Author Archives: Everette Hatcher III

My name is Everette Hatcher III. I am a businessman in Little Rock and have been living in Bryant since 1993. My wife Jill and I have four kids (Rett 24, Hunter 22, Murphey 16, and Wilson 14).

Mar-a-Lago ‘Raid’: Two-Tiered Justice?

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There seems to be a separate system of justice for top Democrats than there is for former President Donald Trump, who is seen here speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Aug. 6 in Dallas. (Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Attorney General Merrick Garland justified the unprecedented FBI raid of the residence of a former president by saying: “The department does not take such a decision lightly. Where possible, it is standard practice to seek less intrusive means as an alternative to a search, and to narrowly scope any search that is undertaken.”

With the approval of former President Donald Trump and after a request by the Department of Justice, Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who approved the warrant, publicly released it, as well as the inventory of items removed.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the FBI “removed 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked as top secret … and … took around 20 boxes of items, binders of photos, a handwritten note and the executive grant of clemency for Mr. Trump’s ally Roger Stone.”

The crimes the DOJ asserts include evidence of probable cause that Trump violated the part of the Espionage Act pertaining to classified information; removal of government records; and the destruction of records.

 

Generally, disputes between a departing president as to what documents and materials can be removed and what should be returned are worked out between the president and the relevant government entities.

The problem is the appearance of a two-tiered system of justice, one pertaining to Trump and the other pertaining to laws or subpoenas allegedly violated by top Democratic officials like then-President Barack Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder, who refused to comply with a congressional subpoena and became the only sitting AG to be found in criminal contempt of Congress; IRS official Lois Lerner, accused of withholding the granting of tax-exempt status to conservative charities and who refused to comply with a congressional subpoena; the treatment of Bill Clinton’s national security adviser Sandy Berger, who removed and destroyed documents from the National Archives in 2003; and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her alleged violation of the Espionage Act.

Take Clinton’s alleged violation of the Espionage Act because of the private server she installed in the basement of her home, a server on which she sent and received classified information.

About Clinton and her staff, then-FBI head James Comey said, “There is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” But he concluded that Clinton was not engaged in “clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information.”

But does the relevant part of the Espionage Act require “intent”?

Political columnist and commentator Charles Krauthammer wrote: “This is baffling. Under the statute (18 U.S.C. section 793(f)), it’s a felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or ‘through gross negligence.’ The evidence, as outlined by Comey, is overwhelming.”

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy wrote: “The question is whether she knew classified info would end up on the server, and her set-up made that inevitable. … Clinton could’ve been prosecuted either for willfully mishandling classified info or for doing so through gross negligence.”

Peter van Buren, a 24-year veteran of the State Department, wrote: “While Comey maintains there was no intent or gross negligence by Clinton to violate the law, it is difficult to reconcile her actions and his statement. … The standards applied in the Clinton case are at variance with how classified information violations elsewhere in the government are handled.”

Harvard Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz wrote: “Berger was administratively fined, and Mrs. Clinton was rebuked by James Comey, then director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which might have cost her the 2016 election. But neither was subjected to broad search warrants or criminal prosecution.”

There is much we still don’t know about the underlying affidavit for the warrant and whether Trump broke laws in removing material from the White House. But given the treatment of top Democratic officials versus the treatment of Trump, did the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago meet what Garland called the “standard practice to seek less intrusive means as an alternative to a search”?

At the very least, the optics look bad, really bad.

COPYRIGHT 2022 LAURENCE A. ELDER

 

 

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left undermines America width=

The left praises democracy when elected but claims the right will destroy democracy when it loses. Pictured: Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton discusses the 2016 election during her 2017 book tour. (Photo: Bastiaan Slabbers, NurPhoto/Getty Images)

 

 

Recently, Democrats have been despondent over President Joe Biden’s sinking poll numbers. His policies on the economy, energy, foreign policy, the border, and COVID-19 all have lost majority support.

As a result, the left now variously alleges that either in 2022, when it expects to lose the Congress, or in 2024, when it fears losing the presidency, Republicans will “destroy democracy” or stage a coup.

A cynic might suggest that those on the left praise democracy when they get elected, only to claim it is broken when they lose. Or they hope to avoid their defeat by trying to terrify the electorate. Or they mask their own revolutionary propensities by projecting them onto their opponents.

After all, who is trying to federalize election laws in national elections contrary to the spirit of the Constitution? Who wishes to repeal or circumvent the Electoral College? Who wishes to destroy the more than 180-year-old Senate filibuster, the over 150-year-old nine-justice Supreme Court, and the more than 60-year-old 50-state union?

Who is attacking the founding constitutional idea of two senators per state?

The Constitution also clearly states that “When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.” Who slammed through the impeachment of former President Donald Trump without a presiding chief justice?

Never had a president been either impeached twice or tried in the Senate as a private citizen. Who did both?

The left further broke prior precedent by impeaching Trump without a special counsel’s report, formal hearings, witnesses, and cross-examinations.

Who exactly is violating federal civil rights legislation?

New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in December decided to ration new potentially lifesaving COVID-19 medicines, partially on the basis of race, in the name of “equity.”

The agency also allegedly used racial preferences to determine who would be first tested for COVID-19. Yet such racial discrimination seems in direct violation of various title clauses of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

That law makes it clear that no public agency can use race to deny “equal utilization of any public facility which is owned, operated, or managed by or on behalf of any State or subdivision thereof.” Who is behind the new racial discrimination?

In summer 2020, many local- and state-mandated quarantines and bans on public assemblies were simply ignored with impunity—if demonstrators were associated with Black Lives Matter or protesting the police.

Currently, the Biden administration is also flagrantly embracing the neo-Confederate idea of nullifying federal law.

The Biden administration has allowed nearly 2 million foreign nationals to enter the United States illegally across the southern border—in hopes they will soon be loyal constituents.

The administration has not asked illegal entrants either to be tested for or vaccinated against COVID-19. Yet all U.S. citizens in the military and employed by the federal government are threatened with dismissal if they fail to become vaccinated.

Such selective exemption of lawbreaking non-U.S. citizens, but not millions of U.S. citizens, seems in conflict with the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

After entering the United States illegally, millions of immigrants are protected by some 550 “sanctuary city” jurisdictions. These revolutionary areas all brazenly nullify immigration law by refusing to allow federal immigration authorities to deport illegal immigrant lawbreakers.

At various times in our nation’s history—1832, 1861-65, and 1961-63—America was either racked by internal violence or fought a civil war over similar state nullification of federal laws.

In the last five years, we have indeed seen many internal threats to democracy.

Hillary Clinton hired a foreign national to concoct a dossier of dirt against her presidential opponent. She disguised her own role by projecting her efforts to use Russian sources onto Trump. She used her contacts in government and media to seed the dossier to create a national hysteria about “Russian collusion.” Clinton urged Biden not to accept the 2020 result if he lost, and herself claimed Trump was not a legitimately elected president.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has violated laws governing the chain of command. Some retired officers violated Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice by slandering their commander in chief. Others publicly were on record calling for the military to intervene to remove an elected president.

Some of the nation’s top officials in the FBI and intelligence committee have misled or lied under oath either to federal investigators or the U.S. Congress, again, mostly with impunity.

All these sustained revolutionary activities were justified as necessary to achieve the supposedly noble ends of removing Trump.

The result is Third World-like jurisprudence in America aimed at rewarding friends and punishing enemies, masked by service to social justice.

We are in a dangerous revolutionary cycle. But the threat is not so much from loud, buffoonish, one-day rioters on Jan. 6. Such clownish characters did not for 120 days loot, burn, attack courthouses and police precincts, cause over 30 deaths, injure 2,000 policemen, and destroy at least $2 billion in property—all under the banner of revolutionary justice.

Even more ominously, stone-cold sober elites are systematically waging an insidious revolution in the shadows that seeks to dismantle America’s institutions and the rule of law as we have known them.

 

(C)2022 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation. 

 

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.

 

The Honorable Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Washington D.C.

Dear Representative Adam Kinzinger, 

I noticed that you are a pro-life representative that has a long record of standing up for unborn babies! It was in the 1970’s when I was first introduced to the works of Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop and I wanted to commend their writings and films to you.

I recently read about your impressive pro-life record:

Washington, DC – Today, Congressman Adam Kinzinger (IL-16) joined his House Republican colleagues in a press conference urging Democratic leadership to allow a vote on the Born Alive protections. The proposal would protect babies who survive abortion and provide them with the same medical care that any other premature baby would receive. Yesterday, the Democrats blocked the proposed legislation—for the 17th time—from coming before the House for a vote.

Joining the Congressman and House Republican leaders at the press conference this morning was Jill Stanek, an Illinois nurse and pro-life advocate who has witnessed the devastating realities of these pro-abortion laws. The Illinois legislature is currently debating two abortion bills, similar to the extreme pro-abortion agendas in New York and Virginia. 

It seems you have a grudge against President Trump while our freedoms under President Biden are being taken away. I recommend to you the article below:

The January 6 Insurrection Hoax

 • Volume 50, Number 9 • Roger Kimball

Roger Kimball
Editor and Publisher, The New Criterion

Mr. Kimball concludes his article with these words: 

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.”

 

Bingo.

You can google and get Roger Kimball article “The January 6 Insurrection Hoax”

NOW WHAT DID YOU DO TO TURN YOUR BACK ON OUR LIBERTY AND PERPETUATE THE HOAX THAT JANUARY 6TH WAS AN INSURRECTION? Read below!! 

9 Republicans voted to hold Trump aide Bannon in contempt of Congress

 

There were a few Republicans Thursday who surprised observers when they voted in support of holding former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress and referring him to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.

Prior to the vote, four Republicans were considered a lock to approve the criminal referral, according to Capitol Hill sources: Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Fred Upton of Michigan and Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio.

 

Cheney and Kinzinger are on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and have for months stood alone as the only two House Republicans willing to speak out against former President Donald Trump’s continued lies about the 2020 election. They were the only two House Republicans to vote for the formation of the select committee on June 30.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi formed the select committee after Republicans rejected a bipartisan commission that would have been evenly split between five Democrats and five Republicans. Only 35 Republicans voted for that measure when itpassed the House of Representatives, and it was defeated by a GOP filibuster in the Senate.

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 27:  (L-R) Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) arrive for the House Select Committee hearing investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol on July 27, 2021 at the Canon House Office Building in Washington, DC. Members of law enforcement will testify about the attack by supporters of former President Donald Trump on the U.S. Capitol. According to authorities, about 140 police officers were injured when they were trampled, had objects thrown at them, and sprayed with chemical irritants during the insurrection. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

 

 
More

Upton has served in the House for more than three decades, since 1987, and will face a primary challenge next year because of his willingness to stand up to Trump.

Gonzalez is retiring from Congress next year, after only four years in the House. “While my desire to build a fuller family life is at the heart of my decision, it is also true that the current state of our politics, especially many of the toxic dynamics inside our own party, is a significant factor in my decision,” Gonzalez said in September when heannounced he would not seek another term.

 

The remaining five Republicans included three who voted for impeachment — Peter Meijer of Michigan, John Katko of New York and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington — and two House Republicans who did not vote to impeach Trump: Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.

Do you realize that Americans rights are being taken away from them and would you like an example? I am going to quote Mr. Kimball again.  You can google and get Roger Kimball article “The January 6 Insurrection Hoax”

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 beenbranded 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.

Let me recommend that you read this letter below from Senator Ron Johnson and his colleagues:

Sen. Johnson and Colleagues Request Answers from DOJ on Unequal Application of Justice to Protestors

 

 

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), along with senators Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), sent a letter on Monday to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting information on the unequal application of justice between the individuals who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, and those involved in the unrest during the spring and summer of 2020. The senators sent 18 questions to the attorney general on what steps the DOJ has taken to prosecute individuals who committed crimes during both events, and requested a response by June 21.

“Americans have the constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances,” the senators wrote. “This constitutional right should be cherished and protected. Violence, property damage, and vandalism of any kind should not be tolerated and individuals that break the law should be prosecuted. However, the potential unequal administration of justice with respect to certain protestors is particularly concerning.”

 

The full text of the letter can be found here and below.

 

 

June 7, 2021 

The Honorable Merrick B. Garland

Attorney General

U.S. Department of Justice

950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20530

 

Dear Attorney General Garland:

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is currently dedicating enormous resources and manpower to investigating and prosecuting the criminals who breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. We fully support and appreciate the efforts by the DOJ and its federal, state and local law enforcement partners to hold those responsible fully accountable.

We join all Americans in the expectation that the DOJ’s response to the events of January 6 will result in rightful criminal prosecutions and accountability.  As you are aware, the mission of the DOJ is, among other things, to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.  Today, we write to request information about our concerns regarding potential unequal justice administered in response to other recent instances of mass unrest, destruction, and loss of life throughout the United States. 

During the spring and summer of 2020, individuals used peaceful protests across the country to engage in rioting and other crimes that resulted in loss of life, injuries to law enforcement officers, and significant property damage.[1]  A federal court house in Portland, Oregon, has been effectively under siege for months.[2]  Property destruction stemming from the 2020 social justice protests throughout the country will reportedly result in at least $1 billion to $2 billion in paid insurance claims.[3] 

                In June 2020, the DOJ reportedly compiled the following information regarding last year’s unrest:

  • “One federal officer [was] killed, 147 federal officers [were] injured and 600 local officers [were] injured around the country during the protests, frequently from projectiles.”[4]
  • According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), “since the start of the unrest there has been 81 Federal Firearms License burglaries of an estimated loss of 1,116 firearms; 876 reported arsons; 76 explosive incidents; and 46 ATF arrests[.]”[5]

Despite these numerous examples of violence occurring during these protests, it appears that individuals charged with committing crimes at these events may benefit from infrequent prosecutions and minimal, if any, penalties.  According to a recent article, “prosecutors have approved deals in at least half a dozen federal felony cases arising from clashes between protesters and law enforcement in Oregon last summer. The arrangements — known as deferred resolution agreements — will leave the defendants with a clean criminal record if they stay out of trouble for a period of time and complete a modest amount of community service, according to defense attorneys and court records.”[6]       

                DOJ’s apparent unwillingness to punish these individuals who allegedly committed crimes during the spring and summer 2020 protests stands in stark contrast to the harsher treatment of the individuals charged in connection with the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.  To date, DOJ has charged 510 individuals stemming from Capitol breach.[7]  DOJ maintains and updates a webpage that lists the defendants charged with crimes committed at the Capitol.  This database includes information such as the defendant’s name, charge(s), case number, case documents, location of arrest, case status, and informs readers when the entry was last updated.[8]  No such database exists for alleged perpetrators of crimes associated with the spring and summer 2020 protests.  It is unclear whether any defendants charged with crimes in connection with the Capitol breach have received deferred resolution agreements.

Americans have the constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances.  This constitutional right should be cherished and protected.  Violence, property damage, and vandalism of any kind should not be tolerated and individuals that break the law should be prosecuted.  However, the potential unequal administration of justice with respect to certain protestors is particularly concerning.  In order to assist Congress in conducting its oversight work, we respectfully request answers to the following questions by June 21, 2021:  

Spring and Summer 2020 Unrest:

  1. Did federal law enforcement utilize geolocation data from defendants’ cell phones to track protestors associated with the unrest in the spring and summer of 2020?  If so, how many times and for which locations/riots?  
  1. How many individuals who may have committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020 were arrested by law enforcement using pre-dawn raids and SWAT teams?
  1. How many individuals were incarcerated for allegedly committing crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020? 
  1. How many of these individuals are or were placed in solitary confinement?  What was the average amount of consecutive days such individuals were in solitary confinement?
  1. How many of these individuals have been released on bail?
  1. How many of these individuals were released on their own recognizance or without being required to post bond?
  1. How many of these individuals were offered deferred resolution agreements?[9]
  1. How many DOJ prosecutors were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?
  1. How many FBI personnel were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?

January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol Breach:

  1. Did federal law enforcement utilize geolocation data from defendants’ cell phones to track protestors associated with the January 6, 2021 protests and Capitol breach?  If so, how many times and how many additional arrests resulted from law enforcement utilizing geolocation information?
  2. How many individuals who may have committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach were arrested by law enforcement using pre-dawn raids and SWAT teams?
  1. How many individuals are incarcerated for allegedly committing crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
  1. How many of these individuals are or were placed in solitary confinement?  What was the average amount of consecutive days such individuals were in solitary confinement?
  1. How many of these individuals have been released on bail?
  1. How many of these individuals have been released on their own recognizance or without being required to post bond?
  1. How many of these individuals were offered deferred resolution agreements?
  1. How many DOJ prosecutors have been assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
  1. How many FBI personnel were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach?

Sincerely,

 

Ron Johnson

United States Senator

 

Tommy Tuberville

United States Senator

 

Mike Lee                                                            

United States Senator

 

Rick Scott

United States Senator

 

Ted Cruz

United States Senator

 

###

 


[1] Jennifer Kingson, Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history, Axios, Sept. 16, 2020, https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-damage-276c9bcc-a455-4067-b06a-66f9db4cea9c.html.

[2] Conrad Wilson and Jonathan Levinson, Protesters, federal officers clash outside Portland’s courthouse Thursday, OPB, Mar. 12, 2021, https://www.opb.org/article/2021/03/12/protesters-vandalize-portlands-federal-courthouse-again/.

[3] Jennifer Kingson, Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history, Axios, Sept. 16, 2020, https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-damage-276c9bcc-a455-4067-b06a-66f9db4cea9c.html.

[5] Id.

[6] Josh Gerstein, Leniency for defendants in Portland clashes could affect Capitol riot cases, Politico, Apr. 14, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/14/portland-capitol-riot-cases-481346.

[7] Madison Hall et al., 493 people have been charged in the Capitol insurrection so far. This searchable table shows them all., Insider, accessed June 4, 2021, https://www.insider.com/all-the-us-capitol-pro-trump-riot-arrests-charges-names-2021-1.

[8] Capitol Breach Cases, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, accessed May 21, 2021, https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/capitol-breach-cases?combine=&order=title&sort=asc.

[9] Josh Gerstein, Leniency for defendants in Portland clashes could affect Capitol riot cases, Politico, Apr. 14, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/14/portland-capitol-riot-cases-481346.

—-

I want to recommend to you a video on YOU TUBE that runs 28 minutes and 39 seconds by Francis Schaeffer entitled because it discusses the founding of our nation and what the FOUNDERS believed: 

How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 5 | The Revolutionary Age

 

Thank you for your time, and again I want to thank you for your support of the unborn little babies!

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, 13900 Cottontail Lane, AR 72002, cell 501-920-5733, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org

——————————————————————————————

——

Dr. Francis schaeffer How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 5 | The Revolutionary Age

 

– Whatever happened to human race? PART 1 Co-authored by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop)

C. Everett Koop
C. Everett Koop, 1980s.jpg
 
13th Surgeon General of the United States
In office
January 21, 1982 – October 1, 1989

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 2 | Slaughter of the Innocents

Francis Schaeffer – Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 3 | Death by Someone’s Choice

Mr. Hentoff with the clarinetist Edmond Hall in 1948 at the Savoy, a club in Boston.

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 4 | The Basis for Human Dignity 

Image<img class=”i-amphtml-blurry-placeholder” src=”data:;base64,Edith Schaeffer with her husband, Francis Schaeffer, in 1970 in Switzerland, where they founded L’Abri, a Christian commune.

________________

______________________

March 23, 2021

President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. I know that you don’t agree with my pro-life views but I wanted to challenge you as a fellow Christian to re-examine your pro-choice view. Although we are both Christians and have the Bible as the basis for our moral views, I did want you to take a close look at the views of the pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff too.  Hentoff became convinced of the pro-life view because of secular evidence that shows that the unborn child is human. I would ask you to consider his evidence and then of course reverse your views on abortion.

___________________

The pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff wrote a fine article below I wanted to share with you.

Nat Hentoff is an atheist, but he became a pro-life activist because of the scientific evidence that shows that the unborn child is a distinct and separate human being and even has a separate DNA. His perspective is a very intriguing one that I thought you would be interested in. I have shared before many   cases (Bernard Nathanson, Donald Trump, Paul Greenberg, Kathy Ireland)    when other high profile pro-choice leaders have changed their views and this is just another case like those. I have contacted the White House over and over concerning this issue and have even received responses. I am hopeful that people will stop and look even in a secular way (if they are not believers) at this abortion debate and see that the unborn child is deserving of our protection.That is why the writings of Nat Hentoff of the Cato Institute are so crucial.

In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented  against abortion (Episode 1),  infanticide (Episode 2),   euthanasia (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 look at the truth claims of the Bible.

Francis Schaeffer

__________________________

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 video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.  Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.

Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION

_____________________________________

 

Dr. Francis schaeffer – from Part 5 of Whatever happened to human race?) Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 5 | Truth and History

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – A Christian Manifesto – Dr. Francis Schaeffer Lecture

Francis Schaeffer – A 700 Club Special! ~ Francis Schaeffer 1982

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – 1984 SOUNDWORD LABRI CONFERENCE VIDEO – Q&A With Francis & Edith Schaeffer

________________

Jewish World Review June 12, 2006/ 16 Sivan, 5766

 

Insisting on life

http://www.NewsandOpinion.com | A longtime friend of mine is married to a doctor who also performs abortions. At the dinner table one recent evening, their 9-year-old son — having heard a word whose meaning he didn’t know — asked, “What is an abortion?” His mother, choosing her words carefully, described the procedure in simple terms.

“But,” said her son, “that means killing the baby.” The mother then explained that there are certain months during which an abortion cannot be performed, with very few exceptions. The 9-year-old shook his head. “But,” he said, “it doesn’t matter what month. It still means killing the babies.”

Hearing the story, I wished it could be repeated to the justices of the Supreme Court, in the hope that at least five of them might act on this 9-year-old’s clarity of thought and vision.

The boy’s spontaneous insistence on the primacy of life also reminded me of a powerful pro-life speaker and writer who, many years ago, helped me become a pro-lifer. He was a preacher, a black preacher. He said: “There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of a higher order than the right to life.

“That,” he continued, “was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore out of your right to be concerned.”

This passionate reverend used to warn: “Don’t let the pro-choicers convince you that a fetus isn’t a human being. That’s how the whites dehumanized us … The first step was to distort the image of us as human beings in order to justify what they wanted to do — and not even feel they’d done anything wrong.”

That preacher was Jesse Jackson. Later, he decided to run for the presidency — and it was a credible campaign that many found inspiring in its focus on what still had to be done on civil rights. But Jackson had by now become “pro-choice” — much to the appreciation of most of those in the liberal base.

The last time I saw Jackson was years later, on a train from Washington to New York. I told him of a man nominated, but not yet confirmed, to a seat on a federal circuit court of appeals. This candidate was a strong supporter of capital punishment — which both the Rev. Jackson and I oppose, since it involves the irreversible taking of a human life by the state.

I asked Jackson if he would hold a press conference in Washington, criticizing the nomination, and he said he would. The reverend was true to his word; the press conference took place; but that nominee was confirmed to the federal circuit court. However, I appreciated Jackson’s effort.

On that train, I also told Jackson that I’d been quoting — in articles, and in talks with various groups — from his compelling pro-life statements. I asked him if he’d had any second thoughts on his reversal of those views.

Usually quick to respond to any challenge that he is not consistent in his positions, Jackson paused, and seemed somewhat disquieted at my question. Then he said to me, “I’ll get back to you on that.” I still patiently await what he has to say.

As time goes on, my deepening concern with the consequences of abortion is that its validation by the Supreme Court, as a constitutional practice, helps support the convictions of those who, in other controversies — euthanasia, assisted suicide and the “futility doctrine” by certain hospital ethics committees — believe that there are lives not worth continuing.

Around the time of my conversation with Jackson on the train, I attended a conference on euthanasia at Clark College in Worcester, Mass. There, I met Derek Humphry, the founder of the Hemlock Society, and already known internationally as a key proponent of the “death with dignity” movement.

He told me that for some years in this country, he had considerable difficulty getting his views about assisted suicide and, as he sees it, compassionate euthanasia into the American press.

“But then,” Humphry told me, “a wonderful thing happened. It opened all the doors for me.”

“What was that wonderful thing?” I asked.

“Roe v. Wade,” he answered.

The devaluing of human life — as the 9-year-old at the dinner table put it more vividly — did not end with making abortion legal, and therefore, to some people, moral. The word “baby” does not appear in Roe v. Wade — let alone the word “killing.”

And so, the termination of “lives not worth living” goes on.

 

______________________

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. Now after presenting the secular approach of Nat Hentoff I wanted to make some comments concerning our shared Christian faith.  I  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.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,

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August 19, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 19) THOUGHTFUL THURSDAY King Solomon’s Proverbs on Sleep Part 2 19:15 “Lazy people sleep soundly,    but idleness leaves them hungry”

Proverbs 19 New Living Translation

19 Better to be poor and honest
    than to be dishonest and a fool.

Enthusiasm without knowledge is no good;
    haste makes mistakes.

People ruin their lives by their own foolishness
    and then are angry at the Lord.

Wealth makes many “friends”;
    poverty drives them all away.

A false witness will not go unpunished,
    nor will a liar escape.

Many seek favors from a ruler;
    everyone is the friend of a person who gives gifts!

The relatives of the poor despise them;
    how much more will their friends avoid them!
Though the poor plead with them,
    their friends are gone.

To acquire wisdom is to love yourself;
    people who cherish understanding will prosper.

A false witness will not go unpunished,
    and a liar will be destroyed.

10 It isn’t right for a fool to live in luxury
    or for a slave to rule over princes!

11 Sensible people control their temper;
    they earn respect by overlooking wrongs.

12 The king’s anger is like a lion’s roar,
    but his favor is like dew on the grass.

13 A foolish child[a] is a calamity to a father;
    a quarrelsome wife is as annoying as constant dripping.

14 Fathers can give their sons an inheritance of houses and wealth,
    but only the Lord can give an understanding wife.

15 Lazy people sleep soundly,
    but idleness leaves them hungry.

16 Keep the commandments and keep your life;
    despising them leads to death.

17 If you help the poor, you are lending to the Lord
    and he will repay you!

18 Discipline your children while there is hope.
    Otherwise you will ruin their lives.

19 Hot-tempered people must pay the penalty.
    If you rescue them once, you will have to do it again.

20 Get all the advice and instruction you can,
    so you will be wise the rest of your life.

21 You can make many plans,
    but the Lord’s purpose will prevail.

22 Loyalty makes a person attractive.
    It is better to be poor than dishonest.

23 Fear of the Lord leads to life,
    bringing security and protection from harm.

24 Lazy people take food in their hand
    but don’t even lift it to their mouth.

25 If you punish a mocker, the simpleminded will learn a lesson;
    if you correct the wise, they will be all the wiser.

26 Children who mistreat their father or chase away their mother
    are an embarrassment and a public disgrace.

27 If you stop listening to instruction, my child,
    you will turn your back on knowledge.

28 A corrupt witness makes a mockery of justice;
    the mouth of the wicked gulps down evil.

29 Punishment is made for mockers,
    and the backs of fools are made to be beaten.

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.

King Solomon’s Proverbs Part

The wisdom of Solomon is there for those who want it.

_____________

What does Solomon say about sleep?

My son, do not lose sight of these—
keep sound wisdom and discretion,
and they will be life for your soul
and adornment for your neck.
Then you will walk on your way securely,
and your foot will not stumble.
If you lie down, you will not be afraid;
when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.

Proverbs 3:21-24   

Do not enter the path of the wicked,
and do not walk in the way of the evil.
Avoid it; do not go on it;
turn away from it and pass on.
For they cannot sleep unless they have done wrong;
they are robbed of sleep unless they have made someone stumble.

Proverbs 4:14-16   

Go to the ant, O sluggard;
consider her ways, and be wise.
Without having any chief,
officer, or ruler,
she prepares her bread in summer
and gathers her food in harvest.
How long will you lie there, O sluggard?
When will you arise from your sleep?
A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest,
and poverty will come upon you like a robber,
and want like an armed man.

Proverbs 6:6-11   

Slothfulness casts into a deep sleep,
and an idle person will suffer hunger.

Proverbs 19:15   

Love not sleep, lest you come to poverty;
open your eyes, and you will have plenty of bread.

Proverbs 20:13   

I passed by the field of a sluggard,
by the vineyard of a man lacking sense,
and behold, it was all overgrown with thorns;
the ground was covered with nettles,
and its stone wall was broken down.
Then I saw and considered it;
I looked and received instruction.
A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest,
and poverty will come upon you like a robber,
and want like an armed man.

Proverbs 24:30-34   

Sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much, but the full stomach of the rich will not let him sleep.

– See more at: http://scripturemenu.com/BibleVerseList.html?topicid=67#sthash.D0Ae56tQ.dpuf

Great website on Solomon’s wisdom from Proverbs:

Proverbs 26:14

As the door turneth upon his hinges, so doth the slothful upon his bed.

How does a door turn on its hinges? It moves back and forth, but it never goes anywhere! It turns from side to side, but it cannot get loose from its place! It moves back and forth, but it does not leave the doorway! So are lazy people, who will lie in bed, rolling back and forth, but dreading the thought of getting up to go to school or work (Pr 26:13-16)!

Here is a wonderful proverb with a great simile to condemn lazy persons that like to sleep too much. A simile is a comparison between two things that is clearly stated by the use of “as” or “like.” As a door turns back and forth, and from side to side, without going anywhere, so are lazy people who stay in bed, though they are through sleeping soundly.

What is the slothful? He is a lazy man that is slow, resentful of action or exertion, sluggish, idle, and indolent. He is named appropriately, for there is a mammal in the forests of Central and South America that is also called the sloth, which moves very slowly and often stays in the same position for extended periods of time.

Solomon wrote to young men, specifically his son (Pr 1:4,8). He knew by inspiration from God and observations in life that young men can sleep too much, so he wrote several proverbs against it (Pr 6:6-11;19:15; 20:13; 23:21; 24:30-34). Too much sleep will bring a man to poverty, so he ridiculed excess sleep by comparing it to a door turning on hinges.

What cures the love of sleep? Starvation (Pr 20:4; II Thess 3:10)! Depriving a young man of food will always work! His appetite and metabolism are at the highest levels of his whole life. Parents can easily teach sons to get up in the morning, though most pamper and feed their sloth, teaching him that laziness is acceptable and without painful consequences.

Lazy people are headed for poverty, unless they drastically change their habits (Pr 6:11; 19:15; 20:13; 23:21;24:34). The more a man sleeps, the more he thinks he needs to sleep, his metabolism slows, and he quickly experiences catabolism of muscular strength. The military knows how to turn soft boys into hard men, and it is not by sleeping in! While the first days of getting up early might be painful, good habits can quickly be formed.

There is more to this proverb than just a condemnation of excess sleep. Solomon also condemned the attitude, actions, and character of lazy persons by picking on their sleep habits. A sluggard will do anything but work! He will talk, take a break, pace himself, take a long time eating, get distracted easily, be unnecessarily concerned about details, and do easy things very slowly, lest he be forced to face a task that will take exertion!

If you are slothful spiritually, you will also suffer spiritual poverty just as surely. It is the man who hunts for wisdom as for hidden treasure – intense and persistent efforts – that finds it (Pr 2:4; 18:1). You must hear preaching with great care (Luke 8:18), and you must make diligent efforts to confirm and understand what you hear to be noble (Acts 17:11; I Thess 5:21). Are you able to get up and seek the Lord early to find Him (Pr 8:17)?

3 QUESTIONS FOR YOU:

1. Why is the simile with the door hinges work so well with laziness and sleeping?

2. What is the cure for the love of sleep?

3. What actions will a sluggard do in order to avoid work?

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Tom Brady, Coldplay, Kansas, Solomon and the search for satisfaction (part 2)

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 […]

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Adrian Rogers and Billy Graham discuss Ronald Reagan (who was my favorite President who I named my son after)

Baptist leaders remember Ronald Reagan’s optimism as being founded on faith in God

By Erin Curry, posted June 7, 2004 in 

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.”

——

Just as I am. Michael W. Smith (at the Lying in Honor of the Reverend Bi…

Touching Moments From Billy Graham’s Funeral

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Watch live: Billy Graham’s funeral

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

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.

VIDEO OF MELODY GREEN (Keith’s widow) INTRODUCES RONALD REAGAN

President Reagan’s Remarks at a Briefing for Right to Life Activists on …

BILLY GRAHAM ON RONALD REAGAN:

Ronald Reagan is one of the most winsome men I have ever known. Our long friendship really started one day in 1953, when I was playing golf in Phoenix. Mrs. Loyal Davis, wife of a prominent Chicago surgeon, came up to me on the course. 

“I want you to get to know my new son-in-law,” she said. 

I asked who he was. 

“Ronald Reagan.”

“You mean the film star?”

She confirmed that he had married her daughter, Nancy, some months before. 

Ron (as most of his friends called him) and I actually met later that year in Dallas. 

In the next two decades, my travels took me to California with some frequency, and often our paths crossed. As our friendship grew, I not only admired his quick wit and warm personality, but I also came to respect his keen insight and tough-minded approach to broad political issues. I also found him very interested in our work, even giving me friendly advice from time to time. 

During the years before Ron was elected to public office, I had often detected a spiritual side to him. For example, I remember once when I gave a small dinner party at the Beverly Hilton Hotel and invited him. He brought up the subject of the Second Coming of Christ. The same subject came up with him on other occasions as well. 

I have been told that where he grew up, in Dixon, Illinois, he did some preaching himself in his late teens. At the time, he was a member of the Christian Church, which was somewhat like the Baptist Church. I kept forgetting to ask him about it, however, something that I now regret. 

During the eight years of Reagan’s presidential administration, we saw each other a number of times. I especially appreciated his kindness in inviting Ruth and me to several states dinners for visiting foreign leaders. 

One night while I was staying at the White House, Nancy and the President got into a discussion about the question of salvation–who was going to be saved and who was going to be lost. He gave her his views on conversion and the new birth right out of the Bible. She turned to me. 

“Billy, is that right?”

I said it was and expanded a little further. 

While he was president, Ronald Reagan bestowed on me one of the highest honors I could ever imagine. On February 23, 1983, he presented me with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor our government gives to an American, for service to the nation. I felt unworthy of the honor, and still do. But whatever else it means, it will always remind me of the generosity and friendship of a remarkable man and a warm and enduring personal friend, Ronald Wilson Reagan.

Pastor to Presidents: Billy Graham and Ronald Reagan

November 19, 2020

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Billy Graham described Ronald Reagan as “one of the most winsome men I have ever known.” Their friendship began long before Reagan’s political career, when he was still a film star in Hollywood. As their friendship grew over the next couple of decades, Billy “not only admired his quick wit and warm personality, but [he] also came to respect his keen insight and tough-minded approach to broad political issues.”

Billy Graham knew Ronald and Nancy Reagan well before their time in the White House

When Reagan was inaugurated as President on January 20, 1981, Billy joined him on the platform while he was sworn in. Throughout Reagan’s term of office, Billy and Ruth were invited to many state dinners, including one for Queen Elizabeth II, and another for Chinese president Li Xiannian.

Billy Graham at state dinner for Queen Elizabeth II hosted by President Ronald Reagan in 1983

In Just As I Am, Billy remembers multiple conversations with the Reagans regarding faith. “They were both interested in understanding more about the Scriptures, especially Ron. He often asked me questions about the biblical view on important topics. Abortion was one such issue he wrestled with. I always stressed the Bible’s teachings on the sacredness of human life, both of the unborn and of the born. We talked about other current issues, but always in terms of principles, not what specific policies or programs should be adopted or scrapped.”

On February 23, 1983, Ronald Reagan presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Billy Graham, the highest honor a civilian citizen of the United States can receive. Of the honor, Billy said, “I felt unworthy of the honor, and still do. But whatever else it means, it will always remind me of the generosity and friendship of a remarkable man and a warm and enduring friend, Ronald Wilson Reagan.”

Billy Graham receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom

The Billy Graham Library is featuring an exhibit Pastor to Presidents highlighting Billy Graham’s friendships with our nation’s Executive Office. The exhibit runs through December 23, 2020. For more information on the exhibit, visit www.billygrahamlibrary.org

Transcript: Ronald Reagan’s Friendship With Billy Graham

By | Fox News

This is a partial transcript of The Big Story With John Gibson, June 7, 2004, that has been edited for clarity.

JOHN GIBSON, HOST: President Ronald Reagan(search) was a man of deep religious faith. For many years, Billy Graham (search) was one of his closest personal friends. Reverend Graham will not be able to attend any of the Reagan memorials because of a broken hip.

Joining me now is Reverend Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham. Franklin, today’s big question, what was the special bond between your father and President Reagan?

REV. FRANKLIN GRAHAM, PRESIDENT, SAMARITAN’S PURSE: They first met in 1954. It was Nancy’s mother, Mrs. Davis, that met my father when he was playing golf… in Arizona and asked if daddy would take time to meet her new son-in-law who happened to be Ronald Reagan.

They met a few weeks after that and really became very close friends since 1954. My father loved him very much and enjoyed every opportunity had he to spend with him and to talk to him. He had a great interest in spiritual questions. He was a man of deep faith. He’s a man who not only believed in God, but he believed in God’s son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He believed that Christ died on the cross for our sins, and that God raised him from the dead and that he was coming again. And he looked forward to the second coming of Jesus Christ. And he often talked to my father about that subject. He was fascinated about that, so they had a lot of very deep theological discussions.

GIBSON: Reverend Graham, as you well know, the current President Bush is a Christian and makes no effort to conceal it, and in a lot of circles, especially in Europe, he is criticized for that. It seems to me that President Reagan wasn’t quite so public in his faith. Was there a reason for that, that you know of?

GRAHAM: Well, I think he probably was more public than we give him credit for. He spoke about God quite often, spoke about his faith. I think today where we have gotten into this realm of political correctness for some reason, somebody has said it’s not right to talk about your faith. If you are in public office. And, of course, when we come back to public office, we do bring our faith, we bring our character with us. And I think those all are important ingredients to a leader, especially to the president of the United States. Reagan believed in God, he believed in Jesus Christ.

Bush is the same way. He has a strong faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, the Bible says that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son whosoever believed in him should not perish, but should have everlasting life. And that whosoever, it’s me, it’s you, it’s everyone who is watching, if we’ll simply believe and trust in him, God will forgive us of our sins. It’s faith.

You don’t have to work for your salvation. It’s simply by faith. And the President Bush understands this, and, of course, President Reagan, he understood it. He had just a very simple faith, which was very dear to him and very real to him.

GIBSON: Reverend Graham, your father, Billy Graham, met Ronald Reagan, as you said, in 1954. This is some years before Ronald Reagan was governor and then later president. What did your father see in him in 1954?

GRAHAM: Well, it’s interesting. He, of course, was a well-known actor, and my father had just finished a campaign in California in 1949, got to know a lot of folks in the industry. And when Mrs. Davis suggested that they meet, daddy was just fascinated in meeting him. He liked his movies and liked him as a person, and when they met, the two had a lot in common. And they shared the same type of jokes, both had great senses of humor. And they just liked each other, you know, companionship. They were just friends, and even after he left office, after he left Washington and went back to California, my father still stayed in touch, would go by to see the president. And then, of course, the last few years his illness was very — very difficult, but he continued to keep in touch with Nancy, to call her and go by to see her.

GIBSON: You know, your father is — one of the many things he is known for is being a friend to presidents. Did he envision — we’re looking at pictures of your father now. Did he envision this actor he met in 1954 who probably at that point was maybe involved with the Screen Actors Guild but not much more politically was going to be a major political figure?

GRAHAM: Of course not. He never dreamed that, and he just — I think he is very grateful for that friendship over the years, especially when the president — when he became president. Reagan had him at the White House on many occasions to visit him. My father has never sought really to be the friend of presidents. It has just happened to come his direction. And my father feels that it’s very important as a minister of the gospel that when you’re with a president or a member of Congress, of the Senate, whatever, to be a minister and to share our faith and to hold up our faith and God’s standards. I think it’s important for people who are in government to remember God’s standards that he has given to us and not to forget them, not to turn our back on them, but to take his standards and that should apply to the way we live our life.

When the Bible says thou shall not murder, we need to hold that standard. When the Bible says thou shall not steal, we need to hold that standard. When God says not to covet, we need to hold those standards. Of course, not everybody believes the Bible. Not everybody wants God’s standards, but as a minister, my father felt it was important that he at least represent God’s standards to those that were in leadership, and did he that to the best of his ability. And I admire him for staying with it all these years.

GIBSON: Reverend Franklin Graham. Reverend, thank you very much. Appreciate you coming on today.

GRAHAM: Thank you, sir.

Copy: Content and Programming Copyright 2004 Fox News Network, L.L.C. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Transcription Copyright 2004 eMediaMillWorks, Inc. (f/k/a Federal Document Clearing House, Inc.), which takes sole responsibility for the accuracy of the transcription. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No license is granted to the user of this material except for the user’s personal or internal use and, in such case, only one copy may be printed, nor shall user use any material for commercial purposes or in any fashion that may infringe upon Fox News Network, L.L.C.’s and eMediaMillWorks, Inc.’s copyrights or other proprietary rights or interests in the material. This is not a legal transcript for purposes of litigation.

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Remarks at a White House Briefing for Right to Life Activists

July 30, 1987

Senators, Congressmen, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to you all. Before I get on with things here, I think I’d better explain a little bit. This is just a small billboard that says — it’s a reminder that says, “Stay out of the Sun.” [Laughter] Well, there’s one Congressman I see in the front row to whom I have to say a special word: Henry Hyde. Watching your contributions to the hearings, Henry, I couldn’t help thinking — [laughter] — forgive me for this — other politicians can run, but there’s only one I know who knows how to Hyde. [Laughter] It’s a great pleasure to welcome all of you to Washington and an honor to be able to speak to this assembly of Americans who are doing so much to declare and defend the sacredness of all human life.

One of the aspects of this gathering that impresses me most is that just a few years ago many of you, perhaps most, never dreamed of getting involved in politics. What brought you into politics was a matter of conscience, a matter of fundamental conviction, and that gives you an integrity that Americans of all views cannot help but respect. It also happens to make me feel a particular kinship with you. You see, there was a time in my own life when nobody who knew me ever expected me to go into politics myself. [Laughter] In fact, back in 1966 when someone told my boss, Jack Warner, that I was running for Governor of California, he is supposed to have said, “No, Jimmy Stewart for Governor. Reagan for best friend.” [Laughter] 

But we come here today on an issue of the most fundamental importance. Many of you’ve been attacked for being single-issue activists or single-issue voters. But I ask: What single issue could be of greater significance? What single issue could say more about a society’s values than the degree of respect shown for human life at its most vulnerable: human life still unborn? 

Many of the most compelling arguments against abortion are as old as our civilization. Indeed, I would submit that a reverence for all human life is one of the distinguishing marks of true civilization. In our own time, medical science has added to our knowledge of the processes of life that take place before birth, deepening our understanding of what abortion means to the mother and the unborn child. We know, in particular, that when an abortion is performed the unborn child often feels pain. 

You might be interested to learn that when I first mentioned this in a 1983 speech there was an outcry, enraged criticism and angry denials. But criticism wasn’t the only response. It so happens that I also received a letter signed by 24 medical doctors, including eminent physicians like the former chief of pediatrics at the St. Louis City Hospital and the president of the New York State Medical Society. The letter stated that in recent years medical techniques have “demonstrated the remarkable responsiveness of the human fetus to pain, touch, and sound.”

And the letter concluded: “Mr. President, in drawing attention to the capability of the human fetus to feel pain, you stand on firmly established ground.” Well, in recent years medical science has taught us so much more about the individuality and responsiveness of the fetus, even at very early stages of development. My friends, isn’t it about time the law of the land recognized the medical evidence of 1987? [Applause] If there’s even a question about when human life begins, isn’t it our duty to err on the side of life? 

The law of the land — that’s a phrase with special resonance for Americans. After all, ours is not a nation founded upon centuries of shared history, like the nations of Europe or Asia. No, ours is a nation founded upon a shared and basic law, the Constitution. And because it is the Constitution that must reflect our most fundamental values — freedom, equality before the law, and yes, the dignity of human life — because of this, the duty of everyone here today is clear. We must not rest — and I pledge to you that I will not rest — until a human life amendment becomes a part of our Constitution. 

At the same time, we must continue to search for practical steps that we can take now, even before the battle for the human life amendment is won. I’ve submitted a bill to Congress that I know interests each of you keenly, and I’d like to talk about that with you in just a moment. But first, permit me to mention four other important steps our administration has taken, steps that I believe represent powerful examples of what can be done now to protect the lives of unborn children. 

First, our position on international population policies — as you may be aware, some international organizations have chosen to support abortion as a means of population control. Well, the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, or UNFPA, for example, works with Chinese population programs, which include abortion. Our response to that? We cut off American funds from UNFPA and from overseas organizations that support or promote abortion. As I said in my statement to the 1984 Mexico City International Conference on Population — incidentally, one of the best parts about being President is that from time to time you get to quote yourself — [laughter] — but as I said then: “We believe population programs can and must be truly voluntary, cognizant of the rights and responsibilities of individuals and families, and respectful of religious and cultural values.” Well, that means no coercive measures such as involuntary sterilization and no use of abortion for population control. 

Second, permit me to mention our recent actions concerning the District of Columbia. You’ll recall that the Congress has the responsibility to oversee and appropriate all funds in the District of Columbia budget, but each year Congress has chosen to restrict only Federal funds in the DC budget from being used for abortions on demand. Yet in practice, the record is clear. There is no way to separate Federal from locally raised funds, and this has permitted the District to go right on financing abortions. And you know, I just felt that the great beauty of this capital city meant nothing if right here, in this city that belongs to all Americans, the dignity of human life was being neglected and even attacked. So, this year we took action. You’ll be pleased to know that, in transmitting to Congress the District of Columbiabudget for 1988, we made it clear that both Federal and local funds must comply with the Hyde amendment. 

I want, third, to restate our firm opposition to the so-called, Grove City legislation sponsored by Senator Kennedy. This bill, S. 557, would mean that all hospitals and colleges receiving Federal funds, even those with religious affiliations, would be open to lawsuits if they failed to provide abortions. In other words, the legislation would virtually force these institutions to provide abortion on demand. I don’t mind telling you this one really touches my temperature control. I don’t want to get started, but let me just say this: As far as I’m concerned, every Member of Congress should oppose this proabortion Federal intrusion. [Applause] Thank you. You just made the day for some Legislators here. [Laughter] We support an amendment offered by Senator Danforth, an amendment that would eliminate the proabortion aspects of that legislation. As I said before, this administration will oppose any legislation that would require individuals or institutions, public or private, to finance or perform abortions

Now, the fourth point is one that will come to you as especially good news, a set of initiatives that we will pursue immediately. The first of these is a revision of the title 10 Family Planning Program guidelines. Current guidelines require grant recipients to provide abortion counseling and referral. This policy has effectively barred family planning organizations that will not engage in abortion activity from participating in the title 10 program. I’m directing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to publish regulations in the Federal Register removing this bias against groups that refuse to engage in abortion activities. In order to give effect to the statutory prohibition on the use of appropriated funds in programs where abortion is a method of family planning, I am also directing Secretary Bowen to make sure that the regulations specifically state that a program which does provide counseling and referral for abortion services as a method of family planning will not be eligible for title 10 funds.

Then there’s an initiative that represents an important change in the title 10 regulations so that any organization that provides abortion-related services will be required to clearly separate these services from title 10 programs that the Federal Government is paying for. At present, the coexistence of abortion with federally supported family planning services fosters the view that abortion is an acceptable and government-sanctioned method of family planning. In order to ensure that this will no longer occur, I’m directing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to publish in the Federal Register regulations that require grant recipients to separate, financially and physically, their eligible and noneligible programs.

Now, a third initiative is the development of a thorough and solid body of public health information on the effects of abortion on women. Growing numbers of women who’ve had abortions now say that they have been misled by inaccurate information. Making accurate data on maternal morbidity available to women before an abortion is performed is an essential element of informed consent. I am, therefore, directing the Surgeon General to issue a comprehensive medical report on the health effects, physical and emotional, of abortion on women.

The final initiative is a restriction on the use of Federal funds for activities that advocate abortion. It is inconsistent with title 10 for Federal funds to be used to provide speakers to debate in opposition to pro-life speakers, to lobby for proabortionlegislation, to provide transportation to abortion clinics, or make reservations at abortion clinics, to bring lawsuits in support of abortion as a family planning method, or to provide or distribute materials that advocate abortion. And I am, therefore, directing Secretary Bowen to publish regulations in the Federal Register to ensure that no title 10 funds go to any program that encourages, promotes, or advocates abortion or which assists a woman in obtaining an abortion.

You’ll be pleased to know that Secretary Bowen is fully supportive of my position on abortion and of these initiatives. Secretary Bowen has agreed that all necessary work will be completed in time to publish draft regulations in the Federal Register within 30 days. And I’m also pleased to say that the Secretary’s newly appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs is NabersCabaniss. Nabers will be among those charged with implementing these new initiatives at the Department of Health and Human Services.

And this brings me to the bill I mentioned earlier. To begin with, a word or two of background. In the past, we’ve been successful in restricting the use of Federal funds for abortions on a department-by-department basis, making use of the Hyde amendment. Yet each year there have been a few departments and agencies not covered by the Hyde amendment. The bill that we’re submitting to Congress will change that. And listen, if you will, to the key provision: “No funds appropriated by Congress shall be used to perform abortions, except where the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term.” In other words, this one piece of legislation would permanently restrict the use of funds for abortions throughout the Federal Government, with absolutely no exceptions. 

And introduced in the Senate by Senator Gordon Humphrey, this bill has 12 Senate cosponsors. And in the House, the bill was introduced by Congressman Henry Hyde and has garnered cosponsors numbering 124. Yes, opposition is stiff. But the very fact that this bill has been introduced has drawn attention to the importance of the debate and demonstrated the growing strength of the prolife movement throughout the country.

Will the bill pass? The pundits certainly don’t think so, but I have to tell you, at this point in my career, I’m used to a little skepticism. [Laughter] “The Impossible Became Inevitable” — that’s what the Washington Post headline said when our tax reform was finally enacted. And I just have to believe that, given the fundamental goodness of the American people, given this great nation’s reverence for life itself, prolife measures like this legislation will become inevitable, too. So, I intend to push for these prolife measures just as hard as I know how. Can I count on your support? [Applause] Thank you. I knew that was a foolish question when I asked it.

Many who turn to abortion do so in harrowing circumstances, and we must remind those who disagree with us, and sometimes even ourselves, that we do not seek to condemn, we do not seek to sit in judgment. Yes, we must take our stand without apology. Yet at the same time, it is our duty to rise above bitterness and reproach, to call upon all Americans to come together in a spirit of helping and understanding. For we know that in this great and good nation, positive solutions to the tragedy of abortion can be found.

If I could, I’d like to leave with you a quotation that means a great deal to me. These are the words of my friend, the late Terence Cardinal Cooke, of New York. “The gift of life, God’s special gift, is no less beautiful when it is accompanied by illness or weakness, hunger or poverty, mental or physical handicaps, loneliness or old age. Indeed, at these times, human life gains extra splendor as it requires our special care, concern, and reverence. It is in and through the weakest of human vessels that the Lord continues to reveal the power of His love.” 

The weakest of human vessels — surely there is no human life more frail and vulnerable than that of an infant still in its mother’s womb. And surely it is our task to appeal to the goodness we know we can find in every American and to call upon the power of His love.

I thank you all, and God bless you all for what you’re doing. 

Note: The President spoke at 11:50 a.m. in Room 450 of the Old Executive Office Building. In his opening remarks, he referred to a basal cell carcinoma on his nose. He also referred to Representative Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, who participated in the congressional hearings on the Iran-contra controversy.

August 18, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 18) Adrian Rogers’ sermon outline for “Raising Kids that Count”

We have to listen to our kids chapter 18 tells us in verse 13:

13 Spouting off before listening to the facts
    is both shameful and foolish.

Proverbs 18 New Living Translation

 

18 Unfriendly people care only about themselves;
    they lash out at common sense.

Fools have no interest in understanding;
    they only want to air their own opinions.

Doing wrong leads to disgrace,
    and scandalous behavior brings contempt.

Wise words are like deep waters;
    wisdom flows from the wise like a bubbling brook.

It is not right to acquit the guilty
    or deny justice to the innocent.

Fools’ words get them into constant quarrels;
    they are asking for a beating.

The mouths of fools are their ruin;
    they trap themselves with their lips.

Rumors are dainty morsels
    that sink deep into one’s heart.

A lazy person is as bad as
    someone who destroys things.

10 The name of the Lord is a strong fortress;
    the godly run to him and are safe.

11 The rich think of their wealth as a strong defense;
    they imagine it to be a high wall of safety.

12 Haughtiness goes before destruction;
    humility precedes honor.

13 Spouting off before listening to the facts
    is both shameful and foolish.

14 The human spirit can endure a sick body,
    but who can bear a crushed spirit?

15 Intelligent people are always ready to learn.
    Their ears are open for knowledge.

16 Giving a gift can open doors;
    it gives access to important people!

17 The first to speak in court sounds right—
    until the cross-examination begins.

18 Flipping a coin[a] can end arguments;
    it settles disputes between powerful opponents.

19 An offended friend is harder to win back than a fortified city.
    Arguments separate friends like a gate locked with bars.

20 Wise words satisfy like a good meal;
    the right words bring satisfaction.

21 The tongue can bring death or life;
    those who love to talk will reap the consequences.

22 The man who finds a wife finds a treasure,
    and he receives favor from the Lord.

23 The poor plead for mercy;
    the rich answer with insults.

24 There are “friends” who destroy each other,
    but a real friend sticks closer than a brother.

 

Adrian Rogers: Raising Kids That Count [#2331] proverbs 18

Great sermon outline below by Adrian Rogers:

Raising Kids That Count

Proverbs (Program 2331DVD, Airing on 2/13 & 2/20)

  1. INTRODUCTION
    1. Our chief desire for our children is not that they be wealthy or famous, but that they love the Lord Jesus Christ and count for His cause.
      1. Psalm 112:2
    2. We find in the book of Proverbs seven gifts that we can give to our children.
  2. GIVE THEM AN EXAMPLE
    1. Proverbs 1:7-9
    2. Proverbs 20:7
    3. We need to give our children a godly example.
      1. Do not pretend perfection.
      2. Be real; be genuine.
    4. There are character traits which we must demonstrate to our children:
      1. Contentment
      2. Courage
      3. Courtesy
      4. Discernment
      5. Fairness
      6. Friendliness
      7. Generosity
      8. Gentleness
      9. Helpfulness
      10. Honesty
      11. Humility
      12. Kindness
      13. Obedience
      14. Orderliness
      15. Patience
      16. Persistence
      17. Self-control
      18. Tact
      19. Thankfulness
      20. Tidiness
      21. Wisdom
  3. GIVE THEM UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
    1. Proverbs 4:1-4
    2. Luke 15:20
    3. True love is not giving someone what they want; it is giving them what they need.
    4. There must be unconditional acceptance of the child regardless of his or her behavior.
  4. GIVE THEM CONSTANT ENCOURAGEMENT
    1. Proverbs 3:21-26
    2. There is a difference between praise and encouragement:
      1. Praise says that I am proud of you for what you do.
      2. Encouragement says that I am proud of you for who you are.
  5. GIVE THEM WISE INSTRUCTION
    1. Proverbs 2:1-7
    2. We need to teach our children the Word of God.
    3. Let the instruction be joined with training.
      1. Proverbs 22:6
  6. GIVE THEM REASONABLE RESTRICTIONS
    1. Proverbs 6:20-23
  7. GIVE THEM A LISTENING EAR
    1. Proverbs 18:13-15
    2. We need to be willing to listen when they want to talk.
  8. GIVE THEM A HAPPY ENVIRONMENT
    1. Proverbs 15:13-17
    2. Let your home be filled with laughter and love.
      1. Ephesians 5:4
      2. Genesis 21:6
  9. CONCLUSION
    1. God ideally wants everyone to have three homes:
      1. A family home
      2. A church home
      3. A heavenly home
    2. Jesus is the greatest home builder.

Related posts:

Easter weekend 2013, List of posts on series: Is the Bible historically accurate? (Updated 1 through 14C)

March 30, 2013 – 4:36 pm

“In Christ Alone” music video featuring scenes from “The Passion of the Christ”. It is sung by Lou Fellingham of Phatfish and the writer of the hymn is Stuart Townend. On this Easter weekend 2013 there is no other better time to take a look at the truth and accuracy of the Bible.    Is the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists ConfrontedBiblical Archaeology | Edit | Comments (0)

Evidence for the Bible

March 27, 2013 – 9:43 pm

Here is some very convincing evidence that points to the view that the Bible is historically accurate. Archaeological and External Evidence for the Bible Archeology consistently confirms the Bible! Archaeology and the Old Testament Ebla tablets—discovered in 1970s in Northern Syria. Documents written on clay tablets from around 2300 B.C. demonstrate that personal and place […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology | Edit | Comments (0)

John MacArthur on Larry King Live Part 4 The Bible on War

February 28, 2013 – 6:30 am

Larry King – Dr. John MacArthur vs. “father” Manning Uploaded on Sep 26, 2011 GotoThisSite.org ___________ I have seen John MacArthur on Larry King Show many times and I thought you would like to see some of these episodes. I have posted several of John MacArthur’s sermons in the past and my favorite is his […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

February 5, 2013 – 6:53 am

The Bible and Archaeology (1/5) The Bible maintains several characteristics that prove it is from God. One of those is the fact that the Bible is accurate in every one of its details. The field of archaeology brings to light this amazing accuracy. _________________________- Many people have questioned the accuracy of the Bible, but I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology | Edit | Comments (0)

Part 2 Adrian Rogers on Proverbs “How To Be The Father Of A Wise Child” (video too)

March 28, 2013 – 6:02 am

I have been reading Proverbs almost every day for many years with my family in the evening and there is lots of wisdom in it. Take a look at the second part of this message from Adrian Rogers. How to Be the Father of a Wise Child Another great sermon outline from Adrian Rogers. Adrian Rogers […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers | Edit | Comments (0)

Part 1 Adrian Rogers on Proverbs “How To Be The Father Of A Wise Child” (video too)

March 26, 2013 – 5:56 am

Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s while pastor of Bellevue Baptist of Memphis, and president of Southern Baptist Convention. (Little known fact, Rogers was the starting quarterback his senior year of the Palm Beach High School football team that won the state title and a hero to a 7th grader at the same school named […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers | Edit | Comments (0)

What Adrian Rogers said to pro-abortion activist at the U.S. Senate in the 1990′s

January 29, 2013 – 8:45 am

Leadership Crisis in America Published on Jul 11, 2012 Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s while pastor of Bellevue Baptist of Memphis, and president of Southern Baptist Convention. (Little known fact, Rogers was the starting quarterback his senior year of the Palm Beach High School football team that won the state title and a hero […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian RogersProlife | Edit | Comments (0)

John McArthur and Adrian Rogers on Proverbs and Alcohol (Eddie Sutton and Ryan Dunn used as examples)

January 17, 2013 – 7:59 am

Same old story it seems. Kentucky pulls out another close victory over the Vols. This is not the only story I am talking about today. Kentucky’s Alex Poythress (22) shoots between Tennessee’s Josh Richardson, left, and Yemi Makanjuola during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky., Tuesday, […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian RogersCurrent Events | Edit | Comments (0)

The Life and Ministry of Adrian Rogers (Part 3)

November 16, 2012 – 1:17 am

7 years ago on November 15, 2005 Adrian Rogers passed away. This is a series of posts about the life and ministry of Adrian Rogers. Adrian Rogers Memorial – Come To Jesus Uploaded by jonwhisner on Jan 20, 2011 This video is from Adrian Roger’s Memorial Service held at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, TN in […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers | Edit | Comments (0)

Adrian Rogers and John MacArthur on wisdom from Proverbs on alcohol

November 15, 2012 – 7:50 am

(My pastor growing up was Adrian Rogers and he died 7 years ago today. He would have been 82 if he was still living. ) I love the Book of Proverbs and every day I read one chapter of Proverbs. Since there are 31 chapters, I start the 1st of ever month and read chapter […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian RogersCurrent Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Adrian Rogers on evolution

November 15, 2012 – 6:27 am

  Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s while pastor of Bellevue Baptist of Memphis, and president of Southern Baptist Convention. (Little known fact, Rogers was the starting quarterback his senior year of the Palm Beach High School football team that won the state title and a hero to a 7th grader at the same school […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian RogersCurrent Events | Edit | Comments (0)

The Life and Ministry of Adrian Rogers (Part 2)

November 15, 2012 – 1:16 am

7 years ago on November 15, 2005 Adrian Rogers passed away. This is a series of posts about the life and ministry of Adrian Rogers. Adrian Rogers Memorial – Come To Jesus Uploaded by jonwhisner on Jan 20, 2011 This video is from Adrian Roger’s Memorial Service held at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, TN in […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers | Edit | Comments (0)

The Life and Ministry of Adrian Rogers (Part 1)

November 14, 2012 – 7:38 am

7 years ago on November 15, 2005 Adrian Rogers passed away. This is a series of posts about the life and ministry of Adrian Rogers. Adrian Rogers Memorial – Come To Jesus Uploaded by jonwhisner on Jan 20, 2011 This video is from Adrian Roger’s Memorial Service held at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, TN in […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers | Edit | Comments (0)

Terri Blackstock’s husband led to Christ while listening to Adrian Rogers on AFR

November 14, 2012 – 1:32 am

Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s while pastor of Bellevue Baptist of Memphis, and president of Southern Baptist Convention. (Little known fact, Rogers was the starting quarterback his senior year of the Palm Beach High School football team that won the state title and a hero to a 7th grader at the same school named […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian RogersCurrent Events | Edit | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 437 Responding to Dan Barker’s book LIFE DRIVEN PURPOSE (Think about abortion…Those of us who affirm a woman’s freedom to decide her own reproductive future equate a human life with personhood, seeing the earlier stages of development ) FEATURED ARTIST IS MODIGLIANI

Life Driven Purpose: How an Atheist Finds Meaning

I have read articles for years from Dan Barker, but recently I just finished the book Barker wrote entitled LIFE DRIVEN PURPOSE which was prompted by Rick Warren’s book PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE which I also read several years ago.

Dan Barker is the  Co-President of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, And co-host of Freethought Radio and co-founder of The Clergy Project.

On March 19, 2022, I got an email back from Dan Barker that said:

Thanks for the insights.

Have you read my book Life Driven Purpose? To say there is no purpose OF life is not to say there is no purpose IN life. Life is immensely meaningful when you stop looking for external purpose.

Ukraine … we’ll, we can no longer blame Russian aggression on “godless communism.” The Russian church, as far as I know, has not denounced the war.

db

In the next few weeks I will be discussing the book LIFE DRIVEN PURPOSE which I did enjoy reading. Here is an assertion that Barker makes that I want to discuss:

Think about abortion…Those of us who affirm a woman’s freedom to decide her own reproductive future equate a human life with personhood, seeing the earlier stages of development

In a past post I mentioned my correspondance with Carl Sagan on abortion. Today I want to point out two atheists who are pro-life (Nat Hentoff has now passed away).

(By the way, Ed Babinski, who is a friend of yours Dan, is the one who introduced me to Kevin Henke back in 1994.)

My good friend Dr. Kevin R. Henke is a scientist and also an atheistic evolutionist. I had a lot of discussions with Kevin over religious views. I remember going over John 7:17 with him one day. It says:

John 7:17 (Amplified Bible)

17If any man desires to do His will (God’s pleasure), he will know (have the needed illumination to recognize, and can tell for himself) whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking from Myself and of My own accord and on My own authority.

I challenged Kevin to read a chapter a day of the Book of John and pray to God and ask God, “Dear God, if you are there then reveal yourself to me, and I pledge to serve you the rest of my life.”

Kevin did that and he even wrote down the thoughts that came to his mind and sent it to me and these thoughts filled a notebook.

Kevin did not become a Christian, but I am still praying for him. I do respect Kevin because he is an honest man. Interestingly enough he  told me that he was pro-life because the unborn baby has all the genetic code at  the time of conception that they will have for the rest of their life. Below are some other comments by other scientists:

Dr. Hymie Gordon (Mayo Clinic): “By all criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.”

Dr. Micheline Matthews-Roth (Harvard University Medical School): “It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception.”

Dr. Alfred Bongioanni (University of Pennsylvania): “I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception.”

Dr. Jerome LeJeune, “the Father of Modern Genetics” (University of Descartes, Paris): “To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion . . . it is plain experimental evidence.”

Back on April 27, 2009 Fox News ran a story by Hollie McKay(Supermodel Kathy Ireland Lashes Out Against Pro Choice,”) on Jill Ireland.

It’s no secret that the majority of Hollywood stars are strong advocates for a woman’s right to choose whether or not she wants to terminate a pregnancy, however former “Sports Illustrated” supermodel-turned-entrepreneur-turned-author Kathy Irelandhas gone against the grain of the glitterati and spoken out against abortion.

“My entire life I was pro-choice — who was I to tell another woman what she could or couldn’t do with her body? But when I was 18, I became a Christian and I dove into the medical books, I dove into science,” Ireland told Tarts while promoting her insightful new book “Real Solutions for Busy Mom: Your Guide to Success and Sanity.”

“What I read was astounding and I learned that at the moment of conception a new life comes into being. The complete genetic blueprint is there, the DNA is determined, the blood type is determined, the sex is determined, the unique set of fingerprints that nobody has had or ever will have is already there.”

However Ireland admitted that she did everything she could to avoid becoming a believer in pro-life.

“I called Planned Parenthood and begged them to give me their best argument and all they could come up with that it is really just a clump of cells and if you get it early enough it doesn’t even look like a baby. Well, we’re all clumps of cells and the unborn does not look like a baby the same way the baby does not look like a teenager, a teenager does not look like a senior citizen. That unborn baby looks exactly the way human beings are supposed to look at that stage of development. It doesn’t suddenly become a human being at a certain point in time,” Ireland argued. “I’ve also asked leading scientists across our country to please show me some shred of evidence that the unborn is not a human being. I didn’t want to be pro-life, but this is not a woman’s rights issue but a human rights issue.”


Nat Hentoff is an atheist, but he became a pro-life activist because of the scientific evidence that shows that the unborn child is a distinct and separate human being and even has a separate DNA. His perspective is a very intriguing one that I thought you would be interested in. I have shared before many   cases (Bernard NathansonDonald TrumpPaul GreenbergKathy Ireland)    when otherhigh profile pro-choice leaders have changed theirviews and this is just another case like those. I have contacted the White House over and over concerning this issue and have even received responses. I am hopeful that people will stop and look even in a secular way (if they are not believers) at this abortion debate and see that the unborn child is deserving of our protection.That is why the writings of Nat Hentoff of the Cato Institute are so crucial.

In the past I have spent most of my time looking at this issue from the spiritual side. In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented  against abortion (Episode 1),  infanticide (Episode 2),   euthanasia (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 look at the truth claims of the Bible.

Francis Schaeffer

__________________________

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 video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.  Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.

To be liberal and pro-life
NAT HENTOFF, CHAMPION OF ‘INCONVENIENT LIFE’ 

by Cathryn Donohoe; THE WASHINGTON TIMES 
November 6, 1989, Monday, Final Edition, November 6, 1989NEW YORK — Until 1984, he had not given much thought to abortion, he says. He had accepted the view of all the women he knew, including his wife, that the right to an abortion is part of a woman’s fundamental right to privacy, one that allows her control over her body and, by extension, her life.

Then came the case of Baby Jane Doe. She was a Long Island infant born with spina bifida (a condition in which the spinal cord is unprotected because the spinal column does not close properly before birth) and hydrocephalus (excess fluid in the cranium).

With surgery, spina-bifida babies can grow up to be bright, productive adults who might need braces to walk, Mr. Hentoff insists. Yet Baby Jane’s parents, on their doctors’ advice, had refused both surgery to close her spine and a shunt to drain the fluid from her brain. In resisting the federal government’s attempt to enforce treatment, the parents pleaded privacy.

What first piqued Mr. Hentoff’s curiosity was not so much the case itself but the press coverage. All the papers and the networks were using the same words to say the same thing, he says.

“Whenever I see that kind of story, where everybody agrees, I know there’s something wrong,” he says. “I finally figured out they were listening to the [parents’] lawyer.”

He went after the story, later publishing it in The Atlantic as “The Awful Privacy of Baby Doe.” In running it down, he found himself digging into the notorious, 2-year-old case of the first Infant Doe. That Bloomington, Ind., Down’s syndrome baby died of starvation over six days when his parents, who did not want a retarded child, refused surgery for his deformed esophagus.

Then Mr. Hentoff came across the published reports of experiments in what doctors at Yale-New Haven Hospital called “early death as a management option” for infants “considered to have little or no hope of achieving meaningful ‘humanhood.’ ” He talked with happy handicapped adults whose parents could have killed them but didn’t. It changed him.

But as he was fretting over Baby Jane, he says, civil libertarians, liberal congressmen and old ACLU friends were trying to steer him away.

“They were saying, ‘What’s the big fuss about? If the parents had known she was going to come in this way, they would have had an abortion. So why don’t youconsider it a late abortion and go on to something else?’

“Here were liberals, decent people, fully convinced themselves that they were for individual rights and liberties but willing to send into eternity these infants because they were imperfect, inconvenient, costly. I saw the same attitude on the part of the same kinds of people toward abortion, and I thought it was pretty horrifying.”

Mr. Hentoff has a pet phrase he draws from novelist William Burroughs. The moment of truth comes, he says, “when you see the naked lunch at the end of the fork.” Once he heard the phrase, “late abortion,” he knew what was at the end of the fork.

“The ‘slippery slope’ business began to make sense to me then,” he says. “From there it was ineluctable – not just abortion, but euthanasia as well.”

The Washington Times


The Mystery of the Modigliani Masterpiece – the fifth estate


MODIGLIANI

Amedeo Modigliani - 1918 - 1884-1920

AMEDEO MODIGLIANI (1884-1920)

One of the most original portraitists of the history of painting, considered as a “cursed” painter because of his wild life and early death.

Francis Schaeffer

Image result for francis schaeffer roman bridge

How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 7 | The Age of Non-Reason


How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 8 | The Age of Fragmentation

Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 1 | Abortion of the Human…

Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 4 | The Basis for Human D…

1984 SOUNDWORD LABRI CONFERENCE VIDEO – Q&A With Francis & Edith Schaefer


Related posts:

Taking on Ark Times Bloggers on various issues Part F “Carl Sagan’s views on how God should try and contact us” includes film “The Basis for Human Dignity”

April 8, 2013 – 7:07 am

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 SchaefferProlife|Edit|Comments (0)

Carl Sagan v. Nancy Pearcey

March 18, 2013 – 9:11 am

On March 17, 2013 at our worship service at Fellowship Bible Church, Ben Parkinson who is one of our teaching pastors spoke on Genesis 1. He spoke about an issue that I was very interested in. Ben started the sermon by reading the following scripture: Genesis 1-2:3 English Standard Version (ESV) The Creation of the […]

By Everette Hatcher III|Posted in Adrian RogersAtheists ConfrontedCurrent Events|TaggedBen ParkinsonCarl Sagan|Edit|Comments (0)

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 4 of series on Evolution)

May 24, 2012 – 1:47 am

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 4 of series on Evolution) The Long War against God-Henry Morris, part 5 of 6 Uploaded by FLIPWORLDUPSIDEDOWN3 on Aug 30, 2010 http://www.icr.org/ http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWA2http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWASGhttp://www.fliptheworldupsidedown.com/blog _______________________ I got this from a blogger in April of 2008 concerning candidate Obama’s view on evolution: Q: York County was recently in the news […]

By Everette Hatcher III|Posted in Atheists ConfrontedCurrent EventsPresident Obama|Edit|Comments (0)

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 3 of series on Evolution)

May 23, 2012 – 1:43 am

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 3 of series on Evolution) The Long War against God-Henry Morris, part 4 of 6 Uploaded by FLIPWORLDUPSIDEDOWN3 on Aug 30, 2010 http://www.icr.org/ http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWA2http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWASGhttp://www.fliptheworldupsidedown.com/blog______________________________________ I got this from a blogger in April of 2008 concerning candidate Obama’s view on evolution: Q: York County was recently in the news […]

By Everette Hatcher III|Posted in Atheists ConfrontedCurrent EventsPresident Obama|Edit|Comments (0)

Carl Sagan versus RC Sproul

January 9, 2012 – 2:44 pm

At the end of this post is a message by RC Sproul in which he discusses Sagan. Over the years I have confronted many atheists. Here is one story below: I really believe Hebrews 4:12 when it asserts: For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the […]

By Everette Hatcher III|Posted in Adrian RogersAtheists ConfrontedCurrent EventsFrancis Schaeffer|Tagged Bill ElliffCarl SaganJodie FosterRC Sproul|Edit|Comments (0)

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 4 of series on Evolution)jh68

November 8, 2011 – 12:01 am

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 4 of series on Evolution) The Long War against God-Henry Morris, part 5 of 6 Uploaded by FLIPWORLDUPSIDEDOWN3 on Aug 30, 2010 http://www.icr.org/ http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWA2http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWASGhttp://www.fliptheworldupsidedown.com/blog _______________________ This is a review I did a few years ago. THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl […]

By Everette Hatcher III|Posted in Atheists ConfrontedCurrent Events|Edit|Comments (0)

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 3 of series on Evolution)

November 4, 2011 – 12:57 am

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 3 of series on Evolution) The Long War against God-Henry Morris, part 4 of 6 Uploaded by FLIPWORLDUPSIDEDOWN3 on Aug 30, 2010 http://www.icr.org/ http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWA2http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWASGhttp://www.fliptheworldupsidedown.com/blog______________________________________ I was really enjoyed this review of Carl Sagan’s book “Pale Blue Dot.” Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot by Larry Vardiman, Ph.D. […]

By Everette Hatcher III|Posted in Atheists ConfrontedCurrent Events|Edit|Comments (0)

Atheists confronted: How I confronted Carl Sagan the year before he died jh47

May 19, 2011 – 10:30 am

In today’s news you will read about Kirk Cameron taking on the atheist Stephen Hawking over some recent assertions he made concerning the existence of heaven. Back in December of 1995 I had the opportunity to correspond with Carl Sagan about a year before his untimely death. Sarah Anne Hughes in her article,”Kirk Cameron criticizes […]

By Everette Hatcher III|Posted in Atheists Confronted|Edit|Comments (2)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 18 “Michelangelo’s DAVID is the statement of what humanistic man saw himself as being tomorrow” (Feature on artist Paul McCarthy)

April 25, 2014 – 8:26 am

In this post we are going to see that through the years  humanist thought has encouraged artists like Michelangelo to think that the future was extremely bright versus the place today where many artist who hold the humanist and secular worldview are very pessimistic.   In contrast to Michelangelo’s DAVID when humanist man thought he […]

By Everette Hatcher III|Posted in Francis Schaeffer|Tagged David LeedsJ.I.PACKERJoe CarterMassimiliano GioniMichelangeloMichelangelo’s DAVIDMichelangelo’s Florence PietàPaul McCarthyRenaissanceRick PearceyRush LimbaughTony Bartolucci|Edit|Comments (0)

Was Antony Flew the most prominent atheist of the 20th century?

April 25, 2014 – 1:59 am

_________ Antony Flew on God and Atheism Published on Feb 11, 2013 Lee Strobel interviews philosopher and scholar Antony Flew on his conversion from atheism to deism. Much of it has to do with intelligent design. Flew was considered one of the most influential and important thinker for atheism during his time before his death […]

By Everette Hatcher III|Posted in Current

The United Kingdom Needs another Margaret Thatcher

Great article by Dan Mitchell!!!

The United Kingdom Needs another Margaret Thatcher

I was a big fan of Brexit (the United Kingdom voting to leave the European Union), but I’m very disappointed about the subsequent failure to create “Singapore-on-Thames.”

The above clip was my “under-reported story of the week,” as part of the most-recent episode of the Square Circle.

The main argument for Brexit was to escape the European Union, which is destined to become a “transfer union.”

To be more specific, the combination of demographic decline and fiscal decay means the bureaucrats and politicians in Brussels eventually will obtain the power to impose taxes in order to redistribute money to failed economies in places such as Italy and Greece.

Indeed, that process already is underway.

By voting for Brexit, the people of the United Kingdom can escape the sinking ship and thus will not be forced to subsidize the bad policy of other nations.

But there was a second reason to support Brexit, which was to give the U.K. the leeway to become the Singapore of Europe.

Would that be a good outcome? Assuming the goal is more prosperity, the answer unambiguously is yes.

As you can see from the chart, Singapore easily has eclipsed the major countries of Europe.

And the idea that the U.K. might copy Singapore’s pro-market policies has been a big part of the Brexit debate, with libertarians and small-government conservatives cheering the possibility and folks on the left dreading that potential outcome.

Any search engine will find thousands of stories about this topic. Here’s a tiny sampling to give readers a flavor.

Sadly, my friends on the left did not need to worry about the U.K. becoming an outpost of laissez-faire policy.

Boris Johnson won a landslide victory in 2019 by promising the “get Brexit done,” but he then proceeded to raise taxes and expand the burden of government spending.

So what’s the current state of play?

In a story for the Washington Post, William Booth writes that Brexit has been a failure.

Boris Johnson…is…the man who “got Brexit done.” So how is that going? What can be said about the post-Brexit Britain that Johnson is leaving behind? …Most people don’t think Brexit has delivered on its lofty promises…With “get Brexit done” as his slogan, Johnson led his party to a landslide election victory. …he oversaw Britain’s departure from the union with one of the hardest possible versions of Brexit… But the government has struggled to show the benefits. …it is clear that although Brexit has not sunk the British economy, it has not produced a boom, either.

But the relevant question is why there was not a boom.

The simple answer, as I noted in the above interview, is that there was no effort to create Singapore-on-Thames. Indeed, the supposedly conservative Tories, under Boris Johnson, went in the opposite direction.

And that explains why supporters of economic liberalization are not very happy. Opining for the U.K.-based Telegraph, Allister Heath is rather depressed.

Statist ideology, historical naivety, cowardice and short-termism have crippled our country. Orthodox thinking has turned out to be wrong in almost all areas that matter, from the economy to energy to planning. …The electorate noticed, kicking Labour out and voting for Brexit,but the politicians let them down. Nothing really changed… Ludwig von Mises, in his Critique of Interventionism, explains how social-democracy is an unstable middle point between capitalism and socialism. This is especially true today. All problems, even when caused by failed Left-wing policy, trigger increasingly hysterical demands for even more state action. …We have a Tory government, but the political climate is veering hard-Left.

This brings us back to what I said in the interview. Boris Johnson has been deposed as leader of the Conservative Party.

Now there’s a race between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss to see who will be the new party leader – and thus the new Prime Minister.

Both of them claim they will move policy back in the right direction. I’m guessing Ms. Truss is the better option, but my main point in the discussion was that the United Kingdom desperately needs another Margaret Thatcher.

Tax Cartels Mean Ever-Higher Tax Rates

When President Biden proposed a “global minimum tax” for businesses, I immediately warned that would lead to ever-increasing tax rates.

Ross Kaminsky of KHOW and I discussed how this is already happening.

I hate being right, but it’s always safe to predict that politicians and bureaucrats will embrace policies that give more power to government.

Especially when they are very anxious to stifle tax competition.

For decades, people in government have been upset that the tax cuts implemented by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatchertriggered a four-decade trend of lower tax rates and pro-growth tax reform.

That’s the reason Biden and his Treasury Secretary proposed a 15 percent minimum tax rate for businesses.

And it’s the reason they now want the rate to be even higher.

Though even I’m surprised that they’re already pushing for that outcome when the original pact hasn’t even been approved or implemented.

Here are some passages from a report by Reuters.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will press G20 counterparts this week for a global minimum corporate tax rate above the 15% floor agreed by 130 countries last week…the global minimum tax rate…is tied to the outcome of legislation to raise the U.S. minimum tax rate, a Treasury official said.The Biden administration has proposed doubling the U.S. minimum tax on corporations overseas intangible income to 21% along with a new companion “enforcement” tax that would deny deductions to companies for tax payments to countries that fail to adopt the new global minimum rate. The officials said several countries were pushing for a rate above 15%, along with the United States.

Other kleptocratic governments naturally want the same thing.

A G7 proposal for a global minimum tax rate of 15% is too low and a rate of at least 21% is needed, Argentina’s finance minister said on Monday, leading a push by some developing countries… “The 15% rate is way too low,” Argentine Finance Minister Martin Guzman told an online panel hosted by the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation. …”The minimum rate being proposed would not do much to countries in Africa…,” Mathew Gbonjubola, Nigeria’s tax policy director, told the same conference.

Needless to say, I’m not surprised that Argentina is on the wrong side.

And supporters of class warfare also are agitating for a higher minimum rate. Here are some excerpts from a column in the New York Times by Gabriel Zucman and Gus Wezerek.

In the decades after World War II, close to 50 percent of American companies’ earnings went to state and federal taxes. …it was a golden period. …President Biden should be applauded for trying to end the race to the bottom on corporate tax rates. But even if Congress approves the 15 percent global minimum corporate tax, it won’t be enough. …the Biden administration to give working families a real leg up, it should push Congress to enact a 25 percent minimum tax, which would bring in about $200 billion in additional revenue each year. …With a 25 percent minimum corporate tax, the Biden administration would begin to reverse decades of growing inequality. And it would encourage other countries to do the same, replacing a race to the bottom with a sprint to the top.

I can’t resist making two observations about this ideological screed.

  1. Even the IMF and OECD agree that the so-called race to the bottom has not led to a decline in corporate tax revenues, even when measured as a share of economic output.
  2. Since companies legally avoid rather than illegally evade taxes, the headline of the column is utterly dishonest – but it’s what we’ve learned to expect from the New York Times.

The only good thing about the Zucman-Wezerek column is that it includes this chart showing how corporate tax rates have dramatically declined since 1980.

P.S. For those interested, the horizontal line at the bottom is for Bermuda, though other jurisdictions (such as Monaco and the Cayman Islands) also deserve credit for having no corporate income taxes.

P.P.S. If you want to know why high corporate tax rates are misguided, click here. And if you want to know why Biden’s plan to raise the U.S. corporate tax rate is misguided, click here. Or here. Or here.

P.P.P.S. And if you want more information about why Biden’s global tax cartel is bad, click here, here, and here.

I enjoyed this article below because it demonstrates that the Laffer Curve has been working for almost 100 years now when it is put to the test in the USA. I actually got to hear Arthur Laffer speak in person in 1981 and he told us in advance what was going to happen the 1980’s and it all came about as he said it would when Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts took place. I wish we would lower taxes now instead of looking for more revenue through raised taxes. We have to grow the economy:

What Mitt Romney Said Last Night About Tax Cuts And The Deficit Was Absolutely Right. And What Obama Said Was Absolutely Wrong.

Mitt Romney repeatedly said last night that he would not allow tax cuts to add to the deficit.  He repeatedly said it because over and over again Obama blathered the liberal talking point that cutting taxes necessarily increased deficits.

Romney’s exact words: “I want to underline that — no tax cut that adds to the deficit.”

Meanwhile, Obama has promised to cut the deficit in half during his first four years – but instead gave America the highest deficits in the history of the entire human race.

I’ve written about this before.  Let’s replay what has happened every single time we’ve ever cut the income tax rate.

The fact of the matter is that we can go back to Calvin Coolidge who said very nearly THE EXACT SAME THING to his treasury secretary: he too would not allow any tax cuts that added to the debt.  Andrew Mellon – quite possibly the most brilliant economic mind of his day – did a great deal of research and determined what he believed was the best tax rate.  And the Coolidge administration DID cut income taxes and MASSIVELY increased revenues.  Coolidge and Mellon cut the income tax rate 67.12 percent (from 73 to 24 percent); and revenues not only did not go down, but they went UP by at least 42.86 percent (from $700 billion to over $1 billion).

That’s something called a documented fact.  But that wasn’t all that happened: another incredible thing was that the taxes and percentage of taxes paid actually went UP for the rich.  Because as they were allowed to keep more of the profits that they earned by investing in successful business, they significantly increased their investments and therefore paid more in taxes than they otherwise would have had they continued sheltering their money to protect themselves from the higher tax rates.  Liberals ignore reality, but it is simply true.  It is a fact.  It happened.

Then FDR came along and raised the tax rates again and the opposite happened: we collected less and less revenue while the burden of taxation fell increasingly on the poor and middle class again.  Which is exactly what Obama wants to do.

People don’t realize that John F. Kennedy, one of the greatest Democrat presidents, was a TAX CUTTER who believed the conservative economic philosophy that cutting tax rates would in fact increase tax revenues.  He too cut taxes, and he too increased tax revenues.

So we get to Ronald Reagan, who famously cut taxes.  And again, we find that Reagan cut that godawful liberal tax rate during an incredibly godawful liberal-caused economic recession, and he increased tax revenue by 20.71 percent (with revenues increasing from $956 billion to $1.154 trillion).  And again, the taxes were paid primarily by the rich:

“The share of the income tax burden borne by the top 10 percent of taxpayers increased from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. Meanwhile, the share of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers dropped from 7.5 percent in 1981 to 5.7 percent in 1988.”

So we get to George Bush and the Bush tax cuts that liberals and in particular Obama have just demonized up one side and demagogued down the other.  And I can simply quote the New York Times AT the time:

Sharp Rise in Tax Revenue to Pare U.S. Deficit By EDMUND L. ANDREWS Published: July 13, 2005

WASHINGTON, July 12 – For the first time since President Bush took office, an unexpected leap in tax revenue is about to shrink the federal budget deficit this year, by nearly $100 billion.

A Jump in Corporate Payments On Wednesday, White House officials plan to announce that the deficit for the 2005 fiscal year, which ends in September, will be far smaller than the $427 billion they estimated in February.

Mr. Bush plans to hail the improvement at a cabinet meeting and to cite it as validation of his argument that tax cuts would stimulate the economy and ultimately help pay for themselves.

Based on revenue and spending data through June, the budget deficit for the first nine months of the fiscal year was $251 billion, $76 billion lower than the $327 billion gap recorded at the corresponding point a year earlier.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that the deficit for the full fiscal year, which reached $412 billion in 2004, could be “significantly less than $350 billion, perhaps below $325 billion.”

The big surprise has been in tax revenue, which is running nearly 15 percent higher than in 2004. Corporate tax revenue has soared about 40 percent, after languishing for four years, and individual tax revenue is up as well
.

And of course the New York Times, as reliable liberals, use the adjective whenever something good happens under conservative policies and whenever something bad happens under liberal policies: ”unexpected.”   But it WASN’T ”unexpected.”  It was EXACTLY what Republicans had said would happen and in fact it was exactly what HAD IN FACT HAPPENED every single time we’ve EVER cut income tax rates.

The truth is that conservative tax policy has a perfect track record: every single time it has ever been tried, we have INCREASED tax revenues while not only exploding economic activity and creating more jobs, but encouraging the wealthy to pay more in taxes as well.  And liberals simply dishonestly refuse to acknowledge documented history.

Meanwhile, liberals also have a perfect record … of FAILUREThey keep raising taxes and keep not understanding why they don’t get the revenues they predicted.

The following is a section from my article, “Tax Cuts INCREASE Revenues; They Have ALWAYS Increased Revenues“, where I document every single thing I said above:

The Falsehood That Tax Cuts Increase The Deficit

Now let’s take a look at the utterly fallacious view that tax cuts in general create higher deficits.

Let’s take a trip back in time, starting with the 1920s.  From Burton Folsom’s book, New Deal or Raw Deal?:

In 1921, President Harding asked the sixty-five-year-old [Andrew] Mellon to be secretary of the treasury; the national debt [resulting from WWI] had surpassed $20 billion and unemployment had reached 11.7 percent, one of the highest rates in U.S. history.  Harding invited Mellon to tinker with tax rates to encourage investment without incurring more debt. Mellon studied the problem carefully; his solution was what is today called “supply side economics,” the idea of cutting taxes to stimulate investment.  High income tax rates, Mellon argued, “inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw this capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities. . . . The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up, wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people” (page 128).

Mellon wrote, “It seems difficult for some to understand that high rates of taxation do not necessarily mean large revenue to the Government, and that more revenue may often be obtained by lower taxes.”  And he compared the government setting tax rates on incomes to a businessman setting prices on products: “If a price is fixed too high, sales drop off and with them profits.”

And what happened?

“As secretary of the treasury, Mellon promoted, and Harding and Coolidge backed, a plan that eventually cut taxes on large incomes from 73 to 24 percent and on smaller incomes from 4 to 1/2 of 1 percent.  These tax cuts helped produce an outpouring of economic development – from air conditioning to refrigerators to zippers, Scotch tape to radios and talking movies.  Investors took more risks when they were allowed to keep more of their gains.  President Coolidge, during his six years in office, averaged only 3.3 percent unemployment and 1 percent inflation – the lowest misery index of any president in the twentieth century.

Furthermore, Mellon was also vindicated in his astonishing predictions that cutting taxes across the board would generate more revenue.  In the early 1920s, when the highest tax rate was 73 percent, the total income tax revenue to the U.S. government was a little over $700 million.  In 1928 and 1929, when the top tax rate was slashed to 25 and 24 percent, the total revenue topped the $1 billion mark.  Also remarkable, as Table 3 indicates, is that the burden of paying these taxes fell increasingly upon the wealthy” (page 129-130).

Now, that is incredible upon its face, but it becomes even more incredible when contrasted with FDR’s antibusiness and confiscatory tax policies, which both dramatically shrunk in terms of actual income tax revenues (from $1.096 billion in 1929 to $527 million in 1935), and dramatically shifted the tax burden to the backs of the poor by imposing huge new excise taxes (from $540 million in 1929 to $1.364 billion in 1935).  See Table 1 on page 125 of New Deal or Raw Deal for that information.

FDR both collected far less taxes from the rich, while imposing a far more onerous tax burden upon the poor.

It is simply a matter of empirical fact that tax cuts create increased revenue, and that those [Democrats] who have refused to pay attention to that fact have ended up reducing government revenues even as they increased the burdens on the poorest whom they falsely claim to help.

Let’s move on to John F. Kennedy, one of the most popular Democrat presidents ever.  Few realize that he was also a supply-side tax cutter.

Kennedy said:

“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now … Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.”

– John F. Kennedy, Nov. 20, 1962, president’s news conference


“Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years an increased – not a reduced – flow of revenues to the federal government.”

– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 17, 1963, annual budget message to the Congress, fiscal year 1964

“In today’s economy, fiscal prudence and responsibility call for tax reduction even if it temporarily enlarges the federal deficit – why reducing taxes is the best way open to us to increase revenues.”

– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 21, 1963, annual message to the Congress: “The Economic Report Of The President”


“It is no contradiction – the most important single thing we can do to stimulate investment in today’s economy is to raise consumption by major reduction of individual income tax rates.”

– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 21, 1963, annual message to the Congress: “The Economic Report Of The President”


“Our tax system still siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power and reduces the incentive for risk, investment and effort – thereby aborting our recoveries and stifling our national growth rate.”

– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 24, 1963, message to Congress on tax reduction and reform, House Doc. 43, 88th Congress, 1st Session.


“A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget. Every taxpayer and his family will have more money left over after taxes for a new car, a new home, new conveniences, education and investment. Every businessman can keep a higher percentage of his profits in his cash register or put it to work expanding or improving his business, and as the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues.”

– John F. Kennedy, Sept. 18, 1963, radio and television address to the nation on tax-reduction bill

Which is to say that modern Democrats are essentially calling one of their greatest presidents a liar when they demonize tax cuts as a means of increasing government revenues.

So let’s move on to Ronald Reagan.  Reagan had two major tax cutting policies implemented: the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA) of 1981, which was retroactive to 1981, and the Tax Reform Act of 1986.

Did Reagan’s tax cuts decrease federal revenues?  Hardly:

We find that 8 of the following 10 years there was a surplus of revenue from 1980, prior to the Reagan tax cuts.  And, following the Tax Reform Act of 1986, there was a MASSIVE INCREASEof revenue.

So Reagan’s tax cuts increased revenue.  But who paid the increased tax revenue?  The poor?  Opponents of the Reagan tax cuts argued that his policy was a giveaway to the rich (ever heard that one before?) because their tax payments would fall.  But that was exactly wrong.  In reality:

“The share of the income tax burden borne by the top 10 percent of taxpayers increased from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. Meanwhile, the share of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers dropped from 7.5 percent in 1981 to 5.7 percent in 1988.”

So Ronald Reagan a) collected more total revenue, b) collected more revenue from the rich, while c) reducing revenue collected by the bottom half of taxpayers, and d) generated an economic powerhouse that lasted – with only minor hiccups – for nearly three decades.  Pretty good achievement considering that his predecessor was forced to describe his own economy as a “malaise,” suffering due to a “crisis of confidence.” Pretty good considering that President Jimmy Carter responded to a reporter’s question as to what he would do about the problem of inflation by answering, “It would be misleading for me to tell any of you that there is a solution to it.”

Reagan whipped inflation.  Just as he whipped that malaise and that crisis of confidence.

________

The Laffer Curve, Part III: Dynamic Scoring

Schiff Bill Would Wrongly Redefine Infertility Through Tax Law

Schiff Bill Would Wrongly Redefine Infertility Through Tax Law

Emma Waters  @emlwaters / August 17, 2022

Rep. Adam Schiff—seen here on June 21 on Capitol Hill—is a co-sponsor, with a fellow California Democrat, Rep. Judy Chu, of the euphemistically named Equal Access to Reproductive Care Act. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

COMMENTARY BY

Emma Waters@emlwaters

Emma Waters is a research associate with the DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at The Heritage Foundation.

The Democrats continue to weaponize the administrative state, from the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago to the vast expansion of the Internal Revenue Service.

Shortly after Congress voted, with no Republican support, to expand the IRS by 87,000 new employees, Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Judy Chu of California introduced a bill to use the IRS as a vehicle to redefine infertility.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Under the Equal Access to Reproductive Care Act, same-sex couples and single men would be able to “deduct assisted reproductive care, including surrogacy, as a medical expense on their tax returns, without having to demonstrate a medical/physical infertility.”

Schiff’s press release goes so far as to equate the pain felt by fertile, same-sex couples with the pain felt by infertile male-female couples.

Typically, the tax deduction is available for men and women after they are diagnosed as infertile. That’s based on “the inability to conceive after 12 months of unprotected intercourse.”

Schiff claims that failing to offer fertile, same-sex couples an infertility benefit is a form of discrimination. But, of course, such men are not infertile. They aren’t biologically deficient. After all, no two men can conceive a child together.

The Californians’ bill would provide generous tax deductions to affirm an illusion. 

By replacing the biological definition of infertility, groups like Men Having Babies are pushing to redefine “infertility” on the federal and state level. Their most recent efforts, in Illinois, resulted in the state redefining infertility to include “a person’s inability to reproduce either as a single individual or with a partner without medical intervention; or … based on a patient’s medical, sexual, and reproductive history.”

That treats infertility as a matter of personal feeling and preference.

Why does that matter?

For one thing, the bill would expand and normalize the use of surrogacy, which is not just another natural way to bear children. It is a complex process involving as many as five different actors, and one that raises all sorts of medical and moral concerns.

For instance, when a same-sex couple uses anonymous sperm or egg donations, they deprive the resulting child of either a mother or father. Male same-sex couples also need a surrogate to undergo dangerous hormone stimulations and a pregnancy.

That transforms an intimate, natural process into a commercialized, order-on-demand market.

That is also not like adoption and foster care. Both of those processes match the needs of children with a loving home. Surrogacy laws, in contrast, do not mandate background checks or home visits to ensure the child is being born to safe, loving parents.

As a consequence, it’s not uncommon to hear heartbreaking stories of male-commissioned surrogate children used for child pornographypedophilia, or living in homes with men who have histories of sex-related crimes.

Under the innocuous title of “reproductive care,” commercial surrogacy (that is, surrogacy contracted for compensation) relies on male same-sex couples and single men “renting” the womb of a woman.

A recent photo shoot in New York City captured the problem, if unwittingly. It pictured two men looking into each other’s eyes while a pregnant woman stood off in the background, her own face obscured. Rather than recognize the biological reality of conception, pregnancy, and childbearing, this image revealed how surrogacy turns a mother into a commodity.

Women in these arrangements are no longer called “mothers” but instead “gestational carriers,” who offer rent-a-womb services to the highest bidder. (And the price is high.)

The Schiff-Chu bill implies that each person has a right to a child, no matter the circumstances. But children are not accessories. They deserve the chance to be raised by both a mother and a father.

Yes, some children, due to abandonment, death, or unsafe environments, are raised without one or both parents. In those cases, priority is given to adoption, foster care, and community-level support for single parents.

In contrast, same-sex and single-parent surrogacy conceives a child through artificial means. The goal is to raise the child without a mother or without a father. In either scenario, children are more likely to encounter physical or sexual abuse and suffer academic, emotional, and other harms throughout their lives.

Surrogacy, by design, severs the natural ties of children to their parents.

By redefining infertility, the Equal Access to Reproductive Care Act pushes a reproductive illusion, compromises the well-being of children, and commodifies women.

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.

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A.F. Branco for Jan 12, 2022

A Proclamation on Transgender Day Of Visibility, 2022

MARCH 30, 2022PRESIDENTIAL ACTIONS

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

In the past year, hundreds of anti-transgender bills in States were proposed across America, most of them targeting transgender kids.  The onslaught has continued this year.  These bills are wrong.  Efforts to criminalize supportive medical care for transgender kids, to ban transgender children from playing sports, and to outlaw discussing LGBTQI+ people in schools undermine their humanity and corrode our Nation’s values.  Studies have shown that these political attacks are damaging to the mental health and well-being of transgender youth, putting children and their families at greater risk of bullying and discrimination.

Transgenderism: Why Stop There?

Deroy Murdock  / April 01, 2022

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LGBT activists rally on the steps of New York City Hall in support of transgender people on Oct. 24, 2018. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

COMMENTARY BY

Deroy Murdock

Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor, a contributing editor with National Review Online, and a senior fellow with the London Center for Policy Research.

“Identifying” as someone who one is not has become all the rage. If you think you’re somebody you’re not, the whole world is expected to nod its collective head, if not stand up and cheer.

This is especially true for gender identity, as William “Lia” Thomas has demonstrated so vividly in collegiate swimming pools. Unheralded male swimmer William Thomas became NCAA champion female swimmer Lia Thomas—Shazam!—just by saying so.

What a cool magic trick.

Gone are the days when a guy had to put some skin in the game to pull this off. Or, more accurately, pull something off to get some skin out of the game; namely, his penis. The old carving-station requirement for gender transition has gone the way of the rotary telephone. Today, mere affirmations will suffice.

“Hey, I’m a girl!” And you are.

As Yogi Berra might say, if he were alive and not in shock: “Only in America.”

Since simple declarations of identity can change people more swiftly than scalpels, what’s next after the triumph of transgenderism?

Why not transnationalism?

Visualize Lupita Martinez. She lives in poverty in Honduras. The mean streets of Tegucigalpa keep her at wits’ end. A crime surge on public transportation is the last macaw that breaks the branch of her patience.

So, Martinez joins a caravan and heads north, to the U.S.-Mexican frontier.

When she comes face to face with a Border Patrol agent, Martinez says the magic words: “I identify as an American.”

“Welcome home, Lupita!” the federal agent says with a warm smile, as he waves this Honduran American citizen back where she belongs.

And why not transracialism?

Picture Ludwig Von Thannhausen, age 18. He lives in suburban Chicago with his native German parents who brought him to America as a baby. He has blond hair, blue eyes, and looks like a young man born in Oberpfaffenhofen who also happens to be white.

But Von Thannhausen can’t get enough of things black.

He is obsessed with the Harlem Renaissance. He knows the literature of Langston Hughes better than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the paintings of Aaron Douglas more than Max Ernst, and the music of Duke Ellington deeper than Richard Wagner.

His heroes stretch from Frederick Douglass to the Tuskegee Airmen to Denzel Washington. He listens to everything from Motown to Parliament Funkadelic to Prince to Kanye West.

He dreams of majoring in black studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C., a historically black college. In fact, he’s applying as a black student and seeks scholarships intended for black applicants.

Von Thannhausen resembles a recruit for the Aryan Nation, but he said the secret words: “I identify as black.”

Who are we to disagree? If that’s his identity, that’s his identity.

And if his good grades, decent SAT scores, and impressive baseball record land him a spot at Howard, plus a $50,000 minority scholarship, then who are we to say that he is not really black?

But what would we say to the kid who actually is black (you know: dark skin, dark hair, etc.), applies to Howard, and misses out on admission, a scholarship, or both? If not for Von Thannhausen, those blessings would be hers.

Why not transindividualism?

Imagine that Bob Glenwood has multiple-personality disorder. He identifies as Bob Glenwood, but also as Steve Jones, Myron Shapiro, Jackie Washington, and Concepcion Gomez.

So, he fills out five voter registration applications and requests five absentee ballots.

Who are we to say that Glenwood deserves just one ballot? How dare we disenfranchise the other four people who live inside his brain? That would be Jim Crow 3.0.

As these (for now) fictional scenarios show, America will plunge into ever deeper chaos if we simply let people “identify” as those they are not and then deprive others of goods and benefits meant for people who legitimately embody those identities.

I identify as Walter Cronkite, and that’s the way it is.

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

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.

SOCIETYNEWS

The Equal Rights of Female Athletes Are Being Infringed’: Women’s Group Files Civil Rights Complaint Over Transgender Swimmer

Maggie Hroncich  / March 18, 2022

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Female swimmers (from left) Emma Weyant, Erica Sullivan, and Brooke Forde place behind Lia Thomas (left), the biologically male transgender swimmer who won the NCAA Division 1 women’s 500-yard freestyle on Thursday. (Photo: Justin Casterline/Getty Images)

Concerned Women for America filed a formal civil rights complaint against the University of Pennsylvania on Thursday, contending the school is violating Title IX requirements designed to protect the rights of female student athletes. 

The complaint came the same day transgender University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, a biological male, won the 500-yard freestyle at the NCAA’s Division 1 Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships in Atlanta. Thomas is set to compete in the 100-yard and 200-yard freestyles today and tomorrow.

Thomas, who had previously competed on the men’s team, has been dominating women’s competitions and shattering records since switching to the women’s team in 2020.

“Thomas is anatomically and biologically a male with physical capacities that are different from anatomically and biologically female athletes, which extends an unfair advantage and strips female student athletes of opportunities afforded to them by law,” according to a statement from Concerned Women for America, a Christian conservative public policy organization. 

The complaint cites federal Title IX requirements for schools to provide equal educational opportunities, including in athletics, to receive federal funding. 

The future of women’s sports is at risk, and the equal rights of female athletes are being infringed,” said Penny Nance, CEO and president of Concerned Women for America. “Any school that defies federal civil rights law by denying women equal opportunities in athletic programs, forcing women to compete against athletes who are biologically male, must be held accountable.”

Jay Richards, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society, expressed support for Concerned Women for America’s complaint against the University of Pennsylvania. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

“The case of Lia (formerly Will) Thomas at the University of Pennsylvania is a highly visible example of how gender ideology is already wreaking havoc in our schools,” Richards said. “And it’s clearly a violation of the spirit and letter of Title IX. I just hope that courts have the courage to recognize that. If justice is to be served, then CWA should prevail.” 

Before I show the clip from AFTER LIFE let me show you how inconsistent humanists can be with this article below. Humanist claim to be the biggest supporters of women’s rights!!

A.F. Branco for Jan 12, 2022

By Canceling Richard Dawkins, the American Humanist Association Has Betrayed Its Values

The drive to punish dissenters from various orthodoxies is itself illiberal.

ROBBY SOAVE | 4.26.2021 1:00 PM

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(Katja Ogrin/Empics Entertainment/ZUMA Press/Newscom)

Last week, the American Humanist Association (AHA) stripped British author Richard Dawkins of his 1996 Humanist of the Year award after he made a comment on Twitter that offended some in the transgender community.

“Regrettably, Richard Dawkins has over the past several years accumulated a history of making statements that use the guise of scientific discourse to demean marginalized groups, an approach antithetical to humanist values,” said the AHA. “His latest statement implies that the identities of transgender individuals are fraudulent, while also simultaneously attacking Black identity as one that can be assumed when convenient.”

This is nonsense: Dawkins had raised a point that it is perfectly worthy of discussion, in accordance with the rationalist philosophy of the humanist movement. But it would also have been ridiculous for the organization to punish Dawkins even if the remark had been offensive, given that many of its past awardees have espoused controversial views, and even said insensitive things on Twitter.

Here was Dawkins’ tweet, which concerned Rachel Dolezal, a chapter president of the NAACP who engendered controversy for identifying as black even though she was a white woman:

If it’s disqualifying to express confusion about progressives’ simultaneous embrace of transgender people and vehement rejection of transracial people, I suppose that I will never win a Humanist of the Year award. I wrote the following in my 2019 book, Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump:

If we accept, as many on the left do, that people can identify as female even though they were born male, why is it unthinkable for people to identify as black when they were born white? How can the left embrace transgender people without even considering the possibility that there could be transracial people? (Race, after all, is more obviously socially constructed than gender. While our conception of gender is at least partly based on biological differences between the sexes, the same is not true for race.)

The point is not to demean transgender people, but to question why people like Dolezal instantly warranted pariah status. Dawkins subsequently clarified that it was not his intention “to ally in any way with Republican bigots in US now exploiting this issue.”

But according to the AHA, this clarification evinced “neither sensitivity nor sincerity.” Dawkins’ name is no longer listed on the website’s awardees page.

Perusing this page reveals something interesting: There are far more controversial past winners than Dawkins. The AHA gave Humanist of the Year awards to the author and activist Alice Walker—who promoted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories—and also to Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood who promoted eugenics and white supremacy. Sanger’s legacy is so complicated that her own organization is currently disowning her.

The AHA has also given lesser awards to several individuals with a history of provocative statements and bad tweets: Jessica ValentiCenk Uygur, and others. To be clear, the AHA is within its rights to give or rescind awards to anyone it wishes, for any reason. But people who support the organization’s mission have the same right to criticize it for hypocrisy.

Two such critics are Rebecca Goldstein and Steven Pinker, who won the Humanist of the Year award in 2011 and 2006, respectively. Goldstein and Pinker wrote an open letter to the AHA calling on it to reverse course:

Dawkins did not call for discrimination against or marginalization of any individual or group. And he explicitly denied any intention to disparage anyone or to lend support to transphobic or racist political movements.  Now, it would still be completely appropriate for those of you who objected to the substance of his tweets to criticize them in The Humanist or other forums, explaining the nature of their objections. But to seek to punish, dishonor, or humiliate a writer rather than engage with his words is a betrayal of humanism.

The Humanist Manifesto III declares that “the lifestance of humanism [is] guided by reason.” Since no one is infallible, reason requires that a diverse range of ideas be expressed and debated openly, including ones that some people find unfamiliar or uncomfortable. To demonize a writer rather than address the writer’s arguments is a confession that one has no rational response to them.

This illiberal response is all the more damaging to an organization that claims to repudiate the repressive practices of religion. It has not been lost on commentators that an association of “freethinkers” has deemed certain thoughts unthinkable, nor that it is enforcing dogmas and catechisms by excommunicating a heretic. The AHA is turning itself into a laughingstock.

Goldstein and Pinker are quite right. The AHA’s own values require tolerance of difficult conversations around public policy subjects, rather than a knee-jerk drive to punish dissenters from orthodoxies.

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After Life #1 Trailer

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I listened to this question and answer session at Harvard in 1992 on cassette tapes and was captivated with Ravi Zacharias. His responses were so much better than Kath’s responses to Tony in AFTER LIFE. I have referenced work by Ravi many times in the past and Especially moving was Ravi’s own spiritual search which started in a hospital bed after a failed suicide attempt. I also want you to check out his talk at Princeton and the question and answer time afterwards which are both on YOU TUBEat these two links: Link for talk, Link for Q/A.

After Life 2 Trailer

On Saturday April 18, 2020 at 6pm in London and noon in Arkansas, I had a chance to ask Ricky Gervais a question on his Twitter Live broadcast which was  “Is Tony a Nihilist?” At the 20:51 mark Ricky answers my question. Below is the video:

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If Death is the end then what is the point Kath asks below:

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Francis Schaeffer passed away on May 15, 1984 and on the 10th anniversary of that date I wrote many skeptics such as Carl Sagan and corresponded with them on the big questions covered by the Book of Ecclesiastes.

Kath: You are an atheist?

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Adrian Rogers on Evolution

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Ravi Zacharias  (March 26, 1946 – May 19, 2020) 

Francis Schaeffer (January 30, 1912 – May 15, 1984[1]

Francis Schaeffer.jpg


I grew up at Bellevue Baptist Church under the leadership of our pastor Adrian Rogers and I read many books by the Evangelical Philosopher Francis Schaeffer and in 1992 I heard cassette tapes of Ravi Zacharias in all his brilliance in his sessions at Harvard and have had the opportunity to contact many of the evolutionists or humanistic academics that they have mentioned in their works. Many of these scholars have taken the time to respond back to me in the last 20 years and some of the names  included are  Ernest Mayr (1904-2005), George Wald (1906-1997), Carl Sagan (1934-1996),  Robert Shapiro (1935-2011), Nicolaas Bloembergen (1920-),  Brian Charlesworth (1945-),  Francisco J. Ayala (1934-) Elliott Sober (1948-), Kevin Padian (1951-), Matt Cartmill (1943-) , Milton Fingerman (1928-), John J. Shea (1969-), , Michael A. Crawford (1938-), Paul Kurtz (1925-2012), Sol Gordon (1923-2008), Albert Ellis (1913-2007), Barbara Marie Tabler (1915-1996), Renate Vambery (1916-2005), Archie J. Bahm (1907-1996), Aron S “Gil” Martin ( 1910-1997), Matthew I. Spetter (1921-2012), H. J. Eysenck (1916-1997), Robert L. Erdmann (1929-2006), Mary Morain (1911-1999), Lloyd Morain (1917-2010),  Warren Allen Smith (1921-), Bette Chambers (1930-),  Gordon Stein (1941-1996) , Milton Friedman (1912-2006), John Hospers (1918-2011), Michael Martin (1932-).Harry Kroto (1939-), Marty E. Martin (1928-), Richard Rubenstein (1924-), James Terry McCollum (1936-), Edward O. WIlson (1929-), Lewis Wolpert (1929), Gerald Holton(1922-), Martin Rees (1942-), Alan Macfarlane (1941-),  Roald Hoffmann (1937-), Herbert Kroemer (1928-), Thomas H. Jukes(1906-1999) and  Ray T. Cragun (1976-).

 Adrian Rogers (September 12, 1931 – November 15, 2005) 

Adrian Rogers.jpg

Charles Darwin Autobiography


Francis Schaeffer “The Age of NONREASON”

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(Above) Tony and Anne on the bench at the graveyard where their spouses are buried.

July 9, 2020 
Ricky Gervais 


Dear Ricky,  

This is the 83rd day in a row that I have written another open letter to you to comment on some of your episodes of AFTER LIFE, and then I wanted to pass along some evidence that indicates the Bible is historically accurate from Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop Book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?

In the 6th episode of the second season of AFTERLIFE Tony and Lenny interview a 50 year old person who pretends to be a 8 year old little girl when everyone in his family knows this person has been around for 50 years. 

Just pretending something is true does not make it true. This was true too for Jean Paul Sartre. The atheist Sartre said that this Godless universe has no meaning but “Let’s pretend the universe has meaning.” But this is just fooling ourselves. 

Let me share a portion of an article by William Lane Craig with you.

The Absurdity of Life without God

William Lane Craig

SUMMARY

Why on atheism life has no ultimate meaning, value, or purpose, and why this view is unlivable.

Francis Schaeffer has explained this point well. Modern man, says Schaeffer, resides in a two-story universe. In the lower story is the finite world without God; here life is absurd, as we have seen. In the upper story are meaning, value, and purpose. Now modern man lives in the lower story because he believes there is no God. But he cannot live happily in such an absurd world; therefore, he continually makes leaps of faith into the upper story to affirm meaning, value, and purpose, even though he has no right to, since he does not believe in God.

Let’s look again, then, at each of the three areas in which we saw life was absurd without God, to show how man cannot live consistently and happily with his atheism.

Meaning of Life

First, the area of meaning. We saw that without God, life has no meaning. Yet philosophers continue to live as though life does have meaning. For example, Sartre argued that one may create meaning for his life by freely choosing to follow a certain course of action. Sartre himself chose Marxism.

Now this is utterly inconsistent. It is inconsistent to say life is objectively absurd and then to say one may create meaning for his life. If life is really absurd, then man is trapped in the lower story. To try to create meaning in life represents a leap to the upper story. But Sartre has no basis for this leap. Without God, there can be no objective meaning in life. Sartre’s program is actually an exercise in self-delusion. Sartre is really saying, “Let’s pretend the universe has meaning.” And this is just fooling ourselves.

The point is this: if God does not exist, then life is objectively meaningless; but man cannot live consistently and happily knowing that life is meaningless; so in order to be happy he pretends life has meaning. But this is, of course, entirely inconsistent—for without God, man and the universe are without any real significance.

Value of Life

Turn now to the problem of value. Here is where the most blatant inconsistencies occur. First of all, atheistic humanists are totally inconsistent in affirming the traditional values of love and brotherhood. Camus has been rightly criticized for inconsistently holding both to the absurdity of life and the ethics of human love and brotherhood. The two are logically incompatible. Bertrand Russell, too, was inconsistent. For though he was an atheist, he was an outspoken social critic, denouncing war and restrictions on sexual freedom. Russell admitted that he could not live as though ethical values were simply a matter of personal taste, and that he therefore found his own views “incredible.” “I do not know the solution,” he confessed.” [7] The point is that if there is no God, then objective right and wrong cannot exist. As Dostoyevsky said, “All things are permitted.”

But Dostoyevsky also showed that man cannot live this way. He cannot live as though it is perfectly all right for soldiers to slaughter innocent children. He cannot live as though it is all right for dictators like Pol Pot to exterminate millions of their own countrymen. Everything in him cries out to say these acts are wrong—really wrong. But if there is no God, he cannot. So he makes a leap of faith and affirms values anyway. And when he does so, he reveals the inadequacy of a world without God.

The horror of a world devoid of value was brought home to me with new intensity a few years ago as I viewed a BBC television documentary called “The Gathering.” It concerned the reunion of survivors of the Holocaust in Jerusalem, where they rediscovered lost friendships and shared their experiences. One woman prisoner, a nurse, told of how she was made the gynecologist at Auschwitz. She observed that pregnant women were grouped together by the soldiers under the direction of Dr. Mengele and housed in the same barracks. Some time passed, and she noted that she no longer saw any of these women. She made inquiries. “Where are the pregnant women who were housed in that barracks?” “Haven’t you heard?” came the reply. “Dr. Mengele used them for vivisection.”

Another woman told of how Mengele had bound up her breasts so that she could not suckle her infant. The doctor wanted to learn how long an infant could survive without nourishment. Desperately this poor woman tried to keep her baby alive by giving it pieces of bread soaked in coffee, but to no avail. Each day the baby lost weight, a fact that was eagerly monitored by Dr. Mengele. A nurse then came secretly to this woman and told her, “I have arranged a way for you to get out of here, but you cannot take your baby with you. I have brought a morphine injection that you can give to your child to end its life.” When the woman protested, the nurse was insistent: “Look, your baby is going to die anyway. At least save yourself.” And so this mother took the life of her own baby. Dr. Mengele was furious when he learned of it because he had lost his experimental specimen, and he searched among the dead to find the baby’s discarded corpse so that he could have one last weighing.

My heart was torn by these stories. One rabbi who survived the camp summed it up well when he said that at Auschwitz it was as though there existed a world in which all the Ten Commandments were reversed. Mankind had never seen such a hell.

And yet, if God does not exist, then in a sense, our world is Auschwitz: there is no absolute right and wrong; all things are permitted. But no atheist, no agnostic, can live consistently with such a view. Nietzsche himself, who proclaimed the necessity of living beyond good and evil, broke with his mentor Richard Wagner precisely over the issue of the composer’s anti-Semitism and strident German nationalism. Similarly Sartre, writing in the aftermath of the Second World War, condemned anti-Semitism, declaring that a doctrine that leads to extermination is not merely an opinion or matter of personal taste, of equal value with its opposite. [8] In his important essay “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” Sartre struggles vainly to elude the contradiction between his denial of divinely pre-established values and his urgent desire to affirm the value of human persons. Like Russell, he could not live with the implications of his own denial of ethical absolutes.

A second problem is that if God does not exist and there is no immortality, then all the evil acts of men go unpunished and all the sacrifices of good men go unrewarded. But who can live with such a view? Richard Wurmbrand, who has been tortured for his faith in communist prisons, says,

The cruelty of atheism is hard to believe when man has no faith in the reward of good or the punishment of evil. There is no reason to be human. There is no restraint from the depths of evil which is in man. The communist torturers often said, ‘There is no God, no Hereafter, no punishment for evil. We can do what we wish.’ I have heard one torturer even say, ‘I thank God, in whom I don’t believe, that I have lived to this hour when I can express all the evil in my heart.’ He expressed it in unbelievable brutality and torture inflicted on prisoners. [9]

And the same applies to acts of self-sacrifice. A number of years ago, a terrible mid-winter air disaster occurred in which a plane leaving the Washington, D.C., airport smashed into a bridge spanning the Potomac River, plunging its passengers into the icy waters. As the rescue helicopters came, attention was focused on one man who again and again pushed the dangling rope ladder to other passengers rather than be pulled to safety himself. Six times he passed the ladder by. When they came again, he was gone. He had freely given his life that others might live. The whole nation turned its eyes to this man in respect and admiration for the selfless and good act he had performed. And yet, if the atheist is right, that man was not noble—he did the stupidest thing possible. He should have gone for the ladder first, pushed others away if necessary in order to survive. But to die for others he did not even know, to give up all the brief existence he would ever have—what for? For the atheist there can be no reason. And yet the atheist, like the rest of us, instinctively reacts with praise for this man’s selfless action. Indeed, one will probably never find an atheist who lives consistently with his system. For a universe without moral accountability and devoid of value is unimaginably terrible.

The Success of Biblical Christianity

But if atheism fails in this regard, what about biblical Christianity? According to the Christian world view, God does exist, and man’s life does not end at the grave. In the resurrection body man may enjoy eternal life and fellowship with God. Biblical Christianity therefore provides the two conditions necessary for a meaningful, valuable, and purposeful life for man: God and immortality. Because of this, we can live consistently and happily. Thus, biblical Christianity succeeds precisely where atheism breaks down.

Conclusion

Now I want to make it clear that I have not yet shown biblical Christianity to be true. But what I have done is clearly spell out the alternatives. If God does not exist, then life is futile. If the God of the Bible does exist, then life is meaningful. Only the second of these two alternatives enables us to live happily and consistently. Therefore, it seems to me that even if the evidence for these two options were absolutely equal, a rational person ought to choose biblical Christianity. It seems to me positively irrational to prefer death, futility, and destruction to life, meaningfulness, and happiness. As Pascal said, we have nothing to lose and infinity to gain.

  • [1]Kai Nielsen, “Why Should I Be Moral?” American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1984): 90.
  • [2]Richard Taylor, Ethics, Faith, and Reason (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1985), 90, 84.
  • [3]H.G. Wells, The Time Machine (New York: Berkeley, 1957), chap. 11.
  • [4]W.E. Hocking, Types of Philosophy (New York: Scribner’s, 1959), 27.
  • [5]Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Gay Science,” in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Viking, 1954), 95.
  • [6]Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship,” in Why I Am Not a Christian, ed. P. Edwards (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957), 107.
  • [7]Bertrand Russell, Letter to the Observer, 6 October, 1957.
  • [8]Jean Paul Sartre, “Portrait of the Antisemite,” in Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Satre, rev. ed., ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: New Meridian Library, 1975), p. 330.
  • [9]Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured for Christ (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1967), 34.
  • [10]Ernst Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung, 2d ed., 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1959), 2:360-1.
  • [11]Loyal D. Rue, “The Saving Grace of Noble Lies,” address to the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, February, 1991.

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This reminds me of an illustration from Francis Schaeffer of what existentialism means: 

When we speak of irrationalism or existentialism or the existential methodology, we are pointing to a quite simple idea. It may have been expressed in a variety of complicated ways by philosophers, but it is not a difficult concept.
Imagine that you are at the movies watching a suspense film. As the story unfolds, the tension increases until finally the hero is trapped in some impossible situation and everyone is groaning inwardly, wondering how he is going to get out of the mess. The suspense is heightened by the knowledge (of the audience, not the hero) that help is on the way in the form of the good guys. The only question is: will the good guys arrive in time?
Now imagine for a moment that the audience is slipped the information that there are no good guys, that the situation of the hero is not just desperate, but completely hopeless. Obviously, the first thing that would happen is that the suspense would be gone. You and the entire audience would simply be waiting for the axe to fall.
If the hero faced the end with courage, this would be morally edifying, but the situation itself would be tragic. If, however, the hero acted as if help were around the corner and kept buoying himself up with this thought (“Someone is on the way!” – “Help is at hand!”), all you could feel for him would be pity. It would be a means to keep hope alive within a hopeless situation. The hero’s hope would change nothing on the outside; it would be unable to manufacture, out of nothing, good guys coming to the rescue. All it would achieve would the hero’s own mental state of hopefulness rather than hopelessness.
The hopefulness itself would rest on a lie or an illusion and thus, viewed objectively, would be finally absurd. And if the hero really knew what the situation was, but consciously used the falsehood to buoy up his feelings and go whistling along, we would either say, “Poor guy!” or “He’s a fool.” It is this kind of conscious deceit that someone like Woody Allen has looked full in the face and will have none of.
Now this is what the existential methodology is about. If the universe we are living in is what the materialistic humanists say it is, then with our reason (when we stop to think about it) we could find absolutely no way to have meaning or morality or hope or beauty. This would plunge us into despair. We would have to take seriously the challenge of Albert Camus (1913-1960) in the first sentence of The Myth of Sisyphus: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”92 Why stay alive in an absurd universe? Ah! But that is not where we stop. We say to ourselves – “There is hope!” (even though there is no help). “We shall overcome!” (even though nothing is more certain than that we shall be destroyed, both individually at death and cosmically with the end of all conscious life). This is what confronts us on all sides today: the modern irrationalism.

Francis Schaeffer has correctly argued:

The universe was created by an infinite personal God and He brought it into existence by spoken word and made man in His own image. When man tries to reduce [philosophically in a materialistic point of view] himself to less than this [less than being made in the image of God] he will always fail and he will always be willing to make these impossible leaps into the area of nonreason even though they don’t give an answer simply because that isn’t what he is. He himself testifies that this infinite personal God, the God of the Old and New Testament is there. 

Instead of making a leap into the area of nonreason the better choice would be to investigate the claims that the Bible is a historically accurate book and that God created the universe and reached out to humankind with the Bible. Below is a piece of that evidence given by Francis Schaeffer concerning the accuracy of the Bible.

TRUTH AND HISTORY (chapter 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?)

We now take a jump back in time to the middle of the ninth century before Christ, that is, about 850 B.C. Most people have heard of Jezebel. She was the wife of Ahab, the king of the northern kingdom of Israel. Her wickedness has become so proverbial that we talk about someone as a “Jezebel.” She urged her husband to have Naboth killed, simply because Ahab had expressed his liking for a piece of land owned by Naboth, who would not sell it. The Bible tells us also that she introduced into Israel the worship of her homeland, the Baal worship of Tyre. This led to the opposition of Elijah the Prophet and to the famous conflict on Mount Carmel between Elijah and the priests of Baal.

Here again one finds archaeological confirmations of what the Bible says. Take for example: “As for the other events of Ahab’s reign, including all he did, the palace he built and inlaid with ivory, and the cities he fortified, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Israel?” (I Kings 22:39).

This is a very brief reference in the Bible to events which must have taken a long time: building projects which probably spanned decades. Archaeological excavations at the site of Samaria, the capital, reveal something of the former splendor of the royal citadel. Remnants of the “ivory house” were found and attracted special attention (Palestinian Archaeological Museum, Jerusalem). This appears to have been a treasure pavilion in which the walls and furnishings had been adorned with colored ivory work set with inlays giving a brilliant too, with the denunciations revealed by the prophet Amos:

“I will tear down the winter house along with the summer house; the houses adorned with ivory will be destroyed and the mansions will be demolished,” declares the Lord. (Amos 3:15)

Other archaeological confirmation exists for the time of Ahab. Excavations at Hazor and Megiddo have given evidence of the the extent of fortifications carried out by Ahab. At Megiddo, in particular, Ahab’s works were very extensive including a large series of stables formerly assigned to Solomon’s time.

On the political front, Ahab had to contend with danger from the Aramacaus king of Syria who besieged Samaria, Ahab’s capital. Ben-hadad’s existence is attested by a stela (a column with writing on it) which has been discovered with his name written on it (Melquart Stela, Aleppo Museum, Syria). Again, a detail of history given in the Bible is shown to be correct.

This brings me to the message of Solomon in ECCLESIASTES and below are comments by Francis Schaeffer:

Ecclesiastes 9:7-12

Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do.

Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head.

Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, (DOES IT SOUND OPTIMISTIC? NOW COMES THE BACKLASH) all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. 10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

11 Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all. 12 For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.

Solomon when at work takes off his hat and he stands by the grave of man and he says, “ALAS. ALAS. ALAS.”

But interestingly enough the story of Ecclesiastes does not end its message here because in two places in the New Testament it is picked up and carried along and put in its proper perspective.

Luke 12:16-21

16 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ 18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax,eat, drink, be merry.”’ [ALMOST EVERYONE WHO HAS PROCEEDED HERE HAS FELT CERTAINLY THAT JESUS IS DELIBERATELY REFERRING TO SOLOMON’S SOLUTION.]20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

Christ here points out the reason for the failure of the logic that is involved. He points out why it fails in logic and then why it fails in reality. This view of Solomon must end in failure philosophically and also in emotional desperation.

We are not made to live in the shortened environment of UNDER THE SUN in this life only!!! Neither are we made to live only in the environment of a bare concept of afterlife [ignoring trying to make this life better]. We are made to live in the environment of a God who exists and who is the judge. This is the difference and that is what Jesus is setting forth here.

I Corinthians 15:32

32 What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.

There is no doubt here he is reaching back to Solomon again and he is just saying if there isn’t a resurrection of the dead then let’s just follow Solomon and let’s just eat and drink for tomorrow we die!!!! If there isn’t this full structure [including the resurrection of the dead] then just have the courage to follow Solomon and we can eat and drink because tomorrow we die and that is all we have. If the full structure isn’t there then pick up the cup and drink it dry! You can say it a different way in the 20th century: If the full structure is not there then go ahead and be an EXISTENTIALIST, but don’t cheat. Drink the cup to the end. Drink it dry! That is what Paul says. Paul  the educated man. Paul the man who knew his Greek philosophy. Paul the man who understood Solomon and the dilemma. Paul said it one way or the other. There is no room for a middle ground. IF CHRISTIANS AREN’T RAISED FROM THE DEAD THEN SOLOMON IS RIGHT IN ECCLESIASTES, BUT ONLY THEN. But if he is right then you should accept all of Solomon’s despair and his conclusions. 


The answer to find meaning in life is found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.

Thank you again for your time and I know how busy you are.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.comhttp://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002

PS: What is the meaning of life? Find it in the end of the open letter I wrote to you on April 23, 2020. 

Below is the workforce of THE TAMBURY GAZETTE 

Seen below is the third episode of AFTERLIFE (season 1) when Matt takes Tony to a comedy club with front row seats to cheer him up but it turns into disaster!!!

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Part 1 “Why have integrity in Godless Darwinian Universe where Might makes Right?”

Part 2 “My April 14, 2016 Letter to Ricky mentioned Book of Ecclesiastes and the Meaninglessness of Life”

Part 3 Letter about Brandon Burlsworth concerning suffering and pain and evil in the world.  “Why didn’t Jesus save her [from cancer]?” (Tony’s 10 year old nephew George in episode 2)

Part 4 Letter on Solomon on Death Tony in episode one, “It should be everyone’s moral duty to kill themselves.”

Part 5 Letter on subject of Learning in Ecclesiastes “I don’t read books of fiction but mainly science and philosophy”

Part 6 Letter on Luxuries in Ecclesiastes Part 6, The Music of AFTERLIFE (Part A)

Part 7 Letter on Labor in Ecclesiastes My Letter to Ricky on Easter in 2017 concerning Book of Ecclesiastes and the legacy of a person’s life work

Part 8 Letter on Liquor in Ecclesiastes Tony’s late wife Lisa told him, “Don’t get drunk all the time alright? It will only make you feel worse in the log run!”

Part 9 Letter on Laughter in Ecclesiastes , I said of laughter, “It is foolishness;” and of mirth, “What does it accomplish?” Ecclesiastes 2:2

Part 10 Final letter to Ricky on Ladies in Ecclesiastes “I gathered a chorus of singers to entertain me with song, and—most exquisite of all pleasures— voluptuous maidens for my bed…behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun” Ecclesiastes 2:8-11.

Part 11 Letter about Daniel Stanhope and optimistic humanism  “If man has been kicked up out of that which is only impersonal by chance , then those things that make him man-hope of purpose and significance, love, motions of morality and rationality, beauty and verbal communication-are ultimately unfulfillable and thus meaningless.” (Francis Schaeffer)

Part 12 Letter on how pursuit of God is only way to get Satisfaction Dan Jarrell “[In Ecclesiastes] if one seeks satisfaction they will never find it. In fact, every pleasure will be fleeting and can not be sustained, BUT IF ONE SEEKS GOD THEN ONE FINDS SATISFACTION”

Part 13 Letter to Stephen Hawking on Solomon realizing he will die just as a dog will die “For men and animals both breathe the same air, and both die. So mankind has no real advantage over the beasts; what an absurdity!” Ecclesiastes

Part 14 Letter to Stephen Hawking on 3 conclusions of humanism and Bertrand Russell destruction of optimistic humanism. “That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms—no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”(Bertrand Russell, Free Man’s Worship)

Part 15 Letter to Stephen Hawking on Leonardo da Vinci and Solomon and Meaningless of life “I hate life. As far as I can see, what happens on earth is a bad business. It’s smoke—and spitting into the wind” Ecclesiastes Book of Ecclesiastes Part 15 “I hate life. As far as I can see, what happens on earth is a bad business. It’s smoke—and spitting into the wind” Ecclesiastes 2:17

Part 16 Letter to Stephen Hawking on Solomon’s longing for death but still fear of death and 5 conclusions of humanism on life UNDER THE SUN. Francis Schaeffer “Life is just a series of continual and unending cycles and man is stuck in the middle of the cycle. Youth, old age, Death. Does Solomon at this point embrace nihilism? Yes!!! He exclaims that the hates life (Ecclesiastes 2:17), he longs for death (4:2-3) Yet he stills has a fear of death (2:14-16)”

Mandeep Dhillon as Sandy on her first assignment in ‘After Life’. (Twitter)

A still from ‘After Life’ that captures the vibe of the Tambury Gazette. (Twitter)

Michael Scott of THE OFFICE (USA) with Ricky Gervais 

After Life on Netflix

After Life on Netflix stars Ricky Gervais as a bereaved husband (Image: Netflix)

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Psychiatrist played by Paul Kaye seen below.

The sandy beach walk

Tony Johnson with his dog Brandi seen below:

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Taking on Ark Times Bloggers on various issues Part I “Old Testament Bible Prophecy” includes the film TRUTH AND HISTORY and article ” Jane Roe became pro-life”

April 12, 2013 – 5:45 am

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 Biblical ArchaeologyFrancis SchaefferProlife | Edit|Comments (0)

John MacArthur on fulfilled prophecy from the Bible Part 2

August 8, 2013 – 1:28 am

I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too.  I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian RogersCurrent Events | Edit|Comments (0)

John MacArthur on fulfilled prophecy from the Bible Part 1

August 6, 2013 – 1:24 am

I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too.  I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian RogersCurrent Events |Tagged Bible Prophecyjohn macarthur | Edit|Comments (0)

John MacArthur: Fulfilled prophecy in the Bible? (Ezekiel 26-28 and the story of Tyre, video clips)

April 5, 2012 – 10:39 am

Prophecy–The Biblical Prophesy About Tyre.mp4 Uploaded by TruthIsLife7 on Dec 5, 2010 A short summary of the prophecy about Tyre and it’s precise fulfillment. Go to this link and watch the whole series for the amazing fulfillment from secular sources. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvt4mDZUefo________________ John MacArthur on the amazing fulfilled prophecy on Tyre and how it was fulfilled […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology | Edit|Comments (1)

John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 2)

August 1, 2013 – 12:10 am

John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 2) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too.  I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)

John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 1)

July 30, 2013 – 1:32 am

John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 1) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too.  I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)

Adrian Rogers: “Why I believe the Bible is true”

July 9, 2013 – 8:38 am

Adrian Rogers – How you can be certain the Bible is the word of God Great article by Adrian Rogers. What evidence is there that the Bible is in fact God’s Word? I want to give you five reasons to affirm the Bible is the Word of God. First, I believe the Bible is the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian RogersBiblical Archaeology | Edit|Comments (0)

The Old Testament is Filled with Fulfilled Prophecy by Jim Wallace

June 24, 2013 – 9:47 am

Is there any evidence the Bible is true? Articles By PleaseConvinceMe Apologetics Radio The Old Testament is Filled with Fulfilled Prophecy Jim Wallace A Simple Litmus Test There are many ways to verify the reliability of scripture from both internal evidences of transmission and agreement, to external confirmation through archeology and science. But perhaps the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical ArchaeologyCurrent Events | Edit|Comments (0)

Taking on Ark Times Bloggers on various issues Part M “Old Testament prophecy fulfilled?”Part 3(includes film DEATH BY SOMEONE’S CHOICE)

April 19, 2013 – 1:52 am

  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 […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis SchaefferProlife | Edit|Comments (0)

Evidence for the Bible

March 27, 2013 – 9:43 pm

Here is some very convincing evidence that points to the view that the Bible is historically accurate. Archaeological and External Evidence for the Bible Archeology consistently confirms the Bible! Archaeology and the Old Testament Ebla tablets—discovered in 1970s in Northern Syria. Documents written on clay tablets from around 2300 B.C. demonstrate that personal and place […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology | E

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Trump Raid Isn’t First Dust-Up Over Presidential Records. Here Are 3 More.

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The Presidential Records Act of 1978 specifies that the U.S. “shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of presidential records.”  Pictured: Former President Barack Obama speaks Sept. 28, 2021, during a ceremonial groundbreaking for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago’s Jackson Park. (Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Although an FBI raid on the home of a former president had been unprecedented until this month, clashes over compliance with a law called the Presidential Records Act are nothing new. 

The 1978 law, signed by President Jimmy Carter, was in response to fallout from the Watergatescandal, when former President Richard Nixon tried to claim that all his White House records belonged to him. 

The law specifies that “the United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of presidential records.” 

Long before enactment of the Presidential Records Act, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s records were the first to go to the National Archives and Records Administration for safekeeping. Before that, presidents took their records with them when leaving the White House. 

 

It’s not likely President Donald Trump could be prosecuted for a violation of the Presidential Records Act, presidential historian Craig Shirley told The Daily Signal in an interview.

“Before FDR, every president just took their records home; some kept them around the house, others used [them] for the fireplace,” Shirley said. “Let’s face it, keeping papers that are supposed to be in presidential archives is akin to not returning an overdue library book.” 

Here are three past controversies involving presidents’ records. 

1. Obama Foundation Supplants Archives

When President Barack Obama left office in January 2017, some 30 million pages of documents from his administration were moved to a warehouse near Chicago that previously was the site of a furniture store. 

The Obama Foundation announced a plan to digitize all of the records ahead of building a $500 million Obama Presidential Center. 

The major difference between the Obama center and previous presidential libraries is that it would be run by the Obama Foundation, a nonprofit established by the former president and former first lady Michelle Obama.

Going back to Herbert Hoover, the National Archives and Records Administration has maintained presidential libraries and records. 

Obama’s plan caused some angst among historians, The New York Times reported. 

“The absence of a true Obama presidential library will have the effect of discouraging serious and potentially critical research into the Obama presidency,” David Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Obama biographer, told the Times.

Timothy Naftali, a former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, said the Obama move “opens the door to a truly terrible Trump library.”

The day after the FBI’s raid on his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, Trump publicly brought up the documents held by Obama. 

“President Barack Hussein Obama kept 33 million pages of documents, much of them classified. How many of them pertained to nuclear? Word is, lots!” Trump said in an Aug. 9 post on Truth Social, the social media platform launched early this year created by Trump Media & Technology Group.

This message prompted the National Archives to issue a statement Aug. 12 in response to Trump that says:

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) assumed exclusive legal and physical custody of Obama presidential records when President Barack Obama left office in 2017, in accordance with the Presidential Records Act (PRA).

NARA moved approximately 30 million pages of unclassified records to a NARA facility in the Chicago area where they are maintained exclusively by NARA. Additionally, NARA maintains the classified Obama presidential records in a NARA facility in the Washington, D.C., area. As required by the [Presidential Records Act], former President Obama has no control over where and how NARA stores the presidential records of his administration.

2. Clinton’s Presidential Library

Former President Bill Clinton’s presidential library in Little Rock, Arkansas, delayed the release of tens of thousands of pages of records in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential race in which Hillary Clinton was the expected Democrat front-runner. 

The delay by the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum came with the help of Obama White House lawyers, Politico reported in February 2014.

The episode led to Congress’ passing a law that year to curb White House prerogatives on secrecy, which Obama signed. 

The legislation specifically updated the Presidential Records Act to direct that no one use personal email to conduct White House business.

3. Bush and Post-9/11 Action

In November 2001, in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush issued an executive order to limit access to presidential records going back to the Reagan administration. The order included the records of his father, Ronald Reagan’s successor as president.

The 12-year shield under the Presidential Records Act protecting records from going public after a president leaves office had expired for the Reagan administration. 

But Bush’s order resealed the presidential records maintained by the National Archives and required a “demonstrated, specific need” for documents to overcome a past president’s assertion of executive privilege to prevent their release. 

On a war footing, the Bush administration argued that the records remain under seal for national security reasons. 

After the American Historical Association sued, part of the younger Bush’s executive order was struck down by a federal court. 

Obama, after promising transparency on the campaign trail, revoked Bush’s executive order shielding records after he took office in January 2009, making most of the records open again and no longer requiring a “demonstrated, specific need.”

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.  

 

 

 

 

Tucker Carlson: Biden Is Using Law Enforcement to Cling to Power

 

 

Fox News host Tucker Carlson eviscerated the Biden administration Monday night for using law enforcement to target its political adversaries, most recently with the raid on former President Donald Trump’s Florida home.

“This could get very bad, very fast and the Biden people know that perfectly well,” Carlson told viewers. “They know what could happen if they continue down this path of using law enforcement to cling to power. But they don’t care because they’re facing a repudiation from voters and they’re desperate and they’ll do anything but at what cost? Pray they pull back before it’s too late.”

Watch the full monologue for read a portion of the transcript below. The full transcript is available from Fox News.

We’ve had a few days to reflect on it and have concluded that no honest person could believe that the raid on Donald Trump’s home last week was a legitimate act of law enforcement. It was not. Even the Biden administration didn’t really bother to pretend otherwise. The official explanations that we have heard for the raid make no sense at all. It doesn’t matter how forcefully they are repeated by the media, they’re nonsensical. In case you’ve forgotten what they are, here’s the very first explanation they gave us. 

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS, HISTORIAN: Why did this guy have these ultra-classified documents in the basement of Mar-a-Lago unsecured, where they could be presumably broken in on or stolen or photographed and given to hostile foreign powers or conceivably even terrorists?  

Are you listening to this? So, it’s not just classified documents in the basement of Mar-a-Lago, but according to Michael Beschloss, the pet historian of the halfwits who run our country, these are ultra-classified documents, the most classified kind, just sitting there helpless in boxes like maidens in bikinis, waiting to be photographed by terrorists. You just imagine al-Qaeda taking selfies with these documents, one after the other relentlessly, repulsive and terrifying. 

Is it true?  At this point, no one has provided proof that it is true, not that august historians like Michael Beschloss wait around for actual evidence before pronouncing final judgment on cable news shows. They just go ahead, but for the sake of argument on our show, we’re going to say that it is in fact true and that Donald Trump did, in fact, have boxes of classified documents sitting in his cellar. 

Let’s say that’s true. What would it mean? Well, what it means depends in part on what the documents were. Did those documents contain meaningful information? Should they have been classified in the first place? Is there a good reason the rest of us should not have been allowed to see those documents? 

Now, you never hear those questions asked in public, but anyone who lives in Washington knows perfectly well they should be asked in public a lot, because in Washington, virtually anything can qualify as an official state secret and often does.  

In 2011, to name one of many examples, the CIA finally declassified a trove of documents from the First World War. These documents dated back to 1917, almost 100 years before. One of these documents, the most ultra-secret of them, contained a recipe for disappearing ink. Now, why would federal bureaucrats spend an entire century hiding an outdated recipe for ink that you can buy legally in any magic store for your fifth grader? Good question. No one asked it. 

Instead, then CIA Director Leon Panetta issued a press release bragging about how he was giving the secret ink recipe to a grateful public. “These documents remain classified for nearly a century until recent advancements in technology made it possible to release them,” Panetta wrote. “When historical information is no longer sensitive, we take seriously our responsibility to share it with the American people.” 

There was no hint whatsoever that Panetta was joking when he wrote that. You’re welcome, America. Here’s your century-old ink recipe. Again, this was in 2011. So, think it through. You had to wonder what recent technological advancements was Leon Panetta talking about in the press release and just how recent were they? Was Panetta actually saying that CIA spies were still communicating in World War One era disappearing ink as of, say, 2010 or even as of 1950? Please. It was bizarre. Of course, it was another lie from the people in charge.  

Here’s the truth. The documents have been classified for 100 years, not because disappearing ink was any sort of national security secret. They’d been classified because the government’s default position in every case is that you have no right to see anything ever. It is their information. It is not yours. You’re not a citizen. You’re just the taxpayer. Shut up and pay for it all. To this day, there are large amounts of classified information remaining from World War II. These are documents written 80 years ago by people whose grandchildren are now old, but you still can’t see it. You don’t have the clearances. Sorry. 

So, when they tell you that Donald Trump had classified documents in his basement, those materials could be literally anything, but once again, for the sake of argument, we’re going to stipulate that Trump did have possession of documents that were classified for some good reason. Documents that, for example, we legitimately would not want the Chinese government to see. If that is true, would it justify what happened? Would it justify sending a large team of federal agents to shut down the entire southern tip of Palm Beach to raid Mar-a-Lago on a weekday? No, it wouldn’t. So, one of the laws they’re telling you that Trump broke doesn’t even have criminal penalties attached to it because it’s not serious enough.  

Federal paramilitaries don’t show up at your house when you violate the Presidential Records Act and in fact, as we later learned, the actual warrant for the raid, which was signed by an openly partisan judge because you couldn’t make any of this up if you tried, once represented Jeffrey Epstein’s side in the famous underage sex case, that judge. That judge allowed the FBI to seize virtually every piece of paper in Donald Trump’s house, whether or not it had ever been classified.  

They took Roger Stone’s clemency order, for example. That had been on the front page of the Washington Post, so was therefore probably not a secret. Apparently, the feds even walked off with Donald Trump’s passports preventing him from leaving the country. So, whatever else this raid was, this raid was not about the Presidential Records Act. That explanation is absurd. It’s almost as ridiculous as the claim that the White House knew nothing about the raid before it happened. Right. Please. If they’re going to lie to us, they ought to try a little harder. So, what was this raid about? Well, we’re keeping track. So, here’s the second explanation they gave us. 

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Now with Donald Trump, suddenly, when we’re talking about the possibility of nuclear weapons, classified documents of the highest classified status being stolen from the White House and taken to Mar-a-Lago. 

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Just a reminder of why the Justice Department might be a little bit concerned about nuclear secrets knocking around Mar-a-Lago.  

SCARBOROUGH: Two words for you, my friend. Two words. “Nuclear secrets.” 

What! Nuclear secrets? Nuclear secrets are the highest classified status. Ultra-secret nuclear secrets. Donald Trump stole those. Ladies and gentlemen, America is in danger tonight. That was their new explanation for the raid. Now, that revised storyline was leaked anonymously to an obedient press corps, which, as you just saw, repeated every word like it was verifiable fact. 

Once again, no one even bothered to explain what these nuclear secrets might be. What’s a nuclear secret exactly and what did Trump plan to do with them? Did he plan to defect to Moscow, give the launch codes to Vladimir Putin, start his own rogue state in the Bahamas? Nobody said, but that didn’t stop former CIA director Michael Hayden from suggesting that Donald Trump should be executed, fried to death in the electric chair, for committing these crimes, whatever these crimes were. We still don’t know. 

There weren’t a lot of facts floating around. There still aren’t, but there was a reason for that. They couldn’t tell you the whole story. They couldn’t release all the documents because that would jeopardize American national security. So instead, you’re just going to have to trust them and of course, you’re going to have to listen to their outrage. There was a lot of that. There was endless huffing on television about something called the rule of law and how absolutely no one is above that. No one. Not even a former president. 

We’re informed of this by the same people who paid rioters to burn down our cities, the ones who eliminated bail, the ones who encouraged tens of millions of foreign nationals to ignore our federal immigration statutes and move to our country permanently at public expense as a reward for breaking our laws, but keep in mind, no one is above the law. That was definitely the word from Joe Scarborough, a man who was accused of committing murder while serving as a member of Congress, yet somehow move seamlessly to the MSNBC lineup without being charged or even investigated. No one is above the law. Remember that. 

So, it was an awful lot of posturing in the days after the raid. But none of it was very effective because again, it didn’t make sense. Even propaganda has to add up. Two plus two equals nine doesn’t convince anybody.  

Nuclear secrets? If the Biden administration really believed that, if they really thought Donald Trump possessed documents that posed an imminent danger to American national security, then you have to wonder, why did they wait a year and a half to do anything about it? Why did they wait till 90 days before a midterm election, an election that polls suggest they will lose? It doesn’t make, oh, wait, actually, it does make sense. 

In fact, the question answers itself. Despite superficial appearances, the raid of Mar-a-Lago was not an act of law enforcement. It was the opposite of that. It was an attack on the rule of law. It was a power grab. As Matt Boose put it recently, in American Greatness, the raid on Trump’s home “was exactly what it looks like, a show of force against the opposition leader by the head of state and his personal bodyguards. If this happened in, any other country would immediately be denounced as the act of a dictator.” 

That’s true, but it’s hard to hear those words anyway. As an American, you don’t want to believe it and yet here are the essential facts. The same week the Biden White House announced that Joe Biden will definitely seek a second term as president, the same week, the Biden Justice Department launched an armed raid against Biden’s main rival in that same presidential election. That’s what happened. Pause for a minute. If The New York Times told you that something like that was going on in Chad or the Gambia, what would your reaction be? 

You’d probably say to yourself, “Thank God I don’t live in a place like that, a country where politicians used armed men to cling to power.” Oh, but you do live in a country like that. You do. The evidence is all around us. We just don’t want to see it.

 

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The left praises democracy when elected but claims the right will destroy democracy when it loses. Pictured: Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton discusses the 2016 election during her 2017 book tour. (Photo: Bastiaan Slabbers, NurPhoto/Getty Images)

 

 

Recently, Democrats have been despondent over President Joe Biden’s sinking poll numbers. His policies on the economy, energy, foreign policy, the border, and COVID-19 all have lost majority support.

As a result, the left now variously alleges that either in 2022, when it expects to lose the Congress, or in 2024, when it fears losing the presidency, Republicans will “destroy democracy” or stage a coup.

A cynic might suggest that those on the left praise democracy when they get elected, only to claim it is broken when they lose. Or they hope to avoid their defeat by trying to terrify the electorate. Or they mask their own revolutionary propensities by projecting them onto their opponents.

After all, who is trying to federalize election laws in national elections contrary to the spirit of the Constitution? Who wishes to repeal or circumvent the Electoral College? Who wishes to destroy the more than 180-year-old Senate filibuster, the over 150-year-old nine-justice Supreme Court, and the more than 60-year-old 50-state union?

Who is attacking the founding constitutional idea of two senators per state?

The Constitution also clearly states that “When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.” Who slammed through the impeachment of former President Donald Trump without a presiding chief justice?

Never had a president been either impeached twice or tried in the Senate as a private citizen. Who did both?

The left further broke prior precedent by impeaching Trump without a special counsel’s report, formal hearings, witnesses, and cross-examinations.

Who exactly is violating federal civil rights legislation?

New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in December decided to ration new potentially lifesaving COVID-19 medicines, partially on the basis of race, in the name of “equity.”

The agency also allegedly used racial preferences to determine who would be first tested for COVID-19. Yet such racial discrimination seems in direct violation of various title clauses of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

That law makes it clear that no public agency can use race to deny “equal utilization of any public facility which is owned, operated, or managed by or on behalf of any State or subdivision thereof.” Who is behind the new racial discrimination?

In summer 2020, many local- and state-mandated quarantines and bans on public assemblies were simply ignored with impunity—if demonstrators were associated with Black Lives Matter or protesting the police.

Currently, the Biden administration is also flagrantly embracing the neo-Confederate idea of nullifying federal law.

The Biden administration has allowed nearly 2 million foreign nationals to enter the United States illegally across the southern border—in hopes they will soon be loyal constituents.

The administration has not asked illegal entrants either to be tested for or vaccinated against COVID-19. Yet all U.S. citizens in the military and employed by the federal government are threatened with dismissal if they fail to become vaccinated.

Such selective exemption of lawbreaking non-U.S. citizens, but not millions of U.S. citizens, seems in conflict with the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

After entering the United States illegally, millions of immigrants are protected by some 550 “sanctuary city” jurisdictions. These revolutionary areas all brazenly nullify immigration law by refusing to allow federal immigration authorities to deport illegal immigrant lawbreakers.

At various times in our nation’s history—1832, 1861-65, and 1961-63—America was either racked by internal violence or fought a civil war over similar state nullification of federal laws.

In the last five years, we have indeed seen many internal threats to democracy.

Hillary Clinton hired a foreign national to concoct a dossier of dirt against her presidential opponent. She disguised her own role by projecting her efforts to use Russian sources onto Trump. She used her contacts in government and media to seed the dossier to create a national hysteria about “Russian collusion.” Clinton urged Biden not to accept the 2020 result if he lost, and herself claimed Trump was not a legitimately elected president.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has violated laws governing the chain of command. Some retired officers violated Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice by slandering their commander in chief. Others publicly were on record calling for the military to intervene to remove an elected president.

Some of the nation’s top officials in the FBI and intelligence committee have misled or lied under oath either to federal investigators or the U.S. Congress, again, mostly with impunity.

All these sustained revolutionary activities were justified as necessary to achieve the supposedly noble ends of removing Trump.

The result is Third World-like jurisprudence in America aimed at rewarding friends and punishing enemies, masked by service to social justice.

We are in a dangerous revolutionary cycle. But the threat is not so much from loud, buffoonish, one-day rioters on Jan. 6. Such clownish characters did not for 120 days loot, burn, attack courthouses and police precincts, cause over 30 deaths, injure 2,000 policemen, and destroy at least $2 billion in property—all under the banner of revolutionary justice.

Even more ominously, stone-cold sober elites are systematically waging an insidious revolution in the shadows that seeks to dismantle America’s institutions and the rule of law as we have known them.

 

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The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation. 

 

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.

 

The Honorable Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Washington D.C.

Dear Representative Adam Kinzinger, 

I noticed that you are a pro-life representative that has a long record of standing up for unborn babies! It was in the 1970’s when I was first introduced to the works of Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop and I wanted to commend their writings and films to you.

I recently read about your impressive pro-life record:

Washington, DC – Today, Congressman Adam Kinzinger (IL-16) joined his House Republican colleagues in a press conference urging Democratic leadership to allow a vote on the Born Alive protections. The proposal would protect babies who survive abortion and provide them with the same medical care that any other premature baby would receive. Yesterday, the Democrats blocked the proposed legislation—for the 17th time—from coming before the House for a vote.

Joining the Congressman and House Republican leaders at the press conference this morning was Jill Stanek, an Illinois nurse and pro-life advocate who has witnessed the devastating realities of these pro-abortion laws. The Illinois legislature is currently debating two abortion bills, similar to the extreme pro-abortion agendas in New York and Virginia. 

It seems you have a grudge against President Trump while our freedoms under President Biden are being taken away. I recommend to you the article below:

The January 6 Insurrection Hoax

 • Volume 50, Number 9 • Roger Kimball

Roger Kimball
Editor and Publisher, The New Criterion

Mr. Kimball concludes his article with these words: 

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.”

 

Bingo.

You can google and get Roger Kimball article “The January 6 Insurrection Hoax”

NOW WHAT DID YOU DO TO TURN YOUR BACK ON OUR LIBERTY AND PERPETUATE THE HOAX THAT JANUARY 6TH WAS AN INSURRECTION? Read below!! 

9 Republicans voted to hold Trump aide Bannon in contempt of Congress

 

There were a few Republicans Thursday who surprised observers when they voted in support of holding former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress and referring him to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.

Prior to the vote, four Republicans were considered a lock to approve the criminal referral, according to Capitol Hill sources: Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Fred Upton of Michigan and Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio.

 

Cheney and Kinzinger are on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and have for months stood alone as the only two House Republicans willing to speak out against former President Donald Trump’s continued lies about the 2020 election. They were the only two House Republicans to vote for the formation of the select committee on June 30.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi formed the select committee after Republicans rejected a bipartisan commission that would have been evenly split between five Democrats and five Republicans. Only 35 Republicans voted for that measure when itpassed the House of Representatives, and it was defeated by a GOP filibuster in the Senate.

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 27:  (L-R) Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) arrive for the House Select Committee hearing investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol on July 27, 2021 at the Canon House Office Building in Washington, DC. Members of law enforcement will testify about the attack by supporters of former President Donald Trump on the U.S. Capitol. According to authorities, about 140 police officers were injured when they were trampled, had objects thrown at them, and sprayed with chemical irritants during the insurrection. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

 

 
More

Upton has served in the House for more than three decades, since 1987, and will face a primary challenge next year because of his willingness to stand up to Trump.

Gonzalez is retiring from Congress next year, after only four years in the House. “While my desire to build a fuller family life is at the heart of my decision, it is also true that the current state of our politics, especially many of the toxic dynamics inside our own party, is a significant factor in my decision,” Gonzalez said in September when heannounced he would not seek another term.

 

The remaining five Republicans included three who voted for impeachment — Peter Meijer of Michigan, John Katko of New York and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington — and two House Republicans who did not vote to impeach Trump: Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.

Do you realize that Americans rights are being taken away from them and would you like an example? I am going to quote Mr. Kimball again.  You can google and get Roger Kimball article “The January 6 Insurrection Hoax”

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 beenbranded 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.

Let me recommend that you read this letter below from Senator Ron Johnson and his colleagues:

Sen. Johnson and Colleagues Request Answers from DOJ on Unequal Application of Justice to Protestors

 

 

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), along with senators Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), sent a letter on Monday to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting information on the unequal application of justice between the individuals who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, and those involved in the unrest during the spring and summer of 2020. The senators sent 18 questions to the attorney general on what steps the DOJ has taken to prosecute individuals who committed crimes during both events, and requested a response by June 21.

“Americans have the constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances,” the senators wrote. “This constitutional right should be cherished and protected. Violence, property damage, and vandalism of any kind should not be tolerated and individuals that break the law should be prosecuted. However, the potential unequal administration of justice with respect to certain protestors is particularly concerning.”

 

The full text of the letter can be found here and below.

 

 

June 7, 2021 

The Honorable Merrick B. Garland

Attorney General

U.S. Department of Justice

950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20530

 

Dear Attorney General Garland:

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is currently dedicating enormous resources and manpower to investigating and prosecuting the criminals who breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. We fully support and appreciate the efforts by the DOJ and its federal, state and local law enforcement partners to hold those responsible fully accountable.

We join all Americans in the expectation that the DOJ’s response to the events of January 6 will result in rightful criminal prosecutions and accountability.  As you are aware, the mission of the DOJ is, among other things, to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.  Today, we write to request information about our concerns regarding potential unequal justice administered in response to other recent instances of mass unrest, destruction, and loss of life throughout the United States. 

During the spring and summer of 2020, individuals used peaceful protests across the country to engage in rioting and other crimes that resulted in loss of life, injuries to law enforcement officers, and significant property damage.[1]  A federal court house in Portland, Oregon, has been effectively under siege for months.[2]  Property destruction stemming from the 2020 social justice protests throughout the country will reportedly result in at least $1 billion to $2 billion in paid insurance claims.[3] 

                In June 2020, the DOJ reportedly compiled the following information regarding last year’s unrest:

  • “One federal officer [was] killed, 147 federal officers [were] injured and 600 local officers [were] injured around the country during the protests, frequently from projectiles.”[4]
  • According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), “since the start of the unrest there has been 81 Federal Firearms License burglaries of an estimated loss of 1,116 firearms; 876 reported arsons; 76 explosive incidents; and 46 ATF arrests[.]”[5]

Despite these numerous examples of violence occurring during these protests, it appears that individuals charged with committing crimes at these events may benefit from infrequent prosecutions and minimal, if any, penalties.  According to a recent article, “prosecutors have approved deals in at least half a dozen federal felony cases arising from clashes between protesters and law enforcement in Oregon last summer. The arrangements — known as deferred resolution agreements — will leave the defendants with a clean criminal record if they stay out of trouble for a period of time and complete a modest amount of community service, according to defense attorneys and court records.”[6]       

                DOJ’s apparent unwillingness to punish these individuals who allegedly committed crimes during the spring and summer 2020 protests stands in stark contrast to the harsher treatment of the individuals charged in connection with the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.  To date, DOJ has charged 510 individuals stemming from Capitol breach.[7]  DOJ maintains and updates a webpage that lists the defendants charged with crimes committed at the Capitol.  This database includes information such as the defendant’s name, charge(s), case number, case documents, location of arrest, case status, and informs readers when the entry was last updated.[8]  No such database exists for alleged perpetrators of crimes associated with the spring and summer 2020 protests.  It is unclear whether any defendants charged with crimes in connection with the Capitol breach have received deferred resolution agreements.

Americans have the constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances.  This constitutional right should be cherished and protected.  Violence, property damage, and vandalism of any kind should not be tolerated and individuals that break the law should be prosecuted.  However, the potential unequal administration of justice with respect to certain protestors is particularly concerning.  In order to assist Congress in conducting its oversight work, we respectfully request answers to the following questions by June 21, 2021:  

Spring and Summer 2020 Unrest:

  1. Did federal law enforcement utilize geolocation data from defendants’ cell phones to track protestors associated with the unrest in the spring and summer of 2020?  If so, how many times and for which locations/riots?  
  1. How many individuals who may have committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020 were arrested by law enforcement using pre-dawn raids and SWAT teams?
  1. How many individuals were incarcerated for allegedly committing crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020? 
  1. How many of these individuals are or were placed in solitary confinement?  What was the average amount of consecutive days such individuals were in solitary confinement?
  1. How many of these individuals have been released on bail?
  1. How many of these individuals were released on their own recognizance or without being required to post bond?
  1. How many of these individuals were offered deferred resolution agreements?[9]
  1. How many DOJ prosecutors were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?
  1. How many FBI personnel were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?

January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol Breach:

  1. Did federal law enforcement utilize geolocation data from defendants’ cell phones to track protestors associated with the January 6, 2021 protests and Capitol breach?  If so, how many times and how many additional arrests resulted from law enforcement utilizing geolocation information?
  2. How many individuals who may have committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach were arrested by law enforcement using pre-dawn raids and SWAT teams?
  1. How many individuals are incarcerated for allegedly committing crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
  1. How many of these individuals are or were placed in solitary confinement?  What was the average amount of consecutive days such individuals were in solitary confinement?
  1. How many of these individuals have been released on bail?
  1. How many of these individuals have been released on their own recognizance or without being required to post bond?
  1. How many of these individuals were offered deferred resolution agreements?
  1. How many DOJ prosecutors have been assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
  1. How many FBI personnel were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach?

Sincerely,

 

Ron Johnson

United States Senator

 

Tommy Tuberville

United States Senator

 

Mike Lee                                                            

United States Senator

 

Rick Scott

United States Senator

 

Ted Cruz

United States Senator

 

###

 


[1] Jennifer Kingson, Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history, Axios, Sept. 16, 2020, https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-damage-276c9bcc-a455-4067-b06a-66f9db4cea9c.html.

[2] Conrad Wilson and Jonathan Levinson, Protesters, federal officers clash outside Portland’s courthouse Thursday, OPB, Mar. 12, 2021, https://www.opb.org/article/2021/03/12/protesters-vandalize-portlands-federal-courthouse-again/.

[3] Jennifer Kingson, Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history, Axios, Sept. 16, 2020, https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-damage-276c9bcc-a455-4067-b06a-66f9db4cea9c.html.

[5] Id.

[6] Josh Gerstein, Leniency for defendants in Portland clashes could affect Capitol riot cases, Politico, Apr. 14, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/14/portland-capitol-riot-cases-481346.

[7] Madison Hall et al., 493 people have been charged in the Capitol insurrection so far. This searchable table shows them all., Insider, accessed June 4, 2021, https://www.insider.com/all-the-us-capitol-pro-trump-riot-arrests-charges-names-2021-1.

[8] Capitol Breach Cases, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, accessed May 21, 2021, https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/capitol-breach-cases?combine=&order=title&sort=asc.

[9] Josh Gerstein, Leniency for defendants in Portland clashes could affect Capitol riot cases, Politico, Apr. 14, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/14/portland-capitol-riot-cases-481346.

—-

I want to recommend to you a video on YOU TUBE that runs 28 minutes and 39 seconds by Francis Schaeffer entitled because it discusses the founding of our nation and what the FOUNDERS believed: 

How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 5 | The Revolutionary Age

 

Thank you for your time, and again I want to thank you for your support of the unborn little babies!

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, 13900 Cottontail Lane, AR 72002, cell 501-920-5733, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org

——————————————————————————————

——

Dr. Francis schaeffer How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 5 | The Revolutionary Age

 

– Whatever happened to human race? PART 1 Co-authored by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop)

C. Everett Koop
C. Everett Koop, 1980s.jpg
 
13th Surgeon General of the United States
In office
January 21, 1982 – October 1, 1989

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 2 | Slaughter of the Innocents

Francis Schaeffer – Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 3 | Death by Someone’s Choice

Mr. Hentoff with the clarinetist Edmond Hall in 1948 at the Savoy, a club in Boston.

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 4 | The Basis for Human Dignity 

Image<img class=”i-amphtml-blurry-placeholder” src=”data:;base64,Edith Schaeffer with her husband, Francis Schaeffer, in 1970 in Switzerland, where they founded L’Abri, a Christian commune.

________________

______________________

March 23, 2021

President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. I know that you don’t agree with my pro-life views but I wanted to challenge you as a fellow Christian to re-examine your pro-choice view. Although we are both Christians and have the Bible as the basis for our moral views, I did want you to take a close look at the views of the pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff too.  Hentoff became convinced of the pro-life view because of secular evidence that shows that the unborn child is human. I would ask you to consider his evidence and then of course reverse your views on abortion.

___________________

The pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff wrote a fine article below I wanted to share with you.

Nat Hentoff is an atheist, but he became a pro-life activist because of the scientific evidence that shows that the unborn child is a distinct and separate human being and even has a separate DNA. His perspective is a very intriguing one that I thought you would be interested in. I have shared before many   cases (Bernard Nathanson, Donald Trump, Paul Greenberg, Kathy Ireland)    when other high profile pro-choice leaders have changed their views and this is just another case like those. I have contacted the White House over and over concerning this issue and have even received responses. I am hopeful that people will stop and look even in a secular way (if they are not believers) at this abortion debate and see that the unborn child is deserving of our protection.That is why the writings of Nat Hentoff of the Cato Institute are so crucial.

In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented  against abortion (Episode 1),  infanticide (Episode 2),   euthanasia (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 look at the truth claims of the Bible.

Francis Schaeffer

__________________________

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 video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.  Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.

Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION

_____________________________________

 

Dr. Francis schaeffer – from Part 5 of Whatever happened to human race?) Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 5 | Truth and History

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – A Christian Manifesto – Dr. Francis Schaeffer Lecture

Francis Schaeffer – A 700 Club Special! ~ Francis Schaeffer 1982

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – 1984 SOUNDWORD LABRI CONFERENCE VIDEO – Q&A With Francis & Edith Schaeffer

________________

Jewish World Review June 12, 2006/ 16 Sivan, 5766

 

Insisting on life

http://www.NewsandOpinion.com | A longtime friend of mine is married to a doctor who also performs abortions. At the dinner table one recent evening, their 9-year-old son — having heard a word whose meaning he didn’t know — asked, “What is an abortion?” His mother, choosing her words carefully, described the procedure in simple terms.

“But,” said her son, “that means killing the baby.” The mother then explained that there are certain months during which an abortion cannot be performed, with very few exceptions. The 9-year-old shook his head. “But,” he said, “it doesn’t matter what month. It still means killing the babies.”

Hearing the story, I wished it could be repeated to the justices of the Supreme Court, in the hope that at least five of them might act on this 9-year-old’s clarity of thought and vision.

The boy’s spontaneous insistence on the primacy of life also reminded me of a powerful pro-life speaker and writer who, many years ago, helped me become a pro-lifer. He was a preacher, a black preacher. He said: “There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of a higher order than the right to life.

“That,” he continued, “was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore out of your right to be concerned.”

This passionate reverend used to warn: “Don’t let the pro-choicers convince you that a fetus isn’t a human being. That’s how the whites dehumanized us … The first step was to distort the image of us as human beings in order to justify what they wanted to do — and not even feel they’d done anything wrong.”

That preacher was Jesse Jackson. Later, he decided to run for the presidency — and it was a credible campaign that many found inspiring in its focus on what still had to be done on civil rights. But Jackson had by now become “pro-choice” — much to the appreciation of most of those in the liberal base.

The last time I saw Jackson was years later, on a train from Washington to New York. I told him of a man nominated, but not yet confirmed, to a seat on a federal circuit court of appeals. This candidate was a strong supporter of capital punishment — which both the Rev. Jackson and I oppose, since it involves the irreversible taking of a human life by the state.

I asked Jackson if he would hold a press conference in Washington, criticizing the nomination, and he said he would. The reverend was true to his word; the press conference took place; but that nominee was confirmed to the federal circuit court. However, I appreciated Jackson’s effort.

On that train, I also told Jackson that I’d been quoting — in articles, and in talks with various groups — from his compelling pro-life statements. I asked him if he’d had any second thoughts on his reversal of those views.

Usually quick to respond to any challenge that he is not consistent in his positions, Jackson paused, and seemed somewhat disquieted at my question. Then he said to me, “I’ll get back to you on that.” I still patiently await what he has to say.

As time goes on, my deepening concern with the consequences of abortion is that its validation by the Supreme Court, as a constitutional practice, helps support the convictions of those who, in other controversies — euthanasia, assisted suicide and the “futility doctrine” by certain hospital ethics committees — believe that there are lives not worth continuing.

Around the time of my conversation with Jackson on the train, I attended a conference on euthanasia at Clark College in Worcester, Mass. There, I met Derek Humphry, the founder of the Hemlock Society, and already known internationally as a key proponent of the “death with dignity” movement.

He told me that for some years in this country, he had considerable difficulty getting his views about assisted suicide and, as he sees it, compassionate euthanasia into the American press.

“But then,” Humphry told me, “a wonderful thing happened. It opened all the doors for me.”

“What was that wonderful thing?” I asked.

“Roe v. Wade,” he answered.

The devaluing of human life — as the 9-year-old at the dinner table put it more vividly — did not end with making abortion legal, and therefore, to some people, moral. The word “baby” does not appear in Roe v. Wade — let alone the word “killing.”

And so, the termination of “lives not worth living” goes on.

 

______________________

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. Now after presenting the secular approach of Nat Hentoff I wanted to make some comments concerning our shared Christian faith.  I  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.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,

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August 17, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 17) ADRIAN ROGERS ”The friendship Factor” Proverbs 17:17 “A friend is always loyal, and a brother is born to help in time of need.”

Proverbs 17New Living Translation

17 Better a dry crust eaten in peace
    than a house filled with feasting—and conflict.

A wise servant will rule over the master’s disgraceful son
    and will share the inheritance of the master’s children.

Fire tests the purity of silver and gold,
    but the Lord tests the heart.

Wrongdoers eagerly listen to gossip;
    liars pay close attention to slander.

Those who mock the poor insult their Maker;
    those who rejoice at the misfortune of others will be punished.

Grandchildren are the crowning glory of the aged;
    parents[a] are the pride of their children.

Eloquent words are not fitting for a fool;
    even less are lies fitting for a ruler.

A bribe is like a lucky charm;
    whoever gives one will prosper!

Love prospers when a fault is forgiven,
    but dwelling on it separates close friends.

10 A single rebuke does more for a person of understanding
    than a hundred lashes on the back of a fool.

11 Evil people are eager for rebellion,
    but they will be severely punished.

12 It is safer to meet a bear robbed of her cubs
    than to confront a fool caught in foolishness.

13 If you repay good with evil,
    evil will never leave your house.

14 Starting a quarrel is like opening a floodgate,
    so stop before a dispute breaks out.

15 Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent—
    both are detestable to the Lord.

16 It is senseless to pay to educate a fool,
    since he has no heart for learning.

17 A friend is always loyal,
    and a brother is born to help in time of need.

18 It’s poor judgment to guarantee another person’s debt
    or put up security for a friend.

19 Anyone who loves to quarrel loves sin;
    anyone who trusts in high walls invites disaster.

20 The crooked heart will not prosper;
    the lying tongue tumbles into trouble.

21 It is painful to be the parent of a fool;
    there is no joy for the father of a rebel.

22 A cheerful heart is good medicine,
    but a broken spirit saps a person’s strength.

23 The wicked take secret bribes
    to pervert the course of justice.

24 Sensible people keep their eyes glued on wisdom,
    but a fool’s eyes wander to the ends of the earth.

25 Foolish children[b] bring grief to their father
    and bitterness to the one who gave them birth.

26 It is wrong to punish the godly for being good
    or to flog leaders for being honest.

27 A truly wise person uses few words;
    a person with understanding is even-tempered.

28 Even fools are thought wise when they keep silent;
    with their mouths shut, they seem intelligent.

Sermon Overview

Scripture Passage: Proverbs 17

One of the basic needs and longings of our lives is for a true friend.

There are acquaintances, whom we learn from and have fun with on the shores of life, yet the friendship never goes beyond the coast. There are fair-weather friends, who will agree to set sail, but jump ship the moment the seas of life get rocky. 

And then there are friends…the ones who stay in the calm and in the storm. These friends are rare. But they are of great value, and are worth the find. 

The Bible places a great emphasis upon friends, but it also encourages us to possess a much higher standard on friendships than we think. We are not to have too many of them. They are costly. We are to consider friendships as an investment. We invest time, energy, prayers, and emotion into people. We cannot fully invest in more than we can maintain.

Jesus loved many people in his time on earth. He made good acquaintances, but he regularly invested himself in his 12 disciples. Of those 12, there was an inner circle: Peter, James and John. And of them, he was closest with John. We see that in his humanity, Jesus needed a friend, and He showed us the virtues of a true friend.

  • A friend is selfless. He loves, not because he needs something from you. He justdoes
  • A friend is sacrificial. He carries your sorrows on his own back. 
  • A friend sanctifies. He keeps you sharp.

How do we find a friend like this? If you want a friend, be a friend. You want love? Give love. 

Renowned pastor and teacher, Adrian Rogers said it this way, “I went out to find a friend and could not find one there. I went out to be a friend and friends were everywhere.”

Apply it to your life

Today is a good day for a quality check of your friendship factor. The test of a good friendship is this: am I a better person because of my friends? Which friendships in your life bring you closer to Jesus? Are there any toxic friendships that need to be cut off? Pray carefully through each investment in your life, and ask God for the wisdom to maintain the relationships in your life with grace and understanding.

This message is a part of this audio series.

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Seeing Jesus in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job

July 16, 2013 – 1:28 am

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John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 10) Summing up Proverbs study

May 30, 2013 – 1:06 am

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John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 9) “Love your neighbor”

May 28, 2013 – 1:23 am

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John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 8) “Manage your money”

May 23, 2013 – 1:35 am

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John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 7) “Pursue your work”

May 21, 2013 – 1:05 am

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John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 6) “Enjoy your wife and watch your words”

May 16, 2013 – 1:23 am

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 RogersCurrent Events | Tagged Gene BartowJohn Wooden | Edit | Comments (0)

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 5) “Control your body”

May 14, 2013 – 1:44 am

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 RogersCurrent Events | Edit | Comments (0)

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 4) “Bad company corrupts…”

May 9, 2013 – 1:10 am

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 RogersCurrent Events | Edit | Comments (0)

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 3) “Guard your mind and obey your parents!!”

May 7, 2013 – 1:43 am

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 RogersCurrent Events | Edit | Comments (0)

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 2) What does it mean to fear the Lord?

May 2, 2013 – 1:13 am

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The Wisdom of Solomon and the Book of Ecclesiastes

July 8, 2013 – 12:01 am

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)

Why is Solomon so depressed in Ecclesiastes? by Brent Cunningham

July 3, 2013 – 7:00 am

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)

Robert Leroe on Ecclesiastes (Mentions Thomas Aquinas, Princess Diana, Mother Teresa, King Solomon, King Rehoboam, Eugene Peterson, Chuck Swindoll, and John Newton.)

June 19, 2013 – 1:30 am

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Solomon was the author of Ecclesiastes

June 11, 2013 – 1:55 am

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Ecclesiastes: Solomon with Life in the Fast Lane

June 3, 2013 – 1:19 am

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 a scathing and self-deprecating attack on hedonism and secular humanism by Solomon

May 31, 2013 – 1:17 am

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)

Solomon was right in his cynicism–unless……unless there is a God who created us and cares about us

May 22, 2013 – 1:34 am

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)

The Humanist takes on Solomon and the Book of Ecclesiastes

May 20, 2013 – 1:13 pm

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 , Coldplay, Kansas, Solomon and the search for satisfaction (part 3)

December 23, 2011 – 11:12 am

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 on gambling

July 18, 2013 – 12:44 am

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 RogersCurrent Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Book of Ecclesiastes

July 17, 2013 – 1:40 am

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: Are fathers necessary?

July 16, 2013 – 12:43 am

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 RogersCurrent Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Tom Brady, Coldplay, Kansas, Solomon and the search for satisfaction (part 2)

December 22, 2011 – 11:56 am

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 […]

Tucker Carlson breaks down the Whitmer kidnapping plot and its alleged ties to the FBI

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https://video.foxnews.com/v/6310973230112

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https://video.foxnews.com/v/6310973230112

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6310973230112

Tucker Carlson: There’s a reason the public’s confidence in the FBI has plummeted

Tucker Carlson breaks down the Whitmer kidnapping plot and its alleged ties to the FBI

By all accounts, Attorney General Merrick Garland was shocked to hear criticism of the raid on Mar-a-Lago last week. It turns out that Garland lives in such a tiny, airless world of left-wing activists and sycophants that it had never occurred to him that anyone might object to siccing the FBI on Joe Biden’s political opponents.

When woke Twitter and The New York Times are your only sources of news, police state politics seems perfectly normal. Trump is bad. Find a reason to arrest him. That’s how they think. So, if you watched Garland carefully at his press conference other day, you may have noticed that he appeared highly annoyed by the idea of having to stoop to explain himself to mere citizens. But he found a solution. Being a liberal, Merrick Garland’s first instinct was to seize the role of victim because when you’re a victim, you’ve already won the argument. You don’t have to explain yourself. You don’t have to change your behavior. You are, by definition, the good guy. The victim always is. Being oppressed means never having to say you’re sorry.

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6310973230112

So, as Garland explained at the press conference, the FBI was in fact the real victim here. Mean old Fox News was asking unfair questions and that’s just wrong. So, the real problem isn’t that America’s most powerful law enforcement agency is dangerously politicized and corrupt. No, the real problem here is the people have dared to complain about it, and they must stop immediately or else they are domestic terrorists.

As Garland put it, with what seemed like genuine outrage, I will not stand silently by as the integrity of the FBI is unfairly attacked. Well, of course, media organizations loved it. There’s nothing they revere more than a victim. Victims are holy. So, they immediately took Garland side. “They’re being mean to the FBI. Stop it, guys. That’s not allowed.” But if you take three steps back and think about it for a second, Garland’s position, which effectively is “You’re not allowed to criticize me. I’m the attorney general of the United States” is pretty weird.

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. 

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)

In fact, it is an inversion of the traditional relationship between the U.S. government and the population that supposedly serves. According to Merrick Garland, the onus is on American citizens to respect the FBI. “Obey, it’s your duty.” But of course, that’s not true. In a democracy, the onus is on the FBI to earn the respect of Americans. They work for you, remember? And lately they have not been doing a very good job and people know that they haven’t been.

The public’s confidence in the FBI has plummeted by double digits in just the last few years and unfortunately, there’s a reason for that and it’s a huge problem. We need the FBI. You can’t just defund federal law enforcement. There are a lot of federal laws, most of them are silly, some of them are not silly at all. They’re very serious and they must be enforced. So, we have to have an FBI and it has to be an FBI we can trust and we can’t trust it until its behavior merits trust, until it’s honest, and to the extent it can be transparent, consistent in the way it enforces the law.

We have to have a federal law enforcement agency like that. We can’t just make it go away and hope for the best, but we’re nowhere near that point because the people who are supposed to be overseeing the FBI have ignored egregious examples of corruption over many years, but they’re getting very hard to ignore because they’re just so obvious now and it’s not just the raid on Mar-a-Lago. Consider the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping case. You may remember that story. It’s from the fall of 2020. You may even have followed it a little bit and heard how it ended. So, what seemed like a terrorism plot was, in fact, a setup by the government to make a group of ordinary people in Michigan look like terrifying right-wing extremists, those violent White nationalists Joe Biden is always mumbling about.

Well, turns out there aren’t enough of those people in real life. They’re pretty rare, actually. It’s not a very racist country, despite what they tell you. So, the Justice Department had to go create some and they did and that’s not just our opinion. That was the finding of a federal jury in Michigan. So, it’s a shocking story, really, but the details of that story are even worse than that. They are beyond belief and we’ll tell you what they are in just a minute, but first to set the scene, here is Gretchen Whitmer, herself, governor of Michigan, announcing that she was the intended target of a terrorism plot. This is from October 8, 2020.

GOV. GRETCHEN WHITMER: Earlier today, Attorney General Dana Nessel was joined by officials from the Department of Justice and the FBI to announce state and federal charges against 13 members of two militia groups who were preparing to kidnap and possibly kill me. If you break the law or conspire to commit heinous acts of violence against anyone, we will find you. We will hold you accountable and we will bring you to justice.  

“We’ll bring you to justice. I’m so important that militia groups have organized to take me out.” What a self-aggrandizing description, but the last thing she said, “we’ll bring you to justice,” well, they actually tried to do that. They had a trial and then a retrial and thanks to that, we have testimony and cross-examination that reveals what actually happened, how the FBI engineered this plot.

Now, most of the media were paying zero attention to this. Julie Kelly of American Greatness has actually covered it. We’re grateful to her for what she’s found. Here’s the outline. In early 2020, a 35-year-old Army veteran called Dan Chappel (nicknamed Big Dan) was working as a contractor for the U.S. Postal Service. He drove delivery trucks. He was Scrolling Facebook one night and Chappel says he found a pro-Second Amendment group called “Wolverine Watchmen.” He says he just happened upon it. So, Chappel testified that he was concerned by the group’s criticism of law enforcement. So, he went to a police officer, a friend of his, and asked for advice. None of the messages within the group violated any law, but somehow, within a week, Chappel wound up connected to the FBI, to several FBI agents, including a special agent called Jayson Chambers.

TOP TRUMP TARGETS CHENEY, MURKOWSKI, FACE VOTERS IN TUESDAY’S PRIMARIES IN WYOMING, ALASKA

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer addresses the press before signing the final piece of a $76 billion state budget into law, Wednesday, July 20, 2022 in Detroit.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer addresses the press before signing the final piece of a $76 billion state budget into law, Wednesday, July 20, 2022 in Detroit. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Now, we learned through testimony in the trial this week why Chambers was interested in the case. It turns out that Chambers, in violation of FBI policy, was running a side hustle. He just incorporated a security firm called Exe-Intel, and he saw his work on the Whitmer case as a way to promote his own business. We know that because throughout 2020, someone affiliated with his business, their Twitter account, repeatedly tweeted nonpublic information about the kidnapping case that Dan Chappel was building for the FBI.

So, it’s not surprising, given the built-in incentives here, which were against policy once again, that Chambers appeared to do everything he could to make sure the investigation went according to plan. Now, no investigation can go according to plan because there shouldn’t be a plan. An investigation is the process of finding out what happened. An investigation is not the process of orchestrating things to happen, but that’s exactly what this became.

In all, the FBI with chambers is the handler paid Chappel (Big Dan) more than $60,000 in the course of just a few months. Today,Chappel testified that he made more money working for the FBI in seven months that he did working for the United States Postal Service over the course of an entire year.

So, there’s a lot of money moving from the FBI, the Federal Treasury, to this informant. So, the FBI told Chappel that in exchange for all of that money, he needed to start assembling a group of right-wing extremists for the FBI to prosecute. They made the whole thing up, and he did that with the FBI’s help. Within a few weeks, the FBI created a new Facebook group called “Patriot Three Percenters.” This is why you should be careful of Facebook, by the way.” Oh, it’s just a screw-up. It looks interesting.”

TRUMP RAID SHOWS THAT FBI, JUSTICE DEPARTMENT WANT TO DECIDE WHO CAN BE OUR PRESIDENT

Okay. So, Chappel and several members of that group then attended a protest at the Michigan State Capitol. “Look at you, bringing people together,” the FBI handler texted Chappel. Now throughout that protest, which didn’t look a whole lot different from the January 6 protest, Chappel kept in touch, close touch, with federal agents. He informed the feds that a 37-year-old man called Adam Fox was at the state capitol during the protest. Adam Fox has got to be one of the least powerful people in our society. He lived alone with his two dogs in the basement of a vacuum repair shop. Why? Because he had no money whatsoever.

In fact, he had so little money that in order to get running water, to brush his teeth or use the bathroom, he had to go to a nearby Mexican restaurant and use their men’s room. So, Chappel began texting this diabolical mastermind, Fox, hundreds of times. But Fox seemed inherently moderate, actually. He wrote things like this, “Our goal is to restore the constitutional republic.”

Fox also said, “In our hearts and minds, we are not domestic terrorists.” Oh, sounds very dangerous. So, based on those text messages, the FBI gave Chappel more instructions. They provided Chappel with several $5,000 limit credit cards, and they told him to give those credit cards to Fox and tell them to spend it on guns and ammunition. So, Fox, despite the fact he had no money at all, had used the men’s room in a Mexican restaurant to brush his teeth, refused. On five separate occasions, he refused to take the credit cards to buy guns and ammunition. Then (what a terrorist) then in July of 2020, Chappel suggested that Fox and others fire rounds into the governor’s mansion, as well as at her cottage, but the alleged plotters, including Adam Fox, again refused. They didn’t want to hurt the governor.

Ultimately, in August of 2020, the group started to splinter. Chappel and other informants were instructed to keep the group together. “No, keep it together. Keep the threat real.” So, they introduced another undercover agent, [who] pretended to be an explosives expert. He showed the group a video of a bomb that blew up a vehicle to prove he knew what he was doing. Where did that video come from?

Well, it was made by the FBI. Is this shaking your confidence a little bit? These details are real, by the way. They came out at trial. Then the bureau recruited a convicted felon and a long time FBI informant called Stephen Robeson to introduce a new idea to Fox as well as to Barry Croft. This time the idea was to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer. Robeson, with the FBI’s money, organized several events including a national militia conference in Ohio, training in Wisconsin and a meeting in Delaware, FBI orchestrating all of this.

On July 18, 2020, at one such militia meeting, again organized by the FBI when they took a right-wing extremists. In this case, they created them. So, at this militia meeting, an alleged plotter, are called Ty Garbin rejected out of hand the idea of kidnapping Gretchen Whitmer. Didn’t want to do it. “No, I don’t think so. Kidnap the governor? No, we’re not crazy. We just want a constitutional republic.” Okay. Then the topic came up again in August and then another defendant called Daniel Harris was equally adamant. “No snatch and grab,” he said, “I swear to f-ing God.”

So, clearly they said it emphatically out loud explicitly these were people were not interested in kidnapping Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, but the FBI kept pushing.

The FBI informants drove the defendants to Gretchen Whitmer’s home. Then they suggested killing the governor of Virginia, also a Democrat. On September 5, 2020, FBI Special Agent Jayson Chambers texted Chappel, “Mission is to kill the governor specifically.” What country is this? To pressure one of the defendants, a man called Barry Croft , into doing that, one FBI agent admitted this week that a female informant slept in the same hotel room as Croft. It was a honey trap. FBI agents also testified this week that they regularly got high with Adam Fox. They smoked weed with Adam Fox. They said he was so high, in fact, he was high in all of his meetings with them. Again, that’s against FBI policy. You can’t just give drugs to people and hope they do something bad.

Well, after all of this failed to produce a kidnapping plot, it fell on yet another FBI agent called Richard Trask to build the criminal case against the defendants. Now, that same year, Trask, who is now been convicted of beating his wife, called Donald Trump a piece of excrement on social media. Really? Yeah. Just nonpartisan federal bureaucrats, public servants doing their job. Now, incredibly, after all of this, the person in charge of the field office overseeing the Whitmer investigation in 2020, a man called Steven D’antuono , was promoted, not fired, promoted to lead the DC field office in late 2020. Are you connecting the dots here?

In other words, the guy who made sure that FBI informants were active during a rally in the Michigan State House in 2020 as part of this concocted plot. That same guy went on to become the guy who oversaw the investigation into—wait for it—January 6, the election justice protest they’re calling an insurrection. But just remember, don’t ask whether the FBI used informants to entrap anyone on January 6. No, you can’t do that or else you’re an insurrectionist yourself. Nor are you allowed to ask why Steven’s agents were involved in the raid on Mar-a-Lago, even though that’s in Florida, and he’s in Washington. As it turns out, questions like this are hate speech. Watch.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: All the buzz on the Internet and all over the airwaves. It does, it does have an impact.  

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Well, I mean, you saw buzz. Well, there’s an awful lot of hate speech coming from pro-Trump media outlets just attacking the nation’s premier law enforcement agency simply because Donald Trump is being investigated.

Oh, it’s hate speech. Now, if there’s one thing we know about hate speech is that it’s not protected by the First Amendment. You’ve read that part of the Constitution which says you can say whatever you want as long as MSNBC doesn’t designate your words hate speech. So, when they call any criticism of the FBI, that would be Joe Biden’s personal Defense Force, they call that hate speech, what they’re really saying is you’re committing a crime and see where this is going, but the truth is, there are still questions about the FBI’s behavior on and around January 6 and given what happened in Michigan, where we know beyond question that the FBI tried to create an act of terror. It’s fair to ask, “What exactly did happen on January 6?”

And why is the FBI still hiding footage critically of the person who planted a pipe bomb outside the DNC on January 6 while Kamala Harris was apparently inside, something that she lied about for months? What exactly is going on here? We’re, of course, not alleging anything. We don’t know the answer, but we know for a fact, given the FBI’s behavior and we report this with great sadness over the last several years, it is worth getting to the bottom of this. In fact, we have to if we’re going to restore confidence in federal law enforcement. No one is asking these questions really apart from Revolver News and here’s what they’ve come up with. Watch this.

NARRATOR: Camera one shows the pipe bomber walking up to the DNC grounds at roughly 7:42 p.m.. He sits on bench one, then he gets up and walks off screen. According to the FBI, he walks the length of the DNC building and 10 minutes later he comes back to the same bench area and sits on bench two. There at 7:52 p.m., camera two captures the pipe bomber sitting on bench two and we are told, planting the pipe bomb by the side of the bench next to the bush. We are told the pipe bomber plants the pipe bomb there, but we can’t see it. Camera two is occluded by a giant bush that blocks the scene. The pipe bomber even looks at camera two head on for some reason. It’s very frustrating because we can’t see the moment the pipe bomber plants the pipe bomb, but the FBI can. That’s because the whole scene should be captured on camera one as well, and much more clearly than camera two. Camera one has a clear shot of both benches. If the FBI released the full tape from camera one, we could see the pipe bomber planting the bomb. 

Okay. So, what exactly happened outside the DNC on January 6, and why is no one asking that question, and why has the Department of Justice not told us? We’ve heard everything they want us to know about January 6. Why not more about this?

Open letter to President Obama (Part 644)

(Emailed to White House on 6-10-13.)

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.

The federal government debt is growing so much that it is endangering us because if things keep going like they are now we will not have any money left for the national defense because we are so far in debt as a nation. We have been spending so much on our welfare state through food stamps and other programs that I am worrying that many of our citizens are becoming more dependent on government and in many cases they are losing their incentive to work hard because of the welfare trap the government has put in place. Other nations in Europe have gone down this road and we see what mess this has gotten them in. People really are losing their faith in big government and they want more liberty back. It seems to me we have to get back to the founding  principles that made our country great.  We also need to realize that a big government will encourage waste and corruption. The recent scandals in our government have proved my point. In fact, the jokes you made at Ohio State about possibly auditing them are not so funny now that reality shows how the IRS was acting more like a monster out of control. Also raising taxes on the job creators is a very bad idea too. The Laffer Curve clearly demonstrates that when the tax rates are raised many individuals will move their investments to places where they will not get taxed as much.

______________________

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6310973230112

We can fix the IRS problem by going to the flat tax and lowering the size of government.

Did President Obama and his team of Chicago cronies deliberately target the Tea Party in hopes of thwarting free speech and political participation?

Was this part of a campaign to win the 2012 election by suppressing Republican votes?

Perhaps, but I’ve warned that it’s never a good idea to assume top-down conspiracies when corruption, incompetence, politics, ideology, greed, and self-interest are better explanations for what happens in Washington.

Writing for the Washington Examiner, Tim Carney has a much more sober and realistic explanation of what happened at the IRS.

If you take a group of Democrats who are also unionized government employees, and put them in charge of policing political speech, it doesn’t matter how professional and well-intentioned they are. The result will be much like the debacle in the Cincinnati office of the IRS. …there’s no reason to even posit evil intent by the IRS officials who formulated, approved or executed the inappropriate guidelines for picking groups to scrutinize most closely. …The public servants figuring out which groups qualified for 501(c)4 “social welfare” non-profit status were mostly Democrats surrounded by mostly Democrats. …In the 2012 election, every donation traceable to this office went to President Obama or liberal Sen. Sherrod Brown. This is an environment where even those trying to be fair could develop a disproportionate distrust of the Tea Party. One IRS worker — a member of NTEU and contributor to its PAC, which gives 96 percent of its money to Democratic candidates — explained it this way: “The reason NTEU mostly supports Democratic candidates for office is because Democratic candidates are mostly more supportive of civil servants/government employees.”

Tim concludes with a wise observation.

As long as we have a civil service workforce that leans Left, and as long as we have an income tax system that requires the IRS to police political speech, conservative groups can always expect special IRS scrutiny.

And my colleague Doug Bandow, in an article for the American Spectator, adds his sage analysis.

The real issue is the expansive, expensive bureaucratic state and its inherent threat to any system of limited government, rule of law, and individual liberty. …the broader the government’s authority, the greater its need for revenue, the wider its enforcement power, the more expansive the bureaucracy’s discretion, the increasingly important the battle for political control, and the more bitter the partisan fight, the more likely government officials will abuse their positions, violate rules, laws, and Constitution, and sacrifice people’s liberties. The blame falls squarely on Congress, not the IRS.

I actually think he is letting the IRS off the hook too easily.

But Doug’s overall point obviously is true.

…the denizens of Capitol Hill also have created a tax code marked by outrageous complexity, special interest electioneering, and systematic social engineering. Legislators have intentionally created avenues for tax avoidance to win votes, and then complained about widespread tax avoidance to win votes.

So what’s the answer?

The most obvious response to the scandal — beyond punishing anyone who violated the law — is tax reform. Implement a flat tax and you’d still have an IRS, but the income tax would be less complex, there would be fewer “preferences” for the agency to police, and rates would be lower, leaving taxpayers with less incentive for aggressive tax avoidance. …Failing to address the broader underlying factors also would merely set the stage for a repeat performance in some form a few years hence. …More fundamentally, government, and especially the national government, should do less. Efficient social engineering may be slightly better than inefficient social engineering, but no social engineering would be far better.

Amen. Let’s rip out the internal revenue code and replace it with a simple and fair flat tax.

But here’s the challenge. We know the solution, but it will be almost impossible to implement good policy unless we figure out some way to restrain the spending side of the fiscal ledger.

___________________________

At the risk of over-simplifying, we will never get tax reform unless we figure out how to implement entitlement reform.

Here’s another Foden cartoon, which I like because it has the same theme asthis Jerry Holbert cartoon, showing big government as a destructive and malicious force.

IRS Cartoon 5

_____________

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.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com

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