The Propaganda Machine In View

I saw the following comparison of headlines and searched the internet for a source only to find countless blogs carrying this information. Lest any of you doubt it, the Main Stream Media (MSM - aka "liberal media") have been pushing public opinion on par with Hitler's Nazi propaganda machine. If you read this and don't know what I'm talking about, how do you think Hitler got all those Germans to be complicit in the evils of Nazi Germany? I had a friend in the Marines named Linda. She was an older lady who went to the base chapel with me. Linda was a German immigrant and had been a youth in Berlin during WWII. She described Hitler's propaganda to me and how it affected the way she thought even to the day I knew her. This kind of distortion of the truth is passed off as merely news, but the intent to color our opinions and inform our worldviews. Be careful that you don't fall prey to those who would be the only source of your information about this world and exploit you to fuel their own geopolitical goals.


Headlines January 19, 2005

• “Republicans spending $42 million on inauguration while troops Die in unarmored Humvees”
• “Bush extravagance exceeds any reason during tough economic times”
• “Fat cats get their $42 million inauguration party, Ordinary Americans get the shaft”

Headlines Today:

• “Historic Obama Inauguration will cost only $120 million”
• “Obama Spends $120 million on inauguration; America Needs A Big Party”
• “Everyman Obama shows America how to celebrate”
• “Citibank executives contribute $8 million to Obama Inauguration”

Where'd the Bread and Milk Go? 'Snow-where to be Found

It's that special time of year in North Carolina where you hear about a presidential inauguration and have to find a few tens of thousands of porta-potties. Okay, wrong story...

Let me try again:

It's that special time of year in North Carolina where one feels compelled to go to the grocery store to stock up on bread and milk only to find that everyone else already beat you to it. Okay, either the stores have gotten wise to this trend and stocked up for the rush or people finally realize that they're not really going to run out of bread and milk. Because it wasn't that bad today when Lois sent me to the store for a few groceries - including bread and milk.

It's also a time when an inch means that everyone not self-employed wakes up hours early to watch the big three networks see if their place of business will be open. Actually, it does sound like the inauguration, except that because of the economy fewer people will be waking up early to see if they need to go to work.

You know, I'm less and less excited about this with each paragraph. (Yes, I just used a neo-Kennedyism.)

But this news is something that is not too common in North Carolina. I'm originally from Ohio so I know how it is. My friend, Kim, just informed me that it's not snowing in New York...

...but in NC there is SNOW!!










Hey! I hear you guys from the north laughing at this piddly amount of snow, and I agree. But we'll have the last laugh. It'll probably all melt by noon tomorrow (like it usually does) having raised our spirits and gone away on it's own...

...completely unshoveled! Yes!!!



I wish I could say the same for the government.

Prayer and Party Affiliation

An interesting set of statistics from the Atlantic:



Why do you think the hard left reports as praying as much as the hard right?

And I wonder if one side more often prays missionally as Timmy Brister discusses?

Change?

Why is Obama campaigning against Bush? Perhaps it's because the media has been setting him up for the past eight years. Whether you agree with Obama or not, you have to admit that the bulk of the media is pretty explicit about their support for him and have been campaigning for him in their news coverage. Long gone is the pretense that the media is "unbiased". We all know that they're not.

I haven't always agreed with Bush, but he's done a pretty good job of stimulating the economy and keeping violent foreign attacks off American soil since 9-11. He's also appointed good judges. Plus, he's done this with a media that's particularly hostile toward him and slandered by politicians who have been corrupted by special interest groups and the likes of Fanny MAE and Freddy MAC. What more could you ask?

It's no secret that socialists want to change the United States from a representative republic to a socialist state. It's no secret that Muslim groups want to eventually enact sharia law in the United States. Both are threats against the Constitution of the United States.

When obama says change, he intends for people to think about George W. Bush and all the bad things they've heard about him in the media. But what has he done that's so bad? A few thousand troops have lost their lives in Iraq. That's horrible. The charge is that there never were weapons of mass destruction. We've seen the abundant evidence of them and a denial by any in the know that Saddam Housein ever had them is a patent lie. He used them and we have the graves to prove it. From people I know who have gone over there, the Iraqis are grateful for what we have done for them. It's not a perfect society over there and arguably neither Afghanistan nor Iraq have self-governed people who have chosen a government for themselves that promises true freedom. However, they have a hope that they didn't have before. We caused change over there - good change.

So what's so bad that Bush has done that needs change? An argument I hear is that the world hates us. The "world" that "hates us" is, in part, the socialist nations who want us to be a socialist state too. No wonder they hate us. They can keep on hating us. They hate us becuase they have lesser economies. Other nations that hate us are many of the Islamic states. They see hollywood and hate us for being a Christian nation. It doesn't matter that we're not a Christian nation. They percieve us to be a Christian nation and for them Hollywood is evidence of Christian depravity. What they hate is Hollywood. The fact that they hate us is their problem, not ours.

People point to the economy as a Bush problem. Our economic issues are a combination of energy issues that liberals have drug our feet over and the whole Fanny MAE / Freddy MAC fiasco, which the liberal politicians who have been corrupted by the incestuous money loop have prevented adequate oversight and common-sense policies. Bush had nothing to do with it.

People make reference to Bush's ignorance and stupidity. Just because the liberal media portrays him as such doesn't mean that he actually is ignorant. He made great grades at an Ivy League school. He has a good cabinet of advisors. He's not ignorant or uninformed. He is privvy to top secret information. We are not. There is much we argue against that he deserves the benefot of the doubt about and there are people in place to hold him accountable for the information he has at his disposal. The slander from the media and liberal politicians is unfair and blatantly sinful.

We do need change, but not from Bush per se. We need common sense regulation over our financial dealings to prevent theives from thwarting a healthy free market. We need a hard nose against the nations that supposedly hate us. You don't make friends by pandering to people. You make friends be being firm in defining your boundaries. The same holds true in foreign affairs. Most importantly, we need to change the fact that we are killing babies by the millions. Some things are just plain wrong whether other people agree. Abortion is part of an attempt, along with the likes of same-sex marriage and nihilistic divorce (as though there were another kind), to secularize the one institution given by God to depict His relationship with His people to His glory. If we need change, that's what we need to change

The Mismanagement of Our Values

Since we all speak from ignorance and I'm no different, I might as well add my vioce to the cacophony. Actually, everyone seems to be buzzing about the election right now and only talking about the economy inasmuch as it affects the outcome of the election. To be sure, I'm not a McCain fan, but he's a far cry better than Obama. I just can't figure out if Obama is more socialist or more Muslim. I could be mistaken, but the last I heard, he wants to take the oath of office on a Koran. I've always considered that one day we may see a showdown between the socialists and the Muslims in their quest for world domination. I'd just like to know which side Obama is really on.

Anyway, since everyone is bothered by the election and talk about the economy has waned slightly, I figured I would add my words of great ignorance to everyone else's. Considering that I supposedly don't even have good common sense, this should be interesting.

What is economic value? It's the value we all agree that an object has. This "object" could be a tangible item or a service that someone provides. For manufactured items, value is assessed in three categories: Material, Labor and Overhead. The value of materials is assessed from the labor required to render (produce, mine, refine, whatever) the materials themselves and the value assigned by any market on those values. Real market values are adjustments to the labor required to render the materials. False market values are artificially manipulated adjustments due to undue control over inventory and other such regulations. Overhead is a combination of real costs added such as physical plant costs (building, energy, machinery, depreciation), taxes and various support services (administrative personnel, benefits, shipping, sales commissions, advertising, etc.).

So, all value can be traced back to labor and tangible assets and both are subject to adjustment according to market forces. Labor is subject to market forces based on the demand for the labor caried out. For example, someone can work very hard digging a hole that no one wants. Who's going to pay him for it? It's a worthless hole an he has labored in vain. Someone else, without breaking a sweat, can have an idea for organizing other people to work that will produce vast amounts of wealth. The nearly 500 people wher I work result in millions of dollars a year in sales. What do we do with all that money? Well, I keep only a small fraction of it and everybody else here gets a small amount of it. None of us would be able to do anything except that someone took an initial risk on the venture and put up the millions of dollars to get us all started. Those investors deserve some of the profits commensurate with the size of their investment. We are competing with other companies making similar products and have to keep streamlined in order to win the sales. I don't have the knowledge, experience or business acumen to be very effective at guiding our efforts, but someone does. I may or may not agree with our corporate leadership's direction, but they are effective in keeping us in business. Otherwise, I have to think of some other way to provide for my family. Therefore, they deserve a healthy portion of the company's profits.

But, certain value is placed on things aside from any labor that went into them. Gold is one. There is some initial labor to mine and refine the stuff. However, there is some market for it. people want to buy it as an investment. They believe they can sell it or trade it later for something they really need for more than the initial investment. There seems to be a trend of people buying gold tomorrow for more than they bought it yesterday that is consistent enough to expect that to continue. This seems rather arbitrary to me. There is no intrinsic value in gold. There is only the value we all decide that it should have. You can't eat it and it's not practical as a building or clothing material. The only thing it's good for is mere adornment or keeping vaults from blowing away.

There's also real estate. This seems to have a more intrinsic value to it. We need a portion of earth on which to stand and on which to build shelter in which to reside. If you come to an undeveloped piece of land, certain labor must be applied to make it suitable to live on. It must be cleared to some extent and a house built on it. Once the house it built and the labor done, you may expect that no labor value can be added since it's already paid for. (I'm not getting into collateral value for the purposes of usury at this point.) However, the value is yet subject to the market. If two pieces of land are being considered by a buyer for a house where one piece of land has a house on it and the other doesn't, the buyer will consider it worthy to buy the land with the house if it's not much more thatn the land without the house since he would have to consider the additional value of developing the land and building a house there. So, land with a house on it has greater value than land without a house even though the labor has long been done and paid for to build the house.

Furthermore, houses come into disrepair if they are not maintained. Mainting a house can help maintian the value of the house or even increase its value despite the fact that the house ages. Older houses may depreciate, but many also gain character. This is a value that is a bit more arbitrary, but enough people seek the character of older homes to make it a more well-established increase in value. There is also the value of location. Houses in or near town tend to be higher in value because of their convenient proximity to various services.

Since real estate has this kind of value and because it is a necessity, it is a good investment. Home owners use their homes as investments. Money lenders use real estate as investemts by lending money to home owners against the value of the home. This is a mortgage. The return on the investment in the loan was the interest (kind of like paying rent on money) due. If something happened and the home owner couldn't pay back the loan, then the money lender would forclose and the property would belong to the money lender to recoup the money they loaned, thus guaranteeing the investment.

Investors began to see the value of buying and selling mortgages. Money lenders would set up the initial mortgage and earn the fees. Then they would sell the mortgage to an investor, who would expect to benefit from collecting the interest. This investor could also decide to resell the mortgage under the pretense that the value of the property would increase. If the home owner could be expected to repay the mortgage in a timely fashion, this doesn't mean much. However, if the homeowner was expected to default on the loan, then the property at the increased value would belong to the investor holding the mortgage ostensibly for more than they paid for the mortgage. That is, unless, the mortage was like a hot-potato where the value of the actual property was less than the mortgage was being exchanged for. In other words, whover has the mortagage last gets stuck with a loss.

A sub-prime mortgage is one where the value of the property is expected to decrease rather than increase. The home may be in poor repair and renovation is not reasonably cost-effective. Or the land may exist in a area where the neighborhood is delapidated in general, the land is decreasing in value and the only hope is for commercial development of the area. If the sub-prime loan is made to someone who cannot be expected to repay the mortgage, then you have an investment nightmare in the making. When such mortgages are mixed in with good mortgages and traded en masse, then you have an inequitable exchange. Good value is being exchanged for low value. So, an investor may end up with a pile of notes he thinks is worth something. He has invested in future value that will never happen. When the true value is revealed he thinks he has suffered a loss. He suffered the loss when he traded something of high value for something of low value. The revelation of the truth, what we might call a correction in the market, didn't cause him to lose money because no one can lose something they don't have.

We still have the same value in the system. People still work and homes still have value, but some investors who managed to sell bad mortgages for a profit wak away with free money.

It's these investors that lost money that the government has decided to "bail out". In other words, as a nation, we have decided to cover the false value of the mortgages. The government can do this a number of ways. Officials can raise taxes which means that our real work will be applied to the problem. They can print more money which means that the real value of each dollar that we have will decrease. So, while we make the same number of dollars, we are actually getting paid less in value. The government can sell bonds, which are an investment in the growth of government. Yikes! In any event, the extra money ultimately goes into the pockets of the theif investors that originally sold the bad mortgages to begin with.

Here's where it gets strange. Many of the investors doing this did so with funds wherein we have our retirement CDs and 401Ks or our companies where we may still have a pension have placed our pension money there. Oops. It seems most of those investors are us by proxy.

Folks, we've trusted others to invest our money wisely for us and we have been mismanaged; and it was legal. We have our corrupt representatives to thank. Remember this at the polls if you haven't yet voted.

By the way, this is intricately linked with the mismanagement of our moral values in this way: We often look to politics or Hollywood for culpability. However, we have only ourselves to blame. They all pander to our self-satiating desires, and have mismanaged our trust in them.

Who is an African-American?

I keep hearing/reading patent lies and I won't go through them all - just one: Barak Obama, if elected, will not legally be the nation's first African-American president. Why is this? Because he's not, by legal definition, an African-American. His father was from Africa, but was mostly Arabic, not African. Which makes me ask questions:

1) Would Obama's father be an Arab-African?
2) If true, would Obama be half Arab-African-American?
3) Do many American's consider white South Africans who move to the US to be African-American?
4) If a white missionary couple from the United States bear and raise children in Africa, would their kids be considered American-African?

Think about these things for awhile and you realize how silly the whole thing is.

I recently did some missions with some South Africans, both black and white on the same team, where we ministered to yet another ethnic group altogether. The question was never asked, but one of the white South Africans answered it anyway. He said that he considers how there was a day when Apartheid was the rule in his county. God changed his heart as well as the hearts of white and black South Africans alike. Now they work side-by-side to bring the gospel to yet another group of people. That's what he said and I believe it by what I saw of them.

It matters not who will be the "first" of any kind of people to fill any kind of position. This goes for Sarah Palin as well as Barak Obama. I like Palin, but not because she's a woman - and I'm getting tired of hearing people say that she's "championing the cause of women". She has good principles beyond that and the fortitude to stick with them. That should be enough.

I don't like Obama. I haven't seen anything he's ever done that backs up his rhetoric and I detest the fact that he demonstrably champions infanticide: the killing of human beings from botched abortions, not to mention abortion itself. If that makes me a songle-issue voter, so be it. I'd rather be a single-issue voter over the issue of infanticide than over the issue of racial or gender identity.

What is a Conservative?

This quiz not comprehensive, but it's not bad in terms of the choices for comparison. It offers overlapping viewpoints by listing common clarifications of talking points rather than less specific "on a scale of 1 to 5..." questions. Can you tell I'm as politically conservative as I am theologically conservative?

	Fred Thompson Score: 49	Agree Iraq Taxes Stem-Cell Research Health Care Abortion Social Security Line-Item Veto Marriage Death Penalty	Disagree Immigration Energy
	Duncan Hunter Score: 49	Agree Iraq Taxes Stem-Cell Research Health Care Abortion Social Security Line-Item Veto Marriage Death Penalty	Disagree Immigration Energy
-- Take the Quiz! --

So what is a conservative, anyway? The word is intended to convey the notion that historical ideological norms ought to be conserved.

Politically speaking, this means that conservatives in Saudi Arabia would be ideologically very different than conservatives in France for each set of conservatives would seek to preserve their own historical ideologies. Conservatives in the United States seek to conserve the ideology of the founding of our nation with the understanding that we have learned some lessons and the world has changed considerably since then. However, the principles of the ideology haven't changed, only the application.

Christian theological conservatism is a different thing. One could say that it is merely a throwback to conserving the traditions of a mere generation ago. There are those who follow this. However, true theological conservatism is where it is recognized that an absolute meaning was intended in the message of God to His people. The theological conservative therefore tries to discover and propagate this message.

As an American, I am a political conservative in that I am in agreement with the principles on which this country was founded. As a Christian, I am a conservative in that I believe that God has intentions that I cannot control and commands that I cannot controvert. It is my duty as one of faith to learn what those intentions and commands are as they are clearly communicated by God and teach others what I learn.

And what of non-conservatives? American political non-conservatives do not agree with the founding principles of this nation. Christian theological non-conservatives do not believe that God has intentions that they cannot control and commands that they cannot controvert.

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Note - By posting the results of the above quiz I do not intend to indicate my endorsement of either of these candidates. This merely represents the results of the referenced quiz. However, I think both of these are very capable candidates and worthy of our consideration.

Why I'm Not a Libertarian

I was just listening to Glenn Beck. He's entertaining, but I don't always agree with him. This is one of those cases. He just made the statement that the founding fathers were libertarians - not by name, but that the current political view that most closely reflects that of the founding fathers is libertarianism.

Let me tell you why I disagree. The founding fathers created a representative republic. Our federal legislative representatives are chosen through a democratic process and they legislate through a similar democratic process. our other governmental leaders are chosen by various democratic means or are appointed. The reason we need representation is so that our collective interest is voiced and protected in an orderly manner.

Protected? Yes.

From whom? Each other. Our collective interests conflict.

Why? Because we live in a fallen world.

The libertarian position is one that seeks to elevate the individual to autonomy. The liberal/socialist lie is similarly one that promises to elevate the individual to autonomy. The purpose of the libertarian is the autonomy. The ostensible purpose of liberalism is equity. The real reason for liberalism is so that politicians can take the money of people who are successful and buy the votes of people who feel disenfranchised. The result is virtual socialism. (There are enough socialists who realize this and who deign to take advantage of it that is problematic.) Both of these views ignore the fact that we live in a fallen world and need to be held accountable.

For this reason the founding fathers created a system of checks and balances so that no individual might assume unchecked power over his fellow human beings. It's a brilliant system, but it is neither liberal nor libertarian.

I am conservative because the purpose of conservatism is to hold people accountable to their fellow human beings, not for the purpose of enslaving them, but for the purpose of engendering a society perpetuated by personal responsibility. This method recognizes the fact that all is not well with the world and we are all inherently evil, but that this evil can be overcome and we can thrive. The Christians who founded this nation realized that we can influence sociological behavior with proper controls, but that the only true way to overcome evil is through Jesus Christ, but they realized that Christian liberty doesn't coerce or force people to be Christian.

Therefore, you can worship in these United States as you please. Not because you have personal liberty, which you do. But because it was recognized that people are evil and want to force you to worship according to their theology. Likewise, if your worship involves forcing others to worship according to your theology, you must be restrained. When we in the United States collectively fail to recognize evil, we will be conquered.

Who Do Terrorists Want in the Oval Office?

Fundamentally, terrorism is not about winning wars. It's about affecting political change. What political change do terrorists hope to gain in the US? There are a couple I can think of: 1) Diminish support for Israel. 2) Ultimately impose sharia law in the US. As for sharia law, they don’t want us to know that this is their goal. Most terrorists believe that this is the goal. The instigators actually desire power – not unlike every other despot that has tried to rule the world. Sharia law is a convenient way to accomplish this because it provides a ready motivation for a subversive army of religious zealots.

Therefore, terrorism is an attempt to establish a global oligarchy disguised as a theocracy. To this end, they probably don’t care if a liberal or a conservative is in office at the moment. A liberal is less willing to put up a fight and they can accomplish more damage by appealing in our own court system. However, without a fight, they lose the imperative that direct terrorism affords. They attacked during the Clinton administration, but it didn’t amount to much. They attacked during the Bush administration and they quickly had everyone’s attention. So, if a liberal is in office, they may primarily lobby, debate and sue and occasionally attack. If a conservative is in office, they may primarily attack and occasionally lobby, debate and sue.

Death in the Line of Duty

I’ve been distancing myself from political commentary, but I couldn’t resist this one. The big news in the Charlotte Metrolina is the death of two police officers in the line of duty.

I stopped by to visit my parents on the other side of town and they were watching the hours-long live coverage of the funeral. Of course, our tragic local news media tragically overused, if they used it once, to the tragic word “tragic” to describe the anything-but-tragic deaths of these police officers. As you may know, the only reason they use the word is part of the emotional appeal to the viewers. Why the appeal? Ratings? Whatever the reason, the fact that the appeal works at all illustrates that death yet has a grip on this world.

I didn’t watch that much of the funeral. Yup, it’s a funeral. Yup, he’s dead. Yup, it’s sad. Doesn’t anyone realize that the death rate is 100%? It had to happen sometime. I kept thinking about how the media touts the deaths of American troops in Iraq as an obviously fallacious argument for running from there with our tails between our proverbial legs. By the same logic, we would have to conclude that we should now withdraw the police force from Charlotte, NC, so that no more police officers die.

I can hear the argument now: “But Iraq is over there and has to do with people other than ourselves. Charlotte is our own place to worry about. The Iraqis should be the ones to defend themselves. Anyway, it’s a civil war and they’d be fighting their own people. We shouldn’t be there because of this.” This argument would be made by otherwise staunch internationalists who love the U.N. and would just as soon there be one big socialist world government. In this respect, these would be our people and we, who are so rich and should support the rest of the world should be providing the apparently abundant American resources to keep the peace in just another neighborhood of the great world state.

So why don’t liberals see the obvious contradiction in their own positions? Truth be told, we’re not in a world government yet and with so many conservatives around to prevent this occasion, the only way liberals see the demise of American nationalism is to weaken our military position. To cut and run is to encourage other countries to come here to attack us. It’s happened and can happen again.

They may return the argument that conservatives are nationalistic, favoring local governments over federal ones and that we shouldn’t be inclined to defend other than our own localities. Actually, the World Wars proved otherwise to us. With the rise of internationalism, coming to the aid of other localities for the purpose of helping the people there maintain self-government in the face of the threat of international control is an activity that has become quite necessary for us. Our own civil war ended with the preservation of our federal union which paradoxically has made us strong enough to do this.

The struggle between nationalism and internationalism has a parallel in our Christian denominations. Internationalism can be seen as somewhat parallel to hierarchical denominational government while nationalism can be seen as somewhat parallel to congregational government. Apostate movements have apparently had a much greater impact on hierarchical governments than congregational governments because apostates with intent have sought control in key hierarchical offices. In this way, sweeping denominational policies can be affected by only a very few compromising the correlation between doctrinal truth and practice. Once that happens, truth falls handily as true doctrine is no longer practiced, for knowledge of the truth is not the end of truth. Practice (or application by another name) is the next step, for in the practice of true doctrine through the transformation of our hearts is God glorified.

So, in the death of America's finest is set the battle for the hearts and minds of Americans. Likewise, Christ Himself died in the line of duty...

...and therein the battle was won.