And, Now, For A Little Culture June 28, 2010

Best viewed with a little volume…

Self-Enslavement June 27, 2010

“Freedom is a need of the soul, and nothing else. It is in striving toward God that the soul strives continually after a condition of freedom. God alone is the inciter and guarantor of freedom. He is the only guarantor. External freedom is only an aspect of interior freedom. Political freedom, as the Western world has known it, is only a political reading of the Bible. Religion and freedom are indivisible. Without freedom the soul dies. Without the soul there is no justification for freedom.” — Whitaker Chambers, in “Witness.”

Even though I’ve always understood Communism (socialism, progressivism, liberalism, leftism) to be anti-God, it never really occurred to me just how ferociously the movement HATES GOD. Even though they claim they don’t believe in a Hereafter, they might as well, because they have sold out to the Evil One, whose finest weapon is to convince people that he doesn’t exist. The left hates God. Period. They hate everything about Him. And they are willing to die to prove it.

I just started reading Whittaker Chambers’ “Witness.” Since it was published in 1952, and I am just getting around to it now, I sincerely apologize to him posthumously for not having read it before. Everything Chambers feared in that book is coming to pass in America today, and the basic reason is mentioned above: The Communists are willing to die to prove there is no God.

“Witness” is about a man making a choice between faith in the REAL God and the human as “god” that Communism has worshipped from the start. But, who is really being worshipped here? Man is a creature of a good and loving God. And, man has a choice between good and evil, which choice is proof of God’s love for us: That He gives us full opportunity to choose against Him if we wish to do so. On the “good” side, God and His love is our choice. On the evil side, we have no choice but to worship the devil himself. Degrees of evil are still evil, so any “shades of gray” are merely attempts to cover up the reality. When we turn our backs on our Creator, we turn toward His antithesis, the evil of Satan. But WE must do the choosing, and we don’t get into a position like America is in without having first made that fundamental decision.

Slavery is just one of Satan’s evil manifestions, and we Americans have enslaved OURSELVES. By our laziness in defending goodness, by our hesitancy to stand up for right, for Life, and for patriotism, by our willingness to “let George do it,” by our desire to be cared for by “the government” from cradle to grave, we have enslaved ourselves to Satan, who doesn’t CARE for us. All he cares about is that we join him in his hatred of God, which we have done so thoroughly and so completely that in just a few years, we have become a debtor nation, a post-Christian country, a weak and subservient parody of our true moral greatness among all the nations of the world. We have slaughtered our posterity, and indebted those who survive until they are ancient, we have turned our televisions and internet websites into bottomless cesspools of depravity. Our schools teach relativism, revisionist “history,” and political correctness. We have no one to blame but ourselves, and, all the while, Satan, the ultimate malignant narcissist, accepts it all as his due, and loves every second of it.

Are we willing to be at least as dedicated as those God-haters? Can we resolve to die to take America back for the sake of our children’s children? Just as Whittaker Chambers made his choice in the middle of the last century, the time has come for us to make that same choice, before it really is too late. We never really have the option to stop choosing God. Failure to choose is as fundamental a choice as answering an altar call. We must do it for the sake of our posterity.

Four Minutes June 26, 2010

This little video takes four minutes. It’s worth EVERY second…

Waiting For The Dream June 23, 2010

What has happened to all the Obama bumper stickers? Remember them? The red, white, and blue “O,” that used to be EVERYWHERE?? For some reason, I don’t see many of them any more. I see lots of scratched-off places on people’s bumpers, but not many actual stickers. Don’t see much activity in the “obama” aisle in the library, or at the “O” kiosks in the malls, either.

He still has his hard little knot of True Believers, people who are so beholden, he could be the Emperor in his birthday suit. Most of the people in the mainstream press dream about him at night, live to be of service to him, and would take a bullet for him without question. It’s in their voices, in the careful way they avoid saying anything that might be construed as negative, or might put him in a less than celestial light. (Speaking of which, have you noticed the recent paucity of clever photos of the Won with a unique “halo” behind his head? No, just this one, I’m afraid…)

If the elections were held today, instead of November of 2012, he couldn’t be re-elected. I believe he has jumped several sharks too many, and disillusioned people who voted for him in November and who supported him earlier in his term have now begun to wander off.

For a man with such a simple past, (no paper trail, no birth certificate, no transcripts, and no history), he has managed to turn the majority of voters in this country against him in just a little over a year. Sheesh, it took GWB, the most hated man in the world (well, maybe after Dick Cheney) more than one full term to pull that one off.

There will always be those of us who didn’t vote for the current resident in the first place, people who saw him for what he was long ago. But, what about all those starry-eyed o-bots who proudly put their “X” in the box for the skinny pretender? Where have they gone? Where are all those hundreds of thousands of voters who stood in the city squares and waited with tears streaming down their cheeks on election night to hear the news that their golden boy had been elected and the country was about to take a right-angle turn for the better? You know, the ones waving the red hammer-and-sickle flags? Are they wondering when it’s going to get “better?” Are they disgusted because all his promises seem to have gone “POOF!” like Pierre’s moustache?

When are the seas going to stop rising? When is the earth going to start healing?? When are the “we” we’ve been waiting for going to arrive??

Are they stumbling around out there in the darkness again, wondering, “Whatever happened to the dream he promised to fulfil?”

Probably.

I Thought Of It First…Sorta June 21, 2010

This just turned up in Canada Free Press.

THIS was written by me here in 2009.

The current resident has no need of the wealth or freedom of this country, and he doesn’t really want it, except to keep it away from you and me. And, yet, he is hard at work ripping it out of the hands of the people who earned it, designed it, built it, maintain it, and provide it, just so we won’t have the fruits of our labors. What I said in 2009 in the article linked above still goes, only moreso, as we have seen, to our sorrow. The current resident and his flying monkeys have had over a year and a half to destroy everything they could lay their hands on, and they aren’t done yet. Time to pray. HARD.

Incidentally, it’s very hard to find information about the theft of the Escalante Grand Staircase coal deposit, simply because it was stolen from the people of Utah just as surely as if guns and a getaway car had been used. Bill Clinton shut it down to prevent its development because it is the biggest deposit of anthracite coal in the world. In order to get campaign money from the Riyadi clan for his second campaign, he turned the entire area into a “National Monument,” and left the Indonesian deposit (second largest) to be developed and profited from. (The foregoing is presented in order to inform you if you had not heard about the Escalante scandal when it happened.)

Pioneer Power, U.S.A. June 20, 2010

This is the Pioneer Power club Joe and I belonged to in Minnesota. Click on the little video image to get a GREAT piece about the nostalgia and the dedication of these farmers, who probably lived through those good old days.

We spent many happy hours there, helping out, serving food, shuttling visitors, demonstrating handspinning, or just gawking at all the “good old ways” they did it in the good old days, and the HUNDREDS of tractors.

Hot August days. Blacksmith shops and steam sawmills. Tractor pulls. Plowing and threshing demonstrations. Throngs of visitors from all over. And, anything on a stick: Spam, Snickers bars, even, believe it or not, hot dogs(whod’a thunk it?), dipped in batter and deep-fried, the Minnesota way! The upper midwest does have its attractions.

Fathers Of Faith June 19, 2010

My husband was the ultimate dad. Although he had only two natural children, he took all of mine under his wide and mighty wings, and made himself available to them all, although only one of them was young enough to have the advantage of such a stepfather. The relationship was so close that when the marriage was proposed, the son was the first to hear of it:
“I love your mother, and I want to marry her. Then we’ll change your name to “Pavek.” How do you like that?”
“You can’t do that.”
“Why not??”
“Because, on my desk at school it says “Hathaway.”
The next day at kindergarten, he informed his teacher that it was necessary to change the name on his desk.
“But, why?”
“Because we’re getting married!”

In a small blended family, no one knew that both boys sitting with us in church were not both his. If my husband’s family was the center of his world, the family faith in God was the rock-solid core. As a child, number 7 of 8, the family was large, boisterous, and for some blessed reason, full of funny, happy people, in spite of the hardships and privation of the Thirties and Forties. When he moved away from the farm permanently, his new family replaced the first one, and he invested as much love and concern in that relationship as he had in the earlier one. He was a man of great honesty and fidelity, and he set a powerful example for any who would come after him.

His father was “tata,” the familial Czech word for “father.” The children spoke Czech at home, English in school, and “Bohinglish” among themselves, with lots of blended words and phrases, a sort of Bohemian pidgin. Grandfather Pavek was built like a stump. Physically powerful, strong in disposition; a man who yielded to only One. His faith in God was as much a part of who he was as his ability to farm or to work harder than anyone around him. His children had profound respect for him to his dying day.

My father came from the other side of the world. He was a lot older than my mother, and they blended families to create a small army of half-siblings. His father was a Utah Pioneer, who had made the trek across the plains with the Mormons in the mid-nineteenth century. He was the youngest of ten, and was born in 1890, his bride in 1908, and I came along in 1943, so you can imagine what kind of time-spread I’m describing. He was a self-educated man, who took a Commercial Art course from ICS in the days when their textbooks were leather-bound, and he spent his productive years painting buildings, homes, and murals, and eventually the billboards, signs, and posters along Utah’s highways.

The march continues. For my three sons, I pray that the fathers who have preceded them have left them with the kind of legacy they will wish to pass on to their own sons. And, in the mix, there are two more budding daddies, as my grandsons make their entrance. Their daddy, my youngest son, is as hard-working as his own father, a roughneck in the oil fields. Physical labor seems to run in the family. The older boys have careers, one in farming and one in computer website design and fine arts.

It looks like the apples haven’t fallen very far from the trees, after all. I have a lot of hope and faith in my sons, and I know that their own faith will carry them through whatever is to come. My sorrow is that I am having to leave them a world so wildly different from the one my father left to me. But I believe that they have received the finest heritage of all: They are all sons of their father, who was a son of his father, and if they are the sons of their father, the challenge will not be insurmountable, and their faith will be their strength, just as it was for their dad, and his father before him.

Dads are men who take the job of fatherhood seriously. They are the men who aren’t afraid to be seen praying, and who willingly and gratefully acknowledge the gifts given by the Father of us all. Faith and fatherhood are inextricably intertwined, and good dads are born, then made. Happy Father’s Day to you all, my sons. I pray I live long enough to say it to your sons.

I Wonder…? June 18, 2010

Does this have anything to do with this? Naw… I’m sure the current resident doesn’t have the slightest worry about anything Sestak said…Especially not enough to cause him to do everything in his power to drag out the repairs and cleanup to keep the Sestak and Romanoff allegations out of the headlines. No, that couldn’t be.

And, he surely wouldn’t refuse help to Louisiana because it’s a “Red” state with a Republican governor? Nawwww… The current resident? POLITICAL??

I guess I’ll have to take myself out to the woodshed for thinking such thoughts. Now, where did I put my spankin’ stick?

Oh, This Is Sweeeet… June 16, 2010

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the html to embed this video, but I recommend it most highly! What Took You So LONG??

Two Ways To Think About This June 15, 2010

I am of two opinions on this incident, one of which is fanciful, the other more practical. The first one is that the entertainment at the fundraiser Etheridge attended was a lounge-act hypnotist who used Etheridge for a subject, hypnotized him, then gave him a post-hypnotic suggestion to react like a grouchy Democrat politician when asked a simple question by a college kid, and repeatedly huff into his face, “Who are you?? Who are YOU?? Who are you??”, then grab his wrist tightly and refuse to let go until after the hammerlock demonstration. Yes, a post-hypnotic suggestion could explain it.

The other school of thought is that Etheridge was more than a little drunk. I can say this with a bit of authority, having been married to an aggressive, boorish alcoholic for several years. (The fact that MY drunk sobered up and got help for his addiction is not the issue here, beyond the fact that perhaps Etheridge needs to seek some help. Any Twelfth-Steppers out there?)

if you find this video as upsetting as I did (experienced alky-observer that I am), you will not want to play it. But it’s there, if you just can’t help yourselves. Otherwise, just scroll down until you don’t have to look at the picture, either.

Although Etheridge has apologized for his behavior, he should be arrested. There is no doubt in my mind that his unprovoked attack on the student comprises assault, with or without the assistance of copious amounts of alcohol. He should at least be stripped of his office. There is no call for this kind of behavior from the people WE hire to send to Washington, presumably to work for OUR benefit. The question was civil, the student was polite. The attack was completely uncalled for and the reaction was far out of proportion to the perceived irritation. I hope Etheridge is squirming mightily, and I hope his constituents have the cojones to demand his resignation.