Category Archives: Christianity

UPDATE II (5/11): You’re Fired, James Comey

America, Christianity, Democrats, Donald Trump, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Objectivism, Politics, Propaganda, Russia

James Comey is out. Donald Trump fired the FBI Director. (Read the ‘You’re Fired’ letter.) One wonders what took POTUS so long? Was he waiting for Congress and Comey to orchestrate another career-advancing hearing? Comey provided “four hours of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee,” on May 3. Boy, did he put on an act. This was Careerism 101 by Comey.

A Republican president fired someone. And OMG! The freaks are free associating. Russia. Putin. Shades of Nixon. Impeach. Tyranny. Is there any doubt Democrats control the received “narrative”?

It’s an alternate reality. Most of it is just not true. Russia, Putin; this that: you know it’s as manufactured as was the invasion of Iraq.  “The proof is not in the Putin“:

The same vague nomenclature deployed by CIA analysts to take Americans to war in Iraq is evident in the agency’s unsubstantiated claims against Russia. In trying to incriminate absent hard evidence, the CIA, as reported by the Washington Post, alludes to “a secret assessment,” nowhere apparent, identifying only “anonymous sources and individuals” in “closed-door briefing.”

During the Bush era, the mantra of Washington operatives like Karl Rove was, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” Not much has changed. Deep State creates reality as they go.

Ignored or rejected as rogue is a reality not of the making of America’s entrenched punditocracy, its self-anointed intelligentsia, slick Big Media, slimy politicians, Democrat and Republican, spooks and bureaucrats.

Back on earth, Hillary lost. Deplorables triumphed over Hillary’s “Antifa” by a smidgen. The degree of contempt for Americans among Democratic leadership and their candidate was revealed through the good works of WikiLeaks, which had exposed the Bush government before Hillary. Deep State doesn’t like to be exposed. Hence the convulsions.

UPDATE (5/10):

Putin channels Bart Simpson, “I didn’t do it.” Whatever IT is:

FBI is rotten:

UPDATE II (5/11):

Syrian Christians:

The Inevitability And Irreversibility Of Government-Sponsored Health Care

Christianity, Conservatism, Healthcare, Morality, Political Economy, Socialism, The State, Welfare

Unz Review columnist Dr. Boyd D. Cathey muses about another government power-grab called Trump Care. Naturally, he hopes it’ll be slightly better than the one to precede it. Dr. Cathey hearkens back to a different, inegalitarian time when the principle of noblesse oblige drove the faithful and the wealthy to take care of the needy. With the triumph of 19th century liberalism and the fanaticism of progress, the quest to level society saw the Church robbed of its lands and traditional role. Conditions soon arose that predisposed the downtrodden to Socialism, Communism and the modern welfare state.

Long, sad story; the end of history, but in a bad way.

Dr. Boyd D. Cathey:

“A large portion of ‘news talk’ yesterday and this morning has been about the repeal of Obamacare and its replacement by a Republican-sponsored medical program. The one thing that is crystal clear is this: whenever a new entitlement is enacted by Congress, whatever it may be, it is almost impossible to completely undo or repeal it.”

“If we consider, beginning at least a century and a half ago, the history of legislative initiatives—and not just in what is called euphemistically ‘welfare,’ but also in such areas as ‘voting rights’ and, generally, ‘civil rights’—passage of legislation, even if stoutly opposed and unpopular at the beginning, usually stands. I can think of only one major piece of social or political legislation, actually an amendment to the Constitution—the 18th Amendment, or “Prohibition Amendment”—that was ever repealed.”

“So, it should not surprise us that the Republican majority, especially in the Senate, will probably end up tinkering with rather than completely undoing the massive power grab by the Federal government known as Obamacare. Even in the House of Representatives many ‘moderate’ and establishment GOP solons fear an active backlash from frenzied Leftist demonstrators and, even more, negative characterizations and attacks by the Mainstream Media [MSM].”

“We shall be fortunate, in these circumstances, to get a modified bill out of the House, and who knows what the pusillanimous scaredy-cats in the Senate will do.”

“Right now, to listen to various pundits, it is the pre-existing conditions question that appears to be the sticking point. That is a central feature of Obamacare: that those already sick and already with an illness would be covered by healthy participants. But then, as anyone can see, this is not insurance we are talking about, but, rather, just another form of taxing the healthy to pay for the sick.

“The present Republican plan appears to separate those two groups of people, sets up a separate special fund for the pre-existing ill, with the hope that then the healthy folks remaining in the program can get much cheaper rates. State waiver permission would be given for those states that wish to operate the program differently.”

“It remains to be seen whether this approach will get through the layers of lobbyists influencing Congress and the abject fear that too many Republicans have of the MSM.” …

“… In any case, government-sponsored health care in one form or another is probably here to stay. And therein lies a long history of modern society that affects us all every day. …”

“IN CENTURIES PAST, it was institutions like the Church or local familial communities (especially here in the US) who were responsible for caring for the sick. My friend, the late Spanish scholar Rafael Gambra once prepared an extensive study of the Spanish Pyrenees commune of Roncal. For nearly 1000 years Roncal was almost a self-contained and self-governing entity, owing allegiance to the Kings of Navarra, but administering most of its local services by itself. The Church possessed about a third of the land, the municipality owned about one-third, and the rest was in private hands. Those families without a freehold had the right to graze their stock on both Church and municipal land. The Church, as part of its mission, maintained a kind of primitive medical facility, with both religious sisters and doctors who looked after the inhabitants. Payment was most often in goods, and, for the poor, the Church did not charge. That system was destroyed by the triumph of 19th century liberalism (in 1839) that expropriated all Church lands and municipal lands, then selling them to Madrileno capitalists. The result was that thousands of the poor, who had once had a stake in places like Roncal, were displaced and forced to migrate to industrial cities like Barcelona, where they found harsh impersonal jobs in factories at dirt level wages. And from that condition arose the eventual appeals of Socialism and Communism—and the modern welfare state–to the downtrodden.”

ObamaCare Lite:

A Weird Weekly Address: Trump’s New Religious Inclusiveness

Christianity, Donald Trump, Judaism & Jews, Religion, Terrorism

Thanks for the transcript of the Weekly Address, Mr. President. Transcripts make America read, save me time (watching YouTube wastes it) and, altogether, MAGA.

Now that I’ve said something nice, let’s get to the weird Weekly Address President Trump has just given. Perhaps this Address is of a piece with the pivot away from Brannon-type nationalism?

Why start the address with an ode to Jews and our Passover? Was this simply because Passover precedes Easter? Still, Easter should have preceded Passover in the president’s address. Must we anticipate hearing about the joys of Ramadan, when it comes up? In that case, I prefer that Passover gets a pass.

However, after 45 Egyptian Coptic Christians were martyred by Muslims on Palm Sunday—to say nothing about candidate Trump’s pro-Christianity talk during the campaign—I’d have expected sometime less wishy-washy than this:

… one of the gravest threats to religious freedom remains the threat of terror.
On Palm Sunday, as Christians around the world celebrate the beginning of Holy Week, ISIS murdered at least 45 people and injured over 100 others at two Christian churches in Egypt.
We condemn this barbaric attack. We mourn for those who lost loved ones. And we pray for the strength and wisdom to achieve a better tomorrow—one where good people of all faiths, Christians and Muslims and Jewish and Hindu, can follow their hearts and worship according to their conscience.

“Terror”? What ever happened to Islamic terror?

Forty five people murdered and over 100 injured? Those “people” were Coptic Christians. They’ve been targeted for centuries, persecuted in that region by Muslims for their religion.

READ THE REST.

UPDATED (1/29): Make Jerusalem Safe Again

Christianity, Donald Trump, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Israel, Palestinian Authority

“Make Jerusalem Safe Again” is the current column, now on The Daily Caller. (And, yes, the column does briefly address the “land” issue, which libertarians can’t skirt.) An excerpt:

RELOCATING the American Embassy to Jerusalem, as President Donald Trump has pledged to do, is more than symbolic. It’s what Christians should be praying for if they value celebrating future Easter Holy Weeks, in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, located in Jerusalem’s Old City. With such a forceful gesture, the Trump Administration will be affirming, for once and for all, the undivided Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish State.

There’s a reason Muslims living in Israel proper—1.5 million of them—don’t migrate to the adjacent Palestinian Authority. They’re better off in Israel. Should Jerusalem, East and West, be recognized formally as the capital of Israel only, under Jewish control alone; Christianity’s holiest sites will be better off. Judaism’s holy sites will be safer. And so will Islam’s.

Jerusalem is no settlement to be haggled over; it’s the capital of the Jewish State. King David conquered it 1000 years Before Christ. The city’s “Muslim Period” began only in the year 638 of the Common Era. “Yerushalaim,” and not Al Quds, is the name of the city that was sacred to Jews for nearly two thousand years before Muhammad. Not once is Jerusalem mentioned in the Quran. And while Muhammad was said to have departed to the heavens from the Al Aksa Mosque, there was no mosque in Jerusalem. The Dome of the Rock and the Al Aksa Mosque were built upon the Jewish Temple Mount. Muslim theologians subsequently justified this usurpation by superimposing their own chronology—and relatively recent fondness for Jerusalem—upon the existing, ancient sanctity of the place to Jews.

Essentially, this amounts to historical identity theft.

It’s bad enough that Bethlehem—the burial site of the matriarch Rachel, birthplace to King David and Jesus and site of the Church of the Nativity—is controlled by the Palestinians. But, as one wag wondered, “How would Christians react if the Muslim theologians aforementioned had chosen to appropriate the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, rename it and declare it Muslim property?”

There is nothing Solomonic about splitting up Jerusalem, which—it bears repeating—was sacred to Jews for nearly two millennia before Muhammad and is not in the Quran. “The Muslim Claim to Jerusalem,” notes Dr. Daniel Pipes, is political, not religious or historic. As such, it’s also a recent project. “Centuries of neglect came to an abrupt end after June 1967, when the Old City came under Israeli control,” explains Pipes. “Palestinians [then] again made Jerusalem the centerpiece of their political program, [when, in fact] Mecca is the eternal city of Islam, the place from which non-Muslims are strictly forbidden. Very roughly speaking, [Mecca is to Islam] what Jerusalem is to Judaism.”

East Jerusalem was not annexed in June of 1967. Rather, Jerusalem was unified. …”

… Read the rest. “Make Jerusalem Safe Again” is now on The Daily Caller. If you’d like to feature the Mercer weekly column in your publication, print or pixels, please contact me at ilana@ilanamercer.com.

UPDATED (1/29):
Global Right of Return to US: