Shari'ah In Action

Make no mistake: those who opt for cultural relativism will have their asses handed to them by the Islamists.

h/t to Act For America (Brigitte Gabriel)



Here's Stuck Mojo' s response to Shari'ah:

I'm American

"If people can fend for themselves, they won't trade their rights for the illusion of security. After all, how can a politician show compassion for victims if people refuse to be victimized?"

"Land For Peace?" Ha Ha......

The fatal glitch with 'land for peace'

George Jonas, National Post
Published: Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Listen up, world. America and Israel have their marching orders from Jordan.

King Abdullah told the media last week that Barack Obama has a peace plan for the Middle East that he'll put on the table when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu comes to visit later in May. At least, the U. S. President had better do so, King Abdullah warned, and the Israeli Prime Minister had better go along with it --or else.

"If there is procrastination by Israel on the two-state solution," Jordan's anointed told The Times of London, "or there is no clear American vision for how this is going to play out in 2009, then all the tremendous credibility that Obama has worldwide and in this region will evaporate overnight if nothing comes out in May."

Well, yes, the rate of evaporation is high in the Middle East. Under Levantine skies "tremendous credibility" can "evaporate overnight." No wonder the good Lord could part the Red Sea on the first try.

What's the deal? Is Mr. Obama using Jordan's ruler to float a trial balloon before Mr. Netanyahu arrives in Washington, or is the ingenious King using the Rose Garden from which to launch his own trial balloon? No one's sure, but the smart money says it's wily Mr. Obama dipping his toes in the water.

"Come on in, the water is lovely!"

But is it? The peace plan, as outlined by King Abdullah, would entail the gradual recognition of Israel by 57 Arab and/or Muslim countries, in return for Israel's gradual withdrawal to its pre-1967 borders. It sounds reasonable, except for three things.

One, 57 Arab/Muslim countries are 56 too many. They aren't likely to agree with each other on the time of day, let alone the recognition of Israel. Is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad going to recognize Israel? And if only one nuclear ayatollah doesn't, what does it matter who does?

Two, His Majesty's description of the peace-for-land computer game even in this Microbama update sounds suspiciously like the software of Bush Senior's "Madrid" or Bill Clinton's "Oslo" or the hapless Dubya's "Road Map." ("Road map to what," a wag asked at the time, "the scene of the accident?") The concept has been a historic failure, not because Israel wouldn't dole out land for peace -- it has, to all comers, sometimes unasked -- but because the Arab/Muslim side won't dole out peace for land.

Three, the Middle East conflict has zip all to do with Israel's 1967 borders. It has to do with Israel's 1948 borders. Had Israel's Arab/Muslim neighbours accepted Israel's 1948 borders, there would be no 1967 borders to dispute today.

The devil may be in the details in the Middle East as much as anywhere else, except no one gets that far because Beelzebub intercepts negotiators in the fundamentals. Long before some Norwegian idealist's starry-eyed peace plan runs aground on whether El Al may enter Arab airspace on a scheduled flight, negotiators have to deal with the law of return or the status of Jerusalem. Odds, anyone?

To think that peace in the Middle East is ripe for the plucking requires a kind of naivete one cannot readily associate with anyone savvy enough to get himself elected to the presidency of the United States. It's certainly difficult to associate it with Obama. And if someone who isn't naive proposes something that only a naive person would propose, chances are that he is -- well, what kind of a person is he?

Do I see someone raise his hand? Yes, sir, you in the blue shirt. Why, a cynical person, that's right. Thank you.

It takes a cynical person to adopt a naive person's proposal, take credit for the goodwill, then blame the inevitable failure on the side he wishes to betray or abandon. Which, I suggest, is precisely what Obama is planning to do.

The irony of King Abdullah lecturing Israel on a two-state solution isn't lost on anyone who remembers that the Hashemite Kingdom occupies about 80% of the former Palestinian Mandate. If the 1917 Balfour Declaration -- "His Majesty's government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" -- resulted within six years in a homeland for a nation inside the territory of the British Mandate, it was neither Jews nor Palestinians but the princely Hashemite refugees from Saudi Arabia and their Bedouin and Circassian subjects. The Emirate of Transjordan came into being in 1923. Man proposes, God disposes, I suppose -- but that's a topic for another day.

Is there no chance for peace in the Middle East? Of course there is. Peace may come because a charismatic imam with trans-rational powers of persuasion convinces the Arab/Muslim "street" that peace is God's will. Or peace may come because a cosmic threat, planetary collision, epidemic or extraterrestrial invasion unites Earthlings. Or because of total exhaustion following devastating, possibly nuclear, wars.

Peace won't come from Microbama's release of Oslo 3.1. The software "land for peace" has a fatal glitch. It may produce land for Palestinians; it produces no peace for Israelis.

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Trackposted to Leaning Straight Up, Allie is Wired, Woman Honor Thyself, and The World According to Carl, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

An Ex-Fetus Speaks Out

National Post

Thoughts From An Ex-fetus
By George Jonas

Published: Wednesday, June 03, 2009

George Tiller, the 67-year-old physician shot last week in Wichita, Kan., was an abortionist. His suspected killer, identified by the press as Scott Roeder, 51, also felt entitled to decide whose life to terminate and when. To this extent at least, killers of abortionists resemble their victims.

Some people might object that there is a fundamental difference. Abortion is legal, while killing abortionists isn't. This is true -- at least, it's true today, although not long ago a medically unnecessary abortion was every bit as illegal as a medically unnecessary assassination. Killers of fetuses stayed behind bars for shorter periods than killers of physicians, but the law viewed both as felons.

The law continues viewing the killing of abortionists as a felony, and rightly so, but has come to regard the abortion of fetuses as a private matter between unborn children and their mothers. Will our grandchildren say we were enlightened or barbaric? Societies are entitled to determine their laws and institutions, but have no say in what their descendants will think of their choices.

We consider the ancient Spartan model barbaric, for instance, although in some ways it was much like ours. Spartans, too, regarded letting children live or die a private choice, although they did involve father in the decision, not only mother, and extended it to born children, not just fetuses. Another difference was that Spartans, instead of relying on vacuum suction, threw unwanted children off a mountain called Taigetos.

For Spartans, "unwanted" meant "substandard." For us, it means "inconvenient." We don't want standard or even super-standard children if they cramp our style.

Living in an epoch that is selfish as well as matriarchal, our lifeboats are no longer marked "women and children first," only "women first." We invent euphemisms, such as "choice" for killing, and sophomoric dilemmas, such as pretending not to know when life begins, to ensure that nothing hinders Virginia's quest for Santa Claus. No obstacle must interfere with her goal of self-fulfillment -- least of all an issue (as it were) of her healthy sexual appetite.

As I've written before, I'm not necessarily opposed to abortion, but then I'm not necessarily opposed to killing. I could even be persuaded that we should let mother be the arbiter of when to kill a child. King Solomon thought so, no doubt because he laboured under the illusion that an authentic mother would rather give up her child than kill it. As we now know, the good king might have been a trifle too optimistic.

In any case, giving parents life-and-death discretion rests on venerable historic precedents. Though tossing babies off a cliff is good sport, it's likely that many parents would have preferred prenatal vacuum suction even in Sparta, had the technology been available to them. "Substandard" probably meant physically deformed to Spartans, but it's not a huge leap to extend it to a fetus that's simply inconvenient. After all, a deformed child is a great inconvenience, so an inconvenient child might as well be deemed deformed.

The Spartan model has had a mixed press. Some people have used the word "brutal" to describe it. I'm not pushing it myself, but then I push nothing except an abstinence from fuzzy thinking. I don't particularly mind abortion on demand; I mind only the arguments used to support it.

My quarrel is with those who would oppose abortion if they thought it amounted to killing. I've no problem with abortion, but they do. They've a whacking big problem. First (as I repeated ad nauseam over the years) they must pretend not to know when life begins. They must pretend not to realize that life is an autonomous process, a continuum from zygote to old-age pension, a self-elaborating force that begins when it begins and keeps growing unless it's vacuumed out first. They must pretend not to recognize something that a cat recognizes: the difference between things alive or dead, animate or inanimate. They must pretend not to see that if a fetus were not alive, it wouldn't have to be killed.

They must cling to the illusion that a court can actually choose for life to "begin" at some arbitrary point: first trimester, second trimester, whatever. I think legal fiction should adopt the notion that life begins at 40 for the comfort of those who cherish their convenience but have no stomach for killing.

Some put the question in terms of a woman's right to control her own body. That would be valid enough in the realm of smoking, diet, liposuction or sex -- but abortion? Abortion means controlling someone else's body. Incidentally, I realize that as a man I have no authority to speak on the matter, but I'm not speaking as a man. I wouldn't dare. I'm speaking strictly as an ex-fetus.

And in my capacity as an ex-fetus, I say controlling someone else's body is where abortionists and their assassins meet. Please note that I say "meet." I don't say justify. Nothing justifies the assassin. Does anything justify the abortionist?

Gee, Mom, I don't know. You tell me.

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Trackposted to Leaning Straight Up, Allie is Wired, Woman Honor Thyself, and The World According to Carl, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Fiat Money Is Toilet Paper

Quadrant QED

The monetary collapse

by Ron Kitching

March 9, 2009

There is only one sure method for the final victory of a scientific idea, namely, by letting every contrary proposition run a free and full course. Carl Menger

Fiat monies are money substitutes. When the world was on a gold standard all nations had paper monies but upon demand they could be exchanged for gold at any bank any where at any time.

During the inflation of the 1920’s Keynes made a million pounds. Irving Fisher made $10,000,000 U.S. When the bubble burst Keynes scrambled out with 250,000 pounds. Fisher lost his entire fortune plus another $1,000,000 he borrowed from his sister-in-law.

Keynes declared that gold was a barbaric relic from the past, and advocated a fiat paper monetary system controlled by the state.

The Fiat Monetarist position of Keynes, Irving Fisher, and Fisher student, Milton Friedman has run its full course. We can all see the results today.

Frantic efforts are being made to reinflate the economic bubble, but they must in the end all be in vain. If leaders and their advisers persist with “stimulation”, the world will all end up as Zimbabwe is today.

Keynes was an outstanding speaker who knew how to influence public officials and politicians. And his admirers, Irving Fisher and later, Milton Friedman, showed politicians, that through a “controlled” on going inflation, they can make promises and keep them. But in the end, stones cannot be turned into bread, as Ludwig von Mises was never tired of pointing out in his many writings.

WW1 cost the English seven and three quarters of a billion pounds. The government declined to directly tax the population, as that would have made the war unpopular. So they abandoned the gold standard and inflated the currency.

Inflation is a secret tax. In his saner days, even Keynes declared: “By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.”

Instead of that capital being invested in competitive goods and services for which the world scrambled to buy, it was turned into bullets, bombs, shells, and all manner of man killing devices. Also the efforts of millions of men and women on both sides were turned to destruction instead of the usual peaceful competitive manufacture and provision of goods and services for the multitude.

Swiss Banker, Ferdinand Lips, in Gold Wars, stated that if the warring nations of Britain and Germany had been forced to pay for the war by using real capital, directly taxed from the populations of both sides, the war would have ended before Christmas of 1914. He maintained that the populations would have revolted at the taxation required to finance the conflict.

So, both antagonists suspended gold payments and resorted to the secret tax of inflation.

History shows that the depression which follows all inflations, is actually the healing process as the market adjusts to the remaining capital. As is the case at all times everywhere, free of state interventionism, entrepreneurs can then invest capital competitively in goods and or services for which the world will once more scramble to buy.

In their ignorance of Monetary Theory, the politicians and their advisers world wide are scrambling looking for a magic bullet. Keen students of correct Monetary Theory know that there isn't one.

The market oriented restructuring of the economy will be aggravated by the refusal of unions, and politics dominated by the unions, to reduce wages to a level compatible with the available capital resources invested competitively in viable profit making enterprises and services.

In other words in such a situation wages should be allowed to fall to a level that competitive productive enterprise can support.

So, with the National leaders, implementing vast “stimulation” programmes, the Nation is being led up a vast dry gully. It will take followers a long time to abandon state policy and seek the truth of the matter.

The world is now reaping the disaster which has grown from the seeds of fallacy.



AUTHOR: Ron Kitching, who celebrates his 80th birthday in April, was one of the organizers of the month long visit to Australia by F.A. Hayek in 1976. He is the author of Understanding Personal and Economic Liberty.

America’s Economic Collapse

h/t to Woodpile Report

Grand Illusion – Secrets of the Federal Reserve

James Quinn March 16th 2009
Cutting Edge Economic Crisis Analyst


The whole world is in a state of complete confusion. Americans are coming to the realization that their lives have been a grand illusion. You thought your neighbor had it made. They were driving a Mercedes, spent $40,000 on a new kitchen with granite countertops and stainless steel appliances, sent their kids to private school, had a second home at the shore, and took exotic vacations all over the world. Now their house is in foreclosure and you are paying to bail them out. The anger and outrage in the country is at the highest level since the Vietnam War.

The American public is being misled by government officials, politicians, and the Federal Reserve regarding the causes of this crisis and the solutions needed to solve our economic tribulations.

The average American does not know much about the Federal Reserve. The government and the Federal Reserve prefer to operate in the shadows. If the American public understood what their policies have done to their lives, they would be rioting in the streets. Most Americans believe that the Federal Reserve is part of the government. They are wrong. It is a privately held corporation owned by stockholders. The Federal Reserve System is owned by the largest banks in the United States. There are Class A,B, and C shareholders. The owner banks and their shares in the Federal Reserve are a secret. Why is this a secret? It is likely that the biggest banks in the country are the major shareholders. Does this explain why Citicorp, Bank of America and JP Morgan, despite being insolvent, are being propped up by Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner?

The history of National Banks in the United States has been controversial since the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution of the United States unequivocally states that only Congress has the authority to coin money, not an independent bank owned by unknown bankers.

The Congress shall have Power to coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures

Article 1, Section 8 – US Constitution

Our most recent horrifying experience with an all powerful central bank has led to the current worldwide financial crisis. In less than one century the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States has destroyed our currency and has allowed bankers to gain unwarranted power over the country. They had the ability and opportunity to bring down the worldwide financial system. When the average American is told that the dollar has lost 95 percent of its purchasing power since the inception of the Federal Reserve in 1913, they look at you with a blank stare and start wondering whether American Idol is on TV tonight. The systematic inflation purposely created by the Federal Reserve silently robs the average American of their standard of living. The government began keeping official track of inflation in 1913, the year the Federal Reserve was created. The consumer price index (CPI) on January 1, 1914 was 10.0. The CPI on January 1, 2009 was 211.1. This means that a man’s suit that cost $10 in 1913 would cost $211 today, a 2,111 percent increase in 96 years. This is a 95 percent loss in purchasing power of the dollar.

In the years following the creation of the Federal Reserve, inflation ran at double digit rates to finance Woodrow Wilson’s foreign intervention into World War I. The other notable period was in the years following President Nixon’s closing of the gold window in 1971. This led to rampant inflation that wasn’t tamed until the early 1980’s by Paul Volcker, the only independent courageous Federal Reserve Chairman in its history. The figures so far in the twenty-first Century seem modest. This is due partly to the methodical downward manipulation of the calculation by government bureaucrats. The period from 2010 to 2020 will show a dramatic jump caused by all of the money printing and reckless spending that is occurring today.

The average American might just conclude that prices always go up, so what’s the big deal about inflation. This is where the Federal Reserve and politicians have pulled the wool over your eyes. The CPI was 30.9 in 1964. Today, it is 211.1. This means that prices have risen 683 percent since 1964. The only problem is that your wages have not risen at the same rate, even using the government manipulated CPI. Using a true CPI figure, average weekly earnings are 64 percent below what they were in 1964. This explains why a family of five could live well with one parent working in 1964, but even with both parents working and using debt in prodigious amounts, the average family does not live as well today.

The dates February 3, 1913 and December 24, 1913 framed a year which placed our country on a downward fiscal spiral. The United States had tinkered with an income tax during the Civil War and the 1890’s, but the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. Until 1913, the U.S. government was restrained from overspending because it was completely reliant on tariffs and duties to generate revenue.

The Sixteenth Amendment changed the game forever. “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

When you give a Congressman a dollar, he’ll take a hundred billion. The initial tax rates of 1 percent to 7 percent were rather modest. That did not last long. The top tax rate reached 92 percent during the 1950s and today rates are still 500 percent to 1,000 percent higher than they were in 1913. The government is addicted to tax revenue. In 2007, they absconded $1.2 trillion in taxes from American individuals. Does anyone think that the bloated government bureaucracy spent these funds more efficiently or for a more beneficial purpose than its citizens could have? Without $1.2 trillion in individual tax revenue, Congressmen would not be able to add 9,200 earmarks to the current $400 billion Federal spending bill every year.

According to the Federal Reserve’s own website, their duties fall into four general areas:

1. Conducting the nation's monetary policy by influencing the monetary and credit conditions in the economy in pursuit of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.
2. Supervising and regulating banking institutions to ensure the safety and soundness of the nation's banking and financial system and to protect the credit rights of consumers
3. Maintaining the stability of the financial system and containing systemic risk that may arise in financial markets
4. Providing financial services to depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign official institutions, including playing a major role in operating the nation's payments system

The American public was told that the Federal Reserve would eliminate any future bank panics. From 1913 through 1920, inflation increased at more than 10 percent per year as Wilson spent vast sums during World War I and its aftermath. From the early 1920s to 1929, the monetary supply expanded at a rapid pace and the nation experienced tremendous economic growth. By the end of the 1920s, speculation and loose money had propelled asset and equity prices to unsustainable levels. The stock market crashed in 1929, and as the banks struggled with liquidity problems, the Federal Reserve cut the money supply. This was the greatest financial panic and economic collapse in American history so far - and it never could have happened without the Fed's intervention. The Fed caused the bubble with loose monetary policy. The Depression did not become Great until the Smoot Hawley Act in 1930 destroyed world trade and the raising of the top income tax rates from 25 percent to 63 percent in 1932 destroyed the incentive to earn money. Over 9,000 banks failed and a few of the old robber barons' banks managed to swoop in and grab up thousands of competitors for pennies on the dollar.

The Federal Reserve’s primary mandates were maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates. Their other chief function was to supervise and regulate banks to ensure the banking system is safe. Let us assess their success regarding their mandates:

• Unemployment reached 25 percent during the Great Depression; attained levels above 10 percent in 1982; and will breach 10 percent in the next year. Grade: Failure

• Since the Federal Reserve’s inception, the dollar has lost 95 percent of its purchasing power. Grade: Failure

• Interest rates have been anything but moderate since the inception of the Federal Reserve. They have consistently caused booms and busts by setting rates too low or too high. Grade: Failure

• The Federal Reserve was supposed to supervise the activities of banks. Instead, under Alan Greenspan, they stepped aside and let banks take preposterous risks while giving an unspoken assurance that the Fed would clean up any messes that they caused. This total dereliction of duty gross negligence has led the greatest financial collapse in history. Grade: Failure

Anyone who is not mad as hell at this point is not paying attention. Your tax-and-spend political leaders and your banker-controlled Federal Reserve have borrowed and spent your tax dollars, your children’s tax dollars, and their children’s tax dollars desperately attempting to prop up this bankrupt system. The unleashing of a never-ending tsunami of printed dollars by the Federal Reserve makes every dollar worth less. They have systematically created inflation that has slowly but surely reduced your standard of living. Politicians in the pocket of lobbyists, corporate interests, and bankers have used their power to tax in order to spend trillions on worthless projects in their districts to insure re-election. The combination of taxing and printing has led to a National Debt of $11 trillion.

Bankers love debt. The more debt, the more interest they collect. Issuing credit cards and collecting 21 percent interest and billions in late fees seemed like a "can’t miss" proposition. It was, until people couldn’t pay the debt back. Now the unwinding of the greatest debt bubble in history has created a Second Great Depression. Instead of learning from the past, the Federal Reserve has chosen to do exactly what led to the crisis. They have lowered rates to 0 percent and have printed money at prodigious rates. The Fed has doubled their balance sheet in the last 12 months.

They have loaned billions to the bankrupt banks that inhabit our financial system while accepting worthless pieces of paper as collateral. They will not reveal to the public the banks they have loaned money to or the collateral that backs up those loans. The arrogance of Ben Bernanke proves that the Federal Reserve answers to bankers, and not to the American public. The books and records of the Federal Reserve are not open to scrutiny by the General Accounting Office. Ron Paul has introduced the Federal Reserve Transparency Act which would open their books to the public. No organization with as much power as the Federal Reserve should be permitted to operate in the shadows.

The future is cloudy but the direction is clear. Government will spend trillions of dollars. Congress will increase taxes on the rich and secretly raise taxes on the masses by calling them cap and trade fees. The Federal Reserve will pull out all stops to create inflation. When you owe the rest of the world $11 trillion, inflation makes the debt less burdensome. The dollar will decline versus gold. With the enormous amount of currency creation and spending by the government, the economy will eventually pull out of this depression. The acceleration will take the Federal Reserve by surprise. They will be hesitant to raise interest rates. The inflation genie will get out of the bottle and will not go back. The hyperinflation that takes hold will lead to social unrest, rioting, and a drastic reduction in the American standard of living.

There is no solution that will not be painful to everyone in the United States. The only solution that would put America back on a path of sustainable prosperity would be a gold/precious metals backed currency that would force government and its citizens to live within its means. Congress would need to vote for something that would take away its power. With our current political system, this is impossible. Money is power. This leads to only one conclusion. The existing Ponzi scheme will have to collapse before we can adopt a rational financial system for America. It may take decades, or it may happen in 2010. No one knows.

Cutting Edge Economic Crisis Analyst James Quinn is a senior director of strategic planning for a major university. This article reflects the personal views of James Quinn. It does not necessarily represent the views of his employer, and is not sponsored or endorsed by them.

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NOTE: This creation of debt has been underway for the past one hundred years.

See my April 2007 post: Hoisting the Black Flag

also see Sept 2008 post: The Federal Reserve Will Destroy America

A Test Of Faith

h/t Right Truth

The Christian Science Monitor

The coming evangelical collapse

An anti-Christian chapter in Western history is about to begin. But out of the ruins, a new vitality and integrity will rise.

By Michael Spencer

from the March 10, 2009 edition

Oneida, Ky. - We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.

Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the "Protestant" 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I'm convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.

Why is this going to happen?

1. Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.

The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can't articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.

2. We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.

3. There are three kinds of evangelical churches today: consumer-driven megachurches, dying churches, and new churches whose future is fragile. Denominations will shrink, even vanish, while fewer and fewer evangelical churches will survive and thrive.

4. Despite some very successful developments in the past 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism. Evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself.

5. The confrontation between cultural secularism and the faith at the core of evangelical efforts to "do good" is rapidly approaching. We will soon see that the good Evangelicals want to do will be viewed as bad by so many, and much of that work will not be done. Look for ministries to take on a less and less distinctively Christian face in order to survive.

6. Even in areas where Evangelicals imagine themselves strong (like the Bible Belt), we will find a great inability to pass on to our children a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of the faith.

7. The money will dry up.

What will be left?

•Expect evangelicalism to look more like the pragmatic, therapeutic, church-growth oriented megachurches that have defined success. Emphasis will shift from doctrine to relevance, motivation, and personal success – resulting in churches further compromised and weakened in their ability to pass on the faith.

•Two of the beneficiaries will be the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions. Evangelicals have been entering these churches in recent decades and that trend will continue, with more efforts aimed at the "conversion" of Evangelicals to the Catholic and Orthodox traditions.

•A small band will work hard to rescue the movement from its demise through theological renewal. This is an attractive, innovative, and tireless community with outstanding media, publishing, and leadership development. Nonetheless, I believe the coming evangelical collapse will not result in a second reformation, though it may result in benefits for many churches and the beginnings of new churches.

•The emerging church will largely vanish from the evangelical landscape, becoming part of the small segment of progressive mainline Protestants that remain true to the liberal vision.

•Aggressively evangelistic fundamentalist churches will begin to disappear.

•Charismatic-Pentecostal Christianity will become the majority report in evangelicalism. Can this community withstand heresy, relativism, and confusion? To do so, it must make a priority of biblical authority, responsible leadership, and a reemergence of orthodoxy.

•Evangelicalism needs a "rescue mission" from the world Christian community. It is time for missionaries to come to America from Asia and Africa. Will they come? Will they be able to bring to our culture a more vital form of Christianity?

•Expect a fragmented response to the culture war. Some Evangelicals will work to create their own countercultures, rather than try to change the culture at large. Some will continue to see conservatism and Christianity through one lens and will engage the culture war much as before – a status quo the media will be all too happy to perpetuate. A significant number, however, may give up political engagement for a discipleship of deeper impact.

Is all of this a bad thing?

Evangelicalism doesn't need a bailout. Much of it needs a funeral. But what about what remains?

Is it a good thing that denominations are going to become largely irrelevant? Only if the networks that replace them are able to marshal resources, training, and vision to the mission field and into the planting and equipping of churches.

Is it a good thing that many marginal believers will depart? Possibly, if churches begin and continue the work of renewing serious church membership. We must change the conversation from the maintenance of traditional churches to developing new and culturally appropriate ones.

The ascendency of Charismatic-Pentecostal-influenced worship around the world can be a major positive for the evangelical movement if reformation can reach those churches and if it is joined with the calling, training, and mentoring of leaders. If American churches come under more of the influence of the movement of the Holy Spirit in Africa and Asia, this will be a good thing.

Will the evangelicalizing of Catholic and Orthodox communions be a good development? One can hope for greater unity and appreciation, but the history of these developments seems to be much more about a renewed vigor to "evangelize" Protestantism in the name of unity.

Will the coming collapse get Evangelicals past the pragmatism and shallowness that has brought about the loss of substance and power? Probably not. The purveyors of the evangelical circus will be in fine form, selling their wares as the promised solution to every church's problems. I expect the landscape of megachurch vacuity to be around for a very long time.

Will it shake lose the prosperity Gospel from its parasitical place on the evangelical body of Christ? Evidence from similar periods is not encouraging. American Christians seldom seem to be able to separate their theology from an overall idea of personal affluence and success.

The loss of their political clout may impel many Evangelicals to reconsider the wisdom of trying to create a "godly society." That doesn't mean they'll focus solely on saving souls, but the increasing concern will be how to keep secularism out of church, not stop it altogether. The integrity of the church as a countercultural movement with a message of "empire subversion" will increasingly replace a message of cultural and political entitlement.

Despite all of these challenges, it is impossible not to be hopeful. As one commenter has already said, "Christianity loves a crumbling empire."

We can rejoice that in the ruins, new forms of Christian vitality and ministry will be born. I expect to see a vital and growing house church movement. This cannot help but be good for an evangelicalism that has made buildings, numbers, and paid staff its drugs for half a century.

We need new evangelicalism that learns from the past and listens more carefully to what God says about being His people in the midst of a powerful, idolatrous culture.

I'm not a prophet. My view of evangelicalism is not authoritative or infallible. I am certainly wrong in some of these predictions. But is there anyone who is observing evangelicalism in these times who does not sense that the future of our movement holds many dangers and much potential?

• Michael Spencer is a writer and communicator living and working in a Christian community in Kentucky. He describes himself as "a postevangelical reformation Christian in search of a Jesus-shaped spirituality." This essay is adapted from a series on his blog, InternetMonk.com .

Judge Orders Home Schoolers Into Public Classrooms...

Liberal activist judges continue to play havoc with families' lives...


This is an outrage. No, having said that, what I reaallly want to do is take this judge and break his back over my knee. (figuratively speaking, of course. You have to say that or the trolls come out at night.)


DRUDGE REPORT

Judge orders home schoolers into public classrooms


Posted: Mar. 12, 2009
Updated: Today at 12:14 a.m.

Raleigh, N.C. — A judge in Wake County said three Raleigh children need to switch from home school to public school. Judge Ned Mangum is presiding over divorce proceeding of the children's parents, Thomas and Venessa Mills.

Venessa Mills was in the fourth year of home schooling her children who are 10, 11 and 12 years old. They have tested two years above their grade levels, she said.

"We have math, reading; we have grammar, science, music,” Venessa Mills said.

Her lessons also have a religious slant, which the judge said was the root of the problem.

"My teaching is strictly out of the Bible, and it's very clear. It is very evident so I just choose to follow the Bible,” Venessa Mills said.

In an affidavit filed Friday in the divorce case, Thomas Mills stated that he "objected to the children being removed from public school." He said Venessa Mills decided to home school after getting involved with Sound Doctrine church "where all children are home schooled."

Thomas Mills also said he was "concerned about the children's religious-based science curriculum" and that he wants "the children to be exposed to mainstream science, even if they eventually choose to believe creationism over evolution."

In an oral ruling, Mangum said the children should go to public school.

"He was upfront and said that, 'It's not about religion.' But yet when it came down to his ruling and reasons why, 'He said this would be a good opportunity for the children to be tested in the beliefs that I have taught them,'" Venessa Mills said.

All sides agree the children have thrived with home school, and Vanessa Mills thinks that should be reason enough to continue teaching at home.

"I cannot sit back and allow this to happen to other home schoolers. I don't want it happening to my children,” Venessa Mills said.

Mangum said he wouldn't talk with WRAL News Thursday about the details of the case because he hasn't issued a written ruling yet. He said he expected to sign it in a few weeks.

An estimated 71,566 students were taught at home during the 2007-08 school year, according to figures released by the state Division of Non-Public Education. The enrollment amounts to about 4 percent of students ages 7 to 16 in North Carolina – students in that age range are required by state law to attend school. About two-thirds of the schools classified themselves as religious schools.

Home school students and their parents plan to come to Raleigh on March 24 to lobby at the state Legislature. They want to demonstrate they have a strong voice regarding education.

Today's History Lesson

American Thinker

March 08, 2009

How the Great Depression brought Adolf Hitler to power

By James Lewis

Oh goody! Looks like we're having another Depression -- maybe just a little one, but who knows how long we can stretch it out, if we give it a good try?

So now we can play FDR and The Glorious New Deal.

If that sounds insane to you, well, it's what both Charles Krauthammer and David Broder -- the Burt and Ernie of the Washington Post -- have now concluded about the Obama White House.

The Great Depression certainly empowered FDR to make big changes in America over his four terms. In spite of all the hoo-hah the country didn't get out of the long, long slump until 1940 or so, with the huge mobilization of men and industrial resources for World War II. But FDR did get to play to his heart's content, through the NRA, the WPA, the AAA, the CCC, the TVA, the NLRB, the FDIC and the SEC. By comparison all we've got is a measly TARP. So far.

Trouble is, the Great Depression also brought Adolf Hitler to power. (Darn, I knew there had to be a downside somewhere.)

For those who have forgotten history or never bothered to learn it, here's is the sixty-second version.

1. Adolf Hitler started out as just another Bohemian intellectual, a sort of fire-breathing hippie, hanging around the coffee houses of Vienna after the big defeat of World War I. Just like Lenin, Mussolini and all the other psychopaths who rose to power around the same time. (Look it up, kids). His ilk can still be found in all the big city cafes of Europe, along with Berkeley, California, Madison, Wisconsin, and other college towns. They all profess peace. But in the right conditions, they are all happy to set off sociological or real dynamite. (Viz., Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn; the Rev. J. Wright and all the rest.)

Today the cafe intellectuals are more likely to be Islamic fascists, but what's the big diff? They all follow Hitler's big maxim, "Alles muss anders sein!" ("everything must change") or, in Obamalingo, "Change you can believe in." They all hate whatever is; it doesn't matter where they want to go.

They want a perfect world, every single one of them. Therefore they all hate freedom, electoral democracy, and the blood-sucking capitalists. They all demand justice and equality. And millions of suckers always fall for it. Some things never change; even the words don't change, much less the marching music.

2. When Hitler got out of the Kaiserliche Wehrmacht with burned-out lungs from mustard gas, Germany was broke. The Reich had started the war as the wealthiest, most industrialized, most highly-educated, and perhaps even the most arrogant nation in Europe. (Although that's a tough one to judge, there being so much competition in the arrogance sweepstakes in Europe.) Anyway, if you remember the goose-stepping soldiers with the funny helmets with the little spikes on top, and all the cheering people standing on the sidewalks going Hoch! Hoch!, that's the one.

3. As punishment for the war, the Versailles Treaty required the Germans to pay their victims, to handicap their military and heavy industries, and to be nice to their neighbors. They did pay some money for a while, but then they just lied about all those other things. None of the victorious nations dared to actually find out if the Germans were re-arming or not. Besides, the Germans and Austrians felt threatened by the new and militant Soviet Union, accidentally created when the old Reich helped Lenin to overthrow the Czar of Russia. (Lenin was another cafe intellectual who turned into a ruthless mass-murdering tyrant, except that he hung around Zurich rather than Vienna.)

4. After WWI the Weimar Republic brought parliamentary democracy of a kind to Germany. But it also saw a wave of corruption, degradation of middle class values, attacks on religion, promiscuity, and glorification of "alternative lifestyles" -- which all agreed on their hatred of the bourgeoisie (who happened to be their parents) -- along with lots of artistic expressions of the same Up Yours! attitude that has made government-funded artists so popular in our day.

(A lot of our avant garde is just the derriere garde of Europe's Weimar period. Nothing new there at all.)

5. Having the Soviets practically next door was a big help to the German Communists -- who still called themselves Communists rather than Black Liberation Theologians, as ours do today. But just like Rev. J-Wright, they all hated middleclassness, or as they called it, the bourgeoisie. (That was their parents, remember?) So did Mussolini and Hitler, who also rose to power as radical world-changers in the turmoil of the day. They were also big ecofreaks -- because Mother Nature was good, you see. They practiced a fair amount of nudity and gayety, celebrated sex and violence, got drunk and carried on riots, and whipped up giant hatreds against scapegoats -- the French, other racially inferior peoples, and of course ... . Yes.

They also swore to eliminate the handicapped, the retarded, and any organized religion. Both the Communists and the Nazis really really hated Christianity. Not just Judaism and the Jews. They were equal-opportunity haters, without fear or favor.

6. The whole Ship of Fools seemed to go sailing along until the economy went kaput. But why did it? You can point to hyperinflation, long and deep declines in industry and agriculture, unemployment, and shaky currencies. Europe had decades of troubles before the United States caught the bug. Stock markets dwindled, trade barriers went up, and on October 29, 1929, far away in New York City, Wall Street went into a tailspin. It was followed by the other big stock markets. People lost their jobs and their savings. No capital, no productivity, just despair.

7. Europe decided that democracy wasn't its thing after all, and looked for nice trustworthy generals to take over the hopelessly ineffective parliamentary governments -- like in Germany. But the President of Germany, General Paul von Hindenburg, was elderly and out of his depth, and after a while was forced to ask that nice Herr Hitler to organize a new government. Hitler's National Socialist Workers Party had never gotten a majority, but the time was ripe, and the Nazis never cared much for rules. So they took power.

In the end United States kind of lucked out, compared to Europe -- but don't try to tell that to anybody who managed to live through it. It's not just our habit of democratic governance that brought us out of it without tyranny and the devastation of Europe and Asia. FDR had a certain amount of demagogue blood in him.

Or as he proclaimed in accepting the Democratic Party nomination,

"Throughout the nation men and women ... look to us here for guidance and for more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth... I pledge you, I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people... This is more than a political campaign. It is a call to arms." (Italics added.)

A better "opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth? ... A call to arms?" Has the Obama crowd seen this speech? FDR naturally attacked greed and wealth, coming from a family of old wealth and long-forgotten greed himself. Greed is in the eye of the accuser.

What's the bottom line? Well, certain politicians thrive in times of trouble; and if they don't see enough trouble, they're always happy to add some more. They always practice the same kind of demagogy. They always promise radical change. And they often bring the opposite.

Historians have long pointed to the breakdown of Europe's middle class as the single biggest earthquake, the one that shook all the other pillars of society until it crumbled.

In the 21st century, you can kill the middle class by teaching kids to despise their parents and their traditions; you can tax them into poverty; you can whip up nationalistic fervor against the Frogs or the Boches; you can inflate the currency so that everybody is equally miserable; you can teach the poor, the black, the women, the young, to attack the middle class values that brought prosperity over generations of toil; you can torpedo the currency and destroy retirement plans; you can turn the Organs of Propaganda -- pahdon me, the "news media" -- to assault middle class values; you can unify the very wealthy with the very poor to try to squeeze and whack the middle; you can take historic wrongs like black slavery or Christopher Columbus to turn people against each other; you can easily turn bubbleheaded movie makers and starlets against George W. Bush; you can break the banks and turn the desperate against the malefactors of great wealth; or you can unify white liberals with poor blacks and militant feminists against all the Evil White Guys...

But it's all the same, you see. Nothing ever changes except the color of the flags and the uniforms. And it's always the militant idealists, the obsessional clerks and scribblers, who seize the moment to raise yet another Hero of Change and Hope to the peak of power. Because, you see, Adolf Hitler was not the exception. In the century of Mao Zedong and Pol Pot, of Lenin and Stalin, of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, of Robert Mugabe and Saddam Hussein, of Ahmadinejad and Khomeini, of genocidal little tyrants in the Sudan and Rwanda, Hitler was by no means the exception.

He was just brought down faster than the others.

Heigh-ho. Interesting times.

See what a little history can teach you?
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**** Betcha you didn't learn this in school****

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Gun-Grabbers Lose Bid To Infringe 2nd Amendment

Supreme Court refuses to revive New York City's suit against gun makers over illegal sales

By Associated Press
9:39 AM EDT, March 9, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has turned away pleas by New York City and gun violence victims to hold the firearms industry responsible for selling guns that could end up in illegal markets.

The justices' decision Monday ends lawsuits first filed in 2000. Federal appeals courts in New York and Washington threw out the complaints after Congress passed a law in 2005 giving the gun industry broad immunity against such lawsuits.

The city's lawsuit asked for no monetary damages. It had sought a court order for gun makers to more closely monitor those dealers who frequently sell guns later used to commit crimes.

But the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that federal law provides the gun industry with broad immunity from lawsuits brought by crime victims and violence-plagued cities. The Supreme Court refused to reconsider that decision.

The lawsuit was first brought in June 2000 while Rudy Giuliani was New York mayor. It was delayed due to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and because of similar litigation in the state courts.

The city refiled the lawsuit in January 2004, saying manufacturers let handguns reach illegal markets at gun shows in which non-licensed people can sell to other private citizens; through private sales in which background checks are not required; by oversupplying markets where gun regulations are lax, and by having poor overall security.

The city said a state nuisance law makes it a crime to knowingly or recklessly create a condition endangering the safety or health of a considerable number of people. But the appeals court said New York's law does not qualify as an exception to federal law. It agreed with U.S. District Judge Jack B. Weinstein that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, signed by President George W. Bush in 2005, is constitutional.

The cases are City of New York v. Beretta, 08-530, and Lawson v. Beretta, 08-545.