A Purpose Driven Life

 https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=7008

As an LCMS "Reformed Catholic", which I somewhat tongue in cheek define as "Catholic with no pope, no worship of Mary or saints, no purgatory, no works righteousness. Yes, that is an oversimplification. 

Being "saved" as a too young child praying the "sinner's prayer" that Warren has distilled to "Jesus, I believe in you, and I receive you". Mine was a little longer because I had been traumatized by chalkboard visions of hell at multiple "Special Meetings", and I was in terror of Hell ... so it involved a lot of crying, pleading for Christ to save me me from Hell, admitting that I was a really bad boy, etc, etc. So I definitely feared God! 

Then I was Baptized as a "too old" teen, to "follow Christ" with no idea of the saving power of Baptism. 

1 Peter 3;20 "to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, 21 and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God.[e] It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ"

Thankfully, I was Baptized "in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit". Baptism is God's work, not ours, so even though neither I or the pastor understood the sacramental power of Baptism, I became a child of God. 

Being genetically prone to anxiety and depression, I often doubted if I was REALLY sincere when *I* gave my life to Christ. So through multiple "re-dedications", massive guilt over a lot of lusting after beautiful girls in short skirts in the '70s,  I "got smart" in college being at best an agnostic, at worst an atheist. Naturally, given my psychological makeup, Hell kept cropping up in the dark of night very frequently, so at least the Holy Spirit was working on me. 

LOTS of reading, study, prayer, conversations with various Christian believers in largely Lutheran, Evangelical (often Baptist), Catholic, etc,  I arrived at Lutheran ... ELCA, moving to LCMS when celebration of gay "marriage" became an important part of "faith". 

While Warren proclaims the book to NOT be a "self help" book, it is. Yes, certainly it is Bible based, and other than the difficult problem of "decision theology" which casts the "God needs you", "worship makes God happy" sort of thinking throughout, the focus is on what you decide/do vs Grace and God's gifts. As with any attempt to create a "process" for Christian life outside of a confessional liturgical church, most everything is "in there",  it just doesn't have 2000 years of interaction between Christ and his Bride, the Church. 

For anyone reading this that is secular but questioning, I recommend "The Reason For God". 

For someone who is struggling to meet some standard of "a Christian life" without the Sacraments, I would suggest "Has American Christianity Failed". 

On page 101 Warren tellingly says "you are a spirit that resides in a body".  The old Cartesian duality. 

Jesus always was and is fully God. In the Incarnation he became fully man as well. When we are Baptized we receive the Holy Spirit. We are flesh and spirit united, which is why we need the physical sacraments, confession/absolution, and holy preaching to grow in Christ. Exactly how our body and spirit are separated at death and reunited at the Resurrection is a mystery, like the "how" of the Trinity. We know through the gift of faith. 

John 14:26 "But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name,will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you."

Can sinful man without the Holy Spirit "decide" to "believe"? That is the foundational belief of Anabaptists, of which Rick Warren is one. 

Given that many in my family share that belief, as well as many I consider as fellow Christians, I sincerely hope so.  One of my many failings is "worship of knowledge". As I have matured I realize there is grave peril there, especially the thought that given what I see as "correct knowledge", I can judge. 

I can't! I believe that Christ is merciful, and although he declares the gate is narrow, he does not say HOW narrow. All earthly churches are flawed, and Warren is clear on that truth. 

A lot of the book is really about "building numbers" which he clearly has in his Saddleback church, recently thrown out of the Southern Baptist denomination for ordaining women. (I'm with the Baptists on that).

Our world is sorely in need of a "second Reformation" where THE CHURCH can have a third millennium "Council of Nicea".  Although America deserves to be treated as Sodom and Gomorrah,  or worse, I pray: 

Lord, Have Mercy

Christ, Have Mercy

Lord, Have Mercy

Will The SCOTUS Dismantle The Administrative State?

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/07/will-the-supreme-court-dismantle-the-administrative-state.php

One can only hope!

As I have written more than once, the government we live under is not the one described in the Constitution. The ubiquitous and powerful arm of our government, found nowhere in the Constitution, is the Fourth Branch, the plethora of federal agencies, the administrative state. The administrative state has assumed much of the power that the Constitution assigns to the legislative and executive branches, a development that has progressed now for more than a century without serious challenge. Do we finally have a Supreme Court willing to take on the unelected Fourth Branch and restore a government that looks more like the one that is outlined in the Constitution?

Actually returning to being a republic, after lying anytime we do the pledge would be great. It isn't healthy to lie, maybe especially when you are so bamboozled you don't even have the merest clue of what "the republic for which we stane" would be ... if we had managed to keep it.  

The linked points to the excellent book, "Is the Administrative State Unlawful?" (spoiler, it is). 

Here is my review of that fine book. 

How Sleepy Joe Got Rich

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/once-the-poorest-senator-middle-class-joe-biden-has-reaped-millions-in-income-since-leaving-the-vice-presidency/2019/06/25/931458a8-938d-11e9-b570-6416efdc0803_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c811d0d72813

This was originally posted in December of 2019, but it is nice information from no less than the far left WaPo. 

Biden seems to have gotten rich as a politician -- and of course his son Hunter has gotten rich as well on foreign influence. Hunter has also distinguished himself by having an affair with his dying brothers wife, as well as fathering a love child.

No problemo ... he is a Democrat in good standing. "Morals" are something Republicans are supposed to be concerned with.

Wealth? As a "D" you can even be an avowed socialist like Bernie, complain vehemently about "the rich" and be a millionaire yourself!

When are the Deplorables going to figure it out that when you bow to the D, you are above such petty criticisms!

Mayo Enforces The Narrative

 https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/16/health/mayo-clinic-physician-suspended/index.html

Mayo gets federal funding, and certainly needs a lot of approvals from federal agencies (new drugs, new treatments, etc). 

In a Totalitarian State, you follow the narrative, or you are punished. 

In a January CNN story, Dr. Michael Joyner, who is principal investigator on a government-funded study on convalescent plasma, said he was “frustrated” with the National Institutes of Health’s “bureaucratic rope-a-dope,” calling the agency’s Covid-19 treatment guidelines a “wet blanket” that discouraged doctors from giving what he considered a promising treatment to their patients.

Two months later, Mayo suspended Joyner for a week without pay, instructing him, in part, to “discuss approved topics only” with reporters and to “stick to prescribed messaging.” The letter warned him that a prescribed set of “behavior changes must be immediate and sustained” and that failure to comply would result in termination of his employment – as would any additional “validated complaints” from the staff, even if unrelated to the issues outlined in the letter.

The narrative is a story.  "Trust the science" really means "trust the narrative" ... or else. 

Drug Induced Utopia, MDMA

 https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230614-how-a-dose-of-mdma-transformed-a-white-supremacist

As soon as I started reading the linked, "soma" from Huxley's "Brave New World" popped into my head. Wow! A drug that makes people feel more "connected", less anxious, more tolerant, less prejudiced, less rigid! 

What sort of monster would argue against putting this into the water supply, or just making injections mandatory to move around or engage in commerce, have a job, etc in a "civil" society? It seems like it would be better than the Covid jab. Or maybe it already was one of the "features" of the original jab or some of the boosters? It does seem that the population at large is more "laid back", not concerned about suich mundane things like working, inflation, possible nuclear war in Europe, high inflation, a senile president, or a host of other things. 

Perhaps, like LSD, we can just "Turn on, Tune in, and Drop Out". Groovy man! Even easier if we never know what happened to us. "Consent" seems to be a tired old concept these days anyway. 

The article focuses on a dangerous White Supremacist (Brendan) who was transformed by a single treatment with MDMA: 

Brendan grew up in an affluent Chicago suburb in an Irish Catholic family. He leaned liberal in high school but got sucked into white nationalism at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he joined a fraternity mostly composed of conservative Republican men, began reading anti semitic conspiracy books, and fell down a rabbit hole of racist, sexist content online. Brendan was further emboldened by the populist rhetoric of Donald Trump during his presidential campaign. "His speech talking about Mexicans being rapists, the fixation on the border wall and deporting everyone, the Muslim ban – I didn't really get white nationalism until Trump started running for president," Brendan said.

Wow, after such a troubled childhood with affluence and Catholicism, he appropriately "leaned liberal". It shows he had to be basically good inside ... I would not be surprised to find he was saddled with a two parent family that had arcane things like rules and discipline!  Tragically, he got "sucked in" by Republicans in college (a rare breed), obviously the screening of students needs to be more rigid. Exposing immature college kids to dangerous ideas of the Republican sort needs to be prevented!

But then he was totally corrupted by the evil orange man Trump!  Perhaps "Let's go Brendan" will replace "Let's go Brandon"? Young people need to get a lot of exposure to drag queens, gay sex, explicit porrnographic books, transgender, etc so they can make their own decisions. However, unless we suppress extremist ideas coming from people like Republicans/Trump for the entire population, people will succumb. We can't trust adults to just decide for themselves! It is just common sense. 

MDMA seems too "good" to be true, as always, depending on what is good? 

Anecdotally, some members of the Taliban, for example, use MDMA to channel a connection to the divine during prayer chants, according to a drug activist based in Kabul who I interviewed for my book. In the West, plenty of members of right-wing authoritarian political movements, including neo-Nazi groups, also have track records of taking MDMA and other psychedelics. This suggests, researchers write, that psychedelics are nonspecific, "politically pluripotent" amplifiers of whatever is going on in somebody's head, with no particular directional leaning "on the axes of conservatism-liberalism or authoritarianism-egalitarianism."

Hmm, so it seems like the drug MAY amplify whatever way you are leaning ... although that does not seem to really fit with Brendan's case. 

Over at Scientific American, we find: 

Although its precise therapeutic mechanisms remain unclear, clinically relevant doses of psilocybin can induce powerful mystical experiences more commonly associated with extended periods of fasting, prayer or meditation. Arguably, then, it is unsurprising that it can generate long-lasting changes in patients: studies report increased prosociality and aesthetic appreciation, plus robust shifts in personality, values and attitudes to life, even leading some atheists to find God. What’s more, these experiences appear to be a feature, rather than a bug, of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy, with the intensity of the mystical experience correlating with the extent of clinical benefit.

The "god" that drugs often lead one to tends to be more like the Buddhist sort of "god is everything, you are part of god, everything is good". Like a few million being killed in Mao's "Cultural Revolution". 

Like "Brave New World", it would seem that whatever "vales" can be induced in people (possibly through education, or REeducation) we will all have a shot a utopia -- possibly against our will, but if "the science" and "the narrative" has declared it as "good", isn't it the duty of the elite make utopia happen? 

Bob And Ray, Keener Than Most Persons

 A book lent to me by a friend who I would guess was quite familiar with the duo. Me on the other hand, had "probably heard of them", but was totally unfamiliar. 

Since my family didn't have TV until '68 or '69 ( I know we had it in '69, because I watched the moon landing) my media awareness was minimal. Relatives had TV. and since I lived in the country, times spent with kids in town were minimal. The folks left us at grandma's house on Sunday nights as they went to evening church services, so Bonanza was a show that I was familiar with. 

B&R began in radio on the East coast. Since pretty much the only radio I heard was in the cow barn as we were milking, if it wasn't on WCCO at milking times, I didn't hear it. 

I was surprised that they were on Carson multiple times, but just realized that I didn't see all that many "Tonight Shows". On reflection, I probably watched more with Jay Leno than with Carson, and zero since. 

Thanks to YouTube, I watched a couple of their appearances. From that small sampling, and how the the book portrayed them, I would guess that fans of Seinfeld would generally like them,. It seemed that the key to their humor was their deadpan style and light hearted parodies about essentially nothing.  

As far as the book goes, the audience that would appreciate it these days would mostly be my age or older. Without significant knowledge of the golden age of radio giving way to television with all the stars of that age, the name dropping connections were often unclear to me. 

I remember that the Tonight Show was once hosted by Steve Allen, but again, I'd have to go to YouTube to see that. Tons of names that I sort of recollect in different contexts  ... Harry Morgan being familiar from MASH, and a little bit from Dragnet, but no contact with previous work. Most of the names I had a vague recollection of, probably from Carson, or picked up from infrequent snippets from shows like "The Hollywood Squares". Paul Lynde for one. 

Lots of name dropping, probably interesting to those much more familiar with media from that era.

That Ray could keep performing by precise scheduling for dialysis for a decade after kidney failure in the late '70s is quite amazing. 

The Cafe des Artistes in Manhattan (now closed) was mentioned as one of their old haunts. My wife and I dined there on and extravagant trip awarded by IBM in the early '90s. Odd connections are always fun.

The book made me think about how the progression of entertainment from Radio, to TV, to the Internet made our lives more and more shallow and isolated. Technology is a tool ... how it is used can have profound effects on our lives. In her later years my moms schedule was wedded to being able to see "Wheel of Fortune". As a child we were on a telephone party line and two neighbor ladies (that lived a mile apart) would spend about and hour discussing that days episode of "Days of Our Lives".  

We have only a short time on this earth, and eternity is forever. The "stars" of media, unlike Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, will not be long remembered. I'm reading "Samuel Johnson, The Struggle" about the author of the first dictionary of the English language,  living from 1709 to 1784. He was friends with Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon and many others that I wish I was more familiar with. 

How should we spend our short time on this earth? A topic that many historical figures have pondered. I'm suspicious that few of us will comment on our deathbeds; "I wish I had watched more TV". 

Explaining the Equality Act

 https://www.heritage.org/gender/heritage-explains/the-equality-act

It is a good fairly short description of what will likely become law if Democrats get full control of  Congress and the Presidency in 2025 (which, I sadly expect given the insecurity of our "elections"). 

If you read this blog or keep in touch with some media that has conservative reality based reporting base, you already know what happens when we have a new "protected class". 

Anyone can identify as whatever "gender" they want, however, they stay the same sex unless we change some laws. 

Were I to propose a law on this subject, (which I don't think should have standing under the law at all) I would propose: 

• Any "gender" selection "treatment" be strictly prohibited until the victim of ths mental illness reaches 21. 
  
  
• If  a male decides to identify as female, he would be required to have all genitalia surgically removed, including the prostate, and the most effective means to purge testosterone from the body be initiated. In this manner, if he chooses to use women's restrooms and locker rooms he would not be capable of rape. Likewise, if the testosterone can be removed. his advantage in women's sports will be curtailed. 
  
  
• Females would receive a hysterectomy, and a radical mastectomy of their breasts if they desire to identify as males. Issues such as construction of a penis or giving testosterone are more problematic. Since creation is best left to God, destruction and mutilation are (as would be required with males) are more predictable. The man made "woman" is a mentally damaged and unpredictably likely a danger to others. 

The main point of this post is awareness. The population needs to be aware of what a vote for Democrats is likely to mean ... their law will look nothing like my proposal, and your children and grandchildren can be forcibly removed from their parents under their laws and the biological men will remain able to molest women and children, the true goal of their "transition". 

A Democrats View of Republican Fascism

 A post appeared on Facebook that was so crazy, I decided to rebut the insanity. 

In case you are ever faced with the strange idea that conservatives / Republicans are somehow leading us toward Fascism. Here is a fairly concise debunking.

Nepotism  – Hunter, James Biden, Hallie Biden 

Cronyism - Rob Walker, James Gilliar

Widespread Corruption – Ukrainian,  Chinese payoffs. https://nypost.com/2023/05/10/how-the-biden-corruption-empire-ran-under-the-radar-for-so-long/ 

Identifying “enemies” as a unifying cause - “right wing extremists are the greatest threat to our country”  Everyone needs to see and hear Biden’s black and red speech https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/joe-bidens-this-is-not-normal-speech

Nationalism, Simple Slogans - “Build Back Better” https://www.leftvoice.org/capitalism-nationalism-and-copaganda-bidens-first-state-of-the-union/  Of course, all politicians do this. "Make America Great Again", or Bill Clinton "Putting People First" 

Disdain for Human Rights – Killing infants in the womb, lockdowns, suppressing free speech, opposing the right to bear arms (self defense) 

Identifying some humans as lower status - “White Privilege”, MAGA Republicans, gun owners, deplorables, bitter clingers … 

Religion and Government intertwined – Wokeism is the Democrat  national religion, and if you are “out there” as a Christian, you are a “heretic”. Democrats believe “Government is great, government is good, we thank it for our daily bread”/ 

Corporate Power Protected - Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter (until Elon), Soros Fund, Bloomberg, Oracle

Labor Power Suppressed – The “Rust Belt” supported Trump. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/22/donald-trump-union-support-snub-joe-biden-418329

Disdain for Intellectualism and the arts – “The Closing Of The American Mind” is an excellent book lamenting how our universities left the Great Books, and understanding the great history of Western (largely Christian) Art . There are many conservative intellectuals, they are just largely suppressed. Postmodernism, a Democrat staple, invalidates intellectualism and the arts (as well as history). 

Increasing Police and Military Power - Our military is in shambles and our police are under attack. Law and order are certainly not a Democrat value. What Democrats/Fascists desire is a strong POLITICAL police state. Put your political enemies in prison, and defund local police to make the citizenry vulnerable and afraid. Fascists disarm their citizens. Right now, Democrats seem to believe that increasing proxy military power serves their interests.

Punishing Personal Enemies – The two tier “justice” system is so obvious at this point that it needs no explanation. Since Biden IS “the state” at this point, politics are personal.

Squelching Opposing Viewpoints - Attempted humor? Canceling, deplatforming, labeling anything outside your narrative “disinformation” and suppressing it? Democrat staples. 

Opposing Freedom Of the Press – “The Press” is essentially the Internet today. See previous. The NY Post had the full story on Hunter’s laptop before the election. That information was suppressed. Our press is essentially the Democrat press. 

Controlling the Media Through Media Ties – Hello? The media has been a Democrat lapdog for a long time, moreso today. “National Public Radio” is really “Democrat Propaganda Radio”. They don’t just control it, they make their opposition help pay for it! 

Isolating Followers From Outside Information - Another Democrat staple. They control education, universities, 90% of media, and all most Americans see is the Democrat narrative. 

Sexism - Gender roles are more rigid – “Gender” is a social construct invented in the ‘50s by a guy named John Money, Sex is about men and women. Sex is very rigid, and only women can have babies, thus maintaining the population. Throw away sex, your movement lasts one generation. Fascists like a lot of kids (future soldiers). They also like as many women as they can get into the munitions plants. Eugenics is also a Democrat staple … Planned Parenthood was founded to “purify the race”. A lot of Democrat/Fascist policies don’t make sense. When ideology is your religion, that tends to happen. 

Obsession with national “security” – Since 9/11, both parties have increased surveillance of citizens. Since Democrats control the Administrative State, that works out largely to their benefit. They use organizations like the FBI, NSA and CIA for political purposes. What they are increasingly obtaining is the “security” of single party rule. Single party rule is a cornerstone of Fascism. 

Fraudulent Elections – Another attempt at humor? Mail in “voting” is internationally laughable. Mexico, Canada, and every European country have election integrity. Democrats oppose even the most basic element of trusting an election, voter ID. There is only one reason to oppose that, you know that you have to cheat to win.  

If you read through my rebuttal, hopefully you saw things where your brain said "Republicans/conservatives do that too". Indeed. Both parties involve humans, and so there will be similarities.

I like to boil it down to "Control vs Chaos", or as I often say "One ditch or the other" (and humans are notorious ditch drivers).

https://bilber99.blogspot.com/2016/01/left-and-right-explained.html

Victor Davis Hanson, Ukraine, Hillary, Obama, etc

https://victorhanson.com/the-ukraine-american-gordian-knot/

Victor Davis Hanson is a truth treasure in a time of global perfidy. The whole linked is well worth the time. Our sense of "history" doesn't go back much beyond a week or two, unless it is attacking Trump, or tearing down some statues so that we are a people with no history.

At one point the war in Ukraine was to defend against Russian aggression ...

 

But apparently, the war’s aims have now shifted to reestablishing the 2013 Ukrainian-Russian border. That is an ambitious agenda and, in the past, neither President Barack Obama nor Donald Trump nor Joe Biden had ever signed on to it. Oddly, those on the Left calling for the utter defeat and humiliation of the Putin regime and the retaking of Crimea (and who also gave us 2009 Russian “reset”) had rarely voiced such agendas after the 2014 aggression during the Obama Administration. (And remember that was not Putin’s first rodeo; he had invaded Georgia and absorbed South Ossetia in 2008).

Yes, the haughty "Russian Reset" ... Obama and Hillary crowing about how we were now allies with Russia!

They did indeed do some sort of "reset".

 

From 2013 onward, Ukrainian opponents of the then-Kyiv government sought out officials high up in the Obama Administration to aid in their efforts to remove the elected, albeit pro-Russian, president and then to help fast track the proper successor government.

In 2015-2016, on the assumption that Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in for the presidency, a Ukrainian-American consultant was hired by the Democratic National Committee. More specifically, she colluded with the hierarchy of the Ukrainian embassy in Washington, D.C., to derail Trump’s then-campaign manager Paul Manafort on grounds he was too friendly with the Russians.

Remember the hero of the left and media Alex Vindman, who illegally (treasonously) leaked a confidential phone call between Trump and Zelensky?

Since his retirement from the military, Vindman has been a vocal proponent on cable news of the need to step up existing massive U.S. arms shipments to his native Ukraine, and belittles most who express worries about the commensurate depletion in American strategic arms stocks.

He did his reputation on the Left no favors when he founded his own military contracting company, Trident Support, in which he seeks to be paid millions by the Ukrainian government to service and repair imported arms inside Ukraine.

In other words, Vindman, who was the catalyst for the impeachment of a president over the question of arms shipments to Ukraine, is now a wannabe profiteering middleman military contractor facilitating arms transfers from NATO countries to Ukraine.

While the Biden administration and NATO sabre rattle us toward nuclear war, at least traitors like Vindeman are able to get some big bucks. It would be tragic if ALL the graft went to the crime families of the Bidens and the Clintons.  

 

Europe Is Great! (When it agrees with the left)

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/06/question-for-the-identitarians.php

'The American left likes to selectively applaud especially Scandinavian Europe when it at least thinks it agrees with them. Turns out that socialist "paradises" like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, etc are less socialist than that US. Mythology is much more important to Democrats than reality, since reality is generally hostile to their mythology. 

Scandinavian countries have stricter abortion laws than the US. 

They also believe the science rather than the narrative on transgender. 

The European medical community, by contrast, is expressing doubts about that approach. Having allowed these treatments for years, five countries—the U.K., Sweden, Finland, Norway and France—now urge caution in their use for minors, stressing a lack of evidence that the benefits outweigh the risks. This month, the U.K.’s publicly funded National Health Service limited the use of puberty blockers to clinical trials, putting the drugs beyond the reach of most children.

I see a few reasons for this: 

• European media and science are still more diverse than the US. The EU has not been weaponized to the degree that the Administrative State has in the US.
• The Democrat Administrative State in the US uses the NIH, CDC, etc in concert with Big Pharma to boost profits, that are then rolled back into the Democrat political machine. 
• Europe is not yet as hostile to religion and families as the US elites are. The countries retain their state religions, and realize that religion is a unifying force. The US is hard at work to establish "Wokeism" as the state religion ... with little thought as to what effect that will have.