Letter From America (About Lawless Privilege)

Clinton Is Above The Law, So The Law Is Dead

Matt Walsh
The Blaze

Write this down. Record the date. Remember it.

July 5, 2016. 11:15 a.m. One day after America’s 240th birthday.

When historians conduct their autopsy on Lady Justice, that will be the time of death. That is the precise moment when Justice drew her last labored breath, cursed our ridiculous country and our hopelessly corrupt government, and collapsed. Sure, she’d been in bad shape for a while, but there was no surviving the final blow. When it is explicitly announced and made public that the wealthiest and most elite and most liberal are indeed above the law, the charade of “law” cannot continue. There is no law. We are living under the rule of men, not of law. We are subject to the whims of petty tyrants and bureaucrats. They are subject to no one on Earth.

None of that was directly said today when FBI Director James Comey held a press conference recommending no criminal charges be brought against Hillary Clinton, but he may as well have said it.

Daily Devotional

We Beseech You

"Brethren, pray for us."  1 Thessalonians 5:25

Charles H. Spurgeon

This one morning in the year we reserved to refresh the reader's memory upon the subject of prayer for ministers, and we do most earnestly implore every Christian household to grant the fervent request of the text first uttered by an apostle and now repeated by us. Brethren, our work is solemnly momentous, involving weal or woe to thousands; we treat with souls for God on eternal business, and our word is either a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death. A very heavy responsibility rests upon us, and it will be no small mercy if at the last we be found clear of the blood of all men.

As officers in Christ's army, we are the especial mark of the enmity of men and devils; they watch for our halting, and labour to take us by the heels. Our sacred calling involves us in temptations from which you are exempt, above all it too often draws us away from our personal enjoyment of truth into a ministerial and official consideration of it. We meet with many knotty cases, and our wits are at a non plus; we observe very sad backslidings, and our hearts are wounded; we see millions perishing, and our spirits sink. We wish to profit you by our preaching; we desire to be blest to your children; we long to be useful both to saints and sinners; therefore, dear friends, intercede for us with our God.

Miserable men are we if we miss the aid of your prayers, but happy are we if we live in your supplications. You do not look to us but to our Master for spiritual blessings, and yet how many times has He given those blessings through His ministers; ask then, again and again, that we may be the earthen vessels into which the Lord may put the treasure of the gospel. We, the whole company of missionaries, ministers, city missionaries, and students, do in the name of Jesus beseech you

"Brethren, pray for us."

Deflections Into False Hope

No Nirvana

We have been reading about the remarkable life of Aung San Suu Kyi, who is at present serving as the effective democratically elected leader of Myanmar, at the pleasure of its military overlords.    It remains to be seen whether the military will retire itself from politics and government and allow itself to be transformed into a servant, not master, of the state.

Aung San Suu Kyi is, like most Burmese, a Buddhist.  But her faith is held seriously, in a dedicated fashion.  She is a true believer.  In one of her published books, she gives a brief description of Buddhism in Myanmar.

The one single factor which has had the most influence on Burmese culture and civilization is Theravada Buddhism.  In all parts of the country where Burmese people live there are pagodas and Buddhist monasteries.  The graceful tapering shape of a pagoda, painted white or gilded to a shining gold, is a basic part of any Burmese  landscape.  Burma is often called the "Land of the Pagodas".  [Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom From Fear (New York: Penguin Group, 2010), p.66.]

It is true that the visitor to Myanmar is immediately confronted with pagodas around every corner.  It is the most striking and visible form of the hold which Buddhism has over the hearts and minds of the people.

Aung San provides a brief overview of Buddhist teaching and doctrine.

Seventeen Million Ignored the Chattering Classes

More Brexit Fallout

An excellent piece from Kiwi-in-America on the Brexit vote and UK politics has been published in Kiwiblog.   

Some key points include:

[EU] regulations are binding on EU member states and their growth and proliferation in recent years sees 60% of the legislative load of the UK Parliament devoted to the implementation of EU  mandates.

 . . . the gradual abridgment of British sovereignty brought on by the growth in size and scope of the EU.

. . . despite the wall to wall clamouring of opinion leaders in politics, industry and entertainment and robust debates with claim and counterclaim, over 17 million people ignored the chattering classes who lectured and hectored, talked down to them and painted endless doomsday scenarios and voted with their hearts to leave.

Parties on the left have yet to learn that people who post on Twitter are not representative of, and are vastly outnumbered by, people not on Twitter who get out and vote.

When the ACTUAL (immigration) numbers for 2015 were revealed, it showed a true net in-migration flow of 333,000--more than triple the limit Cameron told voters he was striving for when he sought re-election in 2015.

Neither Cameron nor any prominent Remain campaigner could give any assurance that Britain could curtail immigration if they remained in the EU.

Whilst immigration was not the only reason for the Brexit vote, it was a potent symbol of the loss of sovereignty inherent in the EU project.

Daily Devotional

The Useless Word

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN: On the difficulties of moving and on the lessons moving teaches us—“We must ‘sit light’ not only to life itself but to all its phases. The useless word is ‘Encore!”

C. S. Lewis

21 November 1962

I think I share, to excess, your feeling about a move. By nature I demand from the arrangements of this world just that permanence which God has expressly refused to give them. It is not merely the nuisance and expense of any big change in one’s way of life that I dread. It is also the psychological uprooting and the feeling—to me, as to you, intensely unwelcome—of having ended a chapter. One more portion of oneself slipping away into the past! I would like everything to be immemorial—to have the same old horizons, the same garden, the same smells and sounds, always there, changeless. The old wine is to me always better. That is, I desire the ‘abiding city’ [Hebrews 13:14] where I well know it is not and ought not to be found. I suppose all these changes should prepare us for the far greater change which has drawn nearer ever since I began this letter. We must ‘sit light’ not only to life itself but to all its phases. The useless word is ‘Encore!’

From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III
Compiled in Yours, Jack

The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C. S. Lewis. Copyright © 2008 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

New Zealand's National Code

Least Armed and Most Servile

In his excellent volume, The Character of Nations, Angelo M. Codevilla has some insightful observations on how a nation's attitude to fighting and winning wars gives insight into its character.  [Angelo M. Codevilla, The Character of Nations: How Politics Makes and Breaks Prosperity, Family, and Civility (New York: Basic Books/Harper Collins Publishers, 1997).  A brief bio of the author from Wikipedia appears at the end of this piece.]

He writes:

The capacity to fight and win wars is the ultimate test of character and nothing so characterizes a people or determines its fate as the way in which it draws military power from itself.  In ancient republics, military service was synonymous with citizenship.  The ultimate political question always and everywhere is which people will risk their lives to uphold the regime.  [Op cit., p.15.]

Which people will indeed risk their lives to defend New Zealand, or any nation for that matter?  In our case, the answer is clear.

Why Ms Mendacity (and President Obama) Should Be In Indicted

What We Do Know about the Benghazi Attack Demands a Reckoning

By The Editors
National Review Online

Nine months before a terrorist attack on U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, killed four American officials, including ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, the State Department dispatched a security officer to assess the threat there. In an interview with the House Select Committee on Benghazi, the officer recounted his report to a superior at State, then under the direction of Secretary Hillary Clinton:

I told him that this was a suicide mission; that there was a very good chance that everybody here was going to die; that there was absolutely no ability here to prevent an attack whatever. . . . He said, “Everybody back here in D.C. knows that people are going to die in Benghazi and nobody is going to care until somebody does die.”

The Select Committee issued its long-awaited report on Tuesday. In many ways, it is a disappointment — an outcome guaranteed by Obama administration stonewalling, abetted by congressional Democrats’ tireless interference. The committee held few public hearings to hold officials accountable, and major questions it was created to examine remain unanswered: Why did the State Department and CIA have compounds in Benghazi, one of the most dangerous places in the world, particularly for Americans? What was President Obama doing during the hours of the siege, particularly once he knew our ambassador was missing? Why, despite the presence of military assets, was no rescue attempted? And why — when the threat was extraordinary, and after months of jihadist attacks on Western targets in the region — was no plan in place to extract the Americans from Benghazi?

Nevertheless, the report is a devastating account of staggering dereliction of duty and deception by the president and his top subordinates.

Daily Devotional

When Will I Be Satisfied?

“I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:26)

John Piper

Imagine being able to enjoy what is most enjoyable with unbounded energy and passion forever.

This is not now our experience. Three things stand in the way of our complete satisfaction in this world.

• Nothing has a personal worth great enough to meet the deepest longings of our hearts.
• We lack the strength to savor the best treasures to their maximum worth.
• Our joys here come to an end. Nothing lasts.

But if the aim of Jesus in John 17:26 comes true, all this will change.

If God’s pleasure in the Son becomes our pleasure, then the object of our pleasure, Jesus, will be inexhaustible in personal worth. He will never become boring or disappointing or frustrating. No greater treasure can be conceived than the Son of God.

Moreover, our ability to savor this inexhaustible treasure will not be limited by human weaknesses. We will enjoy the Son of God with the very enjoyment of his Father.  God’s delight in his Son will be in us and it will be ours. And this will never end, because neither the Father nor the Son ever ends. Their love for each other will be our love for them and therefore our loving them will never die.

Biting Winters

Global Warming Shamanism

It's been a remarkably warm winter in NZ so far.  Records have been broken, we are told--in a data-set stretching back to 1919.  Dark mutterings have been heard again about the horror of global warming about to descend upon us all.  The buzzings of the global warming doomsters have just begun to rise up again--and then this:

Winter is finally starting to bite. The whole country froze yesterday morning, and this morning again will be chilly.  MetService meteorologist Emma Blades said it wouldn't be quite as cold tonight but would still be bitter, particularly in the central and upper North Island.  In many parts of the country, temperatures are expected to slip below zero.  Blades said: "The North Island's looking very cold. In the South Island it's not as cold because there is more cloud around today."

Unusually, New Zealand's holiday hot-spot of the Coromandel was expected to be the coldest part of the country overnight with -2C.  Plenty of frost is forecast for Whitianga. Waikato is forecast to be cold and frosty. Hamiltonians are in for morning temperatures of -1C.  Much of Northland was expected to drop to 3 or 4C and Auckland would drop to 6C before dawn this morning.  [NZ Herald]

 Then overnight, like a smooth, hissing serpent, the meme changes from the threats of global warming, to the horrors of climate change.  All of a sssssudden, cold temperatures "demonstrate" global warming, only this time in the guise of climate change.  Cold temperatures really mean global warming, don't you know.

But, then, from left field comes another message.  The quiescence of the sun.

 You may not have noticed but our sun has gone as blank as a cue ball. As in, it's lost its spots. Meteorologist and sun-watcher Paul Dorian's latest report said the sun had gone "completely blank" for the second time in a month.  "The blank sun is a sign that the next solar minimum is approaching and there will be an increasing number of spotless days over the next few years.  Here is the blank sun:

Here is the "normal" sun:



Then we read this:

There are consequences of a sun without spots, not least for astronauts who face the risk of having their DNA "shattered" by cosmic rays, whose potency surges during periods of solar weakness.  According to Mr Dorian, cosmic rays surge into the inner solar system "with relative ease" during periods of solar minimum.  "Solar wind decreases and sun's magnetic field weakens during solar minimums making it easier for cosmic rays to reach the Earth," he explains.

"This is a more dangerous time for astronauts as the increase in potent cosmic rays can easily shatter a strand of human DNA. Also, during years of lower sunspot number, the sun's extreme ultraviolet radiation (EUV) drops and the Earth's upper atmosphere cools and contracts. [Emphasis, ours.]

We wonder if the Thames will freeze over once again?

What Took the UK So Long?

As Plain As the Nose On Your Face

A former NZ Prime Minister, Geoffrey Palmer has the matter of Brexit absolutely right, in our view.  His comments on the eventual failure of the European State are apt.  Brexit is just the beginning.

Brexit resulted in my view from a break down in accountabilities. It is entirely understandable.  Having spent most of February in the UK when the whole campaign for the referendum got under way in earnest I was not surprised, although I thought that Remain may win narrowly. My point is essentially constitutional. There has been created by the EU a democratic deficit.

The whole thing began with the European Coal and Steel Community after the World War Two. This progressed in time to the Common Market, known as the European Economic Community, and then the European Union. I think after the Lisbon Treaty things began to become very difficult to manage. It started out small and progressed to 28 nations.

Along the way the populations of each of the "member states" lost the core, fundamental rights of citizens in a democracy: they lost the right to hold their representatives and rulers to account.  As the EU has deliberately morphed towards an uber-state, ordinary people who had voted for years, even centuries, holding their rulers to account, gradually found that this fundamental authority, implicit in all democratic or republican government, has been removed while they lay sleeping.

Lest We Forget

Elie Wiesel, 1928 – 2016

Patterico

Death camp survivor, Nobel Laureate, prolific writer, and tireless fighter for human rights Elie Wiesel has died. From his obituary at the Jerusalem Journal:

Wiesel was a hollow-eyed 16-year-old when he emerged from the newly liberated Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945. He had been orphaned by the Nazis and their identification number, A-7713, was tattooed on his arm as a physical manifestation of his broken faith and the nightmares that would haunt him throughout his life.

Wiesel and his family had first been taken by the Nazis from the village of Sighetu Marmatiei in the Transylvania region of Romania to Auschwitz, where his mother and one of his sisters died.Wiesel and his father, Shlomo, ended up in Buchenwald, where Shlomo died. In “Night” Wieselwrote of his shame at lying silently in his bunk while his father was beaten nearby.

After the war Wiesel made his way to France, studied at the Sorbonne and by 19 had become a journalist. He pondered suicide and never wrote of or discussed his Holocaust experience until 10 years after the war as a part of a vow to himself. He was 27 years old in 1955 when “Night” was published in Yiddish, and Wiesel would later rewrite it for a world audience.

“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed …,” Wiesel wrote. “Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.”

It is utterly sobering to be reminded of what so many like Wiesel endured. And not just endured, but miraculously lived to tell, spending the remainder of his days confronting evil for the sake of righteousness.

He was often described as somber. An old friend, Chicago professor Irving Abrahamson, once said of him: “I’ve never seen Elie give a belly laugh. He’ll chuckle, he’ll smile, there’ll be a twinkle in his eye. But never a laugh from within.”

As his burden of pain and sorrow is lifted in passing, may he be surprised by laughter finally unloosed from the deepest reaches of his soul.

–Dana

Daily Devotional

Our Word Our Only Oath

"He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully."  Psalm 24:4

Charles H. Spurgeon

Outward practical holiness is a very precious mark of grace. It is to be feared that many professors have perverted the doctrine of justification by faith in such a way as to treat good works with contempt; if so, they will receive everlasting contempt at the last great day. If our hands are not clean, let us wash them in Jesus' precious blood, and so let us lift up pure hands unto God. But "clean hands" will not suffice, unless they are connected with "a pure heart." True religion is heart-work. We may wash the outside of the cup and the platter as long as we please, but if the inward parts be filthy, we are filthy altogether in the sight of God, for our hearts are more truly ourselves than our hands are; the very life of our being lies in the inner nature, and hence the imperative need of purity within. The pure in heart shall see God, all others are but blind bats.

The man who is born for heaven "hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity." All men have their joys, by which their souls are lifted up; the worldling lifts up his soul in carnal delights, which are mere empty vanities; but the saint loves more substantial things; like Jehoshaphat, he is lifted up in the ways of the Lord. He who is content with husks, will be reckoned with the swine. Does the world satisfy thee? Then thou hast thy reward and portion in this life; make much of it, for thou shalt know no other joy.

"Nor sworn deceitfully." The saints are men of honour still. The Christian man's word is his only oath; but that is as good as twenty oaths of other men. False speaking will shut any man out of heaven, for a liar shall not enter into God's house, whatever may be his professions or doings. Reader, does the text before us condemn thee, or dost thou hope to ascend into the hill of the Lord?

The Webs They Weave

The Practice of Deceit 

For the Darwinists and the evolutionists, the Fossil Record has turned out to be a fizzer.  Well, more than a fizzer--it is now a downright embarrassment.  But don't tell the natives.

As youngsters we recall being inveigled with grand pictures in the Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopedia portraying the evolution of the horse.  Gradually, over millions and millions of years the horse evolved from a nothing to a something, and all the stages of gradual adaptation and change were catalogued in glorious technicolour, until a grand magnificent stallion was portrayed racing across the plains.

A picture can paint a thousand words, they say--and who needed hard evidence in the face of such compelling images?  But as Stephen Jay Gould--the Archbishop of the Grand Church of Evolutionism--once candidly admitted, those pictures represented a "just so" story, with little or no basis in research or evidence.  It was a fairy story that evolutionists liked to tell their children around the fire on a snowy winter's night.

Letter From America (About The End of History And the Last Man)

Brexit and the End of International Progressive Inevitability

Whose side is history on now?

By David French
National Review Online

I’m old enough to remember when history had a side. History, you see, had chosen to progress toward an international order that de-emphasized international sovereignty, elevated a bureaucratic and technocratic elite, and sought to solve international conflict through a combination of moral and economic pressure. Nations caused wars, so nationalism (and even patriotism) had to be set aside. Democracy unleashed bigotry, so “the people” mattered mainly when they agreed with the elite.

It was a system that worked remarkably well for the international upper class. Men and women dedicated to commerce enjoyed unprecedented access to international markets. Activists dedicated to social justice could engineer their societies without ever truly facing the accountability of the ballot box. The logic of the system was self-proving. It would triumph through the sheer force of its virtue.

Unable to grasp the extent to which the new international order had endured and prospered not so much through its self-evident goodness but through the protection of American arms, it proved completely incapable of meeting the challenge when America chose to retreat.

Daily Devotional

Think It Not Strange

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN: On the resolution to her question about joining a religious order; on the impermanence of feelings, good and bad; and on the need for the natural love in marriage to die into divine love.

C. S. Lewis

23 July 1953

I think your decision ‘a rule of life, without membership’ is a good one. It is a great joy to be able to ‘feel’ God’s love as a reality, and one must give thanks for it and use it. But you must be prepared for the feeling dying away again, for feelings are by nature impermanent. The great thing is to continue to believe when the feeling is absent: and these periods do quite as much for one as those when the feeling is present.

It sounds to me as if Genia had a pretty good husband on the whole. So much matrimonial misery comes to me in my mail that I feel those whose partner has no worse fault than being stupider than themselves may be said to have drawn a prize! It hardly amounts to a Problem. I take it that in every marriage natural love sooner or later, in a high or a low degree, comes up against difficulties (if only the difficulty that the original state of ‘being in love’ dies a natural death) which force it either to turn into dislike or else to turn into Christian charity. For all our natural feelings are, not resting places, but points d’appui, springboards. One has to go on from there, or fall back from there. The merely human pleasure in being loved must either go bad or become the divine joy of loving. But no doubt Genia knows all this. It’s all quite in the ordinary run of Christian life. See I Peter iv, 12 ‘Think it not strange et cetera.’

From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III
Compiled in Yours, Jack

The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C. S. Lewis. Copyright © 2008 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

The Terminator and the Rats

Counting the Cost

Donald (The Terminator) Trump is shaping up to lose handsomely to Hillary Clinton, arguably the most mendacious carpetbagger yet to stand for the US Presidency.  Faced with falling poll numbers, the Terminator has seen the need to bloviate more volcanically than usual (which is saying something).  This from the Wall Street Journal:

Donald Trump offered a starkly protectionist view on trade policy, pledging for the first time on Tuesday to scrap the current North American Free Trade Agreement while saying he would label China a currency manipulator and kill America’s involvement in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. “I’m going to tell our NAFTA partners that I intend to immediately renegotiate the terms of that agreement to get a better deal for our workers,” said Mr. Trump, adding that if they don’t agree to favorable terms, “America intends to withdraw from the deal.” [Hat Tip: Kiwiblog]

This latest eructation shows all the signs of a showman looking for ratings.  Once upon a time during the primary season, if the Terminator had come out with such a declaration, the media would have fawned, celebrated, and danced nativist jigs.  It was good for their ratings--and that's all that mattered.

Now, not so much.

Brexit Fallout

Unmasked

The establishment media have long been advocates for centralised, powerful governments.  They have been dismissive of the sovereignty of the people.  Rubes are unfit for such responsibility is the unspoken, yet powerful, belief.  An implicit corollary is that we, the educated, sophisticated elite are fit to rule.

But every so often the masks come off.  Here is one example, starring Christiane Amanpour, a doyenne of the elitist of the elite establishment journalists.  Brexit was a step too far for her, apparently.  She lost every shred of professional objectivity and tore into Daniel Hannan, a British Member of the European Parliament over his advocacy of leaving the EU. Her frothing, rational incoherence is a sight to behold.  As she proceeded, Hannan grew in stature, whilst Amanpour shrivelled, unmasked as a shill and little more.

This, from Dana at Patterico.com

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour Reminds Viewers Why MSM Is Correctly Viewed With Disdain

This is just stunning. During an “interview,” CNN advocacy journalist Christiane Amanpour can be seen attempting to shove her partisan narrative down the throat of Brexit Leave campaigner and conservative Member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan in a heated exchange. Amanpour’s vigorous bias demonstrates in 9 short minutes precisely why the MSM is not to be trusted with providing objective reporting. Throughout the “interview,” Hannan remains composed in spite of Amanpour’s shameful mischaracterizion of his positions and insulting the British majority (52%) who voted in favor of leaving the EU. Further, Hannan admirably demonstrates how to effectively (and fiercely) push back when being smeared by a dishonest “journalist”.

(I was going to provide a blow-by-blow of the interview, but that would not do it justice. It must be watched in its instructive entirety.)

Daily Devotional

The Powerful Root of Practical Love

We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. (1 John 3:14)

John Piper

The Bible sometimes makes love the condition of the ongoing and final experience of future grace. It does not mean that love must precede faith in the promise. On the contrary, it means that faith in the promise must be so real that the love it produces proves the reality of the faith.

Thus love for others is a condition of future grace in the sense that it confirms that the primary condition, faith, is genuine. We could call love for others a secondary condition, which confirms the authenticity of the primary condition of faith.

Faith perceives the glory of God in the promises of future grace and embraces all that the promises reveal of what God is for us in Jesus. This spiritual apprehension and delight in God is the self-authenticating evidence that God has called us to be a beneficiary of his grace. This evidence frees us to bank on the promise as our own. And this banking on the promise empowers us to love. Which in turn confirms that our faith is real.

The world is desperate for a faith that combines two things: awestruck apprehension of unshakable divine Truth, and utterly practical, round-the-clock power to make a liberating difference in life. That is what I want too. Which is why I am a Christian.

There is a great God of grace who magnifies his own infinite self-sufficiency by fulfilling promises to helpless people who trust him. And there is a power that comes from prizing this God that leaves no nook and cranny of life untouched. It empowers us to love in the most practical ways.

Taking Temperatures

Of Prophets and Kingdoms

The Otago Daily Times recently published a thoughtful editorial on the "state" of the Church and churches in New Zealand.  There are few media which could have penned such a piece: Otago is probably the last geographic location where something like this could be found.

These are difficult times for mainstream Christian churches.  Many congregations are dwindling and ageing and the stark divisions between liberals and conservatives continue to manifest themselves, particularly on the issue of same-sex marriages. Parishes in many places cannot afford full-time clergy, and rural and urban churches close regularly.

Most Christians in New Zealand will be aware of these stark realities.  We are now one of the most secular nations upon earth.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Among the First Responders

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

Brussels is only 200 miles from London. I live 2,500 miles from Washington, D.C. Perhaps you see where this is going.

We are living in a time of enormous upheaval. Some of it is good, lots of it is bad, and all of it is challenging. The Brexit exit was one of the good things, some of the best news I have heard in a long time.

There were two basic issues in the Brexit vote. The first was the pointy-headed elites in Brussels making life miserable for the yeomanry in the UK, and the second issue was out-of-control immigration.

Perhaps you see those same two issues driving the Trump campaign, and you would not be wrong. That is where a lot of the energy is coming from, but there is a radical difference as well.

The difference is that in the UK the vote swirled around a referendum, made up of a very sensible proposal.

Daily Devotional

The Winter of the Grave Gives Way

"Them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him." 1 Thessalonians 4:14

Charles H. Spurgeon

Let us not imagine that the soul sleeps in insensibility. "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise," is the whisper of Christ to every dying saint. They "sleep in Jesus," but their souls are before the throne of God, praising him day and night in his temple, singing hallelujahs to him who washed them from their sins in his blood.

The body sleeps in its lonely bed of earth, beneath the coverlet of grass. But what is this sleep? The idea connected with sleep is "rest," and that is the thought which the Spirit of God would convey to us. Sleep makes each night a Sabbath for the day. Sleep shuts fast the door of the soul, and bids all intruders tarry for a while, that the life within may enter its summer garden of ease. The toil-worn believer quietly sleeps, as does the weary child when it slumbers on its mother's breast.

Oh! happy they who die in the Lord; they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them. Their quiet repose shall never be broken until God shall rouse them to give them their full reward. Guarded by angel watchers, curtained by eternal mysteries, they sleep on, the inheritors of glory, till the fullness of time shall bring the fullness of redemption. What an awaking shall be theirs! They were laid in their last resting place, weary and worn, but such they shall not rise. They went to their rest with the furrowed brow, and the wasted features, but they wake up in beauty and glory. The shrivelled seed, so destitute of form and comeliness, rises from the dust a beauteous flower.

The winter of the grave gives way to the spring of redemption and the summer of glory. Blessed is death, since it, through the divine power, disrobes us of this work-day garment, to clothe us with the wedding garment of incorruption. Blessed are those who "sleep in Jesus."

Man's Inhumanity to Man

Arise, O Lord

The Epoch Times has published a report upon "organ harvesting" in China.  We are aware that there are few limits to man's inhumanity to man.  This account reaffirms that view.  As the prophet said, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.  Who can know it?"  (Jeremiah 17: 9,10)

Here is the sum of the matter:

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The authors of a new report about state-led organ harvesting in China presented their findings at the National Press Club on June 22, calling it a “slow motion genocide” that has led to likely over 1 million organs removed from unwilling donors.  “This fits the pattern of King Leopold and the Congo, and the genocides in Cambodia and Darfur,” said David Kilgour a former Canadian secretary of state and a co-author of the new report.

King Leopold of Belgium wrought a death toll of tens of millions running a slave trade in the Congo, researchers suspect, while in Cambodia and Darfur, Sudan, class and ethnic cleansing massacres with vast death tolls were carried out by the government and militia.

The likely estimate is that one transplant has meant one death. In other words, it was not just a matter of prisoners (usually of conscience) having their organs forcibly removed, but that while the donee's received the organs and appropriate medical care, the forced donors were left to die.

The Future Looks Bleak For EU

A Pro-EU Economist’s Sober Assessment 

What Drove the British to Leave?

Brussels elites ignored sound economics to further their own agenda.

By John Fund
National Review Online

London — Sometimes a clear-eyed supporter of a certain point of view can best see what the weaknesses of that position is. After a shell-shocked panel of pro-Remain experts had delivered an autopsy of Britain’s membership in the European Union for the Mile End Institute Friday morning, I sought out the one member of the panel who had expressed concern about the EU’s “democratic deficit.” I got an earful about how an EU that refused to reform and acknowledge its limits invited Britain’s vote to leave this week.

Brigitte Granville is a French monetary economist who worked at the old European Economic Community in the 1980s before it morphed into the EU. She played a key role in restructuring the ruble while working for the Russian Ministry of Finance in the early 1990s. She moved to Britain because she found it a freer and less rigid country than her native land: “There are 5,000 people in charge of everything in France. They are all linked by school and marriage, and they are tight.”

Granville, now a professor at the University of London’s School of Business and Management, voted for Britain to stay in the EU this week: “I am an internationalist.” But she was nevertheless able to give a scathing account of just how insufferably arrogant, delusional, and power-grasping the EU bureaucracy has become. “This vote represents a revolt against elites who don’t take into account ordinary people or sound economics,” she told me.

Daily Devotional

On Sin

C. S. Lewis

[The demon Screwtape writes:] Even of his sins the Enemy does not want him to think too much: once they are repented, the sooner the man turns his attention outward, the better the Enemy is pleased.

From The Screwtape Letters
Compiled in Words to Live By

The Screwtape Letters. Copyright © 1942, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright restored © 1996 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Words to Live By: A Guide for the Merely Christian. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

The Tradition of Philosemitism

Taking Up an Honourable Cause

Gertrude Himmelfarb has written an engaging book on the history of philosemitism in England.  It "began" with Oliver Cromwell who encouraged Jews to return to England, which had been the first country to expel them during medieval times.  Gradually, over two and a half centuries not only were Jews migrating to England, but gradually they were winning or being granted an increasing list of civil and political rights--during centuries when such rights were not universal by any means.

The Christian Church, particularly through the influence of the Great Awakening, played a positive role.  At the end of the eighteenth century, for example, a Jewish financier and philanthropist, Abraham Goldsmid raised a fund to help and assist the Jewish poor throughout England.  Himmelfarb tells us that "of the eighty-seven initial subscribers, forty-one were Christians".   [Gertrude Himmelfarb, The People of the Book: Philosemitism in England, From Cromwell to Churchill (New York: Encounter Books, 2011), p. 56.]

In the mid-nineteenth century, Conservative leader,  Benjamin Disraeli was arguing that the Church was the key instrument for the "renovation of the national spirit".  But he went on to address the origin of the Church.

The Hidden Costs of EU Membership

Loathed EU Rules That Influenced Brexit

Chriss W. Street
BreitbartLondon


The media elites are somewhat right that the Brexit victory was about the UK voters’ disdain for globalization, immigration, and lost pride, but the real cause of the British asking for an EU divorce was the $46.6 billion in hard costs for intangible benefits.

Open Europe is a non-partisan think tank with offices in London and Brussels that produces an annual report measuring the cost burden of 40,000 EU-derived legal acts, 15,000 Court verdicts and 62,000 international standards on the United Kingdom.

Their 2015 report for the “Top 100” regulations estimated the financial burden on the UK economy at $46.6 billion. To put that drain on the economy in perspective, the top 100 EU regulations cost more than the $37.8 billion in local property taxes, called “Council Tax,” paid by British citizens to the UK Treasury last year.

The top five costliest EU-derived regulations in force in the UK were:

Daily Devotional

Seeing The Whole Thing

"Get thee up into the high mountain."  Isaiah 40:9

Charles H. Spurgeon

Our knowledge of Christ is somewhat like climbing one of our Welsh mountains. When you are at the base you see but little: the mountain itself appears to be but one-half as high as it really is. Confined in a little valley, you discover scarcely anything but the rippling brooks as they descend into the stream at the foot of the mountain. Climb the first rising knoll, and the valley lengthens and widens beneath your feet. Go higher, and you see the country for four or five miles round, and you are delighted with the widening prospect.

Mount still, and the scene enlarges; till at last, when you are on the summit, and look east, west, north, and south, you see almost all England lying before you. Yonder is a forest in some distant county, perhaps two hundred miles away, and here the sea, and there a shining river and the smoking chimneys of a manufacturing town, or the masts of the ships in a busy port. All these things please and delight you, and you say, "I could not have imagined that so much could be seen at this elevation."

Now, the Christian life is of the same order. When we first believe in Christ we see but little of him. The higher we climb the more we discover of his beauties. But who has ever gained the summit? Who has known all the heights and depths of the love of Christ which passes knowledge? Paul, when grown old, sitting grey-haired, shivering in a dungeon in Rome, could say with greater emphasis than we can, "I know whom I have believed," for each experience had been like the climbing of a hill, each trial had been like ascending another summit, and his death seemed like gaining the top of the mountain, from which he could see the whole of the faithfulness and the love of him to whom he had committed his soul.

Get thee up, dear friend, into the high mountain.

No Firsts Among "Equals"

False Egalitarianism

We were irritated to read recently about an elite special military unit--consisting of both Australians and New Zealanders--whose courage, skills, and exploits have been suppressed for decades.  For no good reason, it would seem.

One can understand suppression of military exploits that might expose those who participated to danger.  Or, if the danger would come to those presently serving, we can understand keeping things locked in a deep, dark dungeon.  All of this would appear very reasonable.  But not this time.

Families of a forgotten World War II crack commando unit are calling on the New Zealand Government to officially recognise their behind-enemy-lines feats more than 70 years on.  There were 22 New Zealanders who signed up to the ultra-secret Z Special Unit which caused mayhem waging a guerrilla war against the Japanese in the Pacific.

But after the war, they were silenced by 30-year secrecy agreements.  Many died before they could tell anyone - even their wives and families - exactly what they did in the war. [NZ Herald]

What state, or military secrets were being protected, one wonders, by the secrecy?  The Aussies have at last seen the light and decided to allow their heroes to come out into the light.  But not NZ.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Love and Liberty

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

The theme we have been developing is that self-government is the ground of all other government. Men and women who cannot govern themselves will in fact be governed by others. The less government they have at home, in the heart, the more government from the outside will necessarily be imposed.

This liberty we are speaking of—at this individual level—is the liberty to do right, which is not the same thing as the liberty to do as you please. But we must be careful here.

Daily Devotional

The Fear That Draws Us In

“Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.” (Exodus 20:20)

John Piper

There is a fear that is slavish and drives us away from God, and there is a fear that is sweet and draws us to God. Moses warned against the one and called for the other in the very same verse, Exodus 20:20: “Moses said to the people, ‘Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.’”

The clearest illustration I have ever seen of this kind of fear was the time one of my sons looked a German shepherd in the eye. We were visiting a family from our church. My son Karsten was about seven years old. They had a huge dog that stood eye to eye with a seven-year-old.

He was friendly and Karsten had no problem making friends. But when we sent Karsten back to the car to get something we had forgotten, he started to run, and the dog galloped up behind him with a low growl. Of course, this frightened Karsten. But the owner said, “Karsten, why don’t you just walk? The dog doesn’t like it when people run away from him.”

If Karsten hugged the dog, he was friendly and would even lick his face. But if he ran from the dog, the dog would growl and fill Karsten with fear.

Now that is a picture of what it means to fear the Lord. God means for his power and holiness to kindle fear in us, not to drive us from him, but to drive us to him.