Wikipedia entry)

(Lennon/McCartney)

from The Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

When I get older losing my hair,
Many years from now,
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings bottle of wine?

If I'd been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door,
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?

(oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oooo)
You'll be older too, (ah ah ah ah ah)
And if you say the word,
I could stay with you.

I could be handy mending a fuse
When your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings go for a ride.

Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?

Every summer we can rent a cottage
In the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck, and Dave

Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
Stating point of view.
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, Wasting Away.

Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?

Whoo!

There’s “illegal,” and then there’s unlawful — and in a righteous society, they would be the same

2009-11-21T07:29:00.000-08:00

The distinction between an act being truly unlawful and merely “illegal” is that the former is rooted in God’s law, whereas the second is merely created by humanist judicial or legislative fiat.

Robert Ingram illustrates the distinction quite clearly [my italics]:

... Due process of the law means a proper and just conviction of a crime. No one may be executed, imprisoned or fined unless he is a convicted criminal. At the time of the adoption of this Constitution there was none of the present day confusion about crime which sees any infraction of statute regulations somehow as criminal. But the real criminal law, which is summed up, I say, in the Ten Commandments, is such that, together with universal principles of justice, many if not all these regulations are unlawful; they are themselves enforced only by criminal acts.

The Prohibition Amendment and the Volstead Act which made it operative furnish a clear illustration. The common law rights are guaranteed by laws that would punish anyone who takes unlawfully what belongs to another. Thus it is unlawful even for police authorities to put a man under arrest without either a warrant or personal immediate knowledge of a criminal act. It is therefore unlawful to search his person or his property apart from lawful arrest. Now there was no way to enforce the Volstead Act, which outlawed the possession of alcoholic beverages and also their manufacture, except by unlawful search and seizure.

If the Volstead Act was to be enforced, the authorities then had to break the law and violate the common law rights of every one. The result was an intuitive recognition by the general public of the fact that they no longer enjoyed the protection of the law (which is also known as the protection of God since it is God’s law): therefore they turned almost overnight to the protection racket — to gangsterism. The notorious lawlessness of the Prohibition era is quite wrongly explained as the consequence of men becoming accustomed to breaking the law by buying bootleg whiskey; it was simply the collapse of the common law caused when the power of government was used unlawfully.

Attempts to outlaw the possession and sale of narcotics today present the same problem. This is no argument for permitting unlimited use of narcotics; it simply is a recognition of the very precise and serious limitations facing rightful control. Perhaps all that can be done is to follow the ancient precedent used to deal with prostitution — outlaw solicitation. Fornication itself is unlawful under the common law (based on the commandment forbidding idolatry), but raiding a house of prostitution is highly questionable. On the other hand, solicitation, or making the offer to fornicate for a price, is necessarily an open and observable act and is unlawful. So narcotics might be controlled lawfully* by outlawing offering them for sale. No one would expect by these measures to “eliminate” either prostitution or traffic in and use of narcotics; but they probably would serve the common good by keeping these things within tolerable bounds.

The operative principle is to be noticed carefully. The usual common law rights are simply the reverse side of common law prohibitions. It is unlawful to take any of this world’s goods from a man — his person, his liberty, his family, or his goods. It is unlawful for the sheriff or the king to do so. Under the law, then, a man has a “right” to his life, his limbs, his liberty and his property simply because it is wrong to take them from him except in just punishment for breaking that same law. The law is a closed circle, a complete fence. Within it men are free and have innumerable “rights” if one wants to think of them that way. But these rights appear from the wrongs specified by the common law.

~ T. Robert Ingram, What’s Wrong With Human Rights (free PDF available here), pp. 53-54

Of course, it should likewise be stated that, where the civil magistrate acknowledges and honors God’s law, “illegal” does not conflict with “unlawful.”

__________

* The book’s original text reads, “So narcotics might be controlled unlawfully by outlawing offering them for sale.” But given the context and Ingram’s line of reasoning, I think that “unlawfully” is a printing/publisher’s error, which I have taken the liberty of correcting here.

"The warranty on your car is about to expire!" My letter to General Warranty Services

2009-10-31T05:02:00.000-07:00

I was weeding out my gmail box this morning when I came across the following. I thought that someone else might be able to use it — whether against General Warranty Services, or some other persistent, nefarious, unscrupulous telemarketers — so I humbly submit it here for your consideration and free use.

From: Frank & Dianne Golubski [mailto: ________@msn.com]
Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2008 7:52 PM
To: bill@generalwarrantyservices.com; gary@generalwarrantyservices.com; compliance@generalwarrantyservices.com; ken@generalwarrantyservices.com; ray@generalwarrantyservices.com; media@generalwarrantyservices.com; kevin@generalwarrantyservices.com
Subject: Do NOT call!!
Importance: High

Frank Golubski
_____ N. 43rd Ave.
Glendale, AZ 85306

14 June 2008

General Warranty Services, Inc.
282 Main Street
Salem, New Hampshire 03079

Bill Ranney, President
Gary Roberts, V.P. Operations
Peter Skouras, Compliance Manager
Ken Spencer, I.T. Operations
Ray Thayer, Customer Support
Kevin Hurley, Sales Manager

Gentlemen,

I am having a problem with your company. A MAJOR problem.

Almost daily, I receive a phone call on my cellular phone, number 602.696.0833, from one of your nationwide army of slave telemarketers. Since I don't recognize the area code from which the call is originating, I decline the call, but they leave a recorded message anyways.

When I get around to checking my messages later, it's always the same message:
THIS IS A COURTESY CALL TO ALERT YOU THAT THE WARRANTY ON YOUR CAR IS ABOUT TO EXPIRE!!
(A "courtesy call"?! That's **too rich!** And your "alert" would otherwise be really hilarious, considering that your company obviously has NO IDEA as to the status of my automobile warranties.)

Anyhow, when this whole song-and-dance first started, I simply deleted the calls.

But they kept coming.

So then I decided to try telling your nationwide army of slave telemarketers to PLEASE STOP CALLING AND REMOVE MY NUMBER FROM THEIR LIST.

I would press the necessary buttons to speak to somebody, but when I tried to tell them to PLEASE STOP CALLING AND REMOVE MY NUMBER FROM THEIR LIST, they either hung up on me, or said that they had removed me from their list — and THEN they hung up on me.

In short, I have asked to have my number removed from your call list dozens of times. BUT THE CALLS STILL KEEP COMING.

So when I received yet another call today, I finally asked the slave telemarketer the name of your company: "General Warranty Services."

When I told him that I have asked several times to have my number dropped from your list, but that I keep getting calls from his company anyways, he said "Sir, that's probably not the case, because there are dozens of companies selling extended auto warranties by phone."

And when I told him, "Gee, it's funny how every one of these companies uses the exact same recordings," he said that I had been removed from his call list and he would not call again — and he hung up on me.

(Fifty-second verse, same as the fifty-first ...)

So I Googled "General Warranty Services." As you are all likely aware, there is a firestorm of hatred and vitriol swirling about Internet telemarketer-complaint chat rooms about GWS. Here was my personal favorite:

Posted by Bill Ranney, Jr. on 23 May 2008

Hi, I'm the President of General Warranty Services, the company that's bothering you.

I'm a huge douchebag with a flimsy Product/Service that's been around for less than six months but has still garnered enough bad attention to fill posts and threads throughout the web with venom about my shady company. My business model is to have my poor employees call you constantly with no regard to "No-call lists" and requests to be removed from our sales list to try and trick you into thinking that this is your last chance to extend a warranty on a vehicle that I have no idea of the make/model/year or even if it exists.

It's likely that the person calling you has also been duped by my job ads stating they can make $700 - $1200 weekly, though there are many people like the girl who wrote this complaint about making $45 for 54 hours worked.

Whenever you receive multiple phone calls from General Warranty Services, and find yourself on the edge of losing your mind I encourage you call me, Bill Ranney at 603-685-6250 ext. 1141 as many times as my unethical company has called you and please let me have it.

P.S. I make love to children, animals and things that have died.

Now, I didn't want to simply call this "Bill Ranney" guy and unload on him, because that post could just as well have been fraudulent. (That is what is known as "being considerate of other people." You really should try it.)

So after Googling GWS/Bill Ranney a little more, I learned that Virtual Sun, LLC had designed a website for General Warranty Services — and Virtual Sun's home page actually has an audio-recorded testimonial from a "Bill Ranney" of "General Warranty Services"!

So I finally just Googled "General Warranty Services" — and bingo, I found your website!

To cut to the chase, I found your website's "DO NOT CALL" PHONE NUMBER field, entered my phone number (602.696.0833) and clicked "Submit" -- and GUESS WHAT?

A WINDOW CAME UP SAYING:

"The number: '6026960833', already exists in our do not call database"

THEN IF THAT'S THE CASE, GENTLEMEN, WHY DO I KEEP GETTING CALLS ALMOST DAILY FROM YOUR SLAVE ARMY OF TELEMARKETERS?!

No, I really don't care what the answer is!

JUST CONSIDER THIS E-MAIL TO BE LEGAL NOTIFICATION THAT:

1) YOUR NATIONWIDE ARMY OF SLAVE TELEMARKETERS ARE TO **IMMEDIATELY** STOP OR REFRAIN FROM CALLING MY TELEPHONE NUMBERS:

602.696.0697

602.696.0833

602.441.2569

2) YOU ARE NOT TO PROVIDE MY NUMBERS TO ANYONE ELSE.

I will be sending a copy of this letter to the office of the New Hampshire Attorney General, and I will be calling them at my first opportunity Monday morning to file a formal complaint against GWS.

Lastly, I am now keeping a log of all calls received from your nationwide army of slave telemarketers. (I found a handy "Do Not Call" log form at the NH AG's website!)

An acknowledgment of receipt of this e-mail and a statement of intent to immediately address my complaint would be greatly appreciated — and might, in fact, serve to assuage the anger I currently have toward GWS by the time I call the NH AG's office.

Very truly yours,
Frank Golubski

cc: Kelly A. Ayotte, Attorney General of the State of New Hampshire

I sent that email on a Saturday, and received the following reply Monday morning:

From: compliance@generalwarrantyservices.com
To: ________@msn.com
Subject: RE: Do NOT call!!
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:29:52 -0400

Frank Golubski
_____ N. 43rd Ave.
Glendale, AZ 85306

GWS - Mr. Frank Golubski-000164

Dear Mr. Frank Golubski,

In response to your request for written reply to the above captioned reference number. Your name has been removed from our Telemarketing Program. In addition, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or aggravation we may have caused you. We gladly send you this sincere written apology per your request. However, at this time, it is certainly not our intention to inconvenience or aggravate you any further.

Upon receipt of this letter could you please respond with your telephone number or numbers so we could absolutely confirm the complete removal of your entire information from our telemarketing program?

Also as a preventive nuisance practice, we do in fact "scrub" all of our outgoing telephone lists with State Do Not Call Lists and the National Do Not Call List so to remove any number from our outgoing call list that appears on the National DNC. As of January 3, 2008 we hired an independent company called Protus, Inc., who among other business practices specializes in such "scrubbing" procedures regarding the National DNC and as a result our current complaints are nearly non-existent.

As you may or may not be aware, there are at least twenty-two other companies nationwide with over two hundred call center under their direction conducting nearly the same business as General Warranty Services, Inc. GWS is one company with merely one call center under its direction. Therefore, it is at least possible that other similar warranty companies have called and will continue to call you or any other resident who is a member of the National DNC List. Obviously, we have no control of other companies using unethical or suspect business practices.

Also, GWS has a strict policy never to call residents of any state until the passage of at least thirty-one (31) days from the day we issue a campaign in that specific state. Therefore, it is probable that other warranty companies are responsible for at least some of the calls that you allege we made to you. In any event, your name has definitely been removed from our telemarketing program and once you inform us of your telephone number as requested above, you will NOT receive any further calls from GWS. However, as we previously stated, we have no control over any of the other similar warranty companies that may continue to call you.

Furthermore, General Warranty Services, Inc. does not condone any type of predatory practices and we continually remind our employees via daily employee meetings and weekly written memos of our policy regarding consumers requesting to be removed from our call list. General Warranty Services, Inc. has developed an easy and simplistic system for all of our employees to immediately remove consumers from our call list upon their request. At the bottom left on our home page @ www. generalwarrantyservices.com is a selection box where the consumer's telephone number is typed in and immediately removed.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact me directly at the telephone number, e-mail or address listed below.

Respectfully,

Peter G. Skouras
Compliance Department
General Warranty Services, Inc.
282 Main Street
Salem, NH 03079
(603) 685-6156
compliance@generalwarrantyservices.com

Closing notes and observations:

Those courtesy [sic] calls alerting me that my car's warranty was about to expire originated from a variety of area codes around the US. I wonder if GWS has subcontracted work out to non-GWS call centers who sell GWS's "service"? That way they can plausibly claim that their own (GWS) call centers adhere to a strict code of telemarketing ethics, while avoiding having to address the ethics of other call centers who still sell for GWS.
Regardless, after my email to GWS, all such calls immediately ceased.
Although I signed the national "Do Not Call" Registry shortly after moving to Spokane in August 2008 (despite advice to the contrary from Lew Rockwell), we still receive unsolicited calls from what appear on our Caller ID screen to be telemarketing firms. I either don't answer them, or I occasionally pick up the phone and hit the "O" (operator) key, which sometimes puts your number on their "Do Not Call" list.

Then of course, if you are mentally prepared and think you can pull it off with a straight face, there's always this approach [NB: some adult language].

Seven years of commercial-free, non-stop album rock!

2009-08-09T00:09:00.000-07:00

I’m definitely no expert on radio or rock & roll. But I knows what I likes when I hears it ... and I likes KCDX 103.1 FM out of Florence, AZ!

Everyone knows that the playlists of most “classic rock” stations these days are gettin’ pretty tired: Zeppelin ... Floyd ... Stones ... Aerosmith ... repeat.

Well boomer-era rockers, point your browsers at KCDX’s “Listen Online” link and get ready to hear songs you haven’t heard since phones had dials.

I first read about KCDX in a September 2003 Phoenix New Times article called “Ghost Radio.” Sounded cool ... way cool! Problem was, the station is situated in the Sonoran desert between Phoenix and Tucson, and their low-power signal just plain didn’t reach up into my neck of the Valley.

I don’t know if they were streaming their audio online back then, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway — I didn’t have a suitable internet hookup or computer. So KCDX fell off my radar.

Then one day about a year later — when we finally had high-speed internet and a newer Mac — I was working at the computer, and suddenly recalled that magical mystery transmitter I once read about. After a quick Google search ... BAM, I was receivin’!

KCDX boasts a repertoire that’s so classic it’s fresh ... no commercials or DJs ... and of course, an online playlist (to help you recall the songs and artists when those “senior moments” hit you) ...

So what are you waiting for, rock & roll fan? Go forth and check it out ... now!

(In addition to the original New Times story above, you can also read about Ted Tucker, KCDX’s reclusive owner/manager/disc-jockey here.)

You don't say ...

2008-12-21T14:57:00.000-08:00

[ ... click on photo to read the sign.]

A Sabbath from the Slowdown?

2008-11-27T07:47:00.000-08:00

Dianne wondered aloud the other day whether the recession might force stores and restaurants to cut back on their hours of business ... and if so, whether they might consider simply going back to that quaint old tradition of yesteryear: closing on the Lord's day.

(When Dianne was looking for work last year, it was bad enough that all the retail stores required their employees be available Sundays — no exceptions for sabbatarians. But she was particularly dismayed that every Christian book store required the same. Reasons given included, "It's our biggest sales day each week," and, "We consider our work here to be a ministry ... " Uh, yeah. Then maybe you should be giving your stuff away on Sundays? Just sayin' ...)

So at any rate, do you think it's possible that God might use the recession to (among other things) call us to rethink our 24/7 lifestyles and return the wisdom and validity of the Fourth Commandment?

An open letter to the Nanny State

2008-11-26T10:50:00.000-08:00

26 November 2008

Spokane County District Court
P.O. Box 2352
Spokane, WA 99210-2352

Dear Spokane County District Court,

Enclosed please find our personal check for $124 in payment of a fine levied against my wife for driving — however briefly or unwittingly — without her seat belt.

Be advised, we are paying this fine under duress. It has been levied under color of law, and we do not recognize the state of Washington’s authority to punish people who have endangered only themselves, and thus have not committed a true crime.

But we are unable to mount a fight. The state of Washington simply holds all the cards: legislators, administrators and judges, all backed up by men with guns and badges. And all financed with a vast supply of tax dollars. As I have been unemployed since moving to Washington three months ago, we must focus on things like feeding and educating our kids, not spending hundreds of dollars to fight an unjust $124 fine.

So, okay, you win. But not without hearing our remonstrance against the Nanny State’s revenue enhancement scheme disguised as public safety policy.

On 11 November, my wife inadvertently pulled out of a parking lot with her seat belt unfastened. A few moments later, while stopped at a traffic signal, she realized her error and fastened her seat belt. And she did so out of concern for her own safety, not out of fear of being fined.

But it was too late. She’d already been marked for fleecing ... I mean “punishment” ... by an ever-vigilant WSP trooper. Regardless of the fact that she was both safer and in compliance with the law when she pulled away from the signal, the trooper still stopped and cited her. That she realized and corrected the unsafe situation was irrelevant. All that mattered was a violator needed to be punished — and revenue needed to be generated.

We are not some kind of anti-government anarchists. We are Christians who believe what the Bible teaches about civil rulers — namely, that they are ordained by God to bear the sword against evildoers (Romans 13:4). We praise God when criminals — those who actually prey upon and endanger others — are apprehended, tried and punished, because justice has been served. And we truly appreciate those in government — legislators and administrators, judges and hired men with guns and badges — who do their part in serving justice.

But people who jeopardize their own safety by not wearing seat belts or motorcycle helmets are not criminals. They don’t harm or endanger others. The reckless driver is a greater threat to public safety than one who doesn’t buckle up. But curiously, the Nanny State considers it just to punish the latter, who puts nobody but himself at risk, as well as the former.

When a cop is on the lookout for criminals and reckless drivers, he is acting as a genuine “peace officer.” He is keeping the peace of his community by citing or apprehending people who threaten or harm others. But when states enact “Click It Or Ticket” campaigns (for fear of losing federal highway funds), cops become little more than armed thugs, shaking down innocent citizens who have harmed or threatened no one.

The psalmist rhetorically asks God, “Shall the throne of iniquity, which devises evil by law, have fellowship with You? They gather together against the life of the righteous, and condemn innocent blood” (Psalm 94:20, 21). Fining people who haven’t harmed or threatened others amounts to little more than exacting tribute — devising evil by law. And God Almighty has ordained government — that is, you — to punish evil, not perpetrate it.

It has been said, “For the law to be respected, it must first be respectable.” For the order and peace of our community, it is vital that citizens hold their government in proper esteem. But it becomes increasingly difficult for decent, law-abiding taxpayers to esteem rulers who make criminals of drivers who don’t buckle up.

We long for the day in America when government bears the sword against real criminals, earning once again the respect of those whom it exists to serve and protect.

Sincerely,
Frank A. Golubski

cc: Washington State Patrol, Olympia
Washington 4th District legislators: Sen. Bob McCaslin; Rep. Larry Crouse; Rep. Lynn Schindler

What would that make Arizona?

2008-09-20T21:05:00.000-07:00

Yeah, it's been a long time since I last posted. Oh well, other priorities, nothing urgent to blog about ... you know ...

Anyhow, we just moved from Phoenix, AZ to Spokane Valley, WA 3 weeks ago. When we put the plates on the cars, I noted that Washington calls itself "The Evergreen State":

To which Dianne asked, "That must make Arizona the everbrown state?"

Bada-boomp ...

Don't talk to the police!

2008-07-02T08:53:00.000-07:00

(... at least, not without your lawyer present.)

If you’re like me, the vast majority of your exposure to the American legal system comes from TV and movies.

So, who is it that we usually see “pleading the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination”?

That’s right, the evil mafia don ... the guy who we in the audience know is guilty as sin.

I don’t know about you, but that experience has always left me with sort of a funny taste in my mouth about the necessity, the legitimacy — the justice — of the Fifth Amendment.

Well, no more.

In the brief video presentation Don’t Talk to the Police — In praise of the Fifth Amendment right not to be a witness against yourself, Law professor James Duane (27 mins.) and police investigator George Bruch (21 mins.) explain why you and I should always “take the 5th”:

[A]ny lawyer worth his salt will tell the suspect in no uncertain terms to make no statement to police under any circumstances.
~ U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson in
Watts v. Indiana, 338 U.S. 49, 59 (1949 - Justice
Jackson concurring in part and dissenting in part)

This constitutional protection must not be interpreted in a hostile or niggardly spirit. Too many, even those who should be better advised, view this privilege as a shelter for wrongdoers. They too readily assume that those who invoke it are either guilty of crime or commit perjury in claiming the privilege.
~ Ullmann v. United States, 350 U.S. 422 (1956)

One of the Fifth Amendment’s basic functions is to protect innocent men who otherwise might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances. Truthful responses of an innocent witness, as well as those of a wrongdoer, may provide the government with incriminating evidence from the speaker’s own mouth.
~ Ohio v. Reiner, 532 U.S. 17 (2001 - internal
punctuation and citations omittted)

Prof. Duane is very easy to listen to — quick, personable and funny (if a bit toungue-tied at times). Bruch is a bit more reserved, but he gives you the same advice from the cop’s perspective.

Watch it, then pass it along to everyone you know.

The time to be aware of your legal rights is now … not when you find yourself in “a situation.”

Unbelief and the Deification of the Civil Magistrate:Insomnia

2008-05-25T20:47:00.000-07:00

In the 2002 film Insomnia, Al Pacino is Will Dormer, a veteran Los Angeles homicide detective who isn’t above tampering with evidence — only “when necessary,” of course. (I.e., only to ensure the conviction of suspects that everybody knows are guilty.) He and his younger partner, Hap Eckhart, have been sent to Nightmute, Alaska to help the police chief, an old LAPD buddy, investigate the beating death of 17-year-old Kay Connell — and to get them away from a widening Internal Affairs investigation into the dubious ethics of certain detectives.

After arriving and getting settled in, Hap tells Dormer he’s decided to make a deal with IA so that things will go better for him in the long run. Dormer warns Hap that IA only wants to use him to get to Dormer — the “big fish” that will get IA the headlines they want.

Hap protests, “You’re not going to be involved. You’re a G-- d--- hero. With your reputation he can’t touch you. ... You’re clean, Will. ... They’ve got nothing on you because there’s nothing to get.”

“What about [the] Dobbs [case]?” asks Dormer.

“That’s different,” Hap replies. “Even [IA] doesn't want [feces] like Dobbs back on the street.” Everybody knows Dobbs is guilty, you see.

But Dormer also understands that all his prior cases will be jeopardized if Hap cooperates, and he expresses in no uncertain terms his disgust with his partner for deciding to do so.

The next day, Dormer, Hap and several Nightmute cops are in hot pursuit of Kay’s murderer along a rocky, fog-shrouded shoreline. Dormer accidentally shoots Hap, who dies in his arms — convinced that his own partner shot him in retaliation for his decision to cut a deal with IA. Of course, Dormer easily convinces his Nightmute colleagues that Hap was shot by the fleeing killer.

But the killer, Walter Finch (Robin Williams), witnessed the shooting and knows it was accidental. He also knows that Dormer will try to pin it on him. So he calls Dormer to express his sympathies — and to assure Dormer that his secret will be safe with him, so long as he works to convince the Nightmute cops that Kay — and now Hap — were both killed by Kay's high school boyfriend, not by Finch.

Now the race is on between Finch — the creepy, pathetic perv who seems to genuinely believe that Kay’s death was every bit as accidental as Hap’s — and Dormer, the renowned, “honorable” LA homicide detective who must manipulate the evidence to support his “innocence” in Hap’s death — everyone knows he’s innocent, you see — and implicate Finch instead.

Insomnia is an extremely well-crafted psychological crime drama that defends the vital importance of personal integrity. This is probably one of my favorite films — I can’t recommend it highly enough.

But after seeing Insomnia back when it first came out, I also began to consider how our society’s unbelief — our refusal to accept God’s word in faith — might cause us to excuse doing injustice in the name of justice, and thus, to deify the State. Maybe we would prefer to see a possibly innocent man punished in this life — even if a Detective Dormer has to “strengthen the case” against him to assure a conviction — rather than to allow a possibly guilty man to go free in the full confidence that, even if he escapes judgment in this life, he will face God’s judgment at the Last Day.

• Next post: “Unbelief and the Deification of the Civil Magistrate: Woodard v. Wade”

Gold – A political metal

2008-02-08T10:24:00.000-08:00

Political rulers throughout recorded history have asserted a monopoly over money. They have argued that the State possesses legitimate authority over the creation and distribution of money. Because gold and silver have been widely used as money metals, the State has asserted control over the monetary uses of these two metals.

This is the origin of the war against gold. Gold is widely recognized and desired as an investment. It is a highly marketable commodity. This was far more true in 1913 than it is today. Prior to the de-monetization of gold, which began in 1914, a person could take a gold coin anywhere where international trade was common and buy just about anything. It did not matter which ruler’s image was on the coin. The coin was valuable because of its gold content. The image may have helped to convey information about the coin -- so much gold of a certain fineness -- but the face on the coin had merely a brand-name recognition effect. ...

Gold’s value is not independent of governments. This is because governments buy and sell gold. This activity affects its price. Gold’s value is also affected by laws against the circulation of gold coins. The Soviet Union had such laws. So did the United States, 1933-1974. But gold’s value as a money metal can exist independently of a government’s actions to subsidize or stigmatize gold’s use as money. Gold circulates as money precisely because it has a value independent of government policies. Or it did. It no longer does. Gold has been de-monetized by governments and their acolytes, the economists.

As with any scarce resource, gold moves to those holders who bid highest. The more widespread gold’s use as money becomes, the more likely that trade will accompany gold. Gold reduces risk by reducing the likelihood of default or fraud on the part of the State or its licensed agents, fractional reserve banks. A government can go bankrupt, but its gold coins will still circulate at gold’s market value. The same is true of any coin-issuing agency. The gold may be marginally more or less valuable in a particular form because of the degree of recognition of the producer, but a government that accurately certifies its gold coins will find that its coins circulate at full value even if the government itself faces bankruptcy or extinction.

Gold’s independence from the fate of governments points to a political truth that governments despise: governments are not the source of the value of gold. To the extent that gold is money, gold testifies against the sovereignty of the State in the realm of money. It testifies to the sovereignty of consumers in a free market. The free market, not the State, is the primary source of gold’s exchange value [emphasis added].

~ Gary North, The Gold Wars (free pdf book), pp. 44-45

The only good politician ...

2008-02-04T08:41:00.000-08:00

Most of the world’s currencies and coins today have images of politicians, either dead or alive. By law, American coins and bills may not have the image of anyone living. (In this instance, I am strongly in favor this law. If I must daily look at pictures of politicians, I prefer the dead ones.)

~ Gary North, The Gold Wars (free pdf book), p. 18

White Roses for Uncle Sam(or, Passing the time at DTW)

2007-11-04T05:28:00.000-08:00

I wrote previously about my encounter with the TSA upon leaving Phoenix Sky Harbor.

During my week in Ohio and Michigan, I pondered my experience. Remembering the fear I felt as my backpack went through the x-ray machine 3 times ... remembering the looks of resignation on the faces of my fellow travelers ... I think I felt the seeds of a plan begin to form in my mind.

Before leaving Phoenix, I had printed some interesting articles off the Internets and brought them with me, thinking I might engage my old friend and her fiancé in some political conversation. As it turned out, my girlfriend and I spent most of our time reminiscing, touching on current events only occasionally.

Anyhow, one evening as I was tidying up my guest room at their home, I took out the folder of articles and one of them caught my eye: "The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent," by Jacob Hornberger. The non-violent resistance mounted by die Weiße Rose against Hitler's regime is one of the most inspiring stories to me. (I can't recommend highly enough the recent film Sophie Scholl: The Final Days — German language with English subtitles — about three students who were arrested, tried and executed for distributing anti-Nazi pamphlets on their Munich university campus.)

After reading Hornberger's piece once again, the seed that was planted at Sky Harbor Airport earlier that week started to germinate.

The articles I'd brought with me from Phoenix included some classics from LewRockwell.com, some speeches by Rep. Ron Paul, etc. I started looking for shorter pieces that didn't have a whole ton of underlined "hot links" which might prove distracting to readers of the printed articles. I narrowed it down to seven titles:

The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent by Jacob Hornberger
I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty. by Prof. Andrew Bacevich, Col., USA (Ret.)
Political Power and the Rule of Law by Ron Paul
National ID Cards Won't Stop Terrorism or Illegal Immigration by Ron Paul
Power Lust by Lew Rockwell
The Wanna-Be State by Lew Rockwell
The War Criminal in the Living Room by Paul Craig Roberts

Hmm. These should offer food for thought to folks with a lot of time on their hands, in a place where they may have just had a less-than-pleasant, up-close and personal brush with the federal government.

I could make copies and distribute them around the Detroit airport!

Yeah, silly, right? People can read this stuff on the Internet if they want to. Well, yes, they can, but while more folks have computers at home than ever before, I'd bet a whole lot of them don't frequent the same websites I do. In fact, I tend to think a lot of people just use the Internet for e-mail, or to shop for some doo-dad or gee-gaw or other, and little else.

Besides, I really wanted to do something for Ron Paul's presidential campaign. I've got a great sign on the back of my mini-van, but I've been itching to do something more. Two of the Ron Paul speeches were short and sweet ... I could hand-write "Ron Paul for President" and "Google Ron Paul" on those ... yeah, that would be great! The next day, I went down to Office Max and made a bunch of copies.

— • —

I had a couple of days before my flight back to Phoenix, giving me some time to consider what I was thinking of doing ... "What would I do if I were questioned?" Gulp!

"Relax," I told myself. "What's the worst that could happen?"

"I'll be forbidden to fly, and I'll have to hitch-hike home instead."

"No, no, that won't happen, just for distributing some political literature ... 1st Amendment, freedom of speech ... surely that still applies, even in the airport."

"Well, I seem to remember you can't say certain words in an airport, like 'bomb,' and some of my articles mention bombs, terrorists, 9/11, things like that."

"Okay, okay. You've got a point. So what? So it might be a bit risky. What's life without a little risk?"

"It's not just the 'authoritahs" I'm worried about. There are those constant P.A. announcements telling passengers to report anyone who looks suspicious to the airport authorities. It's not like I won't be nervous!"

"Look, you have a right to do this, and it's a great idea! If you chicken out now, how the heck do you think you'll hold up if the going ever gets really tough? Just do it. Speak the truth. It's way less dangerous than what Hans and Sophie Scholl did, and it'll honor their memory."

"Alright, I'll do it. If I don't go through with this, then I'm a miserable coward and have no right to consider myself a Gryffindor." (Sorry, it's a Harry Potter thing ...)

— • —

Fast-forward to Friday, 28 September. I woke up at oh-dark-thirty, showered and grabbed some coffee and a bite of toast. Didn't feel much like eating — too excited!

Got dressed for the day. Brought a long black rain coat on the trip with me. (Got to use it, too — rain's always a bonus for us desert rats!) I decided to try for somewhat of a ... dramatic look. Black jeans and chukka boots, dark red blouse, all under the black raincoat. At 5' 11", I'm rather tall, and brunette (Frank says it's more like auburn), and the effect was pleasing. Took a little extra care with the make-up, too — more than I usually would wear for a day of traveling.

Not much to throw in the rent-a-car: a black suitcase to check; and a black-and-red day pack for carry-on, stuffed with the aforementioned articles, some library books and a spiral-bound notebook.

My girlfriend wouldn't be up until well after I left, but I said a quick good-bye and thank-you to her fiancé as he left for work. Then I was off for Detroit Metro Airport (DTW), about 45 minutes away. Listened to the Dixie Chicks' latest CD on the way; thought it would be inspiring to someone who was aimin' to misbehave.

Got to DTW with loads of time to spare. Checked my bag, then headed for the ladies' room. I left a few articles there. Whew! That wasn't so hard! Then I found a coffee shop, ordered a tea and left a couple on the table outside the shop.

DTW's terminal is rather tiny. You can walk around the whole place in a few minutes. I dropped a few more articles here and there, at pay phones, at the little laptop workstations — even at one of the airport shops, on the shelves below the magazines for sale. On one of my go-arounds, I saw two TSA guys at one of the computer workstations, looking at an article I'd placed there earlier.

Unfortunately (for my purposes), the cleaning crew at DTW is very efficient. I saw one janitor pushing his wheeled trash bin along with one hand, and holding one of my articles in the other, reading it as he went. (And he had another one sticking out of his back pocket ... score!)

It then occurred to me that more folks would probably read these if I put them in the gate area, after they'd passed through security. After all, most people go through security, then spend lots of time waiting at the gate for their plane to arrive. A little "subversive" reading material might be welcome.

So I made my way over to "security central." Not busy at all — breezed right through. The gal at the x-ray machine wasn't the least bit interested in my bag.

I made my way to the gate.

The concourse was laid out in a semi-circle, with gates all around. I went up and down the rows and rows of chairs, placing one and two articles at a time. Several passengers saw me, but no one said anything.

Finally, I reached the end of my stack. Done! Now what?

I was sort of hungry. Went back down the long hallway to get a breakfast sandwich and a bottle of juice.

Sated, I headed back toward my gate. Noticed quite a few folks had picked up the articles I'd laid about, and it also appeared that the janitors weren't so prevalent around here. Lots of empty cups and used newspapers laying around, so I figured my articles might linger a little while longer, as well.

Oh. I almost forgot. I wrote across the top of each one: PLEASE READ, COPY AND DISTRIBUTE! I had no idea if anyone would, but just maybe. It might cause a few people to think about the state of our nation, or at least serve as an encouragement to others of like mind.

The flight home was bumpy, but otherwise uneventful. I cat-napped through part of it, since I hadn't slept much the night before.

My sweetie picked me up at Sky Harbor, and on the way home I told him what I'd done. I didn't tell him about my plan beforehand because I wanted him to be able to honestly deny knowing anything about it — just in case things went badly and he found himself being questioned about my activities! (Honestly now, do you think I was being unnecessarily paranoid, or not?)

Anyhow, Frank loved the story! And as we talked, I realized I want to do more of this. I could leave interesting pro-liberty essays, Ron Paul speeches, etc. at coffee shops, doctors' offices, those wire racks dispensing free magazines and classified ads in grocery stores ... I'm sure there are even more good places to do this that I haven't even thought of yet.

And many more Americans need to be awakened from their slumber.

Fear and loathing at Phoenix Sky Harbor

2007-10-10T21:02:00.001-07:00

Find out just what the people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
~Frederick Douglass (1817-1895),
American Abolitionist

I recall a day long ago, before we slipped into our bizarre post-9/11 mindset, when you could arrive at the airport just a half hour before your flight left. Only time it took longer was over the holidays.

A couple weeks ago, I flew to Detroit to see my mom in Toledo, Ohio, for a few days. The following is an account of my experience prior to departing Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

— • —

Arrived at 7 a.m. Checked in, no problem. Went to the rest room, then headed toward the cattle chute.

Not too busy. Just a family in front of me, some of whom spoke English and were translating for other family members who didn't. I saw some passports out so I gathered they were taking an international flight. I think the other language I heard was Italian — sounded something like Spanish, but not quite.

One young woman in the party was helping an elderly lady, probably her grandma, with her bag. The rest of their party were up at a podium speaking to the TSA guy who was checking their papers. He was yawning, not saying anything. Looked as if he might have had a late night — shirt wrinkled, hair mussed up. I heard him direct them to Station Four. They'd started to head over when Mr. Jackboot shouted at the young girl (who was maybe 19 or 20) and the old lady, "Keep up! You need to stay with your party! Over to Station Four now!"

Well, I was next in line, and I noticed there were actually two TSA guys, at podiums maybe ten feet apart. The other one wasn't doing anything, so I headed toward him, only to hear a curt, "I'm closed — over there." He pointed me back to the other guy. (TSA: "Thousands Standing Around".)

Bracing myself, I went over to him, ticket and photo ID out and ready. He looked at it, handed it back and said, "Station Two." From where I was standing, I couldn't read the numbers above the various stations, so I backed up to see where Two was. Got it — last station on the left.

I began to head over to it, and there was a large concrete pillar in my way. I made to go around it on the right, as there was a bit of a hold-up on the left involving a lady in a wheel chair. As I attempted to go around, another TSA guy at a desk (don't know what his job was — he wasn't checking IDs or anything) barked out, "Don't go through here! Other side of the pillar!" No "please," no attempt at kindness. He sounded annoyed. (Hey, maybe that is his job — keeping people from walking around the wrong side of the pillar!) I did as he said, muttering "jackboot" under my breath — he didn't hear me. (The P.A. guy was droning on about something, and it was really loud.)

Made my way to Station Two. There was one couple ahead of me, retirement age, nicely dressed. I heard him speak with a British accent. I put my coat, daypack and shoes in the bin, placed the bin on the conveyor, and stepped through the metal detector — no problems. Waiting at the end of the conveyor for my stuff, I noticed the lady ahead of me — the other half of the British-sounding couple — was agitated. She was talking to the TSA gal, who was examining her bottled water. It was still sealed — a small bottle, about 16 ounces. Heard the passenger explain that she has to drink water every hour due to a medical condition. Her husband broke in: "We called the TSA last night, and they said it would be alright."

But it was a no go. Miss Jackieboot said she'd have to go back out of security and drink the water back there. (Question for Kip Hawley and the rest of the TSA idiots: Why not simply have her break the seal and take a healthy swig to verify that the bottle does not, in fact, contain a chemical component that could be used in a — ahem — "binary liquid bomb"?) The lady said she couldn't drink it all at once. Then her husband asked, "Can we purchase water past this point?" The TSA gal said yes, so the lady said, "Just bin that one, then. I'll purchase another." They were clearly annoyed. I felt badly for them.

Meanwhile, another gal at the x-ray machine had my bag, looking intently at its image on the screen. (Could she read my book titles?!) She called a supervisor over, and both viewed the image, consulting a small spiral-bound notebook. She told me she'd have to run the bag through again. I put on my shoes and took my coat. She scanned the bag a second time and made a few notes on a paper I couldn't see. Then she ran it through a for a third time.

By then there was quite a line behind me, and a bit of panic began to rise within me — what the hell was she looking for? She made a few more notes, still looking at her small spiral notebook, then gave me my bag.

Whew! I couldn't believe how nervous I was getting! I had a few books with me and some choice articles printed off the Internet — figured they'd come in handy for conversations with my old friend Connie, whom I hadn't seen in several years. I suppose the "authoritahs" — not to mention the current regime — might not like my choice of reading material: Chris Hedges' War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning ... Michael Scheuer's Through Our Enemies' Eyes ... and Iraqi bloggerette "Riverbend's" second Baghdad Burning compilation.

But as far as I know, the First Amendment still applies, even to us hapless folk who have to fly on airplanes. Still, I'd love to know just what the TSA lady was writing down about my daypack.

When I caught up with the couple who was in front of me, they were purchasing another bottled water. I told them I sympathized totally, and we mused how awful it is to fly anymore, at least in the US and UK. The couple turned out to be Swiss citizens, headed for home.

I told them I hoped they could keep their republic, and how inspiring the Swiss were to me personally. And how, sadly, we had lost our republic and were descending rapidly into a police state. They nodded, and the gentleman said, "America is not what it once was. So much has changed since 9/11, and not for the better."

The Bourne-Moby-Voldemort Identity

2007-08-12T17:03:00.000-07:00

Just saw The Bourne Ultimatum yesterday.

On the plus-side: A fun, action-packed summertime popcorn thriller ... with a moral:

Never volunteer to be a remorseless, unquestioning killer for the State.

In the minus column: Gratuitous overuse of the "shaky-cam." You want to communicate to your viewers the chaos and disorientation that attend (I imagine) a man-to-man fight-to-the-death with an equally-trained and even more remorseless killer? Okay, fine. Shake away.

But in a quiet, subdued, face-to-face meeting in a café between a newspaper reporter and his mysterious insider source? C'mon ...

But I digress.

Each of the three films ends with the same song, "Extreme Ways," by a fellow named Moby. Since I'm a certified "credidiot" (one of those people you see in theatres sitting all the way through the final credits), I tried to pay attention to the lyrics this time. What I heard intrigued me, so I looked 'em up on-line.

Wow. In the context of the Bourne films, Moby's lyrics sure seem to express the lament of a remorseless, unquestioning killer for the State.

"So, just who is this Moby?" I wondered. So I went to his website. Where I read the following post in his journal:

i was just in washington dc for a day, and while there i was wearing my 'republicans for voldemort' t-shirt.

granted it's a fairly subtle literary reference (as the harry potter books have only sold, i believe, 300 million copies, and the movies have only been seen by a billion people or so), but i'm still surprised at how many people respond to the t-shirt as if i were really endorsing a republican candidate named voldemort.

every now and then someone will stop me and say 'your t-shirt is very funny, where'd you get it?', but more often than not i get dirty looks from democrats ('boo, hiss, dirty republican') and approving looks from republicans ('yahoo! another member of the cabal!').

but this isn't about politics, it's about my excellent t-shirt (and no, i don't remember where it came from. i think that someone might've given it to me in a bar?) and how surprising it is that the vast majority of americans seem to be unfamiliar with the central antagonist in the most successful book franchise of all time.

isn't that surprising?

i think it's surprising.

maybe if the t-shirt didn't look so authentic. ...

What a hoot! Pulling one over (quite unintentionally) on both Republicans and Dems, both sides thinking he's supporting a GOP candidate named Voldemort!

Just Warriors ~ Just Wars

2007-08-10T11:05:00.000-07:00

Just Warriors ~ Just Wars is my new weblog, dedicated to a biblical consideration of war and the waging of war. Anticipated topics:

foreign policy
principles of national defense
raisng, training and equipping an army
conscription
individual ethics in war
Just War doctrine
international law

... etc. & so forth.

As a Christian, it is my view that God is the final measure of justice, and that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are given to man by inspiration of God to teach us, among other things, how to do justice and live justly — whether in peace or in war.

I invite you join in the discussion.

Benson on the Pat Tillman cover-up

2007-08-07T08:29:00.000-07:00

Steve Benson's editorial cartoon from the 2 August 2007 Arizona Republic:

Which kinda makes me wonder: If they did it to Pat Tillman and his family, how many others have they done it to?

The pornography of violence

2007-08-04T12:40:00.000-07:00

War is also the pornography of violence. It has a dark beauty, filled with the monstrous and the grotesque. The Bible calls it "the lust of the eye" and warns believers against it. War allows us to engage in lusts and passions we keep hidden in the deepest, most private interiors of our fantasy life. It allows us to destroy not only things but human beings. In that moment of wholesale destruction, we wield the power [of] the divine, the power to revoke another person's charter to live on this earth. The frenzy of this destruction — and when unit discipline breaks down, or there was no unit discipline to begin with, frenzy is the right word — sees armed bands crazed by the poisonous elixir our power to bring about the obliteration of others delivers. All things, including human beings, become objects — objects to either gratify or destroy or both. Almost no one is immune. The contagion of the crowd sees to that. ...

It takes little in wartime to turn ordinary men into killers. Most give themselves willingly to the seduction of unlimited power to destroy, and all feel the peer pressure to conform. Few, once in battle, find the strength to resist. Physical courage is common on a battlefield. Moral courage is not.

~ Chris Hedges, "The Death Mask of War"

Harry Potter: How bureaucracy enables tyranny

2007-07-27T19:46:00.000-07:00

Hermione gave a shaky laugh ... "What's Voldemort planning for Hogwarts?" she asked Lupin.

"Attendance is now compulsory for every young witch and wizard," he replied. "That was announced yesterday. It's a change, because it was never obligatory before. Of course, nearly every witch and wizard in Britain has been educated at Hogwarts, but their parents had the right to teach them at home or send them abroad if they preferred. This way, Voldemort will have the whole Wizarding population under his eye from a young age."

~ Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, p. 210

In his essay "Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy," law professor Benjamin Barton examines what the Harry Potter series has to say about government and bureaucracy. (After reading the abstract, scroll down to the bottom to download Barton's 21-page .pdf essay.)

Barton got me thinking about the power of ideas, especially among young people. Witness the popularity of Ron Paul's freedom message among the 18-25 year-old crowd — many of whom grew up reading Harry Potter.

Will we get fooled again?

2007-07-02T08:04:00.001-07:00

It seems to me that the U.S. is spoiling for a fight with Iran. Allegations have been made for what seems to be the better part of a year that Iran is in violation of a nuclear non-proliferation treaty. And of course, there is the more recent charge that the government of Iran is supporting the Iraqi insurgency — i.e., killing American soldiers — with training, men and arms.

After the "justifications" for our invasion of Iraq — WMD threats, unmanned chemical-weapons drones able to attack Europe in 45 minutes, mushroom clouds, links to 9/11 via al Quaida and Osama Bin Laden, yellow-cake uranium, aluminum tubes etc. — turned out to be bogus, you'll excuse me if I don't just readily accept these latest neo-con saber-rattlings at face value.

Indeed, I recently read what appears to be a quite plausible challenge to the now-standard claim that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is threatening to "wipe Israel off the map." (Why anybody thinks that a militarily adept and nuclear-armed Israel is somehow unable to defend herself against possible Iranian aggression and thus in need of U.S. interposition is a discussion for another time.)

In his 26 May 2007 essay "'Wiped off the Map' – The Rumor of the Century," Arash Norouzi goes into much detail in order to show that Ahmadinejad's supposed threat against Israel was actually a mis-translation into English of Ahmadinejad, in a 2005 conference called "The World Without Zionism," quoting an old observation by the Ayatollah Khomenei. Norouzi also puts Khomenei's statement — and Ahmadinejad's use of it — back into the original context from which it has been torn:

Ahmadinejad acknowledges that the removal of America's powerful grip on [Palestine] via the Zionists may seem unimaginable to some, but reminds the audience that, as Khomeini predicted, other seemingly invincible empires have disappeared and now only exist in history books. He then proceeds to list three such regimes that have collapsed, crumbled or vanished, all within the last 30 years:
The Shah of Iran – the U.S. installed monarch
The Soviet Union
Iran's former arch-enemy, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein
In the first and third examples, Ahmadinejad prefaces their mention with Khomeini's own words foretelling that individual regime's demise. He concludes by referring to Khomeini's unfulfilled wish: "The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time. This statement is very wise." This is the passage that has been isolated, twisted and distorted so famously. By measure of comparison, Ahmadinejad would seem to be calling for regime change, not war [Norouzi's italics — F.G.].

Stating that the "regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" is certainly not the same as threatening to "wipe Israel off the face of the earth."

The alleged mistranslation of Ahmadinejad's 2005 quote from an old speech by the Ayatollah Khomenei has been discussed at least a year ago, by Juan Cole in May 2006:

Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope — that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government.

Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that "Israel must be wiped off the map" with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time.

Note that neither Cole nor Norouzi are apologists for Ahmadinejad or his world-view. Norouzi concludes his essay with this statement:

Iran's president has written two rather philosophical letters to America. In his first letter, he pointed out that "History shows us that oppressive and cruel governments do not survive." With this statement, Ahmadinejad has also projected the outcome of his own backwards regime, which will likewise "vanish from the page of time."

And Cole states:

I should again underline that I personally despise everything Ahmadinejad stands for, not to mention the odious Khomeini, who had personal friends of mine killed so thoroughly that we have never recovered their bodies. Nor do I agree that the Israelis have no legitimate claim on any part of Jerusalem.

But they certainly don't think the widespread and belligerent accusation that Iran intends to wipe Israel off the face of the map ought to be allowed to go unchallenged, for it would seem to lend credence to the American interventionists' view that Iran is nation full of Islamist zealots bent on developing nuclear weapons in order to eradicate the nation of Israel, and that it is thus somehow America's obligation to militarily intervene on behalf of our only ally in the Middle East.

Having some fun with the opposition

2007-06-19T20:46:00.001-07:00

The silly season has officially begun: Today we received our first fund-raising letter of the 2008 presidential race, from the campaign of "Baghdad" John McCain!

When we first saw the words ENCLOSED: PRESIDENTIAL PHOTOGRAPH emblazoned across the front of the envelope in bold red letters, we thought Sen. McCain was being just a tad premature. I mean, he hasn't even been elected yet!

But it turns out that he meant this "Presidential Photograph":

The caption reads:

My friend, this photo with President Reagan is one of my personal favorites. It is my pleasure to share it with you. I thank you for your support.

Best wishes,
John McCain

Whenever we receive fund-raising letters from causes or campaigns that we'd rather drink dirty ditchwater than support, we like to return all the stuff they sent us — including the envelope it came in — and using their own postage-paid "Business Reply" envelope!

But this time we did something a little different. I didn't want to confuse Baghdad John's campaign volunteers. ("Huh? Why'd they use our return envelope to send us back everything we sent them, but with no flippin' money? Oh well ... break time!") So instead, in completely feigned appreciation for Sen. McCain sending us one of his "personal favorite" photos, we returned the favor by sending this photo to the McCain campaign (in their postage-aid envelope, of course):

Included was this brief letter of explanation:

Dear McCain Campaign:

Thank you for the photo of Sen. McCain with President Reagan.

In gratitude, it is our pleasure to share with you this photo of Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) with President Reagan. Even though we live in Phoenix, AZ, we consider Rep. Paul to be our congressman. (It's a liberty thing. You wouldn't understand.)

Incidentally, we hope you'll do two things for us:

1) Next time you see Sen. McCain, tell him we said that he needs to find honest work in the private sector; and

2) consider ditching that overspending, gun-grabbing, liberty-killing warmonger ... and come volunteer instead for Ron Paul's campaign!

Yours for peace and liberty,
Frank Golubski

"Avoiding embarrassment" vs. repentance

2007-06-07T13:49:00.000-07:00

The disaffection most have with the war, I suspect, has to do with the sense of embarrassment with how the war is being conducted, not with that it was undertaken in the first place. A colleague of mine opined, a couple months ago, that it “would be nice if the United States could get out of Iraq without too much egg on its face.” To his shock, I replied that the United States needs to experience as much “egg on its face” as possible. Since those who orchestrated, directed, and cheered on this criminal act will never be held to account for their wrongdoing in any meaningful way, they ought to at least suffer public humiliation for their behavior. To fail to see the moral implications of what America has become, to regard the deaths of over one million innocent Iraqis – if one includes the half-million children who died from earlier U.S. embargoes on food and medicine – as nothing more than a failure of “intelligence” or “poor planning” or “mismanagement,” is symptomatic of the moral and spiritual pathology of a once-great nation.

~ Butler Shaffer

An old USAF gag

2007-06-01T13:48:00.001-07:00

Click on the cartoon to enlarge it ...

The Marines and Army are broken ...

2007-05-24T08:19:00.001-07:00

... now they're trying to break the Air Force, too.

Inspiring Benson

2007-05-21T22:22:00.001-07:00

The Arizona Republic's own Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Steve Benson does Charles Goyette's radio program every now and again, and sometimes they invite callers to suggest cartoon ideas for Steve.

This one was mine:

I actually described Ron Paul as the elephant (and truest Republican) in a roomful of wannabes and pretenders who are doing all they can to simply ignore him. I mean, it just seemed so obvious! (And dontcha just love the smiley-faces on the other nine?)

Thanks, Mr. Benson!

My coins, but not my sons

2007-05-18T23:06:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, our pastor preached on Mark 12. While discussing vv. 13-17, he revealed to me a gem — one of those gems that was right there in front of me all along, yet one I’d never noticed before:

Then they sent to Him some of the Pharisees and the Herodians, to catch Him in His words. When they had come, they said to Him, “Teacher, we know that You are true, and care about no one; for You do not regard the person of men, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Shall we pay, or shall we not pay?”

But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, “Why do you test Me? Bring Me a denarius that I may see it.” So they brought it.

And He said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” They said to Him, “Caesar’s.”

And Jesus answered and said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they marveled at Him.

In contrast to the denarius, an ancient Roman coin which bore both the image and inscription of Caesar, Pastor Niell asked us, “Whose image and inscription do you bear?”

Why, the image of Jehovah, and the inscription of the Triune God, I thought. It suddenly occurred to me that, while all men bear the image of God, it is His people alone who bear His inscription: the mark or seal of baptism.

Pretty basic stuff, yes? But something worth considering the next time Caesar claims the authority to conscript citizens to murder for him. (Which claim, I'm sorry to report, I expect to be revived in the very near future.)

And so, a quick note to you who happen to occupy the chair of former Presidents Lincoln and Roosevelt:

Jesus says you can have my pennies and dimes. But neither I nor my children belong to you. God gives you no authority to snatch us up, hand us a rifle, and compel us to violate the Sixth Commandment.

For “whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge” (Acts 4:19).

— • —

And incidentally, I was amazed and edified this past Mother's Day to learn that Julia Ward Howe — whatever her other theological misprisions — understood this doctrine well, as evidenced by the following excerpt from her Mother's Day Proclamation (written in 1870 in reaction to the carnage of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War):

... As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God. ...

Paul Harvey: Since WW I, "there have been no 'civilians'"

2007-05-07T11:17:00.000-07:00

And hear this, please. In Western Afghanistan, where NATO forces are involved in some of the deadliest fighting since January, among the 136 dead this morning, suspect Taliban. But there are others — 51 villagers, mostly women and children. Might not the news media put a stop to such "pulled-punches wars" as this, if we would just desist from categorizing "civilians"? It was "civilians," for goodness' sake, who decapitated New York City. Since the invention of the aerial bomb five wars ago, there have been no "civilians."
~ Paul Harvey, News and Comment, 2 May 2007 (listen here)

It appears to me that Mr. Harvey is engaging in a loose categorization of the parties in war in order to justify his unwillingness to discriminate between legitimate and illegitimate targets in war.

While it was, in fact, "civilians" who "decapitated New York City" on 9/11, they weren't merely civilians, but members of a criminal subset of civilians known as "murderers." And the American civilians who died in the 9/11 attacks were another subset of civilians — "victims."

But if we accept Paul Harvey's specious reasoning in order to assuage our consciences re. Afghan and Iraqi non-combatants killed in the Global War on Terror, then we have no choice but to conclude that the victims of the 9/11 attacks weren't civilians, either.

You can't have it both ways, Mr. Harvey.

Truth to power

2007-05-07T08:10:00.000-07:00

HT: Lew Rockwell Blog

You can't make this stuff up ...

2007-05-05T22:36:00.000-07:00

And it is not knowable if force will be used, but if it is to be used, it is not knowable how long that conflict would last. It could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.

~ Donald Rumsfeld, then-Secretary of Defense, during a Town
Hall meeting at Aviano Air Base, Italy on 7 February 2003

"Rumsnamara" couldn't find his own toochis with two hands and a flashlight, and the Claremont Institute is awarding him a Statesmanship Award? In honor of Sir Winston Churchill?!

I presume Rummy's alleged "statesmanship" occurred some time after this sad moment:

(Hmm, I just noticed that that occurred just ten days before my honorable discharge from the US Air Force!)

Marx was wrong ...

2007-04-24T11:34:00.000-07:00

Religion isn't the opiate of the masses. Professional sports is.

Doug Wilson makes an interesting obesrvation that politics is actually the opiate of the masses. But I think he makes a better case that for many, politics constitutes a god — a false savior — rather than a mere opiate.

Bleating for security

2007-04-17T19:07:00.000-07:00

John and Jennifer Shourds of Lovettsville, Va. demanded the immediate firings of University President Charles Steger and Virginia Tech Campus Police Chief W.R. Flinchum who he said "screwed up" the handling of separate shooting incidents that left 33 students dead, including the shooter.

“My God, if someone shoots somebody there should be an immediate lockdown of the campus,” said John Shourds. “They totally blew it. The president blew it, campus police blew it.”

This is the angry demand of a sheep bleating for security. (Thankfully, the Shourds' daughter, Alexandra, wasn't harmed in Monday's murderous shooting rampage at Virginia Tech.)

For over a hundred years, U.S. courts have ruled that individuals have no right to police protection. But given the numerous — almost routine — warnings from police spokesmen not to "take the law into your own hands" by resisting criminal violence with reasonable force, you really can't blame people like the Shourds for thinking they have a right to the protection of the State.

In his seminal 1993 essay "A Nation of Cowards," New York attorney Jeffrey Snyder says it best:

Is your life worth protecting? If so, whose responsibility is it to protect it? If you believe that it is the police's, not only are you wrong — since the courts universally rule that they have no legal obligation to do so — but you face some difficult moral quandaries. How can you rightfully ask another human being to risk his life to protect yours, when you will assume no responsibility yourself? Because that is his job and we pay him to do it? Because your life is of incalculable value, but his is only worth the $30,000 salary we pay him? If you believe it reprehensible to possess the means and will to use lethal force to repel a criminal assault, how can you call upon another to do so for you?

Do you believe that you are forbidden to protect yourself because the police are better qualified to protect you, because they know what they are doing but you're a rank amateur? Put aside that this is equivalent to believing that only concert pianists may play the piano and only professional athletes may play sports. What exactly are these special qualities possessed only by the police and beyond the rest of us mere mortals?

One who values his life and takes seriously his responsibilities to his family and community will possess and cultivate the means of fighting back, and will retaliate when threatened with death or grievous injury to himself or a loved one. He will never be content to rely solely on others for his safety, or to think he has done all that is possible by being aware of his surroundings and taking measures of avoidance.

Let's not mince words: He will be armed, will be trained in the use of his weapon, and will defend himself when faced with lethal violence.

The Shourds are simply displaying the mindset of a nation that has been brainwashed by Statists into believing that only highly-trained agents of the State may protect them — even though they're not legally obligated to do so, after all.

Pondering the expat thing — an update

2007-04-08T06:58:00.000-07:00

America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self control,
Thy liberty in law.
~ Katherine Lee Bates, "America the Beautiful"

Last year, Ira Katz — an American mechanical engineer employed in Paris — considered the life of an American expatriate in “To be an expat?”

What are the burrs under Katz's saddle? America’s economic and monetary shenanigans. Our cultural superficiality. And especially President Bush’s arrogant and utopian foreign policy in response to 9/11:

… “Everything has changed since 9/11” is a propaganda slogan that Orwell would appreciate. Thus nation building, which was wrong during the 2000 campaign, is now good policy. Add the domestic policy of Lyndon Johnson and no opposition party and you have a country, an empire, headed toward debt and ruin.

What did an insightful Roman of the 5th century think about his country, or even an intelligent Russian in 1985? What does a simple citizen do in times like these?

If a person entered the room proclaiming how great he was, the correct response would be to shun such a pompous jerk. But that is just the way the USA behaves. What should we do? A change in attitude would be a good start. …

I find much to agree with Katz about. He concludes:

The founders had the right idea — no alliances, no war, but trade with all. A smaller, humbler government overseas would lead to a precipitous drop in the number of terrorists. A smaller, humbler government at home would make us a better country overall. We need to stop trying to be great and concentrate on being good.

As for me I know I will always be an American and love my country; but I will unfortunately always loathe my government.* This is true even if I may be living somewhere else among people who have every reason to be proud of their own lands and probably every reason to loathe their own governments.

Many of my friends and family already know that we’ve considered the possibility of moving to New Zealand, and the Web-Wide World has known it since I originally posted this last July.

Then in August, we took a 3-week trip to "En Zed" (the Brit pronunciation of "NZ") to check the place out. To say it is a lovely, lovely country with wonderful people doesn't even begin to tell the story! (See our NZ travel pics here.)

But while we haven't ruled NZ out completely, we returned home with a strong sense that, despite her flaws, the US is our home, and for us to abandon her in this time of great difficulty would be to throw in the towel: "Stick a fork in us, we're done."

We hope to see America return to her former, more godly and genuinely humble greatness — what we believe the early colonists and Founders once envisioned. And we can't shake the feeling that we may have something to contribute to that hoped-for course correction.

If things start to look truly ugly here — e.g., if America begins drafting her sons — and daughters — to pursue a misguided, arrogant, messianic foreign policy of "[ridding] the world of evil" — then we may be forced to turn our eyes overseas.

But for the time being, we plan on sticking around a bit.

____________________
* I certainly don’t think God’s Word permits Christians to “loathe their governments.” But I see nothing in Scripture that says we ought not loathe what we see as our governments’ unrighteous or unjust actions.

Time and the Church

2007-04-06T12:10:00.000-07:00

And speaking of "marking time more Christianly ..."

H.T.: "Der Schweppenator"

Good Friday and the sign of Jonah

2007-04-06T11:02:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, Andrew Tallman discussed on his radio show the chronological inconsistency between Christianity's traditional Good Friday observance of the crucifixion and the words of Jesus:

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.”

But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

~ Matthew 12:38-40

Here's the inconsistency:

Jesus said He would be in the heart of the earth (i.e., the grave) for three days and three nights; and
The resurrection occurred on the first day of the week (what we call Sunday — see Matt. 28, Mark 16, Luke 24 and John 20).
How, then, could He have been crucified and buried on the sixth day (Friday)?

The usual response I've heard from pastors and other Bible teachers over the years is that, in Hebrew chronology, any part of a day is considered a full "day" when reckoning time. Thus, since Jesus was in the grave for part of the sixth day of the week, all of the seventh day, and part of the first day, He was effectively in the grave for three "days." But no matter how you slice it, this reckoning contradicts Jesus' very specific words in Matt. 12 — "three days and three nights."

Andrew Tallman said that the scriptural testimony suggests a possible fourth-day (Wednesday) crucifixion and burial. He referenced supporting articles here, here and here — the last being "the one I thought was the most comprehensive (although I'm not a fan of their style of presentation)."

I have yet to read these three pieces — I intend to do so today. But back in 1988, I read the article "Good Thursday" by James McKeever, in which he suggests a fifth-day (Thursday) crucifixion and burial. The piece has always stuck with me, and I've posted it for your consideration.

You might well ask, "Why is this even an issue?"

One of the five "solas" of the Protestant Reformation is sola scriptura — "by scripture alone." As a Protestant who converted from Roman Catholicism some 26 years ago, I've only begun to reconsider and appreciate the fullness of church history and tradition in the last eight years or so. (That includes her history and tradition prior to the Reformation — Church history doesn't begin with Martin Luther!) The Reformers did not seek to utterly tear down the Roman Catholic church and build a new work in her place, but rather to reform her by holding her to the ultimate authority of Scripture — even over church tradition.

If reformed Protestant, catholic (small "c") churches intend to perpetuate this vital aspect of the Reformation, we should begin discussing the authority of Scripture even in such mundane matters as the church's traditional days of religious observance.

The Protestant church is right to critique aspects of Roman Catholic tradition that contradict the Scriptures — e.g., priestly celibacy, or the immaculate conception and bodily assumption of Mary. Maybe we think we can give Good Friday a "pass" because we don't consider it as weighty a matter. But if we merely perpetuate Good Friday observance apart from the biblical testimony, aren't we just as guilty of holding to tradition rather than the Scriptures?

And by the way, a church that professes sola scriptura and makes every effort to comport itself accordingly — even regarding our religious observance of days — is more credible in the eyes of a watching world.

After all, unbelievers can count, too.

"Good Thursday," by James McKeever

2007-04-06T10:51:00.000-07:00

The following article is reproduced with the gracious permission of Jeani McKeever King, and is copyright 1988 by Omega Ministries, dba The Cutting Edge Ministries, P.O. Box 1788, Medford, OR 97501. All typographical errors are mine. — FG

— • —

Good Thursday
By James McKeever

I would like to share something with you that doesn’t have any major theological consequences, yet it is something that has bothered me all of my Christian life. I was told that Christ was crucified on Friday (Good Friday), and rose again on Sunday, the first day of the week. And yet, Jesus Himself said that He was going to be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth:

39 But He answered and said to them, "An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign shall be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet;
40 for just as Jonah was three days and three night in the belly of the sea monster, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

~ Matthew 12

That verse bothered me. You could possibly get a day and parts of two other days out of that scenario, but there is no way you could get three nights out of it.

Wiser men than I, I am sure, have studied this situation and have come up with various answers. I would like to share with you what the Lord has shown me about it.

Evening (Night) Precedes the Day

In the western world of calculating days, a day starts at midnight: so we have about six hours of night, then we have our daytime of about 12 hours, and then 6 more hours of night.

The Hebrews — and God, even before Abraham — calculated things a different way. They started counting a new day at sundown. Thus, they had 12 hours of night followed by 12 hours of day. Let’s round things off to make it easy. Let’s say the new day began at 6:00 p.m., which started the night portion of the new day; then at 6:00 a.m. the daylight portion of the new day began. Then the following 6:00 p.m. ended that day. This can be seen in Figure 1, where even today in Jerusalem, the Sabbath (Saturday) begins at 6:00 p.m. Friday evening, at which time many gather at the Wailing Wall. The nighttime of that Saturday runs until 6:00 a.m. Saturday morning. The daytime portion then runs until 6:00 p.m. Saturday evening, at which time the Sabbath is over.

If you align these together, you would have the days as shown in Figure 2. The times across the top would be our times and the times across the bottom would be the Hebrew days.

This is the way God has looked at days from the beginning, as we find recorded back in Genesis:

5 And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. . . .

8 And God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. . . .

13 And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.

~ Genesis 1

You see here that God always started with evening and ended with day. We see additional evidence of this in that, if the Hebrews were to fast an entire day, they could eat something at 5:00 p.m. the night before and then have nothing to eat until 6:01 the following evening. Basically, all they did was go without breakfast and lunch during that 24-hour period. We find this recorded in a number of places:

23 And the sons of Israel went up and wept before the Lord until evening, and inquired of the Lord, saying, "Shall we again draw near for battle against the sons of my brother Benjamin?" And the Lord said, "Go up against him." . . .

26 Then all the sons of Israel and all the people went up and came to Bethel and wept; thus they remained there before the Lord and fasted that day until evening. And they offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord. . . .

~ Judges 20

12 And they mourned and wept and fasted until evening for Saul and his son Jonathan and for the people of the Lord and the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword.

~ 2 Samuel 1

2 So the people came to Bethel and sat there before God until evening, and lifted up their voices and wept bitterly.

~ Judges 21

These are just a few of the places where the Bible talks about the people seeking the Lord or fasting "until evening"; once the sun had set, a new day began.

Was Christ Buried on Friday?

Using this model of the Jewish day, if we then consider Christ being buried on Friday and resurrected on Sunday, there is absolutely no way that He could have been in the ground three nights. In fact looking at total duration, He was barely in the ground a sum total of two days! Something just doesn’t work out. This has never been a major problem for me, but it has been an irritant ever since I became a Christian back in 1952.

There Are More Sabbaths Than Just Saturday

When someone speaks of "the Sabbath," most Christians automatically think of Saturday. Saturday is indeed the Sabbath. Of course, we know it begins at 6:00 p.m. (or sunset) on Friday. However, most Christians do not realize that there are many Sabbaths other than just Saturday.

To review, we remember that there were three major feasts which were described in the Old Testament. These were:

The Feast of Passover
The Feast of Pentacost
The Feast of Tabernacles

Actually, there were seven convocations that were grouped together into these three major feasts.

The following passage from Deuteronomy talks about these three feasts. The Feast of Pentacost is called the "Feast of Weeks" and the Feast of Tabernacles is called the "Feast of Booths." Here is what the Bible has to say about these three feasts:

1 "Observe the month of Abib and celebrate the Passover to the Lord your God, for in the month of Abib the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night.
2 "And you shall sacrifice the Passover to the Lord your God from the flock and the herd, in the place where the Lord chooses to establish His name.
3 "You shall not eat leavened bread with it; seven days you shall eat with it unleavened bread, the bread of affliction (for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste), in order that you may remember all the days of your life the day when you came out of the land of Egypt.
4 "For seven days no leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory, and none of the flesh which you sacrifice on the evening of the first day shall remain overnight until morning.
5 "You are not allowed to sacrifice the Passover in any of your towns which the Lord your God is giving you;
6 but at the place where the Lord your God chooses to establish His name, you shall sacrifice the Passover in the evening at sunset, at the time that you came out of Egypt.
7 "And you shall cook and eat it in the place which the Lord your God chooses. In the morning you are to return to your tents.
8 "Six days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a solemn assembly to the Lord your God; you shall do no work on it.
9 "You shall count seven weeks for yourself; you shall begin to count seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain.
10 "Then you shall celebrate the Feast of Weeks to the Lord your God with a tribute of a freewill offering of your hand, which you shall give just as the Lord your God blesses you;
11 and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your son and your daughter and your male and female servants and the Levite who is in your town, and the stranger and the orphan and the widow who are in your midst, in the place where the Lord your God chooses to establish His name.
12 "And you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and you shall be careful to observe these statutes.
13 "You shall celebrate the Feast of Booths seven days after you have gathered in from your threshing floor and your wine vat;
14 and you shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter and your male and female servants and the Levite and the stranger and the orphan and the widow who are in your towns.
15 "Seven days you shall celebrate a feast to the Lord your God in the place which the Lord chooses, because the Lord your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you shall be altogether joyful.
16 "Three times in a year all your males shall appear before the Lord your God in the place which He chooses, at the Feast of Unleavened Bread and at the Feast of Weeks and at the Feast of Booths, and they shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed.
17 "Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord your God which He has given you. . . ."

~ Deuetronomy 16

I realize that the above passage is a little long, but I would encourage you to read it carefully, so that you will begin to have an understanding of these feast days. You might want to pause now to go back an reread that passage.

In Deuteronomy, we saw the three feasts spelled out, but we did not see the exact time frame for the Feast of Passover:

1 Now the Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt,
2 "This month shall be the beginning of months for you; it is to be the first month of the year to you.
3 "Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, 'On the tenth of this month they are each one to take a lamb for themselves, according to their fathers' households, a lamb for each household.
4 'Now if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his neighbor nearest to his house are to take one according to the number of persons in them; according to what each man should eat, you are to divide the lamb.
5 'Your lamb shall be an unblemished male a year old; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats.
6 'And you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month, then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight.
7 'Moreover, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.
8 'And they shall eat the flesh that same night, roasted with fire, and they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
9 'Do not eat any of it raw or boiled at all with water, but rather roasted with fire, both its head and its legs along with its entrails.
10 'And you shall not leave any of it over until morning, but whatever is left of it until morning, you shall burn with fire.
11 'Now you shall eat it in this manner: with your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste — it is the Lord's Passover.
12 'For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments — I am the Lord.
13 'And the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
14 'Now this day will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations you are to celebrate it as a permanent ordinance.
15 'Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses; for whoever eats anything leavened from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.
16 'And on the first day you shall have a holy assembly, and another holy assembly on the seventh day; no work at all shall be done on them, except what must be eaten by every person, that alone may be prepared by you.

~ Exodus 12

In this passage, we find a couple of interesting things. During the first month of the year, they were to celebrate the Feast of the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month (verse 6). Verse 16 says that this should be a holy assembly and no work should be done, which is the definition of a Sabbath.

Since the Jewish calendar has 12 months of 30 days, or 360 days per year, the fourteenth day of the first month could fall on any day of the week. If it fell on Friday, you would have two Sabbaths in a row — the Passover Sabbath on Friday and the regular Sabbath on Saturday.

Later, in giving commands about the day of trumpets, the Lord said this to the children of Israel:

24 Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall ye have a sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation.
25 Ye shall do no servile work therein: but ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD.

~ Leviticus 23, KJV

As you can see in the preceding verses, the first day of the seventh month was a Sabbath. Of course, it could fall on any day of the week. If it fell on Friday, here again there would be two Sabbaths occurring on consecutive days.

And then concerning the Day of Atonement, the Lord had this to say:

26 The LORD spoke to Moses, saying,
27 "On exactly the tenth day of this seventh month is the day of atonement; it shall be a holy convocation for you, and you shall humble your souls and present an offering by fire to the LORD.
28 "You shall not do any work on this same day, for it is a day of atonement, to make atonement on your behalf before the LORD your God.
29 "If there is any person who will not humble himself on this same day, he shall be cut off from his people.
30 "As for any person who does any work on this same day, that person I will destroy from among his people.
31 "You shall do no work at all. It is to be a perpetual statute throughout your generations in all your dwelling places.
32 "It is to be a sabbath of complete rest to you, and you shall humble your souls; on the ninth of the month at evening, from evening until evening you shall keep your sabbath."

~ Leviticus 23

In this last passage, we see that there was a Day of Atonement, which was a Sabbath that fell on the tenth day of the seventh month. This Sabbath also could have fallen on any day of the week. Verse 39 of that same passage tells us that they were to have two Sabbaths in a row:

39 On exactly the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the crops of the land, you shall celebrate the feast of the LORD for seven days, with a rest on the first day and a rest on the eighth day.

~ Leviticus 23

In another place, the Day of Atonement is equated to a Sabbath:

29 "This shall be a permanent statute for you: in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall humble your souls and not do any work, whether the native, or the alien who sojourns among you;
30 for it is on this day that atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you; you will be clean from all your sins before the LORD.
31 "It is to be a sabbath of solemn rest for you, that you may humble your souls; it is a permanent statute.
32 "So the priest who is anointed and ordained to serve as priest in his father's place shall make atonement: he shall thus put on the linen garments, the holy garments,
33 and make atonement for the holy sanctuary, and he shall make atonement for the tent of meeting and for the altar. He shall also make atonement for the priests and for all the people of the assembly.

~ Leviticus 16

Here again, the Sabbath could fall on any day of the week.

I hope you see that if the Day of Atonement or the Day of Passover or one of the other special feast-day Sabbaths (high-day Sabbaths) fell on a Friday, you would have two Sabbaths in a row.

Let's suppose that the Passover feast fell on a Friday around the time Jesus was crucified. We would then have the situation shown in Figure 4, where Saturday was the regular Sabbath, Friday was the Passover (a high-day Sabbath) and Thursday was the day of preparation for the Passover.

From the Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia we have the following definition of Sabbath, from page 1493:

Sabbath. Its meaning. From the Heb. shabbat, which means 'to cease' or 'to desist.' The Gr. word is sabbaton, but the plural sabbata is sometimes used to designate a single sabbath (Arndt, p.746). The word is applied to several festivals in the OT, but prinicpally and usually it refers to the seventh day of the week, the Jewish day of rest and worship. . . .

The other books of the Pentateuch contain legislation for sabbath observance. The Day of Atonement was designated a sabbath of complete rest (Lev. 16:31; 23:32), and the first, fifteenth, and twenty-third days of the seventh month (Feast of Trumpets, Feast of Tabernacles) were to be observed with a sabbath rest (Heb. shabbaton; Lev. 23:34, 39).

So here we see this outstanding conservative group defining the Sabbath as both the seventh day of the week and also the festivals in the Old Testament.

John Speaks to Us About This

The apostle John give the most detailed explanation of Christ's last week here on earth. If we read his gospel carefully, I believe many questions will be resolved. Before we proceed, the best judgement that I am able to come up with concerning the numbering of the hours is that the Jews numbered the hours of the night (starting at 6:00 p.m.) from 1 through 12. Then when daylight came, at say 6:00 a.m., they numbered the hours of the day from 1 through 12. We still do this today with our clocks, except we are about six hours off. Thus, the sixth hour of their daytime would be our noon.

Let's assume for a moment that the Passover Sabbath was on a Friday, and see if things work out. Let us begin at a place where there can be absolutely no argument as to when this event occurred:

11 Jesus answered, "You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above; for this reason he who delivered Me to you has the greater sin."
12 As a result of this Pilate made efforts to release Him, but the Jews cried out saying, "If you release this Man, you are no friend of Caesar; everyone who makes himself out to be a king opposes Caesar."
13 Therefore when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out, and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called The Pavement, but in Hebrew, Gabbatha.
14 Now it was the day of preparation for the Passover; it was about the sixth hour And he said to the Jews, "Behold, your King!"
15 So they cried out, "Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him!" Pilate said to them, "Shall I crucify your King?" The chief priests answered, "We have no king but Caesar."
16 So he then handed Him over to them to be crucified.

~ John 19

This final confrontation with Pilate, when he delivered Jesus to be crucified, happened on "the day of preparation for the Passover" (verse 14). In our model, this would have been Thursday. Verse 14 says further that it happened at about "the sixth hour" of the day, which would have been noontime. So at noon, or shortly thereafter, on the day before the Passover was the time when Jesus was crucified, and that appears to have been a Thursday.

Now let's look forward to the time when the body was taken down from the cross:

31 Then the Jews, because it was the day of preparation, so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.

~ John 19

Here we see that it was still the day of preparation (it was not yet the Passover) and they did not want the bodies to remain on the cross during the Sabbath. However, this Sabbath was not a regular Sabbath. It was a "high-day" Sabbath, such as you would find on the Passover. So evidently the body of Jesus was taken down about 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, so that it would not be on the cross during the high Sabbath of the Passover, Friday.

These two events are outlined in Figure 5. We have also shown in that diagram Jesus' time in the ground, which would have put him in the ground three days and three nights, just as He said He would be. John 20:1 tells us of events that occurred on the first day of the week:

1 Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb.

~ John 20

In order to fulfill all of the Scripture, Jesus had to be crucified on a Thursday, the day of preparation for the Passover. We know the Passover was the next day after His crucifixion, we know that it was a Sabbath, and we know that He was in the ground three nights. Thus, we really should be celebrating "Good Thursday" as the day of our Lord's crucifixion and burial rather than Good Friday.

Jesus Ate the Passover Dinner Early

According to the rigid instructions from the Old Testament, you were to eat the Passover at the beginning of the Passover day. In our model, this would be about 6:30 or 7:00 p.m. on Thursday night, which was the beginning of the Jewish Friday. However, Jesus ate the Passover approximately two days early. John also tells us about this:

1 Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.
2 During supper, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray Him,
3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was going back to God,
4 got up from supper, and laid aside His garments; and taking a towel, He girded Himself.
5 Then He poured water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.
6 So He came to Simon Peter. He said to Him, "Lord, do You wash my feet?"
7 Jesus answered and said to him, "What I do you do not realize now, but you will understand hereafter."
8 Peter said to Him, "Never shall You wash my feet!" Jesus answered him, "If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me."
9 Simon Peter said to Him, "Lord, then wash not only my feet, but also my hands and my head."
10 Jesus said to him, "He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you."
11 For He knew the one who was betraying Him; for this reason He said, "Not all of you are clean."
12 So when He had washed their feet, and taken His garments and reclined at the table again, He said to them, "Do you know what I have done to you?
13 "You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am.
14 "If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet.
15 "For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you.
16 "Truly, truly, I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him.

~ John 13

This is a fairly long passage, but if you look at verse 1, you see that this event described was before the Feast of the Passover. In fact, it must have been very early on the day of preparation for Passover, about 6:30 or 7:00 p.m. After the meal, perhaps 9:00 p.m. on the day of preparation for the Passover, Jesus went into the garden and was arrested there. His trials then took place during our Wednesday evening (the Hebrews night that started Thursday). During that evening, they had the trial before Caiaphas and they had to wait until dawn on Thursday to take Him to Pilate. They took Him to Pilate very early:

28 Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas into the Praetorium, and it was early; and they themselves did not enter into the Praetorium so that they would not be defiled, but might eat the Passover.

~ John 18

Obviously this was still on the day of preparation for the Passover, since the Hebrews had not yet eaten the Passover.

Figure 6 is essentially a summary of what the Lord showed me concerning Christ being in the earth three days and three nights:

I am sure that wiser men than I have studied this and spent more time on it than I have. I simply wanted to pass along to you what I believe the Lord showed me in answer to prayer about how all these things fit together. My task is not to convince or to change anyone; only the Holy Spirit can do that. My only task is to share with you the truth as God reveals it to me.

I will leave it in your hands to judge, but if it is the truth of God and you do want to celebrate these activities on the days that they occurred, then I believe you would have your communion service on Wednesday evening (the beginning of the Hebrew Thursday), and you would celebrate "Good Thursday" as the day that Jesus was crucified.

Come Join With Us for a Feast

What Jeani and I and some others are going to do is to have a supper on Wednesday evening, March 30 (the hebrew Thursday), when Jesus had His last supper. Then we will fast until Sunday morning at breakfast, where we will have a real feast, one of rejoicing over the resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

I encourage you to pray about joining us in this fast, from Wednesday after dinner until Sunday morning, with real jubilation at Sunday breakfast for the victory and the power of our Savior and His resurrection. What a day of rejoicing that will be!

On Thursday, as we thank the Lord for His torturous death on the cross and His burial, we will concentrate especially on the fact that He took our sins upon Himself and that by His stripes we are healed. We hope to concentrate that entire day on what our Savior did for us.

But I'm sure I had nothing to do with it

2007-04-01T19:02:00.000-07:00

Some non-mainstream media seem to be coming around and including Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) in their coverage of 2008 GOP presidential candidates:

— • —

In his Feb. 27 piece "Why do evangelicals ignore Ron Paul?", Pastor Chuck Baldwin noted that the March issue of Rev. Jerry Falwell's National Liberty Journal named 10 men as actual or possible Republican candidates — while Ron Paul, who had already formed a presidential exploratory committee in mid-January, was notably absent from the list. (To add insult to injury, the NLJ article actually named 11 men — including the joke campaign being floated by talk-radio gadfly Michael Savage. Picture Pat Paulsen with a lousy attitude.)

Baldwin's piece inspired me to e-mail the NLJ that same day:

In the article "Campaign 2008: Identifying the Republican Presidential Candidates," NLJ left out one very important candidate: Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.

May I ask, how did this happen? Was it merely an oversight, or was Rep. Paul left out intentionally?

In my opinion, Ron Paul is a politician of tremendous integrity. I hope NLJ will have the integrity to give your readers the pertinent info on all the GOP candidates. Perhaps you can include a "Ron Paul addendum" to the article in your next issue.

In fairness to NLJ, I should point out that it has since occurred to me that their March issue may have already gone to press by the time Rep. Paul formed his exploratory committee.

Nevertheless, I was quite pleased to receive the following response Mar. 20:

Thank you for writing to us. We have included a Ron Paul addendum in our April 2007 edition of the National Liberty Journal. You will find the article on page 14.

The addendum — which includes two other candidates as well (Jim Gilmore, former Virginia governor; and Tommy Thompson, former health and human services secretary and governor of Wisconsin) — is very favorable to Rep. Paul. It didn't even mention the "L" word, which I find interesting, given that 1) Paul actually ran for president as a Libertarian in 1988, and 2) many Christian conservatives are not especially fond of libertarianism, considering it to be the political philosophy of godless pro-choicers and lawless pot smokers.

— • —

Then, while perusing the LewRockwell.com blog the other day, I read that PajamasMedia.com also seems to have resigned themselves to the reality of Ron Paul's candidacy.

Paul was originally listed in the PM Straw poll, but they dropped him after a few weeks — I don't know why. Vox Day thinks it was simply because they didn't like seeing iconoclastic constitutionalist kicking butt. PM said they'd detected some hackers "stuffing" their straw poll's ballot boxes with Paul votes, so maybe this was their way of kicking Paul supporters off the field. But some have surmised that, even after deducting those illicit votes, Ron Paul was apparently still out front.

Maybe in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter. It is, after all, an utterly unscientific on-line straw poll. It's probably better to drop your man a check every few weeks than to tick his box and click the "VOTE NOW!" button. But while this whole online-alternative-media things is still quite new, it just may be the people's way to work around the established (read "moneyed") Media-Political Complex.

So I'm going to go drop Dr. Paul's campaign a check, and then vote for him in the PajamasMedia poll — their eleventh week just started today.

(By the way: If you don't know what Ron Paul stands for, read a few of his articles and congressional speeches. And if you do like what he stands for ... tell a friend!)

"Dear Pajamas Media ..."

2007-03-26T00:15:00.000-07:00

... As you know, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) officially announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president two weeks ago.

Why, then, is Rep. Paul's name not listed in your on-line straw poll?

You claim your poll only includes names that "have achieved at least one percent in the most recent Gallup Poll." But it is my understanding that the Gallup/USA Today poll doesn't even include Ron Paul on their list! Seems to me that you're simply aping the mainstream media, rather than providing an alternative to them.

And besides, intentionally ignoring an officially-announced candidate certainly seems to defeat the purpose of a straw poll in the first place.

In sincerest anticipation of your reply,
Frank Golubski
Phoenix, AZ

And be sure not to miss Vox Day's "Ron Paul and the naked Pajamas Media."

Beginner's luck

2007-03-24T05:52:00.000-07:00

Last December, a little bird told me that my friend Mike would really enjoy "a nice single malt scotch" for Christmas. (Okay, the little bird was Mike ...)

Not being terribly knowledgeable of the world of distilled beverages, I asked, "Single malt? As opposed to what, a double or triple malt?" Perhaps these double or triple malt scotches cost more, and he was just trying to be considerate of my pocketbook.

"No, single malt as opposed to a blend. Blended scotches are generally cheaper." So much for his concern for my pocketbook.

So I called our pastor, who knows about these things. "What can you recommend?" I asked.

"One scotch I enjoy is Glenmorangie. And it's not terribly expensive." I thanked him and hit the internet. Found the Glenmorangie website and learned a few things. They age many of their scotches in casks that have previously held various wines, which imparts the flavors of those wines to the scotch.

I also learned that Glenmorangie rhymes with "then ORangy," not "then more TANgy." (I later passed that tidbit on to Pastor Jeff; he seemed appreciative.)

Then I stumbled across ScotchDrinkers.com, found a "ratings" link, and printed the list to take shopping with me.

Fry's Marketplace, Christmas Eve. Man, what a variety of scotches for a chain grocery store! The liquors are shelved by price: Top-notch stuff up high — some of it even cable-locked to the shelf — and the gun-cleaner grade down near the floor.

They had the Glenmorangie alright, but sixty smackers (on sale) just wasn't in the budget. The ScotchDrinkers list indicated several bottles that seemed to strike a reasonable balance between price and quality, so I chose a bottle of Balvenie Doublewood 12-year-old that was on sale for $42. The bottle said it was aged in two different casks — first a traditional oak whiskey cask, then an oak sherry cask. (I later learned from Balvenie's website that it's pronounced "Bal-VENNY.")

Mike received the gift with no small appreciation on Christmas Day. Being that he's rather new to scotch himself, he wasn't familiar with the Balvenie. But his anticipation of giving it a taste was certainly evident.

A couple of weeks later, we happened to have Mike and Pastor Jeff and his family over for Sunday dinner — and Mike brought the as-yet-unopened Balvenie!

Later in the evening he popped it open for a taste.

At first blush, it was good ... I guess. To me, it tasted just like whiskey. Which is to say, it tasted pretty much what I remembered Jim Beam tasting like some 25 years ago, when I was in the Air Force, which was probably the last time I'd had straight whiskey.

But both Jeff and Mike professed great enjoyment. They couldn't stop raving about it, which made my night!

I've since picked up a bottle and begun to explore and enjoy it — sometimes alongside Knob Creek, a higher-end bourbon, for comparison's sake. The Knob Creek certainly ain't gun cleaner, but I'm really beginning to appreciate the Balvenie better. And tonight, based on some advice from Mike and another "online connoisseur," I'm going to compare 12-year-old Glenlivet with the Balvenie Doublewood — at my friend Dirk's house. (He tried the Balvenie at our place a few weeks ago ... and also fell in love with it!)

Maybe I'll get around to sharing my impressions here in a few days ... Slainté!

What if Ron Paul does win?

2007-03-22T20:38:00.000-07:00

I believe that Ron Paul will scare the living daylights out of the powers-that-be and has a better chance of winning than most pundits think. The amusement factor alone from an 18-month spectacle of political debate between a principled man committed to liberty and the other fakes and frauds is likely to be worth the price of admission. ...

... The main question to consider is not “Can he win?” but “What if he does win?” The potential to slow the inevitable collapse of the state into bankruptcy may do more harm than good in the long run by giving people false hope that “the system can work,” if only for a short time. Hopefully, I am wrong and he really can clean up government, ending the naked exploitation of what remains of free society by the well-connected few. This, however, is tilting at windmills.

The self-delusion isn’t that he could maybe win the election, it’s that he could do anything of substance if he actually did win. After Leviathan steamrolls him ... along with every good man who ever went to Washington, D.C. on a white horse, then President Ron Paul being “in-charge” (of the continuing expansion of state control and intervention leading to said collapse) should prove once and for all to anybody with a smidgen of analytical ability that our political problems are systemic and not due to personnel issues.

So I do hope he runs and wins. Not because I think that he will strike through the root of evil, but because I know that he can’t. The naïve notion that the Constitution is a cage for politicians, and that a brave politician-tamer can just push them back into that cage and close the door makes windmills look like giants. This illusion should be shattered by a President Ron Paul Administration. George Will was right; Ron Paul is an anachronism, because Will knows exactly how the system works with or without Ron Paul.
~ Mark Davis, "Ron Quixote"

Let's see now ...

2007-03-21T20:20:00.000-07:00

... I'm wanting to get some rabbit-themed graphic onto this page, preferably as a background in the header.

Maybe something like this, since spring has sprung here in the Sonoran Desert ...