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).
Christian Rock Pioneer Larry Norman’s Songs Part 1
I posted a lot in the past about my favorite Christian musicians such as Keith Green (I enjoyed reading Green’s monthly publications too), and 2nd Chapter of Acts and others. Today I wanted to talk about one of Larry Norman’s songs. David Rogers introduced me to Larry Norman’s music in the 1970’s and his album IN ANOTHER LAND came out in 1976 and sold an enormous amount of copies for a Christian record back then.
Upon the release of his first album Upon This Rock in 1969, Larry Norman unwittingly created the billion-dollar industry of Christian rock. Author Gregory Alan Thornbury is sure that if Norman were alive today, the musician would have despaired at the state of the genre and evangelicalism.
“Over the years I’ve been listening to it, I’ve come to see Larry Norman’s voice as a machine for killing complacency in religious people, and it is my sincere hope that this book does the same,” writes Thornbury in the biography.
Thornbury points to “The Great American Novel” off Norman’s 1972 album Only Visiting This Planet as a quintessential, complacency-killing Larry Norman song.
“You kill a black man at midnight just for talking to your daughter, / Then you make his wife your mistress and you leave her without water / And the sheet you wear upon your face is the sheet your children sleep on / At every meal you say a prayer; you don’t believe but still you keep on,” Norman sings.
The great irony of Norman’s career, Thornbury says, is that secular musicians like Bono and Pixies’ Black Francis embraced his message, but the Church largely rejected it.
“The church absolutely hated what he was doing because they thought that rock and roll was the devil’s music,” Thornbury says. The author remembers managing a Christian contemporary radio station in the ’90s and finding Larry Norman CDs on the shelves labeled ‘Don’t play this song.’
Gregory Alan Thornbury serves as Vice President at the New York Academy of Art and is a professor of philosophy and Chancellor at The King’s College in New York City.
Aaron Hardin/Courtesy of the author
Thornbury says Norman’s songs like “Why Don’t You Look Into Jesus” didn’t appeal to the Church because Christian music was supposed to be positive and uplifting. Though Norman is known as the “father of Christian rock” for such incisive criticisms of Christian hypocrisy, Christian rock today often strays from this specificity.
“The name evangelical has definitely become a polarizing one,” Thornbury says, speculating that Norman might despair about the role of evangelicalsm in American politics today. “Quite a different story from 1976 … when it seemed like the evangelicals in leadership might actually be people that might bring the country together.”
NPR’s Music digital intern Stefanie Fernández contributed to this story.
Larry Norman – The Great American Novel ~ [Lyrics]
Larry Norman – 1 – The Rock That Doesn’t Roll – In Another Land (1976)
Larry Norman – 2 – I Love You – In Another Land (1976)
Calling Larry Norman a “Christian rock pioneer” is easy, and true enough. But before becoming the personification of the Jesus Movement of the late ’60s and early ’70s, he got his start in the mainstream pop world.In 1966, he joined San Jose area band People and signed to Capitol Records. They scored a pop hit with their cover of The Zombies’ “I Love You (But the Words Won’t Come),” before disbanding over internal spiritual conflicts and Norman’s frustration with the label’s re-naming of the band’s debut album. Norman stayed with Capitol for the release of his solo debut, Upon This Rock, a wildly eclectic folk/rock record often referred to as the first Christian rock record of any consequence.
He moved to MGM Records for two critically-acclaimed albums, including Only Visiting This Planet (called “The Best Christian Album of All Time” by the editors of CCM Magazine). But sales were few, and by 1972, Norman went underground, starting Solid Rock Records in the U.S. and Europe, beginning a 35-year run of independence that brought about not only more great music of his own, but also introduced other artful, progressive artists including Randy Stonehill, Daniel Amos, Steve Scott, Tom Howard, Mark Heard, Chris Eaton (Lyrix) and others.
Unlike the safe, southern gospel influenced Christian records of the mid-’70s, Norman’s albums were richly layered in the best tradition of acts like The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Elton John and Crosby, Stills and Nash, with a dark, apocalyptic streak. His message engaged the culture with authenticity and conviction, and his imagination articulated the disconnectedness felt by so many people in the aftermath of the ’60s.
Odd and controversial business practices and broken personal relationships would bring about the end of his Solid Rock Records imprint and cause friction between Norman and some of his closest friends. As Christian music came into its own, he sent himself into a sort of exile. He emerged occasionally, often with surprising stories of personal injuries and even conspiracies. But for the most part, he spent the last two decades of his life communicating directly with his die-hard fans and performing solo acoustic concerts around the world in small venues.
He released a few new projects and re-assembled his classics for release through his website, larrynorman.com. Occasional festival appearances were rare treats for the faithful fans, but he was so far outside the mainstream that most of today’s Christian music fans have absolutely no idea who Larry Norman is.
The fire he fanned continues to burn to this day. Much of the current faith-fueled music scene can trace its existence all the way back to this lanky San Jose kid with the quizzical face, the ripped blue jeans and the simple message that Jesus loves us. His reach extends well into the mainstream where he was admired by artists like U2, John Mellancamp, Bob Dylan and alternative/punk legend Frank Black of Pixies fame. Black, with his ’90s band The Catholics, covered Norman’s song “Six Sixty Six” and frequently went out of his way to laud his impact. In a statement issued the day after Norman’s death, Black called the singer “The most Christ-like man I ever knew.”
In 2002, when U2’s Bono visited Nashville to speak with Christian artists about his DATA campaign, the only artist he specifically asked about was Larry Norman. Norman couldn’t make that trip, so Bono visited him on the road later that year.
His flaws were many, and unfortunately, often kept him at more than arm’s length from the industry he inadvertently helped create. But in time, most of his harshest critics accepted that despite his faults, maybe because of them, he was an amazing person who had given the Church an incredible gift. One-time protégée and best friend Randy Stonehill had distanced himself from Norman for over 20 years following deep personal conflict between the two. In 2001, they reconciled, reuniting onstage at Cornerstone.
Norman struggled with heart disease for most of the last decade. On Sunday, Feb. 24, 2008 his struggle ended. He died peacefully. He was 60. It is certainly no overstatement to say Larry Norman is to Christian music what John Lennon is to rock & roll or Bob Dylan is to folk music. His contributions deserve to be discovered by future generations, and his enduring legacy includes the fantastic truth that despite his personal weakness and frailty, God used him to accomplish amazing things.
John J. Thompson is an artist, author, pastor, music journalist and industry veteran. He founded True Tunes and Gyroscope Arts and currently resides in Nashville. JohnJThompson.com
Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION _____________________________________ 1978 Prolife Pamphlet from Keith Green’s ministry has saved the lives of many babies!!!! Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?) Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical […]
This is a tribute to Keith Green who died 32 years ago today!!! On July 28, 1983 I was sitting by the radio when CBS radio news came on and gave the shocking news that Keith Green had been killed by an airplane crash in Texas with two of his children. 7 months later I […]
My favorite Christian music artist of all time is Keith Green. Sunday, May 5, 2013 You Are Celled To Go – Keith Green Keith Green – (talks about) Jesus Commands Us To Go! (live) Uploaded on May 26, 2008 Keith Green talks about “Jesus Commands Us To Go!” live at Jesus West Coast ’82 You can find […]
To me this song below sums up Keith Green’s life best. 2nd Chapter of Acts – Make My Life A Prayer to You Make my life a prayer to You I want to do what You want me to No empty words and no white lies No token prayers, no compromise I want to shine […]
Keith Green – Easter Song (live) Uploaded by monum on May 25, 2008 Keith Green performing “Easter Song” live from The Daisy Club — LA (1982) ____________________________ Keith Green was a great song writer and performer. Here is his story below: The Lord had taken Keith from concerts of 20 or less — to stadiums […]
Keith Green – Asleep In The Light Uploaded by keithyhuntington on Jul 23, 2006 keith green performing Asleep In The Light at Jesus West Coast 1982 __________________________ Keith Green was a great song writer and performer and the video clip above includes my favorite Keith Green song. Here is his story below: “I repent of […]
Keith Green – So You Wanna Go Back To Egypt (live) Uploaded by monum on May 25, 2008 Keith Green performing “So You Wanna Go Back To Egypt” live at West Coast 1980 ____________ This song really shows Keith’s humor, but it really has great message. Keith also had a great newsletter that went out […]
Keith Green – So You Wanna Go Back To Egypt (live) Uploaded by monum on May 25, 2008 Keith Green performing “So You Wanna Go Back To Egypt” live at West Coast 1980 ____________ This song really shows Keith’s humor, but it really has great message. Keith also had a great newsletter that went out […]
Keith Green – Your Love Broke Through Here is something I got off the internet and this website has lots of Keith’s great songs: Keith Green: His Music, Ministry, and Legacy My mom hung up the phone and broke into tears. She had just heard the news of Keith Green’s death. I was only ten […]
Keith Green – So You Wanna Go Back To Egypt (live) Uploaded by monum on May 25, 2008 Keith Green performing “So You Wanna Go Back To Egypt” live at West Coast 1980 ____________ This song really shows Keith’s humor, but it really has great message. Keith also had a great newsletter that went out […]
Perhaps more relevant, that foregone economic growth would translate into more than $10,000 of lost compensation per job. And a lifetime drop in living standards of more than 4 percent for younger people.
And these numbers are based on research by the Congressional Budget Office, which is hardly a bastion of libertarian analysis.
The Biden White House has a different perspective.
How different? Well, the President actually claims that expanding the burden of government won’t cost anything.
I’m not joking. Here are some excerpts from an article in the Washington Post by Seung Min Kim and Tony Romm.
President Biden promised Friday that his sweeping domestic agenda package will cost “nothing” because Democrats will pay for it through tax hikes on the wealthy and corporations… The remarks were an attempt by Bidento assuage some of the cost concerns pointedly expressed by the moderate Democrats about the size of the legislation… The total spending outlined in the plan is $3.5 trillion… “It is zero price tag on the debt we’re paying. We’re going to pay for everything we spend,” Biden said in remarks from the State Dining Room at the White House.
Biden’s strange analysis has generated some amusing responses.
For instance, Gerard Baker opined in the Wall Street Journalabout Biden’s magical approach.
…this is a novel way of estimating the cost of something. That eye-wateringly expensive dinner you had last week didn’t really cost you anything because you paid for it. …You could have used the money to investin your children’s college fund. You could have paid off some of your credit card bill, the debt on which has quadrupled in the last year. But you chose instead to blow it on a few morsels of raw fish and a couple of bottles of 1982 Château Lafite Rothschild. Don’t worry, It didn’t cost you anything.
Biden and his team definitely deserve to be mocked for their silly argument.
For all intents and purposes, they want us to believe that there’s no downside if you combine anti-growth spending increases with anti-growth tax increases – so long as there’s no increase in red ink.
But there’s actually a fiscal theory that sort of supports what the White House is saying.
Capital (saving and investment) is a key driver of productivity and long-run growth.
Budget deficits divert capital from the economy’s productive sector to government.
Budget deficits raise interest rates, reducing incentives for investment.
For what it’s worth, all four of those statements are correct.
But the theory is nonetheless wrong because it elevates one variable – fiscal balance – while ignoring other variables that have a much bigger impact on economic performance.
For instance, the Congressional Budget Office at one point embraced this approach – even though it led to absurd implications such as growth being maximized with tax rates of 100 percent.
The White House today is basically embracing the IMF’s “austerity” argument that deficits/surpluses are the variable that has the biggest impact on growth.
P.S. Folks on the left must get whiplash because some days they embrace the Keynesian argument that deficits are good for growth and other days they argue that a big expansion of government will have zero cost because there is no increase in the deficit.
P.P.S. The folks on the right who focus solely on tax cuts also are guilty of elevating one variable while ignoring others (humorously depicted in this cartoon strip).
Those policies hinder American prosperity (as honest folks on the left acknowledge), but we can survive with slower growth. What really worries me is that we may eventually reach a tipping point of too many people riding in the wagon (and out-voting the people who pull the wagon).
Simply stated, we don’t want America to become another Greece.
But this cartoon may be a more effective argument for getting government out of the business of interfering with market forces. It’s simple, direct, and gets the point across. I’m not sure that always happens with my writing.
My former intern, Orphe Divougny, also did a very good job in explaining why politicians shouldn’t interfere with the right of workers and employers to enter into labor contracts.
Max Brantley is wrong about Tom Cotton’s accusation concerning the rise of welfare spending under President Obama. Actually welfare spending has been increasing for the last 12 years and Obama did nothing during his first four years to slow down the rate of increase of welfare spending. Rachel Sheffield of the Heritage Foundation has noted: […]
I have put up lots of cartoons from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. I think Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times Blog was right to point out on 2-6-13 that Hillary […]
I thought it was great when the Republican Congress and Bill Clinton put in welfare reform but now that has been done away with and no one has to work anymore it seems. In fact, over 40% of the USA is now on the government dole. What is going to happen when that figure gets over […]
Again we have another shooting and the gun control bloggers are out again calling for more laws. I have written about this subject below and on May 23, 2012, I even got a letter back from President Obama on the subject. Now some very interesting statistics below and a cartoon follows. (Since this just hit the […]
watch?v=llQUrko0Gqw] The federal government spends about 10% on roads and public goods but with the other money in the budget a lot of harm is done including excessive regulations on business. That makes Obama’s comment the other day look very silly. A Funny Look at Obama’s You-Didn’t-Build-That Comment July 28, 2012 by Dan Mitchell I made […]
I have written a lot about this in the past and sometimes you just have to sit back and laugh. Laughing at Obama’s Bumbling Class Warfare Agenda July 13, 2012 by Dan Mitchell We know that President Obama’s class-warfare agenda is bad economic policy. We know high tax rates undermine competitiveness. And we know tax increases […]
Dan Mitchell Discussing Dishonest Budget Numbers with John Stossel Uploaded by danmitchellcato on Feb 11, 2012 No description available. ______________ Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute has shown before how excessive spending at the federal level has increased in recent years. A Humorous Look at Obama’s Screwy Budget Math May 31, 2012 by Dan Mitchell I’ve […]
Sometimes it is so crazy that you just have to laugh a little. The European Mess, Captured by a Cartoon June 22, 2012 by Dan Mitchell The self-inflicted economic crisis in Europe has generated some good humor, as you can see from these cartoons by Michael Ramirez and Chuck Asay. But for pure laughter, I don’t […]
Another great cartoon on President Obama’s efforts to create jobs!!! A Simple Lesson about Job Creation for Barack Obama December 7, 2011 by Dan Mitchell Even though leftist economists such as Paul Krugman and Larry Summers have admitted that unemployment insurance benefits are a recipe for more joblessness, the White House is arguing that Congress should […]
Dan Mitchell hits the nail on the head and sometimes it gets so sad that you just have to laugh at it like Conan does. In order to correct this mess we got to get people off of government support and get them in the private market place!!!! Chuck Asay’s New Cartoon Nicely Captures Mentality […]
Cato Institute scholar Dan Mitchell is right about Greece and the fate of socialism: Two Pictures that Perfectly Capture the Rise and Fall of the Welfare State July 15, 2011 by Dan Mitchell In my speeches, especially when talking about the fiscal crisis in Europe (or the future fiscal crisis in America), I often warn that […]
John Stossel report “Myth: Gun Control Reduces Crime Sheriff Tommy Robinson tried what he called “Robinson roulette” from 1980 to 1984 in Central Arkansas where he would put some of his men in some stores in the back room with guns and the number of robberies in stores sank. I got this from Dan Mitchell’s […]
I have put up lots of cartons and posters from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. Amusing Gun Control Picture – Circa 1999 April 3, 2010 by Dan Mitchell Dug this gem out […]
We got to cut spending and stop raising the debt ceiling!!! When Governments Cut Spending Uploaded on Sep 28, 2011 Do governments ever cut spending? According to Dr. Stephen Davies, there are historical examples of government spending cuts in Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, and America. In these cases, despite popular belief, the government spending […]
I have put up lots of cartons and posters from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. On 2-6-13 the Arkansas Times Blogger “Sound Policy” suggested, “All churches that wish to allow concealed […]
Gun Free Zones???? Stalin and gun control On 1-31-13 ”Arkie” on the Arkansas Times Blog the following: “Remember that the biggest gun control advocate was Hitler and every other tyrant that every lived.” Except that under Hitler, Germany liberalized its gun control laws. __________ After reading the link from Wikipedia that Arkie provided then I responded: […]
On 1-31-13 I posted on the Arkansas Times Blog the following: I like the poster of the lady holding the rifle and next to her are these words: I am compensating for being smaller and weaker than more violent criminals. __________ Then I gave a link to this poster below: On 1-31-13 also I posted […]
He compares contemporary America’s views on abortion, infanticide and euthanasia for the elderly to the doctrines of pre-Hitler Germany.
He holds that American public school children are “just as secularized” as those in the Soviet Union when it comes to religious instruction.
He believes that the only salvation for this country, which he maintains is “a long way down the road” to tyranny, is to return the nation, its laws and its government to its “Christian foundations.”
The views are those of Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer, a man regarded as a modern-day prophet by certain segments of conservative evangelical Christianity. Schaeffer, an American whose Swiss-based L’Abri center for the conversion of young people has spread its influence around the world, is not widely known in this country.
That may change. The jet-setting evangelist has canceled his commitments in other parts of the world to devote a year to what he views as the grave spiritual and political peril of this country.
Earlier this week, he brought the convention of the National Religious Broadcasters to its feet in shouts of approbation with his grim analysis of this nation’s moral climate and his challenge to the broadcasters to use their airwaves to set things right again.
In Schaeffer’s view, the great evil that has befallen this country in the last 40 to 80 years is secular humanism. In that time, he said, there has been “a shift from a Christian foundation to a humanistic one. Instead of the final reality being in a living, personal God . . . we are now taught in our public schools and in much of our media that instead of God, the final reality is material or energy shaped by chance.”
The secular humanist philosophy has not only given sanction to abortion, pornography, “the breakdown in the family, the killing of human babies,” it is also beginning to erode traditional freedoms in this country, he said.
“The founding fathers founded this country on the basis that there is a God, that He gave inalienable rights,” he said. As the humanist world view “takes over, these freedoms are going to be lost. There will be chaos because there is no absolute in humanism to which to appeal,” he said, which, in turn, “will lead to some form of authoritarian control to control the chaos.”
Schaeffer and his wife, Edith, have become almost cultic figures within a certain segment of conservative evangelicalism. Having lived most of his professional life in Switzerland, his influence in this country has been largely through his books and an occasional speaking engagement, though a vigorously antiabortion film, “Whatever Happened to the Human Race,” in which he appears with Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, brought him to the attention of TV audiences last year.
He has written 22 books that have been translated into 25 languages, according to the publisher of his latest work, “The Christian Manifesto.” There are 2 1/2 million copies of his works in English alone. One of his publishers is Inter-Varsity Press, which caters to evangelicals in the university communities.
He is no mass evangelist in the style of Billy Graham. Schaeffer’s efforts at soul-winning have been much more personal, particularly in the small groups that assemble and live for a time in his L’Abri community. In his early days as a pastor he allied himself with the International Council of Churches, now dominated by the fundamentalist preacher, Carl McIntire, but Schaeffer eventually broke with that group because he found it too antagonistic in its dealings with other Christians, and founded his own church at L’Abri.
Both his and his wife’s works are used widely as the basis for Christian cells and study groups within conservative evangelical circles. A thinker as well as a rousing preacher, he has become the leading theoretician for a substantial segment of born-again Protestantism.
Schaeffer is regarded by his admirers as an apostle to intellectuals, lecturing in university communities. But his current war on secular humanism may shift that focus. During much of the four days of the broadcasters’ convention here, he spent his time talking to and praying with an array of government officials “up to all but the highest level,” an aide said, pressing his view that a national return to God is the only salvation for the nation.
Schaeffer, who is given to quoting himself and the books and films of other members of his family in both his speeches and his books, issues his clarion call only to other born-again, “Bible-believing” Christians. Liberal Christianity, he says repeatedly, is only another part of the problem.
“The [Christian] liberals these days always come down on the side of the humanists,” he told the broadcasters.
Christians — “and I mean real Christians” — have been “stupid” and too much concerned with their own affairs in recent years to recognize the growing peril, Schaeffer said.
“If the church had been stirred 40 years ago even to the level it is today the country would not be in the mess it’s in,” he said.
The prime example of the humanist view, the Supreme Court’s ruling nine years ago on abortion, “had no basis in law,” he said. It cut “the law completely adrift not only from God’s law but from the Constitution as well.” He did not elaborate this point.
As for the banishment of religious instruction and exercises in public schools, “It’s tyranny! It’s tyranny!” he cried. “Congress opens with prayer, but children can’t pray in school.”
Schaeffer said that “in the conservative swing in the last election, we have a special opportunity . . . It’s now or never.”
In sanctioning abortion, pornography and euthanasia and in driving religion from the schools, “The government has made itself a false God,” Schaeffer thundered. “Are we to bow down to a false God?”
From the back of the hall came the cry: “Never!”
“You are the people,” Schaeffer told the broadcasters; “You are the ones who reach this nation . . . who have the technology to speak to people as no one else has . . . If you don’t carry this message, who is going to?” he challenged.
“We must use every legal means at the present time” to return the nation to its Judeo-Christian heritage, he said. But if persuasion fails, Christians “must face the bottom line and face what people in communist countries face” and break objectionable laws in civil disobedience.
After all, he said, “When a government negates the law of God, it abrogates its authority.”
How Should We Then Live? outline
Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason
____________________
Episode 8: The Age Of Fragmentation
Published on Jul 24, 2012
Dr. Schaeffer’s sweeping epic on the rise and decline of Western thought and Culture
_______________________
Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 1 | Abortion of the Human Race
How Should We Then Live: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture is a major Christian cultural and historical documentary film series and book. The book was written by presuppositionalisttheologianFrancis A. Schaeffer and first published in 1976. The book served as the basis for a series of ten films. Schaeffer narrated and appeared throughout the film series, which was produced by his son Frank Schaeffer and directed by John Gonser.[1] In the film series, Schaeffer attacked the influences of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and Charles Darwin. The films were credited with inspiring a number of leaders of the American conservative evangelical movement, including Jerry Falwell.[2] The complete list of materials that the Schaeffers produced under the title “How Should We Then Live?” include the initial book, a study guide for the book, the ten-episode film series, and study aids for the films.
According to Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live traces Western history from Ancient Rome until the time of writing (1976) along three lines: the philosophic, scientific, and religious.[3] He also makes extensive references to art and architecture as a means of showing how these movements reflected changing patterns of thought through time. Schaeffer’s central premise is: when we base society on the Bible, on the infinite-personal God who is there and has spoken,[4] this provides an absolute by which we can conduct our lives and by which we can judge society. This leads to what Schaeffer calls “Freedom without chaos.”[5] When we base society on humanism, which he defines as “a value system rooted in the belief that man is his own measure, that man is autonomous, totally independent”,[6] all values are relative and we have no way to distinguish right from wrong except for utilitarianism.[7] Because we disagree on what is best for which group, this leads to fragmentation of thought,[8] which has led us to the despair and alienation so prevalent in society today.[9] Another premise is that modern relative values are based on Personal Peace (the desire to be personally unaffected by the world’s problems) and Affluence (an increasing personal income.)[10] He warns that when we live by these values we will be tempted to sacrifice our freedoms in exchange for an authoritarian government who will provide the relative values.[11] He further warns that this government will not be obvious like the fascist regimes of the 20th century but will be based on manipulation and subtle forms of information control, psychology, and genetics.[12]
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Ancient Rome – The finite Graeco-Roman gods were not a sufficient inward base for the Roman society: Rome crumbled from within, and the invasions of the barbarians only completed the breakdown.
Chapter 2: The Middle Ages – Had many positive elements of a Christian society, but allowed humanistic concepts to begin to blend with the earlier Bible based Christianity. These elements would begin to polarize in the Renaissance.
Chapter 3: The Renaissance – The rebirth of classical thought. The humanistic ideal, man beginning only from himself, becomes dominant and will continue to grow to its logical conclusion through the further periods.
Chapter 4: The Reformation – The philosophic reasons the reformers wanted to break away from the Church of Rome. The reformers attitudes toward art and culture.
Chapter 5: The Reformation – Continued – The effects the Reformation had on society, affecting thinkers who even themselves may not have been Christian by the traditional definition.
Chapter 6: The Enlightenment – How optimism at human potential became divorced from religion. How the French Revolution showed the logical conclusion of this.
Chapter 7: The Rise of Modern Science – Science’s foundation came from confidence that God had created an orderly world that we could understand.
Chapter 8: The Breakdown in Philosophy and Science – The shift from the concept of the uniformity in an open system to the concept of natural causes in a closed system[13] begins the descent to despair and the conclusion that man is merely a machine.[14]
Chapter 9: Modern Philosophy and Modern Theology – Further steps down the line of despair. How the theologians follow the philosophers.
Chapter 10: Modern Art, Music, Literature, and Films – Numerous examples of despair and alienation in modern productions.
Chapter 11: Our Society – How the values of personal peace and affluence permeate our society.
Chapter 12: Manipulation and the New Elite – How our society has opened itself up to the coming of an elite authoritarian state.
Chapter 13: The Alternatives – Return to the Christian foundation of our society[15] or face increasing economic breakdown, war, the chaos of violence, radical redistribution of wealth, and growing shortage of food and natural resources.[16]
A Special Note – Christians have special responsibilities
Chronological Index – A detailed time line, intended to be used like an index, with page number references tied to the text.
Topical Index – A more traditional index
Select Bibliography
Inspiration for the film series
The film series “Was intended as a Christian version of Sir Kenneth Clark‘s popular Civilization series on public television.”[17] Schaeffer often decried the Civilization series and other programs appearing on Public Television in America as part of a relativist conspiracy, declaring “Public television gives us many things that many of us like culturally, but is also completely committed to a propaganda position that the last reality is only material/energy shaped by pure chance. Clark’s Civilization, Bronowski‘s The Ascent of Man, Carl Sagan‘s Cosmos — they all say it. There is only one final view of reality that’s possible and that is that the final reality is material or energy shaped by pure chance. It is about us on every side, and especially the government and the courts have become the vehicle to force this anti-God view on the total population.”[18] A number of consultants and researchers were approached to provide input in specialist areas, these included Hans Rookmaaker for the history of art, and opera singer Jane Stuart Smith for music[19] A guide to accompany the film series was also produced to facilitate group study.
The film series
The film series How Should We Then Live? was a 1977 Gospel Films Production, written and narrated by Francis A. Schaeffer, executive producer Billy Zeoli, created and produced by Franky Schaeffer V, directed by John Gonser (some scenes by Franky Schaeffer V), post production directed by Mel White. Each episode is just under half an hour.
Episode I – The Roman Age
Episode II – The Middle Ages
Episode III – The Renaissance
Episode IV – The Reformation
Episode V – The Revolutionary Age
Episode VI – The Scientific Age
Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason
Episode VIII – The Age of Fragmentation
Episode IX – The Age of Personal Peace & Affluence
Episode X – Final Choices
Reception
Speaking Tour
Colin Duriez, in his biography of Schaeffer, describes the initial speaking tour and its reception: “Schaeffer spoke at seminars across North America where the film series was shown. In an initial speaking tour of eighteen cities in 1977, there was an enthusiastic response to the screening of the ten half-hour episodes… The film series was also shown around Europe, including local screenings set up by churches and Christian groups in the United Kingdom… The prospect of a large screen presentation perhaps removed peoples fears of being lost, as when hearing or reading Schaeffer undiluted. The seminar pattern, with a lecture by Francis and a showing of an episode followed by his taking questions from the audience, anticipated the more controversial series Whatever Happened to the Human Race? which, however, had smaller audiences.”[20]
Influence among Evangelicals
The film series “became a sensation among evangelicals, drawing audiences of up to five thousand in the churches that screened it. The accompanying book was a best-seller in the evangelical market…”, selling forty thousand copies in the first three months.[20] “…[In America] Conservative evangelicals had been looking for an explanation for the secular drift of their country, and Schaeffer’s diagnosis of contemporary cultural ills gave them a framework for understanding it.”[21] With this and his other works “Schaeffer gave an entire generation of ministers the permission to read philosophy and to be engaged with the culture. It was not unusual for a ministerial student to be accused of ‘carnal-mindedness’ for reading philosophers or, even worse novelists, in an attempt to broaden the range of Christian apologetics. Schaeffer…can be credited for overcoming the monopoly of biblical studies and theology in the education of Evangelical ministers.”[17]
Frank Schaeffer the creator/producer of the film series states “How Should We Then Live? and the second series…”Whatever Happened to the Human Race? are still standard works today in thousands of evangelical high schools, colleges, and seminaries around the world. For many evangelicals, Francis Schaeffer is their first, and perhaps only, introduction to what ‘we’ think about art, history and culture, and politics – not to mention ‘life issues.'”[22]
In America the film series/book’s call to action against legalized abortion is seen as a key impetus to the development of a political Christian Right movement, “Conservative evangelicals’ newfound devotion to the GOP stemmed partly from their increased attention to abortion. In 1980, evangelicals had opposed abortion, but they generally viewed it as only one of many national sins, including the sexual revolution, homosexuality, feminism, and pornography. In the mid-1980s, evangelicals moved closer to the conservative Catholic position on the issue and began to view abortion as a unique evil, far worse than other national sins. Evangelicals heightened concern about abortion was largely due to the influence of Francis Schaeffer and his son Franky.”[21] It is generally admitted by Evangelical leaders, such as Ralph Reed, that “abortion only became a central issue for Evangelicals as a result of a book and ten-part film series in 1976, How Should We Then Live?“[17]
Catholic response
While praising Schaeffer’s message against legalized abortion, Schaeffer’s comments in the film series/book about the Catholic Church drew a critical response. In the series, particularly when speaking about the Reformation, Schaeffer repeats much of the Criticism of the Catholic Church made by previous Protestant leaders and restates such criticism as accepted fact. Catholics have always taken issue with such claims, seeing them as outright falsehoods or at the very least misrepresenting their faith.
Aquinas controversy
Roman Catholic scholar Taylor Marshall has disputed Schaeffer’s assessment of Thomas Aquinas, specifically with regard to the effect of the Fall on the intellect, which was subsequently repeated by other theologians following after Schaeffer (such as Tim Lahaye in The Battle for the Mind). In both the book and film series Schaeffer states: “Then came Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican Monk. He was the outstanding theologian of that period and his thinking still has much influence. He had an incomplete view of the fall of man, as man had revolted against God. In his view the human will was fallen or corrupted, but the intellect was not. As a result of this emphasis, gradually philosophy began to act in an increasingly independent autonomous manner.” Schaeffer, who never actually quotes Aquinas in the series, goes on to mark him as a key source for the development of humanism and relativism.
Dr. Taylor Marshall in response points to Aquinas’ work (Summa Theologica Ia, q. 85 a. 3) where he expounds on the work of the Venerable Bede, who lists the effects of the fall of man as four wounds which includes the fall of the human intellect. Aquinas writes “Therefore in so far as the reason is deprived of its order to the true, there is the wound of ignorance; in so far as the will is deprived of its order of good, there is the wound of malice; in so far as the irascible is deprived of its order to the arduous, there is the wound of weakness; and in so far as the concupiscible is deprived of its order to the delectable, moderated by reason, there is the wound of concupiscence.”[23]
In absolute contrast to Schaeffer, Catholics see Aquinas as an enemy of relativism citing his work on theology (including ST I Q1 A6 ad 2) where he says “The principles of other sciences either are evident and cannot be proved, or are proved by natural reason through some other science. But the knowledge proper to this science [theology] comes through revelation and not through natural reason. Therefore it has no concern to prove the principles of other sciences, but only to judge of them. Whatsoever is found in other sciences contrary to any truth of this science must be condemned as false: ‘Destroying counsels and every height that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God’ (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).”[24] Rather than Aquinas, Catholics see Immanuel Kant as the key figure in Modern Relativism.[25]
Unease over Schaeffer’s portrayal of Aquinas is not limited to Catholics. J.P. Moreland, a professor of the Talbot School of Theology, writing the forward to the 2006 reprint of Schaeffer’s book Escape from Reason, states “Others argue, sometime correctly, that Schaeffer paints with too broad a brush and, as a result, somewhat misrepresents certain thinkers. I, for one, do not think his treatment of Thomas Aquinas is entirely fair or accurate. However at the end of the day these criticisms miss the genius of this book.”[26]
As an indication of the controversy of his position on Aquinas, soon after Schaeffer’s death the premier Evangelical magazine Christianity Today, included a cartoon of him. In it Schaeffer enters the gates of heaven with his trademark goatee while wearing lederhosen. Saint Peter finds his name in the Book of Life and says “Francis Schaeffer…Oh, yes. Saint Thomas Aquinas would like to have a word with you.”[27]
References
^ Colin Duriez (2008). Francis Schaeffer – An Authentic Life, page 184. InterVarsity Press
^ abc Deal Wyatt Hudson (2008). Onward Christian soldiers: the growing political power of Catholics and Evangelicals in the United States. New York,NY: Threshold Editions.[page needed]
^ Colin Duriez (2008). Francis Schaeffer – An Authentic Life, page 184. InterVarsity Press
^ ab Duriez. Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life, page 186
^ ab Daniel K. Williams (2010). God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right. Oxford University Press.[page needed]
^ Frank Schaeffer (2007). Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back. Carrol & Graf.[page needed]
The Francis and Edith Schaeffer Story Pt.1 – Today’s Christian Videos The Francis and Edith Schaeffer Story – Part 3 of 3 Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the […]
THE MARK OF A CHRISTIAN – CLASS 1 – Introduction Published on Mar 7, 2012 This is the introductory class on “The Mark Of A Christian” by Francis Schaeffer. The class was originally taught at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Overland Park, KS by Dan Guinn from FrancisSchaefferStudies.org as part of the adult Sunday School hour […]
The Francis and Edith Schaeffer Story Pt.1 – Today’s Christian Videos The Francis and Edith Schaeffer Story – Part 3 of 3 Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the […]
The Francis and Edith Schaeffer Story Pt.1 – Today’s Christian Videos The Francis and Edith Schaeffer Story – Part 3 of 3 Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the […]
The Francis and Edith Schaeffer Story Pt.1 – Today’s Christian Videos The Francis and Edith Schaeffer Story – Part 3 of 3 Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the […]
The Francis and Edith Schaeffer Story Pt.1 – Today’s Christian Videos The Francis and Edith Schaeffer Story – Part 3 of 3 Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” (Episode 2) SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book really helped develop my political views concerning […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book really helped develop my political views […]
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 […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 5) TRUTH AND HISTORY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book really helped develop my political views concerning abortion, […]
I was saddened to learn of the passing of Dr. John Raymond Smythies on January 28, 2019 in La Jolla, CA, and I wanted to spend time on several posts concentrating on him.
John Raymond Smythies, a British psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and psychedelic pioneer, who spent much of his professional life in the US, died in La Jolla, San Diego, at the age of 96. Smythies was born in Nainital, British India, but as a young boy he was sent to attend school in England. He obtained his medical degree in 1945 from Cambridge, having studied at Christ’s College, with the clinical years spent in London. After two years as a Royal Navy surgeon aboard HMS Porlock Bay in Bermuda, he returned to train as a psychiatrist at St George’s Hospital in London. It was during this period that he became aware both of the old German literature on the hallucinogenic effects of the peyote cactus derivative mescaline, and also the striking structural similarities between it and a metabolite of adrenalin called adrenochrome. He introduced these ideas to his then senior registrar, Humphrey Osmond, and together they developed and proposed what was the first biochemical theory of schizophrenia—the transmethylation hypothesis. Although ultimately not substantiated, their theory was a paradigm shift in our thinking about psychiatric disease and heralded the modern era of biochemical psychiatry. The intention back then had been to use psychedelics like mescaline and, … LESS
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Larry Joe Speaks was 69 years old (his middle name came from his father Joe who fought in the BATTLE OF THE BULGE in World War 2)
The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon’, oil on canvas painting by Edward Poynter, 1890
Adrian Rogers pictured below
The Passion of the Christ: The Crucifixion.
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April 7, 2017
John Raymond Smythies, Center for Brain and Cognition,
La Jolla, CA 92093-0109
Dear Dr. Smythies,
I discovered that on this morning of April 7, 2017 my good friend Larry Speaks has died and gone to heaven. Let me tell you a little about him. After Larry put is faith in Christ alone for his salvation over 20 years ago he got started on a hobby of listening and discussing some of the great sermons that he heard. One of those sermons was WHO IS JESUS? by Adrian Rogers. In fact, he asked me to run off some cassette tapes of that message so he could give it to people who used to come into his store SOUTHERN FRUIT & GROCERY. After he sold the store he continued to give out this message and over the years I switched to putting it on CD’s for him to give out. Even the last years of his life he would go to McCain Mall and walk through the mall and give out the CD’s. He was thrilled that so many people were glad to get them, and he was disappointed when occasionally someone would decline to accept his gift.
In the last years of his life King Solomon took time to look back and then he wrote the BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES. Solomon did believe in God but in this book he took a look at life “UNDER THE SUN.” Christian scholar Ravi Zacharias has noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term ‘UNDER THE SUN.’ What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system, and you are left with only this world of time plus chance plus matter.”
Francis Schaeffer comments on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of death:
Ecclesiastes 9:11
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.
Chance rules. If a man starts out only from himself and works outward it must eventually if he is consistent seem so that only chance rules and naturally in such a setting you can not expect him to have anything else but finally a hate of life.
Ecclesiastes 2:17-18a
17 So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind. 18 I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun…
That first great cry “So I hated life.” Naturally if you hate life you long for death and you find him saying this in Ecclesiastes 4:2-3:
2 And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive.3 But better than both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil deeds that are doneunder the sun.
He lays down an order. It is best never have to been. It is better to be dead, and worse to be alive. But like all men and one could think of the face of Vincent Van Gogh in his final paintings as he came to hate life and you watch something die in his self portraits, the dilemma is double because as one is consistent and one sees life as a game of chance, one must come in a way to hate life. Yet at the same time men never get beyond the fear to die. Solomon didn’t either. So you find him in saying this.
Ecclesiastes 2:14-15
14 The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them.15 Then I said in my heart, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?” And I said in my heart that this also is vanity.
The Hebrew is stronger than this and it says “it happens EVEN TO ME,” Solomon on the throne, Solomon the universal man. EVEN TO ME, even to Solomon.
Ecclesiastes 3:18-21
18 I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts.19 For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity.[n]20 All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return.21 Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth?
What he is saying is as far as the eyes are concerned everything grinds to a stop at death.
Ecclesiastes 4:16
16 There was no end of all the people, all of whom he led. Yet those who come later will not rejoice in him. Surely this also is vanity and a striving after wind.
That is true. There is no place better to feel this than here in Switzerland. You can walk over these hills and men have walked over these hills for at least 4000 years and when do you know when you have passed their graves or who cares? It doesn’t have to be 4000 years ago. Visit a cemetery and look at the tombstones from 40 years ago. Just feel it. IS THIS ALL THERE IS? You can almost see Solomon shrugging his shoulders.
Ecclesiastes 8:8
8 There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death: and there is no discharge in that war; neither shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it. (King James Version)
A remarkable two phrase. THERE IS NO DISCHARGE IN THAT WAR or you can translate it “no casting of weapons in that war.” Some wars they come to the end. Even the THIRTY YEARS WAR (1618-1648) finally finished, but this is a war where there is no casting of weapons and putting down the shield because all men fight this battle and one day lose. But more than this he adds, WICKEDNESS WON’T DELIVER YOU FROM THAT FIGHT. Wickedness delivers men from many things, from tedium in a strange city for example. But wickedness won’t deliver you from this war. It isn’t that kind of war. More than this he finally casts death in the world of chance.
Ecclesiastes 9:12
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.
Death can come at anytime. Death seen merely by the eye of man between birth and death and UNDER THE SUN. Death too is a thing of chance. Albert Camus speeding in a car with a pretty girl at his side and then Camus dead. Lawrence of Arabiacoming up over a crest of a hill 100 miles per hour on his motorcycle and some boys are standing in the road and Lawrence turns aside and dies.
Surely between birth and death these things are chance. Modern man adds something on top of this and that is the understanding that as the individual man will dies by chance so one day the human race will die by chance!!! It is the death of the human race that lands in the hand of chance and that is why men grew sad when they read Nevil Shute’s book ON THE BEACH.
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By the way, the final chapter of Ecclesiastes finishes with Solomon emphasizing that serving God is the only proper response of man. Solomon looks above the sun and brings God back into the picture. I am hoping that your good friend Woody Allen will also come to that same conclusion that Solomon came to concerning the meaning of life and man’s proper place in the universe in Ecclesiastes 12:13-14:
13 Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man.
14 For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil
NOW BACK TO MY FRIEND LARRY SPEAKS. If Larry was here now he would urge you to listen to the message WHO IS JESUS? by Adrian Rogers. Therefore, I wanted to give you a little part of that message. Under the point THE PROPHETIC WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES Adrian Rogers talks about Psalm 22:
Psalm 22 is an incredible chapter. Perhaps more than any other chapter in the Bible, you cannot read it and come away not loving the Bible and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Turn to Psalm 22. Just below the name of a psalm, often the name of the one who wrote it is given. Who is the human author of Psalm 22?
Through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, almost half (73) of the Bible’s 150 psalms were written by King David.
One thousand years before Jesus Christ, David prophetically foretold His crucifixion.
Since crucifixion was a Roman, not Jewish, form of execution, how is that possible? Crucifixion was completely unknown to the Jewish culture. It would be another 800 years before crucifixion came into the Jewish world. But here we find by divine inspiration a portrait of the cross.
and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them.
Harry Kroto
Nick Gathergood, David-Birkett, Harry-Kroto
I have attempted to respond to all of Dr. Kroto’s friends arguments and I have posted my responses one per week for over a year now. Here are some of my earlier posts:
In the second video below in the 95th clip in this series are his words but today I just wanted to pause and look at this life.
Quote from Dr. John Raymond Smythies
I would like to describe how mescaline works. These hallucination drugs have a very specific action in two ways. Number 1 they produce fantastic visual hallucinations. These are described by the people who have them (most of them are down to earth scientists such as MacDonald Critchley) as being more beautiful than anything they have ever seen in normal art. Some of these people have the sort of experience as union with God, mystical experiences and so on.
50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 1)
Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2)
A Further 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 3)
The John Lennon and the Beatles really were on a long search for meaning and fulfillment in their lives just like King Solomon did in the Book of Ecclesiastes. Solomon looked into learning (1:12-18, 2:12-17), laughter, ladies, luxuries, and liquor (2:1-2, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20). He fount that without God in the picture all […]
______________ George Harrison Swears & Insults Paul and Yoko Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds- The Beatles The Beatles: I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking […]
The Beatles in a press conference after their Return from the USA Uploaded on Nov 29, 2010 The Beatles in a press conference after their Return from the USA. The Beatles: I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis […]
__________________ Beatles 1966 Last interview I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. In this […]
_______________ The Beatles documentary || A Long and Winding Road || Episode 5 (This video discusses Stg. Pepper’s creation I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking and writing about […]
_______________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: _____________________ I have included the 27 minute episode THE AGE OF NONREASON by Francis Schaeffer. In that video Schaeffer noted, ” Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. It expressed the essence of their lives, thoughts and their feelings.” How Should […]
Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 1 ___________________________________ Today I will answer the simple question: IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE AN OPTIMISTIC SECULAR HUMANIST THAT DOES NOT BELIEVE IN GOD OR AN AFTERLIFE? This question has been around for a long time and you can go back to the 19th century and read this same […]
____________________________________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: __________ Francis Schaeffer has written extensively on art and culture spanning the last 2000years and here are some posts I have done on this subject before : Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 10 “Final Choices” , episode 9 “The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence”, episode 8 […]
Love and Death [Woody Allen] – What if there is no God? [PL] ___________ _______________ How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason) #02 How Should We Then Live? (Promo Clip) Dr. Francis Schaeffer 10 Worldview and Truth Two Minute Warning: How Then Should We Live?: Francis Schaeffer at 100 Francis Schaeffer […]
___________________________________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: ____________________________ Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?) Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical flow of Truth & History (intro) Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of History & Truth (1) Dr. Francis Schaeffer […]
House Democrats are moving ahead with a huge bill to raise taxes on businesses and individuals, increase welfare handouts, and micromanage numerous industries. It is a complex proposal that would increase taxes $2.1 trillion over 10 years with 66 provisions and would distribute tax breaks and spending with another 79 provisions.
The following table is my summary of the bill based on the official estimates. The bill would raise $2.073 trillion in taxes, distribute $1.202 trillion to infrastructure, green, and safety net programs, and leave $871 billion in higher taxes to be used for other spending in the overall Democratic agenda. Of the $1.202 trillion, 43 percent is tax cuts and 57 percent is spending through refundable tax credits.
Here is a brief summary of the Democratic tax plan:
Subtitle F, Infrastructure. The main provisions are subsidies for infrastructure bonds, building rehabilitation, and the low‐income housing tax credit (LIHTC). The LIHTC is an awful, fraud‐ridden program that mainly benefits developers. That the tax bill would expand it by $29 billion illustrates the absence of evidence‐based policymaking in Washington.
Subtitle G, Green Energy. The main provisions are subsidies for electric utilities, biofuels, energy efficiency, and electric vehicles. The subsidies are mainly in the form of tax credits, which are nearly always complex and difficult to administer.
Subtitle H, Safety Net. The main provisions would expand the child tax credit (CTC), the earned income tax credit (EITC), and the child and dependent care tax credit (CDCTC). The official scoreshows that three‐quarters of CTC and EITC benefits are spending, not tax cuts.
Subtitle I, Tax Increases. The $2.1 trillion in tax hikes include raising the corporate tax rate ($540 billion), raising taxes on business foreign operations ($424 billion), and raising income and capital gains taxes on individuals and small businesses ($1 trillion).
The Democratic tax plan would seize $2.1 trillion from the private economy and use it to micromanage industries and buy votes with handouts to favored interests. The actions of seizing, micromanaging, and handing out benefits would each distort the economy and reduce overall national income.
There would be other costs of the plan. The 145 provisions and the follow‐on regulations would generate large administrative and compliance costs, which would only benefit high‐paid lawyers and accountants. Another cost would be diverting the energies of the nation’s business leaders and entrepreneurs from making better products to dealing with all the new rules.
Below is a JCT table showing projected taxes by income level under present law and under the Democratic proposal in 2023. I circled the overall effective tax rates, meaning total federal income, payroll, and excise taxes as a percent of income. Under present law, the average tax rate at the top is 30 percent, which compares to 0–10 percent for groups at the bottom. If the tax plan passed, the average tax rate at the top would rise to 37 percent, while tax rates at the bottom would fall, going negative for some groups as CTC and EITC expansion wiped out all federal taxes for many additional households.
The reality is that President Biden, pictured at a ceremony where he signed a bill honoring law enforcement in the Rose Garden of the White House on Aug. 5, couldn’t go a year in office without pleading with oilocracies to hike production. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Last week, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ordered a “code red,” releasing a “landmark” report warning that global warming was an existential threat to humanity, “unequivocally” blaming humans for the problem, and demanding rapid action to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
“What the IPCC told us is what President [Joe] Biden has believed all along,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki noted last Tuesday. “Climate change is an urgent threat that requires bold action.”
The very next day, the Biden administration released a statement imploring the OPEC cartel to increase production of oil to help lower worldwide gas prices. “Higher gasoline costs,” the White House said, “if left unchecked, risk harming the ongoing global recovery.” The White House wants OPEC to go above the 400,000-barrels-per-day increase it already promised to implement, which doesn’t seem to jibe with the notion that we are on the precipice of the apocalypse.
As an economic matter, of course, the request makes total sense: By pressuring exporters to pump more oil, a fungible commodity, we lower costs worldwide.
Even though technology continues to create efficiencies that lower emissions, modernity relies heavily on affordable and reliable energy. Economies would collapse without it. And for emerging nations, affordable fossil fuel remains a prerequisite for lifting billions of people out of poverty.
As a political matter, it might seem odd, to say the least, that President Joe Biden is imploring foreign nations to increase supply. Firstly, such a position runs contrary to virtually every “green” plan in existence—almost all of which intentionally, through mandates or bans or taxes or contrived “markets,” exist to make fossil fuels more expensive and reduce use.
Clean energy advocates, including the president, argue that, in the aggregate, going green would be an economic plus. But if slightly higher prices threaten the world’s economic health, what would complete weaning from fossil fuels do to the economy? Biden has promised a “100% clean energy economy” with “net-zero emissions” in only a few decades. Without some technological miracle, this is a fantastical, not to mention suicidal, goal.
The reality is that Biden couldn’t go a year in office without pleading with oilocracies to hike production. In his defense, one assumes, people will point out that COVID-19 presents a historically unique situation. As far as the economics of recovery go, not really. In fact, this manmade downturn should be easier to mend than most. And this is certainly not the last recession or downturn or pandemic or world event that is going to affect the energy market.
Though it’s probably an unpopular position, I’d be content importing cheap oil, or allowing others to flood the market, while saving our own supply for a time when new drilling becomes more economically feasible. But the hypocrisy of all this is that Biden works to restrict energy trade only in North America.
Earlier this year, the president rescinded oil and gas lease sales from most of the nation’s massive state-owned lands and waters, citing climate change as the reason. He then shut down the Keystone XL pipeline, revoking a permit that was needed to build a 1,200-mile project that would have carried around 830,000 barrels per day of Alberta oil sands crude into the United States—probably more than enough to avoid begging OPEC for oil—again citing climate change as the reason.
At the same time, Biden lifted United States sanctions that would have blocked completion of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline that will transport fuel from Russia to Germany, which, like us, is a signee of the Paris Agreement.
Most European nations aren’t abiding by that agreement (well, without the help of an economy-paralyzing pandemic). Which is a reminder that to merely keep pace with the IPCC recommendations on carbon emissions, Americans, who use around 20 million barrels of petroleum every day, would be compelled to induce a pandemic-level shutdown of the economy every year for 30 years.
Americans, despite what they tell pollsters about climate change, demand affordable gas. You might recall that, despite his best efforts to undermine U.S. energy production, former President Barack Obama took credit for the domestic oil and gas boom. “That was me, people,” he told a crowd in 2018. Political pressure is also why the White House made sure its OPEC statement on gas prices was for public consumption, rather than simply making those requests of OPEC through diplomatic channels.
The Green New Deal, whatever iteration of the plan you care to support, is unfeasible. Biden’s request is just another reminder.
John Stossel: Through 50 years of reporting on scares, only COVID proved true
By John Stossel
Published November 17, 2020 at 7:06pm
I hear that climate change will destroy much of the world.
“There will be irreversible damage to the planet!” warns a CNN anchor.
Joe Biden says he’ll spend $500 billion a year to fight what his website calls an “existential threat to life.”
Really?
I’m a consumer reporter. Over the years, alarmed scientists have passionately warned me about many things they thought were about to kill Americans.
Asbestos in hair dryers, coffee, computer terminals, electric power lines, microwave ovens, cellphones (brain tumors!), electric blankets, herbicides, plastic residue, etc., are causing “America’s cancer epidemic”!
If those things don’t get us, “West Nile Virus will!” Or SARS, Bird Flu, Ebola, flesh-eating bacteria or “killer bees.”
Experts told me millions would die on Jan. 1, 2000, because computers couldn’t handle the switch from 1999. Machines would fail; planes would crash.
The scientists were well-informed specialists in their fields. They were sincerely alarmed. The more knowledge you have about a threat, the more alarmed you get.
Yet, mass death didn’t happen. COVID-19 has been the only time in my 50 years of reporting that a scare proved true.
Maybe you accepted the phrase I used above: “America’s cancer epidemic.” But there is no cancer epidemic. Cancer rates are down. We simply live long enough to get diseases like cancer. But people think there’s a cancer epidemic.
The opposite is true. As we’ve been exposed to more plastics, pesticides, mysterious chemicals, food additives and new technologies, we live longer than ever!
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That’s why I’m skeptical when I’m told: Climate change is a crisis!
Climate change is real. It’s a problem, but I doubt that it’s “an existential threat.”
Saying that makes alarmists mad.
When Marc Morano says it, activists try to prevent him from speaking.
“They do not want dissent,” says Morano, founder of ClimateDepot.com, a website that rebuts much of what climate activists teach in schools.
“It’s an indoctrination that’s so complete that by the time (kids) get to high school, they’re not even aware that there’s any scientific dissent.”
Morano’s new movie, “Climate Hustle 2,” presents that dissent. My new video this week features his movie.
Morano argues that politicians use fear of global warming to gain power.
“Climate Hustle 2” features Sen. Chuck Schumer shouting: “If we would do more on climate change, we’d have fewer of these hurricanes and other types of storms! Everyone knows that!”
But everyone doesn’t know that. Many scientists refute it. Congress’ own hearings include testimony about how our warmer climate has not caused increases in the number of hurricanes or tornadoes. “Climate Hustle 2” includes many examples like that.
“Why should we believe you?” I ask Morano. “You’re getting money from the fossil fuel industry.” After all, Daily Kos calls him “Evil Personified” and says ExxonMobil funds him.
“Not at all,” he replies. “I’m paid by about 90% individual contributions from around the country. Why would ExxonMobil give me money (when) they want to appear green?”
Morano’s movie frustrates climate activists by pointing out how hypocritical some are.
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio says he lives a “green lifestyle … (using) energy-efficient appliances. I drive a hybrid car.”
Then he flies to Europe to attend a party.
I like watching Morano point out celebrities’ hypocrisy, but think one claim in his movie goes too far.
“Stopping climate change is not about saving the planet,” says narrator Kevin Sorbo. “It’s about climate elites trying to convince us to accept a future where they call all the shots.”
I push back at Morano: “I think they are genuinely concerned, and they want to save us.”
“Their vision of saving us is putting them in charge,” he replies.
And if they’re in charge, he says, they will destroy capitalism.
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State of the Union 2013
Published on Feb 13, 2013
Cato Institute scholars Michael Tanner, Alex Nowrasteh, Julian Sanchez, Simon Lester, John Samples, Pat Michaels, Jagadeesh Gokhale, Michael F. Cannon, Jim Harper, Malou Innocent, Juan Carlos Hidalgo, Ilya Shapiro, Trevor Burrus and Neal McCluskey respond to President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union Address.
Video produced by Caleb O. Brown, Austin Bragg and Lester Romero.
Today I am taking a look at the response of the scholars of the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute scholars to the 2013 State of the Union Address.
Swept into office four years ago based, in part, on promises to slow sea-level rise, President Obama initiated a radical climate agenda. It seems we are seeing a rerun in 2013. It is worth asking what is different four years after his first State of the Union Address?
There have been four more years of no global warming. In 2010, there had been no significant world temperature increase for over a decade. The streak is now 16 years long. We have four years of costly lessons on the waste and inefficiency of green-energy subsidies.
The scientific basis for catastrophic climate change gets weaker and weaker. The economic argument for green subsidies has already collapsed. It is time for the administration to quit using both arguments to justify a regulatory and fiscal power grab.
– David W. Kreutzer, PhD, research fellow in energy economics and climate change, Center for Data Analysis
Is President Obama gutting the welfare reform that Bill Clinton signed into law? Morning Bell: Obama Denies Gutting Welfare Reform Amy Payne August 8, 2012 at 9:15 am The Obama Administration came out swinging against its critics on welfare reform yesterday, with Press Secretary Jay Carney saying the charge that the Administration gutted the successful […]
Senator Blunt Vows to Keep Pressure on President Obama Over Contraceptive Mandate Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Feb 13, 2012 http://blog.heritage.org/2012/02/13/sen-blunt-vows-to-keep-pressure-on-obama-… | Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) introduced legislation to protect religious organizations from Obamacare’s overreach last summer. Now, as President Obama presses forward with his anti-conscience mandate, Blunt is prepared to keep the pressure on the […]
Max Brantley is wrong about Tom Cotton’s accusation concerning the rise of welfare spending under President Obama. Actually welfare spending has been increasing for the last 12 years and Obama did nothing during his first four years to slow down the rate of increase of welfare spending. Rachel Sheffield of the Heritage Foundation has noted: […]
Sen. Mitch McConnell: Americans Don’t Approve of Anything Obama Has Done Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Dec 8, 2011 In an exclusive interview at The Heritage Foundation, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) sharply criticized President Obama for engaging in class warfare and accused him of shifting the focus away from his own failed policies in […]
Obamanomics: A Legacy of Wasteful Spending Published on Aug 12, 2012 by CFPEcon101 This mini-documentary from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation highlights egregious examples of wasteful spending from the so-called stimulus legislation and explains why government spending hurts economic performance. **Links to additional reading material** Thomas Sowell, “Stimulus or Sedative?” http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/03/09/stimulus_or_sedative_104… Veronique de […]
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. Is […]
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 […]
Thomas Sowell (This letter was mailed before September 1, 2012) President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a […]
I have been writing letters to President Obama almost all of 2012. I have received several responses from the White House but none of the responses have been personal responses from the President. Below is a letter I wrote to the President and a form letter response that I got followed by links to other […]
Democratic leaders in Congress are moving ahead with a $1 trillion infrastructure bill and a $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill to expand entitlements. Both bills are fiscally reckless and fund activities that are the proper responsibility of the states and private sector. To hear most politicians tell it, though, you would think there are no downsides — and only tremendous benefits — attendant to federal‐budget expansion. But that is not the case.
Here are ten reasons to oppose the infrastructure and entitlement bills.
Federal Overload
With more than 2,300 programs, the federal government is already far too large for policy‐makers to oversee. As economist Milton Friedman once observed, “Because government is doing so many things it ought not to be doing, it performs the functions it ought to be performing badly.” The White House’s focus on expanding the welfare state in recent months may, for instance, have distracted it from properly planning the Afghanistan pullout.
Tax Hikes
The infrastructure and entitlement bills would be funded partly by damaging tax hikes. Proposed corporate‐tax increases would undermine business investment, thus reducing job opportunities and wages. Proposed capital‐gains‐tax increases would undermine investment in start‐ups, particularly in technology hubs such as Silicon Valley.
Rising Debt
Both bills would be funded partly by incurring more debt, which would result in higher taxes down the road. If both bills pass, federal debt per U.S. household would rise from $179,000 today to $288,000 by 2031. As debt rises, a larger share of worker pay will be taxed to pay interest costs, which will be very hard on tomorrow’s workers, who will have their own costs and crises to deal with.
Economic Crisis
Rising debt could trigger an economic crisis marked by soaring interest rates and falling output. Greece’s debt crisis a decade ago created long‐lasting damage — its real income per capita is still down one‐quarterfrom its pre‐crisis level. Our combined federal‐ and state‐government debt is already about the same size relative to the economy as was Greece’s before its crisis.
States Can Fund It
Most of the proposed spending is for activities that states can fund themselves. With infrastructure, more than half the states have raised their gas taxes to fund their own highways and transit since 2015. With entitlements, some states are already funding activities that the Democrats want to impose nationally, such as paid family leave. Expanding entitlements is a bad idea, but it is far more damaging when in the form of a top‐down scheme imposed by Congress. Besides, the federal government is running huge deficits while the states are enjoying budget surpluses with tax revenues up 11 percent over pre‐pandemic levels.
Democracy
One casualty of rising federal spending is democracy. When the feds hand out subsidies for state and local activities, decision‐making authority is moved from elected state and local officials to unelected and unknown officials in far‐away Washington. The infrastructure and entitlement bills would move control over activities such as preschool, child care, paid leave, housing and zoning, and the electric grid to federal bureaucrats. That is why former Senator James Buckley argued that “citizens are effectively disenfranchised” by federal subsidy programs. In his April address to Congress, President Joe Biden expressed his support for “democracy” 16 times, but his plans to expand federal power would do the opposite.
Diversity
Residents of each state have varying preferences for social programs and taxes. In our federal system, the states can maximize value by tailoring policies to the needs of their residents. But the proposed bills would undermine such beneficial diversity by imposing one‐size‐fits‐all programs for paid leave, preschool, energy, and other activities. In his April address, the president promised that he would bring the nation together, but trying to force conformity on Americans with top‐down programs would increase anger and division.
Corporate Welfare
Democratic leaders, such as Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, often rail against corporate subsidies. Yet both bills include hundreds of billions in corporate subsidies for broadband, utilities, electric vehicles, manufacturing, research, renewable energy, and other items. If passed, the subsidies would be a boost to the corporate lobbyists in Washington, encouraging them to ask for even more, more, more …
Regulations
Federal subsidies come hand in hand with costly regulations imposed on the states, cities, and private groups administering the programs. The current federal education disabilities law, for example, is 94 pages long but has generated 1,700 pages of regulations and masses of litigation. Meanwhile, federal infrastructure subsidies come tied to labor and environmental rules that raise costs and delay projects. The proposed legislation would likely be accompanied by a mass of costly federal rules on education, energy, housing, college, child care, and other subsidized activities.
Fraud and Waste
Federal subsidy programs suffer from high levels of waste and fraud because state and local administrators have little incentive to restrain costs when the funds come “free” from Washington. Programs such as Medicaid and national school lunches have long had high fraud rates; we have seen massive fraud in the recent pandemic aid to the states, too. Meanwhile, federally funded local projects, such as light‐rail systems, often suffer from large cost overruns. The new hand‐out programs would suffer these same problems.
In sum, new infrastructure and entitlement spending would overload federal policy‐makers, who are already doing a lousy job of managing the vast array of current spending programs. All the proposed spending is for activities that should be instead handled by states, businesses, charities, and individuals. When it imposes national programs, Congress needlessly crushes diversity and local democratic choices. Americans would benefit more from a smaller, leaner federal government that balanced its budget and focused on its core missions.
But since I don’t expect the current crowd in Washington has any interest in getting rid of the Department of Transportation, perhaps we should have a more modest goal of eliminating subsidies for mass transit.
After all, there’s no reason why taxpayers across the nation should be subsidizing the cost of railway, bus, and subway travel in a handful of cities.
Getting rid of these handouts would save a decent chunk of money. Here’s a chart from Downsizing Government, which shows the history of pre-pandemic spending by the Federal Transit Administration.
But that chart is now out of date since politicians have used the pandemic as an excuse to dramatically increase the burden of federal spending. Including big handouts for mass transit.
And now they want to raid taxpayers for more transit money as part of a spending spree on infrastructure.
The Wall Street Journaleditorialized about this topic a couple of days ago.
Democrats are accusing Republicans of holding up the Senate infrastructure deal over funding for mass transit. Here’s what’s really going on: Republicans have bowed to most Democratic demands. But now Democrats are also insisting that they acquiesce to spending ever more to rescue broken rail and bus systems in big liberal cities. Mass transit typically receives $13 billion in federal funds each year, and Congress provided an additional $70 billion for urban transit last year in the myriad pandemic spending bills. That’s more than six times the normal transit budget and more than the annual operating and capital spending of every transit agency in the U.S. combined. …But most mass transit systems face a larger structural budget problem that pre-dated the pandemic: Ballooning operating costs from generous labor contracts and pension payments, which are siphoning off money from system improvements and repairs. Many systems have also been losing riders due to lousy service… So Democrats want Republicans to bail out those cities and their public unions. Republicans have agreed to a $48.5 billion supplemental appropriation for mass transit in the deal. But in addition Democrats are demanding that 20% of transportation spending from the highway trust fund—financed by gas tax revenues—go toward transit.
This is throwing good money after bad.
In a column for the Foundation for Economic Education back in 2019, Hans Bader explained that mass transit in an inefficient money pit.
Mass transit is largely a failure and continues to decline despite growing subsidies to many mass transit systems. Light rail systems are white elephants. …South Korea is abolishing its celebrated high-speed rail line from its capital, Seoul, to a nearby major city because it can’t cover even the marginal costs of keeping the trains running. Most people who ride trains don’t need maximum possible speed,and most of those who do will still take the plane to reach distant destinations. …most Japanese don’t take the bullet train either; they take buses because the bullet train is too expensive. Bullet trains do interfere with freight lines, so Japanese freight lines carry much less cargo than in the United States, where railroads—rather than trucks—carry most freight, thereby reducing pollution… California’s so-called bullet train is vastly behind schedule and over budget, and will likely never come close to covering its operating costs once it is built. …Just the first leg of this $77 billion project will cost billions more than budgeted. And the project is already at least 11 years behind schedule.
Government is a big reason why transit is so inefficient and expensive.
Industry expert Randal O’Toole wrote about the harmful impact of socialized systems back in 2018.
Public ownership of transit has significantly increased the cost of transit, creating another disadvantage for the transit industry relative to other modes of travel. Before 1964, transit systems in most American cities were private and profitable, albeit declining. In 1964, Congress gave cities and states incentives to take over transit systems, and within a decade nearly all had been municipalized …followed by a staggering decline in transit productivity. In the decade before 1964, transit systems carried an average of about 59,000 riders per operating employee. This plunged after 1964 and today averages fewer than 27,000 riders per employee… It is doubtful that any American industry has suffered a 54 percent decline in worker productivity over 30 years unless it was another industry taken over by the government and inflicted with all the inefficiencies associated with government control and management.
We’ll close with this chart from O’Toole’s study, which shows total taxpayer subsidies over time.
The bottom line is that government transit systems are a lot like government schools. More and more money gets spent over time with worse and worse results.
P.S. Click here and here to learn more about the boondoggle of government-funded rail.
P.P.S. Click here to learn more about the boondoggle of government-funded subways.
TRY BORROWING AT A BANK WITH A FINANCIAL CONDITION LIKE THE USA HAS:
The problem in Washington is not lack of revenue but our lack of spending restraint. This video below makes that point. WASHINGTON IS A SPENDING ADDICT!!!
I love reading this blog by Dan Mitchell. No two people agree on everything but I sure do agree with most everything Dan writes on this blog of his. However, I disagree silently with something he has written today. I think it is encouraging that the Republicans in the House have been able to accomplish some things in slowing down the growth in spending by Obama. I know Dan would agree that more needs to be done. For instance, why don’t they just vote no on the next increase to the debt ceiling limit. I have praised over and over and over the 66 House Republicans that voted no on that before. If they did not raise the debt ceiling then we would have a balanced budget instantly. I agree that the Tea Party has made a difference and I have personally posted 49 posts on my blog on different Tea Party heroes of mine.
What would happen if the debt ceiling was not increased? Yes President Obama would probably cancel White House tours and he would try to stop mail service or something else to get on our nerves but that is what the Republicans need to do.
In recent months, people have asked me why I’m acting all giddy and optimistic. Am I hooked on cocaine? Have I fallen in love? Did I inherit several million dollars?
…its liberal predecessor passed a trillion-dollar stimulus, enacted a government takeover of health care and institutionalized the power of Wall Street’s Too Big To Fail banks by passing the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law.
Then he explains that the new Tea Party Congress has changed the fiscal outlook.
…if you look at the hard numbers — if you look at the tax-and-spending trajectory that the United States was on before the 112th Congress was sworn into office, and then look at the path the U.S. is on now — you’d see that Republicans in Congress have made tremendous progress in shrinking the size and scope of the federal government.
But is there any proof?
Conn points out that the CBO “baselines” from early 2011 showed government growing very rapidly.
…the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released its annual Budget and Economic Outlook for fiscal years 2011 through 2021. That document showed the federal government was on track to spend…a total of almost $50 trillion ($49.8 trillion to be exact) through 2021. At the same time, tax revenues were set to rise from just 14.8 percent of GDP in 2011 to 20.8 percent in 2021.
The same estimates from early this year, by contrast, show government growing at a slower pace.
The CBO’s Budget and Economic Outlook for fiscal years 2013 through 2023 shows just how much House Republicans have actually accomplished. The federal government is now on track to spend just $46.2 trillion through 2021. That is a $3.6 trillion spending cut. And instead of taxes eating up 21 percent of the U.S. economy in 2021, now the government is set to take in just 18.9 percent.
Here are the respective baselines from those CBO publications. Let’s start by looking at how spending is projected to grow at a slower pace for the rest of the decade.
That’s $3.5 trillion of savings. Not genuine spending cuts, of course, but it’s real progress if government doesn’t grow as fast.
Here are the revenue numbers.
This data basically shows that the tax burden will be much smaller than projected because about 98 percent of the Bush tax cuts were made permanent as part of the fiscal cliff deal.
And if you believe in the Starve-the-Beast theory (and you should), this will make it harder for politicians to increase the burden of government spending in the future.
Conn also notes that the unemployment rate has fallen.
Despite all of this supposedly economy-killing “austerity,” unemployment has steadily fallen, too. When Republicans took control of the House in 2011, the nation’s unemployment rate was 9 percent. Today, it has fallen to 7.7 percent.
If this seems like a familiar point, it’s because I share his assessment. I wrote back in February of last year that gridlock was a positive thing for the economy since it reduced the likelihood of new bad policies.
What’s remarkable about these developments, as Conn notes, is that folks were expecting Obama to have momentum as his second term began.
Just three months ago, many in Washington were predicting Obama would steamroll Republicans into accepting higher taxes for millions of earners, undoing the sequester and maybe even passing new stimulus spending. Instead, Republicans have stayed unified, outfoxed Obama, preserved and made permanent most of last decade’s tax cuts (including permanent indexing of the Alternative Minimum Tax) and let the sequester cuts occur on schedule. As a result, Obama’s approval ratings have tumbled, and his entire second-term agenda is in jeopardy.
The final sentence in that excerpt explains why I’m feeling semi-optimistic. Obama’s agenda of more taxes and more spending is being thwarted.
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 49) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 48) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 47) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 46) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 45) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 44) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 43) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 42) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 41) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 40) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 39) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 38) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 37) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 36) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 35) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 34) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 33) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 32) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Congressmen Tim Huelskamp on the debt ceiling Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 31) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 30) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 29) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 28) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, […]
The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 27) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, […]
“No Time to Die” debuted at top of the Irish Singles Chart and the UK Singles Chart. It became Eilish’s first number-one single in the UK and made her the first artist born in the 21st century to top the chart. Furthermore, the song became the first James Bondtheme by a female artist to top the UK chart, as well as the second Bond theme overall to top that chart.[6] In the United States, “No Time to Die” debuted and peaked at number 16 on the BillboardHot 100.[7]
In an interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, Eilish explained how she was offered to make the next James Bond theme for No Time to Die, with her brother Finneas O’Connell.[8] On December 19, 2019, they flew to London to work with Hans Zimmerand his orchestra.[9] Finneas explained in an interview that he and his sister wrote and recorded the new James Bond theme song in three days while on a tour bus in Texas. While “No Time to Die” was still in production, the siblings met with the producer Barbara Broccoli, after performing a show in Dublin.[10][11] Broccoli had flown to meet Eilish and Finneas.[11] They were given parts of the script and started to create the theme. Finneas had originally tried to write the song on a guitar, but Eilish scrapped the idea.[11] Finneas later found a piano in the green room of a Texas arena and played a riff which would later appear in the song.[11]
Zimmer liked their demo and the trio would eventually meet in person to start recording the song with a 70-person orchestra at George Martin‘s AIR Studios.[11] She concluded saying, “For, like, a month-ish, like, half a month maybe, we were just kind of going back and forth to their team and us about, like, just getting it right and getting it right and getting it right and it went through a lot of different versions and then we got it, like, we all worked really hard, Hans was incredibly—like, easy to work with. It was a really good, collaborative experience.”[9]
Musically, “No Time to Die” is an orchestral popballad with R&B influences..[12][13][14][8] The track runs at 74 BPM and is in the key of E minor. It runs at four minutes and two seconds.[15] Eilish’s vocals span E3 to D5, which include a belted B4.[16]According to Roisin O’Connor of The Independent, the song “features classic elements of the most memorable Bond themes including a slow build; a dark, shivery theme; and dramatic orchestration”.[17]Cassie Da Costa of The Daily Beast said the song “begins with moody, atmospheric piano music before Billie’s pop-enunciated alto vibrato creeps in with depressive yet vague observations about love, loss, and violence”.[18] The song features orchestral arrangements by Hans Zimmer as well as Johnny Marr on guitar.[19]
According to Sheldon Pearce of Pitchfork, the lyrics reflect the “betrayal hinted at in the film’s trailer and embody the tension of espionage”.[14] In the chorus of the song, Eilish sings about a lover’s betrayal “Was I stupid to love you?/ Was I reckless to help?/Was it obvious to everybody else/That I’d fallen for a lie?/You were never on my side/Fool me once, fool me twice/Are you death or paradise?/Now you’ll never see me cry/There’s just no time to die.”[20]
Eilish was announced as the performer of the theme song for the 25th film in the James Bond franchise in January 2020, initially via the franchise’s official Twitter account.[21] Eilish called the opportunity “a huge honor”,[2] and O’Connell said they “feel so so lucky to play a small role in such a legendary franchise”.[2]No Time to Die director Cary Joji Fukunaga described himself as a fan of the duo, and the film’s producers, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, said the song is “impeccably crafted”.[5] At the 92nd Academy Awards, Eilish said the ballad was “written” and “done”.[22]
Eilish performed the song live for the first time at the 2020 Brit Awards on February 18, 2020 alongside Finneas, Zimmer and Marr.[18]
The official music video for “No Time to Die” was released on October 1, 2020.[23] The video was shot in black-and-white clip and was directed by Daniel Kleinman, who has designed every title sequence for the James Bond series since 1995, except Quantum of Solace in 2008.[23][24][25] In the visual, it shows Eilish singing behind an old-fashioned microphone, as she stares into the camera interspersed with scenes from the film showing James Bond (Daniel Craig) and Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) engaging in a love affair.[23][24][20] Justin Curto, writing for Vulture magazine, mentions the video has “smokey lounge-singer vibes”.[26] Rachel McRady of Entertainment Tonight commented that it was clear that “Madeleine betrays 007 in some way as the video continuously shares shots of the agent looking distrustful as he gazes upon his ladylove”.[23]
Alexis Petridis of The Guardian gave an overall positive review, stating that “No Time to Die” is a “confident”, and “appealing addition to the Bond theme canon.”[27] Chris Willman, writing for Variety, wrote that the track was one of the better James Bond themes to be written in the last 25 to 30 years.[28] Roisin O’Connor of The Independentstated that “‘No Time To Die’ is one of the best Bond theme songs we’ve had in some time.”[29] Alexa Camp of Slant Magazine said, “the lush, darkly cinematic track falls in line with past 007 themes”.[30] Cassie Da Costa of The Daily Beastdescribed the song as “not at the level” of Shirley Bassey‘s “Goldfinger” and Nancy Sinatra‘s “You Only Live Twice“, and said it was certainly not “Eilish’s best, but as of late, the Bond universe has been perfectly satisfied with good enough.”[18]
In June 2020, Billboard ranked “No Time to Die” as the 22nd best song of 2020 so far.[31]
British actor Daniel Craig poses during a photocall to promote the 24th James Bond film ‘Spectre’ on February 18, 2015 at Rome’s city hall. AFP PHOTO / TIZIANA FABI (Photo by VINCENZO PINTO and TIZIANA FABI / AFP)
Paris, France — Ever since the twanging guitar of John Barry’s theme song first appeared in “Dr No” in 1962, music has been crucial to the James Bond phenomenon.
The songs written for each title sequence have become a way of marking out the evolution of pop music through the past 60 years, from the classics of Shirley Bassey and Paul McCartney to Adele and Billie Eilish.
Nobody remembers Monty
Many assume the original theme was written by John Barry, in part because he became so closely associated with the Bond franchise, composing the soundtrack for 11 of the films.
In fact, Barry only arranged and performed the theme tune.
The famous dung-digger-dung-dung line was actually written by theater composer Monty Norman, developed from an unused Indian-themed score he had written for an adaptation of VS Naipaul’s “A House for Mr Biswas.”
It was Barry’s job to jazz it up, adding the blaring horns that made it so dramatic.
While Norman was given a one-off payment of just £250, Barry built a Hollywood career that has included five Oscars and classic soundtracks to “Midnight Cowboy,” “Out of Africa,” and many more.
Golden girl Shirley Bassey
Bassey became almost as closely linked to Bond as Barry — the only singer to deliver three title tracks: “Goldfinger” (1964), “Diamonds are Forever” (1971), and “Moonraker” (1979).
The first two are considered the most memorable in Bond history, the latter less so — Bassey later admitted she hated the “Moonraker” song and only did it as a favor to Barry.
“Goldfinger” made her a star, but the recording sessions were grueling, with Barry insisting that Bassey, then 27, hold the last belting note for seven full seconds.
“I was holding it and holding it — I was looking at John Barry and I was going blue in the face and he’s going — hold it just one more second. When it finished, I nearly passed out,” she later recalled.
A new Beatles beginning
The first Bond film without Barry on the baton was “Live and Let Die” in 1973.
For this, the producers turned to another famous “B” – The Beatles.
The group’s producer George Martin took over composing duties and brought in Paul McCartney and his band Wings for the theme song.
It became another classic and spawned a famous cover by Guns’N’Roses in later years.
From this point on, the Bond title song became its own mini-industry, without the involvement of the composer.
Big pop tie-ins followed, ranging from the not-so-successful (Lulu’s “The Man with the Golden Gun”) to classics like Carly Simon’s “Nobody Does it Better” and Duran Duran’s “A View to a Kill.”
FILE PHOTO: Auctioneer specialists hold a rare intact James Bond ‘Thunderball’ (1965) film poster (estimate £8,000-£12,000), featuring two panels of poster illustrations on the left by Frank McCarthy and two on the right by Robert McGinnis, at Ewbank’s Auctioneers, ahead of an upcoming sale, in Woking, Britain, April 7, 2021. REUTERS/Hannah McKay
The next generation
After a few desultory outings during the Pierce Brosnan years, the Bond genre got a shot of adrenaline with Adele’s “Skyfall” in 2012, which was the first to win an Oscar for best song.
The following year’s “Writing’s on the Wall” by Sam Smith also won an Oscar, though it got a more mixed critical reception.
The latest incarnation is pop princess Billie Eilish with “No Time to Die,” which she co-wrote with her brother Finneas.
It already has a thumbs-up from the doyenne of the Bond theme world, with Bassey telling The Big Issue: “She did a good job.”
The latest James Bond movie “Skyfall” stars Daniel Craig. 007 boozed so much that in all reality he would have had the tremulous hands of a chronic alcoholic, according to an offbeat study published by the British Medical Journal. PHOTO FROM FACEBOOK.COM/JAMESBONDOO7
Live And Let Die Theme Song – James Bond
Paul McCartney Uncle Albert Rare Studio Demo
Paul McCartney; Uncle AlbertAdmiral Halsey. (RAM 1971)
“Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” is a song by Paul and Linda McCartney from the album Ram. Released in the United States as a single on 2 August 1971,[1] but premiering on WLS the previous week (as a “Hit Parade Bound” (HPB)),[2] it reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on 4 September 1971,[3][4] making it the first of a string of post-Beatles, McCartney-penned singles to top the US pop chart during the 1970s and 1980s. Billboard ranked it number 22 on its Top Pop Singles of 1971 year-end chart.[5]
https://youtu.be/XI6C7L66zq8 “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” is composed of several unfinished song fragments that McCartney stitched together similar to the medleys from the Beatles‘ album Abbey Road.[6] The song is noted for its sound effects, including the sounds of a thunderstorm, with rain, heard between the first and second stanza, the sound of a telephone ringing, and a message machine, heard after the second stanza, and a sound of chirping sea birds and wind by the seashore. Linda’s voice is heard in the harmonies as well as the bridge section of the “Admiral Halsey” portion of the song.
McCartney said “Uncle Albert” was based on his uncle. “He’s someone I recall fondly, and when the song was coming it was like a nostalgia thing.”[7] McCartney also said, “As for Admiral Halsey, he’s one of yours, an American admiral”, referring to Fleet AdmiralWilliam “Bull” Halsey (1882–1959).[7] McCartney has described the “Uncle Albert” section of the song as an apology from his generation to the older generation, and Admiral Halsey as an authoritarian figure who ought to be ignored.[8]
Despite the disparate elements that make up the song, author Andrew Grant Jackson discerns a coherent narrative to the lyrics, related to McCartney’s emotions in the aftermath of the Beatles’ breakup.[9] In this interpretation, the song begins with McCartney apologizing to his uncle for getting nothing done, and being easily distracted and perhaps depressed in the lethargic “Uncle Albert” section.[9] Then, after some sound effects reminiscent of “Yellow Submarine,” Admiral Halsey appears to him calling him to action, although McCartney remains more interested in “tea and butter pie.” McCartney stated that he put the butter in the pie so that it would not melt at all.[9] Jackson sees a possible sinister allusion in the use of Admiral Halsey as a character in the song, since Halsey was famous for fighting the Japanese in World War II and claiming that “after the war, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell,” and McCartney’s ex-Beatle partner John Lennon had recently married a Japanese woman, Yoko Ono.[9] The “hands across the water” section which follows could be taken as evocative of the command “All hands on deck!”, rousing McCartney to action, perhaps to compete with Lennon.[9] The song then ends with the “gypsy” section, in which McCartney resolves to get back on the road and perform his music, now that he was on his own without his former bandmates who no longer wanted to tour.[9]
According to Allmusic critic Stewart Mason, fans of Paul McCartney’s music are divided in their opinions of this song.[13] Although some fans praise it as “one of his most playful and inventive songs” others criticize it for being “exactly the kind of cute self-indulgence that they find so annoying about his post-Beatles career.”[13] Mason himself considers it “churlish” to be annoyed by the song, given that song isn’t intended to be completely serious, and praises the “Hands across the water” section as being “lovably giddy.”[13]
On the US charts, the song set a songwriting milestone as the all-time songwriting record (at the time) for the most consecutive calendar years to write a #1 song. This gave McCartney eight consecutive years (starting with “I Want to Hold Your Hand“), leaving behind Lennon with only seven years.
“Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” also appears on Wings Greatest from 1978, even though Ram was not a Wings album, and again on the US version of McCartney’s 1987 compilation, All the Best!, as well as the 2001 compilation Wingspan: Hits and History.
Harry Shearer uses a looped sample of “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” for the “Apologies of the Week” segment of Le Show, with emphasis on McCartney saying “sorry”.
The film Greenberg includes a scene in which the character Florence, drunk on champagne, sings along to the song which Greenberg included on a mix-CD for her.
Jump up^“Top Pop 100 Singles” Billboard December 25, 1971: TA-36
Jump up^Blaney, J. (2007). Lennon and McCartney: together alone: a critical discography of their solo work. Jawbone Press. pp. 46, 50. ISBN978-1-906002-02-2.
I’m Waiting for the Man sung by Nico in 1982 (about waiting for drug fix) __________ Nico Icon documentary part 3 Nico Icon documentary part 4 NICO – I’m Waiting For The Man – (1982, Warehouse, Preston, UK) One of the top 10 songs from The Velvet Underground and Nico is the song “I’m Waiting […]
Nico’s sad story of drugs and her interaction with Jim Morrison Nico – These Days The Doors (1991) – Movie Trailer / Best Parts The Doors Movie – Back Door Man/When The Music’s Over/Arrest of Jim Morrison Uploaded on Jul 30, 2009 A clip from “The Doors” movie with “Back Door Man”, “When The Music’s […]
Dennis Jernigan – You Are My All In All Uploaded on Oct 18, 2009 Dennis Jernigan – You Are My All In All __________________________________________ Christian Singer’s Controversial Journey Revealed in New Documentary: ‘I Placed Homosexuality on Jesus’ Shoulders’ Oct. 2, 2014 2:23pm Billy Hallowell Singer-songwriter Dennis Jernigan has been making Christian music for decades, recording […]
Cole Porter’s songs “De-Lovely” and “Let’s misbehave” ‘At Long Last Love’: Let’s Misbehave/De-Lovely Uploaded on Apr 1, 2009 Burt Reynolds and Cybil Shepherd give an extraordinarily charming performance of Cole Porter’s songs in Peter Bogdanovich’s absolutely wonderful tribute to the golden age of film musicals, ‘At Long Last Love’. _____________________ De-Lovely From Wikipedia, […]
________ _______ Cole Porter’s song’s “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” My Heart Belongs To Daddy Uploaded on Jun 20, 2010 Mary Martin became popular on Broadway and received attention in the national media singing “My Heart Belongs to Daddy”. “Mary stopped the show with “My Heart Belongs to Daddy”. With that one song in the […]
______________ Love For Sale (De-Lovely) Love for Sale (song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2008) “Love for Sale“ Written by Cole Porter Published 1930 Form […]
Cole Porter’s song “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye” _________________ Natalie Cole – Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be […]
Cole Porter’s song “So in Love” __________________ So in love – De-lovely So in Love From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search For the song by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, see So in Love (OMD song). For the song by Jill Scott, see So in Love (Jill Scott song). Not to be […]
____________________ Cole Porter’s song “Night and Day” Cole Porter´s Day and Night by Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Night and Day (song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article […]
Johnny Cash – Big River Uploaded on Jan 16, 2008 Grand Ole Opry, 1962 _______________________________ John Lennon and Bob Dylan Conversation mention Johnny Cash and his song “Big River” _______________________ Big River (Johnny Cash song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia’s quality standards. No […]
British actor Daniel Craig poses during a photocall to promote the 24th James Bond film ‘Spectre’ on February 18, 2015 at Rome’s city hall. AFP PHOTO / TIZIANA FABI (Photo by VINCENZO PINTO and TIZIANA FABI / AFP)
Paris, France — Ever since the twanging guitar of John Barry’s theme song first appeared in “Dr No” in 1962, music has been crucial to the James Bond phenomenon.
The songs written for each title sequence have become a way of marking out the evolution of pop music through the past 60 years, from the classics of Shirley Bassey and Paul McCartney to Adele and Billie Eilish.
Nobody remembers Monty
Many assume the original theme was written by John Barry, in part because he became so closely associated with the Bond franchise, composing the soundtrack for 11 of the films.
In fact, Barry only arranged and performed the theme tune.
The famous dung-digger-dung-dung line was actually written by theater composer Monty Norman, developed from an unused Indian-themed score he had written for an adaptation of VS Naipaul’s “A House for Mr Biswas.”
It was Barry’s job to jazz it up, adding the blaring horns that made it so dramatic.
While Norman was given a one-off payment of just £250, Barry built a Hollywood career that has included five Oscars and classic soundtracks to “Midnight Cowboy,” “Out of Africa,” and many more.
Golden girl Shirley Bassey
Bassey became almost as closely linked to Bond as Barry — the only singer to deliver three title tracks: “Goldfinger” (1964), “Diamonds are Forever” (1971), and “Moonraker” (1979).
The first two are considered the most memorable in Bond history, the latter less so — Bassey later admitted she hated the “Moonraker” song and only did it as a favor to Barry.
“Goldfinger” made her a star, but the recording sessions were grueling, with Barry insisting that Bassey, then 27, hold the last belting note for seven full seconds.
“I was holding it and holding it — I was looking at John Barry and I was going blue in the face and he’s going — hold it just one more second. When it finished, I nearly passed out,” she later recalled.
A new Beatles beginning
The first Bond film without Barry on the baton was “Live and Let Die” in 1973.
For this, the producers turned to another famous “B” – The Beatles.
The group’s producer George Martin took over composing duties and brought in Paul McCartney and his band Wings for the theme song.
It became another classic and spawned a famous cover by Guns’N’Roses in later years.
From this point on, the Bond title song became its own mini-industry, without the involvement of the composer.
Big pop tie-ins followed, ranging from the not-so-successful (Lulu’s “The Man with the Golden Gun”) to classics like Carly Simon’s “Nobody Does it Better” and Duran Duran’s “A View to a Kill.”
FILE PHOTO: Auctioneer specialists hold a rare intact James Bond ‘Thunderball’ (1965) film poster (estimate £8,000-£12,000), featuring two panels of poster illustrations on the left by Frank McCarthy and two on the right by Robert McGinnis, at Ewbank’s Auctioneers, ahead of an upcoming sale, in Woking, Britain, April 7, 2021. REUTERS/Hannah McKay
The next generation
After a few desultory outings during the Pierce Brosnan years, the Bond genre got a shot of adrenaline with Adele’s “Skyfall” in 2012, which was the first to win an Oscar for best song.
The following year’s “Writing’s on the Wall” by Sam Smith also won an Oscar, though it got a more mixed critical reception.
The latest incarnation is pop princess Billie Eilish with “No Time to Die,” which she co-wrote with her brother Finneas.
It already has a thumbs-up from the doyenne of the Bond theme world, with Bassey telling The Big Issue: “She did a good job.”
The latest James Bond movie “Skyfall” stars Daniel Craig. 007 boozed so much that in all reality he would have had the tremulous hands of a chronic alcoholic, according to an offbeat study published by the British Medical Journal. PHOTO FROM FACEBOOK.COM/JAMESBONDOO7
“Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” is a song by Paul and Linda McCartney from the album Ram. Released in the United States as a single on 2 August 1971,[1] but premiering on WLS the previous week (as a “Hit Parade Bound” (HPB)),[2] it reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on 4 September 1971,[3][4] making it the first of a string of post-Beatles, McCartney-penned singles to top the US pop chart during the 1970s and 1980s. Billboard ranked it number 22 on its Top Pop Singles of 1971 year-end chart.[5]
https://youtu.be/XI6C7L66zq8 “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” is composed of several unfinished song fragments that McCartney stitched together similar to the medleys from the Beatles‘ album Abbey Road.[6] The song is noted for its sound effects, including the sounds of a thunderstorm, with rain, heard between the first and second stanza, the sound of a telephone ringing, and a message machine, heard after the second stanza, and a sound of chirping sea birds and wind by the seashore. Linda’s voice is heard in the harmonies as well as the bridge section of the “Admiral Halsey” portion of the song.
McCartney said “Uncle Albert” was based on his uncle. “He’s someone I recall fondly, and when the song was coming it was like a nostalgia thing.”[7] McCartney also said, “As for Admiral Halsey, he’s one of yours, an American admiral”, referring to Fleet AdmiralWilliam “Bull” Halsey (1882–1959).[7] McCartney has described the “Uncle Albert” section of the song as an apology from his generation to the older generation, and Admiral Halsey as an authoritarian figure who ought to be ignored.[8]
Despite the disparate elements that make up the song, author Andrew Grant Jackson discerns a coherent narrative to the lyrics, related to McCartney’s emotions in the aftermath of the Beatles’ breakup.[9] In this interpretation, the song begins with McCartney apologizing to his uncle for getting nothing done, and being easily distracted and perhaps depressed in the lethargic “Uncle Albert” section.[9] Then, after some sound effects reminiscent of “Yellow Submarine,” Admiral Halsey appears to him calling him to action, although McCartney remains more interested in “tea and butter pie.” McCartney stated that he put the butter in the pie so that it would not melt at all.[9] Jackson sees a possible sinister allusion in the use of Admiral Halsey as a character in the song, since Halsey was famous for fighting the Japanese in World War II and claiming that “after the war, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell,” and McCartney’s ex-Beatle partner John Lennon had recently married a Japanese woman, Yoko Ono.[9] The “hands across the water” section which follows could be taken as evocative of the command “All hands on deck!”, rousing McCartney to action, perhaps to compete with Lennon.[9] The song then ends with the “gypsy” section, in which McCartney resolves to get back on the road and perform his music, now that he was on his own without his former bandmates who no longer wanted to tour.[9]
According to Allmusic critic Stewart Mason, fans of Paul McCartney’s music are divided in their opinions of this song.[13] Although some fans praise it as “one of his most playful and inventive songs” others criticize it for being “exactly the kind of cute self-indulgence that they find so annoying about his post-Beatles career.”[13] Mason himself considers it “churlish” to be annoyed by the song, given that song isn’t intended to be completely serious, and praises the “Hands across the water” section as being “lovably giddy.”[13]
On the US charts, the song set a songwriting milestone as the all-time songwriting record (at the time) for the most consecutive calendar years to write a #1 song. This gave McCartney eight consecutive years (starting with “I Want to Hold Your Hand“), leaving behind Lennon with only seven years.
“Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” also appears on Wings Greatest from 1978, even though Ram was not a Wings album, and again on the US version of McCartney’s 1987 compilation, All the Best!, as well as the 2001 compilation Wingspan: Hits and History.
Harry Shearer uses a looped sample of “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” for the “Apologies of the Week” segment of Le Show, with emphasis on McCartney saying “sorry”.
The film Greenberg includes a scene in which the character Florence, drunk on champagne, sings along to the song which Greenberg included on a mix-CD for her.
Jump up^“Top Pop 100 Singles” Billboard December 25, 1971: TA-36
Jump up^Blaney, J. (2007). Lennon and McCartney: together alone: a critical discography of their solo work. Jawbone Press. pp. 46, 50. ISBN978-1-906002-02-2.
I’m Waiting for the Man sung by Nico in 1982 (about waiting for drug fix) __________ Nico Icon documentary part 3 Nico Icon documentary part 4 NICO – I’m Waiting For The Man – (1982, Warehouse, Preston, UK) One of the top 10 songs from The Velvet Underground and Nico is the song “I’m Waiting […]
Nico’s sad story of drugs and her interaction with Jim Morrison Nico – These Days The Doors (1991) – Movie Trailer / Best Parts The Doors Movie – Back Door Man/When The Music’s Over/Arrest of Jim Morrison Uploaded on Jul 30, 2009 A clip from “The Doors” movie with “Back Door Man”, “When The Music’s […]
Dennis Jernigan – You Are My All In All Uploaded on Oct 18, 2009 Dennis Jernigan – You Are My All In All __________________________________________ Christian Singer’s Controversial Journey Revealed in New Documentary: ‘I Placed Homosexuality on Jesus’ Shoulders’ Oct. 2, 2014 2:23pm Billy Hallowell Singer-songwriter Dennis Jernigan has been making Christian music for decades, recording […]
Cole Porter’s songs “De-Lovely” and “Let’s misbehave” ‘At Long Last Love’: Let’s Misbehave/De-Lovely Uploaded on Apr 1, 2009 Burt Reynolds and Cybil Shepherd give an extraordinarily charming performance of Cole Porter’s songs in Peter Bogdanovich’s absolutely wonderful tribute to the golden age of film musicals, ‘At Long Last Love’. _____________________ De-Lovely From Wikipedia, […]
________ _______ Cole Porter’s song’s “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” My Heart Belongs To Daddy Uploaded on Jun 20, 2010 Mary Martin became popular on Broadway and received attention in the national media singing “My Heart Belongs to Daddy”. “Mary stopped the show with “My Heart Belongs to Daddy”. With that one song in the […]
______________ Love For Sale (De-Lovely) Love for Sale (song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2008) “Love for Sale“ Written by Cole Porter Published 1930 Form […]
Cole Porter’s song “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye” _________________ Natalie Cole – Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be […]
Cole Porter’s song “So in Love” __________________ So in love – De-lovely So in Love From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search For the song by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, see So in Love (OMD song). For the song by Jill Scott, see So in Love (Jill Scott song). Not to be […]
____________________ Cole Porter’s song “Night and Day” Cole Porter´s Day and Night by Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Night and Day (song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article […]
Johnny Cash – Big River Uploaded on Jan 16, 2008 Grand Ole Opry, 1962 _______________________________ John Lennon and Bob Dylan Conversation mention Johnny Cash and his song “Big River” _______________________ Big River (Johnny Cash song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia’s quality standards. No […]
Chris Martin, 44, has revealed he still has mental scars from his evangelical Christian upbringingCredit: Getty
Chris said: “I am having such a hard time in my life right now. And part of dealing with that is going back to look at all that stuff.”
He added: “I could not sing Paint It Black by The Stones because I thought it was evil.”
But the dad of two told Howard Stern’s US radio show he still found it tough to discuss.
He said: “Any method of coping is a strength when you develop it, but later in your life it might not necessarily serve you anymore.”
Chris previously admitted moving away from religion, calling himself an “alltheist” as he believed in everything.
These are some of the most popular posts in the last 30 days about the spiritual quest of Chris Martin of Coldplay that can be found on http://www.thedailyhatch.org:
Coldplay 6-22-12 Dallas, TX Best Opening.MOV Published on Jun 23, 2012 by jaimenolga 1 of Don’t miss the second song of this clip!! It was incredible! (One eye watching you song was great.) Coldplay brought confetti, lights and thousands of fans to the American Airlines Center; see photos from their colorful show Photo Gallery News […]
Coldplay Live in Dallas – Lover’s in Japan Ball Drop Published on Jun 23, 2012 by TheRyanj64 Live From the American Airlines Center in Dallas Texas June 22, 2012 Coldplay – Lover’s in Japan Ball Drop Coldplay brought confetti, lights and thousands of fans to the American Airlines Center; see photos from their colorful show […]
Coldplay – Yellow (Live) @ American Airlines Center Published on Jun 23, 2012 by Crwdickerson Coldplay Performing Yellow @ American Airlines Center Dallas June 22, 2012 Coldplay brought confetti, lights and thousands of fans to the American Airlines Center; see photos from their colorful show Photo Gallery News Sports Lifestyles Comments (0) 3/11 Chris […]
Coldplay “paradise” Dallas Texas 6/22/12 ( Floor View ) Published on Jun 23, 2012 by ccam cher Awesome concert Coldplay brought confetti, lights and thousands of fans to the American Airlines Center; see photos from their colorful show Photo Gallery News Sports Lifestyles Comments (0) 9/11 Chris Martin was brought up as an evangelical […]
Coldplay – In My Place (Live in Dallas) June 22 2012 Published on Jun 24, 2012 by maimiaa Coldplay performing at American Airlines Center in Dallas, TX Coldplay brought confetti, lights and thousands of fans to the American Airlines Center; see photos from their colorful show Photo Gallery News Sports Lifestyles Comments (0) 7/11 […]
Viva La Vida Published on Jun 23, 2012 by TheRyanj64 Coldplay’s Viva La Vida at American Airlines Center in Dallas on June 22, 2012 __________ Coldplay brought confetti, lights and thousands of fans to the American Airlines Center; see photos from their colorful show Photo Gallery News Sports Lifestyles Comments (0) 5/11 Chris Martin […]
Coldplay – Mylo Xyloto/Hurts Like Heaven (Live) @ American Airlines Center Coldplay brought confetti, lights and thousands of fans to the American Airlines Center; see photos from their colorful show Photo Gallery News Sports Lifestyles Comments (0) 2/11 Published on Jun 24, 2012 by Crwdickerson Coldplay Performing Mylo Xyloto/Hurts Like Heaven @ AAC Dallas […]
Coldplay-DALLAS-2012-”Opening, Mylo Xyloto, and Hurts like Heaven!” Published on Jun 24, 2012 by ColdplayDALLAS2012 1:10 is where the concert starts! Sorry for the shaking and sound audio! It was really loud! AND AWESOME! Please THUMB UP and COMMENT if u went to this coldplay concert! And I also hope that this will get a few […]
Uploaded by emimusic on Feb 28, 2009 Pre-VEVO play count: 22,581,204 Music video by The Verve performing Bitter Sweet Symphony. ________ At the 4.40 mark in the clip below Chris Martin identifies the best song ever written in his estimation: What does the song mean? Here is a thought off the internet: This song is […]
As far as I know they have never done an interview together. Therefore, I have included separate interviews that they have done below and I have some links to past posts I have done on them too. Gwyneth Paltrow & Robert Downey Jr. on Jonathan Ross 2010.04.23 (Part 1) Coldplay: Chris Martin and Jonny Buckland […]
“This is about freedom. About freedom of women to have choice about the size and timing of their families, [which is] not the business of people on the court or members of Congress,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, pictured on Sept. 24, said about the abortion bill. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
House Democrats passed a bill Friday that would codify Roe v. Wade and massively expand abortions in the United States.
The Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021, first introduced in 2013, passed the House by a vote of 218 to 211. The 2021 House version was sponsored by Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., while the 2021 Senate version was sponsored by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.
The legislation is backed strongly by President Joe Biden’s administration.
“In the wake of Texas’ unprecedented attack, it has never been more important to codify this constitutional right and to strengthen health care access for all women, regardless of where they live,” White House officials said in a public statement. “Our daughters and granddaughters deserve the same rights that their mothers and grandmothers fought for and won—and that a clear majority of the American people support.”
The legislation, which calls for on-demand abortions “without limitations or requirements” and for the promotion of “access to abortion services,” has been severely condemned by pro-life activists and Republicans.
“With this bill, the Democrat Party has rejected every restraint on abortion,” said Penny Nance, CEO and president of Concerned Women for America’s Legislative Action Committee. “For them, aborting unborn children is nothing more than just another medical procedure. It’s a sick perspective that reflects the moral bankruptcy of their party, and it is infecting our country. Democrats exalt aborting babies as the ultimate empowerment of a self-made life.”
“God weeps,” Nance said.
National Right to Life President Carol Tobias warned that the legislation is designed to remove “all legal protections” for unborn babies at both the state and federal levels, calling the bill “the Abortion Without Limits Until Birth Act.”
Heritage Action for America Executive Director Jessica Anderson said the bill would be “the greatest assault on human dignity in America since Roe.”
“Left-wing politicians are cynically using the cover of ‘women’s health’ to disguise their plan to destroy every life-affirming law in the country,” Anderson said. “This bill would go far beyond Roe v. Wade to gut broadly supported federal and state laws protecting religious freedom, force taxpayers to pay for abortions, and, ironically, destroy rules that actually protect women’s health from dangerous procedures.”
Should it pass the Senate and be signed into law by Biden, the legislation would also nullify laws requiring that doctors provide mothers with information on their unborn baby or alternatives to abortion; requirements for waiting periods before abortions; laws that allow medical professionals to opt out of providing abortions; bans on abortions after 20 weeks, when unborn babies can feel pain; and bans on sex-selective abortions.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Wednesday that she did not support the legislation, calling parts of the bill “extreme” and warning that it would weaken the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
“I support codifying Roe. Unfortunately, the bill … goes way beyond that,” Collins said.
“It would severely weaken the conscious exceptions that are in the current law,” she told the Los Angeles Times.
Andrew Trunsky contributed to this report.
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I am a proud member of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers and I attended the convention in Dallas in July and we have officially launched a nationwide push against abortion rights.
The article below notes:
At its first annual policy conference last weekend, group members voted to make a controversial new Texas law, the “Texas Heartbeat Bill,” the organization’s first piece of model legislation, meaning that similar bills may soon pop up in state capitols across the country.
Announcing he planned to introduce a copycat bill, Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert (R), the founder and president of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, shared a template of legislation lawmakers in other states could fill in the blanks on and reproduce.
At the July 17th session of THE CHRISTIAN LAWMAKERS meeting in Dallas, I really got a lot out of the expert panel moderated by Texas State Senator Bryan Hughes entitled ABOLISHING ABORTION IN AMERICA. Here below is what Wikipedia says about Senator Hughes:
On March 11, 2021, Hughes introduced a fetal heartbeat bill entitled the Texas Heartbeat Bill (SB8) into the Texas Senate and state representative Shelby Slawson of Stephenville, Texas introduced a companion bill (HB1515) into the state house.[22]The bill allows private citizens to sue abortion providers after a fetal heartbeat has been detected.[22] The SB8 version of the bill passed both chambers and was signed into law by Texas Governor Greg Abbott on May 19, 2021.[22] It took effect on September 1, 2021.[22]
Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 1 | Abortion of the Human…
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Tucker: Democrats have abandoned their ‘my body, my choice’ argument
Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert presides over a Senate committee at the state Capitol in Little Rock, Ark. in this March 14, 2018, file photo. Rapert’s National Association of Christian Lawmakers met recently to talk model legislation and pass resolutions. Kelly P. Kissel, Associated Press
The National Association of Christian Lawmakers has officially launched a nationwide push against abortion rights.
At its first annual policy conference last weekend, group members voted to make a controversial new Texas law, the “Texas Heartbeat Bill,” the organization’s first piece of model legislation, meaning that similar bills may soon pop up in state capitols across the country.
The model legislation, called the Heartbeat Model Act, was accepted unanimously by the executive committee during a Saturday meeting.
The Texas bill it is based upon, Senate Bill 8, bans abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which can occur as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. The legislation also allows for any state resident to bring a civil suit against a doctor who performs an abortion after a heartbeat is detectable. Under the law, a woman who has an abortion would be liable to civil suits, as would anyone who supported her in the act — from family members to the receptionist who checks her in at a clinic.
Not only is the doctor liable, but anyone found aiding and abetting,” said Texas legislator Bryan Hughes, the bill’s author, during the Saturday meeting, which was led by the organization’s founder and president, Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert.Texas state Rep. Bryan Hughes speaks during the opening session of the 2015 legislative session on Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015, in Austin, Texas. Eric Gay, Associated Press
Speaking to the Deseret News on Monday, Rapert said the provision allowing residents to bring civil suits against anyone involved in an abortion is like “putting a SCUD missile on that heartbeat bill — they can’t stop it.”
Rapert was the author of a similar 2013 bill in Arkansas, portions of which were later struck down by a federal judge. At least a dozen states have implemented a variety of abortion restrictions in recent years, leading numerous observers to say that the landmark 1973 Supreme Court abortion ruling, Roe v. Wade, is under threat.
Speaking Saturday to the Christian legislators gathered in Dallas, Hughes reminded the legislators that the Heartbeat Model Act is just a starting point and that the legislation will have to be tailored to work within each state’s laws.A anti-abortion supporter argues with those who attended a press conference and rally held by the Planned Parenthood Action Council of Utah outside of the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Aug. 25, 2015. Stacie Scott, Deseret News
The National Association of Christian Lawmakers formed last year with three key goals: to offer conservative, Christian legislators networking opportunities,; to help lawmakers share bills that have been successful in their states so that legislators elsewhere might push through similar legislation; and to support Christians running for local, state or national office.
At the policy conference last week, the organization worked toward meeting these goals in various ways, including by approving the Heartbeat Model Act. The executive committee also passed a resolution supporting Israel’s “right to defend itself from terror attacks” and creating a standing American-Israeli Committee.
Speaking to the executive committee, Rabbi Leonid Feldman, who was born in the Soviet Union and was imprisoned there for his pro-Israel activities, remarked that the Jewish people “remember our friends.”
This conference and this organization will be remembered by the Jewish people,” he said.
The organization also approved a resolution in support of “election integrity.”
The executive committee also approved a second piece of model legislation: the National Motto Display Model Act. Based on bills passed in Arkansas in 2017 and this year in Texas, the legislation requires public schools to display the national motto “In God We Trust” when printed versions of the motto are donated to schools or copies of the national motto are bought with funds from private donors.
“As the Texas House sponsor of the Motto Act, I am proud to see a model put out by the NACL so that legislators from every other state can have a mechanism to ensure our citizens — especially our school-age children — are reminded of our nation’s motto,” said Tom Oliverson, a state representative from Texas and chairman of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers’ national legislative council.
During the executive committee’s meeting on Saturday, Rapert said Hobby Lobby would make frames available for a reduced price if they’ll be used for national motto displays.
Asked Monday what other pieces of legislation the organization might adopt as model legislation in the future, Rapert told the Deseret News that the National Association of Christian Lawmakers is already weighing some options.
Since religious freedom is central to the organization, it could end up adopting model legislation similar to bills promoted in Texas this year by Oliverson. He supported three measures designed to make it harder for the government to force church closures during public emergencies, like the COVID-19 pandemic, and a bill that would ensure homeowners’ associations can’t infringe on homeowners’ rights to display religious symbols.
WASHINGTON — A deeply divided Supreme Court is allowing a Texas law that bans most abortions to remain in force, for now stripping most women of the right to an abortion in the nation’s second-largest state.
It is the strictest law against abortion rights in the United States since the high court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 and part of a broader push by Republicans nationwide to impose new restrictions on abortion. At least 12 other states have enacted bans early in pregnancy, but all have been blocked from going into effect.
The high court’s order declining to halt the Texas law came just before midnight Wednesday. The majority said those bringing the case had not met the high burden required for a stay of the law.
“The Court’s order is emphatic in making clear that it cannot be understood as sustaining the constitutionality of the law at issue.”— Chief Justice John Roberts
Chief Justice John Roberts (Supreme Court)
“In reaching this conclusion, we stress that we do not purport to resolve definitively any jurisdictional or substantive claim in the applicants’ lawsuit. In particular, this order is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas’s law, and in no way limits other procedurally proper challenges to the Texas law, including in Texas state courts,” the unsigned order said.
Chief Justice John Roberts dissented along with the court’s three liberal justices. Each of the four dissenting justices wrote separate statements expressing their disagreement with the majority.
Roberts noted that while the majority denied the request for emergency relief “the Court’s order is emphatic in making clear that it cannot be understood as sustaining the constitutionality of the law at issue.”
The vote in the case underscores the impact of the death of the liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last year and then-president Donald Trump’s replacement of her with conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Had Ginsburg remained on the court there would have been five votes to halt the Texas law.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor called her conservative colleagues’ decision “stunning.” “Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand,” she wrote.
“A majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand.”— Justice Sonia Sotomayor
Justice Sonia Sotomayor (Supreme Court)
Texas lawmakers wrote the law to evade federal court review by allowing private citizens to bring civil lawsuits in state court against anyone involved in an abortion, other than the patient. Other abortion laws are enforced by state and local officials, with criminal sanctions possible.
In contrast, Texas’ law allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone involved in facilitating abortions. Among other situations, that would include anyone who drives a woman to a clinic to get an abortion. Under the law, anyone who successfully sues another person would be entitled to at least $10,000.
In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan called the law “patently unconstitutional,” saying it allows “private parties to carry out unconstitutional restrictions on the State’s behalf.” And Justice Stephen Breyer said a “woman has a federal constitutional right to obtain an abortion during” the first stage of pregnancy.
After a federal appeals court refused to allow a prompt review of the law before it took effect, the measure’s opponents sought Supreme Court review.
In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan called the law “patently unconstitutional,” saying it allows “private parties to carry out unconstitutional restrictions on the State’s behalf.” And Justice Stephen Breyer said a “woman has a federal constitutional right to obtain an abortion during” the first stage of pregnancy.
After a federal appeals court refused to allow a prompt review of the law before it took effect, the measure’s opponents sought Supreme Court review.
In a statement early Thursday after the high court’s action, Nancy Northup, the head of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents abortion providers challenging the law, vowed to “keep fighting this ban until abortion access is restored in Texas.”
“We are devastated that the Supreme Court has refused to block a law that blatantly violates Roe v. Wade. Right now, people seeking abortion across Texas are panicking — they have no idea where or when they will be able to get an abortion, if ever. Texas politicians have succeeded for the moment in making a mockery of the rule of law, upending abortion care in Texas, and forcing patients to leave the state — if they have the means — to get constitutionally protected healthcare. This should send chills down the spine of everyone in this country who cares about the constitution,” she said.
Texas has long had some of the nation’s toughest abortion restrictions, including a sweeping law passed in 2013. The Supreme Court eventually struck down that law, but not before more than half of the state’s 40-plus clinics closed.
Even before the Texas case arrived at the high court the justices had planned to tackle the issue of abortion rights in a major case after the court begins hearing arguments again in the fall. That case involves the state of Mississippi, which is asking to be allowed to enforce an abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Associated Press writer Paul J. Weber in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.
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June 23, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I wanted to reach out to you because of some of the troubling moral issues coming out of your administration.
Over and over on my blog I have written about your efforts as Vice President and President to attack legally the rights of our unborn babies in the USA. These views of yours are due to your allegiance to the humanist worldview which Francis Schaeffer and Tim LaHaye exposed in their books. Your vast support from humanist groups in the 2020 election proves my point. No wonder we have seen criminals let go and an effort by Democrats (namely VP Harris) to defund the police. The Bible recognizes the sinful nature of humans and calls for the authorities to have the power of the sword in Romans 13! However, there have been times when the IRS has been used against freedom of expression such as the past persecution of the Tea Party. The Founding Fathers did NOT think the King was above the law! Unfortunately many lawmakers today don’t care about the law very much it seems which is a result of loss of a Christian Consensus influence in our society!
America’s second-ever Catholic president supports abortion rights, leaving the bishops unsure about how to move forward.By Emma Green
MARCH 14, 2021
Archbishop Joseph Naumann is anxious about President Joe Biden’s soul. The two men are in some ways similar: cradle Catholics born in the 1940s who witnessed John F. Kennedy become America’s first Catholic president. Both found a natural home in the Democratic Party—in Naumann’s midwestern family, asking Catholics if they were Democrats was a redundancy. Naumann became a priest and Biden became a politician, but their paths really diverged over the issue of abortion. Now in his 70s, Naumann watched Biden—America’s second Catholic president—transform into a vocal supporter of abortion rights while competing for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Naumann runs the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas and also leads what the Catholic bishops describe as their pro-life activities. He has suggested that Biden should no longer call himself a devout Catholic. At the very least, Naumann says, Biden should stop receiving Communion, a holy sacrament in Catholic life.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops recently convened a working group to discuss how the bishops should interact with Biden, and how they should deal with the challenge of having a visibly Catholic president who defies Church teachings on a central issue. Naumann was part of that group. Conflicts have already arisen: Naumann recently co-authored a statement expressing moral concerns about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which was developed and tested using cell lines from aborted fetal tissue. He also joined a statement from a group of the country’s top bishops celebrating the passage of the American Rescue Plan Act, but called it “unconscionable that Congress has passed the bill without critical protections needed to ensure that billions of taxpayer dollars are used for life-affirming health care and not for abortion.”
John MacArthur gave a sermon in June of 2021 entitled “When Government Rewards Evil and Punishes Good” and in that sermon he makes the following points:
INTRODUCTION AND DISCUSSION OF ROMANS 13
GOVERNMENT CAN FORFEIT ITS AUTHORITY
THE WORLD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GOSPEL
ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY IS PROGRESSING TOWARD A GLOBAL KINGDOM UNDER THE POWER OF SATAN
ONE FALSE WORLD RELIGION IS FINAL PLAY BY SATAN
REAL PERSECUTION CAN ONLY BE DONE BY GOVERNMENT
PERSECUTION IN BOOK OF DANIEL
THE LAW IS KING AND NOT THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA
GOVERNMENT HAS BECOME PURVEYOR OF WICKEDNESS
THERE IS A PLACE FOR CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
DOES GOVERNMENT WIN?
Let me just share a portion of that sermon with you and you can watch it on You Tube:
GOVERNMENT HAS BECOME PURVEYOR OF WICKEDNESS
One New Testament writer says that Romans 13 has “caused more unhappiness and misery . . . than any other . . . verses in the New Testament by the license they have given to tyrants . . . used to justify a host of horrendous abuses of individual human rights.” Hitler’s Holocaust, racism in the apartheid of South Africa, Cantrell says, “Both the Jews in Germany and blacks in South Africa were viewed as a threat to public health and national security. . . . “‘Trust us,’ said government . . . ‘we truly have your best interests at heart. All we want to do is help . . . keep you safe.’”
Government has already become the purveyor of wickedness. Government is a murderer, slaughtering millions of infants in abortion; elevating the LGBTQ agenda, the bizarre transgender deception. The culture has become anti-truth, we all know that. The truth is the biggest threat to lies. William Pitt, well-known name in English history, said this: “Necessity (i.e., public health, common good) is the plea [of] every infringement of human freedom: it is the argument of tyrants. “Get people afraid, and they’ll do whatever you want. A fearful society will always comply; panicking people will believe anything” [(Cantrell)].
“During the gruesome and bloody days of the French Revolution, when 40,000 innocent [people] lost their heads,” you would be interested to know who was operating the guillotine: the Committee for Public Safety [(Cantrell)]. One writer says, “Governments now get voted into power by promising to oversee housing, education, medicine, the economy, [the] currency, a minimum income, food, water, land, and the list goes on. The government become a parent, and the citizens are dependents. The government in this role becomes a monstrous juggernaut of bureaucracy, devouring taxes and trying to regulate every detail of life.” And they definitely want to regulate the church and silence its proclamation.
In his book The Glorious Body of Christ, Kuiper wrote, “Our age is one of ecclesiastical passivism. . . . When a church ceases to be militant it also ceases to be a church of Jesus Christ. . . . A truly militant church stands opposed to the world both without its walls and within. . . . Time and again in its history the church has found it necessary to assert its sovereignty over against usurpations by the state.” And Kuiper gave some biblical examples, like when King Saul or King Uzziah usurped the priesthood, stating, “In both cases a representative of the state was severely punished for encroaching [on] the sovereignty of the church.”
“Lord Macaulay of England summed up the Puritan reputation this way” [(Cantrell)]. He said of the Puritans, “He bowed himself in the dust before his Maker; [as] he set his foot on the neck of his king.” Kuiper says, “Ours is an age of state totalitarianism. All over the world statism is [rising] . . . . In consequence, in many lands the church finds itself utterly at the mercy of the state whose mercy often proves cruelty, while in others the notion is rapidly gaining ground that the church exists and operates by the state’s permission.” We do not operate by the state’s permission; we operate by the Lord’s command.
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Francis Schaeffer discusses this more in his fine book CHRISTIAN MANIFESTO:
PAGE 437
CHAPTER 3 THE DESTRUCTION OF FAITH AND FREEDOM
And now it is all gone!
In most law schools today almost no one studies William Blackstone unless he or she is taking a course in the history of law. We live in a secularized society and in secularized, sociological law. By sociological law we mean law that has no fixed base but law in which a group of people decides what is sociologically good for society at the given moment; and wha they arbitrarily decide becomes law. Oliver Wendall Holmes (1841-1935) made totally clear that this was his position. Frederick Moore Vinson (1890-1953), former Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, said, “Nothing is more certain in modern society than the principle that there are no absolutes.” Those who hold this position themselves call it sociological law.
As the new sociological law has moved away from the original base of the Creator giving the “inalienable rights,” etc., it has been natural that this sociological law has then also moved away from the Constitution. William Bentley Ball, in his paper entitled “Religious Liberty: The Constitutional Frontier,” says:
i propose that secularism militates against religious liberty, and indeed against personal freedoms generally, for two reasons: first, the familiar fact that secularism does not recognize the existence of the “higher law”; second, because, that being so, secularism tends toward decisions based on the pragmatic public policy of the moment and inevitably tends to resist the submitting of those policies to the “higher” criteria of a constitution.
This moving away from the Constitution is not only by court rulings, for example the First Amendment rulings, which are the very reversal of the original purpose of the First Amendment (see pp. 433, 434), but in other ways as well. Quoting again from the same paper by William Bentley Ball:
Our problem consists also, as perhaps this paper has well enough indicated, of more general constitutional delegation of legislative power and ultra vires. The first is where the legislature hands over its powers to agents through the conferral of regulatory power unaccompanied by strict standards. The second is where the agents make up powers on their own–assume powers not given them by the legislature. Under the first, the government of laws largely disappears and the government of men largely replaces it. Under the second, agents’ personal “home-made law replaces the law of the elected representatives of the people.
Naturally, this shift from the Judeo-Christian basis for law and the shift away from the restraints of the Constitution automatically militates against religious liberty. Mr. Ball closes his paper:
Fundamentally, in relation to personal liberty, the Constitution was aimed at restraint of the State. Today, in case after case relating to religious liberty, we encounter the bizarre presumption that it is the other way around; that the State is justified in whatever actions, and that religion bears a great burden of proof to overcome that presumption.
It is our job, as Christian lawyers, to destroy that presumption at every turn.
As lawyers discuss the changes in law in the United States, often they speak of the influence of the laws involved in the reentrance of the southern states into the national government after the Civil War. These indeed must be considered. But they were not the reason for the drastic change in law in our country. This reason was the takeover by the totally other world view which never have given the form and freedom in government we have had in Northern Europe (including the United States). That is the central factor in the change.
PAGE 439
It is parallel to the difference between modern science beginning with Copernicus and Galileo and the materialistic science which took over the last century. Materialistic thought would never have produced modern science. Modern science was produced on the Christian base. That is, because an intelligent Creator had created the universe we can in some measure understand the universe and there is, therefore, a reason for observation and experimentation to be pursued.
Then there was a shift into materialistic science based on a philosophic change to the materialistic concept of final reality. This shift was based on no addition to the facts known. It was a choice, in faith, to see things that way. No clearer expression of this could be given than Carl Sagan’s arrogant statement on public television–made without any scientific proof for the statement–to 140 million viewers: “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever was or ever will be.” He opened the series, COSMOS, with this essentially creedal declaration and went on to build every subsequent conclusion upon it.
There is exactly the same parallel in law. The materialistic-energy, chance concept of final reality never would have produced the form and freedom in government we have in this country and in other Reformation countries. But now it has arbitrarily and arrogantly supplanted the historic Judeo-Christian Consensus that provided the base for form and freedom in government. The Judeo-Christian consensus gave greater freedoms than the world has ever known, but it also contained the freedoms so that they did not pound society to pieces. The materialistic concept of reality would not have produced the form-freedom balance, and now that it has taken over it cannot maintain the balance. It has destroyed it.
Will Durant and his wife Ariel together wrote The Story of Civilization. The Durants received the 1976 Humanist Pioneer Award. In The Humanist magazine of February 1977, Will Durant summed up the humanist problem with regard to personal ethics and social order: “Moreover, we shall find it no easy task to mold a natural ethic strong enough to maintain moral restraint and social order without the support of supernatural consolations, hopes, and fears.”
Poor Will Durant! It is not just difficult, it is impossible. He should have remembered the quotation he and Ariel Durant gave from the agnostic Renan in their book The Lessons of History. According to the Durants, Renan said in 1866: “If Rationalism wishes to govern the world without regard to the religious needs of the soul, the experience of the French Revolution is there to teach us the consequences of such a blunder.” And the Durants themselves say in the same context: “There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.”
PAGE 440
Along with the decline of the Judie-Christian consensus we have come to a new definition and connotation of “pluralism.” Until recently it meant that the Christianity flowing from the Reformation is not now as dominant in the country and in society as it was in the early days of the nation. After about 1848 the great viewpoints not shaped by Reformation Christianity. This, of course, is the situation which exists today. Thus as we stand for religious freedom today, we need to realize that this must include a general religious freedom from the control of the state for all religion. It will not mean just freedom for those who are Christians. It is then up to Christians to show that Christianityis the Truth of total reality in the open marketplace of freedom.
This greater mixture in the United States, however, is now used as an excuse for the new meaning and connotation of pluralism. It now is used to mean that all types of situations are spread out before us, and that it really is up to each individual to grab one or the other on the way past, according to the whim of personal preference. What you take is only a matter of personal choice, with one choice as valid as another. Pluralism has come to mean that everything is acceptable. This new concept of pluralism suddenly is everywhere. There is no right or wrong; it is just a matter of your personal preference. On a recent SIXTY MINUTES program on television, for example, the questions of euthanasia of the old and the growing of marijuana as California’s largest paying crop were presented this way. One choice is as valid as another. It is just a matter of personal preference. This new definition and connotation of pluralism is presented in many forms, not only in personal ethics, but in society’s ethics and in the choices concerning law,
PAGE 440
Now I have a question. In these shifts that have come in law, where have the Christian lawyers been? I really ask you that. The shift has come gradually, but it has only come to its peak in the last 40 or 50 years. Where have the Christian lawyers been? Surely the Christian lawyers should have been the ones to have sounded the trumpet clear and loud, not just in bits and pieces but looking at the totality of what was occurring. Now, a nonlawyer like myself believes I have a right to feel let down because the Christian lawyers did not blow the trumpets clearly between, let us say, 1940 and 1970.
PAGE 441
When I wrote HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? From 1974 to 1976 I worked out of a knowledge of secular philosophy. I moved from the results in secular philosophy, to the results in liberal theology, to the results in the arts, and then I turned to the courts, and especially the Supreme Court. I read Oliver Wendell Holmes and others, and I must say, I was totally appalled by what I read. It was an exact parallel to what i had already known so well from my years of study in philosophy, theology, and the other disciplines.
In the book and film series HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? I used the Supreme Court abortion case as the clearest illustration of arbitrary sociiological law. But it was only the clearest illustration. The law is shot through with this kind of ruling. It is similar to choosing Fletcher’s situational ethics and point to it as the clearest illustration of how our society now functions with no fixed ethics. This is only the clearest illustration because in many ways our society functions on unfixed, situational ethics. The abortion case in law is exactly the same. It is only the clearest case. Law in this country has become situational law, using the term Fletcher used for his ethics. That is, a small group of people decide arbitrarily what, from their viewpoint, is for the good of society at that precise moment and they make it law, binding the whole society by their personal arbitrary decisions.
But of course! What would we expect? These things are the natural, inevitable results of the material-energy, humanistic concept of the final basic reality. From the material-energy, chance concept of final reality, final reality is, and must be b it nature, silent as to values, principles, or any basis for law. There is no way to ascertain “the ought:” from “the is.” Not only should we have known what this would have produced, but on the basis of this viewpoint of reality, we should have recognized that there are no other conclusions that this view could produce. It is a natural result of really believing that the basic reality of all things is merely material-energy, shaped into its present form by impersonal chance.
No, we must say that the Christians in the legal profession did not ring the bell, and we are indeed very, very far down the road toward a totally humanistic culture. At this moment we are in a humanistic culture, but we are happily not in a totally humanistic culture. But what we must realize is that the drift has been all in this direction. if it is not turned around we will move very rapidly into a totally humanistic culture.
PAGE 442
The law, and especially the courts, is the vehicle to force this total humanistic way of thinking upon the entire population.This is what has happened. The abortion law is a perfect example. The Supreme Court abortion ruling invalidated abortion lawsin all fifty states, even though it seems clear that in 1973 the majority of Americans were against abortion. It did not matter. The Supreme Court arbitrarily ruled that abortion was legal, and overnight they overthrew the state laws and forced their will on the majority, even though their ruling was arbitrary both legally and medically. Thus law and the courts became the vehicle for forcing a totally secular concept on the population.
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Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. I also respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children. I wanted to encourage you to investigate the work of Dr. Bernard Nathanson who like you used to be pro-abortion. I also want you to watch the You Tube series WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop. Also it makes me wonder what our the moral climate Of our nation is when we concentrate more on potential mistakes of the police and we let criminals back on the street so fast! Our national was founded of LEX REX and not REX LEX!
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,
PS: In this series of letters John MacArthur covers several points. In the first letter, he quotes you saying that the greatest threat to America—he said on one occasion—is systemic racism, which doesn’t exist; he said white supremacy, which doesn’t exist with any power; and then he said global warming, which doesn’t exist either, and if it does, God’s in charge of it.
In reality the greatest threat to this nation is the government, the government. And I want to show you how we are to understand that. Turn to Romans 13
In the 2nd letter, Dr. MacArthur noted When government turns the divine design on its head and protects those who do evil and makes those who do good afraid, it forfeits its divine purpose
In the 3rd letter Dr. MacArthur noted The world is the enemy of the gospel. The world is the enemy of the church. I pointed out that this manifests itself today in the form of HUMANISM.
In the 4th letter Dr. MacArthur points out how much today the devil is having his way in our society and that the Bible predicts that these will get worse!
In the 5th letter Francis Schaeffer points out “The HUMANIST MANIFESTOS not only say that humanism is a religion, but the Supreme Court has declared it to be a religion. The 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins specifically defines secular humanism as a religion equivalent to theistic and other non theistic religions.”
In the 6th letter Dr. MacArthur noted God has given government the sword, the power; and when they prostitute that power and they begin to punish those who do good and protect those who do evil, they wield that power against the people of God.
In the 7th letter Dr. MacArthur asserted, Throughout history, even in the Western world, people lived under what was called the divine right of kings. Kings were believed to have had a divine right. This was absolute monarchy. What broke that was basically the Reformers. The Reformers—a little phrase was “the law is king,” not the man.
In the 8th letter Dr. MacArthur noted that today the United States “Government has already become the purveyor of wickedness. Government is a murderer, slaughtering millions of infants in abortion.”
Judge gives preliminary OK to $3.5M settlement of IRS case is discussed about the 2013 lawsuit during the Barack Obama administration over treatment of conservative groups who said they were singled out for extra IRS scrutiny on tax-exempt status applications. Then Dr. MacArthur talks about persecution in the Book of Daniel.
“These are groups of law-abiding citizens who should have never had their First Amendment rights infringed upon by the IRS,” Jenny Beth Martin, president of the Tea Party Patriots umbrella group, said Wednesday. “These are groups that want the government to be accountable.”
The government has been used to persecuting people they don’t like for centuries! Let me just share a portion of that sermon by John MacArthur with you and you can watch it on You Tube:
Francis Schaeffer, who died in 1984, says, “If [there’s] no final place for civil disobedience, then the government has been made autonomous, and as such, it has been put in the place of the living God.” And that point is exactly when the early Christians performed their acts of civil disobedience, even when it cost them their lives. “Acts of State which contradict God’s [Laws] are illegitimate and acts of tyranny. Tyranny is ruling without the sanction of God. To resist tyranny is to honour God. . . . The bottom line is that at a certain point there is not only the right, but the duty to disobey the State.”
Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 4 | The Basis for Human Dignity
Sunday Night Prime – Dr. Bernard Nathanson – Fr Groeschel, CFR with Fr …
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Francis Schaeffer pictured above
Larry King had John MacArthur as a guest on his CNN program several times.
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the 1930′s above. I was sad to read about Edith passing away on Easter weekend in 2013. I wanted to pass along this fine […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
It is truly sad to me that liberals will lie in order to attack good Christian people like state senator Jason Rapert of Conway, Arkansas because he headed a group of pro-life senators that got a pro-life bill through the Arkansas State Senate the last week of January in 2013. I have gone back and […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Francis Schaeffer, Max Brantley, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
Sometimes you can see evidences in someone’s life of how content they really are. I saw something like that on 2-8-13 when I confronted a blogger that goes by the name “AngryOldWoman” on the Arkansas Times Blog. See below. Leadership Crisis in America Published on Jul 11, 2012 Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Arkansas Times, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented against abortion (Episode 1), infanticide (Episode 2), euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (3)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (2)
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
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Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert presides over a Senate committee at the state Capitol in Little Rock, Ark. in this March 14, 2018, file photo. Rapert’s National Association of Christian Lawmakers met recently to talk model legislation and pass resolutions. Kelly P. Kissel, Associated Press/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22726922/AP898166992908.jpg)
Texas state Rep. Bryan Hughes speaks during the opening session of the 2015 legislative session on Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015, in Austin, Texas. Eric Gay, Associated Press/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22726936/merlin_1112102.jpg)
A anti-abortion supporter argues with those who attended a press conference and rally held by the Planned Parenthood Action Council of Utah outside of the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Aug. 25, 2015. Stacie Scott, Deseret News
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