FMeekins's blog

Stream Of Consciousness Observations Regarding The 2012 State Of The Union

Obama insists he doesn't want our energy needs linked to unstable parts of the world.  Then why did he veto the Keystone Oil Pipeline?

Obama remarked his grandparents' generation triumphed over fascism.  Yet fascism is the very economic system that he advocates.  Perhaps not yet in terms of wide scale deprivation of human rights but rather in the technical sense of the means of production remaining privately owned but strictly controlled by the government.

If we are all to play by the same set of rules, then why has it taken months for the National Park Service to do anything about the Occupy beatniks laying siege to a number of parks in Washington, DC?

Why should it be portrayed as a greater tragedy when a "single mother" loses her job rather than a man with a wife that stays at home?  Seems both domestic arrangements are in similar positions without income.

In calling for a single source for the unemployed to seek information on training opportunities, doesn't that involve the federal government assuming more control over education?

Obama insists it should be illegal for students to drop out of school before they are 18.  Why should this be a matter of federal interference and what will the punishment be for those leaving prior to that age?

If no country is better than any other according to multiculturalist dogma, then why should foreign students be allowed to remain here after graduation? read more »

Christmas Irritants Pervasive

Use to be during the Christmas season in modern America, if the individual wanted a little buzz during the holidays, they would slip a bit of something into their eggnog. Now, all you have to do to feel that surge of agitated surliness is to turn on the news or read about those turning themselves into the hind quarters of the species the Holy Family rode into Bethlehem in order to pay the assessed tax (an existential financial matter it seems fewer and fewer could possibly relate to).

If you think it is only secularists making an overall nuisance of themselves, you are in for a bigger disappointment than finding a lump of coal in your stocking Christmas morning.

For better or worse, the Internet is widespread enough that most are aware that there is nothing in the Bible compelling believers to participate in the celebration of the birth of Christ even though His miraculous arrival is documented in the pages of Scripture and that many of the trappings such as decorations and related customs now imbedded with meanings symbolizing the spiritually profound account have (to invoke a word of sectarian irony) less than kosher origins.

However, for the most part, Christians on either side of the divide have established a kind of amicable truce where for the most part about the worst that they do to their counterparts is to look down their noses at one another and snicker how peculiar or inconsistent the ones on the side of the debate opposite their own happen to be. read more »

The Old Retcon Bait & Switch

A number of the ultrapious are attempting to promote the notion that if there are no godly candidates running in an election, then the true believer should perhaps refrain from voting all together.  

What we have here is a derivative of the old bait and switch tactic.  

Both Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum are both deeply motivated by their respective Christian faiths.   

However, in numerous Facebook status updates posted by proponents of this perspective, it is constantly reiterated that neither of these candidates is good enough.  

Those advocating such a position are not being fully open about their true position.  

According to this form of Christian Reconstructionism, if a candidate disagrees on so much as a single issue not even directly related to issues of soteriology or Christology, you are not only forbidden from electing them to elected office but are also to toss them into outer darkness as one would any other unbeliever.

By Frederick Meekins

 

 

DC Grants Rats More Rights Than Unborn Children

A law has been enacted by the DC city council not only requiring that must most forms of rodentine vermin be captured for rerelease, but that they must also be relocated as family units.

These creatures are not a pod of whales, a herd of elephants, or a troop of gorillas.

Given that they will even eat their young and produce another liter a few months or weeks later, I doubt they form deep meaningful bonds with their offspring.

The same fanatics that don't want rats harmed by human hands are the same ones that decimate feral cat colonies that would otherwise keep these pests in check.

It's not like rats are on the verge of going extinct in the nation's Capitol (and given the nature of the city it's doubtful that they ever will).

According to one DC health official from Pakistan, the rat problem at Occupy movement shantytowns exceed those in Third World refuge camps.

Some will snap that the law applies only to pest control officials.

But for how long?

Often as in regards to other expansive laws, eventually this dictatorial regulation will be expanded to homeowners trying to handle these vermin themselves.

And speaking of plagues and such, it wouldn't surprise me if such laws were being enacted as a way to allow some kind of new strain of the plague to develop with the hopes of systematically eliminating vast swaths of the human population.

by Frederick Meekins

 

 

Christmas Billboards Point In The Culture War's Direction

Christmas is the time of year when the thoughts of most Americans grow to be at their most devout. It is increasingly the time of year that the avowed despisers of the Almighty are at their most disrespectful.

Before now, the most culturally embarrassing thing to come out of the wastelands of the Garden State was likely Snooki and her Jersey Shore compatriots. However, it now seems even their debauched escapades have been surpassed in terms of deliberately thumbing one’s nose at God.

For decades, one municipality there has draped across a main street a banner reading that horrible bit of wordplay “Keep Christ In Christmas”. As has become customary, leftist subversives have stepped forward insisting that the banner be taken down to placate one or two discombobulated by the message.

Those holding to this position contend that the feelings of a handful must be upheld at all costs for the sake of social cohesion. So if it cannot be urged to keep Christ in Christmas, are these diversitymongers going to be consistent and call for the decoupling of “Black” from “History Month”? That commemoration is even more divisive and controversial, but most Whites are too afraid to speak up as to what they really think of it. read more »

Zany Might Be An Improvement

Romney insists in regards to Gingrich that "zany is not what we need in a President".

By that, one must assume Romney considers as "zany" a willingness to at least consider approaches to issues outside of the box and observing where our time fits with the overall flow of history.

To Romney, it seems how things are going now are, to use vocabulary fitting with his own patterns of speech, "just peachy".

But one supposes there really isn't anyway of ascertaining such since Romney also informed us that we really didn't need an historian either.

And just think, he could have likely gotten by with it if it weren't for those pesky kids.

Thought I would toss that in if candidates are going to start sounding like they are doing voiceovers for Scooby-do episodes from the mid 70's.

by Frederick Meekins

New Yorker Cartoon Exposes Bias & Not Historical Realities

It has been observed that often a picture is worth a thousand words. By this, it is meant that often a witty image can more quickly convey an idea than a written exposition.

Another truism nearly as classic insists that the only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn anything from history.

A prime example of these working in tandem could be found on the cover of a late 2011 edition of the New Yorker Magazine. Depicted violating the U.S. southern border were migrants adorned not in sombreros but rather in what would be considered traditional Thanksgiving pilgrim garb.

Such doodling, though admittedly humorous, displays a number of questionable assumptions.

For starters, the cartoon assumes that the illegal aliens of today are the equivalent of the Pilgrim settlers.

In addressing this issue, emphasis must be placed upon ILLEGAL.

The migrants coming here today are doing so in violation of the agreed upon governing authorities of the territorial United States.

The English Separatists voyaging here aboard the Mayflower committed no such transgression. In fact, the pioneers making that trek were so eager to see law and order established that among their first acts was to promulgate the Mayflower Compact. They are not to blame if the Indians did not have an as developed sense of property as we have in our own Western tradition or that there was not as much of a need to enforce borders back then as there is today. read more »

Leftist Factions Co-opt Rather Than Abolish Holidays

For about the past two decades, those to the left side of the sociopolitical spectrum have made such a fuss over their hostility towards traditional American holidays and celebrations that the arising disputations have themselves become an anticipated aspect of the close of each year.  It was claimed such festivities promote values so vile that these sentiments must be expunged from the civic calendar and the very names seldom mentioned for fear of irrevocably harming those not participating for whatever the reason.

 

Though not always cognizant of the epic spiritual and philosophical struggle taking place all around them, Americans can be a remarkably stubborn and independent lot.  As such, a number sympathetic to the process of communalization have realized that they might be more successful in accomplishing their goals through a subdued gradualism rather than through sudden revolutionary upheaval.

 

The first of the remembrances of the waning year subverted by manipulative social engineers is Thanksgiving.  This holiday is despised for a number of common liberal reasons.

 

For starters, it is argued that Thanksgiving is racist because of the hostilities that eventually erupted between Americans of European origins and the American Indians.  However, such criticism fails to recognize that, at the time of the first Thanksgiving Feast, these distinct groups were at accord with one another over the blessings shared amidst hardships and struggle.

  read more »

Lessons In Apologetics #9: Theism

The next worldview examined by Geisler in "Christian Apologetics" is Theism.  Theism is the belief that a transcendent God created the universe as a reality distinct from Himself but which He actively sustains through both a system of natural law which He created and through divine intervention at the moments He deems such action appropriate for the accomplishment of His divine will.  It is Geisler's intention that, since the other worldviews thus far are contradictory and therefore false, Theism is the true worldview.

However, Geisler does not leave readers dangling by requiring them to embrace Theism simply for the lack of another viable alternative.  Instead, Geisler provides an argument more positive in its orientation incorporating analytical and evidential components.

The argument is stated as such: "(1) Some things undeniably exist. (2) My nonexistence is possible. (3) Whatever has the possibility not to exist is currently caused to exist by another. (4) There cannot be an infinite regress of current causes of existence. (5) Therefore, a first uncaused cause of my current existence exists. (6) This uncaused cause must be infinite, unchanging, all powerful, all knowing, and all perfect. (7) This infinitely perfect being is called "God". (8) Therefore, God exists. (9) This God who exists is identical to the God described in the Christian Scriptures. (10) Therefore, the God described in the Bible exists." read more »

Shining The Light On Laser Pointer Penalties

The Federal Aviation Administration has announced plans to impose fines as high as $11,000 upon those caught shining laser pointers into airplane cockpits. 

Exposure to the beam emitted by such a device can result in temporary blindness, thus theoretically resulting in a major air catastrophe if a flight crew were unexpectedly incapacitated.

In a sense, such a regulation is all good and called for. 

However, one can't but help ask the question how the perpetrators of such malfeasance can be identified at such a distance.

One account categorized the proposed penalty as civil rather than criminal in nature.

As such, it should be pointed out that the threshold to impose such are often lower and occasionally do not afford those they are leveled against with the traditional procedural protections of the judicial system.

In light of the way certain regulations regarding drug possession are implemented, these enforcement operations could end up being as much about raising revenue and seizing desired property as it is about making the skies a friendlier place to fly.

For example, under certain instances of civil penalties and forfeiture, those ultimately cleared of any criminal wrong doing in regards to the drug offenses leveled against them do not necessarily have their property returned to them despite never having been convicted as a part of due process. read more »

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