The ‘Orwellian Dialectic’

The ‘Orwellian Dialectic’
Vol: 45 Issue: 30 Thursday, June 30, 2005

We recently examined the inexplicable rulings of the Supreme Court in its last session that turned the 2nd, 4th, 5th and 10th Amendments upside down under the principle that the Constitution is a ‘living document’ and therefore subject to being tortured until it said what the majority of the Court wanted it to say.

I opined at the time that, at long last, the Constitution had been tortured ‘to death.’ That really isn’t a problem, since it was always intended to be a dead instrument.

The principle of a ‘living constitution’ is that, as a ‘living’ document, it is capable of growing and adapting to meet the challenges imposed by time on a living society.

Without the doctrine of a ‘living’ constitution, its proponents argue, there would still be a Constitutional right to own slaves, deny women the right of suffrage, etc., etc.

It is a powerful argument, if used to sway the ignorant, but since it is being advanced by lawyer/legislators well-educated in the law, ‘ignorance’ is no excuse.

Historically, the Constitution was static, and therefore, it meant what it said — until it didn’t say that anymore — through the process of Constitutional amendment.

That process was NOT given to legislators, and was specifically prohibited to the judiciary. Only a two-thirds majority of, ‘we, the people’ had that power. History abounds with evidence that, until this generation, that process was respected by the courts.

In 1919, the Volstead Act, passed by Congress, made consumption of alcohol illegal in the United States. Since, at that time, nobody had yet dreamed up the fiction of the Constitution as a ‘living document’ — the Volstead Act was unconstitutional on its face.

To make it pass Constitutional muster required the passage of a Constitutional amendment. The Eighteenth Amendment was submitted and passed by the required two-thirds vote of the states, (36 voted to approve it) and the Volstead Act became law.

Of course, the Volstead Act was a monumental failure, since it attempted to impose by legislation that which is the sole province of God — the imposition of individual morals. This experiment introduced America to the concept of ‘crime families’ — a form of terror that remains part of the fabric of our society to this day.

By 1933, since the Constitution was still, at that time, a static document, repealing the Volstead Act required another Constitutional Amendment since the Supreme Court was still bound by existing Constitutional law.

So the 21st Amendment was put to we, the people of the United States, who repealed it by a majority vote of Constitutional state conventions.

The Supreme Court could NOT strike down what was clearly bad law, despite the fact it created much worse problems than those it was intended to cure, because the Constitution was still, well, Constitutional!

The same applies to slavery and women’s suffrage. Since the Constitution had not yet been given the Frankenstein treatment, Constitutional amendments were necessary.

The Supreme Court in session in 1865 recognized the evils inherent in slavery, but was powerless to overturn the Constitution by judicial fiat.

So the Thirteenth Amendment was put to the people and slavery and involuntary servitude were expressly identified as unconstitutional. Similarly, it was the introduction of the 19th Amendment in 1926 that prohibited voter discrimination based on sex.

The Supreme Court in session in 1920’s had no power to rule that sexual discrimination was unconstitutional until the Constitution said it was. Which was the way the framers of the Constitution intended for the process to work. Tinkering with the Constitution was deemed too important to entrust to political appointees.

That’s why amendments were necessary — because only ‘we, the people’ were entrusted with the responsibility to change it.

The Supreme Court’s role wasn’t to interpret the Constitution, it was to read it and apply its terms impartially based on what it said.

Assessment:

The recent deal struck by the ‘Gang of Fourteen’ — seven Senate Democrats and seven Senate Republicans — to approve certain nominations and block others — based entirely on partisan bias — proves that, for the majority of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, winning the partisan battle is less important than protecting the rule of law.

Basing judicial appointments on partisan party lines, rather than on the candidate’s relative merits (or lack thereof) has produced a crop of unelected legislative wannabes, rather than impartial referees judging disputes based on existing laws.

The Democrats deny applying a ‘litmus test’ for example, on nominees’ views on abortion. Unless, of course, a nominee thinks Roe v. Wade is bad law.

The fiction is that judges should be ‘impartial’ but the reality is that a nominee is truly IS impartial on ‘red-line’ issues like abortion, or respecting the Constitutional process, might as well withdraw his or her name from consideration.

Any judicial hopeful who is suspected of not being completely committed to the view of abortion as a Constitutional ‘right’ is deemed to be ‘biased’.

On the other hand, any judicial hopeful who claims absolute allegiance to Roe v. Wade can expect to sail right through. In practice, a judicial nominee must exhibit an absolute bias in order to be confirmed.

Any nominee that gives even a hint of a conservative background is blocked (by filibuster, if necessary) in the name of ‘impartiality’ whereas open evidence of liberal bias means smooth sailing.

This is not a conservative fiction or an exercise in liberal-bashing. Unless the word ‘bias’ has been redefined by Webster’s, bias still means, “A preference or an inclination, especially one that inhibits impartial judgment.”

Note that ‘bias’ describes ANY ‘preference or inclination’ since the word is equally at home before the words ‘conservative’ OR ‘liberal’. But this is a generation in which George Orwell would have felt completely at home.

Orwell’s famous 1948 novel “1984” envisioned a near-future America run by an ubiquitous national leader called ‘Big Brother’. Orwell’s vision of ‘Big Brother’ bears an uncanny resemblance to the Bible’s vision of the coming antichrist.

In his book, “double speak” is the expression of two contrary ideas — one a lie, the other true — being simultaneously and equally accepted by the mind.

In its modern, post-1984 incarnation, ‘doublespeak’ has become synonymous with ‘propaganda’ although its primary application is generally known as ‘political correctness’ — which is another extreme example of double-speak in action.

‘Politics’ as used as a verb, means, “Political attitudes and positions.” How can something be defined as ‘politically correct’ when the very definition of politics means what is ‘correct’ to one person is the EXACT OPPOSITE to another?

Roe v. Wade was the judicial fiction that brought the Constitution to life, and through its supporters, created the monster that the Constitution has become.

It wasn’t until the late 1990’s that the ‘living document’ fiction was clearly articulated as a political reality by one of the great political fiction writers of our time.

During his failed 2000 presidential campaign, Al Gore admitted that, “I would look for justices of the Supreme Court who understand that our Constitution is a living and breathing document, that it was intended by our founders to be interpreted in the light of the constantly evolving experience of the American people.”

By this time, ‘doublespeak’ had become so much a part of the fabric of American society that Al Gore could chant ‘every vote should count’, while simultaneously battling in the courts to suppress votes he didn’t think would count for HIM — without being run out of town on a rail.

It is this same doublespeak that makes it possible for the Supreme Court to find that the ‘right to life’ is unconstitutional, whereas the right to terminate life — based entirely on sex — is Constitutionally protected. Roe v. Wade gives the right to terminate a pregnancy exclusively to the mother.

Courts have ruled that fathers have no parental rights until birth, and only court-mandated parental obligations thereafter.

One can argue the relative merits of determining these rights by the arbitrary standard of the sex of the parent until blue in the face, but discrimination is discrimination. But the courts find some decimation less discriminatory than others.

If the ‘right to abortion’ were put through the amendment process, the polls all say it would most certainly fail. Hence, the ‘living document’ doctrine replaces the Constitutional process and the impartial judiciary becomes as mythical as the Constitutional rights guaranteed by a politically incorrect and therefore non-existent Creator.

The same applies to the newly-discovered Constitutional ‘right’ to ‘marriage’. A Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage would mirror the Congressional-mandated ‘Defense of Marriage Act’ — which has also been passed by the legislatures of enough states to guarantee passage of a Constitutional amendment forever banning gay marriage.

The newly-discovered Constitutional ‘right’ to freedom FROM religion, banning any mention of God, the Bible, or such ‘religious indoctrination materials’ as the Ten Commandments, prohibits the 74% or so of Americans who claim to be Christians from the 4th Amendment guarantees that specifically ‘prohibit the free exercise’ of religious expression.

Where is the Congress now? Fighting to appoint people with the ‘correct’ bias to the federal bench, or fighting to oppose those with the ‘incorrect’ bias from achieving that office, all in the name of selecting ‘impartial’ judges to ‘interpret’ the Constitution ‘correctly’.

The last time lawmakers gave ‘we, the people’ the right to amend the Constitution instead of relying on a hand-picked judiciary was May 7, 1992 — and ‘we, the people, used that authority to stop Congress from granting themselves unlimited pay raises by passing the 27th Amendment.

After THAT happened, the Congress became much more willing to allow the Constitution to be amended from the bench.

The REAL Big Brother, when he arrives on the scene, will discover most of his work already done for him. Orwell would have been proud.

“And Now a Word from the Tooth Fairy . . .”

“And Now a Word from the Tooth Fairy . . .”
Vol: 45 Issue: 29 Wednesday, June 29, 2005

“The president’s frequent references to the terrorist attacks of September 11 show the weakness of his arguments . . . He is willing to exploit the sacred ground of 9/11, knowing that there is no connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq.”

With this comment, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi demonstrated to those few remaining who still doubt it, that liberals live in an alternate universe than the rest of us.

Pelosi’s comments are so out of touch with reality that it is almost pointless to rebut them. Any rebuttal seems to me to automatically fit the ‘beer makes you drunk’ variety. (“Pssst! Did you hear? BEER can make you DRUNK!! Who knew?”)

According to Pelosi, (who evidently was unaware of beer’s consequences) the President KNOWS there is no connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq. (Ummm, what the President KNOWS is what happens when one drinks too much beer. Judging by her comments, Ms. Pelosi does not).

At least, one can hope that the person who now occupies a leadership role in the government’s disloyal opposition was really drunk when she said that. The only alternative explanation is that she thinks her constituency must be.

Allow the appalling stupidity of Pelosi’s ‘rebuttal’ to the President’s speech sink in for a minute. Remember that she is one of the three top Democrats in the Democratic party.

If the Democrats held the majority in the Congress, Nancy Pelosi would be third-in-line in the national line of succession.

If something were to happen to the President, the Vice-President would take over. If something were to happen to both of them, the next in line would be the Speaker of the House. If the Dems held the majority, that would be Nancy Pelosi!

For the sake of argument, let’s take a second to review the main point of the liberal’s ‘rebuttal’.

‘There is no connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq.’

The attacks on September 11 (I guess that is what Pelosi is referring to by 9/11 and not the police emergency telephone number, but who knows?) were perpetrated by al-Qaeda terrorists dedicated to the destruction of America’s representative republic and its replacement with an Islamic government.

Everybody still with me? Any disagreement so far?

The war AGAINST Iraq ended in April, 2003 with the fall of Saddam’s Ba’athist regime.

On June 28th of last year, the Coalition Provisional Government was replaced with an Iraqi government that was installed in a free election characterized by a voter turnout that made American voter participation in Election 2004 pale by comparison.

The war IN Iraq that our forces are now waging is against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s forces. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is a top al-Qaeda commander who openly admits that he takes his orders from Osama bin-Laden.

al-Zarqawi has allowed his communiques between himself and bin-Laden to be intercepted so as to put any doubts to rest about his affiliation and intent.

For Pelosi and her followers, this is a difficult equation to master, so once again, I will type really, really slow . . . the connection between the war in Iraq and 9/11 is that, in both cases, the combatants, objectives and methods are the same.

On September 11, it was al-Qaeda against America. The war on terror is, from the American perspective, a war between America and al-Qaeda. The combatants in Iraq are Americans and al-Qaeda terrorists.

There is no CONNECTION between an Albanian goat and a Australian platypus.

There is no DIFFERENCE between 9/11 and the war we are now waging in Iraq.

Assessment:

To make it fly, the Democrats are pulling out all the old canards. NJ idiot Jon Corzine appeared on Fox News this morning to bring up ‘no weapons of mass destruction’ and ‘Bush lied’ to support Pelosi’s amazing contention 9/11 isn’t connected to the war against al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The New York Times had already published an editorial decrying the President’s ‘cynical exploitation’ of 9/11 before he had finished giving his speech.

By this morning, most of the headlines in the liberal media were parroting the same mantra.

Therefore, the Democrat’s desperate and transparent effort to portray itself as the party of truth, justice and the American way (as opposed to the lying liars who control all three houses of power) is gaining momentum among the useful idiots who are only too happy to provide propaganda victories to the enemy, provided it will boost their own short-term political prospects.

It boggles the mind. First, it is mind-boggling that an American politician would openly make such a seditious comment as part of a national rebuttal speech while American forces are literally still on the battlefield.

Secondly, that it would resonate throughout the liberal establishment the way that it has is simply stunning.

To hear other, presumably intelligent, well-read and well-educated American politicians repeat the claim puts me in mind of Election 2000, when the mantra of the mind-numbed was ‘every vote should count’ — as they simultaneously fought a pitched court battle to disqualify the ballots of our overseas military forces.

It’s like the Tooth Fairy is writing the Democrats’ speeches, which are evidently then vetted by the Queen of Hearts and March Hare before being delivered by the Mad Hatter.

Have these people no shame at all?

It is true that the 9/11 Commission found no link between Saddam’s Iraq and 9/11, (despite documents proving Uday and Qusai met with Osama in 1998 and promised to provide training facilities, so even that ‘truth’ is suspect).

But that bears zero relevance to the fact that it is the 9/11 terrorists we are fighting in Iraq today.

If, as Osama’s useful idiots like Pelosi contend, we pulled out of Iraq, what would happen then? Where would al-Qaeda go? Would all those foreign fighters in Iraq all buy houses in Baghdad, hang up their jihad suits and go job hunting?

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the resources being directed against the US military in Iraq would be redirected against the US civilian homeland.

al-Qaeda fighters IN Iraq aren’t fighting FOR Iraq, they are fighting AGAINST Iraq. Their targets, apart from American soldiers, are Iraqi soldiers, politicians, policemen, school children, housewives, garbagemen, school teachers, etc., etc.

American soldiers aren’t IN Iraq fighting AGAINST Iraq, they are fighting FOR Iraq. THEIR targets are the fighters targeting those who are killing those on the list above, not Iraqis or the Iraqi government.

(I’m STILL typing real slow, in the unlikely event a liberal finds himself reading today’s briefing).

And not a word of what I’ve said is in defense of either the Republicans or the White House. (If that’s what you think, stand over there with Pelosi. Here’s your sign.)

It is a defense of America, who is under attack from all sides abroad, and under an even more vicious and deadly attack from within.

By quislings like Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, Jon Corzine, Dick Durbin and others from any ideology that would so cheerfully sacrifice America’s long-term interests for short-term political gain.

This sounds like a rant. Maybe it is, but it is not intended to be. Neither is it intended to be political, despite the subject matter. It is impossible to separate politics from Bible prophecy and make any sense of the Bible’s outline for last days.

The antichrist is a politician. He comes to power through the political process. His platform is deception on a global scale. To be successful, he will have to have the support of a broad global constituency already conditioned to believe a lie, if properly packaged and repeated often enough.

Throughout my lifetime, one of the prophecy questions that always troubled me was how someone as overtly evil as the antichrist would be able to pull the wool over the eyes of the kindest, most generous, and most sophisticated people the world has ever known, for such is the America I know and love.

But when something as, (dare I say it . . .? Yes, I must, it is the only appropriate adjective available), when something as STUPID as Pelosi’s comment that the war in Iraq is not connected to the war on terror is not immediately recognized for what it is, my question about ‘how’ is answered for me.

The Apostle Paul, writing of the last days, warned of ‘perilous times’ because those “without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God” would eventually gain positions of power to pave the way for the coming deceiver. (2 Timothy 3:3-4)

That certainly helps us get a better sense of “what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time.” (2nd Thessalonians 2:6)

The ministry of the Spirit of Truth is removed with the believing Church at the Rapture. And when truth becomes meaningless, those people remaining will stand for nothing and fall for anything. We are almost there.

The anti-American, anti-God worldview of the liberal American Left mirrors that of most of the rest of the world.

It is a ‘perfect storm’ where treason is fashionable, patriotism is the exclusive domain of the ‘religious right’ and outright lies are indistinguishable from abject truth.

Or, as Solomon expressed it in Ecclesiastes 4:5, when “The fool foldeth his hands together, and eateth his own flesh.”

Special Report: “Living Document” Tortured — To Death

Special Report: “Living Document” Tortured — To Death
Vol: 45 Issue: 28 Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Liberals are fond of referring to the US Constitution as a “living document” presumably because, like a living person, if it is tortured long enough, you can make it say whatever you want it to. In this last session, however, it appears that the Constitution has been tortured to death.

That is to say, it has been so tortured by its captors in Supreme Court chambers that its contents have been rendered meaningless. The Constitution is much like the standard of truth in America — it means whatever a particular agenda wants it to mean.

In a single session, the Supreme Court has stripped Americans of some of their most basic rights, including those formerly guaranteed by the First, Fourth, Fifth and Tenth Amendments.

The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees that; “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The Supremes have interpreted the first part of the 1st Amendment as follows: “No one remotely connected to any branch of government shall be permitted the free exercise of religion, unless it is an obscure, unpopular or dangerous religion. The religious rights of the minority are exempted, while the religious rights of the majority are to be determined on a case-by-case basis.”

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to forbid two county courthouses in Kentucky from posting the Ten Commandments where the public might see them, the president of something called the ‘American Atheists Society’ triumpantly announced a ‘victory’ for the something less than ten percent of Americans who self-identify as atheists.

Meanwhile, those who are adherents to the religion of the vast majority of Americans (at least 76% of Americans, according to the CIA World Factbook) were defeated based on the Supreme Court’s interpretation of “Congress” as ANY entity receiving government funds from ANY source, federal, state, county or municipal.

The Supreme Court interpreted the phrase ‘establishment of a religion’ to mean the ‘the recognition of the existence of a Christian religion’ and ‘prohibiting the free exercise thereof’ as meaning, ‘the prohibition of the free exercise thereof.’

Moreover, in its wisdom, the Supreme Court has decided that it (not Congress) has the right to determine religious doctrine, determining that the Ten Commandments are CHRISTIAN symbols — the fact that they are the foundation of Jewish Law as given through Moses to the Israelites notwithstanding.

As a consequence, the Ten Commandments are illegal if they are ‘too religious’ but they are perfectly legal if they are surrounded by a preponderance (and indeterminate number) of other religious or non-religious monuments.

The Supremes said the two county courthouses in Kentucky couldn’t post their framed copies of the Decalogue, but the State of Texas was allowed to keep its monument because it was one monument among many.

“How many other monuments must accompany the Decalogue?” “Ummm, more than they had in Kentucky?”

“How many is that?” “Ummm, as many as they got in Texas.”

“Why is that?” “Because Texas didn’t just have Christian monuments.”

“When did the Ten Commandments become ‘Christian’ monuments?” “Uh, what time is it now?”

“Who gave you the authority to determine religious doctrine?” “The Supreme Court.”

“Heyyyy, aren’t YOU the Supreme Court?” “Exactly!”

So, what exactly does the ‘establishment clause’ mean this week? It means that it is legal for the United States government to order special sensitivity training to ensure the Koran is handled with due reverence.

But it is illegal for any governmental entity at any level to possess a Bible on public property unless one is desecrating it as part of a Constitutionally-protected form of ‘free speech’.

It is illegal for any public school system to permit children to pray, but it is legal for the United States government to operate an Islamic call to prayer five times per day in a federal prison facility.

It is illegal for government officials to refer to the Bible as the Word of God, but it is legal for the President of the United States to pronounce the Koran a ‘holy’ book.

It is illegal for government officials to promote any one religion, unless one is referring to Islam as ‘a great religion’ as Secretary of State Condi Rice is prone to do in every speech where the subject comes up.

It is also illegal for Christians to peacefully assemble to protest a gay rights parade, since the right to peaceable assembly is denied Christians under hate speech laws, as evidenced by the arrests last year in Philadelphia that put 11 Christians at risk of serving 20 years in prison.

It is legal for gays to denounce Christians as ‘right wing bigots’ but it is illegal for Christians to say that homosexuality is an aberrant lifestyle.

It is legal for abortion rights supporters to hustle women into clinics to have an abortion, but it is illegal for anti-abortion protesters to come within 100 feet of an abortion clinic.

The Supremes have also translated the Fourth Amendment into modern English, where we are shocked to discover it doesn’t mean anything like what it sounds like it means.

The 4th Amendment says, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

What it REALLY means is that we are guaranteed the right to be secure in our houses, papers and effects — unless somebody with more money than we have wants them.

The Supremes ruled that the right of municipalities to seize someone’s home and property and turn it over to a private, commercial development concern, regardless of the wishes of the owner, does NOT violate the Fourth Amendment.

The case arose in depressed New London, Conn., where pharmaceutical giant Pfizer in 1998 agreed to build a $270 million global research facility.

It was near a neighborhood called Fort Trumball, and to make Pfizer happier, the New London City Council launched a redevelopment plan for 90 acres of Fort Trumball: conference center, hotels, offices, condos, etc.

Among those unwilling to sell was Susette Kelo, who was joined by six other Fort Trumball homeowners. They argued in state court that taking property from one private owner to transfer it to another was not a “public use.”

The Supremes disagreed. But wait! There’s more! In case there is some kind of misintepretation of what it means to be ‘secure in their houses’ as not meaning the land they stand on, we have the Fifth Amendment, which says, ” nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

The Supreme Court redefined ‘public use’ as land used by a giant private drug company. And it redefined ‘just compensation’ to mean what the one paying the compensation deems to be ‘just’.

The Court ruled the landowner doesn’t have anything to say about it. And if the landowner doesn’t think the compensation is just and doesn’t want to sell, the private concern can just take it anyway.

The Supremes also struck down the 4th and 5th Amendment guarantees against unreasonable searches and self-incrimination, ruling that internet users who share files can be tracked down by record companies who can read the contents of their computers and use that information to press charges against those who trade music or movie files online.

William McGrath, director for the Center for Intellectual Property Law at John Marshall Law School in Chicago, predicted that average music listeners will find it “harder to get this kind of software for file sharing,” and he warned that the music and movie industries will be gunning for file-sharers. “They have their ways.”

The 2nd Amendment was also re-trashed during this session. The 2nd Amendment USED to guarantee that; “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The Supremes ruled that citizens do not have a constitutional right to police enforcement of court orders protecting them from abusers. In the case before the Court, a woman sued because police failed to enforce a court protection order that would have prevented her estranged husband from killing her three children.

The Supremes threw out her lawsuit — making a mockery of previous decisions that justified violating the 2nd Amendment by outlawing gun possession on the principle that the state provides armed police protection, making private gun ownership for self-protection unnecessary.

Then we get to the Tenth Amendment, which states; “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Unless ‘the people’ want to freely exercise their religion, keep property somebody richer wants, share property that belongs to them (such as music purchased by them) or assemble peaceably near an abortion clinic or a gay rights parade.

Nothing in the Constitution denies the rights of States to regulate those issues or expressly delegates them to the United States.

Congress has passed no law concerning the Ten Commandments, for example. And religious worship, gun ownership, private property rights and rights against illegal searches of private computer files are already REMOVED from federal jurisdiction by the amendments specifically exempting them.

Finally, there is the Eleventh Amendment, which deals exclusively with the rights of the Supreme Court itself. The Supremes REALLY hate THIS one:

“The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.”

The Eleventh Amendment says the Supremes don’t have any jurisdiction over the decorations chosen by county courthouses in Kentucky, the right of a woman to sue a police department for failing to do its job, or legal decisions concerning the internet, which is not in a state, or a country or a foreign state, but is in cyberspace, which is nowhere at all.

The Constitution USED to be a living document. But nothing can survive the torture the Constitution has been subjected to. May it rest in peace.

And may God have mercy on America’s soul.

Enter the Dragon?

Enter the Dragon?
Vol: 45 Issue: 27 Monday, June 27, 2005

In 1991, the United States shocked the world with the ease by which it defeated the much-feared forces of Saddam Hussein, who at the time, was in control of the world’s fifth largest standing army.

US Abrams tanks cut through Saddam’s Russian-built T-52 battle tanks like a hot knife through butter.

The subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union was due in no small part to the realization by the Politburo that the Soviets were light-years behind US military technology, much too far behind to hope to ever catch up, given the Soviet Union’s increasingly failing economy.

American military power so terrified the rest of the world that it united it under the single banner of anti-Americanism that has infected democracies and dictatorships alike. Those nations who could afford to have been playing catch-up ever since.

Those who could not, allied themselves with those who could, in an effort, as Jacques Chirac put it, to create a counter-balance to the ‘unipolar’ American hegemony.

It was the shocked reaction to the ease with which America destroyed Saddam’s army that accelerated the unification of Europe, and facilitated the alliances of strange bedfellows like Iran, Russia and the EU, for example.

The recognition that Israel probably had weapons as sophisticated as those demonstrated by the United States demonstrated to the Islamic world the need for a new kind of warfare if they could hope to destroy the Jewish state.

Open warfare of the conventional state-to-state variety died in Iraq in 1991 and the asymmetrical war strategy of state-sponsored terror took its place.

To the smaller, weaker states of the Islamic world, it offered a chance to attack and weaken both Israel and the United States while remaining relatively safe from massive military retaliation.

The war in Iraq made conventional warfare with the US unthinkable, even for the most powerful nations of the EU, Russia or China and set off the nuclear arms race that has already made Pakistan, India and North Korea nuclear powers, with Iran running closely behind.

The September 11 attacks on the United States revealed America’s Achilles’ Heel, and the 2003 war with Iraq demonstrated American unpreparedness for a drawn-out conflict on the ground. Not to mention how quickly American resolve would evaporate in the process.

A chilling series of reports by Washington Times investigative reporter Bill Gertz notes that China has been closely monitoring America’s weaknesses in advance of what Gertz speculates is a planned Chinese invasion of Taiwan sometime within the next two years.

Since the United States is committed to defending the island nation of Taiwan from the mainland, a war with Taiwan means war with the United States.

Gertz, quoting intelligence and military analysts, says that China is building up its military capabilities much faster than expected and is stepping up its efforts to gather intelligence against the United States, and in particular, on stealing US technology to increase its military capabilities.

Gertz quoted David Szady, chief of FBI counterintelligence operations on the speed with which Beijing is making progress. “I think you see it where something that would normally take 10 years to develop takes them two or three,” Szady said.

“What we’re finding is that [the spying is] much more focused in certain areas than we ever thought, such as command and control and things of that sort. In the military area, the rapid development of their ‘blue-water’ navy — like the Aegis weapons systems — in no small part is probably due to some of the research and development they were able to get from the United States.”

China has been upgrading its military capabilities for most of the 1990’s with its most significant boost coming from a technology waiver granted by Bill Clinton in the mid 1990’s to allow the Loral Corporation to assist China in fixing a glitch in its missile guidance system.

Loral, a company owned by Bernard Schwartz, Friend of Bill and one of the DNC’s most generous contributors, asked for the waiver while it was contracted to build up China’s developing space program after the failure of several rockets to get a satellite into orbit.

Once the waiver was granted, China was able to fix its guidance systems — including those mounted on China’s arsenal of nuclear ICBM missiles.

Chinese intelligence services are using a variety of methods to spy, including traditional intelligence operations targeting U.S. government agencies and defense contractors.

Additionally, the Chinese use hundreds of thousands of Chinese visitors, students and other nonprofessional spies to gather valuable data, most of it considered “open source,” or unclassified information.

“What keeps us up late at night is the asymmetrical, unofficial presence,” Mr. Szady said. “The official presence, too. I don’t want to minimize that at all in what they are doing.”

China’s spies use as many as 3,200 front companies — many run by groups linked to the Chinese military — that are set up to covertly obtain information, equipment and technology, U.S. officials say.

During the Clinton administration, Chinese executives paid millions for a chance to be an FOB and get accommodations in the Lincoln bedroom and tours of Los Alamos, Sandia and Livermore US weapons labs.

Soon reports began to surface of ‘misplaced’ computer disks loaded with classified information, allegations of espionage by scientists with links to China, etc., together with increasing Chinese belligerence.

Chinese espionage cases have invoked the ire of liberal groups like the ACLU who have termed such investigations ‘witch hunts’.

The case against Katrina Leung, a Los Angeles-based FBI informant who the FBI thinks was a spy for Beijing, ended in the dismissal of charges of taking classified documents from her FBI handler. The Justice Department is appealing the case, but is fighting an uphill battle against a united liberal front decrying what is claims is’racial profiling’ of Chinese-Americans.

The case against Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Wen Ho Lee, who was suspected of supplying classified nuclear-weapons data to China, ended with Lee pleading guilty to only one count among the 59 filed.

The FBI has been unable to find out who in the U.S. government supplied China with secrets on every deployed nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal, including the W-88, the small warhead used on U.S. submarine-launched nuclear missiles.

And a report by former Pentagon official Michael Pillsbury highlights 16 key advances in Chinese technology — all with military implications — in the past six months alone.

The failure to gauge China’s development is part of the bias within the U.S. government that calls for playing down the threat from the growing power of China, both militarily and technologically, Mr. Pillsbury stated.

“Predictions a decade ago of slow Chinese [science and technology] progress have now proved to be false,” the report stated.

“I think the Chinese have figured it out, as far as being able to collect and advance their political, economic and military interests by theft or whatever you want to call it,” according to the FBI’s Szady.

“They are way ahead of what the Russians have ever done.”

Assessment:

This morning’s report is more than chilling, in the natural, it is downright terrifying.

(If you are looking for something cheery to read with your coffee, I suggest you stop reading here and, ummmm . . . email me if you find something. I’d like to read it too.)

China’s military buildup includes an array of new high-technology weapons, such as warships, submarines, missiles and a maneuverable warhead designed to defeat U.S. missile defenses.

Recent intelligence reports also show that China has stepped up military exercises involving amphibious assaults, viewed as another sign that it is preparing for an attack on Taiwan.

“There’s a growing consensus that at some point in the mid-to-late ’90s, there was a fundamental shift in the sophistication, breadth and re-sorting of Chinese defense planning,” said Richard Lawless, a senior China-policy maker in the Pentagon.

“And what we’re seeing now is a manifestation of that change in the number of new systems that are being deployed, the sophistication of those systems and the interoperability of the systems.”

China’s economy has been growing at a rate of at least 10 percent for each of the past 10 years, providing the country’s military with the needed funds for modernization.

The combination of a vibrant centralized economy, growing military and increasingly fervent nationalism has transformed China into what many defense officials view as a fascist state.

According to the Bible, in the last days, the world will be divided into four spheres of global influence.

The first is a revived form of the old Roman Empire, which will serve as the seat of the antichrist’s government, which will be so powerful that it will overshadow the rest of the world, as is the role of the United States today.

The second is the alliance of Gog-Magog, which puts Russia and Iran at the head of a massive anti-Israeli alliance that will eventually embark on a march of conquest against the Jewish state.

The third is the pan-African alliance, or the ‘Kings of the South’ which is already in its infancy as the Organization of African States struggles to find a united voice for the world’s second-most populous continent.

(In 1990, about 12 percent of the world’s population, an estimated 642 million people, lived in Africa, making it the world’s second-most populous continent after Asia.)

Finally, there are the “Kings of the East” referenced by the Apostle John as capable of fielding an army of ‘two hundred thousand thousand’ or two hundred million men. (Revelation 9:16, Revelation 16:12)

According to John, this army will be responsible for the slaughter of one-third of mankind during the Tribulation Period.

According to the CIA World Factbook, China has some 281,240,272 males classified as ‘fit for military service’. All Chinese males between the ages of 18-22 are required to serve a two-year military obligation with another nearly fourteen million coming of military age each year.

There is no mention of a fifth sphere of global influence resembling the United States of America. Let’s take each one at a time in a quick review.

Israel, which at the time of the writers of the Bible, would not exist for two thousand years, is pictured as the flashpoint of global unrest and is of such importance that Zechariah says it would the focus of the whole world, particularly over the final status of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jews. (Zechariah 12)

Russia and Iran, (Gog Magog) would lead a pan-Arab alliance against Israel in the last days. According to the prophet Ezekiel, it would take place ‘in the latter years’ and would elicit only a weak diplomatic protest from the rest of the world, leaving it to God to destroy them on ‘the mountains of Israel’. [Ezekiel 39:2]

The prophet Joel, speaking of this great ‘northern’ alliance (Moscow is due north of Jerusalem) will be defeated in a battle involving ‘blood, fire and pillars of smoke.’ (Joel 2:20)

The revived Roman Empire of antichrist will consist of ‘ten kings’ who give their power to an eleventh, who will share power with a global religious leader (the false Prophet) whose religious empire will be headquartered in Rome.

His political counterpart will be associated with the number 666 and will exercise control over the global economy.

The third sphere, ‘the king of the south’, while seemingly very powerful, will ‘push’ at the antichrist, and will be defeated in very short order by his vastly superior military power, despite the overwhelming numbers of the pan-African alliance. (Daniel 11:40)

And finally, we return to the 200 million-strong army of the Kings of the East, the fourth and most powerful sphere of military power during the last days.

But no superpower resembling America. America is currently the most powerful, most hated, and most inviting target on earth, for everybody from the global Islamic jihadists to the jealous Western powers to the Chinese dragon.

She is plotted against in capitals from Beijing to Moscow to Paris and Berlin. She is accused of inventing AIDS to decimate the African continent. She is hated by the Islamists for her support of Israel.

Everybody, seemingly, has a reason to seek her destruction.

In addition, America is universally recognized as the world’s most Christian nation (by everybody except the American Left who are actively seeking to eliminate God from the public discourse).

There are plenty of probable reasons for America’s absence during the final hours of judgment, from political civil war (Red-State Blue-State) to decimation from an Islamist WMD attack to destruction via the nuclear threat emanating from Russia, China or any the rogue nuclear states — to the pre-Tribulation Rapture of the Church.

But the wars of the last days have specific targets; Israel, the antichrist’s empire, etc. Neither the powers of the last days — or their targets, bear any resemblance to America.

And there is no indication that the Rapture of the Church does much damage to the spheres of global power listed in Scripture for the last days.

And Biblical Christianity is virtually non-existent in Europe and has no influence whatever in the governments of China, Russia, Iran, or those governments on the African continent.

In short, we are seeing the buildup of every alliance foretold for the last days, precisely as prophesied, together with the decline in influence of, and global animosity for, the world’s only Christian nation, based largely on his support of Israel.

Within the United States itself, the nation has divided itself along Red-State Blue-State lines, with the Red States derided by the Blue as ‘JesusLand.’

And it is all taking place at PRECISELY the same point in history.

Taken together as a whole, there is only one possible explanation for America’s absence.

“For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

And given the speed with which it is all coming together, it can’t be far away. The Lord IS coming! And He is coming soon!

“Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-18)

Another Leader in Search of a Legacy

Another Leader in Search of a Legacy
Vol: 45 Issue: 25 Saturday, June 25, 2005

It grows increasingly difficult to either understand or support the newly emerging Bush administration foreign policy as it relates to Israel specifically or the Middle East in general. As one commentator put it, it appears that the President is in danger of becoming a casualty of the war that he isn’t winning.

I’m not talking about the battles on the battlefield or whether or not America can defeat the enemy. Our forces are the best in the world and we have plenty of US Marines — the best of the best — on the ground in Iraq. That isn’t where he is losing. He is losing in Washington. Or perhaps a better word might be ‘capitulating’ — I’m not quite sure.

In any case, it appears that US foreign policy as it relates to the Arab world could have just as easily been formulated at the last Organization of Islamic States conference or at a DNC strategy session.

In 2004, Bush managed to lead his party to a clean sweep, across the board. With Republicans in control of all branches of government (except the judiciary, which is completely OUT of control) the President assured the nation that the election gave him plenty of political capital, pledging, “I intend to spend it.”

But his bank went under before the check cleared.

Second-term presidencies are called ‘lame duck’ administrations because of the difficulties they encounter trying to promote new initiatives.

A second-term president is an ex-president in waiting, and ex-presidents are like ex-wives. They can talk all they want, but nobody has to listen.

But that is only part of the problem. In addition, ex-presidents in waiting are surrounded by presidential wannabes who only have the rest of this current term to prove that they are just like the current occupant, only better.

They get a chance to spread their wings, so to speak, but they do so with an eye on the polls to see which policy changes they can claim credit for changing come campaign season.

This kind of executive schizophrenia pretty much goes with the territory. Presidential wannabes begin to distance themselves from anything controversial, which translates into ever increasing defections among lawmakers from the party line. It happened during the second terms of both Reagan and Clinton, and we are witnessing a similar situation with Bush.

But neither Reagan nor Clinton had to carry as much baggage as George W. Bush. Despite Clinton’s failures as the moral leader of the country, he managed to maintain a level of popularity that eluded George Bush throughout his presidency.

Bush was never able to recover from the Election 2000 debacle — millions still believe Bush ‘stole’ the election, despite the fact that not a single recount ever put Al Gore in front.

The Democrats publicly pledged themselves to making his presidency a failure, and, unlike most other promises, they kept this one. Like Bill Clinton, George Bush is a president in search of a legacy.

Bill Clinton’s administration will go down in history (at least, theoretically) with an asterisk noting he was the only president in the 20th century to face an impeachment trial.

George Bush’s administration will be recorded as the most unpopular in living memory, his ascension to office in 2000 overshadows even the September 11 attacks in terms of what history will characterize as his most enduring legacy.

If Bush has any legacy apart from being the most hated president ever to lead America, it is that he is the most distrusted since Richard Nixon’s. There’ve been endless analogies between the war against terror and Vietnam.

Forgive me one more. Both Johnson and Nixon suffered from a ‘credibility gap’ that made prosecuting the war in Vietnam secondary to fighting a defensive war at home.

According to the Washington Post-ABC polls, for the first time since the war in Iraq began, more than half of the American public believes that the fight there has not made the United States safe.

Nearly three-quarters of Americans say the number of casualties in Iraq is unacceptable, while two-thirds say that US military is bogged down and nearly six in 10 Americans say the war was not worth fighting.

The AP-Ipsos poll indicates that just 41 per cent of Americans support Mr. Bush’s handling of the war. Overall, 52 per cent of Americans disapprove of Mr. Bush’s job performance.

The popular perception is that Americans are still fighting the ‘Iraq War’ together with the equally-popular perception that it, like Vietnam, was a war that the American people were hoodwinked into fighting by some vaguely-defined ‘military-industrial’ complex.

Neither were true in Vietnam, and neither is true now. More now than ever, ‘truth’ isn’t what is true, but rather, what people want to believe is true.

In the case of Richard Nixon, he DID lie. Not about Vietnam, but about his administration’s involvement in a coverup of the Watergate burglary investigation.

In the case of George Bush, it was a logical impossibility that he could have lied about the reason for war with Saddam, and he didn’t need to lie about hte reasons for war with al-Qaeda.

But one of Bill Clinton’s legacies was the establishment of the principle that ‘all’ politicians lie.

Bush came to office with the deck stacked against him.

Assessment:

It appears Bush is caving under the pressure. He has been completely ineffective is making his case that we are NOT fighting ‘the Iraq War’ and equally ineffective in proving that we already won it. Saddam is gone, and regime change has been effected.

Our forces aren’t fighting the forces of the Iraqi military. They are fighting the forces of al-Qaeda.

But the calls to pull out of Iraq as if we were are being picked up even by those who should know better. To make the final analogy to Vietnam, it didn’t really matter, to the average American, whether we won or lost.

Losing hurt our pride, it hurt our military and it hurt our international image, but it didn’t hurt Americans at home.

Pulling out of Vietnam ended the carnage. It removed our troops from harm’s way and put an end to the parade of flag-draped coffins returning from a place nobody in America really cared about.

But that is where the analogy ends. Pulling out of Iraq will end the carnage in Iraq. But in removing our troops from harm’s way in Iraq, we will be replacing our troops with American civilians in the homeland.

Despite that, the administration’s policies in Iraq are in shambles and so the administration is looking for a way out without losing.

The war between Crusader America and Islamic jihadists began with the first Gulf War and was centered around the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia.

Osama and his jihadist dedicated themselves to the removal of infidels from Islamic holy places in order. First, Mecca and Medina, and then Jerusalem.

Two of those goals have been successfully accomplished. And the only thing standing in the way of a clean sweep for al-Qaeda is US support for Israel.

It isn’t pulling out of Iraq that the administration believes will end the carnage. It is withdrawing US support for Israel.

Following his meeting with Mahmoud Abbas in Washington, Bush gave a speech that I fear was designed to condition America for that very eventuality.

Of pivotal importance, Bush said that any enlargement of Israel beyond its pre-1967 war boundaries — which did not include east Jerusalem, the West Bank or Gaza Strip — must be agreed to by the Palestinians.

Any final-status agreement must be reached between the two parties, and changes to the 1949 armistice lines must be mutually agreed to.

A viable two-state solution must ensure contiguity of the West Bank. And a state of scattered territories will not work. There must also be meaningful linkages between the West Bank and Gaza, Bush told reporters.

This is the position of the United States today, Bush said. It will be the position of the United States at the time of final-status negotiations, he added.

Reaffirming US commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state, he said: We meet at a time when a great achievement of history is within reach, the creation of a peaceful, democratic Palestinian state, Bush told reporters as he stood next to Abbas in the White House Rose Garden.

That the administration has decided to complete sell out Israel is evidenced by the gleeful press statements emanating from the Palestinians since that meeting.

The results of the meeting lived up to our highest expectations, PA spokesman Nabil Abu Rudaina told the Agence France Presse.

Now there are reports that the Bush administration wants to give Saudi Arabia and Egypt a role in mediating the conflict. This is like inviting a pack of wolves to vote on what would be in the best interests of a herd of sheep and promising to abide by their decision. (“Please pass the mint jelly.”)

The Bush administration has decided on a strategy of winning a war by bombing the wolf pack with lamb chops in the hopes they’ll get sick of lamb and stop attacking the herd.

Not because it is either logical or workable, but because it will, at least temporarily, stop all that awful howling.

God’s original covenant with Abraham included the promise, “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” (Genesis 12:3) And God has kept His word. Through the Jews, all the families of the earth HAVE been blessed.

They are God’s Oracle, in that He revealed Himself through the Jews and made them the repository of His Word. It is through the Jews that we obtained our Bible.

The Savior of the world was born of the line of David, King of the Jews. Those nations throughout history that protected the Jews have been blessed, those who turned against them saw that blessing lifted.

Spain was the world’s most powerful nation until the expelled the Jews in 1492. England embraced them, and within 100 years, the Spanish were vanquished and England replaced them. The collapse of the British Empire coincided with England’s opposition to the creation of a Jewish state.

The United States replaced England as the world’s premier superpower following World War Two, after America destroyed the Nazis and embraced the new state of Israel. And it is through Israel that God will bring about the end of human government and usher in the Kingdom era.

It was American political pressure that forced Yitzhak Rabin to clasp the blood-stained hand of Yasser Arafat in the Rose Garden in 1993. Within two years, Islamic terrorists tried to blow up the World Trade Center.

As violence against Israel increased, so did US efforts to pacify the Palestinians at Israeli expense until, in 1998, Israel was prepared to turn over both Judea and Samaria to Palestinians, had Arafat accepted.

Three years later, Islamic terrorists killed three thousand Americans and launched the formal war against terror that has continued to bedevil America ever since.

The harder the terrorists fought, the more America began to distance itself from Israel and embrace the Palestinian cause. And the worse it got.

Today, America is tearing at itself like a rabid dog, to the degree that our politicians can get away with blaming the military for treating our enemies like they were enemies — and enjoy widespread popular support for the concept.

To say America is coming apart at the seams is no understatement.

With all of this, for Christians, it is really a ‘good news – bad news’ scenario. The bad news first. As America lifts its protective hand from Israel, God is lifting His protective hand from America.

For America, that is very bad news indeed. And it helps to explain, at least in part, why no nation resembling America plays any role in the final act of Bible prophecy.

Now the good news. It is exactly what God said would happen as we approached the final hours before the return of Christ.

Thousands of years ago, the prophet Zechariah was inspired to explain what we are witnessing take place, so that those alive at the time would have a sense of the Eternal perspective.

“Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem. And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.” (Zechariah 12:2-3)

One would have to have just arrived yesterday from Alpha Centauri to miss the significance of this prophecy. Jerusalem is indeed a ‘burdensome stone’ and America has, for the past six decades, willingly burdened themselves with it.

And as a consequence, we have been ‘cut in pieces’, particularly in the political arena.

The Red-State Blue-State dynamic has pretty much created two Americas out of one, and both are in mortal peril from those gathered together against Israel. As America withdraws its support for Israel, that peril increases commensurately.

Once that process has begun, it is irreversible, since it is part of a Divine Plan already set to paper and sealed more than 2500 years ago. It will progress until the Divine objective is realized.

“And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon Me Whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.” (Zechariah 12:10)

America plays no role in Bible prophecy during this period for two reasons. The first is already self-evident. A house divided against itself cannot stand.

The second reason is that a significant part of America won’t be here when the final countdown begins.

“Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” (1st Corinthians 15:51-53)

The Apostle Paul is describing the Rapture of the Church, when the Lord Jesus comes to fulfill His promise to the Church with the same faithfulness with which He has fulfilled His promise to Abraham regarding the blessing or cursing of the nations concerning their treatment of Israel.

The purpose of the Tribulation Period is to judge the world for rejecting Christ’s offer of salvation. It is the time when God pours out His wrath on those who prefer to accept the lie.

But His promise to the Church is that, “God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1st Thessalonians 5:9)

Moreover, to the Church, He promised, “Because thou hast kept the word of My patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.” (Revelation 3:10)

“Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you.” (2nd Thessalonians 1:6)

The ‘hour of temptation’ is on the horizon. But His promise is that the Church will not be here when that hour arrives.

“Wherefore, comfort one another with these words.” (1st Thessalonians 5:18)

“After Two Days, He will Revive Us”

“After Two Days, He will Revive Us”
Vol: 45 Issue: 24 Friday, June 24, 2005

In the 1650’s an Anglican bishop named James Ussher published his ‘Annals of the World’, subtitled, “The Origin of Time, and Continued to the Beginning of the Emperor Vespasian’s Reign and the Total Destruction and Abolition of the Temple and Commonwealth of the Jews.”

It was a ponderous title, but Ussher’s work was a ponderous book. First published in Latin, it consisted of more than 1600 pages.

Bishop Ussher was no ordinary man, but one who was unmistakably blessed with incredible intelligence and insight that he devoted entirely to the study of God’s Word. (By age 26, Ussher was chair of the Divinity Department at Dublin University.)

While that in and of itself would be worthy of a lifetime achievement award, Ussher went on to full professorship, served as vice-chancellor of Trinity College twice, and, by age 44, was elevated to the rank of Archbishop of Armagh, the highest position in the Irish Anglican Church.

The point is that Bishop Ussher was not just a smart man. He was an intellectual giant who used his God-given gifts to advance the understanding of God’s Word.

Bishop Ussher’s “Annals of the World” begins at the point of creation, which he determined was October 23, 4004 BC.

Ussher’s arrival at the date of October 23 was determined based on the fact that most peoples of antiquity, especially the Jews, started their calendar at harvest time.

Ussher concluded there must be good reason for this, so he chose the first Sunday following autumnal equinox.

Although the autumnal equinox is September 21 today, that is only because of historical calendar-juggling to make the years come out right.

In September 1752, eleven days were dropped to bring the calendar back in line with the seasons. Another day was dropped at the beginning of the 19th and 20th century for the same reason.

Ussher’s calculations, made centuries before these adjustments, are vindicated by them. Pretty impressive stuff for a guy working by candlelight centuries before the advent of a calculator.

The reason Ussher’s work is so accurate was because he relied solely on Scripture as his source of information.

Ussher arrived at the date of 4004 BC by taking known dates in history, and calculating backwards by using the chronologies of Genesis Chapters 5 and 11 and working backwards. The calculations themselves were so complicated that, in the original documents, they covered more than one hundred pages.

Notes Larry Pierce of the ‘Online Bible’; “Astrogeophysicist Dr John Eddy, who was at the time Solar Astronomer at the High Altitude Observatory at Boulder, Colorado, made some revealing comments at a symposium in 1978, as reported in Geotimes, Vol. 23, September 1978, p. 18.

“There is no evidence based solely on solar observations, Eddy stated, that the Sun is 4.5-5 x 109 years old. “I suspect,” he said, “that the Sun is 4.5-billion years old. However, given some new and unexpected results to the contrary, and some time for frantic recalculation and theoretical readjustment, I suspect that we could live with Bishop Ussher’s value for the age of the Earth and Sun. I don’t think we have much in the way of observational evidence in astronomy to conflict with that.””

Assessment:

We’re all watching our planet and human culture heading into what looks, to all intents and purposes, the early stages of impending demise.

There are daily, breathless reports about the disintegrating environment, global warming, strange weather patterns, unusual solar activity, together with constant revisions of previously accepted scientific ‘facts’ about the universe and how it works.

The global social structure upon which civilization is built, the family, is under attack from every direction. The war on terror, is in reality, a clash of cultures, both natural and spiritual, with the forces of Islam squaring off against Judeo-Christian culture.

The very fabric of human civilization is being rended and torn before our eyes. It is difficult, at the juncture in history, to foresee how it will survive the onslaught. No nation, seemingly, is exempt from the threat.

Recently, a Senate committee calculated a 70% probability, for example, of an attack against the United States with a weapon of mass destruction within the next ten years. Given our own nuclear capability, any retaliatory response by the US could destroy civilization as we know it.

Using Bishop’s Ussher’s calculations, the Prophet Hosea lived from 3197 to 3246, or, BC 808 to 759. Ussher’s dating is expressed in standard years, although he worked from the perspective of the ancient calendar of twelve months of thirty days each. At the end of each year, the ancients tacked on five days, and every four years they added six days.

The prophet Hosea wrote, “Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for He hath torn, and He will heal us; He hath smitten, and He will bind us up. After two days will He revive us; in the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live in His sight.” (Hosea 6:1-2)

Further on, the prophet predicted; “Also, O Judah, He hath set an harvest for thee, when I returned the captivity of My people.” (6:11)

The Jews of the tribe of Judah were ‘revived’ on May 15, 1948, the day the world officially recognized the existence of the state of Israel. Since then, little pockets of Jews, members of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, have been discovered in various places and repatriated to their ancient cultures and homeland.

Hosea began with the Promise of God that “He will heal us and bind us up” — a promise that was fulfilled with the Crucifixion and Resurrection of the Messiah Jesus.

With the extension of the Perfect Sacrifice for sins that washed away the sins of all men. (“by the righteousness of One the free gift came upon ALL men unto justification of life.” – Romans 5:18)

We date our own calendar counting forward from Christ. So does God, which brings us back to Hosea’s prophecy. “After two days will He revive us, and in the third day, raise us up,” writes the prophet.

Twice in Scripture, God reveals His own reckoning of time. “For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.” (Psalms 90:4)

“But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that ONE DAY is with the Lord AS A THOUSAND YEARS, and a thousand years as one day.” (2nd Peter 3:8)

Our calendar dates the Birth of Christ as Year One. It doesn’t much matter if Jesus was born somewhere between 6 BC and 6 AD, given the subsequent manipulation of the various calendars to make them come out right.

Based entirely in Scripture, Ussher’s calculation of creation as being 4004 years before Christ isn’t based on the year of Christ’s Birth. Hosea’s prophecy is.

Ussher took the known date of Nebuchadnezzar s death as the benchmark from which he launched his backwards journey through time, using Scriptural chronology to move both forward and backward in his calculations.

I hope I haven’t lost you with all the numbers — it makes me a bit dizzy as I work through them myself. (Bishop Ussher was a lot smarter than me. I have trouble even WITH a calculator)

According to Bishop Ussher, the last time Israel marked its God-mandated Jubilee Year was the Year 4030 from the date of Creation, which would correspond to our AD 26. Using Ussher’s calculations, therefore, the Year 2005 dates six thousand and nine years forward from the day of Creation.

And there is a twelve year gap of uncertainty between the Anno Domini calendar and the literal date of His First Advent.

Jesus said that “ye know not what hour your Lord doth come,” and I believe Him. So I am not setting a date for either the Rapture or His Second Coming. But Hosea said that Israel’s revival would come AFTER two days.

It was restored politically in 1948, just BEFORE the conclusion of the ‘two days’ since the Birth of Christ, but Ezekiel’s chronology says that the political revival is only the first stage of Israel’s ‘revival’.

“And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them.” (Ezekiel 37:8) The Hebrew word translated ‘breath’ is ‘ruwach’ a word which means ‘spirit’, particularly in the context of ‘spiritual animation’.

Israel is physically alive, but remains, to this moment, spiritually ‘unquickened’. That ‘quickening’ of the spirit is accomplished by faith in Christ. (“And you hath He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.” (Ephesians 2:1)

So, to return to Hosea, we find the prophecy that AFTER two days, Israel will be revived, but IN the third day, they will be ‘quickened’ so that Israel might ‘live in His sight’.

Israel’s physical revival has been an ongoing process for fifty-seven years as the world’s Jews, including members of the Ten Lost Tribes, are being regathered to the land of Israel. Ezekiel’s prophecy of Israel’s redemption process is almost complete.

No matter how one approaches it, either by accepting Ussher’s calculations from creation, or accepting our calendar reckoning of time since the birth of Christ, the conclusion is inescapable.

Hosea said of the Jews, ‘AFTER two days will He revive us, and IN the third day . . we will live in His sight.’

Peter says that “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (2nd Peter 3:9)

It is clear that God is extending His ‘grace period’ (the Church Age of Grace) to give all men one last chance to accept the gift of pardon that He extends to them, but it is equally clear that His patience is being rapidly exhausted.

How much longer will He wait before returning for His Church and effecting Israel’s national redemption at the conclusion of the Tribulation Period?

Given the twelve-year gap, we are somewhere between three years before and nine years INTO Hosea’s Third Day.

I don’t believe we can calculate the Day of the Rapture, because Jesus said no man could know the day or the hour.

But He did say, “So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.” (Matthew 24:33)

Very near, indeed. Maranatha!

“A Woman Rides the Beast”

“A Woman Rides the Beast”
Vol: 45 Issue: 23 Thursday, June 23, 2005

According to the Bible, a confederation of nations will arise out of the ashes of the old Roman Empire. The Bible is rife with symbols and images concerning this confederation, its identity, its purpose and its ultimate destiny.

The prophet Daniel, writing some six hundred years before Rome rose to power the first time, outlined a succession of world empires; Babylon, Medo-Persia, Alexander the Great’s Greek Empire, and finally, the Roman Empire.

Daniel identified the timeline in which Rome would reach the zenith of its power, which coincided exactly with the first century, linking it to the Crucifixion and the destruction of the city of Jerusalem and the sacking of the Jewish Temple.

“And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.” (Daniel 9:26)

In AD 70, Daniel’s prophecy was literally fulfilled with the Roman legions, under future emporer Titus, destroyed Jerusalem, killed so many Jews that Josephus said the blood flowed to the depth of a horse’s bridle, burned the Temple, dismantled it, stone by stone, and sent the surviving Jews into exile.

Daniel’s identification of Rome is gleaned from looking backwards through history at the characteristics of each empire as he described them in his interpretation of an image in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. The image had two legs of iron and feet and toes of clay.

Shortly before its collapse, the Roman Empire had grown so large and unwieldy that it was split into two — the western Empire of Rome and the Eastern Empire, seating in what is today Ankara, Turkey.

At its heyday, the Western Empire consisted of 54 provinces that today correspond to the nations of Western Europe. In looking at a map of ancient Rome, one finds the empire also extended eastward to the border with Saudi Arabia, taking in the near Middle East and south along the coast of Africa.

It is fascinating to note that Secretary-General Javier Solana has plans, via the EU’s Mediterranean Neighborhood Program , to expand precisely to those boundaries, offering those countries bordering the Med limited membership in the Greater EU.

When political Rome collapsed, the spiritual empire was divided between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. According to the outline of Scripture, political Rome and spiritual Rome will come together again in the last days to form a hybrid political-spiritual empire.

The Beast (Revelation 13:1) is the political arm. The spiritual arm will be headed by the one the Apostle John calls the ‘false prophet’.

The Apostle John gives important clues to the identity of each, clues that, until this generation, were hazy and vague, but are now undeniable, crystal-clear and self-evident to any honest observer.

Assessment:

According to the Apostle John, the empire of the Beast will have seven heads and ten horns. Currently, the Group of Industrialized nations consists of Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the UK, the US and Canada.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, Bill Clinton insisted on bringing Russia to the table as an informal member, and the Group of Seven became the Group of Eight as a form of a thank you to then-president Boris Yeltsin.

It was a cosmetic addition — the G7 forms the nucleus of the global economic system. When the G-7 finance ministers come together for their annual meeting, it is formally known as the “G-8 minus Russia.”

The economic power remains in the hands of the G-7. Four of the G-7 members are also members of the WEU and NATO, so it is no surprise that G-7 economic policy heavily favors the interests of the European Union’s security arm, the Western European Union.

The Apostle John notes that the beast will seize control of the global economic system and will use its clout to assert and enforce its policies.

Out of that system will arise an individual leader who will be the embodiment of the system of the Beast, in much the same way that Adolf Hitler became the embodiment of the Third Reich.

“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” (Revelation 13:16-17)

In 1999, Javier Solana became the High Representative for the EU s foreign and security policy, and through recommendation #666, he was given emergency powers over the military wing of the EU in 2000.

Although the WEU is made up of more than 28 countries, there are only ten full members. All the rest hold lesser status as either ‘associate’, observer’ or partner’ countries.

Solana’s post of uber-boss of both Europes was formalized under the authority of the WEU’s Recommendation 666. This has led many to speculate that Solana is the antichrist. Solana heads the system that will become the beast, but that isn t the same as being the embodiment of it.

The prophecy of the Mark of the Beast is one of the most widely known in the entire Bible. Countless fictional books and movies have used it as their plot line. It has launched a particular fascination with what the ‘number of his name’ is and how it fits together.

John writes, “Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.” (v.18)

The Scripture doesn’t identify a MAN as the beast, it identifies a system that is jointly headed by a political and religious leader. John identifies the marriage of the religious system with the political system using the symbol of a woman riding upon a scarlet colored beast.

The engraving on the EU’s euro and many of its official documents, like stamps, etc., depict Europa, a woman, riding on the back of Minos, a beast.

The harlot image is also in a huge painting in the EU Parliament’s new building in Brussels, and in a huge sculpture outside the new E.U. Council of Ministers Office in Brussels.

The woman, according to John, is a false religion that has joined itself to the political system. John uses the symbols of a harlot “in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.” (Revelation 17:3-6)

Of the Beast, John was told by the revealing angel: “The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.” (17:8)

The Roman Empire was, and is not, and yet is, in the sense that the Roman Empire was both a religion and a political entity, until political Rome fell. But spiritual Rome endured.

John says that they will merge again in the last days, but only briefly.

“But in the end, the political beast will consume the harlot completely; And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.”

John identifies the harlot with “seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth” — a clear indication of Rome, the ‘City on Seven Hills’ and, just to make sure the point isn’t missed, again as “the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.” (17:16,18)

Within that political system a leader will arise who can be identified, as John says, by the number of a MAN, that number, of course, being 666.

Are you still with me?

We have a religious system whose history matches that of Papal Rome throughout the Dark Ages, together with a global economic system run by seven heads, [G-7] that dictates policy for the ten horns [WEU political-military] whose authority is derived from the WEU’s Recommendation 666.

But no political leader conforming to John’s image of the political beast linked to a MAN who is identifiable by ‘the number of his name’, 666.

That is because he isn’t here yet. But there is an empty seat awaiting his arrival. The Tower Building (so named after the Tower of Babel) houses the Fifth Parliament of Europe.

The legislative amphitheater is arranged in a hemicircle and has 679 seats, each assigned to a particular lawmaker. For example, Seat 663 is assigned to Rep Souchet, 664 to Thomas-Mauro, 665 to Zizzener and 667 to Rep Cappato.

In between Zizzner and Cappato is an empty seat, unallocated and unfilled. Seat 666 has never been occupied.

But it will be.

“Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the NUMBER OF A MAN; and his number is 666.” (Revelation 13:18)

The Power to Deceive

The Power to Deceive
Vol: 45 Issue: 22 Wednesday, June 22, 2005

One of the hallmark signs of the last days before the return of Christ is that of deception on a global scale. The Bible says that the antichrist’s entire platform is built on deception.

“And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.” (Revelation 13:14)

When asked, ‘what will be the sign of Thy coming’, Jesus’ reply began with the words, “Take heed that no man deceive you.” (Matthew 24:4)

The Apostle Paul, in his 2nd letter to Timothy, speaking specifically of the last days, warned, “But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.” (2nd Timothy 3:13)

The prophet Isaiah, also writing of the Tribulation Period, prophesied; “I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them; because when I called, none did answer; when I spake, they did not hear: but they did evil before mine eyes, and chose that in which I delighted not.” (Isaiah 66:3)

Contrariwise, Paul says of the Church of the last days, “But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.” (1st Thessalonians 5:4)

The ‘day’ to which Paul is referring is the day of the Rapture of the Church, a secret event that Jesus said would remain secret, because, “. . . if the goodman of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and not have suffered his house to be broken through.” (Luke 12:39)

Suppose that it became common knowledge that the Rapture was definitely going to take place on January 1, 2006.

Recall the ‘Millennium fever’ period just before the turn of the century. The lyrics to a popular song of the time makes my point;

“Two thousand, zero zero / party over / out of time / So tonight we’re gonna party like its 1999.”

That pretty much sums it up. If we knew when the Lord was coming back for sure, you can bet that the day before, there’d be a whole lotta repentin’ goin’ on.

But up until then . . . well, human nature is what it is. Christians are only human, after all.

“Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.” (Matthew 24:42)

Assessment:

In this generation, deception has taken on a new dimension. A lie isn’t a lie, it is ‘spin.’ Truth is relative — one man’s ‘truth’ is another man’s lie — it all depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is, and so forth.

I won’t dwell too much on it because I don’t want to continue beating a dead horse, but consider, for a moment, Senator Dick Durbin’s ‘apology’ for comparing US forces with the Nazis, the Khymer Rouge and the Soviets.

After saying on Friday that there wasn’t anything to apologize for and blaming the Republican ‘message machine’ for the uproar, the Senator finally caved in to pressure and issued an ‘apology’ in which he said that ‘if’ he offended anyone by his remarks, he was sorry.

It reminds me of a time when I was a police supervisor and one of the officers under my command called our local Texas Ranger a jerk. (That isn’t what he called him, but this is a Christian publication. Use your imagination)

The Ranger called me and demanded an apology. I called the officer involved and we met with the Ranger, whereupon my officer “apologized” by saying, “Brantley, I am sorry you’re a jerk.”

Durbin is a US Senator. If he said something that was true and it offended somebody, why apologize? On the other hand, if what he said wasn’t true, why didn’t he set the record straight by saying he was wrong?

It wasn’t an apology for disrespecting our military forces, it was an apology for offending some people by disrespecting them.

Something along the lines of, “I’m sorry our forces act like Nazis.”

Not that it would matter. al-Jazeera carried the Senator’s Nazi comments in full and repeated them over and over. They ignored his ‘apology’ leaving the Arab world with only his comparison of our forces to Nazis for them to dwell on as al-Qaeda recruits its next wave of suicide bombers. The damage was done.

But it was enough of an apology to satisfy his Senate colleagues and his voter base, who obviously agreed with him in the first place.

It raises an interesting question: if George Bush ‘lied’ when he made his case against Saddam using the only intelligence information available to him, did Dick Durbin ‘lie’ when he compared our forces to the murderers of tens of millions of innocents?

Or was Durbin lying when he said that the forces he compared to the Nazis, Soviets and Khymer Rouge were ‘deserving of our heartfelt admiration and respect’? Was his apology sincere? Or is he just sorry our forces are depraved?

No matter. The point is that truth in this generation is relative. And deception is perfectly acceptable, if you happen to like the deceiver.

It isn’t just America or Dick Durbin. al-Jazeera wants to believe America is evil, so they looped Durbin’s comparison and replayed it endlessly, but ignored his apology since they also prefer the deception.

The Israelis are being pressured to accept the lies offered by the Palestinians about a ‘truce’ and are castigated when Sharon refuses to give more ground until the terror attacks stop.

Palestinian terrorists fired at least 10 mortar shells and a Kassam rocket at Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip Monday. But it is the Palestinians who are being portrayed as having been betrayed — by Israel’s refusal to pull out under fire during what is euphemistically called a ‘truce’.

Iran is undeniably working feverishly to develop nuclear weapons while vigorously denying it to an EU more than willing to accept the deception rather than join forces with the United States to stop them.

The UN’s denial that it looted the Oil-For-Food fund to line the pockets of UN and other officials doesn’t even pass the laugh test. But officially, we pretend that the investigation is still ‘inconclusive’ — despite mountains of evidence.

All media now has a label. It is either ‘conservative’, like Fox News or the Washington Times, or it is ‘liberal’, like CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, the New York Times, etc.

But even more interesting is the fact that the public has a welcome choice. The choice? We get to pick which side we want lying to us. If you favor the Democratic spin, you watch CNN. If you want the Republican spin, you watch Fox News.

If you want to know what is REALLY going on, it takes considerable work. You have to watch both and carefully compare the two, sifting out fact from fiction, adding up what is left to see what common facts are shared between them.

If the facts favor the Republicans, those who prefer the Democrats call the fact reporter a Republican ‘shill’. If the facts favor the Democrats, the fact reporter is a Democratic ‘operative’.

Whether or not the facts themselves are true is irrelevant.

The Bible says that one day, someone will seize control of the spin machine and make it his own. It says that he will deceive a willing public only too happy to hear what they want to hear, even if it is obvious deception, because they WANT to believe it.

The Apostle Paul, writing of the events leading up to the revelation of the antichrist, told the church at Thessolonica;

“And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” (2nd Thessalonians 2:11-12)

This generation has been conditioned for the past fifty years to accept lies as truth, and to disparage truth as lies, if it tickles their ears and suits their bias.

One need only listen to Dick Durbin’s defenders to see that the conditioning process is complete. The world is ready to receive the master deceiver.

“For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only He who now letteth will let, until He be taken out of the way. And THEN shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming.”

The only thing standing in ‘that Wicked’s’ way is the Church. For now.

Closing Gitmo

Closing Gitmo
Vol: 45 Issue: 21 Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Former President Clinton has jumped on the appeasement bandwagon, adding his voice to those of other leading Democrats who, having smelt blood in the water, are now in a feeding frenzy over the terrorist detention facilities at Guant namo Bay.

Clinton joined critics at home and abroad who have singled out the indefinite detention of prisoners without trial and widespread reports of human rights violations at Guant namo. It is time that there are no more stories coming out of there about people being abused, he said.

According to Clinton, the camp needs to be either ‘closed down or cleaned up.’ Leaving aside for a moment the fact that allegations of human rights abuses are being lodged by the terrorists, and the fact that Pentagon investigations have uncovered no abuses more significant that failing to be sensitive in handling the Koran and physical abuse no more serious than that suffered by any American who survived Marine Corps boot camp, what sense does that make?

Which state within the continental US should be forced to accept and house five hundred of the most dangerous human beings on the planet? I’d be willing to bet that Dick Durbin would fight tooth and nail to keep an al-Qaeda detention facility out of Illinois, for example.

Bill Clinton may live in Chappequa, NY, but Hillary is the US Senator from New York. You can rest assured that she wouldn’t sit still for putting them in her district, either.

The Democrats are complaining that the United States isn’t affording terrorists the protections afforded under the Geneva Conventions. The Geneva Conventions require combatants to separate themselves from civilians by wearing distinctive uniforms and to avoid concentrating military forces around civilian population centers.

Each signatory nation signed on because in the event of war, the Geneva Conventions provide some measure of safety for their civilian populations, in addition to ensuring minimum standards of ethical treatment for prisoners of war. Each nation, by joining the Conventions, pledges itself to treating its prisoners as it would want its own captured forces to be treated.

It also provides for a benchmark standard against which violators can be prosecuted. If, in fact, we afforded them Geneva Conventions protections, we could theoretically convict every last one of them of violating them and then take ’em out and shoot ’em. How would THAT play out in the court of public opinion or the left side of the aisle?

Affording terrorists the protections and guarantees provided for by the Geneva Conventions makes a mockery of their intended purpose and would render them, to all intents and purposes, null and void.

Terrorists TARGET civilians. They hide themselves among civilians because under the terms of Geneva, signatory countries like the United States can’t attack them there.

They disguise themselves as civilians, launch attacks from within civilian population centers and make it as hard as possible to tell fighters from farmers. They do that, HOPING civilians will be inadvertently killed, handing a propaganda victory to the terrorist side.

They take civilians as prisoners, use them as hostages or bargaining chips and then, after they have outlived their usefulness as living prisoners, squeeze the last drop of publicity out by brutally murdering them on camera.

The Democratic line is that by NOT extending the guarantees of Geneva to al-Qaeda prisoners puts out own forces at risk. That doesn’t even pass the laugh test. Is there a greater risk than being tied up, blindfolded and decapitated with a rusty knife?

I refuse to believe that the entire Democratic political machine is made up of folks that stupid, which only leaves the alternative explanation that they know the truth and prefer the lie.

Affording the protections and guarantees of the Geneva Conventions to terrorists means that, in a legitimate war, an enemy state can ignore them without fear of having their own prisoners held by our side mistreated in return — effectively removing any incentive to comply with them.

Extending Geneva to terrorists puts out own forces at even greater risk, not just in this conflict, but in future conflicts in which Geneva might be applicable. They know that. They KNOW that. But they don’t care.

The Republicans have botched a lot of things during this war . . . but wait! Is this a REPUBLICAN war? Were the 9/11 victims all Republicans? Did al-Qaeda declare war on Republicans? Were Democrats exempted somehow?

Is there a Republican America and a Democratic America? Are those Democrats in the House and Senate all high-school graduates? Because if they were smart enough to graduate from high school, they are smart enough to figure this out on their own.

Clinton said Gitmo should be closed down or cleaned up because, It is time that there are no more stories coming out of there about people being abused.”

What kind of stories about abuse? Stories like the one Newsweek ran about flushing Korans down a toilet? Stories that are not only unsubstantiated by background but clearly impossible in practice?

Stories like the one read by Dick Durban on the Senate floor, gleaned from confidential FBI reports? Gee, how did THAT story get into the press? The point is, they KNOW better. I can’t repeat that often enough.

It isn’t a defense of the Republicans to say that the Democrats are deliberately and actively working against the best interests of a nation at war in order to gain a political advantage.

Despite what the partisans say, it IS possible to oppose the Democrats without it being an endorsement of the Republicans. To tell you the truth, I have no idea how the Republicans would handle the war. They don’t have time — they are too busy fighting their own political counterparts to properly prosecute a war elsewhere.

That isn’t a defense of the Republicans, it is an indictment against the treasonous conduct of their political opponents. I don’t know if I would approve of the Republican warfighting agenda, but at this point, I’d be in favor of ANY agenda.

Right now, we don’t have one.

Four years into the war, the Democrats continue to insist that enemy combatants be treated like American criminals. An American walked into a Seattle courthouse yesterday carrying what looked like a WWII grenade. The cops shot him dead. Isn’t that what our forces are doing on the battlefields?

I fail to see the logic. What is the point in craving power so badly that one is willing to risk destroying the country in the process? What point is power then?

The leftist quislings in the House and Senate are demanding that the administration charge the detainees with a crime or let them go. Give them lawyers and hold long, drawn out trials under the due process guarantees of the US Constitution.

Let’s look at the first three words of our foundational documents; “We, the People”. Which people? The people of the world? Who are the terrorists killing? We, the People. Who is the Constitution designed to protect? We, the People OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

It isn’t Guantanamo Bay that is hurting the US image abroad. It is the coverage of it. Closing the prison won’t accomplish anything beyond giving the terrorists another propaganda victory. The purpose of terror is to force a government to appease them in order to make it stop.

The problem is, appeasement is like paying a blackmailer. Once you pay him once, he doesn’t go away. He is emboldened by his success to demand more and more.

A case in point is Israel. Israel caved in to Palestinian terror in 1993 and signed a deal that would give the Palestinian Authority limited autonomy in certain cities in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Oslo agreement gave the PA the authority to run their own municipal services in Jericho, at first. Municipal services means garbage collection, education, police services, etc.

The document Arafat signed expressly excluded any Palestinian presence in Jerusalem. Arafat signed it, knowing that, once Israel paid off once, he could keep coming back to demanding more. Appeasement cost Israel its claim to all of the West Bank, Gaza and half of Jerusalem.

Since the signing of Oslo, terror hasn’t abated, it has intensified. And there is no end in sight.

Assessment:

The Democrats are demanding the United States appease our enemies. Not because they think that the administration will, but because they are betting the administration won’t. That provides them with more ammunition with which to attack them.

The problem with attacking them is that it forces the administration to defend itself from attacks from within at the expense of defending the country from attacks from outside. To date, if there is a single positive plan that the Democrats have, they’ve kept it a state secret.

Close Gitmo? Then what? No answer. Extend Geneva protections to terrorists? Why? I dunno. Withdraw our troops from Iraq? What happens to the terrorists now fighting there after we pull out? Beats me. What would you do differently if you WERE in power? Ummm, don’t know.

Meanwhile, they know what the Republicans would do if they closed Gitmo, extended Geneva to terrorists, withdrew from Iraq and brought our troops back home.

They would be standing in front of a podium, fumbling for an explanation for why the homeland suffered another terrorist attack.

Then the Democrats could campaign on the GOP’s inability to protect the homeland. The Americans killed would be nothing more than collateral damage that they could use to blame the Republicans.

Not people. Not Americans. Not members of somebody’s family. Political ammunition.

The answer isn’t to censor the free press. They are merely parroting the Democratic line. If the Democratic agenda were to protect the homeland, then that would be the press agenda as well. The free press operates based on the principles of capitalism.

If there were no market for stories about an evil American administration abusing the Koran, there would be no stories. If nobody bought Newsweek because it of its blatant anti-Americanism, it would either change its editorial policies or go out of business.

The free press is free because it gets paid by the public, not the government. The idea of an ‘independent’ press is spin.

They are dependent on their audience for revenue. And that audience has been so poisoned by leftist propaganda that they can’t tell the difference anymore.

To most Americans, our senior elected politicians have credibility by virtue of their high office alone. Dick Durbin’s seditious remarks made the international press because he is a United States Senator. Al-Jazeera wouldn’t be repeating the story day after day if they had been made by a Chicago councilman.

His remarks wouldn’t resonate throughout the Arab world the way they did if they had been made by Osama bin Laden.

Title 18 of the US Code defines ‘treason’ as follows: “Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death.”

Under the legal definition of treason, there are grounds to indict virtually the entire Democratic leadership of the United States of America and most of the allegedly ‘free press’.

It is impossible for me to believe that the Democrats aren’t aware of the detrimental effect of their activities on the war effort.

It is a deliberate political strategy aimed at defeating the GOP at the polls, by actively working towards US defeat on the battlefield and the destruction of public morale.

It is no defense of the Republicans to say the Democrats are the embodiment of the US Codes’ definition of treason. Their conduct would be treasonous regardless of political affiliation.

The fact that there are those who would defend such conduct is incomprehensible, yet there they are, millions of Democrats, all actively working against the administration as if it were a foreign occupation government.

No lie is too egregious to accept at face value. No charge is too outrageous to be repeated. Anyone who speaks positively about America is denounced as an ‘administration flack’ or a ‘Republican shill’, or even a ‘warmonger’ — as if this were a war started by the Republican Party. Or that wanting to win so that it will end is somehow partisan.

This is not an exaggeration of our situation, neither is it an overstatement of our peril.

“Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof:” (2nd Timothy 3:3-4)

Those of us who live in America know what America is. It is us. All of us. Our friends, our neighbors, our family, our friends.

Do you know anyone that would be capable of torturing a helpless captive? Can you think of anyone you know personally that is deserving of the kind of international contempt heaped on all of us collectively?

Do you know anybody personally who resembles the popular image of a brutal, uncaring, human rights abusing America as is held from abroad?

Where are they all? In Afghanistan? Iraq? Washington? How come they don’t live on your street? Is there another America hiding somewhere under the bed?

Is it a defense of the Republicans to believe the America you know is better than the America you keep reading about or hearing about from quislings like Dick Durbin, Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid?

Listen to the rhetoric carefully and dispassionately and see if you can find ANYTHING positive about America emanating from the Left. Anything at all? Just one thing. I’ll wait. . . .

Anybody?

Turned Unto Fables. . .

Turned Unto Fables. . .
Vol: 45 Issue: 20 Monday, June 20, 2005

I am not sure exactly what I expected, all those years ago when I discovered that I was part of the generation that would witness the events outlined in Scripture for the last days.

Although I believed the Scriptures, I could never get my head around how such things could happen. I could not imagine a scenario in which somebody like the antichrist could deceive the whole world, even though Paul indicated that the ‘strong delusion’ of 1st Thessalonians 2:11 is sent by God Himself, so that the whole world would believe a lie.

I’ve often considered this passage, and particularly its context:

“And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.” (2:10)

‘Received not the LOVE of the truth’ was particularly troublesome, from my perspective as it existed some thirty-odd years ago. At the time, the United States was in total meltdown over what, at the time, I thought was an example of how righteous Americans DID love the truth.

The President of the United States had just been forced to resign over a lie. Righteous indignation was the order of the day. The causes for the war in Vietnam were based in a lie, first foisted on the public by John Kennedy, expanded and refined by LBJ and finally exposed for what it was by the ineptitude of Nixon and his men.

Watergate exposed the fact that the entire Executive Branch, the president himself, the majority of his cabinet and most of his advisors were liars and crooks.

Upon taking his oath of office, incoming President Gerald Ford’s incoming remark, “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over,” was a testimony to just how shaken Americans were by years of scandal and war.

Of course, that was how I saw things from my vantage point in history. I couldn’t imagine how, having seen the love of the truth bring down an entire administration, Americans could be deluded enough to embrace someone like the antichrist.

Of course, it wasn’t the love of the truth that brought down the Nixon administration, but I thought at the time that is what it was.

My father loved the truth. Most of his generation did. They were veterans of a war in which truth and lies were defined in stark terms. Hitler’s lies were responsible for the deaths of multiple millions — it seemed unconscionable that anybody would ever willingly embrace such transparent liars again, having seen where they led the world.

Thirty years later, things are clearer to me. Over the years, the distinction between truth and lies blurred until they became a distinction without a difference. Truth became what people wanted to believe, facts notwithstanding. Now, as we teeter on the precipice of the Tribulation Period, what seemed impossible thirty years ago is not only possible, it is clearly inevitable.

Assessment:

My email this weekend was staggering in terms of both its volume and its content. Most of it was about my assessment about Dick Durbin’s comparison of the United States to the most brutal dictatorships in history and his contention that detainees at Gitmo Bay are routinely tortured.

Most of it was in support of Dick Durbin. Almost all of them lectured me about my lack of Christian love because I didn’t agree that what Durbin quoted from that FBI memo constituted ‘torture’.

It was all pretty condescending stuff — one guy wrote and asked me if I’ve ever ‘truly suffered’ the way that the Gitmo detainees were made to suffer. You know, being left in an air-conditioned room turned way down one day, and then turning off the a/c the next, forced to endure loud rap music, etc.

I pointed out that every Marine who ever graduated from boot camp survived sleep deprivation, extremes of hot and cold, been exercised to the point of exhaustion, forced to run long distances, crawl through mud, exposed to CS gas, etc., and that if we were ‘torturing’ our enemies, it wasn’t nearly as bad as the torture we inflict on our own troops.

My correspondent, seemingly oblivious to reality, shot back, “Yeah, but they volunteered,” as if volunteering to serve one’s country is more deserving of harsh treatment than dedicating oneself to the murder of innocents.

One guy wrote to tell me that I took Durbin’s comments out of context, and “I have his quotes and your quotes to prove it.” I replied with the quotes I used and a link to Durbin’s actual statement and his reply was, “You’re playing with the words.. Yes you quoted Durbin . . .” and then went right on accusing me of embellishing them anyway.

Another opened, “Sir, Senator Durbin was right.” This particular correspondent, like most of them, took the high moral ground, reinventing Jesus to fit his argument, claiming I proved that “those who profess Christianity are in fact, the least Christian among us” before making personal observations about me that proved, to me, at least, that he was right.

(If Christianity is love and my correspondent embodies Christianity, then I sure hope I am not ‘his’ kind of Christian.)

The point isn’t that the messages were nasty, although that pretty much characterizes them. The point is how easily people will embrace deception, and how nasty they can get when that deception is exposed.

All of them began with the same tired talking points about how we should get out of Iraq because we invaded Iraq based on a lie.

Of course, that lie is that George Bush, uniquely among the world’s leaders, knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Saddam did not possess weapons of mass destruction and, knowing that fact, invaded Iraq and killed, (according to one missive) ‘hundreds of thousands’ of ‘innocent’ Iraqis for nefarious purposes of his own.

Pointing out that it was impossible for Bush to know conclusively what the rest of the world, from the UN to the combined intelligence gathering apparatus of the world’s leading nations, did not, was an exercise in futility. Not a single correspondent to whom I replied could explain to me how Bush knew, just that he did.

(Well, with one exception. The idiot who thought that volunteering for military service made one more deserving of ‘torture’ than plotting to kill American civilians did said that the French told him. Can you imagine Bush being so stupid that he didn’t believe the French?)

To lie, one must know the truth. Or so it would seem. All of my correspondents (I think somebody must have forwarded my column to DNC headquarters or something) framed their criticisms in terms of Christian principles, (they were Christians and I am not) before going on to explain what a liar Bush is, and what a liar I am because I can’t figure out how he lied.

Like I said, I always wondered how it was that the antichrist would be able to deceive the whole world into believing a lie. Here we have a United States senator accusing US forces of being no better than Nazi concentration camp guards, and my email box is filled with emails from Americans defending him.

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” (2nd Timothy 4:3-4)

It grows increasingly obvious that time is already here.