Two Contrasting Personalities

I have been reading two biographical accounts of two very contrasting people. One of the people is George Whitefield, the great evangelist of the 18th Century. The other is the account of Clyde Smaldone, a gangster and mob boss in Denver in the 1930’s.
Whitefield went around the English and the American colonial landscape preaching the justification of believers by God caused by his grace alone through faith alone and requiring the new birth spoken of by Jesus in John chapter 3. Whitefield’s sermons were most often greeted by the mass response of repentance and faith on the part of his hearers, who seemed to be receiving this information for the very first time. They were astounded when they heard of how magnificent was the grace of God, and this understanding changed their lives. We call this period and this activity the Great Awakening.
Today and in Evangelical churches throughout the world, this concept promulgated by Whitefield is common knowledge. It is interesting that these basic principles of Bible teaching are not resulting in the huge crowds and the aroused public that were noted in the 18th Century. It makes one wonder if this message has become stale or if God has just not ordained another awakening of spiritual fervor that He obviously poured forth in previous times.
Whatever the cause of the apparent lack of public enthusiasm, those who have heard and believed should always be thankful that this mark of mature Christianity has been granted to them. God is good and freely grants the pearls of His message to those whom He designates.
The other personality about whom I have been reading is Clyde Smaldone, the titular head of the Denver mob from the 1930’s until he retired in the 1960’s. The Smaldones and their associates ran bootlegging operations during prohibition, and subsequently drug dealing and extortion of “protection” money from legitimate Denver and Pueblo businesses. Their work involved many gangland murders—between 1919 and 1933, there were more than 33 gang-related murders in these two cities. These killings took the lives of 4 law-enforcement officers.
What we need in this life is more George Whitefields and no Clyde Smaldones.

First Amendment Rights and the Non-Profit Organization

For the past two decades under federal laws like the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, right-to-life organizations, pro-marriage groups and even unions and corporations were prohibited from airing political ads mentioning candidates within 60 days of an election.

Now, thanks to a new Supreme Court decision, the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, these laws have been struck down; and non-profit organizations and corporations are now able to campaign like private citizens. This is a huge breath of fresh air for those of us who would like to exercise our collective rights to free speech along with the corporate giants like the media corporations which were always free to voice their opinions and influence election outcomes. Those bad laws placed an undue burden on citizens taking part in the political process.

Organizations like Focus On the Family Action and Family Research Council Action will benefit from this good decision.

For my part, I am glad to see, finally, the Supreme Court giving support to core political speech rather than the usual support it has given to pornography, the transmission of stolen information, flag burning, topless dancing, and the burning of a cross outside an African-American church.

Of course, liberals are inflamed at the Court’s ruling. They do not want organizations outside their areas of endorsement getting a shot at free speech. President Obama and power brokers in Congress are already looking for ways to limit corporate and non-profit organization expenditures on elections. Representative Barney Frank is speaking of using securities regulation to hamstring corporations that dare to speak.

There are bills in Congress and the Senate that would give very unfair advantage in campaign finance to incumbents, namely, the “Fair Elections Now Act.” (S 752 and HR 1826) These bills would provide money for Legislative Department campaigns gleaned from Federal monies. Incumbents would have much easier access to these funds than challengers would. I think this bill should be titled the “incumbent reelection funding bill.”

You can support the Supreme Court’s decision by writing to your Congressman and to President Obama stating your support and asking them to kill S 752 and HR 1826.

Liberty and Tyranny

“We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name—liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different an incompatible names—liberty and tyranny.” Abraham Lincoln 1864.

So…we see that two persons, both looking at the same phenomenon, may see it entirely differently—depending upon the perspective each brings to the situation. As for me, however, I accept the first definition given by President Lincoln. I believe that liberty is the freedom to do whatever one wishes with one’s self and one’s produce—so long as it does not impinge upon the freedom of others, of course.

Is the President Keeping His Promises? NO!

Americans cannot trust President Obama to keep his promises. For instance, he promised more government transparency in making legislation when he promised that any negotiations on health care would be broadcast on C-SPAN, “so the American people can see what the choices are,” and not conducted behind closed doors. “Such public negotiations,” he said, were “the antidote “to “overcoming the special interests and the lobbyists who…will resist anything that we try to do.” He made this promise eight different times, indicating that this was not an idle whim. He had thought this promise through in a thoroughgoing way. But what do we see now? Closed session legislative planning that excludes his political opposition and hides the issues from the American public. We see no formal legislative conference between the House and the Senate on this issue.

His style is clearly seen to be backroom legislative drafting to keep the negotiating away from the American people. Where is the “transparency” he promised our people?

Sex Infections Still Spreading in the U.S.

The United States is among western countries with the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases, says John Douglas, director of the division of STD’s at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

Chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis are three highly treatable infections that show continued spread in the U.S. Gonorrhea is stable at unacceptably high levels while Chlamydia is on the increase. Syphilis is resurgent after almost being eliminated.

Objective findings:
 1.2 million cases of Chlamydia were reported in 2008, up from 1.1 million in 2007
 Nearly 337,000 cases of gonorrhea were reported.
 Adolescent girls 15 to 19 had the most Chlamydia and gonorrhea cases of any age group at 409,531.
 Blacks, who represent 12% of the U.S. population, accounted for 71% of reported gonorrhea cases and almost half of all Chlamydia and syphilis cases in 2008.
 Black women 15 to 19 had the highest rates of Chlamydia and gonorrhea.
 13,500 syphilis cases were reported in 2008, an almost 18% increase from 2007.
 63 % of syphilis cases were among men who have sex with men.
 Syphilis rates among women increased 36% from 2007 to 2008.

Overall, the CDC estimates that 19 million new STD’s are transmitted each year, almost half among 15-24 year-olds.

The only effective answer to this epidemic is abstinence from sex outside of a bona fide marriage to a monogamous partner. Condoms partially prevent STD spread.

Obama—Timid on Foreign Policy

President Obama’s policies have been made crystal clear in the past year, i.e., intrusive regulatory government at home and retrenchment abroad. He does not seem to realize that we have many powerful enemies “out there” in the foreign world, enemies with whom we could deal effectively to the benefit of the whole free world.

He has withdrawn from our task of protecting our allies, e.g., Poland and the Czech Republic when he withdrew the missile shield from Eastern Europe. He was forever dragging his feet when it came to sending adequate troops to Afghanistan to get the job done there. He has failed to even rhetorically support the democrats in Iran who badly need his endorsement to throw off a tyrannical regime. He even continues to court the cooperation of the Ahmadinijad government in thinking seriously of sending a John Kerry delegation to that country to continue the useless talks with the present government of Iran, begging them to give up their nuclear ambitions. He has tried to get the Israelis to attempt another useless gesture to trade land for peace with the Palestinians on the west bank of the Jordan River when he asked the Israelis to quit building villages there.

In all this, he has stepped away from the policies of protecting America, which were clearly supported by other Democrat presidents in the past, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Harry Truman, and John Kennedy.

Under Mr. Obama, we have pulled back from the foreign world. We are weaker for accepting the false choice between burdens at home and burdens abroad; and the world beyond our shores is more hazardous and cynical for our retrenchment and preoccupation with health care at home and other domestic problems.

Let’s try to get our government back from the liberal “blame America first” crowd in the 2010 elections.
This post was partly excerpted from The Wall Street Journal 12/31/09 page A13.

The Threat of Postmodernism

Academics and other astute observers seem to agree--the modern era of society has ended. A new era of thought has emerged, i.e., postmodernism. This new thought dominator says that there is no such thing as truth, meaning (even in written literature), and individual identity. These are social constructs. Human life has no special significance, no more value than animal or plant life. All social relationships, all institutions, all moral values are expressions and masks of the primal will to power. Convulsed over "political correctness" and "diversity," universities no longer operate under the modernist assumption that one, objective, rational, truth, exists.

The old system, carried to its natural extreme, i.e., the society of the USSR, has collapsed. Their system based on materialism, atheism, and social engineering did not work to the advantage of people. Traditional American ideals of free market economics and individual freedom are sweeping the globe.

However, society is segmenting into antagonistic camps. Tribalism, terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and culture wars are tearing the globe apart.

Despite all the fracturing of society we see before us, we should still remember that in every age, orthodox Christians have had a presence; and this new age will always have us around reminding the world that Christ and the Bible still exist to point the way to truth, unity of belief and causation, redemption from our sin and error, and eternal significance for the individual. We, Christians, must use these days to effectively express our understanding of Christ and His ways--He is the only way to help and life!