Bye-bye to Bad Guys

BUTTE, MONTANA Shotgun preteen vs. Illegal Alien Home Invaders: Butte, Montana November 5, 2007 Two illegal aliens, Ralphel Resindez, 23, and Enrico Garza, 26, probably believed they would easily overpower home-alone 11 year old Patricia Harrington after her father had left their two-story home. It seems the two crooks never learned two things: they were in Montana and Patricia had been a clay shooting champion since she was nine. Patricia was in her upstairs room when the two men broke through the front door of the house. She quickly ran to her father’s room and grabbed his 12 gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun. Resindez was the first to get up to the second floor only to be the first to catch a near point blank blast of buckshot from the 11-year-old’s knee crouch aim. He suffered fatal wounds to his abdomen and genitals. When Garza ran to the foot of the stairs, he took a blast to the left shoulder and staggered out into the street where he bled to death before medical help could arrive. It was found out later that Resindez was armed with a stolen 45 caliber handgun he took from another home invasion robbery. That victim, 50-year-old David O’Brien, was not so lucky. He died from stab wounds to the chest. So, we have an 11 year old girl, properly trained, defended her home, and herself….against two murderous, illegal immigrants….and she wins. She is still alive.

Criminal to another criminal–”Say bud, I sure wish they’d pass more gun control. It’s gettin to where ya don’t feel safe breakin into people’s houses no more.”

The Left’s Assault on the Declaration of Independence

There has been a lot of change in recent months – a $787 billion spending bill, a budget exceeding $3 trillion, government ownership of auto manufacturers, government-imposed caps on earnings, legislation imposing limits on economic activity in America under the name of environmental justice. It is increasingly difficult for conservatives to sustain any audacity of hope for moderate policies coming from the current administration.

What unites these policies and their sweeping designs is the progressive aim of “remaking America”—as President Obama said in his Inaugural Address—into a country much more like the highly regulated, secular and pacifist nations of Europe.

The view of America that dominates the academy, journalism, major foundations and most segments of the American intellectual community was marked out at the start of the last century by progressive thinkers (learn more about them here) when they launched their grand project for America. They repudiated the Founders’ principles, holding that there are no self-evident truths—in the Declaration of Independence or elsewhere—only change in the constant search for progress without final goals. There are no permanent rights with which man is endowed, but endlessly evolving rights that develop and grow based on new demands. Our fidelity must be to a “living” Constitution that adapts to fit the demands of the times. The way forward is to control social conditions and engineer a better society, redistributing wealth through a distant and patronizing welfare state that regulates more and more of the American economy, politics and society.

Over the course of the twentieth century—as America’s principles were assaulted, undermined, and redefined in our culture, in our universities, and in our politics—we have taken significant steps down this path. The Progressive Movement laid the intellectual groundwork, but the basic infrastructure of the modern welfare state established under the New Deal has expanded in regulatory scope and social purpose under the Great Society and its progeny in both political parties. We are in the beginning of a new and perhaps decisive move in this direction.

Now, more than ever, is the time to relearn the meaning and contemporary significance of the Declaration of Independence and recognize that modern liberalism has explicitly rejected the truths it proclaims.

Woodrow Wilson, one of the most famous early progressives, argued during the 1912 presidential campaign that “all that Progressives ask or desire is permission…to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle,” meaning that it should promote an ever-expanding set of powers for an ever-expanding government. The problem, he declared, was that pesky Declaration of Independence: “some citizens of this country have never got beyond the Declaration of Independence,” he remarked with astonishment; “The Declaration of Independence did not mention the questions of our day.”

The progressive view rejects outright the very idea, at the heart of the Founders’ way of thinking, of being guided by permanent or fixed principles. As the prominent progressive historian Carl Becker put it in 1922, “to ask whether the natural rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence is true or false, is essentially a meaningless question.” Such relativism renders meaningless the whole American experiment in self-government.

But denying the truth of America’s principles for the sake of “change” can make no claim to progress at all—a point made with unsurpassed clarity by Calvin Coolidge (learn more here) on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 1926: “If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.”

We don’t need to remake America, or discover new and untested principles. The change we need is not the rejection of America’s principles but a great renewal of these permanent truths about man, politics and liberty—the foundational principles and constitutional wisdom that are the true roots of our country’s greatness.

As we celebrate the blessings of liberty that America’s Founders made possible and the sacrifices of succeeding generations have enabled us to enjoy, let us also rededicate ourselves, and strive to rededicate our nation, to the Declaration of Independence.

From the Heritage Foundation’s “Morning Bell”

Obama’s health care

Obama on health care

“What are not legitimate concerns are those being put forward claiming a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system.” But then a few days ago…“I think there can be some legitimate concerns on the part of private insurers that if any public plan is simply being subsidized by taxpayers endlessly that over time they can’t compete with the government just printing money…”

Ok, I get it now. He’s not going to force Americans to join his new health care plan (he’s just gonna make it impossible for them to choose anything else).

Texas joke

A Texan is visiting Australia for the first time; He sees a sheep and starts laughing; he says to his Australian guide ” oh, at home in Texas, sheep are twice as big!” He then sees a cow ands bursts ” Puff, in Texas, our cows are much, much bigger!” And suddenly, he sees a kangaroo and asks, “What’s that?” the guide answers ” oh, that’s just a grasshopper…”

The Man in the Arena

Teddy Roosevelt: a man’s man. The kind of man I admire. A gritty, hard-core, take-no-prisoners, live-life-to-the-fullest kind of guy, how could one not admire him? Once he was shot in an assassination attempt just as he was about to deliver a speech. The bullet penetrated into his chest, stopping short of his heart. However, instead of rushing to the emergency room, he insisted on delivering his 90 minute oration with that bullet still in his chest. What a guy!

Coming from a man who new how to stand against long odds, I find the following speech quite compelling:

It is not the critic who counts:

not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles

or where the doer of deeds could have done better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,

whose face is marred by

dust and sweat and blood,

who strives valiantly,

who errs and comes up short again and again,

because there is no effort without error or shortcoming,

but who knows the great enthusiasms,

the great devotions,

who spends himself for a worthy cause;

who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly,

so that his place shall never be

with those cold and timid souls

who knew neither victory nor defeat.

Theodore

Roosevelt

The more they spend, the more we pay.

Rep. Randy Forbes on our Judeo-Christian Heritage

Pink Daisies

The Decline and Fall of American Christianity? Nope.

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From CitizenLink

Answering Newsweek — Again

by Glenn T. Stanton, director of family formation studies

The magazine has distorted what the Bible says about marriage. Now, it overlooks the results of its own poll and other data showing Christianity’s influence in the U.S.

As families prepared for Holy Week recently, they saw on newsstands the Newsweek“Decline and Fall of Christian America.” But a close examination of the data cited by Editor Jon Meacham opens serious holes in his misguided declaration that the Christian God is “less of a force in American politics and culture than at any other time in recent memory.” cover story,

Meacham drew many of his conclusions from the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS 2008) and the Newsweek opinion poll “A Post Christian Nation?” by Princeton Survey Research Associates. Those studies, viewed in totality, tell a much different story than what Meacham wrote for his more than 2 million readers.

Here’s a point-by-point explanation of Meacham’s more glaring omissions and mistakes:

1. “Christians are now making up a declining percentage of the population.”

That’s true, but it’s not news. Leading religion scholar Robert Wuthnow of Princeton University has said weekly church attendance reached its pinnacle in 1958, “has never reached that level again” and has fallen a quarter of a percentage point each year since. Nonetheless, the absolute number of Christians is growing, even as the percentage of the population declines. Wuthnow explains:

The total population of the United States has grown by almost 50 percent  since 1970, so even though a smaller proportion of the public is attending  religious services regularly, the absolute numbers are larger. It’s just that  they would have been considerably larger if the rate of church-going had  held steady.

That’s an important point Meacham’s essay failed to make.

2. “[T]he percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 percentage points since 1990, from 86 to 76 percent.”

The same ARIS 2008 survey Meacham cited showed that the Christian religion still has no close rivals in America, far surpassing the number who say they’re Mormon (1.4 percent), Jewish (1.2), atheist (0.9), agnostic (0.7), and Muslim (0.6). Those Americans who claimed no religious affiliation — a group ARIS calls “nones”— did nearly double from 8 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2008, but the Pew Forum U.S. Religious Landscape Survey found that “it is simply not accurate to describe this entire group as nonreligious or ‘secular’.” Just one quarter of these unaffiliated are atheist or agnostic, while the remaining three-quarters described their religion as “nothing in particular” and half of these reported being somewhat or very important in their lives, despite their lack of a specified affiliation.

Regarding the decline of Christianity, of course it is the mainline Protestant churches that have seen “a significant fall in numbers” since 2001, according to ARIS. The survey reads: “The Protestant denominations, mainly composed of conservatives and sectarian groups, have grown in size and proportion …[which] suggests a movement towards more conservative beliefs and to a more ‘evangelical’ outlook among Christians.” The ARIS authors call this growth an “important historical trend.”

More tellingly, Meacham doesn’t say that his own Newsweek poll found 81 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christian, with the largest subset being “Evangelical Protestant.”

3. The Newsweek poll found that “two thirds of the public (68 percent) now say religion is ‘losing influence’ in American society”

Meacham didn’t share with readers that the same poll found an even greater number — 74 percent — of Americans think it’s a good thing when religion gains influence, or that 81 percent said it’s a bad thing when religion loses influence. Even more remarkable is that 74 percent said they support “old-fashioned values about marriage and family.”

4. “Many Conservative Christians believe they have lost battles over issues such as abortion, school prayer and even same-sex marriage.”

How did Meacham miss the fact that voters in 30 states approved constitutional amendments, most by big margins? It was only after Meacham’s article came out that the genderless-marriage proponents won their first legislative victory, in Vermont — a state not known as an evangelical stronghold. Even so, losing some skirmishes is not the same as losing a war, let alone the same as giving up the battle for such linchpin social issues as the sanctity of human life.

5. “While we remain a nation decidedly shaped by religious faith, our politics and culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were five years ago.”

We know from reading back issues of Newsweek that Meacham didn’t overlook the presidential candidate debate hosted by Pastor Rick Warren last year, nor Warren’s unapologetically Christian prayer at President Barack Obama’s inauguration. Perhaps he simply didn’t comprehend their significance.

6. “The decline and fall of the modern religious right’s notion of a Christian America creates a calmer political environment, and for many believers may help open the way for a more theologically serious religious life.”

Meacham favorably quotes three scholars — Mark A. Noll, Nathan O. Hatch and George M. Marsden — on what he thinks Christians in the public square ought to do:

“We have important obligations to do whatever we can, including through  the use of political means [emphasis added], to help our neighbors —  promoting just laws, good order, peace, education and opportunity.”

Perhaps Meacham is asking those evangelicals who work on behalf of the preborn, who defend “old-fashioned” marriage and who fight the sex exploitation industry — all causes associated with the “religious right” — to find something else to do, or to just shut up altogether. Not surprisingly, this is not something he says to the religious Left.

There’s nothing more that some in the media want than for evangelicals to stay silent, to stop criticizing President Obama for his reversal of President George W. Bush’s pro-life policies, for example. But as Christians recognized during Holy Week, there’s no holding back Christ and His church.

Focus on the Family founder Dr. James Dobson put it this way when he appeared April 14 on the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity”:

“The Left-wing media is itching for members of the pro- family movement  to put up a white flag and declare the culture war over and to just hand the country to them,” he said. “Terrible things are going on right now, including  using taxpayer money to support abortion around the world. Those things  are very, very troubling. But we believe they’re temporary, and whether  they are or not, we as speaking of myself as a Christian, we’re not called  to be successful. We’re called to be faithful, and that’s what we plan to do.

“In tough times,” Dr. Dobson added, “good people hang in there and wait  for things to change — and we pray a lot.”

What is music?

Itzhak Perlman – a violinist of violinists, a musician of musicians. He is the great violinist of our time. Music is a language and he is its prophet. But what is it about Itzahk and the violin and even music that enchants us?

The concert hall was packed, every seat sold, the lights dimmed, the orchestra tuned, the suspense built as we waited for Itzhak Perlman to emerge. Finally the thick black curtain was drawn and we saw him. But he wasn’t what you would expect. He didn’t stride onto the stage; he struggled. You see, Itzhak lost much of the use of his legs when polio gripped him at age four. We stood as one and gave thunderous applause to the great prophet of the violin, and he, with marked dignity and humility, stiffly bowed and eased into his seat. Beethoven’s great violin concerto in D major began.

As he moved his bow over the strings, there arose the sweetest, most beautiful, eloquent notes I have ever heard. What set him apart from other violinists, however, was what he did with his music. If you listened, he was not just playing music, he was speaking to us—like a bard to his clan, like Cicero to his friends. His notes spoke without speaking of deep mysteries which cannot be uttered. He was communicating to us with his music.

Itzhak’s playing made me question, what is this thing—music? It is commonly said that music is the universal language of emotion. Yet, there are things in music we do not understand. Why is a Mozart Symphony scientifically proven to make listeners smarter? Why does rock music prevent mice from solving problems and even cause their very neurons to split? Why does water crystallize in certain configurations based on music played around it when it is frozen? Why does a wine glass resonate and eventually split apart when a soprano sings the perfect note? When reduced to musical notation, why does the molecular structure of milk produce a lullaby? Why do the velocities of our rotating planets exactly correspond to the ratios in our harmonic scale?

Even a greater mystery is music’s role in our universe. According to modern quantum mechanics and string theory all matter is nothing more than vibrating energy, music. This leads us to the startling question—are we music? I find this significant, for in the Bible I find that our origin is sound, for God “spoke” the world into existence.

And now I see it…there is much more to Itzhak Perlman’s music than meets my ear. His music speaks to my essence—music to music. I am like the soprano’s wine glass, for I hear his music and it makes me resonate.