Stolen Morality & A Good Argument for God

"Atheists steal their moral code from the Judeo-Christian tradition, then claim that it was obvious all along." - Occam's Tool

I've said this more than once...it's so obvious it's embarrassing that atheists don's see it. Kinda indicts their level of honesty...or their intelligence, doesn't it?


and further:

Atheists always behave morally--they ape the morality of the society they were born into, with a few personal exceptions to demonstrate their independence. What atheists cannot be is virtuous. Morality is the mere rough average of what a culture accepts and will not accept; virtue requires the belief in free will, which atheists cannot believe because without God there is no liberty. From the atheist perspective the whole of human history is no more important than lichens growing on a rock and then drying out and blowing away. No matter what we do, it is irrelevant, because it cannot matter to the rolling on of the universe. This is indisputable from the atheist perspective; a universe that was created by random chance CANNOT have any meaning or purpose, and everything in it can have no more. Cosmic nihilism, yes; but nihilism is an impossible philosophy so instead we get arguments from Judeo-Christian morality turned against Judeo-Christian morality, which is all we've seen in these comments from the atheists. Think enthusiastic atheism would save you in Kampuchea? More likely to get you killed by the atheist regime, because it means you are at least a self-styled intellectual and hence unworthy of the new world. At root, atheism is nothing more than intellectual onanism, a way to preen with self-righteousness while condemning all the unbelievers.

 Wow! "...without God there is no liberty." 

Or at least....for sure...without God, there is no purpose, no choice, no hope, no future, no meaning.

And I'm pretty sure I don't want to live in a universe like that.

and

When every choice leads to the same end, what does it matter what you choose? No choice, no liberty. And besides, all our behaviors are instinctive, we don't choose anything. Just ask an evolutionary psychologist.

Science nerd atheists of my acquaintance do suggest that "morality" is nothing more than instinct prompted by our DNA for its own survival and propagation.

They claim that kindness, generosity, community, etc..are not virtues but DNA directives that create a hospitable culture for the survival of the DNA hosts...which are really, in their eyes, just vehicles for DNA to use...not "individuals" in their own right.

This, of course, does not explain criminals, whose DNA would appear to be broken.

Or the tens of millions murdered within societies that surely did not prove to be hospitable to their DNA...

Nor does it explain altruism and self-sacrifice of oneself for others besides one's own children...which flies in the face of one's peculiar DNA protecting itself.

It's just not an argument that hangs together for me.


/gun

So Egregiously Out of Control

You think I'm paranoid.

Not so much...

Red State's Francis Cianfrocca's piece: The Stakes in the Catholic Church Abortion Debate are Higher than You Might Think.

In this case, the Obama Administration has ruled unilaterally that health insurance programs provided by the Catholic Church must pay for abortions. Forget about the welter of discussion about whether the Federal mandate extends beyond those of many states. That’s not the core issue here.

For the government to say, as it has, that its goals are prior to the Catholic Church’s core beliefs, is precisely to say that government power is unambiguously senior to all other claims.

This is radically counter to the doctrines of the American founding. It’s more radical than anything that even FDR said during the New Deal. It quite simply elevates government to the level of a religion.

Democrats should beware. Imperial Government is bad for everyone; even them, eventually.

The Gunslinger

Bedtime Stories

As a child, I loved the simple stories of heroes and villains.

When I grew up, I found that life was rarely that cut & dried. Shades of grey do exist in the adult's world, and it's rarely as exhilarating as those precious bedtimes when the hero boldly vanquished the unequivocal monster.

But...wonder of wonders, it appears that in our lifetime we are to be treated to fantasy become reality.

It's getting harder to deny anymore...even as my adult, grownup brain wants to disdain the idea—actual evil seems to be afoot in the world, and its guise is becoming ever more clear.

See if you agree.

"Contained within his secularism is a totalitarian seed, which will grow and grow until nothing is a 'private' matter. As the hapless executives at the Komen Foundation recently learned--after committing the thought crime of withholding private donations from abortionists--no one is free to leave Obama's Animal Farm."


The Gunslinger

What Jesus said...

...from a commenter at American Spectator:

Riff Raff 10.13.11 @ 11:18AM
“In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this, not because we do not have a right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow. For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: 'If a man will not work, he shall not eat.'" (2 Thessalonians, 3:6-10)

The Bible commands that we gve alms to the poor, not subsidize the laziness of sloths.

This to Leftist trolls masquerading as Christians demanding greedy Conservatives give all their money away, according to the Bible!

Funny and apt, particularly in the face of the Øccupy Zømbies demanding that "the greedy" pay for everything they want - just because they want it.

Can somebody call the irony police, please?

I don't think they're quite clear on the concepts of "covetousness" and "greed".

Of course, it's clear they don't understand much of anything. That would entail intelligence and a modicum of actual information, which is obviously lacking in those I observed so far.

The Gunslinger

God and DNA

I have just read what I believe is the best rational/logical argument for the existence of God:

(1) DNA is not merely a molecule with a pattern; it is a code, a language, and an information storage mechanism.

(2) All codes we know the origin of are created by a conscious mind.

(3) Therefore DNA was designed by a mind, and language and information are proof of the action of a Superintelligence.

I can't find anything wrong with this logically. If everything (little) I know about DNA is true.

The author makes the distinction between patterns, which can occur randomly and naturally, and CODE which carries information via symbols (language), which requires intelligence and intent.

I shared it with an engineer friend of mine last night who is, at best, an agnostic, and is very intelligent, fair and honest...and his reaction was to stare blankly at me for a moment and say, "Wow, I have to think about that."

He'd never heard that argument either.

For more information on this, see:  If You Can Read This, I Can Prove God Exists.

So, is it possible the "Divine Language" is not hidden in the Bible or any other mystic tome...but in life itself?

How perfectly fitting.

The Gunslinger

God AND Science

This started out as a comment, in response to a comment...but it got so long I decided to just make it a post. Besides, I think it's interesting.

I do need to give a little background. An earlier post had to do with us old folks learning to love being old for all the real reasons it's pretty cool.

Sure we're not as pretty or agile or sexual (san chemicals) as we once were, but there are a lot of benefits to not being self-absorbed, vain, insecure, unformed, unfinished and dumber than a box of rocks. (I speak only of myself, of course.)

A commenter took exception to my describing aging as "natural" because he believes that the bible testifies to a perpetually young, perfect, vital humanity before the "fall".  He believes that our natural state is young forever. And that old age is unnatural...introduced by sin.

Now I totally respect his religious beliefs, but I don't agree.

In fact, I think the way we are is so elegant, and so logical I can't help but think the Intelligent Designer meant us to be just this way.

I honor the Bible, but I don't understand it as being the "word of God" with every passage being literally true history.

I think of it as the chronicle of a people's relationship with their God. And it is human understanding that informs it, with perhaps, divine inspiration...but certainly not divine dictation.

My idea of the "fall" is when our brains/minds developed to the point that we became able to distinguish good from evil.

Before that, we were in a state of bliss because we were in a state of perfect moral ignorance. We operated according to our animal nature, because that is what we were. We were nothing more than bundles of instinct.

It is when we became fully human that the concept of "sin" originated. We could make choices. We transcended instinct. That is the moment when we were "expelled from the Garden" of blissful ignorance into the harsh reality of choices and consequences; of fore-knowledge of death and the sad appreciation of the transience of all we love and value.

Remember, the fruit that caused the expulsion was from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

It was the moment we became free agents with free will...with all the doubts and difficulties, conflicting emotions and goals inherent in human intellectual development.

In my opinion we became better, higher, more evolved beings that the simple contented ones we had been before, grazing among the other animals, living short, brutal lives, but not minding it, because we didn't have the capacity to intellectualize it...and had nothing to compare it to anyway.

Adam biting the apple is a metaphor for the same moment portrayed in "2001 A Space Odyssey" when the ape absently tapping one bone against another forms the first abstract thought—makes the leap from animal to human. Kubrick called the sequence "The Dawn of Man".  It still gives me chills to see it. It is the moment we began. The moment we left the garden of innocence and instinct and moved into a landscape of choices and consequences; of knowledge and the sorrow and pain—as well as the joy—it can bring.

I believe the biblical story of the "fall" of man is really one of the "rise" of man. Of that single moment in time...that first self-awareness...that first abstract thought...that first knowledge of choices, of free will...and of good and evil.

For the record, while the Theory of Evolution is incompatible with Creationism, it is certainly not incompatible with idea of God as Intelligent Designer.  There is no reason why God should be assumed to be incapable of creating the Big Bang, and designing evolution as science understands it, to result after billions of years in the development of Man (and beyond?)

It is absurd and anti-intellectual, as the Marxist and atheists do, to offer only the choice of Creationism OR Evolution; of Religion OR Science.  It is perhaps their nearness to our primitive animal nature that prevents them from being more creative and inventive in their thinking.

The Gunslinger
(Sorry in advance for making the trolls "think" too much.)

Minnesotans in Sweat Lodges

Seriously, can't these people just go to church?

Okay. I don't, I admit. I'm a Conservative Heathen, if you need a label. I believe in God, but I'm not a Christian. The Christians used to call us heathens. Seems as good a name as any.

If was going to experiment with a "New Age" religion, I'd pick one that actually reflected my culture and heritage, like Witchcraft or Odinism. Say what you want about them, they're based in European traditions.

Why do flaky, unfulfilled white people insist on intruding themselves into native faith systems like Voodoo or any Native American Religious Cosmos?

Culture has consequences. And I know it's hard for the pinhead Liberal "seekers" to understand, but they are not all equal, and they are not all interchangeable...and you can't expect to go slogging around in another culture's traditions and expect to get the same results the natives get because, like it or not, you bring all of your cultural baggage, habits, expectations and limitations to the teepee.

Whether it was badly planned or well planned but just too much for culturally unprepared participants, this sad incident reflects this fundamental misunderstanding.

European-Americans: Get a pentacle, write a grimoire, dance in the heath, light candles, praise Odin or the Moon Goddess, cast spells or read the Runes ...

...but stay the hell out of Sweat Lodges and Oúfos*, for God's sake.

Let me put it in a way you'll understand: Stop being imperialists colonizing other people's cultural territory. 

The Gunslinger

*Voodoo temple

Where Are Marauding Vikings When You Need Them?

Ireland has passed a law against blasphemy.

I can't believe I just typed that sentence. This is 2009 AD, right?

From the Examiner:

Here is an excerpt from the Blasphemy Clause:

Section 36

(1) A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €100,000. [Amended to €25,000]

(2) For the purposes of this section, a person publishes or utters blasphemous matter if (a) he or she publishes or utters matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion, and (b) he or she intends, by the publication or utterance of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage.

This part of the bill makes it illegal to criticize any religion either verbally or in writing. Saying anything in which a “substantial number” of followers might find offensive would now be a crime in the Ireland. But the bill goes even further. Here is another excerpt:

Section 37

(1) Where a person is convicted of an offence under section 36, the court may issue a warrant (a) authorising any member of the Garda Siochana to enter (if necessary by the use of reasonable force) at all reasonable times any premises (including a dwelling) at which he or she has reasonable grounds for believing that copies of the statement to which the offence related are to be found, and to search those premises and seize and remove all copies of the statement found therein, (b) directing the seizure and removal by any member of the Garda Siochana of all copies of the statement to which the offence related that are in the possession of any person, specifying the manner in which copies so seized and removed shall be detained and stored by the Garda Siochana.

The Garda Siochana is the Irish police who can now (under this law) break into people’s homes and confiscate copies of any book which might be critical of any religion.

From the tone of things I'm reading, I'm getting that it is outrage at disrespectful atheist behavior and probably art (remember the Piss Cross?) that prompted this stupidity.

It is not comforting to know that career politicians all over the world are as stupid as their American counterparts. It severely limits potential emigration destinations.

I guess the Irish are busy, like Øbama, preparing for our return to the Dark Ages.

He's managing the destruction of all the material & economic infrastructure of modern life, and they're seeing to the social and religious de-evolution.

GE is sponsoring the event. And Al Gore will, no doubt, be the new Head of the Inquisition.

The Gunslinger

God & Honor

We've been having a discussion on why men in power act as badly—and stupidly— as they do. When did honor go out of style? When did virtue lose its grip?

We were speaking particularly about politicians who don't honor their marriage vows and who don't honor their oath to defend the Constitution any better, but the same argument applies to the rest of us.

It turns out Character matters.

If a man cheats on and lies to the person he vowed in public to be true to...his nearest and dearest, mother of his children...what makes anyone think he will behave honorably (when no one is looking) when dealing with anyone else?

We have convinced ourselves that duty doesn't matter, and that "self-fulfillment" is all that does.

It's loss of God.

If there is no God, no heaven or hell, no final reward or punishment, what is the point of being good? Why deny oneself the carnal and selfish pleasures of this world, when it is the only tiny moment of existence one will ever have?

A godless world is one of desperate people, living only for the present, seeking above all things for worldly pleasure, and the power and money to fulfill their appetites.

If there is no God, no final arbiter of good and evil; if virtue is merely a quirk or preference of human culture, there is no good argument for honorable—which often means self-sacrificial—behavior.

If there is no absolute good on which people are required to model their behavior, why would anyone behave honorably, when the spoils of the world will be lost to them, and they will spend their brief life on earth—the only life they believe they will ever have—with less gratification and less pleasure than those who are immoral, selfish, exploitive...bullies, liars and cheats?

If there is no God, how can there be honor? What would it look like? What would it mean? What would be its raison d'être?

Sappy human emotion that thinks it's "nice" to be nice to others will not stand against the intense pressures of life; the desperate times, the pain, the loss, the frustration, the envy, the greed, the rage, the hunger, the passion and the lust that comes with being human.

There must be some higher, stronger, firmer standard...that in the end, makes all the pain and sacrifice, the pity, the compassion, the selflessness, the love...the HONOR....worth it.

And when our culture's Anointed rejected that standard, and its Maker, they turned their back on the only mode of living that makes men Man, not merely Animal.

Lack of God is what's wrong.

In former times it was the Anointed...the elite...that kept the flame of the best of humanity burning brightly. Those who studied the true Liberal Arts of history, languages, literature, philosophy and religion were the ones that lead mankind out of the primeval darkness and into the light of higher human understanding and accomplishment...of the appreciation of the special differentiation of humans from all other creatures on earth by virtue of their minds and souls.

For over two thousand years, most of those Anointed of the West have been Christians, and their philosophies were consistent with belief in a higher authority, a divine judge, an intelligent designer—an absolute standard of good and evil.

And their cultures reflected those beliefs. Honor and Duty were understood to be the requirements of Privilege—in theory if not always in practice.

But today the Elite don't even bother to pretend that privilege has any accompanying responsibilities. And the culture reflects that fall from grace. It is coarser, stupider, greedier, shallower, lest celestial and more demonic. It is ignorant, rude, and in many cases beastly.

Man was never perfect. But there was a time when his face was lifted toward heaven and those bright faces led, ultimately, to the glorious apex of human accomplishment, the recognition that as equals before God, all men had the right to individual liberty—with the caveat, of course, that with individual liberty comes the responsibility and duty to be individually virtuous. Our Best knew that freedom and free societies can only exist when every man lives according to that Absolute Standard that God required.

Today's elites wrestle in the mud, back in the black, dark swamp of creatures without souls, fighting without the light of higher intelligence for their bigger chunk of the spoils, of power, of pleasure.

And they have dragged their societies down with them.

Forgotten are the responsibilities and duties of individual free men. Forgotten is the Absolute Standard of good. Forgotten is the censure of evil. And forgotten are the qualities that differentiate man from the animals. Among them, Honor.

Honor belongs to enlightened Man, not to snarling beasts fighting over carrion.

Only God can incite Honor. And without Him, there is only the bloody tooth and claw of Nature.

And we see where that gets us!

The Gunslinger

The American Way

by Alan Korwin May 21, 2009


I was fortunate to be invited to a meeting of thirteen deep-thinking well-educated men recently, and for two-and-a-half hours over lunch we examined some of the critical issues of our time, from our perspective.

The question came up, "What Is America?" and I ask you today, "What is America?"

It seems to me this is a question without an answer, because America is as many things as there are people to define it. It is a complex and huge topic that could fill encyclopedias and not scratch the surface.

But it dawned on me that a few fundamental principles of America stand out. These are the principles that have made America great. These are the reasons America is a shining beacon of real hope for the entire world, such as the world has never known. These are guidelines that people have adopted in their hearts, instilled in their families. These are understandings that drive people from their homes across the entire planet and to our borders. These fundamental principles are The American Way, and this can be described.

I've been a champion of The American Way for as long as I can remember, and way before I even knew that this was what I was championing.

The American Way is hard work. It is keeping the benefits of your hard work. It is ownership of private property, and the sanctity of a contract between people.

It is the idea that you and you alone own the fruits of your labors. It is the idea -- of paramount importance -- of self ownership. You and you alone own and are responsible for you. It's a tautology. The king doesn't own you. The state doesn't own you. You own you.

This is not a right you demand, or get from the state, or earn. It is a fundamental right of the fact that you exist. It is a right that comes from your Creator, by nature. It is the natural order of things. And it is honored here like nowhere else -- that's why we've achieved so much.

The American Way is the idea that all you Americans can make something of yourselves, because you are free to do so. This is the great magnet that draws people here. In 2006, net immigration into 78 nations from Albania to Zimbabwe was below zero -- people were fleeing. In America in that year, more than two million people, risking life, limb, family and arrest, walked across blinding miles of blazing snake-infested desert to get here. That says something. Half got caught and sent back. Half snuck in. Those are problems for another time, but that raw drive speaks volumes about what we have accomplished that their native lands have not.
--
In one of the documents that helped start our country, Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, published in the year of our founding, 1776, he described principles that drive The American Way (although it was too early for him to call it that). Wealth of Nations, in the country's infancy, identified what has led to unprecedented opulence, prosperity abundance, opportunity and freedom that is The American Way.

Smith recognized that private property, free trade, self interest, limited government and division of labor were the basics of capitalism and cornerstones of personal freedom and economic security.
--
So these are the factors that make you and me special, and make the land we live in special, and attract many non-Americans to this special place, seeking to be Americans. But along with the teeming masses yearning to be free are undesirable miscreants seeking to leach off our success, eat out our substance and do us harm, who must be resisted. Col. Jeff Cooper put it plainly: Some people prey on other people. I don't like it. That's just the way it is.

So I ask you: Do you intend to preserve, protect and defend these special attributes that make us what we are? You bet we do! Will you resist the constant forces that seek to diminish, denigrate, defeat and delete these special attributes? You bet we will!

The American Way can be summed up, not perfectly, and not for all cases, but it can be summed up for our purposes: The American Way is the idea that the people are the rulers and the rulers are the servants. Have we strayed from this? Yes. Does that make it less true or less valuable or less right? Not at all.

The American Way is the rule of law, individual responsibility and government of limited delegated powers only. It is free markets, free enterprise, low taxes, entrepreneurship and capitalism. The American Way is moral and just and yes, has a strong religious underpinning, whatever your religion may be -- so long as your religion does not include forcible coercion of others. It is "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you," but definitely not, "You better submit to our way," no matter how strongly convinced that your way is right.

Convince people to follow and you follow the precepts that drive much of what we are. Force people, and you are by definition the enemy of The American Way. Neither political party has a really good score card on this.

The American Way is what has generated the most opulent, abundant, prosperous, generous, productive, creative, inventive and loving society the world has ever known, light years ahead of whatever is in second place. Our politicians have lost support because they've abandoned our goals.

The idea that such a land could even exist was beyond the comprehension of earlier societies -- the ideas that made it possible had not been invented yet. The uniquely American ideals of freedom were born here. They were birthed by a lucky confluence that skeptics might say were coincidental. True believers might say it was destiny, or divine providence. And who knows who's right. The important thing is that it happened.

Our natural geography, limits of technology, self-selected pioneers and thinkers in a brave new land, the abuses and usurpations of a tyrant, the homogeneous nature of voluntary leaders, simultaneous existence of so many geniuses in one place and one time, an abundance of natural resources, existence of such vast expanses of untapped wilderness -- all contributed to the damn lucky creation of the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights that set us on our way.

When people are turned free to do what they will, they do what we have seen here. Acting in your own self interest, you persevere, plant and harvest great seeds of innovation and wealth. And great wealth results from the work of your loins. True Americans, recognizing the great blessings that have been bestowed upon us, share those fruits, like no society before us has ever done. Americans donate and share more food, more wealth, more health care, more humanitarian aid, more power of righteous self defense, than the world has ever seen -- without exception.

And what of guns? Guns, guns, guns, they are so American. All nations have guns, but only in a scant few do the people have guns. And only in America is there a wildly western tradition of a gun for everyman. Only in America is there broad understanding that guns save lives. Guns stop crime. Guns keep you safe. Guns deter evil. Guns are good.

Colt, Remington, Winchester, Browning, Smith and Wesson -- is it just coincidence that Americans have guns, and use guns, and have invented some of the finest firearms ever known -- and the fact that America has been the freest nation on earth? It is not coincidence. Guns are why America is still free.

We know and easily accept that you can't let slaves have guns and expect them to remain slaves. Does that mean that if the forces of darkness were to succeed in their endless effort to disrupt our long-standing balance and disarm peaceful, innocent Americans, that America would be devolve into slavery? Is it safe to confiscate guns from the innocent? I'm not eager to find out!

Why is it safe to give all those dangerous guns to other people, just because they have government jobs and are paid with your tax money? Why can they be trusted any more than any of you who actually earn the money that pays them? What magical writing says guns are OK but only if rulers have them all? Where does it say that a man in government is more trustworthy than a man in his own home?

We know that just the opposite is true. It is our resistance to the bad idea that only leadership should have power that put power into the hands of the people and created The American Way. It is the understanding that the power to govern is only legitimate if it comes from the consent of the governed. When the power to govern is disconnected from consent, you have classic tyranny, no checks on leadership, only those latitudes leadership arbitrarily decides to offer. That, my friends, is the Anti-American Way.

Guns are indeed why America is still free. Guns in the hands of the masses help assure that leadership cannot just run wild. It stops them short. Guns are power to the people.

Slaves must be disarmed. Americans must never be disarmed. A disarmed docile subservient America would cease to be the magic magnet it is.

Now, there's corrosion in the aging machinery of The American Way. Jefferson's warning that the natural tendency is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground is true, and 200 years of yielding and gaining have taken us to a strange place.

Our great strides forward are at grave risk today. The idea of true human freedom, freedom from the state, freedom from arbitrary rule, appeal to a power higher than any government or man can exert -- these are what give us what we have. Today, far too many people, influenced by dastardly powers, reject the very things that give them the power to speak out against us.

We are now infested with czars -- a drug czar, an education czar, an environment czar, and now even a border czar. Czars are horrors yet we're embracing them, welcoming them into our midst. Czars are toxic waste, destroyers of freedom, autocratic tyrants who have no place in our system. Yet they are praised and promoted with glee by our failed "news" media. Tolerance of czars is a repugnant result of the insidious success of political correctness. Czars should be removed and replaced with representatives.

But our representatives need to be replaced with representatives, because they've long since left the scene.

We have reached a point where our laws are written by secretive government operators and clandestine conspirators, creeps working in deep basements without the light of public scrutiny, who draft endless edicts that cannot be read by a person of decent education. The edicts are thrust upon our elected hollow men, who are coerced and intimidated into signing before they have read what they are handed, and saddle us with unacceptable, anti-American crap whose contents they don't know.

Think about that. The laws are now written by people you don't know, can't name, can't see, signed by people without reading or understanding, and then held against you at the point of a government gun and prison. That, my fellow Americans, is corrupt. It is tyrannical. It is intolerable.

Our elected participants should fall to their knees in shame and tears for what they are complicit in forcing upon this great nation and its people. But they show no shame. They justify, and excuse and continue. How much further must that travesty go on before a few heads are on pikes on the K Street bridge? A bridge, by the way, actually named after Francis Scott Key, the author of the Star Spangled Banner.

Tyranny has its appeal. Especially in the young, a desire to follow rather than lead burns hot. It's easy to be sheep, to obey, to stand in line, take what's handed you, care not for the higher values. They are far from the roots that got this tree growing. And their schooling, run by the very government that schooling is supposed to tame and keep in check, encourages the collectivist antithesis of The American Way.

Freedom is hard work, but worth it. Socialism, the Anti-American Way and our arch enemy, seems easy, because it runs on other people's money and sweat. Too many Americans today have had their values turned upside down and actually crave socialism, or can't even tell the difference between craven collectivism and freedom's liberation.
________

We have our share of difficulties, and our ability to surmount them looks increasingly grim. And when you're the big dog, as freedom has made America, people and groups and nations and even ideologies nip at your feet.

The have nots, the do nots, the know nots, freeloaders and the useful idiots wound up into a frenzy by people of ill will and a disgraceful media, seek to take you down. Seek to hurt you. Seek to diminish your accomplishments, cast aspersions on your greatness, work to undermine your success, mean-mouth your achievements, deny, rewrite and twist history to say it isn't so. They would rather pick at the nits than recognize how far America has drawn humanity out of the primordial goo.

Americans know our greatness. America haters hate our greatness. Too many of our own countrymen are misled, misguided, propagandized and brainwashed into hating -- blind fuming hatred -- of the very hand that feeds them.

America haters are the most pernicious, deceitful and hate-filled enemies of all that is good and prosperous and productive and beneficial to humanity. Too many exist within our midst, in our Congress and schools and newsrooms and within the bureaus of the czars. And they are clever, and devilish in their cunning, and left unchecked they will indeed ruin the greatest society the planet has ever seen, and then dance in the bloody gore of the havoc they reek.

If you believe in The American Way, if you have benefited from The American Way, if you want your children and their children and generations to come both here and abroad to bask in the glory of The American Way, then you need to rise up -- in all your righteous glory and indignation -- and denounce the siren song of those who would rend and ridicule what we have achieved.

You need to always say the obvious, and flatly refuse to participate in the debilitating socialist disease of political correctness! Don't joke about it, which reinforces it, denounce it! You need to substitute e pluribus unum -- "From Many, One" for the leftwing sickness of multicultural divisiveness. You need to know that belief in limited government, low taxation, delegated powers, free markets, free enterprise, gun ownership, religion and personal responsibility makes you a moderate not an extremist. Those who tell you to reject these core American values, they are the extremists. The extremists are calling the moderates extreme, and the media helps sing that song. Clinging to The American Way makes you a centrist, a moderate centrist. Only a vile and corrupt media could see it otherwise and then promote an upside-down cake of the truth.

You must loudly and publicly reject laws that violate the separation of Congress and the States, laws that violate the 10th Amendment by delegating forbidden powers, laws that grow government illegally, laws that use color and sex and language to force compliance, quotas, and deceptive non-equality. Equal treatment under the law, not enforced treats and benefits through income redistribution. Special treatment to favored groups is the behavior of tyrants. We are and must remain a nation built on merit and compassion, not central dictates and giving away your money to other people.

You can do all these things, and keep America at her heights of glory. You can for generations to come preserve all the things that made America great and this shining beacon of liberty it has been for more than two centuries. You need to ask yourself, of every proposal that comes down the pike from central government, state government, local government, media pundits and all others who profess to know what's right for you, "Does it maximize freedom?"

Does it maximize freedom, that's the question. That's the benchmark.

If it maximizes freedom, it's good. That's what our Founders knew. That's what got us to this great pinnacle of success from which we are now slipping. If it would do good but does not maximize freedom, it must be rejected. If government could take action -- but has no authority to do so, it must be rejected. There is always another way. The American Way.

Thank you, and may God bless America.

The only objection I have is to his describing those who believe in the American Way as "centrist Moderates". Forget it...we're Liberty Radicals!

The Gunslinger

Christianacht

So, do you think the San Diego "official" is a Liberal?

SAN DIEGO -- A local pastor and his wife claim they were interrogated by a San Diego County official, who then threatened them with escalating fines if they continued to hold bible studies in their home, 10News reported.

I thought that this was just a tease, and that there would be more to the story...like everyone gets naked and parades through the neighborhood shouting Bible verses and scaring the horses.

But no. They just meet to study the Bible. And that has been deemed illegal in San Diego county.

Read it yourself. Un-be-fucking-lievable. (Praise the Lord.)

The Gunslinger

What Rand Missed

I'm reading a sort of encyclopedia of Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy. Subjects are in alphabetical order, and quotes from her writings are inserted regarding each.

The one overriding theme that I disagree with Rand about is her rejection of God, the belief in whom she calls "mysticism".

I understand her mistake, but I find it ridiculous that a woman of her intellectual gifts made it.

When I was 18 year's old, I made the same one. Eventually I figured out my error. It appears Rand never did, and I think that so many other people make her mistake.

She rejects Religion, and mistakes it for God.

As a child of Catholic school, my image of God was limited to the Catholic/Christian one. When I rejected that particular vision, I called myself an "athiest". Silly, I know, but it seemed to make sense at the time, when I had no alternative view or definition or description of God to turn too. The only one I knew was the God as presented by the Catholics. And when He turned out to be a logical impossibility, I was left without any God at all. No God = Atheist. That's teenage logic.

But I got caught in that mistake for years.

What I didn't think through at the time, and Rand appears to have never done, is that the particular view of God that you learn in Sunday School is not the Being himself.

We both rejected an opinion about God....not God himself...and confused the two.

I'm always amused at secularists who claim that the Theory of Evolution proves that God does not exist. I'm equally amused at the gullibility of secularists, who believe God (whatever that means to you) is so limited in power that he could not have set evolution in motion to create homo sapien exactly as they claim it did.

Every act in their lives gives them the perfect example of how it's done. When humans make babies, they don't say magic words...and a baby appears. They couple...and in the fullness of time, a homo-sapien develops. Duh.

When a secularist wants a lawn, he plants seeds, and in the fullness of time, grass grows. How, exactly is that different from the idea that God could make the world...exactly as we have discovered it operates.

In all the years I was a practicing Catholic, I never met anyone who believed in the "literalness" of the Bible. And it is only this literal interpretation against which the newborn athiest rails. Every Christian I know is perfectly happy to accept evolution and the existence of God without the slightest hesitation. Indeed evolution makes the Intelligent Designer even more creative, marvelous and admirable than the simplistic fable of Adam and Eve.

Rand appears to have been unable to see the possibility of a God of Reason whom she could have adored as her "Perfected Man".

As I've said here before, it's Reason that makes us "(made in) the image of God". And Reason was Rand's total focus. It's a shame she couldn't make the leap. I suppose it was her obsessive attention to Man that prevented her from lifting her eyes sufficiently to see the eternal possibilities.

As for her condemnation of "mysticism", she is right when she is talking about "blind faith", of adhering to dogma without thought, of the requirement of believing the logically impossible, in the belief that what is natural and healthy and good and joyful, and necessary for the fulfillment of Man's nature is, by definition, evil, and that altruism to the point of self-sacrifice and existential self-denial are virtues most admired, and most highly valued by God.

She was right to reject them all. But wrong to imagine that in rightly banishing them, she annihilated God. If she had looked a little longer and deeper, she would have seen that what she did was shatter the distorting, funhouse mirror that generations of small, fearful, angry men had contructed before the image of God...and reflected only their dysmorphic souls.

Smashing that false image revealed a God she could have loved and trusted...but she turned away too soon...before the broken glass fell away, before she beheld the God of Reason.

And like so many atheists, thereafter she never questioned or examined her own "blind faith".

As much as it would horrify her, it would seem that Rand's philosophy is perfectly compatible with a faith in God. You just have to pick the right one!

The Gunslinger

God's Reason

Oh how the Secularists, and the Humanists, and the Atheists, and the Objectivists, and the Rationalists, and the Social-Scientists, and the "Liberation" Theologists, and the Socialists, and the Progressives miss the point.

And oh, how the Muslims and the Wiccans and the New-Agers and the Hindus and the Buddhists and too many Born-Again Christians miss the point.

The point of God.

The Pope understands it. Albert Einstein understood it. The Founders understood it. The proponents of Natural Law understood it.

God is Reason. God is Rational. And we are "created in the image of God" by the fact that we have the capacity to reason. It is our Reason that connects us to the divine. Not some amorphous, mystical, emotional, tongue-talking ecstasy.

The fact that nature can only be understood by reason and logic...demands the acknowledgment that its maker created it according to the rules of reason and logic. How can this be so misunderstood? How can we imagine that the Creator—the creative intelligence, the intelligent designer—is anything other than a being of rationality, reason and logic?

Successful, prosperous, efficient human culture depends on the right application of reason and logic. Happy, successful, productive human individuals require the same thing.

Man is defined by and is distinguished from the brutes by only one attribute: Reason.

Yet, the pirates and looters and cannibals among us reject it, and substitute the fuzzy, nebulous emotionalism of pity, guilt, envy, greed, sloth, sentimentality, gluttony and lust for it.

And we are reaping the whirlwind of their abdication.

To connect with the divine is not to pray for ecstatic visions or miracles...but to do the more difficult work of using our Reason to relentlessly seek the truth, and to have the courage to accept it even when it contradicts our pet prejudices, easy answers and comfortable habits.

But man must have the WILL to Reason. The path of Reason & Logic demands moral courage because it is "the path less traveled", and the great number of people, unwilling to accept the burden themselves, hate those that take it up—for their virtue. (Though they will pretend to despise it as a vice!)

Irrationality is darkness. The rejection of the light of truth of Reason is the Fall of Man into brutishness, and into a brutal world of his own creation. Irrationality is Original Sin. It is a sin against God. It is a sin against Nature. And it is a crime against Human Nature; a crime against Humanity.

Irrationality is the characteristic of monsters and brutes—not True Men. It is mirrored in those who believe only what is good for themselves or their factions. It is mirrored in the anger of the mob, in the exhortation of the demagogue.

Irrationality is the persistent, hissing whisper of Satan, and of his earthly minions. It is the determined blindness to the bright, unequivocal, precious, redemptive Truth. It is the purposeful rejection of goodness, justice and virtue, and the eager embrace of evil and injustice and the lies that sustain them.

Irrationality is the road to hell, to barbarism, to insanity. Irrationality is the destruction of civil society and the extinction of civilized man.

And every man has to choose the side he serves: The bright god of Reason and salvation, or the dark demons of irrationality and doom.

Are they enough men of Reason left to defeat the army of darkness?

The Gunslinger

Too Much God Addendum

Let me simplify my argument made in Too Much God.

I argued there that if you believe in America you must believe in God. Here's the syllogism:

Inalienable rights are not possible without God.

America* is not possible without inalienable rights.

Therefore America is not possible without God.

Therefore one cannot believe in the America without also believing in God. Not, at least, if one is to be logically consistent.

While secularists/atheists may say they believe in America but refute the existence of God, they may as well claim to believe in bread while refuting the existence of flour.

Anyone can say it, but it's illogical nonsense.

One may believe in both or neither. No other option is rational.

*America is defined here as the America of the Founders. Constitutional America. The Idea and Ideals of America.

The Gunslinger

Too Much God?

In the previous post, I listed the 28 Principles of the Founders presented in the book, The 5,000 Year Leap. The first nine, a good chunk of the list, refer to God. In our aggressively secularized public sphere, this emphasis might make people uncomfortable. It might make some believe that the author is some kind of religious nut, and dismiss him and his book out of hand.

But remember, he's just quoting the Founders.

I've had my struggles with faith. In fact, I still do. My problem comes down to this: I think my way through stuff, and "faith" isn't usually presented as something you can think your way to or through. It's often described as a "gift", or a "grace", or some kind of emotional response.

What is a thinker & doubter to do with that? It leaves no avenue open to reason one's way to faith or to God.

But there is a way, it turns out, to reason one's way to belief in a Higher Power:

If one believes in America, one must, logically, believe in God.

America is based on the idea of inalienable rights. In order to believe in the great experiment of America, one must believe that man has inalienable rights and that they are our natural inheritance, which no man can violate or suspend.

Without inalienable rights, America as an idea and an ideal, cannot exist.

If one believes that America has proved to be the best form of government in the history of mankind, that liberty is the proper state of man, that no one has a right to enslave others...if one believes in the inalienable rights of man, one must believe in God.

Because, without God there cannot be inalienable rights.

Without God, the only authority is man. And what man gives, man can take away; with a stroke of a pen, or an argument in Congress, or an election, or an army.

Without God, all rights are mutable, impermanent, inconstant, and only exist at the pleasure of the Authority or the Majority (the Master or the Mob.)

Without God, there can be no America.

So, if one believes in America, one must believe in God. There is no rational alternative. America without God is a logical impossibility.

The Gunslinger

The Reason of God

This is only tangentially related to politics, but I enjoyed the insight.

I listen to Dennis Prager on podcast. His slogans: Clarity before Agreement, and First Tell the Truth, then Give Your Opinion resonate with me.

He values reason, is very logical, is precise in explaining his positions, and is brilliant at debunking Liberal arguments.

But the single most important thing he ever said was almost a throw away...in a discussion about worshiping God he said that "Acknowledging that there is a Power greater than yourself is an act of worship."

The reason this was so important to me is that I am a fervent child of America. I believe in individualism, freedom, equality (in the Constitutional sense!), and I take them very seriously. Indeed, some might say I take them to the extreme. The result is that I often found the idea of worship in the ordinary sense an offense against my sovereignty of self.

I just couldn't square the American Cowboy ideal of self-reliance and individuality with the Religious Uriah Heep ideal of obsequious adoration and currying favor. It creeps me out. (I know that's not a fair representation...but it's how it feels to me. I can't really say "Lord" with any conviction.)

But when Prager said that the acknowledgment of a higher power is in itself an act of worship, it changed the whole landscape, and made worship possible without diminishing the American Cowboy character.

Totally do-able.

What followed was reading a book recommended by Glenn Beck, The 5000 Year Leap, in which was chronicled the Founders' recognition of Natural Law as the basis for the rights enumerated both in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The author, Cleon Skousen explains how Natural Law leads one to recognize that Reason, the unique faculty of man, is the quality he shares with the Creator. He posits that Reason is that which makes man "Made in the Image of God."

He further posits (as does the Catholic Pope, whom I failed to understand when he said it), that employing our Reason is our duty to God.

Accordingly, it is not ornate rituals, or endless prayers that please God...but that man should employ the divine gift that makes him unique in creation: Reason. And that by doing so, he will find and identify goodness and truth.

It explains the moral codes that are always part of the religions of all civilized cultures. They all had something like the equivalent of the Ten Commandments—because they are perfectly discoverable by Reason—and to know human nature is to understand their wisdom.

What is Good and what is True can be determined by Reason. And to use Reason in their pursuit is to worship the creator, i.e., live a "religious" life, which in turn makes their discovery more meaningful. It ceases to be merely a personal journey (that sometimes you wonder why you're on it when you could be at the mall or in Hawaii or at the bar). It's significant. It matters. It's a pilgrimage. It's a Mission from God!

And that gives one strength, and hope, and faith.

And that's a very good thing.

The Gunslinger

God and Natural Law

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This is brilliant. It takes Social Conservatism out of the monopolistic hands of the Christian Right. Or more accurately, out of the hands of those that would use "God's Will", or "God's Word", or "God's Revelation" as arguments for it.

The author claims that Reason is enough; that what believers call "God's Laws", can reasonably and logically be shown to be "Natural Laws", that when followed, contribute to the welfare of human life and culture. He notes that no less a Religious thinker than Pope John Paul II stated that:

"The Ten Commandments," he said, "are not an arbitrary imposition of a tyrannical Lord. They were written in stone; but before that, they were written on the human heart as the universal moral law, valid in every time and place. . . . To keep the Commandments is to be faithful to God, but it is also to be faithful to ourselves, to our true nature and our deepest aspirations."

Hard to argue with that...even if you don't believe in God.

Read: Huckabee and Social Conservatives, by Ryan T. Anderson

The Gunslinger
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Court Pisses on First Amendment

Welcome to California, where doctors will be forced to perform procedures that violate their religious beliefs, in the name of the State Established Religion of Secularism.

Freedom of Religion? Hah! Not in this state, Skippy.

The Gunslinger

The Godless Bible Scholars

Some of the new scholarship of the Bible, particularly some of the stuff presented on TV channels like History or Discovery, has the feeling of propaganda disguised as education. While the information is interesting, it is almost always framed to discourage faith and encourage questioning.

I think that honest examination and research into the Bible and early Christianity is a legitimate study, but it is curious that so much presented on television leads to a more secular point of view, and away from the sacred and religious one.

You might almost, if you watched it long enough, conclude there was a plan unfolding...a concerted effort to diminish faith by promoting the idea that science and scholarship have actually disproved Christianity and the Bible.

Of course they haven't. One cannot disprove the existence of God.

And, many of the "theologians" or "professors of Religion" interviewed are not busy teaching "religion", but rather busy teaching that religion is just the history of mythology.

What the creators and producers of such television shows seem to miss, of course, is that most Christians are not believers in the "literal truth" of the Bible. Not many Christians I've ever met believe the world was created six thousand years ago, in a seven day period, with the literal creation of Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden, who were tempted by a real snake to eat a real apple, and get thrown out of paradise by an real angel with a flaming sword.

As a product of long years of Catholic education, I can state without fear of contradiction that Roman Catholics (the largest single sect of Christianity on the planet), do not take the Old Testament as Historical Fact...and do not believe that most of the stories presented in it are historical facts. Catholics understand the stories to be lessons, metaphors, fables that teach us wisdom and truth, a little like the Aesop's Fables. Donkeys don't speak...nor do serpents...but the lessons are good ones, nevertheless. Catholics believe that the Bible writers were inspired by God. But they do not suppose God was busy writing the facts of history. That'd be awfully mundane. God is not necessary for that, man is quite up to that challenge.

Indeed, if the Bible is God's version of history, He's been proven to be in error by the research and scholarship of mere man. And that's a preposterous idea, isn't it? In the end, it seems to me that anybody who insists the Bible is literal historical fact is making God out to be an idiot, or a liar. A pretty untenable position for a believer I should think.

That, of course, does not excuse the makers of such programs "researching" The Bible, for the often obvious intent of discouraging faith by attempting to prove the historical inaccuracy of the Bible. They only do so because they apparently believe that the foundation of Christianity is the literal belief in Bible stories...so to undermine them is to undermine Christianity, which, on can argue reasonably, often seems to be their purpose and intent.

But assuming that all Christians believe in the literal historical truth of the Bible is to mistake all of Christianity for fundamentalism. But, fundamentalism is not representative of the modern Christian faith, rather it is a throwback to the Dark Ages.

The Catholic Church has moved on from those days of ignorance. Indeed it was, itself, a significant influence in the advancement of science and discovery...and, in spite of the commonly held prejudice, never persecuted or outlawed scientific truth because it seemed to conflict with religion. Not even Galileo, that favorite example of Christianity-haters, was ever persecuted or excommunicated for any of his scientific discoveries.

Fundamentalist dogma has been mistaken by ill-educated atheists and secularists as a common belief of all Christians. And they clearly believe that to show the non-historicity of the Bible is to undermine Christian faith itself. Nasty little buggers, even if their efforts are futile.

A perfect example of this ignorance is their claim that anyone who is open to the idea of Intelligent Design is really trying to advance Biblical Creationism. They seem unable to understand that someone who thinks the wonders of the universe require an intelligent designer does not necessarily think the biblical version of creation is literally true. Yet you hear the argument over and over that ID is really Creationism in disguise.

Silly really.

That said, I really do enjoy some of the shows. One particularly interesting one is called "Mysteries of the Garden of Eden" on History International. If you get a chance, watch it. It has an interesting take on the possible significance of the eden-like early hunter-gatherer life of early man in the Tigris Euphrates valley, where the weather was good, the hunting and gathering easy...until Climate Change (too many polluting automobiles, I suppose) forced a rapid change in their environment, and forced them into a more difficult, less idyllic, less abundant world.

Don't let the likelihood that their primary goal is to undermine Christianity stop you from watching. Since they misunderstand Christianity so badly, their changes of success are slim to none. Meanwhile, they do discover some fascinating bits, and weave some interesting theories.

And in spite of themselves, by showing how often the Bible poetically reflects much that may very well be historically true, they have made it even an more amazing document.

The Gunslinger

Save Us Lord Obie

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"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it."

-- H. L. Mencken


"Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes, not divine, but demonic."

--Pope Benedict, Truth and Tolerance; p. 116

Kyle-Anne Shiver has an insightful piece in American Thinker. I don't totally concur with the heavy Christian emphasis...but the over-all point is well made, and well taken. She's certainly got a handle on the messianic pretensions of our boy, Obie. They are seriously creepy, and she exposes them for what they are brilliantly.

And she had the good taste to include the above quotations. They will be useful for the duration of the campaign. And they have the perfect length and universality required of "mottos".

The only thing I would change is Pope Benedict's word "politics"...to "government".

"Wherever government tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes, not divine, but demonic."

Surely the perfect motto for Conservatives, and us libertarian Independents.

The Gunslinger
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