Nightmare continued: Disunited States of America

By David Petteys (dpetteys@comcast.net)

Editor's Note: Petteys is on a dystopian prophetic tear. Here is the sequel to his recent progressive nightmare post.

The golden age for ancient Israel was the united kingdom under King David and his son Solomon. It lasted less than a 100 years. It fractured when Solomon’s son tried to impose an unreasonable agenda on the Northern Kingdoms. In analogy, has not the American golden age been the last 100 years of a united and prosperous United States? But are not the pieces in place for its dissolution over the next couple of generations?

The progressives have taught our children that the United States has been built on racism, genocide and oppression, and maybe the world would be better off without it. The progressives have spent the last generation balkanizing the nation: rich against poor, men against women, ethnic strife, victimology, and entitlement.

Secularism along with a “higher loyalty" to all humanity and mother earth, undermining and ridiculing Americanism and patriotism, has become the established quasi-religion. And if the secular vision for the future is only to enjoy life as comfortably as possible, who is willing to die for anything?

Suppose the current drive for amnesty and open borders succeeds. It’s not hard to envision a California legislature, dominated by Hispanics, declaring themselves an autonomous region with a special relationship to Mexico. And if they passed laws to do the following:

** To fly only the Mexican flag

** Public schools to teach only in Spanish

** Only Mexican history to be taught

** To prohibit Federal withholding by California companies, and instead mandate its diversion to the state

** Seizure of all Federal Facilities by the California militia (basically a California Hispanic Army)

... does anyone think a Hillary Clinton, who had spent the first four years of her administration dismantling the American military, would send the 82nd Airborne to seize Sacramento?

More than likely she’d “negotiate”. And as the negotiations dragged on for years, the California secession would become a fait accompli. It would result in an arrested tax flow to Washington, but not welfare checks from Washington.

With this precedent, there would be nothing to keep little islands of Islamic Republics forming in Michigan and Minnesota, an independent Mormon region in Utah, and so on. In another generation or two, the United States would be no more: only a balkanized and warring North American continent. The weath, power and prosperity of a United States only a distant memory of old people whose broken hearts remember it well.

It would also render a squabbling North America incapable of dealing with any external threat, such as a modern 30 million man, nuclear-equipped Chinese Army.

The Progressives had better start learning Chinese, unless the Chinese decide to exterminate and repopulate the entire continent, which they could easily do.

Property rights trashed by Boulder's NIMBY plan

By Krista Kafer (krista555@msn.com) I don’t like McMansions – those pretentious, overbuilt houses parked on a crust of a yard within spitting distance of the next near-identical house. I’m not into bland or beige or three-car Garage Mahals. I’m wary of McMansion neighborhoods where I feel like I’m on the set of the Stepford Wives, only super-sized. I imagine a homeowners' association, in the dark lair of a fully finished basement, churning out smiling replica families complete with shiny-coated Weimaraners and wintergreen SUVs. Yikes! Get me out of here! Take me back to the days of my childhood when this blighted land was untilled prairie where red foxes hunted, prairie dogs barked and hawks circled on the warm summer air.

Did I mention I really don’t like McMansions? That said, however, I support an individual’s right to own one. As much as I resent the intrusion and deplore the bad taste, I support the developer’s right to build the houses. And, as much as I miss the golden fields of my youth, I support the landowner's right to sell his property to the developer. Put simply, I support property rights.

The right to property is an alienable one—that is a God-given right that government has an obligation to protect. A property owner has a right to own, lawfully use, and dispose of his property.

Obviously there are some limits. A person cannot use his property for illegal purposes like say, growing marijuana, assembling bombs, or replacing errant homeowners with responsible, well-coiffed robots. Zoning laws prohibit certain otherwise legal activities. One cannot build a porn shop next to a daycare or an oil refinery next to a neighborhood. Countless other federal, state, and local laws, ordinances and regulations dictate how land can be used. Some make even a lot of sense -- but others burden landowners unnecessarily and often without constitutionally-mandated compensation.

The latter describes a restriction under consideration by Boulder County (see “Boulder County weighs McMansion limits” in the Denver Post). Boulder County would like to limit the size of houses. Owners could get out of the limits by purchasing the development rights to preserve open space and agricultural land in the county. The loophole favors those wealthy enough to buy back from government the "privilege" of controlling their own land. This arbitrary restriction, if implemented, will surely impact current landowners wishing to sell, developers, and future homeowners by reducing the value of the land.

The restriction is nothing more than a NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) power play by those who have control of their own property and want to control the property of others. Here in Littleton, NIMBY folks are trying to block Wal-Mart (see here for my take on that).

The local activists have me beat on intensity. They certainly hate Wal-Mart more than I dislike McMansions, and their scorn for the big box store is untempered by the irony of my Stepford fantasy. But the main difference between the NIMBY folks (whether in Littleton or Boulder) and someone myself is respect for property rights.

I may not like what people do with their property but I respect their right to legally dispose of it as they please. It's principle, and it's also self-interest, because the same property rights that protect big box store and the McMansion owner, protect the owners of that little boutique down the street and me the cottage-dweller.

Apologizing to Jerry Falwell

By Dave Crater (crater@wilberforcecenter.org) The passing of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, someone at whom many of the glitterati and literati even among ostensible conservatives still love to scoff, has, as passings often do, led many others (myself included) to engage in some real soul-searching concerning what this man was about and what we all should learn from him and his legacy. Consider this more a confession than an argument.

I’m ashamed to say – and this is my confession – that I once unthinkingly accepted much of the common claptrap about Rev. Falwell. I heard it so often, and from members of the glitterati and literati who were so well educated and well placed and well dressed that they couldn’t possibly be misguided, that I assumed it was at least partially true:

Not intellectually respectable; prone to saying stupid things in public; representative of everything wrong with Christian America; front man for how silly and hopeless fundamentalist America is, and how autocratically governed by slightly-overweight white males it is; impediment to real Christian influence and respectability in the American public square; etc, etc.

This same claptrap is repeated all the time even by people claiming to be followers of Christ – and insinuated by still more who offer the lame but perfunctory “I didn’t always agree with him” qualifiers as they eulogize Falwell in public statements – but who, if they are indeed Christians, I began some time ago to suspect are at least less familiar with Christ’s actual life and teaching, and certainly less willing to bear Christ’s cross, than Rev. Falwell was.

For some strange reason this uneducated fundamentalist hillbilly’s legacy includes a 22,000-member evangelical church that he started in a basement, a major evangelical university and law school, and a national Christian activist infrastructure that was a major force in American politics for the decade he was leading it, but which has dwindled to much less since he left. For anyone else, this kind of organizational and influential legacy would be the very definition of respectable worldly success.

Imagine, for example, the glowing reports from the glitterati and literati we would be seeing if Barack Obama had started and led for decades a 22,000-member center-left church, founded a center-left university and center-left law school the size of Liberty University, or developed a center-left national grassroots network the size of the Moral Majority/Christian Coalition. The choruses of anointed hallelujahs out of Washington, New York, and Hollywood, and the star-power in attendance at his funeral, would ring for years.

Imagine, in turn, the soothing flatteries you would whisper to yourself if your own life had resulted in even a small portion of these accomplishments – albeit center-right and respectable accomplishments, not too right and certainly not too evangelical. For Rev. Falwell, this enormous legacy seems to be most prominent when it provides the visible, obvious evidence why we don’t want to be like him or even give the appearance of being like him, or, if we can help it, be involved with anything he created. That lawyer is a Liberty University grad? Well (snicker), I guess we know how that case will turn out.

I have spent many hours pondering this paradoxical curiosity since Falwell died. In hindsight, I think this visceral, nameless dislike resulted from Falwell’s unflinching, fearless adherence to a robust, worldview-sized faith that transcended right and left, entering irrecoverably and inevitably-controversially the ancient realm of right and wrong. You know, good and evil, angels and demons, and all that.

I further think the fact that the visceral, nameless dislike was and is so widespread among so many says more about the many than it does about the man. Certainly I confess it said more about me when I believed it than it did about him. Now I think it well illuminates the Apostle’s lament that the spiritual man judges all things rightly while he himself is judged rightly by no one (I Cor. 2:15).

So I say publicly and sincerely to all of you my witnesses – lest I allow too much time to pass between Rev. Falwell’s death and my confession and repentance regarding what I once thoughtlessly and sinfully believed about him – that I have asked God’s forgiveness and prayed He would be so clement and gracious as to raise up a few more heroes with the understanding, courage, and faith of Rev. Falwell, to sustain them against all the vitriol and ignorant hatred we will hurl at them in our pursuit of intellectual, social, and political respectability and success, and, just as a crowning, excessive grace, to also raise up a few stalwarts with the deep and spiritual kind of wisdom to ignore the vain, foolish praise and criticism of men and to instead judge these heroes rightly while they are yet alive on the earth.

An ambitious prayer, I know. But I still believe in miracles. Thank you for taking the time to witness my confession.

What's meant by 'rendering to Caesar'?

I’ve been struck by two thoughts lately, one thought expands on my April 1 post concerning the political leanings of Jesus, the second asks to what extent faith and politics can or cannot accompany each other. It may not be fashionable to say, but it is certainly true; you can legislate morality. In fact I'd actually contend that every law adopted from seat-belt laws to smoking bans to insurance mandates is morality codified, heck the most morally telling law we pass is the budget – “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). When I say that we can legislate morality, and then I give the examples above, I am not talking about philosophical morality but rather, I mean that we can "impose by law our moral code on others and make them behave as we expect." It is far more difficult, maybe impossible, to use the force of law to compel the conscience of someone else to believe as we do. Society creates and encourages behavior it deems moral precisely through the force of law, but we cannot – and do not expect our laws to change the heart of another person. We can stop a man from murder, but we cannot stop a man from thinking murderous thoughts.

From birth through death we are constantly searching for who we are, and our individual identity - how we see ourselves - is closely tied to who we are in community and how we live our lives in relation to others. Our relationships with each other and with the greater community around us shape who we are and how we see ourselves. How we choose to be involved in the lives around us often defines us not only in the eyes of others, for a man is known to those around him by his actions, but also defines us to ourselves, for who but God knows our hearts and minds as well as we do. In other words, how I see myself is determined by what I do.

So what about political involvement? As an individual in relationship to Christ as well as to one’s fellow man, politics would seem a natural extension of living in a community. For Christians, there is some good in being politically involved, but that is not the good, or even the key ground to fight over in this world. What is Good is to live lives that draw others to Christ - and draw ourselves ever closer at the same time. Some good comes from politics and social action, and from pursuing and advocating for policies that strengthen the moral fabric of society - the founding ethics of biblical Christianity and Judaism.

To live Christianly, to have my actions truly reflect my heart, must lead to some difference in our world, some "rendering unto Caesar.” It's important to create laws that protect the innocent and punish the guilty, it is important to vote, and to use our God-given freedom to create a country that seeks liberty and justice, a country that loves and encourages what is right and true. But more than working to affect the country, Christians must realize that it is when Christians seek to act like Christ that they most inspire their community. It is the heart that influences one to follow laws, though laws will always be necessary.

I guess my point is that people don't find that out by simply following laws.

A feminized America is easy prey for the Chos and the Islamofascists

By Dave Petteys (dpetteys@comcast.net) When a single mom sends her 12 year old son off to Middle School, often times she will instruct him “don’t hit!” which basically ties his hands in defending himself. The boy becomes a target for the school bullies, and his life becomes miserable owing to the intimidation. The mom’s response usually is to wring her hands and complain ineffectually to school officials or to move the boy to another school, where the pattern is repeated.

A father, on the other hand, will encourage his son to defend himself. He will get him boxing or karate lessons, which gives the boy confidence and some options. Then, at the next confrontation, the bully gets knocked on his butt, ending the problem. Bullies concentrate on those who don’t defend themselves. But mom will still object, saying such a response is “stooping to the bully’s level!”

Our traditions were founded by tough frontier families who carved lives out of the primeval forests of North America. The musket over the mantle, powder horns and tomahawks were a necessity of life. The call to muster to defend homes and families against raiding parties was all too frequent for the men of those times. The women understood, appreciated and supported them. This doesn’t seem to be true today.

Modern America hasn’t seen major bloodshed on its soil since the Civil War. Even the attack of 9-11 seems to have sunk from memory, becoming nothing more than a forgotten TV event of sorts. To the modern woman, the idea of the frontiersman husband that defends his family is laughable. Masculine strength and courage are no longer necessary. And if there is a man in a woman’s life at all, it could only be a partnership with a “sensitive new-age guy” that will give her space. And if strength and courage are no longer necessary, neither are firearms.

Gun control is the national equivalent of “don’t hit”. It assumes everyone abides in a feminine rational relational point of view. The problem is, not everyone does, and that seems to be hard for the feminine viewpoint to accept. Theo Van Gogh’s last words to his Radical Islamist murderer were “Can’t we talk about this?” Evidently not. And it’s painfully clear how Radical Islam treats their women! The VA Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui didn’t want to discuss things either. Had any teacher presented herself to reason with him, she would have received a 9mm beauty spot between her running lights.

As the threat of radical Islam grows, and as the VA Tech media attention encourages “copy cat massacres” elsewhere, it may be time to realize America still may need masculine qualities of courage and strength, as well as the modern equivalent of the musket over the fireplace, to survive.