ATTENTION: Please SCROLL DOWN this page to find the article titled on this post in LARGE BRIGHT BLUE CAPITAL LETTERS. Thank you.)
WALK FOR LIFE - CAN YOU STILL HELP? - 3/10 - With what I received at my church's neighborhood group meeting last night - and several checks in the mail - I believe God has enabled me to reach my goal for the Walk for Life I will be participating in THIS Sat. For this, I truly thank God.! In the over dozen times I have participated in WFLs, I have NEVER seen God raise this amount in just one week! I confess that I did not imagine this could happen but praise God I was proven wrong.God WILL accomplish what is HIS will!
Go to: “CornerstonePregnancyCenter.org”
Urgent Petition: Defend Christians - Defeat ISIS.
Go to http://aclj.org/jihad/say-no-to-a-third-term-of-president-obamas-failed-foreign-policy?view=donFrmB&utm_expid=7567081-8.vdNbXkfzQUyJhpww3WXtYQ.1&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=ExactTarget&utm_campaign=petition
SAY "NO" TO GIRL SCOUT COOKIES! - Be sure to read post #1161 on the pro-life boycott for the organization's connection with abortion-related organizations and individuals.
PRAYER MATTERS:
"To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world." - Karl Barth
PRAY FOR AMERICA: THANK GOD for His many blessings on America throughout it's history. May we then ask that AMERICA once again be a blessing TO GOD, by once again submitting to HIS will in our affairs - both personal and national - that He may truly "heal our land." (2 Chron. 7:14) Short of that, we should not be saying "God Bless America"but instead "God be merciful towards America!"
Of course, let's CONTINUE PRAYING FOR AN END TO THE EBOLA CRISIS IN WEST AFRICA AND THE HEALING OF ALL THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN INFECTED.
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"Meet the 19th Century American Who Warned About Big Government, Religious Liberty Assaults" - Robert Moffit / March 09, 2015 / http://dailysignal.com/2015/03/09/meet-19th-century-american-warned-big-government-religious-liberty-assaults/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailydigest&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRoiva3NZKXonjHpfsX56eguXa%2B3lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4HT8diI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFQrLBMa1ozrgOWxU%3D
A scene from the Civil War. (Image: Getty Images)
2015 marks a milestone in American history. One hundred and fifty years ago, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant and ended the Civil War. Shortly thereafter, Orestes Augustus Brownson (1803-1876), a prominent journalist and philosopher, published “The American Republic,” an erudite defense of the Federal Constitution.
As noted in our Heritage Foundation “First Principles” essay [http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2015/02/federalism-and-freedom-orestes-brownsons-case-for-the-federal-constitution], today a fresh reading of Brownson’s masterwork can give Americans a deeper understanding of their precious civic birthright, the unique federal order that guarantees their personal and political freedom.
Prophetically, Brownson warned that the greatest future threats to the Republic were internal. He called upon his fellow Americans to oppose the relentless centralization of power in Washington; a transformation fueled by a new secular ideology—“humanitarian democracy”—that would war against all prescriptions and traditions, as well as state and local powers, in the name of equality, and seek to crush all genuine diversity, individual distinctions, and subordinate even personal conscience itself on the altar of a fully secularized, and thus absolute, state.
The Founders’ genius was in devising a constitutional order that recognized the truth of man’s individuality, his flourishing in freedom, and the sacredness of his person, particularly in his relationship to God: “The American constitution is not founded on political atheism, but recognizes the rights of man, and therefore, the rights of God.”
Today, when Americans of all religious faiths have just cause to fear government assaults on religious liberty, the wisdom of Brownson—a devout Catholic—is a bounteous benefit for all. Protect the sacred, he warned, from the profane and thus preserve the moral order: “If they [government officials] could subject religion to the secular order, or completely secularize the church, they would reduce themselves to the secular order alone, and deprive themselves of all aid from religion. To secularize religion is to nullify it.”
While a journalist, urgently writing on contemporary topics in his Quarterly Review, many of his opinions, right or wrong, were exclusively relevant to his own time. However, Brownson also developed a sophisticated and consistent philosophical conservatism that imparted a timeless quality to his observations. Those hard hitting commentaries are strikingly relevant to contemporary America.
For example:
On immigrants’ duty to assimilate: “It is not attachment to American soil, or sympathy with the American nationality, spirit, genius, or institutions, that brings the great mass of foreigners to our shores. No doubt we derive great advantages from them, but the motive that brings them is not advantage to us or service to our country. They come solely from motives of personal advantage to themselves; to gain a living, to acquire a wealth, or to enjoy a freedom denied them in their own country, or believed to be more easily obtained or better secured here than elsewhere. The country, therefore, does not and cannot feel that it is bound either in justice or in charity to yield up its nationality to them, or to suffer the stream of its national life to be diverted from its original course to accommodate their manners, tastes or prejudices…If I from motives of hospitality open my doors to the stranger, and admit him to the bosom of my family, I have the right to expect him to conform to my domestic arrangements, and not to undertake to censure or interfere with them.”
On crony capitalism: “Louis XI was not weaker against Charles the Bold than is Congress against the Pennsylvania Central Railroad and its connections, or the Union Pacific, built at the expense of the government itself. The great feudal lords had souls, railroad corporations have none.”
On fiscal irresponsibility and debt: ‘The journalists tell us that the country is rich, and we count our millionaires by the thousands, if not by hundreds of thousands; and yet, if called upon suddenly to pay its debts or to redeem its bonds of every sort, it would be found to be hopelessly insolvent, and the reputed wealth of the millionaires would vanish in smoke. Our present wealth is chiefly in evidences of debt, that is, created by mortgages on the future.”
On Communism’s false promises: “Communism, if it could be carried out, would not…as the communists dream, secure to all the advantages of wealth, but would result in the reduction of all to the most abject poverty—the very thing which they are ready to commit any crime or sacrilege in order to escape.”
The Civil War was a terrible trial for millions—Brownson himself lost two sons—but the calm courage of the American people prepared them for world leadership:
“With larger armies on foot than Napoleon ever commanded, with their line of battle stretching from ocean to ocean, across the whole breadth of the continent, they never, during four long years of alternate victories and defeats—and both unprecedently bloody—or a moment lost their equanimity, or appeared less calm, collected and tranquil, than in ordinary times of peace…Their success proves to all that what, prior to the war, was treated as American arrogance or self-conceit, was only the outspoken confidence in their destiny as a providential people, conscious that to them is reserved the hegemony of the world.”
That “hegemony” was moral, not militaristic. Rather it was the success, for the entire world to witness, of America’s providential mission to secure the greatest degree of human liberty under law; a unique experiment in self-government realized through the ingenious Federal Constitution, the priceless gift of America’s Founders. This was a recurrent theme in Brownson’s writings. It was a theme that, over a century later, President Ronald Reagan also expressed in his vision of America as a “Shining City on a Hill.” Brownson’s name recognition may be low, but his ideas and insights have endured.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
Robert E. Moffit, a seasoned veteran of more than three decades in Washington policymaking, is a senior fellow in The Heritage Foundation's Center for Health Policy Studies. Read his research.
WALK FOR LIFE - CAN YOU STILL HELP? - 3/10 - With what I received at my church's neighborhood group meeting last night - and several checks in the mail - I believe God has enabled me to reach my goal for the Walk for Life I will be participating in THIS Sat. For this, I truly thank God.! In the over dozen times I have participated in WFLs, I have NEVER seen God raise this amount in just one week! I confess that I did not imagine this could happen but praise God I was proven wrong.God WILL accomplish what is HIS will!
HOWEVER, I will
continue to seek out donors until the Walk THIS Sat. as just reaching MY goal tells me that GOD has a higher
goal (How often does this prove true, right?). I want to keep seeking what is GOD's goal, and not the one I set.Because every dollar that is contributed will go to helping girls and women who might otherwise abort their unborn child. Whatever you could still contribute will be greatly appreciated!
- Once there have them click on the logo on the left side for the Walk for Life (ABOVE the words “Upcoming Events.”
- They then need to scroll down the page to find my name – Stan Yonashiro and click on that
- That should take them to a page where they can make a donation and credit it to my Walk effort.
[If you have a problem, please email me at yonashiro@bellsouth.net] THANK YOU!Urgent Petition: Defend Christians - Defeat ISIS.
Go to http://aclj.org/jihad/say-no-to-a-third-term-of-president-obamas-failed-foreign-policy?view=donFrmB&utm_expid=7567081-8.vdNbXkfzQUyJhpww3WXtYQ.1&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=ExactTarget&utm_campaign=petition
SAY "NO" TO GIRL SCOUT COOKIES! - Be sure to read post #1161 on the pro-life boycott for the organization's connection with abortion-related organizations and individuals.
PRAYER MATTERS:
"To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world." - Karl Barth
PRAY FOR AMERICA: THANK GOD for His many blessings on America throughout it's history. May we then ask that AMERICA once again be a blessing TO GOD, by once again submitting to HIS will in our affairs - both personal and national - that He may truly "heal our land." (2 Chron. 7:14) Short of that, we should not be saying "God Bless America"but instead "God be merciful towards America!"
Feb. 24th - Rev. Franklin Graham delivered this insight to his Facebook friends yesterday, "I do know that the president defends Islam and chastises Christians, rebukes our allies and befriends our enemies, and fully supports gay marriages and abortion but denies the religious freedoms of those who don't agree. Our nation is ridiculed abroad and morally crumbling within. We are in trouble. We have turned our back on God
Supreme Court To Decide on Same-Sex "Marriage" - Upon hearing a case dealing with this issue in April, the Court will be poised to render a decision that will impact the entire country, much as the Roe v Wade decision did 42 years ago. The Court could in effect MAKE law rather than interpret law as it is sworn to do. PRAY that there will be enough justices to exercise judicial restraint instead when the decision is revealed in June
NEW CONGRESS IN SESSION: Let's be praying that the newly formed Congress will not just offer more effective opposition to the President but that together the two branches of government will find a way to pass legislation and enact policies that will benefit America today and future generations.
Supreme Court To Decide on Same-Sex "Marriage" - Upon hearing a case dealing with this issue in April, the Court will be poised to render a decision that will impact the entire country, much as the Roe v Wade decision did 42 years ago. The Court could in effect MAKE law rather than interpret law as it is sworn to do. PRAY that there will be enough justices to exercise judicial restraint instead when the decision is revealed in June
NEW CONGRESS IN SESSION: Let's be praying that the newly formed Congress will not just offer more effective opposition to the President but that together the two branches of government will find a way to pass legislation and enact policies that will benefit America today and future generations.
World-Wide Prayer Requests:
Feb. 25 - Urgent Prayer: "US Missionary Held for $300K Ransom in Nigeria" - CBNNews.com, February 25, 2015;http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2015/February/US-Missionary-Held-for-Ransom-in-Nigeria----/ "Phyllis Sortor, an American missionary in Nigeria, has been abducted from the Hope Academy compound in Emiworo, Kogi State. Nigerian police say her captors are asking for $300,000 in ransom. The Free Methodist Church, Sortor's sponsoring denomination, reports that the U.S. State Department and FBI are working with Nigerian authorities to find and rescue her. Kidnappings for ransom are common in Nigeria and most victims are returned unharmed. It's also possible that the Islamist insurgent group Boko Haram is involved, although it operates mainly in the northeastern corner of Nigeria and Sotor was kidnapped in the central part of the country..."
Save Christian Mom Asia Bibi from Execution - A Christian mom has been sentenced to death in Pakistan for her faith. Asia Bibi was falsely accused of “blasphemy” – speaking against the prophet Muhammad. Now this wife and mother of five will hang for her Christian faith.She would be the first woman executed under Pakistan’s Shariah blasphemy law.This is the ultimate human rights violation. We’re mobilizing our international affiliate – the European Centre for Law and Justice – and its partner in Pakistan to stop this atrocity. Add your name to our letter to the government of Pakistan demanding Asia Bibi’s freedom.Go to http://aclj.org/persecuted-church/save-christian-mom-asia-bibi-from-execution; please add your signature to mine and over 35,000 others AND pray for Asia Bibi.
Feb. 25 - Urgent Prayer: "US Missionary Held for $300K Ransom in Nigeria" - CBNNews.com, February 25, 2015;http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2015/February/US-Missionary-Held-for-Ransom-in-Nigeria----/ "Phyllis Sortor, an American missionary in Nigeria, has been abducted from the Hope Academy compound in Emiworo, Kogi State. Nigerian police say her captors are asking for $300,000 in ransom. The Free Methodist Church, Sortor's sponsoring denomination, reports that the U.S. State Department and FBI are working with Nigerian authorities to find and rescue her. Kidnappings for ransom are common in Nigeria and most victims are returned unharmed. It's also possible that the Islamist insurgent group Boko Haram is involved, although it operates mainly in the northeastern corner of Nigeria and Sotor was kidnapped in the central part of the country..."
Save Christian Mom Asia Bibi from Execution - A Christian mom has been sentenced to death in Pakistan for her faith. Asia Bibi was falsely accused of “blasphemy” – speaking against the prophet Muhammad. Now this wife and mother of five will hang for her Christian faith.She would be the first woman executed under Pakistan’s Shariah blasphemy law.This is the ultimate human rights violation. We’re mobilizing our international affiliate – the European Centre for Law and Justice – and its partner in Pakistan to stop this atrocity. Add your name to our letter to the government of Pakistan demanding Asia Bibi’s freedom.Go to http://aclj.org/persecuted-church/save-christian-mom-asia-bibi-from-execution; please add your signature to mine and over 35,000 others AND pray for Asia Bibi.
Friday, Sept. 26th - Two Year Anniversary of Pastor Saeed Abedini's Imprisonment in Iran! - [NOTE TODAY'S POST!]
We need to continue to pray for Pastor Saeed - that his health will improve and that he will be re-united with his wife and two young children who live in the United States. [If you have not yet, please sign the petition for his clemency- http://beheardproject.com/saeed#sign]
"Not Everyone Happy with Religious Ambassador Pick," Caitlin Burke,July 29, 2014;
"Not Everyone Happy with Religious Ambassador Pick," Caitlin Burke,July 29, 2014;
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2014/July/Obama-Taps-Rabbi-for-Religious-Freedom-Ambassador/ "..An estimated 76 percent of the world's population live in countries where religious freedom is restricted...SIGN A PETITION TO THE UN FOR THE PROTECTION OF CHRISTIANS :" The church in Syria has shone brightly for 2,000 years. But today violence and persecution threatens its survival. Thanks to an incredible response, Open Doors is helping 8,000 families in Syria survive each month. We believe the signatures and prayers of 500,000 people will encourage the UN to act and protect the rights and lives of all Syrians, especially the vulnerable Christian community." Go to: http://lp.opendoorsusa.org/emails/nov-13-action/save-syria.html?utm_source=action&utm_medium=email&utm_content=button&utm_campaign=november
Of course, let's CONTINUE PRAYING FOR AN END TO THE EBOLA CRISIS IN WEST AFRICA AND THE HEALING OF ALL THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN INFECTED.
PRAY FOR THE CRISIS HAPPENING NOW IN IRAQ (see post #907) Pray that allied forces will be able to drive the group ISIS back (see post #964)
/PRAYER ALERT- UKRAINE: As the Lord leads, please pray:
*For God to suppress President Putin’s ambitions to "restore" the Soviet empire.
*For the people of Ukrainen [esp. for the church 'to be THE church'] as they wait to see if the Russian troops will advance.
*About President Obama and to use wisdom in crafting our foreign policy, and wisdom for his advisers.
Continue to Pray for EGYPT - Continue to pray for the tense situation in Egypt and especially for the Christian believers who are being targeted with violence by Muslim Brotherhood members.
"Meet the 19th Century American Who Warned About Big Government, Religious Liberty Assaults" - Robert Moffit / March 09, 2015 / http://dailysignal.com/2015/03/09/meet-19th-century-american-warned-big-government-religious-liberty-assaults/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailydigest&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRoiva3NZKXonjHpfsX56eguXa%2B3lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4HT8diI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFQrLBMa1ozrgOWxU%3D
A scene from the Civil War. (Image: Getty Images)
2015 marks a milestone in American history. One hundred and fifty years ago, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant and ended the Civil War. Shortly thereafter, Orestes Augustus Brownson (1803-1876), a prominent journalist and philosopher, published “The American Republic,” an erudite defense of the Federal Constitution.
As noted in our Heritage Foundation “First Principles” essay [http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2015/02/federalism-and-freedom-orestes-brownsons-case-for-the-federal-constitution], today a fresh reading of Brownson’s masterwork can give Americans a deeper understanding of their precious civic birthright, the unique federal order that guarantees their personal and political freedom.
Prophetically, Brownson warned that the greatest future threats to the Republic were internal. He called upon his fellow Americans to oppose the relentless centralization of power in Washington; a transformation fueled by a new secular ideology—“humanitarian democracy”—that would war against all prescriptions and traditions, as well as state and local powers, in the name of equality, and seek to crush all genuine diversity, individual distinctions, and subordinate even personal conscience itself on the altar of a fully secularized, and thus absolute, state.
The Founders’ genius was in devising a constitutional order that recognized the truth of man’s individuality, his flourishing in freedom, and the sacredness of his person, particularly in his relationship to God: “The American constitution is not founded on political atheism, but recognizes the rights of man, and therefore, the rights of God.”
Today, when Americans of all religious faiths have just cause to fear government assaults on religious liberty, the wisdom of Brownson—a devout Catholic—is a bounteous benefit for all. Protect the sacred, he warned, from the profane and thus preserve the moral order: “If they [government officials] could subject religion to the secular order, or completely secularize the church, they would reduce themselves to the secular order alone, and deprive themselves of all aid from religion. To secularize religion is to nullify it.”
While a journalist, urgently writing on contemporary topics in his Quarterly Review, many of his opinions, right or wrong, were exclusively relevant to his own time. However, Brownson also developed a sophisticated and consistent philosophical conservatism that imparted a timeless quality to his observations. Those hard hitting commentaries are strikingly relevant to contemporary America.
For example:
On immigrants’ duty to assimilate: “It is not attachment to American soil, or sympathy with the American nationality, spirit, genius, or institutions, that brings the great mass of foreigners to our shores. No doubt we derive great advantages from them, but the motive that brings them is not advantage to us or service to our country. They come solely from motives of personal advantage to themselves; to gain a living, to acquire a wealth, or to enjoy a freedom denied them in their own country, or believed to be more easily obtained or better secured here than elsewhere. The country, therefore, does not and cannot feel that it is bound either in justice or in charity to yield up its nationality to them, or to suffer the stream of its national life to be diverted from its original course to accommodate their manners, tastes or prejudices…If I from motives of hospitality open my doors to the stranger, and admit him to the bosom of my family, I have the right to expect him to conform to my domestic arrangements, and not to undertake to censure or interfere with them.”
On crony capitalism: “Louis XI was not weaker against Charles the Bold than is Congress against the Pennsylvania Central Railroad and its connections, or the Union Pacific, built at the expense of the government itself. The great feudal lords had souls, railroad corporations have none.”
On fiscal irresponsibility and debt: ‘The journalists tell us that the country is rich, and we count our millionaires by the thousands, if not by hundreds of thousands; and yet, if called upon suddenly to pay its debts or to redeem its bonds of every sort, it would be found to be hopelessly insolvent, and the reputed wealth of the millionaires would vanish in smoke. Our present wealth is chiefly in evidences of debt, that is, created by mortgages on the future.”
On Communism’s false promises: “Communism, if it could be carried out, would not…as the communists dream, secure to all the advantages of wealth, but would result in the reduction of all to the most abject poverty—the very thing which they are ready to commit any crime or sacrilege in order to escape.”
The Civil War was a terrible trial for millions—Brownson himself lost two sons—but the calm courage of the American people prepared them for world leadership:
“With larger armies on foot than Napoleon ever commanded, with their line of battle stretching from ocean to ocean, across the whole breadth of the continent, they never, during four long years of alternate victories and defeats—and both unprecedently bloody—or a moment lost their equanimity, or appeared less calm, collected and tranquil, than in ordinary times of peace…Their success proves to all that what, prior to the war, was treated as American arrogance or self-conceit, was only the outspoken confidence in their destiny as a providential people, conscious that to them is reserved the hegemony of the world.”
That “hegemony” was moral, not militaristic. Rather it was the success, for the entire world to witness, of America’s providential mission to secure the greatest degree of human liberty under law; a unique experiment in self-government realized through the ingenious Federal Constitution, the priceless gift of America’s Founders. This was a recurrent theme in Brownson’s writings. It was a theme that, over a century later, President Ronald Reagan also expressed in his vision of America as a “Shining City on a Hill.” Brownson’s name recognition may be low, but his ideas and insights have endured.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
Robert E. Moffit, a seasoned veteran of more than three decades in Washington policymaking, is a senior fellow in The Heritage Foundation's Center for Health Policy Studies. Read his research.
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