A Christian’s Heart 6 26 12

Episodes

Things I See and Hear

The perfidy of the national media demonstrated:

You must surely recall the incident where a neighborhood watch volunteer named George Zimmerman killed a young black man named Trayvon Martin. NBC news was caught editing a tape of the Zimmerman 911 call  to make it sound like Zimmerman had picked out Martin because he was black, when in fact that was not the case. NBC fired the editor over this and claimed that they did not intentionally edit this tape this way. What a lie! Any idiot could see through this.

More recently MSNBC edited a video of Mitt Romney’s visit to a store where he commented on certain touchtone keypad equipment the store used. They edited the video  to make it look like Romney was amazed that there might be such technology: message being this guy’s a rube and should not be president. Romney’s message was, in reality, about how competition in the private sector produces efficiencies that are not mirrored when the government runs something. (Like the Obama Nation Health Care law, just approved by the Supreme Court.)

There was also the Duke Lacrosse rape case where the three boys falsely accused of rape were tried and convicted in the press. The New York Times was a leader in this journalistic atrocity.

Then there was the Dan Rather CBS News incident during the Bush years where Rather was caught pushing a forged document indicating, as I recall, that Bush had lied about his National Guard service. Mr. Rather was fired as a result of that.

Of course there are thousands more of examples. Any honest media watchdog agency could provide them.

Such media lies follow a long tradition of the media being little less than a left-wing propaganda machine.

I’ve been reading an interesting book by Thomas Sowell called Intellectuals and Society (Basic Books, NY, NY, 2011). Dr. Thomas Sowell, a well-known economist, makes many comments that touch on this topic in his book (numbers in parentheses represent page numbers in his book).

Re: The Soviet Union

If you were a reader of the news media in the 1930’s, particularly the New York Times, you would have been convinced that the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin was the “moral top of the world.” (from Edmund Wilson, literary critic, quoted on p. 213. This idiocy was not constrained to gushing praise of Joe Stalin’s Soviet Union. You older readers probably remember Jane Fonda’s gushing praise of North Vietnam and communism in the 1970s. This was before the government of the North killed over 1 million people after we slunk out of South Vietnam in the early 1970s. This was also before Communist murderer Pol Pot killed between 2 – 3 million people in Cambodia during that same time period.

But Did you know that in the 1930’s Joseph Stalin’s government created a famine in Ukraine that eventually starved to death about 6.0 million human beings (193-194). This was later confirmed when, under Mikhial Gorbechev, the Soviet archives were opened.(194). (According to the Black Book of Communism, estimates of the number of Soviet citizens murdered under Uncle Joe’s rule range from 35 to 50 million. I’ve seen estimates as high as 60 million elsewhere.)

Now during the time of the Ukraine atrocity, a reporter from the New York Times named Walter Duranty wrote, “There is no famine or actual starvation, nor is their likely to be.” (quoted on p. 194) Later a British diplomat reported to London that “Mr. Duranty thinks it quite possible that as many as 10 million people may have died directly or indirectly.” For lying through his teeth Mr. Duranty got a Pulitzer prize. (also quoted on p. 194).

On the other hand, a British writer named Malcom Muggeridge reported that peasants in Ukraine were indeed starving and that “the man-made famine in Ukraine was one of the most monstrous crimes in history …” What was this honest man’s reward: he was drummed out of the media for his “hysterical tirade”, and could not get a job anywhere as a writer. (194) (If you want to get more information on the atrocities committed by communist governments, Google “The Black Book of Communism.” It’s available on Amazon. The statistics and incidents recorded in that book are based on the scholarly work of several French historians (not right-wingers by any stretch!) who combed through the Soviet archives mentioned above.)

Re: Herbert Hoover

Based on our history lessons “everyone knows” that Herbert Hoover caused the Great Depression, that he did nothing for the poor people of America starving in the streets, that he was in the pockets of the robber barons of Industry; in short, that he was an all round really bad man. This has been the common view of Hoover in the popular media for over eighty years. I never saw anything to balance that view until a few years ago.

But did you know that Herbert Hoover was one of the great philanthropists of the 20^th century, and maybe would have been known “as one of the greatest humanitarians of the century” had he not had the misfortune of being president during the start of the Great Depression? (203) Right after World War I there were millions of people in Europe suffering from hunger. According to Dr. Sowell, “Hoover formed a philanthropic organization to get food to them on a massive scale. However, realizing that if he operated in the usual way, by first raising money from donations and then buying the food, people would be dying…” So Hoover, taking what I consider to be an enormous personal risk, bought the food first with his own personal fortune and shipped it to and distributed it through Europe and then eventually covered the cost by raising donations.(203)

Did you also know that during the beginning of the Great Depression Hoover raised taxes rates on the rich from 30 percent to over 60 percent? And that “the real Hoover was praised by the head of the American Federation of Labor for his efforts to keep industry from cutting workers’ wages during the depression.” (205)

As I point out above, this lying to the public by the popular media certainly hasn’t stopped in our day. Why, then, do you suppose they have so much power over us? Why do we buy into their lies? And what does this suggest about our future as a free country where all points of view are respected?

 

Episodes

Things I see and hear

I saw a movie called THE MIST recently. It is based on a novel by Stephen King. It’s a gruesome story (of course) about some deadly creatures that get released onto earth from another dimension. These creatures exist only in the mist that has poured out of this other world. The movie is shot almost entirely in a grocery store where several dozen people have been trapped. If anyone goes out into the mist, he is brutally killed. (Not the most uplifting movie to watch, I admit.) But there was one character who claimed to know God. Her soul, however, was full of darkness and evil. And like the Evil One, she quoted Scripture incessantly. It’s hard to describe this character within the length constraints of this blog, except to say, she is everything evil anyone has ever thought about God, God’s people or His church: She was accusatory, judgmental, without compassion or love, full of hatred, and just plain awful; she even started demanding human sacrifices to appease the “forces of hell” that had been released into the world. By extension, of course, her God must be this same way. This indicates to me how Mr. King views God and his church.

Needless to say, this movie saddened me greatly. Think of all the people who were turned away from God when they saw this. Think of the darkness of the soul that wrote this book. Yet I’m wondering if the behavior of the church over the past millennium has not merited some of this criticism. Think of the inquisition, for example.  What a shame that the church could be slandered in this way. What have we done?

I was having a cup of coffee at a local coffee shop, reading. A lesbian couple came into the shop and started “making out”. I cannot tell you how uncomfortable this made me. There’s a time and a place for everything, except, of course, for homosexual behavior. Seeing anyone “making out” would leave an uncomfortable feeling. Seeing homosexual’s make out left me nauseous. And my heart went out to them: the judgment they face in the next life is so awful, it cannot be described in human terms. I’m wondering how they might have reacted if I had mentioned my feelings to them. Given the viciousness of the society we live in, they probably would have thrown a cup of hot coffee at me. I am praying for them.

Finally:

I was reading the prophet Haggai and the Lord says:

“Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.” (Hag 1:5-6) And then the Lord says, “Therefore, because [you have refused to rebuild my temple] the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops. I called for a drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the new wine, the oil and whatever the ground produces, on men and cattle, and on the labor of your hands.” (Hag 1:10-11)

Well, I personally have written six books, with two more on the way. I have spent thousands of dollars on them, and have gotten little in return. One thing I’m sure of: it was and is the Lord’s will for me to write. The one thing I’m not sure of is, am I doing something, or not doing something that has caused the Lord to call a draught on “the labor of my hands”? One tidbit of information: He has continued to bless me in many other ways. I have yet to receive the blessing of book sales, however. It’s about more than the money. I believe the books have merit both artistically and spiritually.  The few readers I do have have said that my work has impacted their lives in a significant way. So, I’m continuing to “give careful thought” to my ways.

That’s the blog this time. Updates should be coming every other day or so.

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A Christian’s Heart 6-5-2012

America the Fool

The Tyranny of Good Intentions

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Matt 7:21-23)

[Jesus said,] “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matt 7:11)

We are a society that is being destroyed by “well intended” policies. The welfare state, which has destroyed millions of lives, especially in the black community, started based on good intentions. Lyndon Johnson introduced the 1964/65 Great Society legislation by saying it would be a help up, not a hand out. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=28464#axzz1wx6DFZIw

But it has not turned out to be a help up at all, but just one hand out after another. Generations of people have grown up on welfare. Generations of lives have been destroyed thereby, especially in the black community. Giving people money without requiring that they earn it, destroys their willingness to work, and it sabotages their self-esteem. When one looses his/her self esteem, he/she feels victimized and he/she gets angry. So now, after 50 years of the destructive welfare policies we “naturally” live in a society full of anger and hate where everyone is a victim. This is especially true in the black community where victimhood is preached everyday.

Bill Clinton himself is quoted as saying,

“All Americans, without regard to party, know that our welfare system is broken, that it teaches the wrong values, rewards the wrong choices, hurts those it was meant to help,” Clinton said. “We also know that no one wants to change the current system in a good way more than people who are trapped in it.”

And any one of you can all look into your own souls and see that this would be true of you too, if you were (or are) unfortunate enough to be a client of (and a slave to) the welfare state.

Now, Scripture is clear: even though all of us are evil (absent the saving work of God’s Spirit in our lives) we can do good things as God would judge them. And certainly I believe the genesis of the welfare state was based on the good intention to help people in need. Who, after all, seeing someone starving would not want to give him/her food to eat? (Though I don’t believe any able-bodied person in the U.S. was starving in 1964.) Who, seeing someone going naked, would not want to give them clothing to wear? (Again, I don’t believe any able-bodied person was going naked in America in 1964.) Who, seeing someone struggling to support themselves in this dog-eat-dog society would not want to give him/her a helping hand to allow him/her to succeed? (This was certainly true of millions of people in America in 1964, especially in the black community.)

But my question is this: if after 50 years and $16 trillion dollars of not only failed welfare state policies but of the destruction they have caused, can one really claim to have good intentions by continuing to support and facilitate these destructive policies? Rather, can it be reasonably interpreted that those who continue to support these destructive policies don’t really care about the people they are supposedly trying to help? Can it not be reasonably inferred that they are really just flattering themselves and pumping up their own egos at the expense of those who are their true victims: the people enslaved by the welfare state, and the dependent mentality it fosters? Can it not be reasonably be inferred that these people in all reality need the poor and the destitute to remain poor and destitute so that they will have a constituency that will help them maintain their political power?

Recall when a massive change to the welfare program, called workfare, was passed in 1996 there were howls of protest from the Welfare State promulgators, that requiring people to actually work for their benefits would leave people starving in the streets; children would starve; whole families would starve, and all manner of cataclysmic evil would rain down on America. (Bill Clinton’s words above were stated in the context of this workfare reform effort and the debate that resulted.)

Needless to say, none of these catastrophes happened, and the worst fears of those who howled loudest did not materialize. The welfare roles were reduced dramatically and people whose families had been dependent on welfare for generations were finding work and breaking the chains that bound them without hope to dependence on welfare. Yet in the face of this, in 2009, a bill was introduced to reverse these beneficial changes. I cannot determine whether this bill was passed or not, but the very idea that it would have been introduced in the first place tells me that those who support the welfare state do not have the best interests of its slaves at heart. I believe the very introduction of this bill answers my question above: these politicians need the poor and destitute to remain poor and destitute so that they, the Welfare State supporters, will continue to control the destitute’s lives, keep them dependent, and thereby retain their power over them.

The passage from Matthew chapter 7 above states clearly that there will be those who might have thought they were doing good, but who in the end will be cast into the burning fires of hell because they were doing evil in God’s eyes. And certainly, the Welfare State has produced only evil in the lives it has destroyed. But this passage implies to me that there are many who are knowingly doing evil who will also be thrown into the burning fires of hell, though they claimed they were doing good.

God save America from the continued expansion of this evil program, and from our “good intentions”. If He does not, America will impale itself on them: anger and hate will continue to spread, and civil strife will break out; eventually society will destroy itself. We have already seen the beginnings of this in the Occupy Wall Street movement, which I addressed in a previous blog. We can see this destructive pattern in other countries, like Greece.

But since we have rejected God as a nation, I hold out little hope that He will turn us from our destructive and evil ways.