Now that we know that it always was a hoax

We now know of the hoax of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming. The revealed emails show the manipulation of information. There is nothing left to doubt except the leftist politicians. But what do we do now? Here are some ideas:

1) Ask Honda and Toyota to produce diesels instead of hybrids.

2) Challenge Congress on the Cap & Trade tax excuse. Challenge them to shelve it entirely. And return any tax dollars disbursed to reinforce this hoax.

3) Challenge President Obama to apologize for his error.

4) Challenge Al Gore to apologize.

5) Challenge the emergent and postmodern theologians to apologize and remediate their accompanying theological errors.

Of course there is much more that we can do. But we must begin by actively communicating with the apologists.

I though there was something illegal or unethical ...

... about people with corporate power taking sexual advantage of those under their authority?

Does that political hack David Letterman get a pass on any investigation?

When will CBS quit protecting this pervert?  Does CBS think this behavior, which is at best unethical, to be suitable for their image?

I used to watch his show on occasion and enjoyed it.  I miss the days when he was actually funny -- because he enjoyed his job.  But it seems that today he thinks of himself as a political commentator.  I wonder if he would do better anchoring the CBS Evening News?  It might improve their ratings.

The Failure of the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics

The Washington D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics has made its understandings of the law clear -- that somehow homosexual marriage is required by law.  You can read the whole document here.  The board finds its motivation in the modern feminist movement.  In evaluating two matters, the Jury and Marriage Amendment Act (JAMA) and the Human Rights Act (HRA), the board came to the conclusion that

While neither the HRA nor its legislative history explicitly mentions same-sex marriage, it is without question that the HRA must “be read broadly to eliminate the many proscribed forms of discrimination in the District.”40 Since JAMA’s enactment, the District recognizes same-sex marriages that have been properly entered into, performed, and recognized by other jurisdictions. This did not exist when Dean was decided. Consequently, couples who fall within JAMA’s purview are entitled to the same benefits of marriage that are afforded heterosexual married couples, and the denial of these benefits to married couples on the basis of the sexual orientation of the individuals who comprise the couples now constitutes a “proscribed form of discrimination.” It is clear that this result is the intent of the Council, which voted 12-1 to pass JAMA. The Initiative seeks to deny recognition to JAMA marriages on the basis of the sexual orientation of the individuals who comprise the couples. As a result, the Board finds, and both the District’s Attorney General and the General Counsel for the Council agree, that the Initiative authorizes or would authorize discrimination proscribed by the HRA and is therefore not a proper subject for initiative.

This is dangerous.  The D.C. board considers the disallowance of homosexual marriage recognition, in principle, to be a "proscribed form of discrimination" -- and "proscribed" means dangerous and illegal.  The D.C. board has used specific terminology that declares the Christian view of marriage, that marriage must be between one man and one woman, and the practices of hiring and service, to be dangerous and illegal.


It doesn't take long to go back and look at the government's confrontation of Bob Jones University for its institutional racism.  The school was, in my understanding of the Word, practicing an immorality for which it deserved condemnation.  But the power of the federal government to intrude into religious organizations has been established, against Bob Jones and elsewhere, as the Left continues its assault on individual liberty.


And the board has let its intentions regarding any initiative to change this ruling:

IV. Conclusion Under current law, the District recognizes same-sex marriages validly performed in other jurisdictions. The proposed Initiative seeks to prohibit the District from continuing to recognize these same-sex marriages. The Initiative instructs that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in the District of Columbia.” If passed, the Initiative would, in contravention of the HRA, strip same-sex couples of the rights and responsibilities of marriages currently recognized in the District.



The District’s Initiative, Referendum and Recall Procedures Act requires the Board to refuse to accept referenda and initiatives which violate the HRA. Because the Initiative would authorize discrimination prohibited by the HRA, it is not a proper subject for initiative, and may not be accepted by the Board.

The board's appeal to the Human Rights Act leaves open a door for a new type of discrimination:  Where do religious charities that participate with the government stand when it comes to their hiring practices and where does the expression of the Chrisitan faith end and responsibility to the state end?  This Human Rights Act is Section 14, Title 2 of the D.C. code, and as later clarified:

To amend the Human Rights Act of 1977 to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity or expression.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE COUNCIL OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, That thisact may be cited as the “Human Rights Clarification Amendment Act of 2005”.

Sec. 2. The Human Rights Act of 1977, effective December 13, 1977 (D.C. Law 2-38; D.C. Official Code § 2-1401.01 et seq.), is amended as follows:

(a) Section 101 (D.C. Official Code § 2-1401.01) is amended by striking the phrase“sexual orientation,” and inserting the phrase “sexual orientation, gender identity or expression,” in its place.

(b) Section 102 (D.C. Official Code § 2-1401.02) is amended by redesignating paragraph (12A) as (12A-1) and adding a new paragraph (12A) to read as follows:

“(12A) “Gender identity or expression” means a gender-related identity, appearance, expression, or behavior of an individual, regardless of the individual's assigned sex at birth.”.

And here, in the Mayor's directive to end discrimination against homosexuals in the policies and procedures of government offices -- and even further:

This order shall be applicable to all agencies under the direction and control of the Mayor. This Order governs unfirom language which shall be placed in any document that recites the District's anti-discrimination policy. examples of such documents are: jobpostings, job applications, program brochures, equal opportunity notices and postings, general orders, departmental directives, special instructions, and meterials processed through the Administrative Inssuance Systems which recites the District's anti-discrimination policy.

And here, from "reaffirmed by the elected Council under Home Rule in 1977 is stated in § 2-1401.01," as quoted by Summersgill regarding the potential for a referrendum on homosexual marriage in the District of Columbia:

It is the intent of the Council of the District of Columbia, in enacting this chapter, to secure an end in the District of Columbia to discrimination for any reason other than that of individual merit, including, but not limited to, discrimination by reason of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, marital status, personal appearance, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, familial status, family responsibilities, matriculation, political affiliation, genetic information, disability, source of income, status as a victim of an intrafamily offense, and place of residence or business.

The foundation for homosexual marriage is found in laws which protect sexual expression, not just sexual identity.  The possibility that any religious organization might come under the Mayor's directive gave good reason for the Roman Catholic reaction to the District's position, but the District continues in its discrimination against orthodox Christian belief systems.


But is the district's law even legal?  Sounds strange, but the question must be pursued.  Does the district's denial of initiative and referrendum amont to an unconstitutional  limitation of the rights of the citizens of the district.  Could it be that the very definition of discrimination as used by the District is one which is politically motivated and of merely partisan convenience?  Should not the citizens be allowed -- they are by the Constitution, though not by District leadership -- to correct the error of the District?  They do, after all, regard us as dangerous.  This type of rhetoric is hardly tolerant.

D.C. Dreams

It's been interesting -- a whole month in the Baltimore-Washington area, staying near BWI and taking the train in from Dorsey every morning at about 6:35. 

Washington, D.C., is a fascinating place.  And it's nuts.  I hate the traffic.  The people are generally friendly, but getting eye contact is almost impossible.

My job has been to help with some software maintenance at the Washington Post.  I wanted to meet some of the writers but I got my job done too early.  So it's down to one more day to meet some of them.  These are the rock stars of the editorial world, like David Broder.  ;-)

Now, I don't always agree with all of them.  In fact, hardly ever.  But they are not my enemies.  Opponents on isues and world view, but not enemies.  I'd like to find the opportunity chat with some over lunch.  You know -- pick their brains.  Hear what they think about writing and communication.  Might be fun, if only on my last day at the Old Gray Lady.  Hey, a guy can always dream.

When Citizens Rebel

First, I do not and will not promote insurrection. But I will promote active dissent, even active disobedience when it comes to maintaining the practice of one's faith. The time is coming closer with the current situation in D.C. As reported in the Washington Post today, the D.C. council has taken upon itself the authority to decide when one can or cannot practice their religious beliefs.

Under the bill, headed for a council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings.

How dare they! They should be silent on the matter. They should speak neither positively nor negatively.

But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians. Church officials say Catholic Charities would have to suspend its social services work for the city, rather than provide employee benefits to same-sex married couples or allow them to adopt.But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians. Church officials say Catholic Charities would have to suspend its social services work for the city, rather than provide employee benefits to same-sex married couples or allow them to adopt.

What an arrogant bunch of thugs! If one participates at all in civic affairs then one has to hire homosexuals! That is wrong. The Romans should stand up against the city and stand in contempt of illegal laws. Call their bluff. Let Congress, which manages D.C., come out and make its position clear. Let's see how much statism the Left in D.C. is willing to enforce. Let's see them throw a few people in jail for the cause of religious liberty.

One More Liberty Lost

Well, not yet. But it looks pretty likely. Washington, D.C., the city that should be the protector of liberty is now bent on reducing liberty. Specifically, the city is bent on reducing religious liberty. And they are doing it in the same fashion as Massachusetts did a few years ago.



Tim Craig and Michelle Boorstein of the Washington Post report today (Nov. 12, 2009, front page) that

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn’t change a proposed same-sex marriage la, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness, and ehalth care.


Under the bill, headed for a D. C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay mean and lesbians.


Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.

If you are unfamiliar with the happenings in Massachusetts a few years ago, the Catholic Church was forced to withdraw from participation in the foster care and adoption system of the state because of moral objections to having to place children into homosexual households. The state could have accommodated the church and modified their procedures, but they chose to do otherwise, thus removing the church from equal rights to participate in civic matters on account of religious beliefs.


The Post article goes further:

If the city requires this, we can’t do it,” Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said Wednesday. “The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that’s really a problem.”


Several D.C. Council members said the Catholic Church is trying to erode the city’s long-standing laws protecting gay men and lesbians from discrimination.

And of course there is the expected accusation from the homosexual community:

Peter Rosenstein of the Campaign for Alll D.C. Families accused the church of trying to “blackmail the city.” 

“The issue here is that they are using public funds, and to allow people to discriminate with public money is unacceptable,” Rosenstein said.

And

“If they find living under our laws so oppressive that they can no longer cake city resources, the city will have to find an alternative partner to step in to fill the shoes,” Catina said. He also said Catholic Charities was involved in only six of the 102 city-sponsored adoptions last year.

Terry Lynch, head of the Downtown Cluster of Congregations, said he did not know of any other group in the city that was making such a threat.

“Are they really going to harm people because they have a philosophical disagreement with us on one issue?” Cheh asked. “I hope, in the silver light of day, when this passes, because it will pass, they will not really act on this threat.”

craigt@washpost.com
boorsteinm@washpost.com


Now, is anyone outraged? Well, the homosexual advocates are. But are we? Can we promote liberty while they, under their special-rights processes, seek to secularize society and turn the church into a servant of the secular state. This is statism at its worst.  Discrimination against religious beliefs and related liberty, under law.  But what has changed, really?  The homosexual thugs will not stop at restricting religious liberty to enforce their agenda.  They will go further if they are allowed to win more of these battles.  They want control of your belief system and find the church to be their greatest opponent. 


Your tax dollars at work.

Steps in American History

Step 1 was our identity crisis. From the beginning through the Civil War we sought to clarify our system of government, leaving the Articles of Confederation and moving onto the more centralized Constitution. We ended our bout with slavery and secured rights. We secured the hemisphere from European expansion and the threat it posed.

Step 2 was the First Corruption. From Grant to Hoover we gathered together into government a collection of the new corporate manipulaors.

Step 3 was the beginning of the American Empire. Whether it was our unique style of economic colonialism or (especially) the Wilsonian attempt to influence on other national identities, or today's neoconservative treatment of democracy as a commodity to be exported, our disintegration is now quite serious.

Empire is empire. The Caesar ignored the Senate. The Pelosi dismisses the Constitution. The Frank admittedly does not question jurisdiction. (We will only briefly mention his relationship with illegal substances and homosexual prostitution.) The Obama inserts admitted communists into government and promotes limitation on media that criticize him (specifically Fox News and by implication, Clear Channel Communications via the media diversity, media justice movement).

Can the U.S. survive itself? Some days I wonder. While I think the classic liberal position holds great hope for the world, today's Marxists leave no hope for a free society to survive.

In Style

For years I've been wearing bill/baseball caps.  They are useful but ... they lack style.  They're plain.  One might even think of them as less than mature.  They just don't look good.  But is there an alternative?  Yes -- the classic fedora!

I've chosen the woven type.  I've two, and the most stylish one is a wool tweed.  Lookin' good, huh?  And they go well with a tweed jacket.

The only remaining question is -- what does the little woman think?

Separation of Church and State as Marx' Replacement Theology

Back, again, to my primary social concern:  Marxism.  No surprise there.

The first impression of Marxist motives usually leads us to the idea of statism.  The principle that Marx proclaimed, that religion is the opiate of the people, sets the church beneath the state.  That may seem more Hegelian than particularly Marxist, but still plays into the goals of Marx.

Today's popular Marxists, like the ACLU, proclaim the state and church as separate entities.  That is, there is to be no reciprocal relationship between then.  The church is best of being outside the control of government and likewise the government must not approach anything resembling the old theocracies.  So the question becomes plain:  How do we fit this into the Marxist paradim?

It is a simple error to miss the revolutionary intentions of Marx and his end game.  In the end the Marxist intends that the church serves the interest of the state.  To get there, that's another story.  It goes to Marx' view of virtue and ethics, of what is real and what is unreal.  For to Marx only the material is real and that leaves all religion and faith unreal.  And what is unreal is to be rejected, to be set aside and replaced with his materialism.

The process winds its way through two general steps.  The first is to marginalize the church.  The second is use this marginalized position to present the Marxist alternative to a church that is impotent.

Marginalization came by way of a redefinition of theology.  By employing Freuerbach and others of similar persuasion, religious belief was changed from the immanent God who is involved in human affairs to something unreal and merly emotional.  Bockmuehl states it this way (p. 31, The Challenge of Marxism):

Is Christianity real?  This attack leveled by Marx and Engels is of special concern to Christians because the slogan "real humanism," which sums up the attack, was also used to point out the alleged unreality of Chrsitian theology.  "Real humanism" was the battle cry shouted at the thin spiritualism of contemporary Protestant theology as well as at speculative, idealistic philsophy.  bot of these never got anywhere near the actual situation of the proletariat, because they were so occupied with more spiritual things.  Therefore, Marx and Engels looked at this kind of "religious inhumanity" as one of their main enemies.

This approach is part of the Marxist criticism.  His "critical thinking" was not what we would probably term "critical analysis."  For Marx it was an intentional attack on what has been heretofore assumed to be true.  Critical thinking was and his the Marxist method for tearing down obstacles for the establishment of his world view as a system.  This was his "ruthless criticism of the existing order" that we might today read on bumper stickers as Subvert the Dominant Paradigm.

The door has now been opened to replace an unreal and impotent Christianity (or any other religion) with a strictly human way of doing things. As Lennon said, and employing many of the core principles of a Marxist world view:Imagine there's no Heaven

It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today


Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one


Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world


You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

This criticism of religion is Marx' foundation.  Again, as Bockmuehl says (p. 51):

In 1844 Karl marx published his essay entitled "A Contribution to the Critique of hegel's Philosophy of Law: Introduction."  Contrary to its abstract title, this piece carried significant concrete weight:  It was the manifesto of early Marxism.  the very first sentence contained a two-point thesis:  For Germany the criticism of religion is in the main complete, and criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism."

This is intended to leave religious faith vulnerable, and that was his goal throughout.  But while we may philosophyically prove the assumption to be in error, the step that we must take is to raise our theology above the compromise of pluralism and to make Christianity more and more real -- practically beneficial -- to the world around us.  Calvin did this in Geneva.  Rome did this by ending slavery in Europe during the first millennium.  English protestantism initiated the end of secularism's slavery through Newton and Wilberforce.

And, looking back on the heritage of Marx, we can clarify the impotence and abuses of his world view despite the rantings of Obama and Schaeffer.  The compromise of faith is a plain dismissal of that faith, for the acceptance of Marxism is an acceptance of its atheism.

Today gods from the right and the left compete to impress the church and persuade it, causing it to reduce itself to nothing but the moderate expression of the accepted opinions of the day.  In contrast to this the first task of the church is to find and keep its identity. (Bockmuehl, p. 21)

a thousand pictures

Pick a word.  No, no, not that one.  Don't pick just any word.  Stick with the nouns.  Then build a picture around that word.  Now build several pictures around the word.  See how many you can come up with.

Now let's try some of the words that have been most popular over the past 50 years.  War.  Peace.  Born-again.  Saved.  Hope.  Change.  Green.  Oil.  Profit.  Insurance.  Not only do pictures come to mind, so does a whole range of emotions.  Single words carry more power than whole pictures.

Now let's do something more interesting.  Let's add a second term to the noun.  Oil is a good one to work with.  Oil barron.  Oil change.  Oil well.  Heating oil.  Now we have some specific meaning attached to each exression.  And while each one can still convey a set of images, and some may overlap, each is still the property of the new word pair.

A word paints a thousand pictures.  A collection of words paints a set of ideas.  But unfortunately the current under-30 generation is not one which reads.  Too much X-Box, internet porn, and television porn.  Is it any wonder, after having been taught a few catch phrases in 12 or so years of school, that they have all the answers and that history is now meaningless?  The best thing we can do for our children is to encourage them to read.  And better yet, teach them to write.