Month: December 2022

The Christmas Story

America, Religion, Society & Culture, Values

I am dismayed by how many people do not know the story of the birth of Christ. Sure, there are cartoons and videos and picture books that depict the sequence of events, all with high production values to capture the attention of young and old in a world of instant gratification, shiny objects (.sic) and eye-popping visuals, but even I had to stop and think about the main points as I prepared to recount the story to my grandkids this Christmas. They’re still too young and squirmy for me to read it to them from the Bible but I take a few minutes, have their parents hold them down, and remind them of what the Christ is Christmas is all about.

We can lament how commercialism has overtaken the significance of what happened over two thousand years ago, but unless we pause at some point during the next few days and think about it, another year will rush by.

So for those of us with short attention spans or those who wish to recount the story to others without a PowerPoint presentation… here goes:

  • Joseph and Mary are living in Nazareth when one day an angel, Gabriel, appears to Mary and tells her she is going to have a baby boy who is the Son of God and that she is to name him Jesus.
  • Mary travels to visit her cousin Elizabeth who is also going to have a baby (John) and when Mary enters Elizabeth’s house, Elizabeth’s baby jumps in her womb and Elizabeth immediately knows that Mary is carrying the Holy Child. Mary spends three months with Elizabeth, then returns to Nazareth.
  • Caesar demands a census be taken so he can tax everyone, and everyone is to head to their traditional home city which for Joseph and Mary was Bethlehem, about 70 miles south of Nazareth.
  • When they arrive in Bethlehem, there is no room available for them in the “inn”.
  • They are told to spend the night where the sheep were kept. Mary gives birth to Jesus, wraps him in swaddling clothes, and places him in a manger.
  • Shepherds living out in the fields nearby keeping watch over their flocks at night are terrified by an angel that appears to them.
  • The angel says to them, “Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.”
  • Suddenly a great company of additional angels appear praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
  • When the angels retreat to heaven, the shepherds decide to go find the baby the angel spoke of.
  • The shepherds head to Bethlehem where they find Joseph and Mary and the baby lying in a manger. They tell everyone about what the angels had told them about the baby, and they go back to their flocks praising God for all they had seen and heard.
  • Mary had been told by the angel Gabriel that she was to name her son Jesus, but when he was eight days old, according to Hebrew tradition, the baby was officially given the name Jesus.

So what does this have to do with the price of eggs or gas, or the open border, or the election shenanigans, or the crises in our cities, or government corruption? In truth, it has to do with ALL of it. The Lord’s prescriptions really aren’t complicated or ambiguous. They’re straightforward and virtually all of our current problems can be traced to either violations of the Ten Commandments or Gospel Law.

As for me and my house, this year and every year I will insist that we pause to reflect on the real meaning of Christmas.

Hope yours is merry and that 2023 will be better for all of us. Hang in there and may God bless us all!

Changing The Basic Concepts Of Society

America, Media, Morality, Reason, Society & Culture, Values

As I read about the soon to be passed, euphemistically named “Respect for Marriage Act” I shake my head once again at the Left’s success at changing the definition of fundamental concepts to suit their agenda. It’s all ok, of course, because this is meant to be “progressive” and move us further toward that utopian fantasy where we can “all just get along”.

The skill with which the Left (i.e. Democrats) are able to use the media and high production values to beguile or bludgeon us into changing what we name concepts and thus continue to insidiously change society as a whole is astonishing.

“Illegal Alien” is now “Undocumented Immigrant”.

“Global Warming” is now “Climate Change”.

“Sex Change Operation” is now “Gender Affirming Care”

“Male and Female” is “Sex Fluidity”, “Non-Binary” or any number of other ridiculous labels

“AR 15 Style Rifle” is “Assault Weapon”

“Utopian Absurdity” is “Progressive”

And now, in a reversal of the “Defense of Marriage Act” passed under the Clinton Administration, this “Respect for Marriage Act” changes a definition that has existed since Adam and Eve.

On the one hand, I get it that in some ways calling the committed relationship between same sex couples “marriage” is a shortcut way to ensure that, for example, a same-sex “spouse” enjoys the same rights and benefits as a heterosexual spouse in everything from hospital visits to probate law. On the other hand, these inequities were already being addressed with laws and policies being incrementally changed under the rubric “civil unions”.

What galls me is the degree to which the Left has sought, in many cases successfully, to shove their ideology down our throats. The LBGTQXXX invasion of our school curriculum is another example. Cancel culture, the designation “deniers” of this or that…all are meant to shame and or/demonize what has traditionally been the norm since the beginning of time.

In short, the tail is wagging the dog. A small minority of green or multi-colored haired, aberrant deviants, given a very loud megaphone by the “cool ones”…i.e. the unproductive losers who make up the majority of the print, televised and social media, funded by megalomaniacal, power-hungry and bent-on-domination godzillionaires, are destroying everything that made our country, and society in general, the most prosperous and civilized in the history of mankind. All so they can feel good about themselves, in the case of the deviants, or for power advancement, in the case of the puppet-string pullers.

Not only is the Left successfully changing the meaning of things, it is also successfully demeaning, censoring, blasting any voice that dares utter opposition to this civilizational suicide. Comparisons with Germany in the 30’s and what has repeatedly happened in totalitarian regimes across the globe aside, what’s happening to 2020’s America is nothing less than the necrosis of the greatest civilization in world history.

Can it be halted? Can it be reversed? I think so. For the good of my children, my grandchildren, my fellow-Americans and for all sane and traditional-minded human beings around the world, I pray so.

Blackout

Emergency Preparedness, Government, Law and Order, Science, Technology

The attack on the electricity substation in Moore County, North Carolina this past Saturday evening is precisely what I’ve been warning about for years. Conventional arms were used to blast away at transformers and other equipment at the site resulting in a blackout that persists three days later for thousands of North Carolinians.

If you take the probability and likelihood of a disastrous event and multiply it by the impact it would have you get what I call the “Disaster Index”. It’s a measure of just how bad a disaster could be. In arithmetic terms DI=I x P. So while the impact, and forgive the pun, of a meteor hitting the earth amounts to the highest imaginable I (an extinction event most likely), the probability or likelihood of such an event is PDS (pretty damn small). The Disaster Index is thus extremely small.

On the other hand, the impact of a Katrina-like hurricane is both high AND likely, thus the DI is many times greater than the meteor strike.

I have long stated that the event with the highest DI is not an EMP, Coronal Mass Ejection, Reversal of the Earth’s magnetic poles…all potentially catastrophic in terms of impact but, unlikely. Rather, it is a terrorist attack on the nine electrical grid substations in the country that, were they to fail or be knocked out simultaneously, would plunge the entire nation into darkness for upwards of three months. The knock-on effects of such an outage would create a chaos and “Walking Dead” scenario only Hollywood could dream up.

The attack in Moore County is being investigated as “vandalism”. Irrespective of whether the attack was that, or a deliberate vulnerability “test”, you can bet the many terror cells already existing in the United States took a very special interest in it.

Study after study have warned of the vulnerability of our power grid. Blackouts have already occurred that should have been wake-up calls that this kind of disaster could happen. But no, our government would rather…you fill in the rest.

God help us!

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