The Honorable John Cornyn of Texas United States Senate Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Senator John Cornyn,
After reading all your views on being a conservative, I was surprised to read your name in this article below that said you made a way for Democrats to put in more gun control that doesn’t work! Chicago has lots of gun control but compare them to the results in Houston! Which has more deaths by gun violence?
Thank you for your time and thank for opposing abortion. I really appreciate your pro-life stance!
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002 everettehatcher@gmail.com
Joe Biden’s publicist just announced with a straight face that he plans to run again in 2024. We’ll address that at some length tomorrow. But first, another crisis in the news. So, after the killings in Buffalo and Uvalde a few weeks ago, you begin to hear people on television talk about something called red flag laws. The government, they informed us, could actually end mass shootings tomorrow simply by taking the guns away from mass shooters before they commit mass shootings. It’s not complicated.
In fact, it’s such an obvious solution that you had to wonder why we weren’t already doing that. Who doesn’t want to prevent mass shootings? Well, only the gun lobby. Everybody else cares about children. So, a lot of Americans, not surprisingly, now say they want red flag laws, and why wouldn’t they? Like supporting Black Lives Matter or fighting climate change or getting the COVID shot or standing with the brave people of Ukraine. Red flag laws seem like one of those ideas that no decent person could possibly oppose.
You want crazy people to have guns? Of course, you don’t. Who would? So naturally, you’re for red flag laws and in fact, we may soon get red flag walks across the country. So, what would that mean if we do?
Well, two things you should know. First: Red flag laws will not end mass shootings, but red flag laws will end due process. Due process is a simple concept, but it’s the key to everything that is good about America.
In our system of justice, citizens cannot be punished without first being charged with a crime. Politicians cannot just decide to hurt you, throw you in handcuffs, lock you in jail, seize your property simply because they don’t like how you think or how you vote. No. Before they punish you, they have to go through a formal process in which they describe which specific law you broke and exactly how you broke it. They have to prove it.
For serious crimes with big penalties, the government has to convince a group of your fellow citizens first. It’s called a grand jury and this government must convince them that you deserve to be punished or they cannot proceed. None of this is new. This is the way we’ve done things in America for more than 200 years, and it’s exactly why we have and have always had the fairest justice system in the world. People move to this country from all over the globe to benefit from it. But red flag laws will end this.
Under red flag laws, the government doesn’t have to prove you did anything wrong in order to strip you of your most basic rights. All that’s required to punish you is a complaint, possibly even an anonymous complaint in which somebody says you seem dangerous. Now, that complaint doesn’t come from a grand jury. It can come from anyone, including someone who hates you or someone who simply doesn’t like your politics. It doesn’t matter because no jury will ever see it. On the basis of that unproven complaint, you lose your freedom and your ability to defend yourself and your family.
Now, how could that possibly happen in this country? Well, the Supreme Court has said unequivocally that it can’t happen here. A year ago, the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Caniglia vs Strom. Police in Rhode Island had seized the personal firearms of a 68-year-old man whose wife had called in a complaint against him after they had an argument. That man had committed no crime. He’d never been convicted of a crime, and he was judged by doctors to be sane. And yet the authorities took away his guns anyway.
He sued under the Fourth Amendment and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The result was not even close. The Supreme Court sided with the gun owner in that case in a rare nine-zero decision. That means that every justice, liberal and conservative, agreed that authorities cannot just seize your property or throw you in jail because they don’t like the way you look or because someone is mad at you. So, red flag laws are unconstitutional, period. We don’t need to guess about that. And yet the Biden administration is pushing them anyway. Why? Because they don’t care.
How is Joe Biden able to ignore a Supreme Court decision from last year? Simple. He declares an emergency and does what he wants. He’s done it before. The White House did the same thing with the eviction moratorium and vaccine mandates last year. “It’s an emergency. We don’t have time for due process!”
So, you can see why Democrats love emergencies. Nothing gives them more power more quickly. They’ve declared the atrocities in Uvalde and Buffalo an emergency, unlike the daily mass shootings in Baltimore and Chicago, cities they run and whose killings they therefore assiduously ignore. And on the base of that emergency, they can move forward with gun confiscation.
The White House now wants Congress to pass a law paying the states to enact red flag laws. And here’s the amazing part: At least ten Republican senators are backing this effort from the Biden White House and that means this is virtually guaranteed to pass. What’s the reasoning? Well, here’s one of those senators, John Cornyn of Texas.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) speaks on a proposed Democratic tax plan, at the U.S. Capitol on August 04, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
REPORTER: You have colleagues on the other, in the other chamber who are already coming out against this before you even put out a proposal.
SEN. JOHN CORNYN: I’m not surprised. Some people will not want to touch this with a ten-foot pole because they’re concerned about the politics of it, but I think this is a time where hopefully we can transcend that personal political interest and do what we think will save lives. To me, that’s the ultimate goal. We can do something sensible that does not undermine the rights of law-abiding citizens under the Constitution to keep and bear arms.
So there are two things to notice about that soundbite, which is so revealing. The first is the use of the term “sensible.” Now that is a Democratic talking point approved by the DNC. “It’s sensible gun safety regulation.” So here you have John Cornyn taking Nancy Pelosi’s language and he’s doing it on purpose and then you hear him describe anyone who disagrees with him. Why would you disagree with John Cornyn? Well, according to John Cornyn, anyone who disagrees with them is “concerned about the politics” of red flag laws, not the wisdom of red flag laws, not whether or not red flag laws are constitutional, but the grubby politics.
In other words, says John Cornyn, anyone who disagrees with me is low and unethical.
Now, if you’re not used to hearing liberal demagoguery like that from Republicans, you should know that John Cornyn is not the only one engaging in it. He is joined in this effort by Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Rob Portman of Ohio, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Mitt Romney of course of Utah, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, needless to say, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina (always on board for any bad idea) and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.
Particularly interesting to see Lindsey Graham on board, the person who encouraged Capitol Hill police to shoot more Trump voters, who has no problem with violence, whose life is organized around worshiping it, telling you that you can’t have a gun. Now, all the senators whose names we just read, many of whom are retiring so they’re beyond the reach of voters, have the backing of the top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell.
So, what exactly are they backing when they back red flag laws?
Well, we can take Florida’s experience as an example. In Florida, the police can seize guns from people who pose a “significant danger” based on “any relevant evidence.” Huh? That’s it, any relevant evidence. The law raises some obvious questions, and the most obvious is if you can seize people’s guns without proving that they committed a crime, why can’t you imprison them without proving they committed a crime? If you can take their guns, why can’t you take their homes? Why can’t you empty their bank accounts? Oh, sound paranoid? Alex Jones stuff? That just happened in Canada.
What stops it from happening here? We already know the authorities are abusing the red flag laws already on the books. Kendra Parris is a lawyer based in Florida who specializes in them. In a recent interview, she said clients are able to hire lawyers, have “vastly higher” odds of getting their firearms back from the government.
Of course, laws like this always penalize the weakest. She said courts are taking it “better safe than sorry approach” to avoid political blowback and the police are taking advantage of that. So, court records show that cops in Florida often show up to the homes of citizens who present them with “stipulations.” If you agree in writing to surrender your firearms, you have a chance of getting them back after a year. Now, as it happens, that’s a pretty tempting offer to offer when you have armed people in your living room. But it is and it remains and again, we don’t need to guess about it because the Supreme Court just ruled on this, it’s unconstitutional.
It is for several reasons. It’s a clear violation of the search and seizure prohibition on the Fourth Amendment, but it’s also applied unfairly. And even the people who wrote our current red flag laws admit that. In New York, for example, Assembly member Jo Anne Simon co-sponsored the state’s red flag law. “Basically, it’s all over the place,” Simon admitted. “You have places where we have one filed, in other places where it’s 38 filed.”
So, how will these laws be applied? Well, of course, they will be applied along political lines, just like everything else currently is in this highly politicized country. So, if you don’t like someone, if you don’t like what someone believes, that person will be a target for unconstitutional search and seizure. Armed authorities showing up in somebody’s home and taking their personal property at gunpoint. And if you doubt that, that will happen, look at this.
This is the guy, the very same member of Congress who had sex with a Chinese spy demanding that cops disarm Ben Shapiro because Ben Shapiro says things the Chinese government disagrees with. This is from Eric Swalwell: “Please tell me this lunatic does not own a gun. Reason number 1,578 that America needs red flag laws.” Eric Swalwell wrote that.
Now what would qualify as a trigger for gun seizure in the view of Eric Swalwell under the red flag was that he supports and now Republicans in the Senate support? Well, here’s the video that Ben Shapiro made that Swalwell thinks qualifies him for red flag law. Watch.
BEN SHAPIRO: If you come tell me that you’re going to indoctrinate my kids in a particular policy and that I can’t pull my kid out of the school and send my kid to a school I want to send them to, that I can’t go to the church or synagogue that I want to go to, and if you make that national policy, not just California policy where I can move, but national policy, people are not going to stand for that. I now have two choices. One is to leave the country utterly. Two is to pick up a gun. Those are the only choices that you have left me and now people are on ” Oh this is, how could you say something like that? How could you be so extreme?” It’s not extreme to defend the fundamental rights the Constitution was created in order to protect. These rights pre-exist government.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) delivers remarks during the House Judiciary Committee markup of H.R. 7120, the “George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020,” on Capitol Hill on June 17, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images)
“These rights pre-exist government.” Well, actually our founding documents make that point which he is merely repeating, but on the basis of effectively quoting the founding documents of the country we live in, Eric Swalwell says the police should show up at Ben Shapiro’s house and take his firearms away. Does anybody, even Eric Swalwell, who is deranged, sincerely believe that Ben Shapiro is a violent threat to anyone? No, of course not. Ben Shapiro is an ideological threat and an ideological threat is the only kind of threat people like Eric Swalwell actually care about and you know that when you look at the laws that they’re pushing and that Republicans are backing.
If these laws were actually designed to fight gun crime, they would, among other things, force prosecutors to enforce existing gun laws against people who are committing all the murders and it’s not Ben Shapiro. In Los Angeles and many other cities, that’s not happening and that’s why those criminals openly support the Soros-backed prosecutor, George Gascon. Watch.
WILLIE WILKERSON, GANG MEMBER CHARGED WITH MURDER:I told you last time he wanna hurry up and try to get something did before they re-elect somebody else besides Gascon and bring back that little, uh, b——- life without parole and uh the death penalty. If he could get the manslaughter, then s—.Manslaughter only carries six, nine, 12.
Yeah. So that’s just one tape. We can play you video, as we often do, of what’s happening in our city. What you’re looking at is anarchy, tyranny. People who are favored by the regime can do whatever they want. You vote the right way, commit whatever crimes you want, in jail for 10 minutes, you’re out, go do it again, no problem. Baltimore can happen, mass killings on an ongoing basis for decades and no one will say a word. But if you’re disfavored by the regime, no punishment is too strong, no infraction too small.
None of the gun legislation that John Cornyn and all these other pompous buffoons who were siding with Nancy Pelosi support, none of that legislation would do anything about the core problem, which is DAs like George Gascon, who are failing to enforce existing gun laws, gun laws that, by the way, George Gascon himself, to name one example, is breaking.
A whistleblower in Gascon’s office says he was fired for complaining about Gascon’s habit of illegally carrying firearms aboard airplanes. So, why haven’t the cops red-flagged George Gascon and disarmed him? Is anyone going to red-flag Hunter Biden, who lied on a federal drug form, was a drug addict carrying a illegally obtained weapon? No, of course not, because red flag laws aren’t designed to punish the politically loyal. And that’s why you get scenes like this in New Orleans, which the police do nothing about.
So hey, John Cornyn, will your legislation do anything about that? Because anybody who’s okay with that or what’s happening in downtown Chicago or downtown Baltimore or Gary, Indiana or Detroit, just pick a city, every day of the week – fix those things and get back to me about the AR in my closet.
By the way in New Orleans, the Soros-backed DA there, Jason Williams isn’t worried about what you just saw. Last year, his office dismissed more than 60% of violent felony cases that came to his office, most of them involving firearms. So, they just dismissed him. These are the people worried about gun crime. For perspective, the previous administration dismissed only 16% of those cases.
Another Soros-backed DA in Philadelphia has a similar record. In the first half of last year, Larry Krasner’s office withdrew or dismissed 65% of all gun charges. Does that seem high? Well, it is because in 2015, that figure was just 17%. New ideology, new outcome, and of course, the outcome is more dead people. But this law does nothing about that. It ignores it completely in favor of redefining you as a violent threat and giving the authorities controlled by the Biden administration the right to march into your house with guns drawn and disarm you.So, what are they ignoring? Well, let’s see. Last year in Philadelphia, we set a record set for homicides. Already this year, more than 200 people have been shot to death in the city of Philadelphia, which is not a huge city, and it’s getting smaller. On Friday, for example, a 14-year-old boy was killed in a drive-by. On Saturday, a man was shot five times in West Philadelphia. Did you see that on the news? Probably not.
On Sunday night, a man taking care of his mother in North Philadelphia was shot in the back of the head. So, if you’re actually worried about gun crimes, gun atrocities (and for the record we are because unlike Lindsay Graham. We actually hate violence) you would do something about this and punish the people who are committing gun crimes.
But no. They want to prevent you from defending your family, from buying or holding guns. Why is that? Well, we don’t need to guess because they’re telling us. Watch what the attorney general of the United States, and just to restate, this guy actually is the attorney general. He’s more than a craven political hack. He runs the DOJ. Watch him describe, Mr. Merrick Garland, the biggest threat facing this country today.
MERRICK GARLAND, US ATTORNEY GENERAL: In the FBI’s view, the top domestic violent extremist threat comes from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocated for the superiority of the White race.
Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks to announce a team to conduct a critical incident review of the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, during a media availability at the Department of Justice , Wednesday, June 8, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
That’s just a total lie, actually, and we have numbers to prove it, but, you know, it’s a lie. There’s no justification rationally for what Merrick Garland just said. It’s ridiculous. It’s an obvious untruth and anyone living in a major city knows that.
So, why do they keep telling you that?
Well, because nothing the Biden administration is doing and nothing that is happening in Congress right now will actually address gun violence. That’s not the point, John Cornyn. The point is to allow the Democratic Party to become even more powerful, and if it feels like it, to send its armed agents to raid the homes of Ben Shapiro and other disobedient people the Democratic Party doesn’t like.
Tucker Carlson currently serves as the host of FOX News Channel’s (FNC) Tucker Carlson Tonight (weekdays 8PM/ET). He joined the network in 2009 as a contributor.
Gun control arguments just don’t make any sense, but President Obama still supports gun control. Laughing at Obama’s Belly Flop on Gun Control April 23, 2013 by Dan Mitchell I’ve shared serious articles on gun control, featuring scholars such as John Lott and David Kopel. I also posted testimonials from gun experts and an honest liberal. […]
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The United Nations is full of gun control nuts. The United Nations and Gun Control: Two Negatives Don’t Make a Positive April 15, 2013 by Dan Mitchell Citing the analysis of America’s former Ambassador to the United Nations, I wrote last year about a treaty being concocted at the United Nations that would threaten […]
Sometimes you just have to look at the facts!!! An Inside Look at Left-Wing Social Science Gun Research March 20, 2013 by Dan Mitchell In a presumably futile effort to change their minds by learning how they think, I periodically try to figure out the left-wing mind. Why, for instance, do some people believe in Keynesian […]
I do love Michael Moore’s movie “Canadian Bacon” and I have blogged about it before. However, I am not a big Michael Moore fan. Take a look at this excellent article by Trevor Burrus of the Cato Institute on Moore’s latest stupid claim. March 15, 2013 3:50PM Some Pictures for Michael Moore By Trevor Burrus […]
(This letter was mailed before October 1, 2012) President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what […]
Great yardsign on gun control from Dan Mitchell’s blog. Here’s a quiz. What do you do after seeing this sign? Letter to Senator Cruz on constitutional issues in federal gun control proposals David Kopel • February 11, 2013 2:25 pm On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human […]
The rear of the Bath School after the May 18, 1927 bombing. Wikimedia Commons ___________ I have put up lots of cartoons and posters from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. Did […]
I have put up lots of cartons and posters from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. There is no doubt that Hitler took away guns from those he wanted to persecute and […]
Newlyweds Angela VanZandt and Rodger Bumpass. Photo: Angela VanZandt. The voice of Squidward Tentacles the cranky octopus on Nickelodeon’s beloved animated series SpongeBob SquarePants, Bumpass wed VanZandt at a ceremony in front of the Old Statehouse in Arkansas!
Bumpass married the woman he always had a crush on back in his days at Central High School. The two of them both graduated from Central and told of their love to each other in their yearbooks.
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Arkansas actor lands ‘job of a lifetime’ in SpongeBob SquarePants
Rodger Bumpass was a college student at Arkansas State University majoring in television and radio with a minor in theater. One night after a live theater performance in a play, he came off stage and one of his professors said something that changed his life.
“I look forward to seeing you in professional theater,” the professor said.
Those words fueled a desire in Bumpass and when he graduated from college he moved to New York and became a professional actor, he told Talk Business & Politics. He eventually landed in Hollywood where he was cast in several movies
Bumpass’s unique ability to manipulate his voice opened doors in the realm of voice acting. It culminated when he was selected as the voice actor for Squidward Tentacles on the hit animated television show, “SpongeBob SquarePants.” The 70-year-old actor spoke at an event recently in St. Louis. He said he’s not surprised the cartoon is about to enter its 23rd season.
“Funny is funny and silliness is timeless,” he said.
Bumpass was born in Little Rock, and after high school he attended ASU. While living in Jonesboro he worked at local television station, KAIT, as a cameraman, announcer, and other various jobs. He performed in his own late-night television show, “Mid-Century Nonsense Festival Featuring Kumquat Theater,” according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
After graduating in 1976, the aspiring actor moved to New York. Living in Manhattan wasn’t as glamorous as you might suspect, he said. Among his odd jobs, Bumpass sold carpet cleaner to make ends meet while auditioning for roles. He caught his first break when he was cast in National Lampoon’s road show, “That’s Not Funny, That’s Sick.” His performances were well-received and he toured across the country and even got to make an appearance in his native Arkansas.
Bumpass nearly got his first major break when he was tentatively cast in a proposed comedy movie, “Jaws III, People 0.” It was supposed to be a spoof of the first two Jaws movies and it included a love scene between Bumpass and sultry actress Bo Derek. Jaws director Steven Spielberg objected to the premise of the comedy film and it was shelved along with Bumpass’s love scene with Derek.
“That’s my Hollywood tragedy story,” he said with a laugh.
The actor made appearances in movies such as “Escape from New York,” and in television shows such as “Hart to Hart” and “Silk Stockings.” Demand began to grow, however, for his voice acting. He became a voice actor on hit television shows such as “Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?,” “The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Batman: The Animated Series,” “Gravity Falls,” “Monsters University” among others.
In 1999, he auditioned for the role of Squidward. When he was given a description of the character one of the first things that jumped out to him was his large nose. Bumpass decided to give the character a decidedly “nasally” sounding voice and he won the part. He wasn’t initially sure if the show would be a success. The premise of the cartoon is that SpongeBob is an adult sea sponge working at a fast-food restaurant on the seafloor with a collection of friends and co-workers. They embark on many misguided adventures.
Squidward loathes his job as a cashier at the restaurant, the Krusty Crab. He has a temper and has an adversarial relationship with the other characters in the show, but they don’t realize he doesn’t like them. He’s an aspiring, egotistical artist.
The show premiered on Nickelodeon July 17, 1999. Within two years the show became one of the most popular cartoons in the United States, and the most popular ever on the cable network. Merchandise featuring the show’s characters began to pop up everywhere, he said.
Bumpass became an avid collector of all things SpongeBob SquarePants. He thinks he has the largest such collection in the world and he plans to submit his claim to the Guinness Book of World Records. Once, when he was in a Target store, he found several Squidward figurines and he grabbed them all. At the checkout, the clerk asked him if he was a fan of the character.
Bumpass explained that he was the voice for the character and the clerk asked him to perform the voice. The clerk was less than impressed.
“He said ‘Yeah, that’s pretty good. Don’t quit your day job,’” he said.
His parents never embraced his desire to become a professional actor, he said. Images of a starving artist came to mind. Each year when he files his taxes there is one thing that makes him smile.
“When I see the box for profession and it says actor — I really like that,” he said. “They [his parents] didn’t think it would be a great way to make a living.”
Playing a character like Squidward can encompass many parts of your life. In the show, he plays a clarinet and there are paintings all over his house he paints of himself. Bumpass said he has pictures of Squidward all over his own house, meaning his home mimics his character’s home, to a degree, in Bikini Bottom, the fictional town in which he lives.
A common question he’s asked is whether Squidward is a squid or an octopus. The character is an octopus, but “Octoward doesn’t roll off the tongue as well,” he said with a laugh.
What would be the best show ending from a Squidward perspective?
“To win an invaluable award for his paintings,” Bumpass said.
In addition to his voice work on the hit cartoon, Bumpass has been a voice actor in numerous movies, including “Hercules,” “A Bug’s Life,” “The Emperor’s New Groove,” “Monster’s Inc.,” “Shrek” and “Ice Age” among others.
__________________ A Funny Press Interview of The Beatles in The US (1964) Funny Pictures of The Beatles Published on Oct 23, 2012 funny moments i took from the beatles movie; A Hard Days Night ___________________ Scene from Help! The Beatles Funny Clips and Outtakes (Part 1) The Beatles * Wildcat* (funny) Uploaded on Mar 20, […]
_____________________ Great article on Dylan and Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Cover: A famous album by the fab four – The Beatles – is “Sergeant peppers lonely hearts club band“. The album itself is one of the must influential albums of all time. New recording techniques and experiments with different styles of music made this […]
__________________________ Beatles 1966 Last interview 69 THE BEATLES TWO OF US As a university student, Karl Marx (1818-1883) joined a movement known as the Young Hegelians, who strongly criticized the political and cultural establishments of the day. He became a journalist, and the radical nature of his writings would eventually get him expelled by the […]
____________ Aleister Crowley on cover of Stg. Pepper’s: _______________ I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. […]
The Capitol Hill Crisis Pregnancy Center in Washington, D.C., was the target of vandalism June 3 by pro-abortion extremists. (Photo: Evalyn Homoelle/The Daily Signal)
The Washington Stand has found that there have been at least 41 separate incidents of violent attacks against churches, pro-life organizations, and pro-life property across the country since the May 2 leak of a draft Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that indicated the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
These attacks include arson, vandalism, property theft, and property destruction.
These incidents do not include at least nine other occurrences of physical violence against pro-life advocates, threats of violence against churches, and illegal disruptions of church services that have unfolded within the same time frame.
In the same time period, there has been a single instance of violence against pro-abortion advocacy groups, in which a woman is suspected of committing arson at an abortion facility under construction on May 25 in Wyoming.
Despite the wide disparity in violent incidents between the two groups, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a “Terrorism Threat” advisory bulletin on June 7 that appeared to equate the amount of violent incidents from activists on both sides of the abortion issue. It stated, in part, “…individuals who advocate both for and against abortion have, on public forums, encouraged violence … .”
The recent spike in attacks against churches and pro-life organizations is part of a wider pattern of violence that has seen a marked uptick in the past two years. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops released a report in early June that catalogued “at least 139 incidents … across 35 states and the District of Columbia since May 2020” against Catholic churches and organizations, including “arson, statues beheaded, limbs cut, smashed, and painted, gravestones defaced with swastikas and anti-Catholic language and American flags next to them burned, and other destruction and vandalism.”
“For the last 49 years—each time the pro-life movement had encountered an uncertain future, whether it be the future of an unexpectedly pregnant mom or of Supreme Court decisions, the movement has responded with an outpouring of love, resources, and prayer,” said Mary Szoch, director of the Family Research Council’s Center for Human Dignity.
For the pro-abortion industry, the exact opposite is true. Their solution to uncertainty about a mother’s future has always been violence and destruction in the sacred space of the mother’s womb. It is not surprising that now that the pro-abortion movement is facing uncertainty of the future decision of the Supreme Court, their response is once again violence.
“The pro-life movement must continue to respond with love, prayer, and support for men, women, and babies in need,” Szoch concluded.
In a sign indicating that cooler heads may be prevailing amongst some pro-abortion activist groups, the Washington Examiner reported on Wednesday that the pro-abortion extremist group Ruth Sent Us shut down its website that had included the home addresses of multiple Supreme Court justices. Its move followed shortly after news broke that an armed man was arrested outside of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s residence, who police say had the intent to assassinate Kavanaugh.
The noteworthy move stands in stark contrast to the actions of other progressive organizations that have refused to take down online content that aided violent extremists. Following revelations that the domestic terrorist who shot and wounded the building manager at the Family Research Council’s headquarters in 2012 had used information from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Hate Map” to carry out his plan to kill everyone in the building, the center refused to take the information down from its website, where it remains today.
The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
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Roger Kimball Editor and Publisher, The New Criterion
Roger Kimball is editor and publisher of The New Criterionand publisher of Encounter Books. He earned his B.A. from Bennington College and his M.A. and M.Phil. in philosophy from Yale University. He has written for numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times Book Review, and is a columnist for The Spectator World, American Greatness, and The Epoch Times. He is editor or author of several books, including The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America, The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art, Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education, and Vox Populi: The Perils and Promises of Populism.
The following is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College on September 20, 2021, during a Center for Constructive Alternatives conference on “Critical American Elections.”
Notwithstanding all the hysterical rhetoric surrounding the events of January 6, 2021, two critical things stand out. The first is that what happened was much more hoax than insurrection. In fact, in my judgment, it wasn’t an insurrection at all.
An “insurrection,” as the dictionary will tell you, is a violent uprising against a government or other established authority. Unlike the violent riots that swept the country in the summer of 2020—riots that caused some $2 billion in property damage and claimed more than 20 lives—the January 6 protest at the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. lasted a few hours, caused minimal damage, and the only person directly killed was an unarmed female Trump supporter who was shot by a Capitol Police officer. It was, as Tucker Carlson said shortly after the event, a political protest that “got out of hand.”
At the rally preceding the events in question, Donald Trump had suggested that people march to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically”—these were his exact words—in order to make their voices heard. He did not incite a riot; he stirred up a crowd. Was that, given the circumstances, imprudent? Probably. Was it an effort to overthrow the government? Hardly.
I know this is not the narrative that we have all been instructed to parrot. Indeed, to listen to the establishment media and our political masters, the January 6 protest was a dire threat to the very fabric of our nation: the worst assault on “our democracy” since 9/11, since Pearl Harbor, and even—according to Joe Biden last April—since the Civil War!
Note that phrase “our democracy”: Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and various talking heads have repeated it ad nauseam. But you do not need an advanced degree in hermeneutics to understand that what they mean by “our democracy” is their oligarchy. Similarly, when Pelosi talks about “the people’s house,” she doesn’t mean a house that welcomes riff-raff like you and me.
I just alluded to Ashli Babbitt, the unarmed supporter of Donald Trump who was shot and killed on January 6. Her fate brings me to the second critical thing to understand about the January 6 insurrection hoax. Namely, that it was not a stand-alone event.
On the contrary, what happened that afternoon, and what happened afterwards, is only intelligible when seen as a chapter in the long-running effort to discredit and, ultimately, to dispose of Donald Trump—as well as what Hillary Clinton might call the “deplorable” populist sentiment that brought Trump to power.
In other words, to understand the January 6 insurrection hoax, you also have to understand that other long-running hoax, the Russia collusion hoax. The story of that hoax begins back in 2015, when the resources of the federal government were first mobilized to spy on the Trump campaign, to frame various people close to Trump, and eventually to launch a full-throated criminal investigation of the Trump administration.
From before Trump took office, the Russia collusion hoax was used as a pretext to create a parallel administration shadowing the elected administration. Remember the Steele dossier, the fantastical document confected by the “well-regarded” former British spy Christopher Steele? We know now that it was the only relevant predicate for ordering FISA warrants to spy on Carter Page and other American citizens.
But in truth, the Steele dossier was just opposition dirt covertly paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. From beginning to end, it was a tissue of lies and fabrications. Everyone involved knew all along it was garbage—rumors and fantasies fed to a gullible Steele by shady Russian sources. But it was nonetheless used to deploy, illegally, the awesome coercive power of the state against a presidential candidate of whom the ruling bureaucracy and its favored candidate disapproved.
The public learned that the Democratic National Committee paid for the manufactured evidence only because of a court order. James Comey, the disgraced former director of the FBI, publicly denied knowing who paid for it, but emails from a year earlier prove that he knew all along. And what was the penalty for lying in Comey’s case? He got a huge book deal and toured the country denouncing Trump to the gleeful satisfaction of his anti-Trump audiences.
What was true of Comey was also true of the entire intelligence apparat, from former CIA Director John Brennan to Congressman Adam Schiff and other Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee to senior members of the FBI. All these people said publicly that they had seen clear evidence of collusion with Russia. But they admitted under oath behind closed doors that they hadn’t.
General Michael Flynn, Trump’s original National Security Advisor, had his career ruined and was bankrupted as part of this political vendetta. Meanwhile James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, John Brennan, Peter Strzok, and all the rest of the crew at the FBI, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies suffered nothing. When it came to light that an FBI lawyer altered an email in order to help get a FISA warrant—in other words, that he doctored evidence to spy on a political opponent, which is a felony—he got probation.
The recent news that Special Counsel John Durham is indicting Michael Sussman, a lawyer who covertly worked for the Clinton campaign and lied to the FBI, is welcome news. But it seems like small beer given the rampant higher-level corruption that saturated the Russia collusion hoax.
At least 74 million citizens voted for Donald Trump in 2020, which is at least 11 million more than voted for him in 2016. Many of those voters are profoundly disillusioned and increasingly angry about this entire story—the years-long Robert Mueller “investigation,” the two impeachments of President Trump, the cloud of unknowing that surrounds the 2020 election, and the many questions that have emerged not only from the January 6 protest at the Capitol, but even more from the government’s response to that protest.
Which brings me back to Ashli Babbitt, the long-serving Air Force veteran who was shot and killed by a nervous Capitol Police officer. Babbitt was a useful prop when the media was in overdrive describing the January 6 events as an “armed insurrection” in which wild Trump supporters, supposedly at Trump’s instigation, attacked the Capitol with the intention of overturning the 2020 election.
According to that narrative, five people, including Babbitt, died in the skirmish. Moreover, it was said, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was bludgeoned to death by a raging Trump supporter wielding a fire extinguisher. That gem of a story about the fire extinguisher, reported in our former paper of record, The New York Times, was instantly picked up by other media outlets and spread like a Chinese virus.
Of course, it is absolutely critical to the Democratic Party narrative that the January 6 incident be made to seem as violent and crazed as possible. Hence the comparisons to 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the Civil War. Only thus can pro-Trump Americans be excluded from “our democracy” by being branded as “domestic extremists” if not, indeed, “domestic terrorists.”
The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution accords American citizens the right to a speedy trial. But most of the political prisoners of January 6—many of whom have been kept in solitary confinement—are still waiting to be brought to trial. And although the media was full of predictions that they would be found guilty of criminal sedition, none has.
Indeed, the prosecution’s cases seem to be falling apart. Most of the hundreds who have been arrested are being charged with trespassing. Another charge being leveled against them is “disrupting an official proceeding.” This is a felony charge designed not for ceremonial procedures like the January 6 certification of the vote, but rather for disrupting Congressional inquiries—for example, by shredding documents relevant to a Congressional investigation. It originated during the George W. Bush administration to deal with the Enron case.
The indisputable fact about January 6 is that although five people died at or near the Capitol on that day or soon thereafter, none of these deaths was brought about by the protesters. The shot fired by Capitol Police Officer Michael Byrd that hit Ashli Babbitt in the neck and killed her was the only shot fired at the Capitol that day. No guns were recovered from the Capitol on January 6. Zero.
The liberal commentator Glenn Greenwald further diminished the “armed insurrection” narrative in an important column last February titled “The False and Exaggerated Claims Still Being Spread About the Capitol Riot.” The title says it all. Kevin Greeson, Greenwald notes, was killed not by the protesters but died of a heart attack outside the Capitol. Benjamin Philips, the founder of a pro-Trump website called Trumparoo, died of a stroke that day. Rosanne Boyland, another Trump supporter, was reported by The New York Times to have been inadvertently “killed in a crush of fellow rioters during their attempt to fight through a police line.” But later video shows that, far from that, the police pushed protesters on top of Boyland and would not allow other protesters to pull her out.
Four of the five who died, then, were pro-Trump protesters. And the fifth? Well, that was Officer Sicknick—also a Trump supporter, as it turned out—who, contrary to the false report gone viral of The New York Times, went home, told his family he felt fine, but died a day later from, as The Washington Post eventually and grudgingly reported, “natural causes.” No fire extinguishers were involved in his demise.
***
The January 6 insurrection hoax prompts lots of questions.
Why, for example, did the government mobilize 26,000 federal troops from all across the country to surround “the people’s house” following January 6? Why were those troops subjected to FBI vetting, with some of them sent packing?
Why is there some 14,000 hours of video footage of the event on January 6 that the government refuses to release? What are they afraid of letting the public see? More scenes of security guards actually opening doors and politely ushering in protesters? More pictures of FBI informants covertly salted among the crowd?
My own view is that turning Washington into an armed camp was mostly theater. There was no threat that the Washington police could not have handled. But it was also a show of force and an act of intimidation. The message was: “We’re in charge now, rubes, and don’t you forget it.”
In truth, there is little threat of domestic terror in this country. But there is plenty of domestic conservatism. And that conservatism is the real focus of the establishment’s ire.
It is important to note that while the government provides the muscle for this war on dissent, the elite culture at large is a willing accomplice. Consider, for example, the open letter, signed by more than 500 “publishing professionals” (authors, editors, designers, and so on), calling on the industry to reject books written by anyone who had anything to do with the Trump administration.
These paragons pledged to do whatever they could to stop “enriching the monsters among us.” But here’s their problem: over 74 million people voted for Trump. That’s a lot of monsters.
Many people have been quoting Benjamin Franklin’s famous response when asked what sort of government they had come up with at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. “A republic,” Franklin said, “if you can keep it.” Right now, it looks like we can’t. It looks as if the American constitutional republic has given way, as least temporarily, to an American oligarchy.
As the years go by, historians, if the censors allow them access to the documents and give them leave to publish their findings, may well count the 2016 presidential election as the last fair and open democratic election in U.S. history. I know we are not supposed to say that. I know that the heads of Twitter and Facebook and other woke guardians of the status quo call this view “The Big Lie” and do all they can to suppress it. But every honest person knows that the 2020 election was tainted.
The forces responsible for the taint had tried before. Hitherto, their efforts had met with only limited success. But a perfect storm of forces conspired to make 2020 the first oligarchic installation of a president. It would not have happened, I think, absent the panic over the Chinese virus. But that panic, folded in a lover’s embrace by the Democratic establishment, was not only a splendid pretext to clamp down on civil liberties; it also provided an inarguable excuse to alter the rules for elections in several key states.
“Inarguable” is not quite the right word. There could have been plenty of arguments, and many lawsuits, against the way the executive branches in these states usurped the constitutionally guaranteed prerogative of state legislatures to set the election rules when they intervened to allow massive mail-in voting. But the Trump administration, though foreseeing and complaining about the executive interventions, did too little too late to make a difference.
Among the many sobering realities that the 2020 election brought home is that in our current and particular form of oligarchy, the people do have a voice, but it is a voice that is everywhere pressured, cajoled, shaped, and bullied. The people also have a choice, but only among a roster of candidates approved by the elite consensus.
The central fact to appreciate about Donald Trump is that he was elected president without the permission, and over the incredulous objections, of the bipartisan oligarchy that governs us. That was his unforgivable offense. Trump was the greatest threat in history to the credentialed class and the globalist administrative state upon which they feed. Representatives of that oligarchy tried for four years to destroy Trump. Remember that the first mention of impeachment came 19 minutes after his inauguration, an event that was met not only by a widespread Democratic boycott and hysterical claims by Nancy Pelosi and others that the election had been hijacked, but also by riots in Washington, D.C. that saw at least six policemen injured, numerous cars torched, and other property destroyed.
You will search in vain for media or other ruling class denunciations of that violence, or for bulletins from corporate America advising their customers of their solidarity with the newly-installed Trump administration. As the commentator Howie Carr noted, some riots are more equal than others. Some get you the approval of people like Nancy Pelosi and at least the grudging acceptance of oligarchs of the other party. Others get the FBI sweeping the country for “domestic terrorists” and the lords of Big Tech canceling people who defend the protesters’ cause.
Someday—maybe someday soon—this witches’ sabbath, this festival of scapegoating, and what George Orwell called the “hideous ecstasy” of hate will be at an end. Perhaps someday people will be aghast, and some will be ashamed, of what they did to the President of the United States and people who supported him: the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, for instance, proposing to put Senator Ted Cruz on a “no fly” list, and Simon & Schuster canceling Senator Josh Hawley’s book contract.
Donald Trump is the Emmanuel Goldstein (the designated principal enemy of the totalitarian state Oceania in Orwell’s 1984) of the movement. But minor public enemies are legion. Anyone harboring “Trumpist” inclinations is suspect, hence the widespread calls for “deprogramming” Trump’s supporters, who are routinely said to be “marching toward sedition.”
Michael Barone, one of our most perceptive political commentators, got it right when he wrote of the rapid movement “from impeaching incitement to canceling conservatism.” That is the path our oligarchs are inviting us to travel now, criminalizing political dissent and transforming policy differences into a species of heresy. You don’t debate heretics, after all. You seek to destroy them.
Donald Trump’s accomplishments as president were nothing less than stunning. Trump was, and is, a rude force of nature. He accomplished an immense amount. But he lacked one thing. Some say it was self-discipline or finesse. I agree with a friend of mine who suggested that Trump’s critical flaw was a deficit in guile. That sounds odd, no doubt, since Trump is supposed to be the tough guy who mastered “the art of the deal.” But I think my friend is probably right. Trump seems never to have discerned what a viper’s nest our politics has become for anyone who is not a paid-up member of The Club.
Maybe Trump understands this now. I have no insight into that question. I am pretty confident, though, that the 74 plus million people who voted for him understand it deeply. It’s another reason that The Club should be wary of celebrating its victory too expansively.
Friedrich Hayek took one of the two epigraphs for his book, The Road to Serfdom, from the philosopher David Hume. “It is seldom,” Hume wrote, “that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Much as I admire Hume, I wonder whether he got this quite right. Sometimes, I would argue, liberty is erased almost instantaneously.
I’d be willing to wager that Joseph Hackett, confronted with Hume’s observation, would express similar doubts. I would be happy to ask Mr. Hackett myself, but he is inaccessible. If the ironically titled “Department of Justice” has its way, he will be inaccessible for a long, long time—perhaps as long as 20 years.
Joseph Hackett, you see, is a 51-year-old Trump supporter and member of an organization called the Oath Keepers, a group whose members have pledged to “defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.” The FBI does not like the Oath Keepers—agents arrested its leader in January and have picked up many other members in the months since. Hackett traveled to Washington from his home in Florida to join the January 6 rally. According to court documents, he entered the Capitol at 2:45 that afternoon and left some nine minutes later, at 2:54. The next day, he went home. On May 28, he was apprehended by the FBI and indicted on a long list of charges, including conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and illegally entering a restricted building.
As far as I have been able to determine, no evidence of Hackett destroying property has come to light. According to his wife, it is not even clear that he entered the Capitol. But he certainly was in the environs. He was a member of the Oath Keepers. He was a supporter of Donald Trump. Therefore, he must be neutralized.
Joseph Hackett is only one of hundreds of citizens who have been branded as “domestic terrorists” trying to “overthrow the government” and who are now languishing, in appalling conditions, jailed as political prisoners of an angry state apparat.
Hayek’s overriding concern in The Road to Serfdomwas to combat the forces that were pushing people further along that road to servitude. His chief concern was unchecked state power. In a new preface to the book’s 1956 edition, Hayek noted that one of its “main points” was to document how “extensive government control produces a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people.”
“This means,” Hayek wrote, “that even a strong tradition of political liberty is no safeguard if the danger is precisely that new institutions and policies will gradually undermine and destroy that spirit.”
This dismal situation, Hayek continues, can be averted, but only if the spirit of liberty “reasserts itself in time and the people not only throw out the party which has been leading them further and further in the dangerous direction but also recognize the nature of the danger and resolutely change their course.”
Note the power of that little word “if.” It was not so long ago that an American could contemplate totalitarian regimes and say, “Thank God we’ve escaped that.” It’s not at all clear that we can entertain that happy conviction any longer.
That’s one melancholy lesson of the January 6 insurrection hoax: that America is fast mutating from a republic, in which individual liberty is paramount, into an oligarchy, in which conformity is increasingly demanded and enforced.
Another lesson was perfectly expressed by Donald Trump when he reflected on the unremitting tsunami of hostility that he faced as President. “They’re after you,” he more than once told his supporters. “I’m just in the way.”
Attorney Alan Dershowitz, in 2020 when he was a member of President Donald Trump’s legal team. (Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images)By Newsmax Wires Sunday, 14 Feb 2021 1:56 PM
Former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz on Sunday blasted the “new McCarthyism” of the Democrats’ “hard left.”
In an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” Dershowitz, a constitutional law expert, said some liberals have become radical censors of free speech.
“Common Cause, which purports to be a liberal, not a radical organization, has now demanded that Facebook keep Donald Trump off its platform,” he said. “We are getting liberals… [calling for] Fox News [to be] taken off the networks. I hated communism but I defended the rights of lawyers to defend accused communists.”
“If any lawyer is the subject of this kind of McCarthyism, I will represent you pro bono, in front of universities and bar associations,” he added. “I will dedicate myself that the new McCarthyism of the hard left doesn’t become American culture.”
Dershowitz called the Senate trial acquittal of former President Donald Trump a “great day” for the Constitution and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., — but “not such a good day” for Trump himself.
“McConnell “taught us a civic’s lesson: You don’t have to support President Trump or Donald Trump, you don’t have to agree with the speech, but support the First Amendment and the Constitution’s limitations on the power of the Senate to put a former president on trial,” he said.
“McConnell accepted the constitutional argument I’ve been making from the very beginning — that Congress has no power to put on trial Citizen Trump.”
On the flip side, Dershowitz said, Saturday was “not such a good day for Donald Trump because McConnell and others criticized him.”
In laying out a long-running objection to election fraud by former President Donald Trump, House impeachment managers are effectively making the case for the defense because the speech under the microscope is protected, even if they disagree with it, according to constitutional law expert Alan Dershowitz on Newsmax TV.
“Very good theater, terrible constitutional law,” Dershowitz told “The Chris Salcedo Show” of the House Democrats’ opening statements Wednesday.
“The videos make good theater; they’re very riveting,” the noted legal scholar said. “”But they prove President Trump’s constitutional defense.”
House Democrats are emphasizing that Trump had long argued the election was stolen, but then they show how the president challenged it “by all lawful means and all political means,” Dershowitz told host Chris Salcedo.
“The Constitution protects a person that says the Earth is flat as much as a person who says it’s round,” Dershowitz said. “The Constitution protects a Holocaust denier as much as it does a historian who can prove that 6 million Jews were killed.
“And the Constitution, the First Amendment, protects a president who’s wrong about the election as much as a president who’s right.”
Instead of tying the lone article of impeachment — incitement of insurrection — solely on Trump’s Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally speech, which was delivered at a rally just before the Capitol siege, House Democrat impeachment managers are making a case that he’d long objected to a stolen election as a predicate to inciting the storming of the U.S. Capitol Building.
“Matters of opinion cannot be disputed or taken outside of constitutional protections,” Dershowitz said. “So I think the House managers were actually helping the Trump defense by trying to prove that what he said was false.”
Dershowitz did suggest that Democrats’ gaffe might be part of a plan to “lay a trap” for Trump defense lawyers — getting them to argue the validity of a stolen-election claim, which could derail the president’s case.
“That would be a serious mistake, because it would lose a number of senators who are now on their side,” Dershowitz concluded.
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I have read several books by Alan Dershowitz and he is a liberal but he does look at the constitution honestly and here he has made some very insightful observations that I am sure will upset Democrats but nonetheless will not slow them down from impeaching the President a second time because of their hate of all things Trump!
Dershowitz: Senate Rules Would Prevent Impeachment Trial Of Trump
An image from video of Alan Dershowitz, an attorney for President Donald Trump, walking from the podium after speaking on behalf of the president during the impeachment trial in the Senate on Jan. 27, 2020. (Senate Television via AP)By Newsmax Wires Sunday, 10 Jan 2021 2:42 PM
Harvard law professor and constitutional law expert Alan Dershowitz on Sunday warned an impeachment of President Donald Trump won’t go to trial — but could “lie around like a loaded weapon” for both parties in the future.
In an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” Dershowitz said a Senate trial of citizen Trump would be unconstitutional.
“It will not go to trial,” he said. “All Democrats can do is impeach the president in House of Representatives, for that you only need a majority vote.
“The case cannot come to trial in the Senate” because of rules that do no allow it until, “according to the Majority Leader [Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.), until 1 p.m. on Jan. 20” — an hour after Trump leaves office.
“Congress has no power to impeach or try a private citizen, whether it’d be a private citizen in Donald Trump or …. Barack Obama or anyone else,” he said. “The jurisdiction is limited to a sitting president and so there won’t be a trial.”
But Dershowitz said he worried more about is“the impact of impeachment on the First Amendment.”
“For 100 years the Supreme Court and other courts have struggled to develop a juris prudence which distinguishes between advocacy and incitement.”
“To impeach a president for having exercised his First Amendment rights would be so dangerous to the Constitution, it would lie around like a loaded weapon ready to be used by either party against the other party and that’s not what impeachment nor the 25th amendment were intended to be,” Dershowitz said.
The host emphasizes that “we should be furious about what happened on Capitol Hill,” but adds that “the media have played a huge, huge role in what’s going on in this country.”
“We need to reject all this violence, but what about the media?” asks Levin before displaying front pages of various newspapers from around the country.
“The New York Times: ‘Trump Incites Mob’. This is projection,” Levin contends. “This is projection. He never did that. Or The Washington Post: ‘Trump mob storms Capitol’. There were hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people there … That’s an awfully broad brush. Or the [New York] Daily News: ‘President Incites Insurrection’ … or USA Today: ‘Pro-Trump Mobs Storm US [sic] Capitol’. How about ‘Thugs Storm U.S. Capitol’? How about ‘Lawbreakers Storm U.S. Capitol’?”
Levin then calls out politicians like Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who he says are also “exploiting the situation.”
“They’re talking about impeaching the president of the United States or [invoking] the 25th Amendment nine days before he leaves office,” the host says. “Do they even know what’s involved in the 25th Amendment?
“So they double down, they triple down, they quadruple down. They’re not going to change at all. On one side of their mouth, they talk about unity. Out of the other side of their mouth, they spit on people,” he goes on. “Seventy-four million [Trump-voting] people and more, they’re not going away. Their concerns still exist.”
Meanwhile, Levin says, House Democrats are working toward their goal to “choke the system even further” by passing a rules package for the 117th Congressthat makes it “virtually impossible for Republicans to even propose legislation or amend legislation, even though [they] only has a 10- or 11-person majority in the House.”
“Nancy Pelosi … eliminated 100 years of tradition …”, the host argues, “and the media are trying to intimidate conservatives and constitutionalists by projecting onto them the violence that occurred by reprobates and others who need to be tracked down and punished.
“So it seems that the lessons have not been learned,” Levin concludes. “They certainly haven’t been learned by the left, they certainly haven’t been learned by the media, and they certainly haven’t been learned by the Never Trumpers.”
—-
December 13, 2020
Office of Barack and Michelle Obama P.O. Box 91000 Washington, DC 20066
Dear President Obama,
I wrote you over 700 letters while you were President and I mailed them to the White House and also published them on my blog http://www.thedailyhatch.org .I received several letters back from your staff and I wanted to thank you for those letters.
I have been reading your autobiography A PROMISED LAND and I have been enjoying it.
Let me make a few comments on it, and here is the first quote of yours I want to comment on:
The story of how this postwar consensus broke down—starting with LBJ’s signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and his prediction that it would lead to the South’s wholesale abandonment of the Democratic Party—has been told many times before. The realignment Johnson foresaw ended up taking longer than he had expected. But steadily, year by year—through Vietnam, RIOTS…and Nixon’s southern strategy; through busing, Roe v. Wade, urban crime, and white flight; through affirmative action, the Moral Majority, union busting, and Robert Bork; through assault weapons bans and the rise of Newt Gingrich…and the Clinton impeachment—America’s voters and their representatives became more and more polarized.
During 2020 I have noticed lots of riots and looting across the USA and I wanted to ask you why it is always the liberals doing that? AND WHY DIDN’T ANYONE CONDEMN THESE ACTIONS AT THE 2020 CONVENTION AND DIDN’T YOU SPEAK AT THE CONVENTION TOO?
In Kenosha, Portland, Seattle, and Chicago, city officials have tolerated criminal activity performed by mobs for politically motivated reasons. Philadelphia appears to be the next hotspot for mob violence to go unchecked. Pictured: A barricade is set on fire during a night of looting and violence in Philadelphia on Oct. 27. (Photo: Gabriella Audi/AFP/Getty Images)
James Jay Carafano, a leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges, is The Heritage Foundation’s vice president for foreign and defense policy studies, E. W. Richardson fellow, and director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies. Read his research.
Like the replay of a bad movie, a law enforcement incident in Philadelphia triggered an excuse for violence and looting. It remains to be seen whether the City of Brotherly Love will become the next “Kenosha,” where city officials moved quickly to restore order and seek state and federal support—though sadly after 48 hours of opportunistic looting, violence, and destruction devastated the city.
Or perhaps Philadelphia will be the next Portland, Seattle, or Chicago, where systemic attacks seem to be a daily occurrence.
Police in Philadelphia are fully capable of restoring peace. The open question is whether the mayor and Larry Krasner, the former defense attorney-turned elected rogue prosecutor, will do their job and hold people accountable for their crimes.
When local, state, and federal governments work together, act quickly, and demonstrate no tolerance for organized violence to advance radical agendas, communities are kept safe and equal protection under the law is afforded for all citizens.
The left is actively working to undermine the integrity of our elections. Read the plan to stop them now. Learn more now >>
On the other hand, when local officials, the media, and politicians ignore, excuse, normalize, and enable violence, everyday Americans pay the price.
There is a plague sweeping this country that many don’t want to talk about: The deliberate use of street violence to advance radical political agendas, often under a smoke screen of campaigning for civil liberties. The evidence of organized criminal activity at the root of the outbreaks in American cities is mounting.
The list of people enabling this violence sadly includes some public officials, who are principally responsible for ensuring public safety. For example, a growing threat to peaceful communities is “rogue prosecutors,” former criminal defense attorneys recruited and funded by liberal billionaire backers, who—once elected—abuse their office by refusing to prosecute entire categories of crimes.
These rogue prosecutors are usurping the power of the legislature in the process, and ignoring victim’s rights—all to advance their politics.
Baltimore is a perfect example. Since being sworn into office, under the watch of Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby.
Rogue prosecutors fuel street violence by refusing to prosecute rioters and looters. When confronted with the rising crimes rates, Mosby called the statistics “rhetoric.”
The only way to break the cycle of violence is for local and state officials to work with each other, and if necessary, the federal government. They need to stop enabling the destruction of property and lives on their streets, and start investigating and prosecuting the individuals (and organizations) behind the riots.
It’s time to start shaming and calling out the media, politicians, and advocates who excuse and normalize the violence.
There is a proven action plan for making our streets safe. It is past time for officials to start following this blueprint.
There is no time—zero time to waste. There are already fears of more violence in our streets, regardless of the outcome of the national elections.
In my hometown of Washington, D.C., downtown buildings are already boarding up in anticipation of violence on our streets after the election. If Trump wins, violence. If Biden wins, violence. This makes no sense, and it’s time for it to stop.
It is time for every official and public figure, every political party, in every part of the country to publically reject violence on American streets as a legitimate form of protected speech. Violence is not protected speech, period.
The notion of deliberately destroying the lives and property of our neighbors to advance a radical political agenda is abhorrent. American leaders—of all stripes—should stand up now as one and reject these violent acts. It has gone on for too long, well before the death of George Floyd.
Leaders in Philadelphia and across America must take a principled stand to demand the end to this violence, and they need to do it before the election. In one voice, they should demand: “Leave our streets alone.”
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733 everettehatcher@gmail.com
President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. There have […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers, President Obama | Edit |Comments (0)
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
President Obama Speaks at The Ohio State University Commencement Ceremony Published on May 5, 2013 President Obama delivers the commencement address at The Ohio State University. May 5, 2013. You can learn a lot about what President Obama thinks the founding fathers were all about from his recent speech at Ohio State. May 7, 2013, […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Founding Fathers, President Obama | Edit | Comments (0)
Dr. C. Everett Koop with Bill Graham. Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 4) THE BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Founding Fathers, Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit |Comments (1)
America’s Founding Fathers Deist or Christian? – David Barton 4/6 There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Tagged governor of connecticut, john witherspoon, jonathan trumbull | Edit | Comments (1)
3 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton There were 55 gentlemen who put together the constitution and their church affliation is of public record. Greg Koukl notes: Members of the Constitutional Convention, the most influential group of men shaping the political foundations of our nation, were […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
I do not think that John Quincy Adams was a founding father in the same sense that his father was. However, I do think he was involved in the early days of our government working with many of the founding fathers. Michele Bachmann got into another history-related tussle on ABC’s “Good Morning America” today, standing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit |Comments (0)
I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 4) THE BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ____________ The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book really helped develop my political […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
Why do some children adore their dads and others hate their dads? What’s the difference in dads? I’ve observed dads, and there’s one characteristic I’ve found in almost all dads whose children love and follow them. I’m going to tell you what that characteristic is in a moment.
Sometimes children are caught up in the mistakes and mindset of fathers who won’t do what they should to guide those children into a safe, secure haven. Their own pride and arrogance make shipwreck both of their own lives and their children’s. It doesn’t have to be this way.
The book of Proverbs is a veritable owner’s manual on how to raise a wise child. In large part, that’s why the book was written. From the first chapter, it says:
2To know wisdom and instruction, to perceive the words of understanding; 3To receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment and equity. 4To give subtlety to the simple and to the young man, knowledge and discretion. 5A wise man will hear and will increase learning and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels… 20Wisdom crieth without, she uttereth her voice in the streets. 21She crieth in the chief place of the concourse in the opening of the gates. In the city she uttereth her words saying, 22“How long ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? And scorners delight in their scorning and fools hate knowledge?” (Proverbs 1)
Underscore three words in this passage: simple, scorners, and fools. A child isn’t born a scorner or a fool. Verse 22 reveals there’s a long road in the evolution of a fool.
THE IGNORANCE OF THE SIMPLE
The word “simple” in verse 22 means open and naïve; children’ minds and hearts are plastic—easily shaped, innocent.
They lack understanding. 22“How long ye simple ones will ye love simplicity?” There comes a time when the child must be guided out of his simplicity and into wisdom and maturity.
They are easily led into error. A child is an easy target for Madison Avenue, MTV, false religions, and sinful friends. Because they’re so open, they’ll believe anything. They’re like a sponge, you can trick them, flim-flam them, but they’re living in constant danger. “The simple believeth every word…” (14:15). “A prudent man forseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on and are punished” (22:3). The simple thinks he’s indestructible, never weighing the future, easy to lead to the slaughter.
THE DEFIANCE OF THE SCORNER
The scorner, however, has gone a step farther. Heads up, dads. If not guided by dad and mom, they take the next step down—they become the scorner. They get their jollies from being the teenage smart aleck, the cynic in business, the mocker at the university. It breaks my heart to say it, but most teenagers in America are now scorners.
They defy instruction because “scornersdelight in their scorning” (1:22) “A wise son heareth his father’s instruction, but a scorner heareth not rebuke (13:1). A scorner will fire back at you (9:8). They won’t listen. It’s like talking to a brick wall—they’ll tune you out.
They despise the good and godly. “A scorner loveth not the one that reproveth him” (15:12). They’ll never come and say, “Dad, I need help. Will you help me out?” When you try to correct the scorner, they’ll look at you and say with their eyes, “I hate your guts.”
They’re destined for destruction. “Whoso despiseth the Word shall be destroyed” (13:13). If they laugh at the Word of God, they may laugh their way right into Hell. The scorner isvery hard to reach, but there is yet hope; they can still be reclaimed.
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FOOL
First there was the simple—naive, open, and carefree. But if he’s not taught, he becomes the scorner. Then the scorner becomes a fool. The scorner is insolent, but the fool is immovable— rebellious, arrogant, and wicked.
The fool rejects wisdom. 22“And fools hate knowledge.” “The heart of him that hath understanding seeketh knowledge, but the mouth of fools feedeth on foolishness” (15:14).
He ridicules righteousness. “Fools make a mock at sin” (14:9). This is why we have sitcoms that laugh at drunkenness, glorify adultery, mock marriage, promote homosexuality and relish perversion. Who does that? Fools.
He rejoices in iniquity. “Folly is a joy to him that is destitute of wisdom” (15:20-21). His moral sense has been so perverted, he calls good evil and evil good. His heart is hardened, conscience seared, mind defiled.
He rejects reproof. “Whom the Father loves, He chastens and scourges every son whom He receiveth.” God will chasten those who are His own, but “A reproof entereth more into a wise man than a hundred stripes into a fool” (17:10).Trying to reprove the fool will get you nowhere. Don’t even try. He won’t hear you. He is intransigent. If he were wise, when God chastised him, he would repent.
God gives us little children who begin life “simple”—innocent and open. But if you’re not careful, society will turn them into a smart aleck. If they’re not rescued, dad, when they becomes scorners or smart alecks, they’ll become fools. The fool is on the fast-track for Hell.
We are in serious trouble in America. In 1962, prayer in public schools was declared unconstitutional. In 1963, Bible reading in schools was deemed “unconstitutional” but the killing of pre-born children somehow became (1973) a Constitutional “right.” Then (1980) the Ten Commandments posted on school walls must be removed because—they said—“The child might be tempted to emulate them.”
Secular humanists have proven to be great strategists. They found the one segment of life almost every child will pass through—public education—and targeted it to become their “Sunday School” for humanist philosophy. To do that, they had to purge out any vestige of Christian influence.
To not to raise a fool, what can you do? With everything in modern culture fighting against you, you must gear up for this battle, dads.
1. Expound truth. Saturate them in the Proverbs. Emblazon the Ten Commandments onto their consciousness. Teach them the Beatitudes, that they might learn these simple, basic truths. The battle is for the mind. As the child thinks, so is he.
It’s your God-given responsibility (see Deuteronomy 6:6-9) is to teach these commandments to your sons and grandsons that your family will survive and your home endure.
2.Expose sin. The simple will learn by example when they see discipline falling upon the scorner. Children need to see what happens when sin is exposed and consequences are suffered. “When the scorner is punished, the simple is made wise” (21:11). The worst thing would be for your child to live in a sinful society where he never sees the repercussions of sin. Our children today are insulated; often they don’t see the result of sin. You need to help them understand. Don’t only expound truth, but expose sin. Take him down to skid row. Take him to the prisons. Let him see the end result of bad choices. “Smite a scorner, and the simple will beware” (Proverbs 19:25). They will learn. He thinks he’s indestructible. He does not know. You need to pull back the veil.
3. Expel scorners. Do not let your children hang around with scorners and fools. Just don’t do it. Help him select his friends. That means you may have to be firm and cast out the scorner. Why? Impressionable children will succumb to peer pressure.
Open up your house to your child’s friends. Make your home the headquarters for happiness. And while they’re there, you can monitor those friends. Peer pressure is not bad if the peers are good. If there’s a scorner, a smart aleck, or a fool, you say, “Son, there’s the sidewalk.” “Cast out the scorner and contention shall go out. Yea, strife and reproach shall cease.” (22:10). Moms and dads, underscore this: “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise. But a companion of fools shall be destroyed” (13 20).
4. Express love. Love your children! Delight in them. “For whom the Lord loveth He correcteth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth” (3:12). Be positive! Don’t be negative. Words can hurt your children more than a slap in the face. Learn to listen. Try to see life from their point of view. They’re facing things you never faced.
5. Be gentle. This is that one characteristic I mentioned at the beginning, which I’ve seen in all dads whose children love and follow them: They are gentle. That’s what children want out of their dad. Yes, they want a dad they can look up to, who’s the strongest, wisest, smartest, fastest, best dad in the world…but they want him to be gentle! Touch them, hug them, give them non-verbal affection.
6. Be transparent. Let them know your fears, joys, disappointments, failures, and goals. They already know you’re not perfect; they don’t want you to be a phony.
7. Be available. Make it a priority that you’re going to be available to your child.
You say, “Pastor Rogers, very frankly, I’m not adequate.”
I know—I’m not either. None of us has what it takes to be this kind of dad or mom. That’s the reason we need Jesus isn’t it? We’ve got to have Christ in our hearts! Because the Christian life is not difficult, it’s impossible. Only one can do it, and that’s Jesus. But He will do it inus and through us if we’ll let Him. The best thing you can do for your children is to love God will all your heart. Give your heart to Jesus.
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Tagged Gene Bartow, John Wooden | Edit | Comments (0)
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. It is tough to guard your […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. What does it mean to fear […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Uncategorized | Edit | Comments (0)
Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Ecclesiastes 4-6 | Solomon’s Dissatisfaction Published on Sep 24, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 23, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider ___________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Tom Brady “More than this…” Uploaded by EdenWorshipCenter on Jan 22, 2008 EWC sermon illustration showing a clip from the 2005 Tom Brady 60 minutes interview. _______________________ Tom Brady ESPN Interview Tom Brady has famous wife earned over 76 million dollars last year. However, has Brady found lasting satifaction in his life? It does not […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Adrian Rogers: How to Be a Child of a Happy Mother Published on Nov 13, 2012 Series: Fortifying Your Family (To read along turn on the annotations.) Adrian Rogers looks at the 5th commandment and the relationship of motherhood in the commandment to honor your father and mother, because the faith that doesn’t begin at home, […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular humanist man […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Adrian Rogers – How to Cultivate a Marriage Another great article from Adrian Rogers. Are fathers necessary? “Artificial insemination is the ideal method of producing a pregnancy, and a lesbian partner should have the same parenting rights accorded historically to biological fathers.” Quoted from the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, summer of 1995. […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Tom Brady “More than this…” Uploaded by EdenWorshipCenter on Jan 22, 2008 EWC sermon illustration showing a clip from the 2005 Tom Brady 60 minutes interview. To Download this video copy the URL to http://www.vixy.net ________________ Obviously from the video clip above, Tom Brady has realized that even though he has won many Super Bowls […]
Christian Rock Pioneer Larry Norman’s Songs Part 1
I posted a lot in the past about my favorite Christian musicians such as Keith Green (I enjoyed reading Green’s monthly publications too), and 2nd Chapter of Acts and others. Today I wanted to talk about one of Larry Norman’s songs. David Rogers introduced me to Larry Norman’s music in the 1970’s and his album IN ANOTHER LAND came out in 1976 and sold an enormous amount of copies for a Christian record back then.
Upon the release of his first album Upon This Rock in 1969, Larry Norman unwittingly created the billion-dollar industry of Christian rock. Author Gregory Alan Thornbury is sure that if Norman were alive today, the musician would have despaired at the state of the genre and evangelicalism.
“Over the years I’ve been listening to it, I’ve come to see Larry Norman’s voice as a machine for killing complacency in religious people, and it is my sincere hope that this book does the same,” writes Thornbury in the biography.
Thornbury points to “The Great American Novel” off Norman’s 1972 album Only Visiting This Planet as a quintessential, complacency-killing Larry Norman song.
“You kill a black man at midnight just for talking to your daughter, / Then you make his wife your mistress and you leave her without water / And the sheet you wear upon your face is the sheet your children sleep on / At every meal you say a prayer; you don’t believe but still you keep on,” Norman sings.
The great irony of Norman’s career, Thornbury says, is that secular musicians like Bono and Pixies’ Black Francis embraced his message, but the Church largely rejected it.
“The church absolutely hated what he was doing because they thought that rock and roll was the devil’s music,” Thornbury says. The author remembers managing a Christian contemporary radio station in the ’90s and finding Larry Norman CDs on the shelves labeled ‘Don’t play this song.’
Gregory Alan Thornbury serves as Vice President at the New York Academy of Art and is a professor of philosophy and Chancellor at The King’s College in New York City.
Aaron Hardin/Courtesy of the author
Thornbury says Norman’s songs like “Why Don’t You Look Into Jesus” didn’t appeal to the Church because Christian music was supposed to be positive and uplifting. Though Norman is known as the “father of Christian rock” for such incisive criticisms of Christian hypocrisy, Christian rock today often strays from this specificity.
“The name evangelical has definitely become a polarizing one,” Thornbury says, speculating that Norman might despair about the role of evangelicalsm in American politics today. “Quite a different story from 1976 … when it seemed like the evangelicals in leadership might actually be people that might bring the country together.”
NPR’s Music digital intern Stefanie Fernández contributed to this story.
Larry Norman – The Great American Novel ~ [Lyrics]
Larry Norman – 1 – The Rock That Doesn’t Roll – In Another Land (1976)
Larry Norman – 2 – I Love You – In Another Land (1976)
Calling Larry Norman a “Christian rock pioneer” is easy, and true enough. But before becoming the personification of the Jesus Movement of the late ’60s and early ’70s, he got his start in the mainstream pop world.In 1966, he joined San Jose area band People and signed to Capitol Records. They scored a pop hit with their cover of The Zombies’ “I Love You (But the Words Won’t Come),” before disbanding over internal spiritual conflicts and Norman’s frustration with the label’s re-naming of the band’s debut album. Norman stayed with Capitol for the release of his solo debut, Upon This Rock, a wildly eclectic folk/rock record often referred to as the first Christian rock record of any consequence.
He moved to MGM Records for two critically-acclaimed albums, including Only Visiting This Planet (called “The Best Christian Album of All Time” by the editors of CCM Magazine). But sales were few, and by 1972, Norman went underground, starting Solid Rock Records in the U.S. and Europe, beginning a 35-year run of independence that brought about not only more great music of his own, but also introduced other artful, progressive artists including Randy Stonehill, Daniel Amos, Steve Scott, Tom Howard, Mark Heard, Chris Eaton (Lyrix) and others.
Unlike the safe, southern gospel influenced Christian records of the mid-’70s, Norman’s albums were richly layered in the best tradition of acts like The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Elton John and Crosby, Stills and Nash, with a dark, apocalyptic streak. His message engaged the culture with authenticity and conviction, and his imagination articulated the disconnectedness felt by so many people in the aftermath of the ’60s.
Odd and controversial business practices and broken personal relationships would bring about the end of his Solid Rock Records imprint and cause friction between Norman and some of his closest friends. As Christian music came into its own, he sent himself into a sort of exile. He emerged occasionally, often with surprising stories of personal injuries and even conspiracies. But for the most part, he spent the last two decades of his life communicating directly with his die-hard fans and performing solo acoustic concerts around the world in small venues.
He released a few new projects and re-assembled his classics for release through his website, larrynorman.com. Occasional festival appearances were rare treats for the faithful fans, but he was so far outside the mainstream that most of today’s Christian music fans have absolutely no idea who Larry Norman is.
The fire he fanned continues to burn to this day. Much of the current faith-fueled music scene can trace its existence all the way back to this lanky San Jose kid with the quizzical face, the ripped blue jeans and the simple message that Jesus loves us. His reach extends well into the mainstream where he was admired by artists like U2, John Mellancamp, Bob Dylan and alternative/punk legend Frank Black of Pixies fame. Black, with his ’90s band The Catholics, covered Norman’s song “Six Sixty Six” and frequently went out of his way to laud his impact. In a statement issued the day after Norman’s death, Black called the singer “The most Christ-like man I ever knew.”
In 2002, when U2’s Bono visited Nashville to speak with Christian artists about his DATA campaign, the only artist he specifically asked about was Larry Norman. Norman couldn’t make that trip, so Bono visited him on the road later that year.
His flaws were many, and unfortunately, often kept him at more than arm’s length from the industry he inadvertently helped create. But in time, most of his harshest critics accepted that despite his faults, maybe because of them, he was an amazing person who had given the Church an incredible gift. One-time protégée and best friend Randy Stonehill had distanced himself from Norman for over 20 years following deep personal conflict between the two. In 2001, they reconciled, reuniting onstage at Cornerstone.
Norman struggled with heart disease for most of the last decade. On Sunday, Feb. 24, 2008 his struggle ended. He died peacefully. He was 60. It is certainly no overstatement to say Larry Norman is to Christian music what John Lennon is to rock & roll or Bob Dylan is to folk music. His contributions deserve to be discovered by future generations, and his enduring legacy includes the fantastic truth that despite his personal weakness and frailty, God used him to accomplish amazing things.
John J. Thompson is an artist, author, pastor, music journalist and industry veteran. He founded True Tunes and Gyroscope Arts and currently resides in Nashville. JohnJThompson.com
Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION _____________________________________ 1978 Prolife Pamphlet from Keith Green’s ministry has saved the lives of many babies!!!! Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?) Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical […]
This is a tribute to Keith Green who died 32 years ago today!!! On July 28, 1983 I was sitting by the radio when CBS radio news came on and gave the shocking news that Keith Green had been killed by an airplane crash in Texas with two of his children. 7 months later I […]
My favorite Christian music artist of all time is Keith Green. Sunday, May 5, 2013 You Are Celled To Go – Keith Green Keith Green – (talks about) Jesus Commands Us To Go! (live) Uploaded on May 26, 2008 Keith Green talks about “Jesus Commands Us To Go!” live at Jesus West Coast ’82 You can find […]
To me this song below sums up Keith Green’s life best. 2nd Chapter of Acts – Make My Life A Prayer to You Make my life a prayer to You I want to do what You want me to No empty words and no white lies No token prayers, no compromise I want to shine […]
Keith Green – Easter Song (live) Uploaded by monum on May 25, 2008 Keith Green performing “Easter Song” live from The Daisy Club — LA (1982) ____________________________ Keith Green was a great song writer and performer. Here is his story below: The Lord had taken Keith from concerts of 20 or less — to stadiums […]
Keith Green – Asleep In The Light Uploaded by keithyhuntington on Jul 23, 2006 keith green performing Asleep In The Light at Jesus West Coast 1982 __________________________ Keith Green was a great song writer and performer and the video clip above includes my favorite Keith Green song. Here is his story below: “I repent of […]
Keith Green – So You Wanna Go Back To Egypt (live) Uploaded by monum on May 25, 2008 Keith Green performing “So You Wanna Go Back To Egypt” live at West Coast 1980 ____________ This song really shows Keith’s humor, but it really has great message. Keith also had a great newsletter that went out […]
Keith Green – So You Wanna Go Back To Egypt (live) Uploaded by monum on May 25, 2008 Keith Green performing “So You Wanna Go Back To Egypt” live at West Coast 1980 ____________ This song really shows Keith’s humor, but it really has great message. Keith also had a great newsletter that went out […]
Keith Green – Your Love Broke Through Here is something I got off the internet and this website has lots of Keith’s great songs: Keith Green: His Music, Ministry, and Legacy My mom hung up the phone and broke into tears. She had just heard the news of Keith Green’s death. I was only ten […]
Keith Green – So You Wanna Go Back To Egypt (live) Uploaded by monum on May 25, 2008 Keith Green performing “So You Wanna Go Back To Egypt” live at West Coast 1980 ____________ This song really shows Keith’s humor, but it really has great message. Keith also had a great newsletter that went out […]
Most people think his reelection prospects were doomed because of high inflation.
I suspect, however, that he was most hurt by falling levels of real income. And when I write “real income,”I’m referring to income after adjusting for inflation.
If you peruse the historical data from Table A-2 in the Census Bureau’s most recent report on income and poverty, you’ll notice that median household income (in 2020 dollars) dropped by nearly $2,000 between 1978 and 1980.
In other words, Carter may have survived double-digit inflation if incomes rose even faster than prices.
But that’s not what happened. Instead, we got rising prices and falling real income. This “stagflation” is probably the reason Ronald Reagan was elected, and the rest is history.
Moreover, history may be repeating itself.
Here’s a recent story from the Washington Post. I’ve excerpted the key passages, but all you really need to do is read the headline.
…the World Bank warned… Not since the 1970s — when twin oil shocks sapped growth and lifted prices, giving rise to the malady known as “stagflation” — has the global economy faced such a challenge. …“The risk from stagflation is considerable…,” said David Malpass, president of the multilateral development institution in Washington… Investors also could take a beating from a repeat of ‘70s-style stagflation. The S&P 500 stock index, already down more than 13 percent this year, could lose an additional 20 percent or more, according to a recent client note from Bank of America.
The World Bank mostly focused on the risks for the global economy.
That being said, Biden reappointed Jerome Powell, the Chairman of the Fed’s Board of Governors. By rewarding Powell’s failure, Biden is now in no position to deflect blame.
P.S. Rising prices and falling income under Jimmy Carter’s gave us Ronald Reagan, so bad policy indirectly led to a good outcome. As of now, it’s unclear if there’s a new version of Reagan to rescue us from today’s version of stagflation.
P.P.S. For readers who are not only enough to have experienced America’s national rejuvenation under Reagan, you can click here, here, and here to see “the Gipper” in action.
Ronald Reagan_We will never abandon our belief in God
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)–While much is being said of how former President Ronald Reagan was an eternal optimist who believed America’s best days were ahead, several Southern Baptist leaders have noted his outlook was closely linked to his stated faith in God.
James T. Draper Jr., president of LifeWay Christian Resources, was among six religious leaders to meet with Reagan while he was governor of California. During the meeting, D. James Kennedy asked Reagan two pointed questions about his faith.
The first question was, “If you died today, do you have the assurance you would go to heaven?” Reagan answered, “Yes.”
“Kennedy then asked him, ‘If you should stand before God today and He asked you, ‘Why should I let you in my heaven?’ what would you say?’” Draper recounted in a statement to Baptist Press. “At that point, Gov. Reagan stroked his chin and had that faraway look. After a moment he said, ‘Well, I guess it would be because I pray to His Son Jesus Christ every day.’
“He won my heart that day because that was obviously not a question he had thought about or had planned to answer, and his response was very honest and open,” Draper said. “He was one of the most gracious men I have ever met, and always gave you the sense of honesty and integrity that inspires confidence.”
Reagan died June 5 at his home in Bel Air, Calif., after a decade-long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. The 40th president of the United States was 93.
After being elected President of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1979, Adrian Rogers met with President Ronald Reagan.
Former SBC President Adrian Rogers, pastor of the Memphis-area Bellevue Baptist Church, recounted that he first met Reagan in 1980 when he was a candidate for president. Rogers and four others visited with Reagan in a hotel room.
“Someone asked him this question at the end of the meeting, ‘Governor, I want to ask you a very personal question. Do you know Jesus Christ? Not do you know about Him, but do you know Him?’
“He said, ‘Oh, yes. He is very real to me. I have trusted Him as my personal Lord and Savior, and I pray every day. But I don’t wear my religion on my sleeves.’
“I felt impressed to pray for him, and I put my arm around him and prayed,” Rogers recounted. “I got a letter from him, and I really appreciated it. … He said, ‘Thank you for remembering me in prayer before our Lord.’”
Rogers was in about a half-dozen meetings with Reagan. Once, in the Oval Office early in his administration, “I told him, ‘Mr. President, Southern Baptists love you and will stand behind you if you will stand for the things that mean so much to them. Stand for the home, for the family, for purity. Those are the things that mean so much to them, and I would hope that you would stand for them.’ And he said he would.”
Rogers described Reagan as “a man of principle. He was not driven by polls or political correctness. In that sense, I think he was comparable to our current president. I think the same mosquito may have bit them both.
“The other major thing I would mention about him was his genteel kindness and his ability to make you feel important and feel at home,” Rogers said. “I do believe he was one of the most affable persons I have met.”
Morris H. Chapman, president of the SBC’s Executive Committee, described Reagan as “an extraordinarily gifted and patriotic American and a great president. He had a profound understanding of the difference in right and wrong, justice and injustice, strength and weakness, and civility and incivility. His moral compass kept him on course in leading his beloved country. … His faith sustained him in tough times.”
Chapman recalled the closing words of Reagan’s speech in the wake of the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster in 1986. Reagan said America would never forget the astronauts as they waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.”
“In times like these he demonstrated the resolve of a president, the caring nature of a pastor and the love of a father,” Chapman said.
Robert E. Reccord, president of the North American Mission Board, noted that Reagan was teaching Sunday School at his home church in Dixon, Ill., by the age of 15, and the principles laid down then led to his realization that faith in God was essential to America’s survival.
Reccord mentioned Reagan’s 1984 address at an ecumenical prayer breakfast in Dallas in which he said, “America needs God more than God needs America. If we ever forget that we are one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”
“I am so thankful for how he courageously corrected those who for so long have misrepresented the principle of separation of church and state,” Reccord said in a statement to Baptist Press. “In 1982 he told the Alabama legislature, ‘To those who cite the First Amendment as a reason for excluding God from more and more of our institutions and everyday life, may I just say: The First Amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people of this country from religious values; it was written to protect religious values from government tyranny.’
“That kind of clarity, born in a personal and vital faith, made me thankful Ronald Reagan was my president, but more importantly, a fellow Christ-follower,” Reccord said. “As he now enters the heavenly Shining City, I pray Christ’s comfort for Mrs. Reagan and the family.”
R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., was a 16-year-old volunteer in Reagan’s 1976 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination when he stood in a rope line for the chance to shake Reagan’s hand in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
“I had been inspired by Reagan’s clear and confident voice, articulating a bold vision for America when others preached disillusionment. He presented a conservative political philosophy that changed a generation — and made a great impact on my life,” Mohler said in a statement to Baptist Press.
“Ronald Reagan transformed the world by refusing to believe that freedom and liberty were too expensive to defend,” Mohler also said. “He transformed the presidency by demonstrating that conviction, rather than political calculation, would drive his policies and decisions…. He believed in the American dream and the American people, and he gave the nation a new confidence in its most cherished ideals.”
Christians should remember that Reagan spoke directly and simply about his personal faith in Christ, Mohler said, noting, “He spoke of his confidence in divine providence and his security in knowing that this life is not the end.”
Reagan also took a courageous stand for the sanctity of human life by telling the nation the truth about abortion and putting the defense of human life on the nation’s agenda, Mohler said.
Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, called Reagan the greatest U.S. president since Teddy Roosevelt and ranked Reagan among the five most influential presidents in the history of the nation.
“President Reagan was a gracious friend who demonstrated his own reverence for the Word of God by designating 1983 as the Year of the Bible,” Patterson said.
Reagan chose Patterson’s wife, Dorothy, to serve as chair of the Presidential Bible Committee, which raised money for a special edition of the New King James Version of the Bible.
“President Reagan was a colorful, decisive, humble, principle-driven statesman who was as little affected by Beltway politics as any president we have ever had. We will miss him profoundly,” Patterson said.
Billy Graham expressed his wishes to be present with the Reagan family during their time of mourning but is recuperating in Asheville, N.C., from pelvic surgery.
“Ronald Reagan was one of my closest personal friends for many years,” Graham said in a statement. “Ruth and I spent a number of nights at the White House and had hundreds of hours of conversations with the president and first lady. Mr. Reagan had a religious faith deeper than most people knew.”
Graham said Reagan was a man of tremendous integrity based on his religious belief, and the evangelist had prayer with the ailing former president and his wife during the later years of his life.
“Though her husband was unable to communicate at times, Nancy would say, ‘When you prayed, I think he knew you were here,’” Graham said. “The love between Ronald and Nancy Reagan was an example to the nation.”
Reagan’s casket was transported from a Santa Monica funeral home to his presidential library in Simi Valley, Calif., June 7 where it will lie in repose until the evening of June 8. The casket will then be moved to Washington to lie in state in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol until a state funeral at the National Cathedral June 11. The body will then be returned to California to be buried at the Reagan Presidential Library.
President Bush has ordered the American flag be lowered to half-staff on all buildings, grounds and naval vessels of the United States for 30 days in honor of Reagan. Bush also declared June 11 a National Day of Mourning and ordered all non-essential government buildings closed on that day. –30– With reporting by Chris Turner, Tom Strode, Martin King, Lawrence Smith & Brent Thompson. (BP) photos posted in the BP Photo Library at http://www.bpnews.net. Photo titles: RONALD REAGAN and MEETING THE PRESIDENT.
Best President of my life time Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Worst President of my lifetime LBJ.
MY PICK OF THE BEST AND WORST PRESIDENTS OF MY LIFETIME:
One of the thrills of my life was getting to hear President Reagan speak in the beginning of November of 1984 at the State House Convention Center in Little Rock. Immediately after that program I was standing outside on Markham with my girlfriend Jill Sawyer (now wife of 34 years) and we were alone on a corner and the President was driven by and he waved at us and we waved back. Since the rally that President Reagan held was filled with thousands of people I assumed Jill and I were on the corner with many other people but when I turned around I realized that President Reagan had only waved to us two because we were all alone on the corner and I felt deeply honored.
One of the reasons I liked Reagan was because of his conservative economic philosophy which he got from my hero Milton Friedman and his social views on abortion which influenced his pick for surgeon general which was C. Everett Koop who was Francis Schaeffer’s good friend. Ronald Reagan because of his pro-life views also attended a meeting in Dallas in 1980 with my pastor Adrian Rogers who was President of the Southern Baptist Convention at the time
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Dr. C. Everett Koop pictured above and Adrian Rogers pictured below with Reagan.
I have a son named Wilson Daniel Hatcher and he is named after two of the most respected men I have ever read about : Daniel from the Old Testament and Ronald Wilson Reagan. I have studied that book of Daniel for years and have come to respect that author who was a saint who worked in two pagan governments but he never compromised. My favorite record was the album “No Compromise” by Keith Green and on the cover was a picture from the Book of Daniel.
My favorite President was divorced and running against a family man in 1980 who was part my same religious denomination I belong to and I personally thought Carter had been the second worst President During my life time behind LBJ who had pushed Down the accelerator full speed ahead on the welfare state which has trapped so many of our citizens from climbing the economic ladder to true financial freedom.
I decided that Joe Biden was going to win because Chuck Todd on Sunday November 1st on MEET THE PRESS noted that the last poll in 2016 had Hilliary Clinton over Trump 44% to 40% while the final Wall Street Journal NBC poll completed on November 1st, 2020 has Biden up 52% to 42%.
My exact Prediction of who will win between Donald Trump and Joe Biden and by how much.
Let me start off by saying that in October of 1972 my fifth grade class at the private Christian school that I had just started attending named EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN SCHOOL in Memphis had a vote in my elementary class where Mrs. Blake was our teacher and President Richard Nixon won re-election 21-0. That was the first time I predicted the winner of a Presidential Election, but I have predicted ever since. Sadly I was wrong just four years later when President Gerald Ford was beaten by Jimmy Carter. I then was correct in every election until Mitt Romney lost to President Obama in 2012, and Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in 2016.
Let me share my insights on the race in 2020. The issue that President Trump has chosen to emphasize more than any other is Joe Biden’s corruptness as a politician trying to allow his son Hunter to benefit financially from his relationship to the Vice President. During the last presidential debate in Nashville the moderator asked Biden about his son Hunter and Biden responded:
There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant. Five former heads of the CIA — both parties — say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him and his good friend Rudy Giuliani.
I believe that these emails from Hunter Biden do accurately show that Hunter benefitted from his father agreeing to meet with people that Hunter arranged for him to meet with and this is not Russian disinformation. However, this story was never picked up by the mainstream media and that is whyI am predicting Joe Biden to win Michigan and Wisconsin and defeat Donald Trump. I read an article today on CNN that predicts a 270-268 victory by Biden and that is my prediction too. The article noted:
Biden wins 270 to 268 by winning the Clinton states plus Arizona, Michigan, Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District and Wisconsin.
Another article that caught my attention is below:
Trump won last time out by just more than 10,000 votes, or around 0.3 percent of those cast, according to figures from The New York Times. According to Real Clear Politics, Biden is up by 7.2 points on average, looking at state polling.
A recent poll from The Hill/Harris X put him up 11 points, with 54 percent of 1,289 likely voters asked October 12 to 15 going for Biden, compared to 43 percent for Trump.
Wisconsin
In Wisconsin, Biden is up 6.1 points on average, according to Real Clear Politics.
Survey Monkey’s latest results, from 4,571 likely voters asked September 20 to October 17, put Biden up 12 points, with 55 percent of the support compared to 43 percent for Trump.
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THESE DEFICITS ARE YOO BIG FOR TRUMP TO OVERCOME IN MY VIEW AND THAT IS WHY I AM PREDICTING A BIDEN VICTORY.
(Arkansas Governor Hutchinson at White House with President Trump pictured below)
Now let’s look at Past Presidential Races and the Results of my Predictions:
Years I was correct: 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012.
Years my predictions were wrong: 1976, 2012, and 2016.
In 1972 the Republicans nominated President Richard M. Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew. The Democrats, still split over the war in Vietnam, chose a presidential candidate of liberal persuasion, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota. Senator Thomas F. Eagleton of Missouri was the vice-presidential choice, but after it was revealed that he had once received electric shock and other psychiatric treatments, he resigned from the ticket. McGovern named Sargent Shriver, director of the Peace Corps, as his replacement.
The campaign focused on the prospect of peace in Vietnam and an upsurge in the economy. Unemployment had leveled off and the inflation rate was declining. Two weeks before the November election, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger predicted inaccurately that the war in Vietnam would soon be over. During the campaign, a break-in occurred at Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., but it had little impact until after the election.
The campaign ended in one of the greatest landslides in the nation’s history. Nixon’s popular vote was 47,169,911 to McGovern’s 29,170,383, and the Republican victory in the Electoral College was even more lopsided at 520 to 17. Only Massachusetts gave its votes to McGovern.
1976: Jimmy Carter vs. Gerald Ford
In 1976 the Democratic Party nominated former governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia for president and Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota for vice president. The Republicans chose President Gerald Fordand Senator Robert Dole of Kansas. Richard M. Nixon had appointed Ford, a congressman from Michigan, as vice president to replace Spiro Agnew, who had resigned amid charges of corruption. Ford became president when Nixon resigned after the House Judiciary Committee voted three articles of impeachment because of his involvement in an attempted cover-up of the politically inspired Watergate break-in.
In the campaign, Carter ran as an outsider, independent of Washington, which was now in disrepute. Ford tried to justify his pardoning Nixon for any crimes he might have committed during the cover-up, as well as to overcome the disgrace many thought the Republicans had brought to the presidency.
Carter and Mondale won a narrow victory, 40,828,587 popular votes to 39,147,613 and 297 electoral votes to 241. The Democratic victory ended eight years of divided government; the party now controlled both the White House and Congress.
1980: Ronald Reagan vs. Jimmy Carter vs. John B. Anderson
In 1980 President Jimmy Carter was opposed for the Democratic nomination by Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts in ten primaries. But Carter easily won the nomination at the Democratic convention. The party also renominated Walter Mondale for vice president.
Ronald Reagan, former governor of California, received the Republican nomination, and his chief challenger, George Bush, became the vice-presidential nominee. Representative John B. Anderson of Illinois, who had also sought the nomination, ran as an independent with Patrick J. Lucey, former Democratic governor of Wisconsin, as his running mate.
The two major issues of the campaign were the economy and the Iran Hostage Crisis. President Carter seemed unable to control inflation and had not succeeded in obtaining the release of American hostages in Tehran before the election.
Reagan won a landslide victory, and Republicans also gained control of the Senate for the first time in twenty-five years. Reagan received 43,904,153 popular votes in the election, and Carter, 35,483,883. Reagan won 489 votes in the Electoral College to Carter’s 49. John Anderson won no electoral votes, but got 5,720,060 popular votes.
1984: Ronald Reagan vs. Walter Mondale
In 1984 the Republicans renominated Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Former vice president Walter Mondale was the Democratic choice, having turned aside challenges from Senator Gary Hart of Colorado and the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Jackson, an African-American, sought to move the party to the left. Mondale chose Representative Geraldine Ferraro of New York for his running mate. This was the first time a major party nominated a woman for one of the top offices.
Peace and prosperity, despite massive budget deficits, ensured Reagan’s victory. Gary Hart had portrayed Mondale as a candidate of the “special interests,” and the Republicans did so as well. Ferraro’s nomination did not overcome a perceived gender gap, as 56 percent of voting women chose Reagan.
Reagan won a decisive victory, carrying all states except Minnesota, Mondale’s home state, and the District of Columbia. He received 54,455,074 popular votes to Mondale’s total of 37,577,185. In the Electoral College the count was Reagan, 525 and Mondale, 13.
1988: George H.W. Bush vs. Michael Dukakis
Although Vice President George Bush faced some opposition in the primaries from Senator Robert Dole of Kansas in 1988, he won the Republican nomination by acclamation. He chose Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana as his running mate. The Democrats nominated Michael Dukakis, governor of Massachusetts, for president and Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas for vice president. Dukakis had faced strong competition in the primaries, including the Reverend Jesse Jacksonand Senator Gary Hart of Colorado. Hart withdrew from the race following revelations about an extramarital affair, and party regulars and political pundits perceived Jackson, a liberal and an African-American, as unlikely to win the general election.
Once again the Republicans were in the enviable situation of running during a time of relative tranquility and economic stability. After a campaign featuring controversial television ads, Bush and Quayle won 48,886,097 popular votes to 41,809,074 for Dukakis and Bentsen and carried the Electoral College, 426 to 111.
1992: Bill Clinton vs. George H.W. Bush vs. H. Ross Perot
In 1991 incumbent President George H. W. Bush’s approval ratings reached 88 percent, the highest in presidential history up to that point. But by 1992, his ratings had sunk, and Bush became the fourth sitting U.S. president to lose re-election.
In the summer of 1992 Ross Perot led the polls with 39 percent of voter support. Although Perot came in a distant third, he was still the most successful third-party candidate since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912.
Popular Vote: 44,908,254 (Clinton) to 39,102,343 (Bush)Electoral College: 370 (Clinton) to 168 (Bush)
1996: Bill Clinton vs. Robert Dole vs. H. Ross Perot vs. Ralph Nader
Although Clinton won a decisive victory, he carried a mere four Southern states, signaling a decline in Southern support for Democrats who historically could count on the area as an electoral stronghold. Later, in the elections of 2000 and 2004, Democrats did not carry a single Southern state.
The 1996 election was the most lavishly funded up to that point. The combined amount spent by the two major parties for all federal candidates topped $2 billion, which was 33 percent more than what was spent in 1992.
During this election the Democratic National Committee was accused of accepting donations from Chinese contributors. Non-American citizens are forbidden by law from donating to U.S. politicians and 17 people were later convicted for the activity.
Popular Vote: 45,590,703 (Clinton) to 37,816,307 (Dole). Electoral College: 379 (Clinton) to 159 (Dole)
2000: George W. Bush vs. Al Gore vs. Ralph Nader
The 2000 election was the fourth election in U.S. history in which the winner of the electoral votes did not carry the popular vote. It was the first such election since 1888, when Benjamin Harris became president after winning more electoral votes but losing the popular vote to Grover Cleveland.
Gore conceded on election night but retracted his concession the next day when he learned that the vote in Florida was too close to call. Florida began a recount, but the U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled the recount unconstitutional.
Political activist Ralph Nader ran on the Green Party ticket and captured 2.7 percent of the vote.
Popular Vote: 50,996,582 (Gore) to 50,465,062 (Bush). Electoral College: 271 (Bush) to 266 (Gore)
2004: George W. Bush vs. John Kerry
Total voter turnout for the 2004 presidential election numbered at about 120 million, an impressive 15 million increase from the 2000 vote.
After the bitterly contested election of 2000, many were poised for a similar election battle in 2004. Although there were reported irregularities in Ohio, a recount confirmed the original vote counts with nominal differences that did not affect the final outcome.
Former Vermont governor Howard Dean was the expected Democratic candidate but lost support during the primaries. There was speculation that he sealed his fate when he let out a deep, guttural yell in front of a rally of supporters, which became known as the “I Have a Scream” speech, because it was delivered on Martin Luther King Day.
Popular Vote: 60,693,281 (Bush) to 57,355,978 (Kerry). Electoral College: 286 (Bush) to 251 (Kerry)
2008: Barack Obama vs. John McCain
In this historic election, Barack Obamabecame the first African-American to become president. With the Obama/Biden win, Biden became the first-ever Roman Catholic vice president.
Had the McCain/Palin ticket won, John McCain would have been the oldest president in history, and Sarah Palin would have been the first woman vice president.
Popular Vote: 69,297,997 (Obama) to 59,597,520 (McCain). Electoral College: 365 (Obama) to 173 (McCain).
2012: Barack Obama vs. Mitt Romney
Romney, the first Mormon to receive a major party’s nomination, fought off a number of Republican challengers in the primary, while the incumbent Obama faced no intra-party challenges.
The election, the first waged following the “Citizens United” Supreme Court decision that allowed for increased political contributions, cost more than $2.6 billion, with the two major party candidates spending close to $1.12 billion that cycle.
Popular Vote: 65,915,795 (Obama) to 60,933,504 (Romney). Electoral College: 332 (Obama) to 206 (Romney).
2016: Donald J. Trump vs. Hillary Clinton
The 2016 election was unconventional in its level of divisiveness. Former first lady, New York Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton became the first woman to be nominated by a major party in a U.S. presidential election. Donald Trump, a New York real estate baron and reality TV star, was quick to mock fellow Republicans running for the nomination as well as his democratic opponent.
In what many political analysts considered a stunning upset, Trump, with his populist, nationalist campaign, lost the popular vote, but won the Electoral College, becoming the nation’s 45th president.
Popular Vote: 65,853,516 (Clinton) to 62,984,825 (Trump). Electoral College: 306 (Trump) to 232 (Clinton).
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If Trump was to win re-election then I predict his next pick for the Supreme Court would have been Allison Jones Rushing who I discussed below:
I have a son named Wilson Daniel Hatcher and he is named after two of the most respected men I have ever read about : Daniel from the Old Testament and Ronald Wilson Reagan. I have studied that book of Daniel for years and have come to respect that author who was a saint who worked in two pagan governments but he never compromised. My favorite record was the album “No Compromise” by Keith Green and on the cover was a picture from the Book of Daniel.
One of the thrills of my life was getting to hear President Reagan speak in the beginning of November of 1984 at the State House Convention Center in Little Rock. Immediately after that program I was standing outside on Markham with my girlfriend Jill Sawyer (now wife of 34 years) and we were alone on a corner and the President was driven by and he waved at us and we waved back. Since the rally that President Reagan held was filled with thousands of people I assumed Jill and I were on the corner with many other people but when I turned around I realized that President Reagan had only waved to us two because we were all alone on the corner and I felt deeply honored.
I have read everything I can get my hands on about the views of Allison Jones Rushing and her views remind me of Ronald Reagan which I am summer
In the judicial-nominee process, smear attacks have replaced substantive discourse. Allison Jones Rushing is just the latest victim.
Rushing was recently confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit by a 53-44 vote. This party-line vote is indicative of the confirmation process in recent years, which has dissolved into a morass of bitter mudslinging. Never mind her impeccable credentials, Rushing was labeled an “ideological extremist” and lambasted for a summer internship with a supposed “hate group.”
Reality is much less scandalous.
A native of North Carolina, Rushing excelled at Wake Forest University and at Duke Law School. She clerked for three of the most preeminent federal judges in the country, including then-Judge Neil Gorsuch and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She then joined and subsequently became a partner at Williams & Connolly, recognized as the most selective law firm in the United States. Accolades have followed her throughout her education and career, and justifiably so.
Rushing also has an impressive record of pro-bono legal service. She successfully represented a military veteran seeking education benefits, helped numerous criminal defendants on appeal, and represented the New York City Council Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus in opposing a discriminatory city facility use policy that was ultimately rescinded by Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Why the attacks on Rushing, then?
A principal complaint against her is that, during law school, she did a summer internship with Alliance Defending Freedom, where I serve as senior vice president of strategic relations and training and which the Southern Poverty Law Center has irresponsibly labeled a “hate group.” Of course, this is the same SPLC that recently paid $3.375 million and issued a public apology to settle a threatened defamation lawsuit after it falsely labeled Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz an anti-Muslim extremist. So unwarranted attacks are not new territory for the SPLC.
Then what is Alliance Defending Freedom? For the past 25 years, ADF has defended constitutionally guaranteed freedoms for Americans from all walks of life who are seeking to live consistent with their conscience. The Washington Post has described ADF as the “legal powerhouse that keeps winning at the Supreme Court,” with nine victories at the court in the past eight years. In fact, according to independent analysis published last fall, ADF emerged as a front-runner at the Supreme Court: the law firm with the highest number of wins in First Amendment cases and the top performing firm overall during the 2013-2017 terms.
Fair-minded individuals from both sides of the aisle have vigorously rejected the SPLC’s characterization of ADF. U.S. Senator James Lankford calls ADF “a national and reputable law firm that works to advocate for the rights of people to peacefully and freely speak, live and work according to their faith and conscience without threat of government punishment.” Nadine Strossen, the former president of the ACLU, explained, “I consider ADF to be a valuable ally on important issues of common concern, and a worthy adversary (not an ‘enemy’) on important issues of disagreement; what I do not consider it to be, considering the full scope of its work, is a ‘hate group.’”
And what did Rushing actually do during her summer internship with ADF? It was certainly nothing like what the SPLC would have you to believe. She co-authored an academic legal article discussing who had the right to bring a lawsuit in federal court to challenge the constitutionality of a passive display (like a Ten Commandments monument) on public property, a legal question which the Supreme Court is still grappling with today.
For this, activists sought to banish a credentialed and highly competent woman from public service. For this, Rushing was branded an “ideological extremist.” For this, every Democratic senator present for her confirmation vote deemed her unfit to serve on the bench.
Who, in this scenario, are actually the ideological extremists?
TIMOTHY CHANDLER is senior counsel and senior vice president of strategic relations and training for Alliance Defending Freedom.
TIMOTHY CHANDLER is senior counsel and senior vice president of strategic relations and training for Alliance Defending Freedom
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Amy Coney Barrett was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in November 2017. She serves on the faculty of the Notre Dame Law School, teaching on constitutional law, federal courts, and statutory interpretation, and previously served on the Advisory Committee for the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Rhodes College in 1994 and her J.D. from Notre Dame Law School in 1997. Following law school, Barrett clerked for Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. She also practiced law with Washington, D.C. law firm Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin.
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, President Obama, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, President Obama, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (3)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (2)
It is truly sad to me that liberals will lie in order to attack good Christian people like state senator Jason Rapert of Conway, Arkansas because he headed a group of pro-life senators that got a pro-life bill through the Arkansas State Senate the last week of January in 2013. I have gone back and […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Francis Schaeffer, Max Brantley, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
A heavy heart is the beginning of misery, and we were never meant to carry the load.
A burdened soul breaks the spirit. A broken spirit thins the immunity of the body. The body then begins to wither, and we get ill. In fact, studies have shown that emotions largely contribute to one’s overall state of health. Doctors call it Emotionally Induced Illness (E.I.I.), and it is the idea that physical sickness can be a result of emotional illness.
The entire body is affected by a heavy heart. But God has given us a remedy for the soul, the spirit, and the body. And it is good medicine…Joy!
Not mere laughter, not mere joking, not mere fun and games, but deep, abiding joy is our strongest medicine and greatest weapon. Joy doesn’t depend upon material things or circumstances. It doesn’t depend upon thrills. It comes straight from the heart.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus spoke of the joy in His own heart, and He promised to give us a dose of it; not just some cheap imitation… He wants to give us the real thing. “My joy have I given unto you.” Jesus said, “I want that joy to remain in you.”
We don’t root our happiness in circumstances, because those can change in an instant and leave us emotionally stranded. We root our joy in Christ alone, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. (Hebrews 13:8)
“Without joy, life is meaningless!” Acclaimed pastor and teacher, Adrian Rogers says, “That joy is found only in Jesus. And we ought to share the secret, the source of our joy —the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Apply it to your life
Joy is something freely given, but it must be received, day by day. Today, seek it out through prayer and in Scripture. Let it be seen in your countenance as you go about your day, and share it with someone else.
Democrats, corporations and the liberal media repeatedly decried Georgia’s Republican-passed Election Integrity Act as the next Jim Crow, but the Peach State is now seeing record-breaking turnoutfor early voting ahead of Tuesday’s primary.
Last year, President Biden called the law, known as SB 202, a “blatant attack on the Constitution and good conscience,” ascribed it as “Jim Crow in the 21st century” and was supportive of Major League Baseball moving the 2021 All-Star Game out of Atlanta as a response. Biden urged Congress to pass sweeping federal voting laws, including the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
Biden, along with Democrats and members of liberal media, argued that the law would deny people the right to vote, especially minority Americans, and could lurch U.S. democracy off balance.
But voting in Georgia is breaking early records despite the state’s “controversial new election law,” as The Washington Post put it.
Joe Biden speaks about Democrats’ voting legislation in Georgia.(Getty Images)
A 70-year-old Black woman that spoke with the Post said she was surprised at how easily she was able to vote.
“I had heard that they were going to try to deter us in any way possible because of the fact that we didn’t go Republican on the last election, when Trump didn’t win. To go in there and vote as easily as I did and to be treated with the respect that I knew I deserved as an American citizen — I was really thrown back,” she said.
According to the office of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, there have been nearly 800,000 ballots cast by Georgians as of Friday, a number three times that of 2018 and significantly higher than 2020, an election year when voting typically increases.
“Major media outlets joined Stacey Abrams and Joe Biden in saying Georgia’s Election Integrity Act was ‘Jim Crow’ and would suppress voting,” Raffensperger told Fox News Digital. “In fact, SB 202 made common sense reforms that will help ensure confidence in Georgia’s elections. The fact that we are seeing record early vote turnout, including record minority turnout, proves that the Abrams/Biden narrative was always completely false.”
Such information likely came as a surprise to the Post, which last June tweeted that the law signed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp “imposes a number of restrictions” on voting and thus earned it comparisons to Jim Crow laws that “effectively blocked Black men and women from voting in the American South.”
An attached article argued in part that the new restrictions are “likely” to make “disproportionately more difficult” for people of color to vote.
The Washington Post admitted that Georgia voting was “surging” after criticizing the “Jim Crow” election law. (Eric Baradat/AFP via Getty Images)
Two months earlier the paper’s editorial board asserted that Republicans had adopted a strategy in many states, including Georgia, of making it more difficult to vote.
“No, that is not a full return to Jim Crow. But it shows a toxic hostility to democracy that no Republican can take pride in,” the board concluded.
The Post was far from the only media organization to tout the Jim Crow narrative.
A March 2021 article from attorney and author Teri Kanefield in MSNBC ran with the title, “Georgia’s ‘Jim Crow’ voter suppression bill is now law. Here’s how Democrats can fight back.”’
An opinion column from the New York Times asked of the Georgia law, “If it’s not Jim Crow, what is it?”
U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock arrives at a polling station in Atlanta, Georgia, May 6, 2022. (Reuters/Elijah Nouvelage)
It wasn’t just in print media that liberal organizations flooded the airwaves with rabid criticism of the Georgia law, but also on the airwaves.
MSNBC host Joy Reid said early last year that the Republican voting legislation was the “end of democracy” in America and the beginning of a strategy reminiscent of apartheid South Africa.
“It’s old school American, it’s Jim Crow American,” Reid added.
Furthermore, during an appearance on MSNBC, liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson was asked by host Ali Velshi whether he agreed with Biden’s comments comparing the law to Jim Crow.
“Well, I’d say it is,” Robinson replied. “I mean I did grow up under Jim Crow laws.”
“It’s voter suppression, it’s the new Jim Crow,” CNN anchor Don Lemon similarly said of Georgia’s legislation and the filibuster.
CNN political analyst April Ryan took shots directly at the GOP, calling them a party against the “browning of America” and actively “cheating at the polls.”
Speaking with CBSN, New York Times opinion columnist told host Tanya Rivero that the law was at least “Jim Crow-adjacent.”
Certain Republican Georgia lawmakers want Coca Cola products removed from their offices after the corporation spoke out against the state’s new election law, reports the Hill.
In a letter to Kevin Perry, president of the Georgia Beverage Association, eight members of the Georgia House of Representatives —Victor Anderson, Clint Crowe, Matt Barton, Jason Ridley, Lauren McDonald III, Stan Gunter, Dewayne Hill and Marcus Wiedower —complained about Coca-Cola.
“Given Coke’s choice to cave to the pressure of an out of control cancel culture, we respectfully request all Coca-Cola Company products be removed from our office suite immediately,” they stated. “Should Coke choose to read the bill, share its true intentions and accept their role in the dissemination of mistruths, we would welcome a conversation to rebuild a working relationship.”
Coca-Cola said in a statement obtained by Newsweek that it had been working with the Metro Atlanta Chamber in “expressing our concerns and advocating for positive change in voting legislation. We, along with our business coalition partners, sought improvements that would enhance accessibility, maximize voter participation, maintain election integrity and serve all Georgians.”
The company stated it would continue to advocate for its position on voting issues in Georgia.
“We will continue to identify opportunities for engagement and strive for improvements aimed at promoting and protecting the right to vote in our home state and elsewhere,” the company said.
Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey publicly attacked Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp for recently signing into law voting legislation Quincey declared as “unacceptable” and “a step backwards.”
The legislation expands early voting opportunities, weekend early voting and extends deadlines for absentee ballot requests. It also creates a state-wide voter ID absentee voting requirement and restricts ballot drop box usage.
Quincey said the new law moves Georgia backwards.
“Let me be crystal clear and unequivocal, this legislation is unacceptable, it is a step backward and it does not promote principles we have stood for in Georgia, around broad access to voting, around voter convenience, about ensuring election integrity, and this is frankly just a step backwards,” Quincey said.
One provision of the new law seems to be of particular interest to the Georgia Beverage Association: the prohibition on handing out either soft drinks or food voters waiting in a line at the polling station to vote, reports the Hill.
Here’s a look at the key myths vs. facts about Georgia’s election reforms, which Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, signed into law. Pictured: Demonstrators inside the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta show their support March 8 for the legislation. (Photo: Megan Varner/Getty Images)
President Joe Biden and other Democrats, without offering evidence, equate Georgia’s new election law with the Jim Crow era, while many media outlets obliginglyrepeatDemocratictalkingpoints about it.
A headline over a March 25 news report in The New York Times, not an opinion piece, referred to the legislation as a “major law to limit voting.”
Among the most vocal opponents is Stacey Abrams, Georgia Democrats’ 2018 candidate for governor, who now heads a group called Fair Fight Action, which describes itself as a voting rights organization.
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“From passage of the #SB202 voter suppression bill targeted at Black and brown voters to the arrest of a Black legislator who was advocating for the voting rights of her constituents, today was a reminder of Georgia’s dark past,” Abrams wrote last week in a tweet. “We must fight for the future of our democracy #gapol.”
The Washington Post stands almost alone in the ocean of mainstream media outlets, noting in a fact-check analysis that Biden earned “four Pinocchios” for making misleading comments about Georgia’s new election law both during his first press conference and in an official presidential statement.
Here’s a look at the key myths vs. facts about Georgia’s election legislation, which Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, signed into law last Thursday.
1. ‘Restrictions on Casting Absentee Ballots’
In his written statement, Biden said of the new law: “It adds rigid restrictions on casting absentee ballots that will effectively deny the right to vote to countless voters.”
The term “rigid restrictions” is a matter for debate, so a ruling of true or false is difficult here.
The law does require voter ID for individuals who are casting absentee ballots, which previously was not the case. A voter would need to provide a driver’s license number or another state identification number on the absentee ballot form.
The law also requires voters to request absentee ballots 11 days before the election. In its previous form, the law allowed voters to request ballots by the Friday before Election Day.
The deadline is still before Election Day. But the new law allows voters to return applications for absentee ballots online, through the Secretary of State’s Office.
The earliest that Georgia voters may request an application for an absentee ballot will be 77 days before Election Day, down from 180 days, according to Georgia Public Broadcasting.
Kemp said that 96% of Georgia voters already have suitable voter ID, and alternative identification would be provided at no charge to those who need it.
“In order to verify that the absentee ballot was voted by the elector who requested the ballot, the elector shall print the number of his or her Georgia driver’s license number or identification card,” the law states, referring to a voter as “elector” and adding: “The elector shall also print his or her date of birth in the space provided in the outer oath envelope.”
The law goes on to state:
If the elector does not have a Georgia driver’s license or state identification card issued pursuant to Article 5 of Chapter 5 of Title 40, the elector shall so affirm in the space provided on the outer oath envelope and print the last four digits of his or her Social Security number in the space provided on the outer oath envelope.
If the elector does not have a Georgia driver’s license, identification card issued pursuant to Article 5 of Chapter 5 of Title 40, or a Social Security number, the elector shall so affirm in the space provided on the outer oath envelope and place a copy of one of the forms of identification set forth in subsection (c) of Code Section 21-2-417 in the outer envelope.
For its part, Fair Fight Action, the group run by Abrams, asserts: “Over 200,000 Georgians lack the appropriate ID under SB 202.”
2. ‘Crime to Provide Water’
Georgia’s law prohibits campaign workers from distributing food or drink, or anything else of value, to waiting voters, and from setting up a table within 150 feet of the building or 25 feet of a voter.
The most prominent talking point to emerge from Biden and other Democrats has been regarding water bottles.
“It makes it a crime to provide water to voters while they wait in line—lines Republican officials themselves have created by reducing the number of polling sites across the state, disproportionately in Black neighborhoods,” Biden said of the new law in his formal statement.
This is false, because the law specifically allows official poll workers, as opposed to campaign workers, to provide water to voters.
Specifically, the law says:
No person shall solicit votes in any manner or by any means or method, nor shall any person distribute or display any campaign material, nor shall any person give, offer to give, or participate in the giving of any money or gifts, including, but not limited to, food and drink, to an elector, nor shall any person solicit signatures for any petition, nor shall any person, other than election officials discharging their duties, establish or set up any tables or booths on any day in which ballots are being cast: (1) Within 150 feet of the outer edge of any building within which a polling place is established; (2) Within any polling place; or (3) Within 25 feet of any voter standing in line to vote at any polling place.
The law goes on to state:
This Code section shall not be construed to prohibit a poll officer from distributing materials, as required by law, which are necessary for the purpose of instructing electors or from distributing materials prepared by the Secretary of State which are designed solely for the purpose of encouraging voter participation in the election being conducted or from making available self-service water from an unattended receptacle to an elector waiting in line to vote.
A practice known as the “line warming loophole,” in which campaign operatives provide giveaways to voters while they stand in line, is not a new controversy.
Last year, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger warned against tolerating the practice.
“The right to vote is sacred and fundamental to our democracy, and I am committed to upholding that right for all Georgians,” Raffensperger said in a formal statement. “Political organizations looking to game the system should be forewarned that we will not tolerate efforts to electioneer near polling sites in violation of the law.”
As for Biden’s charge that Republicans are creating long lines to vote, the new law provides “additional voting equipment or poll workers to precincts containing more than 2,000 electors.”
Kemp said this change would lead to shorter lines.
3. ‘It Ends Voting Hours Early’
In his written statement Friday, Biden said: “Among the outrageous parts of this new state law, it ends voting hours early so working people can’t cast their vote after their shift is over.”
This assertion about voting hours is false.
The new Georgia law does nothing to change Election Day voting hours from 7 a.m to 7 p.m., although it expands weekend voting before Election Day.
The law adds early voting on two Saturdays and one Sunday that previously were not available to Georgians.
Georgia Public Broadcasting, the state affiliate of the left-leaning Public Broadcasting Service (which includes National Public Radio), did an explanatory piece that said: “One of the biggest changes in the bill would expand early voting access for most counties, adding an additional mandatory Saturday and formally codifying Sunday voting hours as optional.”
The law itself states:
Requiring two Saturday voting days and two optional Sunday voting days will dramatically increase the total voting hours for voters across the State of Georgia, and all electors in Georgia will have access to multiple opportunities to vote in person on the weekend for the first time.
The Georgia Public Broadcasting story also says: “Counties can have early voting open as long as 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., or 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at minimum.”
Previously, some rural counties in Georgia didn’t provide for early voting for eight hours on a work day, the Post reported.
The legislation signed into law by Kemp does limit the time for runoff campaigns from nine weeks after Election Day to four weeks. But it says early voting in these runoff elections should begin “as soon as possible prior to a runoff from any other general primary.”
The law reads:
Voting shall be conducted during normal business hours beginning at 9:00 A.M. and ending at 5:00 P.M. on weekdays, other than observed state holidays, during such period and shall be conducted on the second Saturday and third Saturdays during the hours of 9:00 A.M. through 5:00 P.M. and, if the registrar or absentee ballot clerk so chooses, the second Sunday, the third Sunday, or both the second and third Sundays prior to a primary or election during the hours of 9:00 A.M. through 4:00 P.M. determined by the registrar or absentee ballot clerk, but no longer than 7:00 A.M. through 7:00 P.M.
4. ‘Render Drop Boxes Useless’
Abrams’ Fair Fight Action organization said the law, known as Senate Bill 202, would “render drop boxes ‘useless’ and otherwise harm voters across the state.”
The New York Times, in a March 30 story, referred to the legislation as a “GOP-backed bill that prohibits the use of drop boxes.”
The law actually codifies use of drop boxes. Election officials provided drop boxes for ballots in the presidential election in Georgia based on Kemp’s emergency order to address voting concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But for SB 202, drop boxes would not have to be used in any future Georgia elections.
That said, fewer drop boxes will be available in future elections—presumably operating in the absence of a pandemic—than in the 2020 election.
Each county in Georgia must provide at least one drop box. But boxes will have to be located near early-voting sites and be accessible for dropping off absentee ballots when these polling locations are open.
The law states:
A board of registrars or absentee ballot clerk shall establish at least one drop box as a means for absentee by mail electors to deliver their ballots to the board of registrars or absentee ballot clerk.
A board of registrars or absentee ballot clerk may establish additional drop boxes, subject to the limitations of this Code section, but may only establish additional drop boxes totaling the lesser of either one drop box for every 100,000 active registered voters in the county or the number of advance voting locations in the county. Any additional drop boxes shall be evenly geographically distributed by population in the county.
5. ‘Jim Crow 2.0’?
One’s tolerance for hypercharged political rhetoric—and decision to accept something as literal or serious—may determine whether it’s justifiable to claim the new law imposes modern Jim Crow-style restrictions on voting rights.
Upon the Georgia Legislature’s passage of the bill, Abrams, the losing 2018 gubernatorial candidate, said in a public statement:
Republican state leaders willfully undermine democracy by giving themselves authority to overturn results they do not like. Now, more than ever, Americans must demand federal action to protect voting rights as we continue to fight against these blatantly unconstitutional efforts that are nothing less than Jim Crow 2.0.
During his press conference Thursday, Biden appeared to make false assertions about the Georgia legislation that were repeated in his official statement.
“Deciding in some states that you cannot bring water to people standing in line, waiting to vote; deciding that you’re going to end voting at 5 o’clock when working people are just getting off work; deciding that there will be no absentee ballots under the most rigid circumstances,” Biden said at one point to reporters.
The president added: “This makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle. I mean, this is gigantic what they’re trying to do, and it cannot be sustained.”
Biden later tweeted a similar assertion.
“It’s Jim Crow in the 21st Century—and it must end,” Biden said in the tweet.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., tweeted of Kemp: “The Republican who is sitting in Stacey Abrams’ chair just signed a despicable voter suppression bill into law to take Georgia back to Jim Crow.”
Tweets from some reporters and media outlets expressed the same line.
Putting aside what is or isn’t acceptable political hyperbole, Jim Crow has a literal historical legacy.
With regard to voting, these laws included requiring poll tests for black voters before they could cast a ballot. These overtly racist laws also restricted employment and educational opportunities for black Americans.
Schools, parks, recreation facilities, and other public buildings routinely were segregatedthroughout the South, as were public restrooms and water fountains. The Jim Crow era included terrorist activity by the Ku Klux Klan, which committed violent and deadly acts against blacks such as lynchings, often with impunity.
“It’s an outrageous historical lie and insulting to those who actually suffered under Jim Crow election laws in the old South, to compare providing ID on absentee ballots with Jim Crow,” Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal.
6. ‘Legislative Takeover’
Abrams’ Fair Fight Action says Georgia’s new law would “allow legislative takeovers of local boards of elections, and much more.”
This is a dubious political characterization.
The Associated Press reported: “One of the biggest changes [in the law] gives the GOP-controlled legislature more control over election administration. That has raised alarms about potential greater partisan influence.”
The fact is that under the new law, the state Legislature does indeed have an increased role in the State Election Board under the new law.
Meanwhile, Georgia’s secretary of state will have a diminished role. This is the basis for the claim that partisan politics could play a role.
“The secretary of state will no longer chair the State Election Board, becoming instead a non-voting ex-officio member,” Georgia Public Broadcasting explained. “The new chair would be nonpartisan but appointed by a majority of the state House and Senate.”
“The chair would not be allowed to have been a candidate, participate in a political party organization or campaign or [have] made campaign contributions for two years prior to being appointed.”
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we will consider publishing your remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez self-hyped her effort to block a Senate-approved bill that would step up security protections for Supreme Court justices and their immediate family members Thursday — a day after an armed man was arrested for attempting to murder Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The Bronx Democrat posted a video on her Instagram feed of her running up the steps to the Capitol so she could be present on the House floor to stop a unanimous consent request by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to move the measure.
AOC told her followers that she would oppose the unanimous consent request until the Senate advances gun control measures after a spate of mass shootings in the US, including the May 24 Uvalde, Texas elementary school massacre.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bragged that she attempted to block a bill that would increase security for Supreme Court justices.
“Oh, so we can pass protections for us and here easily, right? But we can’t pass protections for everyday people? I think not,” she said. “I’m going to need a roll call vote on that.”
House Democrats, who say they want to expand the bill to include enhanced security for Supreme Court clerks and other employees, rejected the unanimous consent request, sending McCarthy into a rage on the House floor.
“How many times do they have to be threatened?” he asked, referring to the justices. “How many people have to be arrested with a gun outside their home?”
The outburst took place hours after a California man was arrested with a cache of weaponsoutside Kavanaugh’s Maryland home after he called 911 on himself and told an operator he was having suicidal thoughts and wanted to kill the justice, according to court documents.
“What would have happened had he not called 911?” McCarthy asked his Democratic colleagues Wednesday night. “He didn’t just have a gun. He had zip ties. But somehow you want to leave. This bill could be on the president’s desk right now.”
The Senate passed the legislation by unanimous consent May 9 after a draft Supreme Court opinion leaked that indicated the justices were close to overturning Roe v. Wade, triggering nationwide protests.
On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi snapped at a reporter who pressed her about Supreme Court security.
“He’s protected. The justices are protected,” Pelosi said of Kavanaugh, later adding: “No one is in danger over the weekend because of our not having a bill.”
“Real Time” host Bill Maher lambasted The New York Times over its weak coverage of the assassination attempt of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Earlier this week, a man named Nicholas John Roske was arrested outside the justice’s home carrying a gun and a knife. He admitted to police that he had traveled from California to Washington, D.C., to kill Kavanaugh because of his apparent intention to overturn Roe v. Wade following the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion. Roske was charged with attempted murder.
However, the Times shrugged off the assassination attempt, keeping it off the front page, which drew ire on social media.
During his panel discussion on Friday night, Maher also did not give the Times a pass, calling it a case of “media bias.”
“The New York Times buried this,” Maher said. “If this had been a liberal Supreme Court justice that someone came to kill, it would have been on the front page.”
“And that’s what’s so disappointing about a paper like The New York Times because they just wear their bias on their sleeves, and if it’s not part of something that feeds our narrative, f— it, we bury it,” Maher added.
“Real Time” host Bill Maher slammed the New York Times for burying the assassination attempt of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. (HBO)
Maher took a swipe at Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for his “very inflammatory words” toward Kavanaugh and Justice Neil Gorsuch, suggesting they could have “inspired” Roske.
The top Democrat told the two conservative justices in 2021, “you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price! You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions!”
Maher credited Schumer for walking the comments back.
“The New York Times buried this. If this had been a liberal Supreme Court justice that someone came to kill, it would’ve been on the front page…They wear their bias on their sleeves and if it’s not part of something that feeds our narrative, f&$@ it” – @BillMaher#RealTime
Former Trump White House counselor Kellyanne Conway blasted House Democrats for holding up a bill passed unanimously in the Senate that would grant protection for the Supreme Court justices.
“This is the kind of thing that drives America crazy when Washington can’t do something as simple as pass a law that we should all agree with just to beef up their security,” Conway said.
A man was arrested near Justice Kavanaugh’s home in Maryland for allegedly threatening violence toward the justice. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
Substack writer Josh Barro told Maher the assassination attempted is “related to the perception that a lot of Americans have where they don’t think these institutions are legitimate anymore.”
“And that creates the willingness these nutty people have to go and try to take matters into their own hands and shoot people,” Barro said. “And I think it’s a really worrying trend in our politics and I agree it’s not solely limited to one side of the aisle.”
Joseph A. Wulfsohn is a media reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to joseph.wulfsohn@fox.com and on Twitter: @JosephWulfsohn.
Pro-life activists listen to then-President Donald Trump as he speaks at the 47th annual March for Life in Washington on Jan. 24, 2020. The March for Life announced the theme for its 2022 event on Wednesday: “Equality Begins in the Womb.” (Photo: Olivier Douliery/ AFP/Getty Images)
The 2022 March for Life will lean into a theme of equality for the unborn, the event’s organizers said Wednesday, as they announced the annual march’s theme: “Equality Begins in the Womb.”
“The pro-life movement recognizes the immense responsibility this nation bears to restore equal rights to its most defenseless citizens in the womb,” March for Life President Jeanne Mancini said during the Wednesday announcement at The Heritage Foundation. “Since [the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision], scientific advances have undeniably confirmed the humanity of the unborn, and today most Americans agree there should be significant limits on abortion.”
Equality Begins in the Womb | 2022 March for Life
To this end, we hope the Supreme Court honors the existing constitutional protections for the unborn as they hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization,” Mancini said. “No child’s life, either here or abroad, should be threatened by the injustice of abortion.”
A number of pro-life activists joined the March for Life president in Washington, D.C., for the announcement: Judicial Crisis Network President Carrie Severino, Radiance Foundation co-founder Ryan Bomberger, Catholic Association policy adviser and radiologist Dr. Grazie Christine, and Heritage Foundation President Kay C. James.
Actor Kirk Cameron will speak at the January 2022 march, and Grammy Award-nominated songwriter Matthew West will perform, the March for Life announced. The Rev. Mike Schmitz, a Catholic priest who hosts the chart-topping “Bible in a Year” podcast, is the keynote speaker at the event’s Rose Dinner after the march.
The March for Life is a massive pro-life demonstration that has followed the anniversary of Roe v. Wade every year in the nation’s capital since 1974. Thousands of pro-life activists, students, and families flock to Washington, D.C., to demonstrate against abortion and attend the march’s rallies.
Organizers canceled the 2021 March for Life, scheduled to take place only a few weeks after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. A small group of pro-life leaders opted instead to march for the unborn in Washington on an unpublicized route.
“The protection of all of those who participate in the annual march, as well as the many law enforcement personnel and others who work tirelessly each year to ensure a safe and peaceful event, is a top priority of the March for Life,” Mancini announced Jan. 15, in canceling the event.
“In light of the fact that we are in the midst of a pandemic, which may be peaking, and in view of the heightened pressures that law enforcement officers and others are currently facing in and around the Capitol, this year’s March for Life will look different,” she said.
In January 2020, then-President Donald Trump became the first president to attend the March for Life in person. Mancini hailed the former president and his administration as “consistent champions for life,” calling their support for the March for Life “unwavering.”
“Every life brings love into this world,” the then-president said. “Every person is worth protecting.”
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.
I am a proud member of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers and I attended the convention in Dallas in July and we have officially launched a nationwide push against abortion rights.
The article below notes:
At its first annual policy conference last weekend, group members voted to make a controversial new Texas law, the “Texas Heartbeat Bill,” the organization’s first piece of model legislation, meaning that similar bills may soon pop up in state capitols across the country.
Announcing he planned to introduce a copycat bill, Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert (R), the founder and president of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, shared a template of legislation lawmakers in other states could fill in the blanks on and reproduce.
At the July 17th session of THE CHRISTIAN LAWMAKERS meeting in Dallas, I really got a lot out of the expert panel moderated by Texas State Senator Bryan Hughes entitled ABOLISHING ABORTION IN AMERICA. Here below is what Wikipedia says about Senator Hughes:
On March 11, 2021, Hughes introduced a fetal heartbeat bill entitled the Texas Heartbeat Bill (SB8) into the Texas Senate and state representative Shelby Slawson of Stephenville, Texas introduced a companion bill (HB1515) into the state house.[22]The bill allows private citizens to sue abortion providers after a fetal heartbeat has been detected.[22] The SB8 version of the bill passed both chambers and was signed into law by Texas Governor Greg Abbott on May 19, 2021.[22] It took effect on September 1, 2021.[22]
Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 1 | Abortion of the Human…
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Tucker: Democrats have abandoned their ‘my body, my choice’ argument
Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert presides over a Senate committee at the state Capitol in Little Rock, Ark. in this March 14, 2018, file photo. Rapert’s National Association of Christian Lawmakers met recently to talk model legislation and pass resolutions. Kelly P. Kissel, Associated Press
The National Association of Christian Lawmakers has officially launched a nationwide push against abortion rights.
At its first annual policy conference last weekend, group members voted to make a controversial new Texas law, the “Texas Heartbeat Bill,” the organization’s first piece of model legislation, meaning that similar bills may soon pop up in state capitols across the country.
The model legislation, called the Heartbeat Model Act, was accepted unanimously by the executive committee during a Saturday meeting.
The Texas bill it is based upon, Senate Bill 8, bans abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which can occur as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. The legislation also allows for any state resident to bring a civil suit against a doctor who performs an abortion after a heartbeat is detectable. Under the law, a woman who has an abortion would be liable to civil suits, as would anyone who supported her in the act — from family members to the receptionist who checks her in at a clinic.
Not only is the doctor liable, but anyone found aiding and abetting,” said Texas legislator Bryan Hughes, the bill’s author, during the Saturday meeting, which was led by the organization’s founder and president, Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert.Texas state Rep. Bryan Hughes speaks during the opening session of the 2015 legislative session on Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015, in Austin, Texas. Eric Gay, Associated Press
Speaking to the Deseret News on Monday, Rapert said the provision allowing residents to bring civil suits against anyone involved in an abortion is like “putting a SCUD missile on that heartbeat bill — they can’t stop it.”
Rapert was the author of a similar 2013 bill in Arkansas, portions of which were later struck down by a federal judge. At least a dozen states have implemented a variety of abortion restrictions in recent years, leading numerous observers to say that the landmark 1973 Supreme Court abortion ruling, Roe v. Wade, is under threat.
Speaking Saturday to the Christian legislators gathered in Dallas, Hughes reminded the legislators that the Heartbeat Model Act is just a starting point and that the legislation will have to be tailored to work within each state’s laws.A anti-abortion supporter argues with those who attended a press conference and rally held by the Planned Parenthood Action Council of Utah outside of the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Aug. 25, 2015. Stacie Scott, Deseret News
The National Association of Christian Lawmakers formed last year with three key goals: to offer conservative, Christian legislators networking opportunities,; to help lawmakers share bills that have been successful in their states so that legislators elsewhere might push through similar legislation; and to support Christians running for local, state or national office.
At the policy conference last week, the organization worked toward meeting these goals in various ways, including by approving the Heartbeat Model Act. The executive committee also passed a resolution supporting Israel’s “right to defend itself from terror attacks” and creating a standing American-Israeli Committee.
Speaking to the executive committee, Rabbi Leonid Feldman, who was born in the Soviet Union and was imprisoned there for his pro-Israel activities, remarked that the Jewish people “remember our friends.”
This conference and this organization will be remembered by the Jewish people,” he said.
The organization also approved a resolution in support of “election integrity.”
The executive committee also approved a second piece of model legislation: the National Motto Display Model Act. Based on bills passed in Arkansas in 2017 and this year in Texas, the legislation requires public schools to display the national motto “In God We Trust” when printed versions of the motto are donated to schools or copies of the national motto are bought with funds from private donors.
“As the Texas House sponsor of the Motto Act, I am proud to see a model put out by the NACL so that legislators from every other state can have a mechanism to ensure our citizens — especially our school-age children — are reminded of our nation’s motto,” said Tom Oliverson, a state representative from Texas and chairman of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers’ national legislative council.
During the executive committee’s meeting on Saturday, Rapert said Hobby Lobby would make frames available for a reduced price if they’ll be used for national motto displays.
Asked Monday what other pieces of legislation the organization might adopt as model legislation in the future, Rapert told the Deseret News that the National Association of Christian Lawmakers is already weighing some options.
Since religious freedom is central to the organization, it could end up adopting model legislation similar to bills promoted in Texas this year by Oliverson. He supported three measures designed to make it harder for the government to force church closures during public emergencies, like the COVID-19 pandemic, and a bill that would ensure homeowners’ associations can’t infringe on homeowners’ rights to display religious symbols.
WASHINGTON — A deeply divided Supreme Court is allowing a Texas law that bans most abortions to remain in force, for now stripping most women of the right to an abortion in the nation’s second-largest state.
It is the strictest law against abortion rights in the United States since the high court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 and part of a broader push by Republicans nationwide to impose new restrictions on abortion. At least 12 other states have enacted bans early in pregnancy, but all have been blocked from going into effect.
The high court’s order declining to halt the Texas law came just before midnight Wednesday. The majority said those bringing the case had not met the high burden required for a stay of the law.
“The Court’s order is emphatic in making clear that it cannot be understood as sustaining the constitutionality of the law at issue.”— Chief Justice John Roberts
Chief Justice John Roberts (Supreme Court)
“In reaching this conclusion, we stress that we do not purport to resolve definitively any jurisdictional or substantive claim in the applicants’ lawsuit. In particular, this order is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas’s law, and in no way limits other procedurally proper challenges to the Texas law, including in Texas state courts,” the unsigned order said.
Chief Justice John Roberts dissented along with the court’s three liberal justices. Each of the four dissenting justices wrote separate statements expressing their disagreement with the majority.
Roberts noted that while the majority denied the request for emergency relief “the Court’s order is emphatic in making clear that it cannot be understood as sustaining the constitutionality of the law at issue.”
The vote in the case underscores the impact of the death of the liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last year and then-president Donald Trump’s replacement of her with conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Had Ginsburg remained on the court there would have been five votes to halt the Texas law.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor called her conservative colleagues’ decision “stunning.” “Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand,” she wrote.
“A majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand.”— Justice Sonia Sotomayor
Justice Sonia Sotomayor (Supreme Court)
Texas lawmakers wrote the law to evade federal court review by allowing private citizens to bring civil lawsuits in state court against anyone involved in an abortion, other than the patient. Other abortion laws are enforced by state and local officials, with criminal sanctions possible.
In contrast, Texas’ law allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone involved in facilitating abortions. Among other situations, that would include anyone who drives a woman to a clinic to get an abortion. Under the law, anyone who successfully sues another person would be entitled to at least $10,000.
In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan called the law “patently unconstitutional,” saying it allows “private parties to carry out unconstitutional restrictions on the State’s behalf.” And Justice Stephen Breyer said a “woman has a federal constitutional right to obtain an abortion during” the first stage of pregnancy.
After a federal appeals court refused to allow a prompt review of the law before it took effect, the measure’s opponents sought Supreme Court review.
In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan called the law “patently unconstitutional,” saying it allows “private parties to carry out unconstitutional restrictions on the State’s behalf.” And Justice Stephen Breyer said a “woman has a federal constitutional right to obtain an abortion during” the first stage of pregnancy.
After a federal appeals court refused to allow a prompt review of the law before it took effect, the measure’s opponents sought Supreme Court review.
In a statement early Thursday after the high court’s action, Nancy Northup, the head of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents abortion providers challenging the law, vowed to “keep fighting this ban until abortion access is restored in Texas.”
“We are devastated that the Supreme Court has refused to block a law that blatantly violates Roe v. Wade. Right now, people seeking abortion across Texas are panicking — they have no idea where or when they will be able to get an abortion, if ever. Texas politicians have succeeded for the moment in making a mockery of the rule of law, upending abortion care in Texas, and forcing patients to leave the state — if they have the means — to get constitutionally protected healthcare. This should send chills down the spine of everyone in this country who cares about the constitution,” she said.
Texas has long had some of the nation’s toughest abortion restrictions, including a sweeping law passed in 2013. The Supreme Court eventually struck down that law, but not before more than half of the state’s 40-plus clinics closed.
Even before the Texas case arrived at the high court the justices had planned to tackle the issue of abortion rights in a major case after the court begins hearing arguments again in the fall. That case involves the state of Mississippi, which is asking to be allowed to enforce an abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Associated Press writer Paul J. Weber in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.
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June 23, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I wanted to reach out to you because of some of the troubling moral issues coming out of your administration.
Over and over on my blog I have written about your efforts as Vice President and President to attack legally the rights of our unborn babies in the USA. These views of yours are due to your allegiance to the humanist worldview which Francis Schaeffer and Tim LaHaye exposed in their books. Your vast support from humanist groups in the 2020 election proves my point. No wonder we have seen criminals let go and an effort by Democrats (namely VP Harris) to defund the police. The Bible recognizes the sinful nature of humans and calls for the authorities to have the power of the sword in Romans 13! However, there have been times when the IRS has been used against freedom of expression such as the past persecution of the Tea Party. The Founding Fathers did NOT think the King was above the law! Unfortunately many lawmakers today don’t care about the law very much it seems which is a result of loss of a Christian Consensus influence in our society!
America’s second-ever Catholic president supports abortion rights, leaving the bishops unsure about how to move forward.By Emma Green
MARCH 14, 2021
Archbishop Joseph Naumann is anxious about President Joe Biden’s soul. The two men are in some ways similar: cradle Catholics born in the 1940s who witnessed John F. Kennedy become America’s first Catholic president. Both found a natural home in the Democratic Party—in Naumann’s midwestern family, asking Catholics if they were Democrats was a redundancy. Naumann became a priest and Biden became a politician, but their paths really diverged over the issue of abortion. Now in his 70s, Naumann watched Biden—America’s second Catholic president—transform into a vocal supporter of abortion rights while competing for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Naumann runs the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas and also leads what the Catholic bishops describe as their pro-life activities. He has suggested that Biden should no longer call himself a devout Catholic. At the very least, Naumann says, Biden should stop receiving Communion, a holy sacrament in Catholic life.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops recently convened a working group to discuss how the bishops should interact with Biden, and how they should deal with the challenge of having a visibly Catholic president who defies Church teachings on a central issue. Naumann was part of that group. Conflicts have already arisen: Naumann recently co-authored a statement expressing moral concerns about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which was developed and tested using cell lines from aborted fetal tissue. He also joined a statement from a group of the country’s top bishops celebrating the passage of the American Rescue Plan Act, but called it “unconscionable that Congress has passed the bill without critical protections needed to ensure that billions of taxpayer dollars are used for life-affirming health care and not for abortion.”
John MacArthur gave a sermon in June of 2021 entitled “When Government Rewards Evil and Punishes Good” and in that sermon he makes the following points:
INTRODUCTION AND DISCUSSION OF ROMANS 13
GOVERNMENT CAN FORFEIT ITS AUTHORITY
THE WORLD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GOSPEL
ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY IS PROGRESSING TOWARD A GLOBAL KINGDOM UNDER THE POWER OF SATAN
ONE FALSE WORLD RELIGION IS FINAL PLAY BY SATAN
REAL PERSECUTION CAN ONLY BE DONE BY GOVERNMENT
PERSECUTION IN BOOK OF DANIEL
THE LAW IS KING AND NOT THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA
GOVERNMENT HAS BECOME PURVEYOR OF WICKEDNESS
THERE IS A PLACE FOR CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
DOES GOVERNMENT WIN?
Let me just share a portion of that sermon with you and you can watch it on You Tube:
GOVERNMENT HAS BECOME PURVEYOR OF WICKEDNESS
One New Testament writer says that Romans 13 has “caused more unhappiness and misery . . . than any other . . . verses in the New Testament by the license they have given to tyrants . . . used to justify a host of horrendous abuses of individual human rights.” Hitler’s Holocaust, racism in the apartheid of South Africa, Cantrell says, “Both the Jews in Germany and blacks in South Africa were viewed as a threat to public health and national security. . . . “‘Trust us,’ said government . . . ‘we truly have your best interests at heart. All we want to do is help . . . keep you safe.’”
Government has already become the purveyor of wickedness. Government is a murderer, slaughtering millions of infants in abortion; elevating the LGBTQ agenda, the bizarre transgender deception. The culture has become anti-truth, we all know that. The truth is the biggest threat to lies. William Pitt, well-known name in English history, said this: “Necessity (i.e., public health, common good) is the plea [of] every infringement of human freedom: it is the argument of tyrants. “Get people afraid, and they’ll do whatever you want. A fearful society will always comply; panicking people will believe anything” [(Cantrell)].
“During the gruesome and bloody days of the French Revolution, when 40,000 innocent [people] lost their heads,” you would be interested to know who was operating the guillotine: the Committee for Public Safety [(Cantrell)]. One writer says, “Governments now get voted into power by promising to oversee housing, education, medicine, the economy, [the] currency, a minimum income, food, water, land, and the list goes on. The government become a parent, and the citizens are dependents. The government in this role becomes a monstrous juggernaut of bureaucracy, devouring taxes and trying to regulate every detail of life.” And they definitely want to regulate the church and silence its proclamation.
In his book The Glorious Body of Christ, Kuiper wrote, “Our age is one of ecclesiastical passivism. . . . When a church ceases to be militant it also ceases to be a church of Jesus Christ. . . . A truly militant church stands opposed to the world both without its walls and within. . . . Time and again in its history the church has found it necessary to assert its sovereignty over against usurpations by the state.” And Kuiper gave some biblical examples, like when King Saul or King Uzziah usurped the priesthood, stating, “In both cases a representative of the state was severely punished for encroaching [on] the sovereignty of the church.”
“Lord Macaulay of England summed up the Puritan reputation this way” [(Cantrell)]. He said of the Puritans, “He bowed himself in the dust before his Maker; [as] he set his foot on the neck of his king.” Kuiper says, “Ours is an age of state totalitarianism. All over the world statism is [rising] . . . . In consequence, in many lands the church finds itself utterly at the mercy of the state whose mercy often proves cruelty, while in others the notion is rapidly gaining ground that the church exists and operates by the state’s permission.” We do not operate by the state’s permission; we operate by the Lord’s command.
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Francis Schaeffer discusses this more in his fine book CHRISTIAN MANIFESTO:
PAGE 437
CHAPTER 3 THE DESTRUCTION OF FAITH AND FREEDOM
And now it is all gone!
In most law schools today almost no one studies William Blackstone unless he or she is taking a course in the history of law. We live in a secularized society and in secularized, sociological law. By sociological law we mean law that has no fixed base but law in which a group of people decides what is sociologically good for society at the given moment; and wha they arbitrarily decide becomes law. Oliver Wendall Holmes (1841-1935) made totally clear that this was his position. Frederick Moore Vinson (1890-1953), former Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, said, “Nothing is more certain in modern society than the principle that there are no absolutes.” Those who hold this position themselves call it sociological law.
As the new sociological law has moved away from the original base of the Creator giving the “inalienable rights,” etc., it has been natural that this sociological law has then also moved away from the Constitution. William Bentley Ball, in his paper entitled “Religious Liberty: The Constitutional Frontier,” says:
i propose that secularism militates against religious liberty, and indeed against personal freedoms generally, for two reasons: first, the familiar fact that secularism does not recognize the existence of the “higher law”; second, because, that being so, secularism tends toward decisions based on the pragmatic public policy of the moment and inevitably tends to resist the submitting of those policies to the “higher” criteria of a constitution.
This moving away from the Constitution is not only by court rulings, for example the First Amendment rulings, which are the very reversal of the original purpose of the First Amendment (see pp. 433, 434), but in other ways as well. Quoting again from the same paper by William Bentley Ball:
Our problem consists also, as perhaps this paper has well enough indicated, of more general constitutional delegation of legislative power and ultra vires. The first is where the legislature hands over its powers to agents through the conferral of regulatory power unaccompanied by strict standards. The second is where the agents make up powers on their own–assume powers not given them by the legislature. Under the first, the government of laws largely disappears and the government of men largely replaces it. Under the second, agents’ personal “home-made law replaces the law of the elected representatives of the people.
Naturally, this shift from the Judeo-Christian basis for law and the shift away from the restraints of the Constitution automatically militates against religious liberty. Mr. Ball closes his paper:
Fundamentally, in relation to personal liberty, the Constitution was aimed at restraint of the State. Today, in case after case relating to religious liberty, we encounter the bizarre presumption that it is the other way around; that the State is justified in whatever actions, and that religion bears a great burden of proof to overcome that presumption.
It is our job, as Christian lawyers, to destroy that presumption at every turn.
As lawyers discuss the changes in law in the United States, often they speak of the influence of the laws involved in the reentrance of the southern states into the national government after the Civil War. These indeed must be considered. But they were not the reason for the drastic change in law in our country. This reason was the takeover by the totally other world view which never have given the form and freedom in government we have had in Northern Europe (including the United States). That is the central factor in the change.
PAGE 439
It is parallel to the difference between modern science beginning with Copernicus and Galileo and the materialistic science which took over the last century. Materialistic thought would never have produced modern science. Modern science was produced on the Christian base. That is, because an intelligent Creator had created the universe we can in some measure understand the universe and there is, therefore, a reason for observation and experimentation to be pursued.
Then there was a shift into materialistic science based on a philosophic change to the materialistic concept of final reality. This shift was based on no addition to the facts known. It was a choice, in faith, to see things that way. No clearer expression of this could be given than Carl Sagan’s arrogant statement on public television–made without any scientific proof for the statement–to 140 million viewers: “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever was or ever will be.” He opened the series, COSMOS, with this essentially creedal declaration and went on to build every subsequent conclusion upon it.
There is exactly the same parallel in law. The materialistic-energy, chance concept of final reality never would have produced the form and freedom in government we have in this country and in other Reformation countries. But now it has arbitrarily and arrogantly supplanted the historic Judeo-Christian Consensus that provided the base for form and freedom in government. The Judeo-Christian consensus gave greater freedoms than the world has ever known, but it also contained the freedoms so that they did not pound society to pieces. The materialistic concept of reality would not have produced the form-freedom balance, and now that it has taken over it cannot maintain the balance. It has destroyed it.
Will Durant and his wife Ariel together wrote The Story of Civilization. The Durants received the 1976 Humanist Pioneer Award. In The Humanist magazine of February 1977, Will Durant summed up the humanist problem with regard to personal ethics and social order: “Moreover, we shall find it no easy task to mold a natural ethic strong enough to maintain moral restraint and social order without the support of supernatural consolations, hopes, and fears.”
Poor Will Durant! It is not just difficult, it is impossible. He should have remembered the quotation he and Ariel Durant gave from the agnostic Renan in their book The Lessons of History. According to the Durants, Renan said in 1866: “If Rationalism wishes to govern the world without regard to the religious needs of the soul, the experience of the French Revolution is there to teach us the consequences of such a blunder.” And the Durants themselves say in the same context: “There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.”
PAGE 440
Along with the decline of the Judie-Christian consensus we have come to a new definition and connotation of “pluralism.” Until recently it meant that the Christianity flowing from the Reformation is not now as dominant in the country and in society as it was in the early days of the nation. After about 1848 the great viewpoints not shaped by Reformation Christianity. This, of course, is the situation which exists today. Thus as we stand for religious freedom today, we need to realize that this must include a general religious freedom from the control of the state for all religion. It will not mean just freedom for those who are Christians. It is then up to Christians to show that Christianityis the Truth of total reality in the open marketplace of freedom.
This greater mixture in the United States, however, is now used as an excuse for the new meaning and connotation of pluralism. It now is used to mean that all types of situations are spread out before us, and that it really is up to each individual to grab one or the other on the way past, according to the whim of personal preference. What you take is only a matter of personal choice, with one choice as valid as another. Pluralism has come to mean that everything is acceptable. This new concept of pluralism suddenly is everywhere. There is no right or wrong; it is just a matter of your personal preference. On a recent SIXTY MINUTES program on television, for example, the questions of euthanasia of the old and the growing of marijuana as California’s largest paying crop were presented this way. One choice is as valid as another. It is just a matter of personal preference. This new definition and connotation of pluralism is presented in many forms, not only in personal ethics, but in society’s ethics and in the choices concerning law,
PAGE 440
Now I have a question. In these shifts that have come in law, where have the Christian lawyers been? I really ask you that. The shift has come gradually, but it has only come to its peak in the last 40 or 50 years. Where have the Christian lawyers been? Surely the Christian lawyers should have been the ones to have sounded the trumpet clear and loud, not just in bits and pieces but looking at the totality of what was occurring. Now, a nonlawyer like myself believes I have a right to feel let down because the Christian lawyers did not blow the trumpets clearly between, let us say, 1940 and 1970.
PAGE 441
When I wrote HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? From 1974 to 1976 I worked out of a knowledge of secular philosophy. I moved from the results in secular philosophy, to the results in liberal theology, to the results in the arts, and then I turned to the courts, and especially the Supreme Court. I read Oliver Wendell Holmes and others, and I must say, I was totally appalled by what I read. It was an exact parallel to what i had already known so well from my years of study in philosophy, theology, and the other disciplines.
In the book and film series HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? I used the Supreme Court abortion case as the clearest illustration of arbitrary sociiological law. But it was only the clearest illustration. The law is shot through with this kind of ruling. It is similar to choosing Fletcher’s situational ethics and point to it as the clearest illustration of how our society now functions with no fixed ethics. This is only the clearest illustration because in many ways our society functions on unfixed, situational ethics. The abortion case in law is exactly the same. It is only the clearest case. Law in this country has become situational law, using the term Fletcher used for his ethics. That is, a small group of people decide arbitrarily what, from their viewpoint, is for the good of society at that precise moment and they make it law, binding the whole society by their personal arbitrary decisions.
But of course! What would we expect? These things are the natural, inevitable results of the material-energy, humanistic concept of the final basic reality. From the material-energy, chance concept of final reality, final reality is, and must be b it nature, silent as to values, principles, or any basis for law. There is no way to ascertain “the ought:” from “the is.” Not only should we have known what this would have produced, but on the basis of this viewpoint of reality, we should have recognized that there are no other conclusions that this view could produce. It is a natural result of really believing that the basic reality of all things is merely material-energy, shaped into its present form by impersonal chance.
No, we must say that the Christians in the legal profession did not ring the bell, and we are indeed very, very far down the road toward a totally humanistic culture. At this moment we are in a humanistic culture, but we are happily not in a totally humanistic culture. But what we must realize is that the drift has been all in this direction. if it is not turned around we will move very rapidly into a totally humanistic culture.
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The law, and especially the courts, is the vehicle to force this total humanistic way of thinking upon the entire population.This is what has happened. The abortion law is a perfect example. The Supreme Court abortion ruling invalidated abortion lawsin all fifty states, even though it seems clear that in 1973 the majority of Americans were against abortion. It did not matter. The Supreme Court arbitrarily ruled that abortion was legal, and overnight they overthrew the state laws and forced their will on the majority, even though their ruling was arbitrary both legally and medically. Thus law and the courts became the vehicle for forcing a totally secular concept on the population.
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Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. I also respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children. I wanted to encourage you to investigate the work of Dr. Bernard Nathanson who like you used to be pro-abortion. I also want you to watch the You Tube series WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop. Also it makes me wonder what our the moral climate Of our nation is when we concentrate more on potential mistakes of the police and we let criminals back on the street so fast! Our national was founded of LEX REX and not REX LEX!
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,
PS: In this series of letters John MacArthur covers several points. In the first letter, he quotes you saying that the greatest threat to America—he said on one occasion—is systemic racism, which doesn’t exist; he said white supremacy, which doesn’t exist with any power; and then he said global warming, which doesn’t exist either, and if it does, God’s in charge of it.
In reality the greatest threat to this nation is the government, the government. And I want to show you how we are to understand that. Turn to Romans 13
In the 2nd letter, Dr. MacArthur noted When government turns the divine design on its head and protects those who do evil and makes those who do good afraid, it forfeits its divine purpose
In the 3rd letter Dr. MacArthur noted The world is the enemy of the gospel. The world is the enemy of the church. I pointed out that this manifests itself today in the form of HUMANISM.
In the 4th letter Dr. MacArthur points out how much today the devil is having his way in our society and that the Bible predicts that these will get worse!
In the 5th letter Francis Schaeffer points out “The HUMANIST MANIFESTOS not only say that humanism is a religion, but the Supreme Court has declared it to be a religion. The 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins specifically defines secular humanism as a religion equivalent to theistic and other non theistic religions.”
In the 6th letter Dr. MacArthur noted God has given government the sword, the power; and when they prostitute that power and they begin to punish those who do good and protect those who do evil, they wield that power against the people of God.
In the 7th letter Dr. MacArthur asserted, Throughout history, even in the Western world, people lived under what was called the divine right of kings. Kings were believed to have had a divine right. This was absolute monarchy. What broke that was basically the Reformers. The Reformers—a little phrase was “the law is king,” not the man.
In the 8th letter Dr. MacArthur noted that today the United States “Government has already become the purveyor of wickedness. Government is a murderer, slaughtering millions of infants in abortion.”
Judge gives preliminary OK to $3.5M settlement of IRS case is discussed about the 2013 lawsuit during the Barack Obama administration over treatment of conservative groups who said they were singled out for extra IRS scrutiny on tax-exempt status applications. Then Dr. MacArthur talks about persecution in the Book of Daniel.
“These are groups of law-abiding citizens who should have never had their First Amendment rights infringed upon by the IRS,” Jenny Beth Martin, president of the Tea Party Patriots umbrella group, said Wednesday. “These are groups that want the government to be accountable.”
The government has been used to persecuting people they don’t like for centuries! Let me just share a portion of that sermon by John MacArthur with you and you can watch it on You Tube:
Francis Schaeffer, who died in 1984, says, “If [there’s] no final place for civil disobedience, then the government has been made autonomous, and as such, it has been put in the place of the living God.” And that point is exactly when the early Christians performed their acts of civil disobedience, even when it cost them their lives. “Acts of State which contradict God’s [Laws] are illegitimate and acts of tyranny. Tyranny is ruling without the sanction of God. To resist tyranny is to honour God. . . . The bottom line is that at a certain point there is not only the right, but the duty to disobey the State.”
Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 4 | The Basis for Human Dignity
Sunday Night Prime – Dr. Bernard Nathanson – Fr Groeschel, CFR with Fr …
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Francis Schaeffer pictured above
Larry King had John MacArthur as a guest on his CNN program several times.
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the 1930′s above. I was sad to read about Edith passing away on Easter weekend in 2013. I wanted to pass along this fine […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
It is truly sad to me that liberals will lie in order to attack good Christian people like state senator Jason Rapert of Conway, Arkansas because he headed a group of pro-life senators that got a pro-life bill through the Arkansas State Senate the last week of January in 2013. I have gone back and […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Francis Schaeffer, Max Brantley, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
Sometimes you can see evidences in someone’s life of how content they really are. I saw something like that on 2-8-13 when I confronted a blogger that goes by the name “AngryOldWoman” on the Arkansas Times Blog. See below. Leadership Crisis in America Published on Jul 11, 2012 Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Arkansas Times, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented against abortion (Episode 1), infanticide (Episode 2), euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (3)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (2)
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
“Real Time” host Bill Maher lambasted The New York Times over its weak coverage of the assassination attempt of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Earlier this week, a man named Nicholas John Roske was arrested outside the justice’s home carrying a gun and a knife. He admitted to police that he had traveled from California to Washington, D.C., to kill Kavanaugh because of his apparent intention to overturn Roe v. Wade following the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion. Roske was charged with attempted murder.
However, the Times shrugged off the assassination attempt, keeping it off the front page, which drew ire on social media.
During his panel discussion on Friday night, Maher also did not give the Times a pass, calling it a case of “media bias.”
“The New York Times buried this,” Maher said. “If this had been a liberal Supreme Court justice that someone came to kill, it would have been on the front page.”
“And that’s what’s so disappointing about a paper like The New York Times because they just wear their bias on their sleeves, and if it’s not part of something that feeds our narrative, f— it, we bury it,” Maher added.
“Real Time” host Bill Maher slammed the New York Times for burying the assassination attempt of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. (HBO)
Maher took a swipe at Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for his “very inflammatory words” toward Kavanaugh and Justice Neil Gorsuch, suggesting they could have “inspired” Roske.
The top Democrat told the two conservative justices in 2021, “you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price! You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions!”
Maher credited Schumer for walking the comments back.
“The New York Times buried this. If this had been a liberal Supreme Court justice that someone came to kill, it would’ve been on the front page…They wear their bias on their sleeves and if it’s not part of something that feeds our narrative, f&$@ it” – @BillMaher#RealTime
Former Trump White House counselor Kellyanne Conway blasted House Democrats for holding up a bill passed unanimously in the Senate that would grant protection for the Supreme Court justices.
“This is the kind of thing that drives America crazy when Washington can’t do something as simple as pass a law that we should all agree with just to beef up their security,” Conway said.
A man was arrested near Justice Kavanaugh’s home in Maryland for allegedly threatening violence toward the justice. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
Substack writer Josh Barro told Maher the assassination attempted is “related to the perception that a lot of Americans have where they don’t think these institutions are legitimate anymore.”
“And that creates the willingness these nutty people have to go and try to take matters into their own hands and shoot people,” Barro said. “And I think it’s a really worrying trend in our politics and I agree it’s not solely limited to one side of the aisle.”
Joseph A. Wulfsohn is a media reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to joseph.wulfsohn@fox.com and on Twitter: @JosephWulfsohn.
Pro-life activists listen to then-President Donald Trump as he speaks at the 47th annual March for Life in Washington on Jan. 24, 2020. The March for Life announced the theme for its 2022 event on Wednesday: “Equality Begins in the Womb.” (Photo: Olivier Douliery/ AFP/Getty Images)
The 2022 March for Life will lean into a theme of equality for the unborn, the event’s organizers said Wednesday, as they announced the annual march’s theme: “Equality Begins in the Womb.”
“The pro-life movement recognizes the immense responsibility this nation bears to restore equal rights to its most defenseless citizens in the womb,” March for Life President Jeanne Mancini said during the Wednesday announcement at The Heritage Foundation. “Since [the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision], scientific advances have undeniably confirmed the humanity of the unborn, and today most Americans agree there should be significant limits on abortion.”
Equality Begins in the Womb | 2022 March for Life
To this end, we hope the Supreme Court honors the existing constitutional protections for the unborn as they hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization,” Mancini said. “No child’s life, either here or abroad, should be threatened by the injustice of abortion.”
A number of pro-life activists joined the March for Life president in Washington, D.C., for the announcement: Judicial Crisis Network President Carrie Severino, Radiance Foundation co-founder Ryan Bomberger, Catholic Association policy adviser and radiologist Dr. Grazie Christine, and Heritage Foundation President Kay C. James.
Actor Kirk Cameron will speak at the January 2022 march, and Grammy Award-nominated songwriter Matthew West will perform, the March for Life announced. The Rev. Mike Schmitz, a Catholic priest who hosts the chart-topping “Bible in a Year” podcast, is the keynote speaker at the event’s Rose Dinner after the march.
The March for Life is a massive pro-life demonstration that has followed the anniversary of Roe v. Wade every year in the nation’s capital since 1974. Thousands of pro-life activists, students, and families flock to Washington, D.C., to demonstrate against abortion and attend the march’s rallies.
Organizers canceled the 2021 March for Life, scheduled to take place only a few weeks after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. A small group of pro-life leaders opted instead to march for the unborn in Washington on an unpublicized route.
“The protection of all of those who participate in the annual march, as well as the many law enforcement personnel and others who work tirelessly each year to ensure a safe and peaceful event, is a top priority of the March for Life,” Mancini announced Jan. 15, in canceling the event.
“In light of the fact that we are in the midst of a pandemic, which may be peaking, and in view of the heightened pressures that law enforcement officers and others are currently facing in and around the Capitol, this year’s March for Life will look different,” she said.
In January 2020, then-President Donald Trump became the first president to attend the March for Life in person. Mancini hailed the former president and his administration as “consistent champions for life,” calling their support for the March for Life “unwavering.”
“Every life brings love into this world,” the then-president said. “Every person is worth protecting.”
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.
I am a proud member of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers and I attended the convention in Dallas in July and we have officially launched a nationwide push against abortion rights.
The article below notes:
At its first annual policy conference last weekend, group members voted to make a controversial new Texas law, the “Texas Heartbeat Bill,” the organization’s first piece of model legislation, meaning that similar bills may soon pop up in state capitols across the country.
Announcing he planned to introduce a copycat bill, Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert (R), the founder and president of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, shared a template of legislation lawmakers in other states could fill in the blanks on and reproduce.
At the July 17th session of THE CHRISTIAN LAWMAKERS meeting in Dallas, I really got a lot out of the expert panel moderated by Texas State Senator Bryan Hughes entitled ABOLISHING ABORTION IN AMERICA. Here below is what Wikipedia says about Senator Hughes:
On March 11, 2021, Hughes introduced a fetal heartbeat bill entitled the Texas Heartbeat Bill (SB8) into the Texas Senate and state representative Shelby Slawson of Stephenville, Texas introduced a companion bill (HB1515) into the state house.[22]The bill allows private citizens to sue abortion providers after a fetal heartbeat has been detected.[22] The SB8 version of the bill passed both chambers and was signed into law by Texas Governor Greg Abbott on May 19, 2021.[22] It took effect on September 1, 2021.[22]
Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 1 | Abortion of the Human…
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Tucker: Democrats have abandoned their ‘my body, my choice’ argument
Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert presides over a Senate committee at the state Capitol in Little Rock, Ark. in this March 14, 2018, file photo. Rapert’s National Association of Christian Lawmakers met recently to talk model legislation and pass resolutions. Kelly P. Kissel, Associated Press
The National Association of Christian Lawmakers has officially launched a nationwide push against abortion rights.
At its first annual policy conference last weekend, group members voted to make a controversial new Texas law, the “Texas Heartbeat Bill,” the organization’s first piece of model legislation, meaning that similar bills may soon pop up in state capitols across the country.
The model legislation, called the Heartbeat Model Act, was accepted unanimously by the executive committee during a Saturday meeting.
The Texas bill it is based upon, Senate Bill 8, bans abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which can occur as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. The legislation also allows for any state resident to bring a civil suit against a doctor who performs an abortion after a heartbeat is detectable. Under the law, a woman who has an abortion would be liable to civil suits, as would anyone who supported her in the act — from family members to the receptionist who checks her in at a clinic.
Not only is the doctor liable, but anyone found aiding and abetting,” said Texas legislator Bryan Hughes, the bill’s author, during the Saturday meeting, which was led by the organization’s founder and president, Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert.Texas state Rep. Bryan Hughes speaks during the opening session of the 2015 legislative session on Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015, in Austin, Texas. Eric Gay, Associated Press
Speaking to the Deseret News on Monday, Rapert said the provision allowing residents to bring civil suits against anyone involved in an abortion is like “putting a SCUD missile on that heartbeat bill — they can’t stop it.”
Rapert was the author of a similar 2013 bill in Arkansas, portions of which were later struck down by a federal judge. At least a dozen states have implemented a variety of abortion restrictions in recent years, leading numerous observers to say that the landmark 1973 Supreme Court abortion ruling, Roe v. Wade, is under threat.
Speaking Saturday to the Christian legislators gathered in Dallas, Hughes reminded the legislators that the Heartbeat Model Act is just a starting point and that the legislation will have to be tailored to work within each state’s laws.A anti-abortion supporter argues with those who attended a press conference and rally held by the Planned Parenthood Action Council of Utah outside of the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Aug. 25, 2015. Stacie Scott, Deseret News
The National Association of Christian Lawmakers formed last year with three key goals: to offer conservative, Christian legislators networking opportunities,; to help lawmakers share bills that have been successful in their states so that legislators elsewhere might push through similar legislation; and to support Christians running for local, state or national office.
At the policy conference last week, the organization worked toward meeting these goals in various ways, including by approving the Heartbeat Model Act. The executive committee also passed a resolution supporting Israel’s “right to defend itself from terror attacks” and creating a standing American-Israeli Committee.
Speaking to the executive committee, Rabbi Leonid Feldman, who was born in the Soviet Union and was imprisoned there for his pro-Israel activities, remarked that the Jewish people “remember our friends.”
This conference and this organization will be remembered by the Jewish people,” he said.
The organization also approved a resolution in support of “election integrity.”
The executive committee also approved a second piece of model legislation: the National Motto Display Model Act. Based on bills passed in Arkansas in 2017 and this year in Texas, the legislation requires public schools to display the national motto “In God We Trust” when printed versions of the motto are donated to schools or copies of the national motto are bought with funds from private donors.
“As the Texas House sponsor of the Motto Act, I am proud to see a model put out by the NACL so that legislators from every other state can have a mechanism to ensure our citizens — especially our school-age children — are reminded of our nation’s motto,” said Tom Oliverson, a state representative from Texas and chairman of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers’ national legislative council.
During the executive committee’s meeting on Saturday, Rapert said Hobby Lobby would make frames available for a reduced price if they’ll be used for national motto displays.
Asked Monday what other pieces of legislation the organization might adopt as model legislation in the future, Rapert told the Deseret News that the National Association of Christian Lawmakers is already weighing some options.
Since religious freedom is central to the organization, it could end up adopting model legislation similar to bills promoted in Texas this year by Oliverson. He supported three measures designed to make it harder for the government to force church closures during public emergencies, like the COVID-19 pandemic, and a bill that would ensure homeowners’ associations can’t infringe on homeowners’ rights to display religious symbols.
WASHINGTON — A deeply divided Supreme Court is allowing a Texas law that bans most abortions to remain in force, for now stripping most women of the right to an abortion in the nation’s second-largest state.
It is the strictest law against abortion rights in the United States since the high court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 and part of a broader push by Republicans nationwide to impose new restrictions on abortion. At least 12 other states have enacted bans early in pregnancy, but all have been blocked from going into effect.
The high court’s order declining to halt the Texas law came just before midnight Wednesday. The majority said those bringing the case had not met the high burden required for a stay of the law.
“The Court’s order is emphatic in making clear that it cannot be understood as sustaining the constitutionality of the law at issue.”— Chief Justice John Roberts
Chief Justice John Roberts (Supreme Court)
“In reaching this conclusion, we stress that we do not purport to resolve definitively any jurisdictional or substantive claim in the applicants’ lawsuit. In particular, this order is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas’s law, and in no way limits other procedurally proper challenges to the Texas law, including in Texas state courts,” the unsigned order said.
Chief Justice John Roberts dissented along with the court’s three liberal justices. Each of the four dissenting justices wrote separate statements expressing their disagreement with the majority.
Roberts noted that while the majority denied the request for emergency relief “the Court’s order is emphatic in making clear that it cannot be understood as sustaining the constitutionality of the law at issue.”
The vote in the case underscores the impact of the death of the liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last year and then-president Donald Trump’s replacement of her with conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Had Ginsburg remained on the court there would have been five votes to halt the Texas law.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor called her conservative colleagues’ decision “stunning.” “Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand,” she wrote.
“A majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand.”— Justice Sonia Sotomayor
Justice Sonia Sotomayor (Supreme Court)
Texas lawmakers wrote the law to evade federal court review by allowing private citizens to bring civil lawsuits in state court against anyone involved in an abortion, other than the patient. Other abortion laws are enforced by state and local officials, with criminal sanctions possible.
In contrast, Texas’ law allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone involved in facilitating abortions. Among other situations, that would include anyone who drives a woman to a clinic to get an abortion. Under the law, anyone who successfully sues another person would be entitled to at least $10,000.
In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan called the law “patently unconstitutional,” saying it allows “private parties to carry out unconstitutional restrictions on the State’s behalf.” And Justice Stephen Breyer said a “woman has a federal constitutional right to obtain an abortion during” the first stage of pregnancy.
After a federal appeals court refused to allow a prompt review of the law before it took effect, the measure’s opponents sought Supreme Court review.
In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan called the law “patently unconstitutional,” saying it allows “private parties to carry out unconstitutional restrictions on the State’s behalf.” And Justice Stephen Breyer said a “woman has a federal constitutional right to obtain an abortion during” the first stage of pregnancy.
After a federal appeals court refused to allow a prompt review of the law before it took effect, the measure’s opponents sought Supreme Court review.
In a statement early Thursday after the high court’s action, Nancy Northup, the head of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents abortion providers challenging the law, vowed to “keep fighting this ban until abortion access is restored in Texas.”
“We are devastated that the Supreme Court has refused to block a law that blatantly violates Roe v. Wade. Right now, people seeking abortion across Texas are panicking — they have no idea where or when they will be able to get an abortion, if ever. Texas politicians have succeeded for the moment in making a mockery of the rule of law, upending abortion care in Texas, and forcing patients to leave the state — if they have the means — to get constitutionally protected healthcare. This should send chills down the spine of everyone in this country who cares about the constitution,” she said.
Texas has long had some of the nation’s toughest abortion restrictions, including a sweeping law passed in 2013. The Supreme Court eventually struck down that law, but not before more than half of the state’s 40-plus clinics closed.
Even before the Texas case arrived at the high court the justices had planned to tackle the issue of abortion rights in a major case after the court begins hearing arguments again in the fall. That case involves the state of Mississippi, which is asking to be allowed to enforce an abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Associated Press writer Paul J. Weber in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.
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June 23, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I wanted to reach out to you because of some of the troubling moral issues coming out of your administration.
Over and over on my blog I have written about your efforts as Vice President and President to attack legally the rights of our unborn babies in the USA. These views of yours are due to your allegiance to the humanist worldview which Francis Schaeffer and Tim LaHaye exposed in their books. Your vast support from humanist groups in the 2020 election proves my point. No wonder we have seen criminals let go and an effort by Democrats (namely VP Harris) to defund the police. The Bible recognizes the sinful nature of humans and calls for the authorities to have the power of the sword in Romans 13! However, there have been times when the IRS has been used against freedom of expression such as the past persecution of the Tea Party. The Founding Fathers did NOT think the King was above the law! Unfortunately many lawmakers today don’t care about the law very much it seems which is a result of loss of a Christian Consensus influence in our society!
America’s second-ever Catholic president supports abortion rights, leaving the bishops unsure about how to move forward.By Emma Green
MARCH 14, 2021
Archbishop Joseph Naumann is anxious about President Joe Biden’s soul. The two men are in some ways similar: cradle Catholics born in the 1940s who witnessed John F. Kennedy become America’s first Catholic president. Both found a natural home in the Democratic Party—in Naumann’s midwestern family, asking Catholics if they were Democrats was a redundancy. Naumann became a priest and Biden became a politician, but their paths really diverged over the issue of abortion. Now in his 70s, Naumann watched Biden—America’s second Catholic president—transform into a vocal supporter of abortion rights while competing for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Naumann runs the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas and also leads what the Catholic bishops describe as their pro-life activities. He has suggested that Biden should no longer call himself a devout Catholic. At the very least, Naumann says, Biden should stop receiving Communion, a holy sacrament in Catholic life.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops recently convened a working group to discuss how the bishops should interact with Biden, and how they should deal with the challenge of having a visibly Catholic president who defies Church teachings on a central issue. Naumann was part of that group. Conflicts have already arisen: Naumann recently co-authored a statement expressing moral concerns about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which was developed and tested using cell lines from aborted fetal tissue. He also joined a statement from a group of the country’s top bishops celebrating the passage of the American Rescue Plan Act, but called it “unconscionable that Congress has passed the bill without critical protections needed to ensure that billions of taxpayer dollars are used for life-affirming health care and not for abortion.”
John MacArthur gave a sermon in June of 2021 entitled “When Government Rewards Evil and Punishes Good” and in that sermon he makes the following points:
INTRODUCTION AND DISCUSSION OF ROMANS 13
GOVERNMENT CAN FORFEIT ITS AUTHORITY
THE WORLD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GOSPEL
ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY IS PROGRESSING TOWARD A GLOBAL KINGDOM UNDER THE POWER OF SATAN
ONE FALSE WORLD RELIGION IS FINAL PLAY BY SATAN
REAL PERSECUTION CAN ONLY BE DONE BY GOVERNMENT
PERSECUTION IN BOOK OF DANIEL
THE LAW IS KING AND NOT THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA
GOVERNMENT HAS BECOME PURVEYOR OF WICKEDNESS
THERE IS A PLACE FOR CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
DOES GOVERNMENT WIN?
Let me just share a portion of that sermon with you and you can watch it on You Tube:
GOVERNMENT HAS BECOME PURVEYOR OF WICKEDNESS
One New Testament writer says that Romans 13 has “caused more unhappiness and misery . . . than any other . . . verses in the New Testament by the license they have given to tyrants . . . used to justify a host of horrendous abuses of individual human rights.” Hitler’s Holocaust, racism in the apartheid of South Africa, Cantrell says, “Both the Jews in Germany and blacks in South Africa were viewed as a threat to public health and national security. . . . “‘Trust us,’ said government . . . ‘we truly have your best interests at heart. All we want to do is help . . . keep you safe.’”
Government has already become the purveyor of wickedness. Government is a murderer, slaughtering millions of infants in abortion; elevating the LGBTQ agenda, the bizarre transgender deception. The culture has become anti-truth, we all know that. The truth is the biggest threat to lies. William Pitt, well-known name in English history, said this: “Necessity (i.e., public health, common good) is the plea [of] every infringement of human freedom: it is the argument of tyrants. “Get people afraid, and they’ll do whatever you want. A fearful society will always comply; panicking people will believe anything” [(Cantrell)].
“During the gruesome and bloody days of the French Revolution, when 40,000 innocent [people] lost their heads,” you would be interested to know who was operating the guillotine: the Committee for Public Safety [(Cantrell)]. One writer says, “Governments now get voted into power by promising to oversee housing, education, medicine, the economy, [the] currency, a minimum income, food, water, land, and the list goes on. The government become a parent, and the citizens are dependents. The government in this role becomes a monstrous juggernaut of bureaucracy, devouring taxes and trying to regulate every detail of life.” And they definitely want to regulate the church and silence its proclamation.
In his book The Glorious Body of Christ, Kuiper wrote, “Our age is one of ecclesiastical passivism. . . . When a church ceases to be militant it also ceases to be a church of Jesus Christ. . . . A truly militant church stands opposed to the world both without its walls and within. . . . Time and again in its history the church has found it necessary to assert its sovereignty over against usurpations by the state.” And Kuiper gave some biblical examples, like when King Saul or King Uzziah usurped the priesthood, stating, “In both cases a representative of the state was severely punished for encroaching [on] the sovereignty of the church.”
“Lord Macaulay of England summed up the Puritan reputation this way” [(Cantrell)]. He said of the Puritans, “He bowed himself in the dust before his Maker; [as] he set his foot on the neck of his king.” Kuiper says, “Ours is an age of state totalitarianism. All over the world statism is [rising] . . . . In consequence, in many lands the church finds itself utterly at the mercy of the state whose mercy often proves cruelty, while in others the notion is rapidly gaining ground that the church exists and operates by the state’s permission.” We do not operate by the state’s permission; we operate by the Lord’s command.
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Francis Schaeffer discusses this more in his fine book CHRISTIAN MANIFESTO:
PAGE 437
CHAPTER 3 THE DESTRUCTION OF FAITH AND FREEDOM
And now it is all gone!
In most law schools today almost no one studies William Blackstone unless he or she is taking a course in the history of law. We live in a secularized society and in secularized, sociological law. By sociological law we mean law that has no fixed base but law in which a group of people decides what is sociologically good for society at the given moment; and wha they arbitrarily decide becomes law. Oliver Wendall Holmes (1841-1935) made totally clear that this was his position. Frederick Moore Vinson (1890-1953), former Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, said, “Nothing is more certain in modern society than the principle that there are no absolutes.” Those who hold this position themselves call it sociological law.
As the new sociological law has moved away from the original base of the Creator giving the “inalienable rights,” etc., it has been natural that this sociological law has then also moved away from the Constitution. William Bentley Ball, in his paper entitled “Religious Liberty: The Constitutional Frontier,” says:
i propose that secularism militates against religious liberty, and indeed against personal freedoms generally, for two reasons: first, the familiar fact that secularism does not recognize the existence of the “higher law”; second, because, that being so, secularism tends toward decisions based on the pragmatic public policy of the moment and inevitably tends to resist the submitting of those policies to the “higher” criteria of a constitution.
This moving away from the Constitution is not only by court rulings, for example the First Amendment rulings, which are the very reversal of the original purpose of the First Amendment (see pp. 433, 434), but in other ways as well. Quoting again from the same paper by William Bentley Ball:
Our problem consists also, as perhaps this paper has well enough indicated, of more general constitutional delegation of legislative power and ultra vires. The first is where the legislature hands over its powers to agents through the conferral of regulatory power unaccompanied by strict standards. The second is where the agents make up powers on their own–assume powers not given them by the legislature. Under the first, the government of laws largely disappears and the government of men largely replaces it. Under the second, agents’ personal “home-made law replaces the law of the elected representatives of the people.
Naturally, this shift from the Judeo-Christian basis for law and the shift away from the restraints of the Constitution automatically militates against religious liberty. Mr. Ball closes his paper:
Fundamentally, in relation to personal liberty, the Constitution was aimed at restraint of the State. Today, in case after case relating to religious liberty, we encounter the bizarre presumption that it is the other way around; that the State is justified in whatever actions, and that religion bears a great burden of proof to overcome that presumption.
It is our job, as Christian lawyers, to destroy that presumption at every turn.
As lawyers discuss the changes in law in the United States, often they speak of the influence of the laws involved in the reentrance of the southern states into the national government after the Civil War. These indeed must be considered. But they were not the reason for the drastic change in law in our country. This reason was the takeover by the totally other world view which never have given the form and freedom in government we have had in Northern Europe (including the United States). That is the central factor in the change.
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It is parallel to the difference between modern science beginning with Copernicus and Galileo and the materialistic science which took over the last century. Materialistic thought would never have produced modern science. Modern science was produced on the Christian base. That is, because an intelligent Creator had created the universe we can in some measure understand the universe and there is, therefore, a reason for observation and experimentation to be pursued.
Then there was a shift into materialistic science based on a philosophic change to the materialistic concept of final reality. This shift was based on no addition to the facts known. It was a choice, in faith, to see things that way. No clearer expression of this could be given than Carl Sagan’s arrogant statement on public television–made without any scientific proof for the statement–to 140 million viewers: “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever was or ever will be.” He opened the series, COSMOS, with this essentially creedal declaration and went on to build every subsequent conclusion upon it.
There is exactly the same parallel in law. The materialistic-energy, chance concept of final reality never would have produced the form and freedom in government we have in this country and in other Reformation countries. But now it has arbitrarily and arrogantly supplanted the historic Judeo-Christian Consensus that provided the base for form and freedom in government. The Judeo-Christian consensus gave greater freedoms than the world has ever known, but it also contained the freedoms so that they did not pound society to pieces. The materialistic concept of reality would not have produced the form-freedom balance, and now that it has taken over it cannot maintain the balance. It has destroyed it.
Will Durant and his wife Ariel together wrote The Story of Civilization. The Durants received the 1976 Humanist Pioneer Award. In The Humanist magazine of February 1977, Will Durant summed up the humanist problem with regard to personal ethics and social order: “Moreover, we shall find it no easy task to mold a natural ethic strong enough to maintain moral restraint and social order without the support of supernatural consolations, hopes, and fears.”
Poor Will Durant! It is not just difficult, it is impossible. He should have remembered the quotation he and Ariel Durant gave from the agnostic Renan in their book The Lessons of History. According to the Durants, Renan said in 1866: “If Rationalism wishes to govern the world without regard to the religious needs of the soul, the experience of the French Revolution is there to teach us the consequences of such a blunder.” And the Durants themselves say in the same context: “There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.”
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Along with the decline of the Judie-Christian consensus we have come to a new definition and connotation of “pluralism.” Until recently it meant that the Christianity flowing from the Reformation is not now as dominant in the country and in society as it was in the early days of the nation. After about 1848 the great viewpoints not shaped by Reformation Christianity. This, of course, is the situation which exists today. Thus as we stand for religious freedom today, we need to realize that this must include a general religious freedom from the control of the state for all religion. It will not mean just freedom for those who are Christians. It is then up to Christians to show that Christianityis the Truth of total reality in the open marketplace of freedom.
This greater mixture in the United States, however, is now used as an excuse for the new meaning and connotation of pluralism. It now is used to mean that all types of situations are spread out before us, and that it really is up to each individual to grab one or the other on the way past, according to the whim of personal preference. What you take is only a matter of personal choice, with one choice as valid as another. Pluralism has come to mean that everything is acceptable. This new concept of pluralism suddenly is everywhere. There is no right or wrong; it is just a matter of your personal preference. On a recent SIXTY MINUTES program on television, for example, the questions of euthanasia of the old and the growing of marijuana as California’s largest paying crop were presented this way. One choice is as valid as another. It is just a matter of personal preference. This new definition and connotation of pluralism is presented in many forms, not only in personal ethics, but in society’s ethics and in the choices concerning law,
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Now I have a question. In these shifts that have come in law, where have the Christian lawyers been? I really ask you that. The shift has come gradually, but it has only come to its peak in the last 40 or 50 years. Where have the Christian lawyers been? Surely the Christian lawyers should have been the ones to have sounded the trumpet clear and loud, not just in bits and pieces but looking at the totality of what was occurring. Now, a nonlawyer like myself believes I have a right to feel let down because the Christian lawyers did not blow the trumpets clearly between, let us say, 1940 and 1970.
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When I wrote HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? From 1974 to 1976 I worked out of a knowledge of secular philosophy. I moved from the results in secular philosophy, to the results in liberal theology, to the results in the arts, and then I turned to the courts, and especially the Supreme Court. I read Oliver Wendell Holmes and others, and I must say, I was totally appalled by what I read. It was an exact parallel to what i had already known so well from my years of study in philosophy, theology, and the other disciplines.
In the book and film series HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? I used the Supreme Court abortion case as the clearest illustration of arbitrary sociiological law. But it was only the clearest illustration. The law is shot through with this kind of ruling. It is similar to choosing Fletcher’s situational ethics and point to it as the clearest illustration of how our society now functions with no fixed ethics. This is only the clearest illustration because in many ways our society functions on unfixed, situational ethics. The abortion case in law is exactly the same. It is only the clearest case. Law in this country has become situational law, using the term Fletcher used for his ethics. That is, a small group of people decide arbitrarily what, from their viewpoint, is for the good of society at that precise moment and they make it law, binding the whole society by their personal arbitrary decisions.
But of course! What would we expect? These things are the natural, inevitable results of the material-energy, humanistic concept of the final basic reality. From the material-energy, chance concept of final reality, final reality is, and must be b it nature, silent as to values, principles, or any basis for law. There is no way to ascertain “the ought:” from “the is.” Not only should we have known what this would have produced, but on the basis of this viewpoint of reality, we should have recognized that there are no other conclusions that this view could produce. It is a natural result of really believing that the basic reality of all things is merely material-energy, shaped into its present form by impersonal chance.
No, we must say that the Christians in the legal profession did not ring the bell, and we are indeed very, very far down the road toward a totally humanistic culture. At this moment we are in a humanistic culture, but we are happily not in a totally humanistic culture. But what we must realize is that the drift has been all in this direction. if it is not turned around we will move very rapidly into a totally humanistic culture.
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The law, and especially the courts, is the vehicle to force this total humanistic way of thinking upon the entire population.This is what has happened. The abortion law is a perfect example. The Supreme Court abortion ruling invalidated abortion lawsin all fifty states, even though it seems clear that in 1973 the majority of Americans were against abortion. It did not matter. The Supreme Court arbitrarily ruled that abortion was legal, and overnight they overthrew the state laws and forced their will on the majority, even though their ruling was arbitrary both legally and medically. Thus law and the courts became the vehicle for forcing a totally secular concept on the population.
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Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. I also respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children. I wanted to encourage you to investigate the work of Dr. Bernard Nathanson who like you used to be pro-abortion. I also want you to watch the You Tube series WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop. Also it makes me wonder what our the moral climate Of our nation is when we concentrate more on potential mistakes of the police and we let criminals back on the street so fast! Our national was founded of LEX REX and not REX LEX!
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,
PS: In this series of letters John MacArthur covers several points. In the first letter, he quotes you saying that the greatest threat to America—he said on one occasion—is systemic racism, which doesn’t exist; he said white supremacy, which doesn’t exist with any power; and then he said global warming, which doesn’t exist either, and if it does, God’s in charge of it.
In reality the greatest threat to this nation is the government, the government. And I want to show you how we are to understand that. Turn to Romans 13
In the 2nd letter, Dr. MacArthur noted When government turns the divine design on its head and protects those who do evil and makes those who do good afraid, it forfeits its divine purpose
In the 3rd letter Dr. MacArthur noted The world is the enemy of the gospel. The world is the enemy of the church. I pointed out that this manifests itself today in the form of HUMANISM.
In the 4th letter Dr. MacArthur points out how much today the devil is having his way in our society and that the Bible predicts that these will get worse!
In the 5th letter Francis Schaeffer points out “The HUMANIST MANIFESTOS not only say that humanism is a religion, but the Supreme Court has declared it to be a religion. The 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins specifically defines secular humanism as a religion equivalent to theistic and other non theistic religions.”
In the 6th letter Dr. MacArthur noted God has given government the sword, the power; and when they prostitute that power and they begin to punish those who do good and protect those who do evil, they wield that power against the people of God.
In the 7th letter Dr. MacArthur asserted, Throughout history, even in the Western world, people lived under what was called the divine right of kings. Kings were believed to have had a divine right. This was absolute monarchy. What broke that was basically the Reformers. The Reformers—a little phrase was “the law is king,” not the man.
In the 8th letter Dr. MacArthur noted that today the United States “Government has already become the purveyor of wickedness. Government is a murderer, slaughtering millions of infants in abortion.”
Judge gives preliminary OK to $3.5M settlement of IRS case is discussed about the 2013 lawsuit during the Barack Obama administration over treatment of conservative groups who said they were singled out for extra IRS scrutiny on tax-exempt status applications. Then Dr. MacArthur talks about persecution in the Book of Daniel.
“These are groups of law-abiding citizens who should have never had their First Amendment rights infringed upon by the IRS,” Jenny Beth Martin, president of the Tea Party Patriots umbrella group, said Wednesday. “These are groups that want the government to be accountable.”
The government has been used to persecuting people they don’t like for centuries! Let me just share a portion of that sermon by John MacArthur with you and you can watch it on You Tube:
Francis Schaeffer, who died in 1984, says, “If [there’s] no final place for civil disobedience, then the government has been made autonomous, and as such, it has been put in the place of the living God.” And that point is exactly when the early Christians performed their acts of civil disobedience, even when it cost them their lives. “Acts of State which contradict God’s [Laws] are illegitimate and acts of tyranny. Tyranny is ruling without the sanction of God. To resist tyranny is to honour God. . . . The bottom line is that at a certain point there is not only the right, but the duty to disobey the State.”
Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 4 | The Basis for Human Dignity
Sunday Night Prime – Dr. Bernard Nathanson – Fr Groeschel, CFR with Fr …
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Francis Schaeffer pictured above
Larry King had John MacArthur as a guest on his CNN program several times.
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the 1930′s above. I was sad to read about Edith passing away on Easter weekend in 2013. I wanted to pass along this fine […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
It is truly sad to me that liberals will lie in order to attack good Christian people like state senator Jason Rapert of Conway, Arkansas because he headed a group of pro-life senators that got a pro-life bill through the Arkansas State Senate the last week of January in 2013. I have gone back and […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Francis Schaeffer, Max Brantley, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
Sometimes you can see evidences in someone’s life of how content they really are. I saw something like that on 2-8-13 when I confronted a blogger that goes by the name “AngryOldWoman” on the Arkansas Times Blog. See below. Leadership Crisis in America Published on Jul 11, 2012 Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Arkansas Times, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented against abortion (Episode 1), infanticide (Episode 2), euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (3)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (2)
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
Roger Kimball is editor and publisher of The New Criterionand publisher of Encounter Books. He earned his B.A. from Bennington College and his M.A. and M.Phil. in philosophy from Yale University. He has written for numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times Book Review, and is a columnist for The Spectator World, American Greatness, and The Epoch Times. He is editor or author of several books, including The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America, The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art, Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education, and Vox Populi: The Perils and Promises of Populism.
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Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert presides over a Senate committee at the state Capitol in Little Rock, Ark. in this March 14, 2018, file photo. Rapert’s National Association of Christian Lawmakers met recently to talk model legislation and pass resolutions. Kelly P. Kissel, Associated Press/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22726922/AP898166992908.jpg)
Texas state Rep. Bryan Hughes speaks during the opening session of the 2015 legislative session on Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015, in Austin, Texas. Eric Gay, Associated Press/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22726936/merlin_1112102.jpg)
A anti-abortion supporter argues with those who attended a press conference and rally held by the Planned Parenthood Action Council of Utah outside of the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Aug. 25, 2015. Stacie Scott, Deseret News
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