Crusader War College

No Muslim Outrage

http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=303929&D=2010-08-22&SO=&HC=4

The link is to an article posted at Rantburg. I found comment #4 particularly enlightening, and I plan to use its observations in the future:

#4 * Muslims fly commercial airliners into buildings in New York City. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslim officials block the exit where school girls are trying to escape a burning building because their faces were exposed. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims cut off the heads of three teenaged girls on their way to school in Indonesia. A Christian school. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims murder teachers trying to teach Muslim children in Iraq. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims murder over 80 tourists with car bombs outside cafes and hotels in Egypt. No Muslim outrage.
* A Muslim attacks a missionary children's school in India. Kills six. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims slaughter hundreds of children and teachers in Beslan, Russia. Muslims shoot children in the back. No Muslim outrage.
* Let's go way back. Muslims kidnap and kill athletes at the Munich Summer Olympics. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims fire rocket-propelled grenades into schools full of children in Israel. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims murder more than 50 commuters in attacks on London subways and busses. Over 700 are injured. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims massacre dozens of innocents at a Passover Seder. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims murder innocent vacationers in Bali. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslim newspapers publish anti-Semitic cartoons. No Muslim outrage
* Muslims are involved, on one side or the other, in almost every one of the 125+ shooting wars around the world. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims beat the charred bodies of Western civilians with their shoes, then hang them from a bridge. No Muslim outrage.

Dead children. Dead tourists. Dead teachers. Dead doctors and nurses. Death, destruction and mayhem around the world at the hands of Muslims .. no Muslim outrage.

Bankrupting a Nation

http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerkimball/2010/07/26/how-to-bankrupt-a-country/?singlepage=true

Roger Kimball at Pajamas Media makes the following comment on the "generosity" of President Obama's "spreading the wealth" that equally applies to Christians who support him based on "its what Jesus would do":

How long before people wake up to that fact that you are only incidentally interested in battling the deficit — sure, it would be nice, but how much more important to you is “spreading the wealth around”? That’s what, in an unguarded, an unscripted moment, you told Joe the Plumber. What was perhaps insufficiently appreciated at the time is the fact that there are two sides to “spreading the wealth around.” There is the open hand that distributes largess (while at the same time fostering dependence and accumulating chits for favors done). And then there is the clenched hand that fleeces other people for the money you require to make the redistribution work. On the one hand there are favors done, loyalties incurred; on the other, there are penalties exacted. I am not sure we have instruments fine enough to determine which is more gratifying to the political class of which you are so ostentatious a member.
(Hattip tipper at Rantburg)

"incapable of independent thinking"

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2414.htm

In an interview last month on Al-Arabiya TV, former Saudi Shura Council member Ibrahim Al-Buleihi said that Arab individualism has been erased, rendering the Arab "incapable of independent thinking," and that what prevails is "the spirit of the herd that cannot free itself from the captivity of the prevailing culture."

In the interview, which aired on February 26, 2010, Al-Buleihi sang the praises of Western civilization, saying that notions such as human rights are not "an accumulated achievement, in which all societies played a role, but an achievement of the West." Arab societies "should benefit from this rich experience," rather than remaining "a burden on the West."

The transcript is here.

Good comments at Belmont Club

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/03/21/both-sides-would-do-well-to-remember-the-dignity-of-the-house/

While I believe the loss of freedom in the health care "reform" bill makes it intolerable, I continue to work on my project that has dictated this web site's hiatus, which promises to radically change the game.

Following the money in the Climate Racket

http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=290552

Thanks to tipper at Rantburg.

It's BURNING, not HANGING people!!!

http://www.drudge.com/news/128640/obama-hung-effigy-plains-georgia

Burning in effigy is a long cherished tradition in America since the Revolution. Hanging in effigy is a different matter.

If you don't want to burn in effigy, get a big fish tank, put a sign over it, and pour ash into the tank....
[...] Read more!

Disproving man-caused global warming

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykgg9m-7FK4

"An Orchestrated Litany of Lies"

http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=312&Itemid=1

Ouch.

That's gotta hurt!

Government by Wishful Thinking

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/12/06/government-by-wishful-thinking/

Another masterful piece by Steven den Beste.
[...] Read more!

What the Arabs Did with the Zero

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/2063.htm

Like, WOW!

Transcript here.

Hattip GolfBravoUSMC via Rantburg.

Remember!

I pause to remember those who perished in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon 8 years ago today. We should note that the main battlefield of the war, of which the 9/11 actions were homefront attacks, has re-shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan, where our forces continue to fight against those who sheltered our attackers and refused to hand them over to justice. We must continue to press for the certainty that they not return to power, support our troops, give them what they require to finish the job, and settle for nothing less than victory.

Perils of an Open Society

Mere dissent is not in itself virtuous.

Dissent is disagreement with someone else.

If the other is mistaken, then dissent may be right, or it may be wrong.

HOWEVER, if the other is right, then dissent is wrong.

Here is the kicker: A society that tolerates, nay welcomes, dissent, does so to do the right thing. It does so to discover the truth. However, such a society is also open to manipulation by liars posing as dissenters. To blindly accept any dissent as the truth is as bad as blindly denying any dissent as evil. We must "examine all things, hold fast to that which is true."

One of the core sins of Neo-marxist liberalism is sloth: they establish superficial rules and methods to designate "truth tellers" because they are too lazy to follow the more reliable, but much harder to apply, rules to determine truth. They would much rather declare the tree good than face the task of determining if the fruit is good and letting that determine the goodness or badness of the tree. Since their internal goal is to please themselves rather than discover and obey the truth, they resort to hypocrisy in the application of their own rules when the inevitable consequences work out to their displeasure.

"Its for the children!"===>Human Shields

http://www.biblestudytools.com/OnlineStudyBible/bible.cgi?word=Exodus+20%3A4-6&section=0&version=kjv

A lot of people cling to the belief that God is inherently unfair and not good given the following threat from Exodus 20:

4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: 5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; 6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

It is, of course, ignored that the punishment of the fathers falls on the children to the third and fourth generation, while mercy is shown to thousands of generations that love him.

This threat is repeated in Exodus 34:7, with some clarification that is often ignored deliberately:

5 And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. 6 And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, 7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. (Ex. 34:5-7)

What is the purpose of these threats? The first thing to recognize is that these indeed are threats, but they are plainly directed to the descendants of the guilty. Secondly, it should be recognized that, in those days, it was customary for marriages to be very early and with the goal of having children as soon as possible. Thus, it was very much possible for the guilty one who worshipped idols to see their great grand children (the fourth generation).

I believe the way to look at these verses is to realize that when religious men and women knowingly commit evil, they will justify the sin or the attempt to manage the consequences of their sin by a seeming "selfless" appeal. "It's for the children!" is the cry being given today for government mandated health care, one world government, pacifism, abortion, environmentalism, the war on terrorism, and destruction of the economy in the name of controlling "man originated global warming". "Certainly what we are doing is not good right now," they say, "but it is okay because I am not doing it for myself, but for those who will come after me." It is said that the wealthy tend to look 100 years down the line while the poor don't look past the next paycheck. Thus, this threat is directed to those who claim to have a "long term vision" that mandates their "evil" actions today in the name of averting some future threat or gaining some future benefit.

Whether this is what they honestly believe or is merely a pretext is irrelevant: the intent is to disarm opponents that would keep them from performing those actions or who would punish them as part of a process to derail what they set into motion. In a sense, these people are employing virtual human shields. Like cowardly terrorists who flee to civilian areas knowing that Western forces will not chase them down if there is a good chance of civilian casualties resulting from it, these appeal to the threat to current children or children not yet born that would result from executing justice on them and undoing their acts.

What must be kept in mind when dealing with such people is that such behavior is calculated. That is, they have not only meticulously planned out what they were going to do, but engaged in a cost/benefit calculation that was used to come up with contingency plans to mitigate the costs: "IT'S FOR THE CHILDREN" is the implementation of a contingency plan born of a mitigation strategy. The argument against government intrusion into economic affairs is based on the fact that government aid and restrictions affect the cost/benefit analysis, and thus affects the actions of those making those calculations.

What is God doing in these passages? He is acting to counter-mitigate this argument! "If you truly CARED for future generations, know that what I am requiring will truly benefit thousands of future generations if you obey my commandments today. Thus, because those future generations are what you purport to value, I will not only threaten them for what you do, but I will make sure that that punishment falls on the generations that you do see."

That God takes into account the perverse calculations of the human heart is seen when this commandment is seemingly reversed in Ezekiel 18. In that chapter, the parents believe that these verses imply that the children totally bear the parents sins, while beliving that they are suffering the consequences of the sins of their parents. Rather than repent and count on the Lord's word that he would have mercy on thousands of generations that love and obey him, they decide that the best way to mitigate the pain they are suffering is to indulge the sins of pleasure, reasoning that the pain from THOSE sins will be shifted off of them to their children. It is even more perverse behavior if their fathers were righteous so the suffering they are enduring is due to the natural consequences of the sins of their neighbors splashing over onto them because they didn't want to "rock the boat" or "cause trouble" by holding their sinning neighbors to account: Rather than execute true justice on the ones causing corporate suffering, they start this inter-generational pissing contest by their sins. God "messes" things up by negating the inter-generational threat and declares he would judge people by what they do, rather than what their fathers did.

Those who complain about God's justice should note Ezekiel 18:25-29:

25 Yet ye say, The way of the Lord is not equal. Hear now, O house of Israel; Is not my way equal? are not your ways unequal? 26 When a righteous man turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, and dieth in them; for his iniquity that he hath done shall he die. 27 Again, when the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive. 28 Because he considereth, and turneth away from all his transgressions that he hath committed, he shall surely live, he shall not die. 29 Yet saith the house of Israel, The way of the Lord is not equal. O house of Israel, are not my ways equal? are not your ways unequal?

We may laugh today at what we see as the obvious perversity of that generation who complained of God's ways "not being equal" when it was obvious that "their ways were unequal"! In the same way, future generations will look back at the fools of our day and laugh at them for their belief that God would be blamed for their use of human shields! Men's moralities may not change as often as the spring clothing styles, but change they do. God's morality never changes and is always beneficial, regardless of the time or the foolish beliefs of men.

Reformed Arminianism

http://evangelicalarminians.org/

Wow.

Like WOW.

THAT is who I REALLY am.

THAT is what I REALLY BELIEVE.

And THERE ARE OTHERS who believe as I do!

I once joked that I was a Pentecostal Free-will Baptist, but I had no idea that what I thought was "off-the-wall" was actually held by others.

Like WOW.

Thanks be to God!!!!

[The Jansenists were seen as calvinists because they held to total depravity. So does Reformed Arminianism.]

How to "Immanentize the Eschaton"

http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2009/0706.html

An extremely good article by J. R. Nyquist on the unintended consequences of men deciding they can create Utopia on earth, and who thus feel themselves free from any restrictions because the utter blessedness of the ends must surely justify the means.

However, this set of quotes Mr. Nyquist cites from David Ignatius' "Agents of Innocence", says exactly what I have been trying to articulate:

There is a passage from a novel by David Ignatius about Middle East espionage, titled Agents of Innocence. It expresses the damning verdict of an Arab who had been working for the Americans. At first he thought the Americans had the toughness to persevere. He thought they were “cynical enough” to liberate the Arab world (and t hereby do something good).

The disillusioned Arab wrote to his handlers: “I was wrong. Americans are not hard men. Even the CIA has a soft heart. You want so much to achieve good and make the world better, but you do not have the stomach for it. And you do not know your limitations. You are innocence itself. You are the agents of innocence. That is why you make so much mischief.”

The great teaching of David Ignatius may be condensed, as follows: Men who are not sufficiently cynical, who are soft-hearted, who do not have the stomach for what they propose, cannot do anything good. If you want to level nations and kill millions of men, adopt a Utopian foreign policy. Ignatius’s Arab tells his American handlers, “You convince people to put aside their old customs and allegiances and to break the bonds that hold the country together. With your money and your schools and your cigarettes and music, you convince us that we can be like you. But we can’t. And when the real trouble begins, you are gone. And you leave your friends, the ones who trusted you, to die.”

There is, indeed, a millenarian spirit at work. This spirit now contaminates American domestic policy as well as military policy. “You urge us to open up the windows of heaven,” wrote Ignatius’s Arab. “But you do not realize that the downpour will come rushing through and drown us all.”

Exactly. In an imperfect and evil world, doing real good takes real effort. Sometimes, to do real good means doing what a fake good would call evil.