Category Archives: Christianity

The Peerless Malevolence of Redcoat Piers Morgan

Christianity, Constitution, Founding Fathers, Free Speech, GUNS, Hebrew Testament, Individual Rights, libertarianism, Natural Law, Private Property, Taxation

Below is an excerpt from the current weekly column, “The Peerless Malevolence of Redcoat Piers Morgan,” now on RT (“hoplophobic” in the tagline is courtesy of the editor—I had never heard that word before today. Very cool):

“Piers Morgan is preaching treason from his perch at CNN—and not because he is undermining the dead-letter US Constitution, as some have claimed.

Most people would define treason as a betrayal of one’s country or sovereign. In my book, the book of natural law, treason is properly defined as a betrayal of one’s countrymen—and, in particular, the betrayal of the individual’s right to life, liberty and property. (To your question, yes, this renders almost all politicians traitors by definition.)

A right that can’t be defended is a right in name only. If you cannot by law defend your life, you have no right to life. If you cannot defend your property, you have no right of private property. And if you cannot defend your liberty, you are not a free man.

It follows that inherent in the idea of an inalienable right is the right to mount a vigorous defense of the same rights.

Knowing full well that a mere ban on assault rifles would not give him the result he craved, our redcoat turncoat has structured his monocausal appeals against the individual’s right to bear arms as follows:

1) The UK once experienced Sandy-Hook like massacres.
2) We Brits banned all guns, pistols too.
3) There were no more such massacres.

… This week, the CNN host will be fulminating over the shortfalls of 23 new imperial orders against firearm owners and in furtherance of federal tyranny. Piers believes the president’s extra-constitutional diktats don’t go far enough to void what’s left of the Constitutional scheme (to say nothing of the Hippocratic Oath. The Dear Leader has decreed that, “Doctors and other health care providers … need to be able to ask about firearms in their patients’ homes and safe storage of those firearms”).

Last year, an admirably rebellious Egyptian people revolted against President Mohamed Morsy for issuing a single executive order. America’s “King Tut” issued 23 such directives in one day! But—and by contrast—Piers thinks nothing of this “attempt by the [US] executive to make laws in violation of the Article 1, Sec. 8 of the Constitution” …

… Read the complete column, “The Peerless Malevolence of Redcoat Piers Morgan,” now on RT.

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UPDATE IV: “Jesus, No Radical”? (Jesus’ Jewishness)

Ancient History, Christianity, Classical Liberalism, Hebrew Testament, Islam, Judaism & Jews, Justice

“Jesus was no political radical or rebel. He was God” is how the ever-provocative Jack Kerwick introduces his latest Belief.Net blog to Facebook Friends.

Maestro, pray tell, why are the two categories of the title—“G-d” vs. “political radical”—mutually exclusive?

One might have theological reasons for designating “G-d” and “political radical” as mutually exclusive, but reason is reason. It has to work a priori, surely?

Jews (at least those who think) think of Jesus as a preacher in the great tradition of the classical Hebrew prophets, whose genius, courage and yes, radicalism is hard to match—they were forever telling the stiff-necked people where to get off in no uncertain terms.

UPDATE I: “Yiddishkeit.” In reply to the thread on Facebook: Jesus was indeed a Jew (or a Hebrew), with everything that being a Hebrew would imply. A lot of people describe Jewish traits negatively. But you can be sure that Jesus was not without a dose of “Yiddishkeit,” as my blond, blue-eyed, Jewish mother would call it.

UPDATE II: Meathead: One should never place Russell Kirk in the company in which you placed him. For one, Kirk was against the wars Buckley embraced as a matter of principle. As I read Kirk, he was a classical liberal of enormous talent.

UPDATE III (June 14): The “because” is unfairly placed in yours sentence below, Jack Kerwick.

As for Ilana’s contention that Jesus was a “radical” because, like the prophets of old, He told “the stiff necked people where to get off in no uncertain terms,” how does that make Jesus, or anyone, a radical?

Here is what I wrote in the post above:

In punctuation, the sentence indicates that the last clause is but an example of the “genius, courage and yes, radicalism” of the prophets, and hardly exhaustive.

In meaning, how does the last clause, which you rightly seem to disparage as inexhaustible, qualify the words “genius, courage and yes, radicalism”?

It doesn’t. Yours is a somewhat unfair read of the sentence.

As for conflating, as you do Jack, the views of Jews on Christ with those of Muslims: That, in my view, is a grave error.

UPDATED: Brothers And Sisters On Top (Meantime, In Lefty La-La Land)

Affirmative Action, Christianity, Government, Homeland Security, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Race, Racism

LAYING OF THE HANDS BY HOMELAND SECURITY. Feel free to come up with other captions to this image, in which a young woman, palms up, endures a TSA head massage. It joins a growing stash of similarly themed Americana, in which minority members—represented in federal agencies in greater numbers than among the larger population—lord it over the maligned and despised majority.

This is no spiritual ministry.

In my case, a large African-American woman had summoned me with a crooked finger for a pat down, during which I thought of the film “Midnight Express.” And in particular, the scene where Billy Hayes’ far-from-delightful Turkish jailer schemes to enjoy some time alone with the young American. My tormentor wore the same sadistic, atavistic expression. Her giant digits were soon upon my chest and between my legs.

In the TSA grope-a-thone, a preponderance of manifestly angry minorities face off against the submissive majority. It’s not easy to prove—more so because there is no will to prove it—but you’d be hard pressed to view this sort of TSA pat-down, in this case, of a toddler in a cast (via LRC.COM), as racially insignificant or innocent.

Catholic nuns are notoriously liberal—having recently been admonished by the Vatican for infidelity to the Church’s teachings. So this nun probably doesn’t much mind having her habit disturbed by a similarly clad TSA handmaiden.

If you find footage of TSA agents frisking black tots, or elderly and crippled black old ladies, please send it along.

UPDATE (April 22): Meantime, In Lefty La-La Land.
A naive, lefty parallel universe RG (in Comments) has going there, in opposition to what is looking like a critical mass of facts and anecdotes. What was the last sentence in this post? “If you find footage of TSA agents [black or white] frisking black tots, or elderly and crippled black old ladies, please send it along.”

In a Perverse Way, Afghan Justice Is Less Perverse

Christianity, Crime, Justice, Law, Middle East, Military, Morality, Natural Law

“As a Christian,” reasons Thomas Fleming, in his highly recommended Mail-Online blog, “I can say plainly that Afghans have a truer sense of justice than the catechisms of most Christian churches today. As post-Christian savages without a sense of justice, we were quite wrong to conquer this primitive people.”

“The Afghans do not pretend to see beyond the end of their nose or outside the limits of their settlement. Their simple and wholesome ethic is: You kill my people, I kill you. They are demanding nothing less than the transfer of the killer to Afghan jurisdiction. After a speedy trial and conviction, he will be turned over to the relatives of the victims to kill in whatever way they see fit.”

“Americans may pretend to understand this demand as a temporary outburst of grief and rage, but, when they do not relent, in a few weeks we can expect to hear condemnations of the primitive Afghan understanding of justice. We shall be reminded of the Talibans’ mass executions in sports stadiums. ‘They don’t want justice,’ we shall cry, ‘only vengeance,’ and no one will spend half a minute explaining what the difference is.”

“Here in the enlightened West,

we know that the purpose of a criminal justice system is two-fold: to rehabilitate the criminal and protect the public. It was not always so. The ancients believed that a criminal act–murder, assault, robbery, rape–put the universe out of joint. The purpose of punishment was to put it right again. Killers are killed, robbers robbed, beaters beaten.
It was not always so simple as “an eye for an eye,” and Roman and Christian law made allowances for motives, circumstances, and appropriateness of punishment, but they never forgot the primary purpose of punishment was retribution or, to use a simpler word, vengeance.
Leftist Christians will howl in protest, citing, “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” little understanding that the same Lord, according to St. Paul, delegates the power to punish evil to the rulers of the world. Not in vain, Paul declared in an authoritative chapter of Romans, does the ruler hold the sword, nor is it a terror to the good but only to the wicked. It follows that a ruler who casts away the sword on a humanitarian whim is no longer a legitimate ruler. The Church always begged for mercy in specific cases, but never disputed the right and duty of kings and parliaments to execute criminals.
Even Imanuel Kant, who got most things wrong, saw through the lies of all the liberal theories of punishment:
“Judicial punishment can never be used solely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or for society, but instead must in all cases be imposed on a person solely on the ground that he has committed a crime….woe to him who rummages around in the winding paths of a theory of happiness looking for some advantage to be gained by releasing the criminal from punishment or by reducing the amount of it….

MORE.