Freedom Apart from Faith?

April 16, 2011 Leave a comment

Vanity Fair, May 2011 issue, under the heading Five Things the Lamestream Media Won’t Tell You About the Constitution:

“2. The phrase “separation of church and state” appears nowhere in the Constitution. It was coined in 1975 by William Ayers.”

*****
Here’s something to ponder: a golf game is more important to Obama (who learned about compartmentalization while being around Ayers) than attending church with his family.
Obama has no problem deciding whether to play golf. The economy, Lybia and…? These issues don’t require faith or prayer or even a decision. For Obama, these things require golf (and campaigning for 2012).

2012: send Obama back to wherever he came from. Somewhere there is a community that needs his golf experience!

*****
In stark contrast to the morally filibustering Obama is the integrity and forthrightness of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan:

On the opposite side of the fence (or state border) from Obama is Wisconsin’s Rep. Paul Ryan. In the Sunday, April 17th, 2011 Chicago Tribune there is an article about Ryan titled Wisconsin’s Ryan is thrust into spotlight: Conservative’s plans put him at odds with Obama.” The article discusses some of the details of Ryan’s The Path to Prosperity budget plan. There is also this quote:

“Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, in the news for his own budget battles, is an ally (of Ryan). “There are two types of people in politics, people who want to be somebody great or people who want to do something great,” he said Paul is among the latter.””

And in the article:

“House Republican Peter Roskam (a Christian), of Wheaton (Illlinois), called him (Ryan) well-prepared and said, “He doesn’t overstate or oversell and he’s clear – that’s a gift in this town.”
And:

“”He’s very devoted to his family. He flies back for parent-teacher conferences,” said Janesville attorney George Steil Jr. who practiced with Ryan’s father.”

At the end of the article:

“Joe Van Rooy, who teaches government at Janesville’s Parker High School…takes his students to Washington every year and they meet with Ryan. He said the congressman, now in his seventh term, knows their families and remembers their names. Ryan lectures them about political civility.”
“He noticed, though, that one year Ryan was fingering prayer beads while taking student’s questions. The teacher asked why.
“He said, ‘I am so stressed out about the country.’”
(emphasis mine)
*****

It appears that for Obama, faith is just another tool to leverage himself and his constant campaign. He is more interested in power than in principle.

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What Can You Say About the Nature of Man?

April 15, 2011 Leave a comment

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Tune In

April 15, 2011 Leave a comment

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Obamians vs. the Common man

April 14, 2011 Leave a comment

The Democrat’s/progressive’s answers to any economic/political question:  tax people more and give people a ration (bait-and-switch government);  you need government’s help;  the government has your best interest at heart, you are too stupid to know any better and government has deeper pockets than you, you won’t have a chance without government;  the people’s pie needs to be divvied up;  Fairness is better than justice; equal outcome trumps exceptional achievement;  everyone who is not wealthy is a victim of unfairness; It’s every woman’s right to commit abortion; life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness can only come when others are forced to share their life, liberty and happiness; having a government-secured future is better than trusting in a God we cannot see; you shouldn’t have to reap what you sow.

 The Republican response to a problem:  let’s make the pie bigger so that we can all share in its increase; government, get off our backs; it is every fetus’ right to be protected;  life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness comes when a person pursues life, liberty and happiness.  charity profits from such pursuits; accountability is mandatory.

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Obama’s Deficit Presidency & Failure’s Equal Outcome

April 14, 2011 Leave a comment

 

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Embracing the Dark Shade of Gender

April 12, 2011 Leave a comment


I don’t worship at the temple of psychology. Rather, I do believe that simple common sense dictates that this type of action (pictured in the j-crew ad) by the mother is moronic and hurtful. Gender identity is rooted in a sexed body and becomes mentally, emotionally and socially defined within healthy relationships and communities. The ad relationship, as depicted, is not a healthy one. The child is not ambivalent to what is happening to him. What symbol is the mother painting on her son?

I have a very clear fifty-three year old memory from kindergarten: I am standing outside the elementary school stage with other classmates. We are preparing to go out on stage to recite some memorized piece for a spring play. Each of us, boys and girls, waits for our turn to speak. As we waited for our cue, a teacher’s aide walked down the line, stood in front of each child and cupped their face in her hand. She then applied red lipstick on each child’s lips. The aide did the same to me and I started crying. I did not want to be a boy looking like a woman. I walked away and I didn’t go out on stage. That wasn’t for me.

Born with gender-dysphoria, I was never encouraged to behave feminine in any way by my parents. I was never given a gender option. Yet, as an adult I decided to reconcile my mind and body to live as woman. I did this not out of hate for my body nor out of an anger towards my father nor out of a need for attachment nor out of separation anxiety. I did not make the change to be with a man. I simply understood that I was female and not a feminine actor from the very beginning of my life.

I believe that while I was in the womb my brain was dealt an overdose of estrogen, thereby increasing a need/awareness of being entirely female despite having a body that was sexed male. Common sense would say be a male and that is what I did for most of my life. I lived this role until I realized, after much reflection, that I could make the change as a way of healing and reconciling my whole person. Now, you should know that the hormone-on-the-brain theory is not proven and neither are any of the psychological diagnoses proffered about gender-dysphoria. What is known, by all accounts that I’ve ever heard or read, is that the need to make the change is fundamental and pervasive for the dysphoric individual, so much so, that some people would even attribute the dysphoria to birth trauma. I have written many posts about these issues.

No one should be promoting gender-dysphoria or gender confusion within children. No one. This is serious business. A person may come to realize later in life that they can make the change and do it with help. It should be done only after much serious consideration and not because it is the fashionable thing to do in a post-modern age.

The j-crew ad is a blatant attack on gender. It implies that gender is fashion – a fashion accessory to take on or off. And, the fact that a parent is involved in this ad as presenting her son as a false-feminine person is truly disturbing. Gender isn’t fashion and parenting is not for fools.

In fun, children will swap gender roles in role play but they shed those roles when they leave the playground of their imagination. Pink nail polish doesn’t come off as easily… from your body or your psyche.

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Just a note: If you read Dr. Ablow’s post highlighted above you will note the many comments from the LGBT community. Many of the comments are angry words directed at Dr. Ablow. He is called homophobic.

You should know that homosexuals are very, very touchy about protecting thier homosexual lifestyle and the malignant narcissism that is behind it. Ablow’s article doesn’t mention homosexuality but the LGBT community is on high alert anyway.

Filed under family, gender, gender dysphoria, LGBT Tagged with , , , ,

The Bard and a Blustery Blowhole

April 9, 2011 Leave a comment

It is Saturday afternoon and I am listening to Wynton Marsalis playing Stadust on his horn. I am drinking Sofie, a tart Belgian Style Ale from Goose Island and I am reading the current (May 2011) Vanity Fair. I am suddenly struck by an off-handed pejorative comment in a VF article (again).

The current Vanity Fair magazine issue contains a column by contributing editor John Heilpern. The “Out To Lunch” one page piece is titled Avon Calling. This sounds interesting. But, wait.

The article relates Heilpern’s recent interview of Professor Harold Bloom at Bloom’s home in New Haven. Bloom, a professor of humanities at Yale for the past 55 years, is a well-known Shakespeare scholar. He has studied and read Shakespeare’s work in great depth. His latest book, number 39 in a series of scholarly works is titled The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life. (I am currently reading Bloom’s book Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human.)

In the interview Bloom’s talks about his respect for Shakespeare:

“If Shakespeare is not God, he told Heilpern, “I don’t know what God is.” And, regarding Shakespeare’s biographers, “Let me quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, best mind to come out of America: ‘Shakespeare is the only biographer of Shakespeare.’ In other words, don’t look for the man in the work; look for the work in the man. And stop speculating about his life.”

Further in the interview, Bloom: “All high concept Shakespeare directors should be shot a dawn,” Later, Heilpern mentions Al Pacino’s and F. Murray Abraham’s New York performances of Shylock (The Merchant of Venice) saying that Abraham is the greatest Shylock he’d ever seen. (Recently, March, Abraham was Shylock at the Bank of America Theatre in Chicago.)

The interview brushes on the topic of Falstaff. Bloom: “Sir John Falstaff…even more than Hamlet – and that’s saying something – he’s the most intelligent person in all of literature. He has the best mind, the best wit, the most beautiful laughing language. As my late friend the marvelous critic George Wilson Knight said about Hamlet, he’s the embassy of death. But Falstaff is life! Falstaff is blessing.”

Prince Hal and Falstaff’s banishment are mentioned and then Bloom says, “Falstaff sees through the all-powerful. ““He sees through everything. He’s the best possible guide to the state of the world today. Can you think of anyone more antithetical to the Fascism of the Tea Party than Sir John Falstaff?”

What?! Why the sniping Tea Party comment? Wait. I think I know why the old fart and gassy pontificator Bloom, learned disciple of Falstaff and urbane liberal, looks down upon the Tea Party from his ivory tower:
“He’s a drunk, a liar, and a cheat. Yet he’s been glowingly described as “the personification of England”. He’ll do anything with a debt but honour it, and makes light of accepting bribes from fit men and leading a troop of 150 decrepit soldiers to their deaths. Yet he’s also taken, at his own admiring estimate, as a great booster-jab of infectious liveliness: “I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.” He has a spectacular obesity problem and he’s referred to – with epic freedom from euphemism – as “that swoll’n parcel of dropsies”, “that stuff’d cloak-bag of guts”, “this bed-presser, this horse-back-breaker, this hill of flesh” – a man who secretes sweat in such quantities that he “lards the lean earth as he walks along”. Yet his most prominent characteristic, according to many commentators, is his “jubilant brain”. Meet, if you will, Sir John Falstaff.”

O, the humanity!

The above quote from this web page.

Filed under Current Events 2011, Politics, Tea Party Tagged with ,

Tantum Ergo

April 8, 2011 Leave a comment

“When Christians say the Christ-life is in them, they do not mean simply something mental or moral. When they speak of being “in Christ” or of Christ being “in them” this is not simply a way of saying that they are thinking about Christ or copying Him. They mean that Christ is actually operating through them: that the whole mass of Christians are the physical organism through which Christ acts –that we are His fingers and muscles, the cells of His body. And perhaps that explains one or two things. It explains why this new life is spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, but by the bodily acts like baptism and Holy Communion…There is no good in trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.” C. S. Lewis

I will never understand why the Bible/Baptist churches teach that the communion wafer and grape juice are just symbols or tokens of Christ’s sacrifice and not the Real Presence of Jesus Christ. It is these same churches that preach that Christ dwells within the believer. Why cannot that same Christ dwell in the bread and wine?

The Holy Spirit came down as a dove. And, God moved His people with a cloud and pillar of fire. Manna. The burning bush. The Temple. These all were obviously physical manifestations that required the eyes of faith to rightly see that God was in them. The same applies to the bread and wine.

“But Jesus didn’t give an inch. “Only insofar as you eat and drink flesh and blood, the flesh and blood of the Son of Man, do you have life within you. The one who brings a hearty appetite to this eating and drinking has eternal life and will be fit and ready for the Final Day. My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. By eating my flesh and drinking my blood you enter into me and I into you. In the same way that the fully alive Father sent me here and I live because of him, so the one who makes a meal of me lives because of me. This is the Bread from heaven. Your ancestors ate bread and later died. Whoever eats this Bread will live always.””

St John (6:32-58)

“Well, if [the Eucharist] is just a symbol, to hell with it.”–Flannery O’Connor, when discussing Catholicism with writer Mary McCarthy

(Flannery) “O’Connor was often critical of what she considered Protestant shortcomings. “A Protestant habit is to condemn the Church for being authoritarian and then blame her for not being authoritarian enough”. She had a healthy respect for fundamentalist Protestants, and she was alarmed at the liberal theology she heard coming from some Protestant camps. “One of the effects of modern liberal Protestantism has been gradually to turn religion into poetry and therapy, to make truth vaguer and vaguer and more and more relative, to banish intellectual distinctions, to depend on feeling instead of thought, and gradually to come to believe that God has no power, that he cannot communicate with us, cannot reveal himself to us, indeed has not done so and that religion is our own sweet invention”. She understood the difference between cheap grace and costly grace. “What people don’t realize,” she wrote to Louise Abbot, “is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross”.”From this web page.

Read more.

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Mordorian Madness

April 7, 2011 Leave a comment

 

Dear Government,

 Even if you were to shut down due to a budget crisis our national debt never shuts down.  In fact, our national debt continues to grow and mushroom. Soon, Middle Earth and the lives of men will be destroyed. This fact pleases The Dark Lord Sauron but not us Hobbits.

Destroy the Ring that controls you!

Sincerely,

Bilbo T. Baggins

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The Writing on the Wall

April 5, 2011 Leave a comment

Ob-a-Man is running for re-election.  This UberMan has never stopped campaigning (except while making hops and malt into Obama beer:  PrezFez.  He must be getting ready for another beer summit.).

It is said that he will gather one billion dollars ($1,000,000,000.00) to finance his campaign.  (This money, put into the hands of the common folk, would do much to stimulate the economy.  Ob’s ego is stimulated enough.)

 Obama, the Enabler:  “We can Win the Future… if you just keep buying the lottery tickets I’m selling!”; “Carpe pecunia!”

 (Obamany:   Asking your husband if you can spend more money than you as a couple will ever have in your life and telling him that your household will be better off for it! “Honey, let’s make the kids pay our bills. Today, we live!)

Obama:  LOL, COL (cry out loud).

Mene Mene Tekel Upsharin

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