#2152 (11/30) "Don’t Believe the Democrat Attacks on Tax Reform. Here Are the Facts."

"DON'T BELIEVE THE DEMOCRAT ATTACKS ON TAX REFORM. HERE ARE THE FACTS." - Derek Kreifels / Nov. 28, 2017 / http://dailysignal.com/2017/11/28/dont-believe-democrat-attacks-tax-reform-facts/

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

As president of the State Financial Officers Foundation, I have the privilege of working with some of the nation’s sharpest financial officers. They are not merely treasurers. They are thought leaders, experts, and fighters who, day-in and day-out, serve on the front lines of fiscal policy and intimately understand their state budgets, cash flow, and state pensions.These leaders—state treasurers, state controllers, and state auditors—know firsthand how policies coming from inside the beltway impact the states.

The rhetoric during this year’s tax reform debate is producing more heat than light. While Democrats portray the tax reform bill as an all-out assault on the American middle class, members of the State Financial Officers Foundation have a different view. We believe tax reform is vital to growing our economy and empowering innovators in our states.

Regarding the middle class, Democrats fail to mention that under the new House plan, the standardized deduction would almost double from $6,350 to over $12,000 for single filers, and $12,700 to $24,000 for married couples filing jointly. That means the number of Americans who claim the standard deduction would likely go from 60 percent of all filers to 90 percent.
    Critics also fail to mention that the tax credit per child would increase from $1,000 to $1,600.
    Additionally, critics don’t admit that the impact of simplifying the tax code would disproportionately help lower- and middle-income taxpayers, most of whom would be able to file their taxes using a simple postcard.
    
Democrats are also arguing that higher education will be in shambles because students will no longer be able to deduct student loan interest. The current tax code allows a deduction up to $2,500 if your income is $65,000 or less. However, this deduction goes away if your adjusted gross income is $80,000 or more. An analysis done by the American Enterprise Institute estimates the average benefit actually received by students is just $202.
    The claim that losing the student loan interest deduction would prevent students from applying for new student loans and attending a college or university isn’t supported by facts. And frankly, if that were true, everyone should be pushing to eliminate the deduction, given that the student loan debt crisis in America has ballooned to an astonishing $1.3 trillion.

Democrats continue to argue that states with high taxes will be “destroyed” if state and local tax deductions are eliminated. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned in a tweet earlier this month that “New York will be destroyed, if the deductibility of state and local taxes is included in any final plan that passes the House.” Some claim eliminating the state and local tax deduction is a “revenue grab” on behalf of the federal government.
     But the reality is that repealing the deduction would allow $1.3 trillion to be used to reduce tax rates for all individuals and business. The state and local tax deduction is nothing more than an unfair federal subsidy of wealthier states with higher tax rates.

And lastly, Democrats argue that eliminating the mortgage interest deduction on mortgages worth up to $1 million is somehow a tax increase on the middle class. Aside: It is humorous to most of us that live between the coasts that somehow someone with a $1 million mortgage is still considered to be middle class.
    This disingenuous claim only impacts new mortgages. Homeowners who currently own a home would still be able to deduct their mortgage interest. And for new home purchases, one would still be able to deduct the interest up to the first $500,000 of the mortgage. Given the analysis by the National Low Income Housing Coalition that fewer than 4 percent of mortgages in the United States are over $500,000, the “middle class” statistically has nothing to worry about when it comes to the proposed changes.

State leaders from the State Financial Officers Foundation act as the chief financial officers and chief financial literacy officers for their states. Tax reform is one of the most common issues that constituents bring up to these elected officials.
     The complicated tax code has made millions of Americans hate April 15 and has required many to hire accountants and lawyers to help them maneuver through the system. 
     Americans haven’t seen serious changes to the tax code since the Reagan administration. America is long overdue for sweeping tax reform.

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

Derek Kreifels is the president of the State Financial Officers Foundation, an organization of state treasurers, state controllers, and state auditors dedicated to free market principles and limited government.

"As Vote Nears, Where GOP Senators Are on Tax Reform" - Rachel del Guidice / Nov. 29, 2017; http://dailysignal.com/2017/11/29/vote-nears-gop-senators-tax-reform/

#2151 (11/29) "Fight Inequality, Promote Matrimony - Marriage as a Social Justice Issue"

"FIGHT INEQUALITY, PROMOTE MATRIMONY - MARRIAGE AS A SOCIAL JUSTICE  ISSUE" - by: Eric Metaxas &  Stan Guthrie; Breakpoint.org, Nov. 28, 2017; http://www.breakpoint.org/2017/11/breakpoint-fight-inequality-promote-matrimony/

When somebody asks you whether you support social justice, just say, “Sure I do—I believe in marriage!”

These days, marriage is under attack, with government and pop culture redefining it and increasing numbers of young people ignoring it. Interestingly, many of them are deriding what they call America’s failures in “social justice.” Could there be a connection? Our friend Glenn Stanton certainly thinks so.

Stanton, who is the director of family formation studies at Focus on the Family and the author of eight books, has penned a great piece in The Federalist titled “The Research Proves the No. 1 Social Justice Imperative Is Marriage.” Stanton writes, “Working for healthy, well-formed, enduring marriages is one of the most effective ways we can do the work of social justice. That the effort is not hip and trendy has no bearing on its ability to change lives for the better.”
    Indeed. Stanton quotes Jonathan Rauch, a liberal writer for the National Journal, who notes that “marriage is displacing both income and race as the great class divide of the new century.”  Research by the Brookings and the American Enterprise institutes backs that up. According to Bill Galston, domestic policy advisor for President Clinton, Brookings demonstrated way back in the early nineties that Americans only need to do three things to avoid living in poverty: graduate from high school, marry before having a child, and have that child after age 20. Sociologists today say that this “success sequence” still works. One study of millennials found that 97 percent of those who earn at least a high-school diploma, work, and get marred before having kids will not be poor as they enter their 30s.

And avoiding poverty is far from the only social justice marker improved by marriage. Glenn notes that “marriage strongly boosts every important measure of well-being for children, women, and men. Pick any measure you can imagine: overall physical and mental health. . . employment . . .general life contentment . . ., sexual satisfaction, even recovery from serious disease. . .”

And this holds true in every racial demographic. Marriage fuels upward mobility. Its absence stifles it. “Thus, the growing class divide,” Stanton concludes. “Any smart and compassionate effort to alleviate poverty and increase the well-being of our communities and its citizens cannot ignore this fact.”

Frankly, this should come as no surprise to those of us who hold a Christian worldview. God created marriage—the lifetime commitment of a man and a woman under Him—to maximize human flourishing. And the statistics, as Stanton details so well, bear this out. The family is one of the foundational building blocks of any society. It is where children are born and raised, men and women encourage and bring out each other’s best, traditions are made and passed on, and where the knowledge of God is first transmitted and lived out.

None of this is to say that if you don’t get married poverty will be knocking at your door, or that somehow you’re missing God’s plan for your life. As Christians, we know and need to do a better job appreciating the fact that God calls some to marriage and some to the celibate single life. Which is why I’ve recommended Gina Dalfonzo’s excellent book “One by One: Welcoming Singles into Your Church.”

Yet the question remains: Are we doing all we can to promote stable, healthy marriages in our congregations? Yes, the relationship between husband and wife is the most intensely personal relationship imaginable. But as Stanton writes, “Each family is as much a public institution as it is private, if not more so. Its strength and weaknesses are felt throughout each community in countless ways.”

So, maybe it’s time your church joined the crusade to fight inequality and promote social justice. Promote marriage, for the good of individuals, the Church, and all of society.

 [bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine] 

RESOURCES - As Eric has pointed out, when we encourage and promote marriage we contribute to real social justice. It’s a position that all believers can hold and proclaim boldly.
"The Research Proves The No. 1 Social Justice Imperative Is Marriage" - Glenn Stanton | The Federalist | November 3, 2017;
 https://thefederalist.com/2017/11/03/research-proves-no-1-social-justice-imperative-marriage/https://thefederalist.com/2017/11/03/research-proves-no-1-social-justice-imperative-marriage/
"The Marriage Divide: how and why working-class families are more fragile today" - W. Bradford Wilcox and Wendy Wang | Executive Summary | September 2017; http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/The-Marriage-Divide.pdf
'The State of Our Unions - The National Marriage Project" | December 2011; http://www.stateofourunions.org/2011/SOOU2011.pdf
The Ring Makes All the Difference: The Hidden Consequences of Cohabitation and the Strong Benefits of Marriage- Glenn Stanton | Moody Publishers | September 2011 - http://www.colsoncenterstore.org/Product.asp?sku=9780802402165
The Case For Marriage- Linda Waite, Maggie Gallagher - http://www.colsoncenterstore.org/Product.asp?sku=2191_9780767906326
One by One: Welcoming the Singles in Your Church- Gina Dalfonzo | Baker Books | June 2017 - http://www.colsoncenterstore.org/Product.asp?sku=2191_9780801072932

#2150 (11/28) "Planned Parenthood Is in Deep Trouble With the Law. This Could Be a Turning Point."

"PLANNED PARENTHOOD IS IN DEEP TROUBLE WITH THE LAW. THIS COULD BE A TURNING POINT." - Marjorie Dannenfelser / November 27, 2017 / http://dailysignal.com/2017/11/27/planned-parenthood-deep-trouble-law-turning-point [AS I SEE IT:  Praise God that we have seen more good things happen for the unborn in this country just from this past year than at almost any other time in recent history. Let's be praying that the next year will brig even more good news. - Stan]

Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, was forced to defend her organization's actions before Congress after the 2015 "baby parts" scandal. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/UPI/Newscom)

We are living through a remarkable time in history. Almost daily, those in influential positions who once appeared untouchable are falling out of popular favor as their abuses are exposed.
Earlier this month, one particularly corrupt institution was dealt back-to-back blows: Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion business.

    On Nov. 13, The Hill reported that the FBI may be investigating Planned Parenthood and its associates for the sale of aborted babies’ body parts for profit. It’s the latest development yet in a scandal that began in 2015 with the release of explosive undercover videos. Those videos showed abortion industry executives haggling over the price of hearts, livers, brains, and kidneys and describing, in chilling detail, their techniques for crushing late-term babies to get the freshest organs.
    The Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives spent almost one-and-a-half years conducting a national investigation, reviewing 30,000 pages of documents, and hearing hours of testimony. They found enough evidence to refer several Planned Parenthood affiliates and tissue procurement companies for potential prosecution. Attorney General Jeff Sessions suggested that if the FBI concurs, charges might be filed.

Then came the second punch.
   Just as news of the FBI inquiry broke, the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals declined to revisit its ruling that the state of Arkansas can redirect Medicaid funds away from abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood, which the state is completely justified in doing considering the ongoing baby parts scandal.

These two major breakthroughs would have been inconceivable under the Obama administration, which repeatedly abused federal power to prop up the abortion industry.
     President Barack Obama’s aggressively pro-abortion administration put the “bully” in “bully pulpit.” Under Obama, the Justice Department became a tool to harass and intimidate pro-life advocates, labeling them domestic terrorists alongside groups like the Ku Klux Klan.
     Instead of investigating Planned Parenthood for the shocking, potentially illegal practices exposed in the videos, pro-abortion Attorney General Loretta Lynch decided to investigate the whistleblowers.
    The Obama administration also actively interfered with state efforts to defund Planned Parenthood. Kansas, Tennessee, Indiana, Texas, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina—all these states tried to get taxpayers out of the abortion industry, only to have the federal government bypass local officials to directly award lucrative contracts to Planned Parenthood or threaten to withhold federal Medicaid funds unless they kept tax dollars flowing.
    As one last parting gift, during Obama’s final weeks in office, his administration issued an order banning states from defunding Planned Parenthood under Title X, which took effect two days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
   Through it all, Obama’s court appointees have generally been reliable backers of abortion. One Obama appointee even compared an abortion to a tonsillectomy in a recent case that would have created new “rights” to abortion on demand for illegal immigrants.

But there’s a new sheriff in Washington now, and a palpable sense of terror is gripping Planned Parenthood and its camp. Without their defender-in-chief or the courts to bail them out, they are finally being held accountable.
     Trump has busily set about undoing his predecessor’s destructive pro-abortion legacy. He has filled his Cabinet with pro-life officials, and has filled court vacancies with outstanding judges like Neil Gorsuch who faithfully interpret the Constitution.
     Right away, Trump signed legislation (H.J. Res. 43) rolling back Obama’s parting gift to the abortion industry—something that, on a personal note, I was proud to witness in the Oval Office.
    Trump’s strong commitment to pro-life policies has helped embolden state governors and legislatures. Texas has now applied to reclaim the federal funding it was denied under the last administration. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster in August successfully defunded Planned Parenthood and requested a waiver from the Trump administration so that the state can do the same with Medicaid, which is where the abortion business gets most of its taxpayer funding.

The next step is for the Trump administration to issue new guidance to the states restoring their freedom to prioritize Medicaid funds the way they believe will best serve their citizens. The administration must be prepared to defend that policy vigorously should the case go to the Supreme Court.

The pro-life majorities in both houses of Congress should also fulfill their promise to redirect half a billion dollars in annual taxpayer funding away from Planned Parenthood using budget reconciliation, where they have the best chance of succeeding.

Sometimes justice is a long time coming, but as two of our nation’s greatest thinkers—Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King, Jr.—pointed out, it “cannot sleep forever” and “the arc of the moral universe … bends toward justice.”
     There are good reasons to hope that for America’s abortion giant, justice is right around the corner.

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

Marjorie Dannenfelser is president of the national pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List.

#2149 (11/27) "The Lack of Security on the Border"

"THE LACK OF SECURITY ON THE BORDER" - Michelle Malkin / November 22, 2017 / http://dailysignal.com/2017/11/22/the-lack-of-security-on-the-border/

The border wall at the U.S. - Mexico border in the city of Nogales, Arizona. (Photo: Dimitrios Manis/ZUMA Press/Newscom)

The circumstances of U.S. Border Patrol agent Rogelio Martinez’s death [recently] remain murkier than the Rio Grande River.

Agent Martinez succumbed to critical head injuries early Sunday morning [Nov. 19]. An unnamed partner, who came to Martinez’s aid after he radioed for help from a remote area of the Big Bend sector in Texas, also suffered serious wounds. Whether by deliberate ambush or accident, one of our border enforcers is dead and the other hospitalized.

This much is clear: Dumb sensors + depleted forces = deadly border disorder.

Agent Martinez had ventured out alone to check on a ground sensor to determine who or what had set it off. He confirmed to his colleagues that human activity had activated the alarm before he died. Here’s the scandal: Our federal government has been squandering billions of dollars on inferior border technology for years. It’s a monumental waste of taxpayer funds and a dangerous redistribution of wealth to crony contractors, whose ineffective pet projects are putting our men and women on the front lines at risk.

Nearly 14,000 ground sensors have been littered along the southern border over the past several decades — some dating back to the Vietnam War era. Untold numbers have simply been buried and lost by federal workers who failed to record where they put them. Twelve years ago, a Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s report found that agents couldn’t determine the cause of 62 percent of the sensor alerts because they were “unable to respond to the dispatch, or it took the agent too long to get to the sensor location.”

Compounding staff shortages are outdated sensors unable to distinguish between humans, vehicles and animals. They can’t tell cows from criminals or wild boars from dirty bombers. Thirty-four percent of alerts were confirmed false alarms in the 2005 review. Only 2 percent resulted in apprehensions of immigrants in this country illegally, the feds admitted.

The Arizona Republic reported that “a possible false alarm from a ground sensor, and faulty radio communications, may have contributed to the death of Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Ivie in a friendly-fire incident” in 2012. “(A)gents didn’t detect anyone but each other when they arrived. Ivie, responding separately, apparently mistook the other agents for smugglers and opened fire. One of the agents shot and killed him.”

A $1 billion integrated fixed tower project, fronted by Boeing, was supposed to remedy the flaws of the ground sensor system. A surveillance program along the southwest border in Arizona, the IFT systems “are fixed surveillance assets that provide long-range persistent surveillance” using radars that send pictures back to a central hub to monitor illegal crossings and criminal activity.
    But the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general reported this summer that the towers had never been properly tested for suitability and operational effectiveness. Its successors haven’t fared much better.

On a trip to the Sierra Vista, Arizona, region earlier this summer for my CRTV.com show, “Michelle Malkin Investigates,” I talked to ranchers who pointed out fancy new towers with fatal blind spots, out of reach of deep washes and heavy forests where illegal immigrants and drug smugglers travel.
    “We have $50 million of infrastructure on this ranch now,” fourth-generation Arizona rancher John Ladd told me during a tour of his property, “and none of it has worked. Camera towers, radar, fence, roads, street lights.” All the technology in the world is useless - he has long pointed out to politicians and bureaucrats - without boots on the ground. And Border Patrol agents parked in air-conditioned cubicles hours from the border don’t count.
    “You got 600 (agents) in Tucson” who “take 6 hours to get to the border. Move them down! You got Nogales … and Naco and Douglas that are within a mile of the border,” Ladd points out. “All the rest of them are more than 50 miles north. Why do we have that? What good is that?”

Longtime illegal immigration activist and systems engineer Glenn Spencer, who I first met in California in the 1990s, has lived and worked on the Arizona border for more than decade. He patented and tested a pilot system of seismic detection and ranging on 1.5 miles of his friend John Ladd’s property called Seidarm and paired it with a drone, dubbed Hermes, which automatically launches when border activity is detected within 500 feet of the smart sensors. It can be manufactured and built at a fraction of the cost of the big defense contractors’ systems. Unlike much of the government’s gold-plated technology, Ladd said: “It worked.”
    “If they had SEIDARM/HERMES installed, they could have checked out the ground sensor without putting the agent in jeopardy,” Spencer told me after Agent Martinez’s death hit the news this week.

But politicians in both parties have spurned Ladd’s pleas and Spencer’s proposals. Special interests have raided public coffers to fund border security Kabuki theater and stave off meaningful assessments. Spencer doesn’t mince words:
    “They don’t want to measure it; they don’t want to secure the border; they want to make it LOOK like they are.”
    Beltway business as usual. Another agent’s life sacrificed. President Trump, the clock is ticking.

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

Michelle Malkin is the senior editor of Conservative Review. She is a New York Times best-selling author and a FOX News Channel contributor.

#2148 (11/24) SUNDAY SPECIAL: "Millennials Spellbound by the Occult- Witchcraft as Cheap Spirituality"

"MILLENNIALS SPELLBOUND BY THE OCCULT - WTICHCRAFT AS CHEAP SPIRITUALITY" - by: John Stonestreet &  G. Shane Morris, Breakpoint.org, November 21, 2017;http://www.breakpoint.org/2017/11/breakpoint-millennials-spellbound-by-the-occult/

Halloween is over, but a growing segment of millennials are still fascinated by witches, ghosts, and other expressions of pseudo-spirituality.

An increasingly heard description of 20 and 30 somethings these days is “spiritual, but not religious.” Ambivalence towards organized religion is near an all-time high. Barna reported in 2014 that over half of millennials hadn’t been to church in the last six months—many citing the irrelevance, hypocrisy, and moral failings of religious leaders. But by far the most common reason given was that they “find God elsewhere.”

What they mean by both “God” and “elsewhere” becomes a bit more clear when you consider the recent explosion of interest in astrology and the occult. Writing at MarketWatch, Kari Paul explains that young professionals and artists in Brooklyn are today less likely to ask, “Where do you live?” or “What do you do?” and more likely to ask, “What’s your star sign?”
    The owner of one so-called “metaphysical boutique” in New York says business has never been better. Her occult accessories fly off shelves and into the apartments of educated, urban young people. For those who want to go even deeper, her establishment offers workshops like “Witchcraft 101,” “Astrology 101,” and “Spirit Séance.”
    Another company sells mail-order kits containing crystals, bath salts purportedly infused with mystic, Japanese healing powers, and incense “customized to the unique energy of the current moon cycle.”
    There’s even a phone app which lets you keep track of your horoscope, and—according to the app’s website—will predict when you’ll have a bad day and whether “you’re fated to fall in love with your crush(es).” The app was so instantaneously popular that its servers crashed the day it was launched. And no wonder. 

   A study by the National Science Foundation found that a majority of American millennials believe astrology is a science, compared with just 8 percent of Chinese young adults. All told, practices like astrology, aura reading, mediumship, tarot-cards, etc., generate a staggering $2 billion annually.

So what do we make of this exodus from organized religion and into the arms of new expressions of old paganism? Well, for one thing, it shows young people have no idea what they’re actually buying into. As my colleague, Roberto Rivera, wrote at BreakPoint.org, witchcraft and occult spirituality has been marketed the last few decades as sanitized, consumer-friendly versions of the real thing. Sorcery and star signs may be in vogue now, but one need only look at the preserved bodies of human sacrifices from Iron-Age Europe to know what sort of world this worldview creates.
     It was onto this scene that Christianity burst, bringing with it the rule of law, science, respect for individuals, and “nearly everything that is truly humane about the world we inhabit.”
    Even more importantly, the modern groundswell of pagan piety shows how inadequate secularism is. Two Harvard Divinity grads recently topped the charts on iTunes with a new podcast that treats the text of J. K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” novels as scripture. They explain that a secular worldview “doesn’t speak to people’s hearts and souls” the way mythical magic does.

The fact is young people aren’t being won by atheism in significant numbers. In fact, by some measures, militant unbelief is dying. Rather, they’re trying to fill that deep spiritual longing they have with a faith that offers self-affirmation and a belief in something beyond our physical world—a spirituality that places no moral demands on its adherents.

Ultimately, what they’re searching for is an alternative to God, who, as St. Augustine famously said, made us for Himself. But God does make such moral demands of us, demands that point us to human flourishing—and to Himself, and His love for us that is fully revealed in Jesus Christ.

Until the hearts of this generation find what they are really looking for, you can expect to see plenty more restlessness instead of peace.

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

RESOURCES - As John has said, the latest version of the “spirituality” trend only confirms the words of St. Augustine: “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”
"Why millennials are ditching religion for witchcraft and astrology" - Kari Paul | MarketWatch.com | October 23, 2017;https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-millennials-are-ditching-religion-for-witchcraft-and-astrology-2017-10-20
"Nothing New Here" - Roberto Rivera | BreakPoint.org | October 25, 2017; http://www.breakpoint.org/2017/10/nothing-new-here/
"Americans Divided on the Importance of Church" - Research Releases in Culture & Media | Barna.com | March 24, 2014; https://www.barna.com/research/americans-divided-on-the-importance-of-church/

#2147 (11/25) PRO-LIFE SAT: "Supreme Court to Hear Case on Whether California Pro-Lifers Have to Promote Abortion"

LET'S BE IN CONTINUED PRAYER for the many who were impacted by these horrific tragedies.

Let's  CONTINUE PRAYING for the people of Southeast Texas and  the entire region suffering from HURICANE HARVEY, IRMA, AND MARIA A esp. those in Puerto Rico and throughout the Caribbean. Many have lost loved ones and suffered great damage to their homes and many millions are still dealing with power outages and clean-ups. Let's also be praying for the many thousands who are suffering through the OUT OF CONTROL WILDFIRES IN CALIFORNIA. 

"SUPREME COURT TO HEAR CASE ON WHETHER CALIFORNIA PRO-LIFERS HAVE TO PROMOTE ABORTION" - Melanie Israel / November 13, 2017 / http://dailysignal.com/2017/11/13/supreme-court-to-hear-case-on-whether-california-pro-lifers-have-to-promote-abortion

Life-affirming pregnancy resource centers have gone to great lengths to counter California’s pro-abortion culture and offer women alternatives. (Photo: Ingram Publishing/Newscom)

The Supreme Court [has] agreed to hear a critical First Amendment challenge to a California law that forces life-affirming pregnancy centers to promote abortion.

The National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA) is a group that promotes life-affirming options to women experiencing an unplanned pregnancy by supporting more than 1,400 pregnancy resource centers across the country, including more than 100 in California alone.

NIFLA v. Becerra will be an incredibly important case for both free speech and the cause of life. Xavier Becerra is California’s state attorney general.

Under threat of ruinous fines, California’s so-called Reproductive Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency (FACT) Act, requires medically licensed pro-life pregnancy resource centers to instruct women on how to receive free or low-cost access to abortion via the state’s Medi-Cal program. It also forces unlicensed pregnancy centers—even if they do not provide medical services—to post disclosures regarding their nonmedical status.

The law should alarm all Americans who believe in free speech and the freedom to provide compassionate care according to one’s conscience.
    The FACT Act was pushed through the Legislature after the Center for Medical Progress released horrifying undercover videos in the summer of 2015. Rather than investigate the abortion providers and a tissue procurement company shown in the videos discussing the unconscionable sale of baby body parts, California lawmakers instead targeted the Center for Medical Progress and life-affirming pregnancy centers. 
    That was despite the fact that courts have struck down similar laws that targeted pro-life pregnancy centers in Texas, Maryland, and New York.

As previously explained at The Daily Signal:"According to the most recent available state-level data from 2011, California performed more abortions than any other state. Planned Parenthood’s former research arm, the Guttmacher Institute, reports that while 18 percent of pregnancies in America resulted in abortion that year, in California, 23 percent of pregnancies resulted in abortion."
    California has virtually no restrictions on abortion, such as waiting periods or parental consent requirements. The state is so abortion-friendly that it allows state tax dollars to pay for abortion services and requires employee health insurance plans—even church insurance plans—to cover elective abortions.

Faced with these sobering challenges, life-affirming pregnancy resource centers have nonetheless gone to great lengths to counter California’s pro-abortion culture and offer women alternatives. These organizations provide services, education, supplies, counseling, and compassionate options to women experiencing a tough pregnancy.
    On Oct. 30, a California superior court judge ruled that the FACT Act violates the “freedom of mind” protection in the state’s 1949 Declaration of Rights, noting that “compelled speech of a political or cultural nature is not the tool of a free government.”
  
      The Supreme Court will now have the opportunity to affirm that the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protects against compelled speech and to recognize that pro-life pregnancy centers shouldn’t have to contradict their mission of providing compassionate alternatives to abortion.
      If you can’t force the American Lung Association to promote cigarettes and tell people where to buy them, you certainly can’t force pro-life organizations to direct people to taxpayer-subsidized free or reduced-price abortions.
     
     Regardless of one’s opinion about abortion, the belief that people should be free from government telling them what to say in providing compassionate care to women experiencing a tough pregnancy shouldn’t be controversial.

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

Melanie Israel is a research associate for the DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation.
"Battle to Stop California Law Forcing Pregnancy Centers to Promote Abortions Heads to Supreme Court" - Steven Ertelet, LifeNews.com, NOV 13, 2017; http://www.lifenews.com/2017/11/13/battle-to-stop-california-law-forcing-pregnancy-centers-to-promote-abortions-heads-to-supreme-court/ 

#2146 (11/24) "The Mayflower Compact and the Seeds of American Democracy"

"THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT AND THE SEEDS OF AMERICAN DEMOCACY" - Jeff Jacoby : Nov 23, 2017 https://townhall.com/columnists/jeffjacoby/2017/11/23/the-mayflower-compact-and-the-seeds-of-american-democracy-n2413511

Driven far off course by gales and rough seas as they crossed the Atlantic in the fall of 1620, the Mayflower's 102 passengers made landfall at a spot much farther north than they had planned. They anchored at the tip of Cape Cod in what is now Provincetown, hundreds of miles from the Virginia territory they'd been aiming for — and well beyond the jurisdiction of the Virginia Company of London, which had issued the patent authorizing them to build a settlement. It was a setback, but not enough to weaken the resolve of the ship's Protestant Separatists, who had come to America to create a community true to their religious beliefs and who would stick together no matter what.
    A majority of the Mayflower's passengers, however, were non-Separatist "Strangers," some of whom now insisted they were no longer bound by the original plan. William Bradford, who would become the foremost Pilgrim leader, wrote that several Strangers began to make "discontented and mutinous speeches," announcing that when the ship anchored they would go their own way. The Virginia patent was no longer valid, they said, and "none had power to command them."
    Something had to be done to keep the group united. That something turned out to be the Mayflower Compact, the foundation stone of American democracy.
   
   That may sound like an absurdly grand claim for a document barely 200 words long and improvised in haste. It contained no laws or blueprint for the governance of their new settlement. Some of those who signed were illiterate and made their mark with an 'X'. Many of the signers would be dead within the year.
    And yet the Mayflower Compact was something new under the sun. More than a jerry-built expedient to keep the group together, it established the first government in the New World based on the voluntary consent of the governed. Every free man on the ship was invited to sign — including those who in England, as mere uneducated laborers, would have had no political rights. Virtually all of them did so, forming what the Compact called "a civill body politick" with the power to elect leaders and make "just and equall lawes, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices" for the general good of the colony.

    To be sure, the signers professed their loyalty to "our dread soveraigne Lord, King James." But they claimed authority to rule themselves not in the king's name, but from their own free will. The agreement they signed off Provincetown Harbor declared their intention to "covenant and combine our selves togeather" for the purpose of self-government. When each man "promise[d] all due submission and obedience," it was to the colony they were poised to launch in America, not to the throne back in London.

    More than 180 years later, future president John Quincy Adams regarded what the Pilgrims had done with awe. Their shipboard agreement, he said in 1802, "is, perhaps, the only instance in human history of that positive, original social compact which speculative philosophers have imagined as the only legitimate source of government." What Locke and Rousseau would theorize about, the men on the Mayflower actually did: "Here was a unanimous and personal assent, by all the individuals of the community, to the association by which they became a nation."
     
    They did something else, too. They underscored that the right of free people to govern themselves came from God, who is mentioned four times in the brief document. The Compact's opening words are "In the name of God, Amen." Its core purpose, the forming of a body politic, is expressly undertaken "solemnly and mutually in the presence of God."

Yet while the Mayflower Compact was explicitly religious, it was not sectarian. It said nothing about a church. It was signed by no clergyman. It contained no Separatist language. There was nothing in it that a mainstream member of the Church of England, or even a Roman Catholic, could object to.

Thus, in just 200 words, were sown the great themes of American democracy: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with basic rights, that government derives legitimacy from the consent of the governed. Those themes would be enshrined in a world-changing Declaration of Independence in 1776, but they had their birth a century and a half earlier, as a tiny band of Pilgrims prepared to step ashore a wintry wilderness in the New World, and start life anew.

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

#2145 (11/23) HAPPY THANKSGIVING! "Reset Your Gratitude Meter" / "An Attitude of Thankfulness"

"RESET YOUR GRATITUDE METER" - Daniel Darling, 1 Thess. 5:18; http://www.crosswalkmail.com/ViewMessage.do?m=fjyssrsrgs&r=twlvzjbwjlbm&s=xhgjvsdbjgjdcbmplqnkndschllcgrdnvvm&q=1510912800&a=view

What are you thankful for? We gather, every year at this time, to reflect on the blessings of God over the past year. But in most families, Thanksgiving is less about real gratitude and more about stuffing your face, watching football, and hanging with the family. Some actually dread Thanksgiving, because they're forced to sit in a room with people they really don't enjoy.

Now I'm all in favor of the food and the football. But this year, let's make Thanksgiving about giving and about thanks. This year, more than any, might force us to dig deeper. For many, it will mark a year since they've had employment . For others, Thanksgiving will bring another reminder that they haven't found that significant other. And there are those couples who have to face the family questions of why they still can't have children.

For many, this was a year marked by pain. So how do we summon the gratitude? Well, if you're a Christian, you're basis is not your circumstances, but something greater. Paul tells the people of Thessalonica that they could "give thanks in everything." Why? Because this was the "will of God in Christ."
    In other words, followers of Christ believe that every piece of hardship is a grace gift from the Lord, sent for their growth, sanctification, and further intimacy with the Almighty. We don't believe we're here on this earth all alone. We believe God is firmly in charge. Though life may get hard--and it does--it all falls under God's sovereign will. And so we give thanks.

As Americans, we really have cause for gratitude. I have to periodically remind myself of this and remind my family. We so easily get caught up in the easy lust for more stuff. Bigger house, nicer car, better clothes, newest gadgets. But then I remember my travels to third world countries, where I've seen real poverty--and real gratitude on the part of the Christians there.

Tonight, my kids will go to bed with full stomachs. They'll have a roof over their heads. They will have two parents in the next room. They will ride in a nice car. They will have a future that includes a good education. All of those are things most kids in the world don't have. And so, they should be grateful.

Let's not sit around the table carping about the election, complaining about our job status, whining about injustices from friends. Let's instead reset our gratitude meters and offer genuine, heartfelt thanks to God. For salvation in Christ. For His daily care. And for friends and family He graciously provides. Oh, and for wives that allow us to stuff our faces and watch football.

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

Daniel Darling is an author, pastor, and public speaker. His latest book is Crash Course, Forming a Faith Foundation for Life. Visit him on Facebook by clicking here, follow on him on Twitter at twitter.com/dandarling, or check out his website: danieldarling.com. 

"AN ATTITUDE OF THANKFULNESS" - by Jim Burns; Daily Devotionals, http://www.crosswalkmail.com/ViewMessage.do?m=nfdyyjkqqy&r=hnvcqmsnmvsh&s=adbtksmptbtmlpwyzgvrvmsldzzlbhmvkkw&q=1511344800&a=view

Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. --1 Thessalonians 5:18

There is always a reason to be thankful. Notice that today’s Scripture doesn’t say to be thankful for all things but to be thankful in all things. Even in the most difficult of circumstances, you can find a reason for a thankful heart. I like the phrase that says, “I complained because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.” No matter what your circumstances, I believe there is a reason to be thankful. Your situation may never change, but your attitude can change and that will make all the difference in the world.

Terry Fox was a Canadian distance runner who started a run from one side of Canada to the other. He ran at least 26 miles each day to raise money for cancer research. He was a cancer victim himself. He ran every mile on one leg, since his right leg had been amputated above the knee. Almost every day, a television announcer or radio newscaster would put a microphone in front of Terry and ask him how his run for cancer was going. Often exhausted and losing valuable strength, Terry would say, “I don’t know about tomorrow, but God gave me another day to live and I’m thankful for each day I’m alive.”

Terry didn’t finish his run across Canada because he died of the dreaded disease. Yet even to the end, he remained thankful for each day and considered each one God’s gift to him. With an attitude of thankfulness, he made the most of a difficult situation.

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

GOING DEEPER:
1. What is the difference between being thankful for all circumstances and being thankful in all circumstances as prescribed in 1 Thessalonians 5:18?
2. What are your circumstances right now? Is it time for you to begin developing a greater attitude of thankfulness in your life?
FURTHER READING: 1 Chronicles 16:8; Psalms 136:1

#2144 (11/22) "Here’s Why We Should Still Celebrate the Pilgrims at Thanksgiving"

"HERE'S WHY WE SHOULD STILL CELEBRATE THE  PILGRIMS AT THANKSGIVING" - Jarrett Stepman / November 20, 2017 / http://dailysignal.com/2017/11/20/heres-still-celebrate-pilgrims-thanksgiving/

America's Thanksgiving tradition dates back to 1621 when the first Pilgrims gave thanks in Plymouth, Massachusetts. (Photo: World History Archive/Newscom)

For most American families, Thanksgiving is a time to gather with loved ones, eat delicious food, and perhaps watch some football. But not everyone is pleased with the celebration of this holiday, and some have taken to maligning its “originators,” the Pilgrims.
     An editorial in Al Jazeera labeled Thanksgiving a “thoroughly nauseating affair,” one that is “saturated with disgrace.” Other articles have called the Pilgrims genocidal toward Native Americans, or argued that the original idea of a Thanksgiving feast is a “myth.” “Debunking” the nature and origin of Thanksgiving seems to be turning into its own cottage industry.

But the Pilgrim Thanksgiving story is based on real events. The small band of religious dissenters who crossed an ocean to a dangerous new world have, rightly, been given special prominence in the origin story of the United States.
    A year after the Pilgrims landed in what is now Massachusetts, Gov. William Bradford called for a day of thanksgiving. As historian Rod Gragg noted:
    "The Pilgrims were not the first Europeans to hold a thanksgiving event in the New World—although they appear to have been the first to do so in New England … It was the Pilgrims of Plymouth, however, who would be credited with establishing America’s distinctive Thanksgiving holiday—thanks to a joyful observance sometime in the autumn of 1621."
    The Pilgrims gathered for a three-day feast with about 90 local Wampanoag Indians to celebrate a bountiful harvest following a year of toil (over half of the Pilgrims had died since they set out for America in 1620). Though the food on the menu excluded modern items like pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce, those who gathered for that Thanksgiving likely ate wild turkey, among other foods common in the area like venison and shellfish.
   While later conflicts would ensue between the Pilgrims’ descendants and the descendants of the Indians who feasted with them, the initial contact between the cultures was positive and beneficial.
    Political misunderstandings unfortunately led to future conflicts—in particular King Phillip’s War—in which atrocities were committed by both sides.

   The Pilgrims would certainly be foreign to the conventions of modern America. They were, after all, a different people who lived in a harsher world than ours. But they don’t deserve to be maligned as genocidal monsters, nor should we dismiss the fact that they set incredibly beneficial norms for a future American culture.
    Though America’s Thanksgiving conventions have morphed and evolved over the years, Thanksgiving has retained a permanent connection to the Pilgrims of New England. Many of the traditions they passed on have become integral to what is now the cultural heritage of the United States.
    
    The Pilgrims came to America as part of a quest to be distinct. They set out to the New World to establish a new religious, social, and political order—to be free from the constraints of the Church of England, and free from what they saw as the corrupting influences of Holland, where they were staying temporarily.
    It wasn’t necessarily religious liberty or pluralism that the Pilgrims sought, but space to create a society based on strict Protestant Christian teachings. As Massachusetts Bay leader John Winthrop once exclaimed in a sermon, the new colonies would be as a “city upon a hill.” The Puritans wanted to be a beacon of light in a fallen world. “The eyes of all people are upon us,” Winthrop said.
    Nearly 400 years later, the idea of America as a kind of promised land continues to resonate.

    The other great legacy the Pilgrims left us was a tradition of political consent and the seeds of republican government. The Mayflower Compact, a relatively simple document, established a kind of covenant between the citizens of the new colony. It was the first such document in the New World creating a “civic body politic” through clear, written guidelines. It was an indirect antecedent to the Constitution of the United States and our tradition of placing laws above men.

Undoubtedly, the modern holiday of Thanksgiving has evolved from being a regional and haphazard holiday to a nationally celebrated one. Notable New England orators, such as Daniel Webster, kept the Pilgrim flame alive in the early 19th century by singing songs of remembrance of their way of life on “Forefathers’ Day,” a Thanksgiving precursor that is still celebrated in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
    But Thanksgiving as we know it never became a formal holiday until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln nationally recognized it. Magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale had advocated a national Thanksgiving holiday for decades.

Thanksgiving has since grown to become a significant part of our nation’s shared cultural inheritance. Though our customs have evolved over the years, Thanksgiving has retained a permanent connection to its origins with the Pilgrims of New England—and for that, we can be thankful.

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

Jarrett Stepman is an editor for The Daily Signal.

#2143 (11/21) "When Virtue Carries a Cost"

"WHEN VIRTUE CARRIES A COST" - by David French, November 20, 2017;  http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453905/al-franken-roy-moore-politics-virtue

-------------------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

 Why it’s so difficult to hold politicians accountable for their misdeeds?
   Over the last few days, I’ve had a number of conversations with both right- and left-leaning friends about the political futures of Al Franken and Roy Moore. Without equating the severity of the alleged offenses (Moore’s are obviously worse), I’ve been struck by the extent to which people across the political spectrum will tolerate misconduct in politicians that they’d never, ever tolerate in their own workplaces. 

    In most functioning corporations, if there’s pictorial evidence that a senior executive groped a woman, then that executive is forced to resign. If there are known, credible allegations that an applicant for a senior position has sexually assaulted teenage girls, then no sane employer gives him a job. 
    In fact, in the post-Weinstein era it’s remarkable to see how quickly corporate Hollywood and corporate media can move, even against some of the biggest names in news and show business. Credible claims have led to swift action. Men have been fired. Entire magazines have been canceled. Television shows have been shut down. All of this is evidence that maybe, just maybe, we’re on the cusp of a culture change. 
    So why do politicians continue to avoid responsibility for the same actions that cost private citizens their jobs? Two of the last four presidents have been credibly accused of sexual misconduct, including sexual assault. We learned last week of congressional sexual-harassment settlements that are still mysterious to the public. And now we face the very real possibility that the world’s greatest deliberative body will feature a man who once abused teenage girls and who will be seated near a man who was caught on camera groping a sleeping model. 

    Why do politicians escape when private citizens face consequences? There are two main answers: an inflated sense of importance and the reality of the binary choice. Politicians and their allies have become very good at communicating their own importance. A senator isn’t just a senator, he’s a “champion” of women’s rights or a “warrior” for the Constitution. Consequently, they convince the public (and themselves) that if they lose their jobs, a great cause will suffer. This argument becomes ever more potent as our body politic relentlessly (and wrongly) elevates politics over culture. Indeed, it sometimes holds even when a political party wouldn’t suffer a net loss by exercising the same level of discipline that’s expected in virtually every other quarter of American life. If Bill Clinton had resigned in 1998, he would have been replaced by Al Gore, and the 2000 election (not to mention everything that followed) might have turned out differently. If Al Franken were forced to resign today, he would be replaced by another progressive Democrat. 

    Are these men really so gifted and important that their survival should trump not just the ascension of their progressive peers but also their negative impact on our culture? Is Franken such a powerful champion of progressive causes that, say, Keith Ellison would be utterly inadequate to fill his progressive shoes? In this environment, standing on principle isn’t seen as a vital act of cultural and moral leadership; it makes you a sucker. 
    Not really, but that brings us to the binary choice. In 1998 the Democrats couldn’t bear to give the Republicans a win. The very thought was repugnant to them, even if a Republican win would still have left the nation with a President Gore. How many Democrats are saying today — when pondering Al Franken — that there is no way they will force out one of their own when the Alabama GOP is rallying around a man credibly accused of terrible sex crimes?

   In this environment, standing on principle isn’t seen as a vital act of cultural and moral leadership; it makes you a sucker, a rube who allows your party to be beaten by a more Machiavellian opponent. Some of this is understandable. After all, in the private sector one rarely faces a situation where forcing out a sexual predator means “My enemies win.” Liberal filmmakers are crawling all over Hollywood. Getting rid of the likes of Harvey Weinstein is in a very real way an ideologically costless exercise — and even that small display of resolve took decades to happen. 
    Every week members of the media are getting caught in scandals, but MSNBC can take action against Mark Halperin or the New York Times can put Glenn Thrush on leave without potentially handing over their institutions to their ideological opponents. If ditching Halperin meant canceling Rachel Maddow’s show and handing her prime-time slot over to, say, Mark Levin, I wonder how many people would have suddenly been willing to accept his apologies and (in the words of a certain progressive activist organization) “Move on.” 

    The bottom line is that virtue — rightly understood — is hard. Defending a culture of integrity, respect, and honor means sometimes taking a short-term loss for the larger win. It means sometimes being willing to sacrifice for the greater good. It means that 51–49 is preferable to 52–48 if that one extra seat would have meant that a likely child abuser was in the Senate. Keith Ellison (or another progressive) is preferable to Al Franken if it means that our political culture is finally getting serious about respecting women. 
    Alabama voters and Democratic senators are in control of an important moral moment. Are they serious enough about character and integrity to make even the smallest political sacrifice to shore up a fraying national culture? It won’t be long before time marches on and the names of Roy Moore and Al Franken are lost to memory. Few people will remember who they were or why anyone worried about their political careers. What will survive, however, is a culture that has been either built, brick by brick, or demolished, brick by brick. The decision now is whether we build or tear down. We’d best choose wisely. 

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

#2142 (11/20) "How the P.A. Uses Millions of US Dollars for 'Pay-to-Slay' "

"HOW THE P.A. USES MILLIONS OF US DOLLARS TO 'PAY-TO-SLAY'" - 11-17-2017; http://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/israel/2017/november/taxpayers-funding-terrorism-how-the-p-a-uses-millions-of-us-dollars-for-pay-to-slay [AS I SEE IT: It makes no sense to be trying to fight terrorism and yet be giving money to those who do acts of terrorism. It's outrageous that this has continued as long as it has. It's time to end this; please sign the petition noted at the end of this article as I have. - Stan]

JERUSALEM, Israel – A House subcommittee unanimously passed a bill that paves the way for cutting U.S. funding to the Palestinian Authority if it doesn't stop paying salaries to terrorists who kill Israelis – what some call "pay to slay."

What would you say if you found out your tax dollars were indirectly going to pay Palestinian Arab terrorists to murder Israeli Jews and others? That's just what's happening.

"Since 2003, it has been Palestinian law to reward Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails with a monthly paycheck. Palestinian leadership also pays the families of Palestinian prisoners and suicide bombers. These policies incentivize terrorism," Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., said. The practice is known as #pay-to-slay.

In 2016, Taylor was murdered in a knife attack while on a Vanderbilt University trip to Tel Aviv, Israel. His attacker was a Palestinian man who was paid with U.S. tax dollars by the Palestinian Authority, a known terrorist organization, to murder Taylor. The terrorist was killed by police—but his family was left with a lifelong lucrative financial reward:

*Pension for life that is triple the average salary in the West Bank
*Free tuition for life
*Free health insurance for life
*Free clothing allowance for life
* Free monthly stipend—ALL courtesy of U.S. tax dollars.

Each year, the U.S. government gives $300 million in U.S. taxpayer money to the Palestinian Authority for the promotion of peace in the area—but that’s not how the PA uses it:
In 2016, the PA paid $135 million to terrorists jailed in Israel
And $183 million to family of terrorists and to incentivize future attacks
That adds up to more than $300 million to reward and incentivize acts of murder—in one year alone.

The Taylor Force Act:
     And that's where this current legislation draws the line. Royce says stopping that practice – courtesy of $300 million U.S. tax dollars every year – is what's behind the Taylor Force Act.       
"With this legislation, we are forcing the P.A. to choose between U.S. assistance and these morally reprehensible policies," he said.
    Despite earlier pressure from Congress to stop these payments, the Palestinian Authority has actually raised the amount paid to terrorists whom they consider martyrs. The payments are on a sliding scale. The more successful the attack, the bigger the payout.

In the 2017 P.A. budget, money to convicted terrorists serving time in Israeli prisons increased by 13 percent and 4 percent more went to their families – more than 30,000 recipients in all. This year, direct funding of terrorism has reached $355 million and yet the P.A. is largely funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars. 

"The Palestinian Authority claims to its people that they have a right to kill Israelis, literally, a right to kill Israelis," Palestinian Media Watch Director Itamar Marcus told CBN News. "Israeli civilians, women, babies and they claim that a U.N. decision from the 1970s, which said the Palestinians have the right to use all means to gain their rights, means they have a right to kill civilians. This is the way the Palestinian Authority interprets it."

Marcus said while Israel has means to crack down on terrorists, the West can play a major role. 
    "The only way this will stop is if the leadership of the Palestinian Authority is forced by the international community to completely change the messaging," he explained. "The international community can force them. The Palestinian Authority is so dependent on foreign aid. The United States gives them foreign aid. The European Union gives them foreign aid. Most of the Western European countries, they have the power to stop this."

The House Foreign Affairs Committee passage of the Taylor Force Act aims to do just that. The measures are expected to pass the full House and move on to the Senate.

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

TELL CONGRESS TO STOP 'PAY-TO-SLAY': Click here to have your voice heard:https://www.cbn.com/news/faithinaction/paytoslay.aspx 

#2141 (11/19) SUNDAY SPECIAL: "Are Truth and Love in Conflict? - Living as Christians in a Deeply Divided Time"

"ARE TRUTH AND LOVE IN CONFLICT? - LIVING AS CHRISTIANS IN A DEEPLY DIVIDED TIME" - : John Stonestreet &  David Carlson, Breakpoint.org, September 21, 2017; http://www.breakpoint.org/2017/09/breakpoint-truth-love-conflict/ [AS I SEE IT: Too many of us - as individuals and as churches - misunderstand the idea of being"peacemakers." We remember Matthew 5 but forget that Jesus also said that He came to cause divisions (Luke 12:51). There will be differences of opinion always and that is not a bad thing. It's a question of engaging with others respectfully and based on the truth of Scripture. We may not change minds by expressing ourselves - but then again we might, esp. as we engage rightly. - Stan]

In the wake of last year’s election, many Americans decided to spend Thanksgiving with friends instead of family. This year, I suspect it will be even worse. After all, once Uncle Bill starts talking about President Trump, or Aunt Sally weighs in on transgenders in the military, or Cousin Phil announces why a Christian baker should or shouldn’t decorate a cake for a gay wedding . . . well, who knows what might happen.

I’m not that old—not nearly as old as Eric Metaxas, in fact—but I can’t remember a time when our country, our communities, and even our families have been so ideologically divided. Not only do we disagree but we tend to see others not only as wrong, but as our enemies. On news outlets, college campuses—certainly on Twitter—civility is out the window. It’s one thing to say “I disagree with you.” It’s another thing to say “I can’t even share a meal or stand the sight of you.” But it’s exactly here that Christians have something unique to offer.

... In my travels around the country, I see more and more that people—especially Christians—feel they have only one of two choices: to avoid important topics altogether, or to err on the side of not offending by compromising or burying the truth.
    But that’s a false choice. The stakes of our cultural debates right now are too high. Too many today, including within the Church, seem to believe that truth and love are somehow incompatible: that if we speak the truth, we’re somehow being unloving.

But truth and love are not mutually exclusive concepts. Why? Because both are fully embodied in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (Jn 14:6). And, He is love incarnate (1 Jn 4:8). Christians must ground our arguments, in both substance and in style, on the firm foundation of Scriptural truth.

First, Scripture is clear that each and every human being is made in the image of God and therefore has eternal dignity and value. As C. S. Lewis put it in “The Weight of Glory,” “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal . . .” And of course, we must treat every person with that kind of respect.

Second, we know that God’s established laws include the moral law as well. Though our capacity to fully comprehend and live out what is true and good is bent by the fall, what is true and good remains. As Archbishop Charles Chaput wrote in a recent issue of First Things, “Truth exists, whether we like it or not. We don’t create truth; we find it, and we have no power to change it to our tastes. The truth may not make us comfortable, but it does make us free.”

Exactly. And that is what we want for every human being—to be free to become all that God created them to be. This is what should motivate us in our interactions with everyone—even those who will hate what we stand for.
    This doesn’t mean our approach will always “work” in the sense of avoiding conflict or convincing those who see us as their enemies. But it’s the right thing to do. And so we must engage this moment with courage and conviction.

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

RESOURCES
The Global Public Square: Religious Freedom and the Making of a World Safe for Diversity - Os Guinness | IVP Books | September 2013; http://www.colsoncenterstore.org/Product.asp?sku=9780830837670

#2140 (11/18) PRO-LIFE SAT: "Eugenics and Its Victims - Why Buck v. Bell Still Matters"

"EUGENICS AND ITS VICTIMS - WHY BUCK V. BELL STILL MATTERS" - by: Eric Metaxas &  Roberto Rivera,Breakpoint.org, 

Nov. 17, 2017; http://www.breakpoint.org/2017/11/breakpoint-eugenics-and-its-victims/ [AS I SEE IT: I don't know about you, but I was stunned to read about this Supreme Court decision that I suspect most Americans don't know about. The greater tragedy is that it's still being used as the basis of some horrible decisions in regards to our most vulnerable citizens. Let's pray that the present Supreme Court might find a case on which to revisit this insane decision of the past and finally overturn it. - Stan]

2017 is a year of milestone anniversaries for events that shaped our world: the Reformation, the Russian Revolution, and one horrible Supreme Court decision.

As John Stonestreet often says, “ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims.” One such victim was Carrie Buck. She was the “Buck” in Buck v. Bell, the notorious 1927 Supreme Court decision that upheld Virginia’s statute permitting compulsory sterilization for those deemed to be “feebleminded” and “unfit.”
     In his majority decision, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wrote that, “It is better for all the world, if . . . society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.” He then concluded by saying, “three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
    The “imbeciles” Holmes referred to were Buck, her mother, and Buck’s infant daughter. But as Adam Cohen tells readers in his recent book, “Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck,” there was nothing wrong with Carrie Buck, her mother, or her daughter. The problem lay in bad ideas that can be summed up in one word: eugenics.

Eugenics, a word that combines the Greek words for “well” and “born,” was the creation of Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin. Like many of his Victorian peers, Galton was concerned that the vast majority of children were born to what he regarded as “inferior stock.”
    While Galton’s preferred approach was to create a “highly gifted race of men” through “judicious marriages,” his contemporaries were not so gentle. Many of them opposed charity and even vaccines because they “helped people survive who had been targeted by nature for illness and death.” If that sounds like “survival of the fittest” to you, that’s exactly what it was.
    Darwin, as Cohen tells us, “conceded there might well be practical advantages to abandoning ‘the weak and helpless.’” But he added that to do so would create “an overwhelming present evil.”
    
    Many adherents to Darwin’s ideas were not as squeamish. By the time Carrie Buck was born, much of America’s intellectual elites had embraced eugenics and had decided that the only way to deal with the “manifestly unfit” was coercion, in particular, sterilization.
    One of the most committed and ruthless of these supporters was Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. How ruthless? In 1921, in a letter to a friend, he didn’t rule out the possibility of infanticide “to reduce the number of ‘undesirables.’” Carrie Buck never stood a chance. Buck v. Bell was the culmination of seventy-plus years of bad ideas. And the rest is history.

Except that it is isn’t. Buck v. Bell has never been overturned by the Supreme Court.
     In 2001, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, citing Holmes’ decision, ruled that “involuntary sterilization is not always unconstitutional.”
    More recently, 150 inmates were sterilized without their consent in California prisons between 2006 and 2010. 
    Last summer, a Tennessee judge offered inmates reduced jail time in exchange for undergoing vasectomies or receiving contraceptive implants.

Eugenics is a terrible idea that won’t go away. As Cohen points out, the rise of “DNA editing” raises eugenic questions about “whether parents should be allowed to modify the embryos of their future children to whether the government should be allowed to require it.”

If Carrie Buck, who died in 1983, were here today, she would remind us that “manifestly unfit” is in the eye of the beholder. And the beholder usually isn’t squeamish.

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

RESOURCES - As Eric points out, eugenics is not new to America’s history. It’s a concept that even now gets consideration–whether in medicine, science,  biology, or law. To find out more on this topic, check out the resources linked below.
"New Technology, Same Old Eugenics: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" - John Stonestreet | BreakPoint.org | March 10, 2016; http://www.breakpoint.org/2016/03/new-technology-same-old-eugenics/
"Three Generations of Eugenics: Sterilizing California Prisoners" - Eric Metaxas | BreakPoint.org | July 15, 2013; http://www.breakpoint.org/2013/07/three-generations-eugenics/
"War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race" - Adam Cohen | Dialog Press | April 2012; https://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Weak-Eugenics-Americas/dp/0914153293 

#2139 (11/17) "What Hath Kaepernick Wrought?"

"WHAT HATH KAEPERNICK WROUGHT?" - Jerry Newcombe : Oct 26, 2017; https://townhall.com/columnists/jerrynewcombe/2017/10/26/what-hath-kaepernick-wrought-n2400374 [AS I SEE IT: Though this article was posted several weeks ago, I just came across it and thought it appropriate to post it here in light of this player being named by GQ magazine as "The Citizen of the Year." Really?! As this article explains, he is certainly not a citizen who Americans should laud in any way. Sheesh! And he's definitely a reason why I have STOPPED BEING a 49ers fan. - Stan]

I’m so out of touch with some aspects of contemporary culture that some friends have suggested I’m from a different planet. They’ve even created a name for it, the “Planet Newton,” playing off my last time.

I don’t even follow football enough to know all the teams’ names associated with different cities, and I really don’t care. As I recall, just about the only time I sat down to watch a sports game on TV just happened to be in the winter of 1980. I watched some hockey game during the Winter Olympics that year. And everybody said the Russians would smear the Americans, but the Americans surprisingly won. They even made a movie out of it. There, I’ve spent my time watching sports on TV.

Meanwhile, news about the protests against the National Anthem on the part of some football players has reached even Planet Newton. Colin Kaepernick, former quarterback with the San Francisco 49ers, started it all, only about a year ago. His protest specifically was geared toward reports of alleged racist police violence. And now this protest, spreading to other players, is emptying out the stadiums. They kneel rather than stand for the National Anthem.

Note this headline on the Drudge Report (10/23/17): “NFL Stadiums Nearly Empty As Backlash Continues” (an article at gatewaypundit.com). The American people are voting with their feet. The article notes: “If the NFL thought Americans would ease the backlash against the league — they were sadly mistaken. Photos of empty stadiums from around the league show how dire a situation kneelers have spurred. Stadiums were nearly empty in Week 6, as well… The NFL managed to [anger] their core audience by nearly 40 points in the last three weeks. Nearly 60 percent of working class Trump supporters now view the NFL unfavorably.”

About a year ago, I produced a television segment on this for D. James Kennedy Ministries’ nationally syndicated program, "Truths That Transform." In the piece, we quoted Colin Kaepernick: “I am not looking for approval. I have to stand up for people that are oppressed… If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I stood up for what is right.”
   While we might admire Kaepernick’s willingness to suffer adversity for his convictions, he also appears to be misguided. He regularly wears t-shirts featuring Marxists Fidel Castro and Huey Newton at press conferences.

David Barton, a man who knows very well America’s Christian roots, has noted:  “What Colin Kaepernick is doing is absolutely amazing. Here you have a professional athlete who is being paid millions for something you can’t get paid for in the rest of the world. He’s part of the 1 percent of the American elite, and he’s protesting the country that has given him everything he has.”

Why all the protest? To Barton, it boils down to years and years of faults in our educational system: “What you see with Colin Kaepernick is: This is typical of what we’re teaching in America. We’re teaching kids how to hate America.” Barton noted that children today are, largely, not taught even basics of American history.

Roger Goodell, the embattled NFL commissioner, said about the time the protests first began, “I support our players speaking out on issues that they think need to be changed in society.”
    Barton counters: “But he didn’t hold that position when players spoke out on traditional marriage… [or] when the transgender stuff came out... the NFL is showing itself out of touch with where so many Americans are on some of the other issues.”

Another voice of reason in this NFL kerfuffle is Rev. Paul Blair of Fairview Baptist Church, who used to play with the Chicago Bears in the 1980s and with the Vikings in 1990. He speaks at seminars under the banner of Reclaiming America for Jesus Christ. I attended such a seminar he spoke at for pastors two months ago. It was most illuminating.
    On October 10, Blair wrote an open letter to the NFL, protesting the NFL protests of the National Anthem. He notes: “As a vested NFL veteran, whose pension rests on the solvency of the National Football League, I have watched one misguided athlete infect much of the league with the poison of his false narrative, and it has put all of our financial futures at risk.”
    Blair adds, “America is not perfect, no man-made system ever is, but we are the greatest nation in history because our system is conducive to correcting injustice and providing opportunity. No country has been perfect, but America has always been exceptional when compared to the rest.”
   Blair concludes, “… alienating America is not a winning strategy. You want a winning strategy? Stand for the flag. Save your kneeling for the cross.” Hear, hear.

[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]

"In Rare Interview, Justice Thomas Denounces Anthem Protests" - Kevin Daley / November 02, 2017 / http://dailysignal.com/2017/11/02/in-rare-interview-justice-thomas-denounces-anthem-protests
    “When I was a kid, even as we had laws that held us apart there were things that we held dear that we all had in common,” Justice Clarence Thomas says. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas appeared on Fox News for a rare television interview Wednesday night, where he expressed concern about societal cohesion in view of protests staged by professional athletes during the national anthem.“What binds us? What do we all have in common anymore?” Thomas asked.
    The justice suggested that the player protests erode public faith in symbols and shared commitments, exacerbating existing tensions along various social lines.“When I was a kid, even as we had laws that held us apart there were things that we held dear that we all had in common,” he added. Thomas was born in Georgia’s coastal lowlands among Creolite gullah speakers, and was raised by his grandparents in Jim Crow Savannah.
[italics emphasis mine]

"We Hear You: It’s NFL’s Right to Disrespect the Flag. It’s Our Right Not to Watch Games." - 

Ken McIntyre / September 30, 2017; http://dailysignal.com/2017/09/30/we-hear-you-its-nfls-right-to-disrespect-the-flag-its-our-right-to-not-watch-the-teams/