Archive for the ‘freedom’ Category

A President without a Country - from Pat Boone

Friday, January 15th, 2010

Be sure to open the “Snopes” comments. Appears this is ALL TRUE!!!!!! When are we going to impeach this man?

Oh, how well put this is! Thank you, Pat Boone.

And Happy AMERICAN New Year ya’ll!

The President Without A Country
By Pat Boone

“We’re no longer a Christian nation.” - President Barack Obama, June 2009
” America has been arrogant.” - President Barack Obama
“After 9/11, America didn’t always live up to her ideals.”- President Barack Obama
“You might say that America is a Muslim nation.”- President Barack Obama, Egypt 2009

Thinking about these and other statements made by the man who wears the title of President. I keep wondering what country he believes he’s president of.

In one of my very favorite stories, Edward Everett Hale’s “The Man without a Country,” a young Army lieutenant named Philip Nolan stands condemned for treason during the Revolutionary War, having come under the influence of Aaron Burr. When the judge asks him if he wishes to say anything before sentence is passed, young Nolan defiantly exclaims, “Damn the United States ! I wish I might never hear of the United States again!”

The stunned silence in the courtroom is palpable, pulsing. After a long pause, the judge soberly says to the angry lieutenant: “You have just pronounced your own sentence. You will never hear of the United States again.. I sentence you to spend the rest of your life at sea, on one or another of this country’s naval vessels - under strict orders that no one will ever speak to you again about the country you have just cursed.”

And so it was. Philip Nolan was taken away and spent the next 40 years at sea, never hearing anything but an occasional slip of the tongue about America. The last few pages of the story, recounting Nolan’s dying hours in his small stateroom - now turned into a shrine to the country he fore swore - never fail to bring me to tears. And I find my own love for this dream, this miracle called America , refreshed and renewed. I know how blessed and unique we are.

But reading and hearing the audacious, shocking statements of the man who was recently elected our president - a young black man living the impossible dream of millions of young Americans, past and present, black and white - I want to ask him, “Just what country do you think you’re president of?”

You surely can’t be referring to the United States of America , can you? America is emphatically a Christian nation, and has been from its inception! Seventy percent of her citizens identify themselves as Christian. The Declaration of Independence and our Constitution were framed, written and ratified by Christians. It’s because this was, and is, a nation built on and guided by Judeo-Christian biblical principles that you, sir, have had the inestimable privilege of being elected her president.
You studied law at Harvard, didn’t you, sir? You taught constitutional law in Chicago? Did you not ever read the statement of John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and an author of the landmark “Federalist Papers”: “Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers - and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation - to select and prefer Christians for their rulers”?
In your studies, you surely must have read the decision of the Supreme Court in 1892: “Our lives and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian.”
Did your professors have you skip over all the high-court decisions right up till the mid 1900’s that echoed and reinforced these views and intentions? Did you pick up the history of American jurisprudence only in 1947, when for the first time a phrase coined by Thomas Jefferson about a “wall of separation between church and state” was used to deny some specific religious expression - contrary to Jefferson’s intent with that statement?
Or, wait a minute. Were your ideas about America ’s Christianity formed during the 20 years you were a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ under your pastor, Jeremiah Wright? Is that where you got the idea that “America is no longer a Christian nation”? Is this where you, even as you came to call yourself a Christian, formed the belief that “America has been arrogant”?
Even if that’s the understandable explanation of your damning of your country and accusing the whole nation (not just a few military officials trying their best to keep more Americans from being murdered by jihadists) of “not always living up to her ideals,” how did you come up with the ridiculous, alarming notion that we might be “considered a Muslim nation”?
Is it because there are some 2 million or more Muslims living here, trying to be good Americans? Out of a current population of over 300 million, 70 percent of whom are Christians? Does that make us, by any rational definition, a “Muslim nation”?
Why are we not, then, a “Chinese nation”? A “Korean nation”? Even a “Vietnamese nation”? There are even more of these distinct groups in America than Muslims. And if the distinction you’re trying to make is a religious one, why is America not “a Jewish nation”? There’s actually a case to be made for the latter, because our Constitution - and the success of our Revolution and founding - owe a deep debt to our Jewish brothers.
Have you stopped to think what an actual Muslim America would be like? Have you ever really spent much time in Iran? Even in Egypt? You, having been instructed in Islam as a kid at a Muslim school in Indonesia and saying you still love the call to evening prayers, can surely picture our nation founded on the Quran, not the Judeo-Christian Bible, and living under Shariah law. Can’t you? You do recall Muhammad’s directives [Surah 9:5,73] to “break the cross” and “kill the infidel”?
It seems increasingly and painfully obvious that you are more influenced by your upbringing and questionable education than most suspected. If you consider yourself the president of a people who are “no longer Christian,” who have “failed to live up to our ideals,” who “have been arrogant,” and might even be “considered Muslim” - you are president of a country most Americans don’t recognize.
Could it be you are a president without a country?
All who love their Christian belief’s and your country, forward this email to all in your address book.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/patboone.asp

Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly, always be grateful, and leave the rest to God. Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.

FTC want to regulate your words on blogs and microblogs (think twitter)

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

Big brother is at it again. The FTC is planning to regulate the words that you use on any blog or microblog (think Twitter). If you make money through your blogs or Twitter, you are at risk. The new guidelines could be in effect by the end of the summer unless bloggers can stop it. This hits me - I review books and send my web site surfers to Amazon for purchasing all the time. And Amazon gives me a cut.

The FTC will soon be looking at reviews or endorsements published on blogs or microblogs and if they believe you are paid to review a product or service without sticking to their guidelines, you could face action from the Justice Department and/or have to pay restitution to consumers.

The guidelines mean you must provide full disclosure (who is paying you for what), you must be an expert, and you must be able to substantiate your claim. More information is in their 86-page document at: http://www.ftc.gov/os/2008/11/P034520endorsementguides.pdf.

Of course, I don’t see any way to respond to the document on the FTC website. The FTC website today runs slower than a 1980 computer on 300 baud.

Spread the news, then, to get Jon Leibowitz out of the FTC and this idiotic regulation never implemented. This post isn’t copyrighted. I also emailed the white house asking for an explanation of this nonsense.

Update on that pastor’s Bible Study in California:

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

Here is the update on that pastor’s Bible Study in California:
http://www.10news.com/news/19606760/detail.html

Notice he only had about 15 people attending. Also notice the ACLU was supporting the pastor!

Here is something that happened in Pennsylvania where a mother tried to read from the Bible for show & Tell in a kindergartner’s class.
http://news.aol.com/article/bible-show-and-tell/507859?icid=main|hp-desktop|dl1|link6|http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Fbible-show-and-tell%2F507859
Check out the vote results on the poll on this page.
(P.S. – They do teach a religion in our failing schools. It’s called humanism. Maybe we can’t read the Bible in our schools now; but we can refuse to fund the schools that teach this humanism. I vote against every single school funding issue unless a voucher system has been established. A very large number of parents now are sending their kids to Christian schools or home school them.)
We must be ever vigilant.

County is trying to stop a Bible Study in a pastor’s home

Friday, May 29th, 2009

0529091718-00San Diego, CA - Pastor David Jones and his wife Mary have been told by the county that they can no long have a Bible Study in their home with friends unless they are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a permit from the county. This interference is in direct violation of the First Admendment and their right of free speech.

Attorney Dean Broyles of The Western Center for Law and Policy was shocked at what is happening to the pastor and is now representing him. The pastor and wife throught the attorney plan to give a demand letter to the county this week. If the pastor and his wife are not released from obtaining the permit they will consider a lawsuit in a Federal Court.

Apparently it is fine for Wall Street CEOs, the Administration, and the leaders in Congress to rip the taxpayers off and make their own moral and ethical rules. But it is not ok for a pastor to hold a Bible Study in his home. Where have our freedoms gone? And the legal bills for this will go the county and its taxpayers as the taxpayers are trying to survive recession and unemployment.

Report in San Diego News: http://www.10news.com/news/19562217/detail.html

Report on Fox news: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,522637,00.html?test=latestnews

Blog the info here to as many friends as possible. Write the county,

Is America a Christian Nation? - Part I

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

Is America a Christain Nation? - Part I

The following is a mailing from Dutch Sheets and reprinted by permission. My purpose here is to raise some questions for dialog:

What is a Christian Nation?
Is America a Christian Nation?
Was America Ever a Christian Nation?

Pray for America!


“Your heart is free - have the courage to follow it.”

Braveheart’s dying father to Braveheart.

To read the message, go to: http://www.creatingnewworlds.org/dutchsheets.htm

Call your Senator today!! Stop Senate bill 909–Hate Crimes Bill criminalizing teaching Biblical Truth

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

The U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote any day on a federal “hate crimes” bill that will pave the way for persecuting Christians and threatening our freedoms of religion, speech, and association.

Dr. D. James Kennedy, and Coral Ridge Ministries have warned for many years against this threat to our way of life and our children’s freedom to live out their faith.

The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act (S. 909) is the Senate version of a bill that passed the House in April. A cornerstone of the “gay” political agenda, it would raise “sexual orientation” to a legal status equivalent to that of real civil rights categories such as race or ethnicity, and it would introduce for the first time into federal law the radical concept of “gender identity.” Since “sexual orientation” is not clearly defined, it would afford special legal protections to pedophiles and other sexual deviants that ordinary Americans won’t get.

In addition, S. 909 would:
• Put pressure on police and prosecutors to devote more time and money to some victims’ cases and not others.
• Vastly expand the federal government’s power to intervene in criminal cases, whether local authorities want this or not.
• Create a taxpayer-funded slush fund for “education” programs that lump conservative Christians among “hate groups.”
• Have a chilling effect on free speech by making unpopular ideas a basis for harsher treatment in criminal proceedings.
• Add a layer of law that is utterly unnecessary. There is no evidence that “hate crime” victims receive less justice. Everyone deserves equal treatment under the law—no more, no less.

Widely known homosexual activist Andrew Sullivan recently said this:
The real reason for hate crimes is not the defense of human beings from crime. There are already laws against that-and Matthew Shepard’s murderers were successfully prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law in a state with no hate crimes at the time. The real reason for the invention of hate crimes was a hard-left critique of conventional liberal justice and the emergence of special interest groups which need boutique legislation to raise funds for their large staffs and luxurious buildings.
Please call or email your senators now to voice opposition to this dangerous bill. The Senate switchboard is (202) 224-3121 or (202) 225-3121. To identify your senators and reach them directly by phone or email, click here and then choose your state near the top.
Here are three key points to tell your senators:

This bill:

Is an Assault on Liberty of Conscience. In free countries, criminal acts are punished—not beliefs or views. The proposed hate crimes bill would result in two convictions—one for the criminal act, and another for the beliefs or thoughts behind it. This is a road to “thought crime” tyranny that is unfolding already in Europe and Canada.

Is not needed. Every state legal code already protects men and women, whatever their “actual or perceived … sexual orientation,” against criminal assault. There is no hate-crime “epidemic” in America. The FBI reports that so-called hate crimes, which are difficult to identify because only God can know the human heart, are a tiny fraction of all crimes.

Puts Pastors At Risk For Prosecution. Anyone, including pastors, can be accused of creating a “climate of hate” that leads to violence, merely for speaking biblical truth. Under Pennsylvania’s hate crimes law, 11 Christians were arrested and jailed in 2004 merely for preaching the gospel at a Philadelphia homosexual street festival. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), a former judge, said that under this federal bill, clergymen and others could be charged with encouraging or inducing a “hate crime” if they preach against homosexuality.

Please call your senators now to respectfully request their position on this bill and to urge them to vote “No” on S. 909. Among other things, this bill is a giant step toward the criminalization of Christianity.

Love Your Enemies

Friday, January 30th, 2009

Love Your Enemies
By Chuck Colson
1/30/2009
Related Audio/Video Downloads

John Rucyahana Receives Wilberforce Award

In a large open area of a Rwandan prison, Anglican Bishop John Rucyahana spoke to a crowd of killers responsible for the 1994 genocide. “Close your eyes,” he instructed them. “Go back in your mind to 1994. What did you see?” he asked. “What did you smell? What did you hear?”

Many in the crowd began to weep. He told the men to see their victims’ faces. The sobs grew louder. “Now,” said Bishop John, “that which made you cry, that you must confess.”

It’s amazing enough that Bishop John, himself a Tutsi, would speak to the Hutu perpetrators of the genocide. It’s even more amazing when you consider that John’s own niece, Madu, was brutally raped and killed during the genocide. But Bishop John had a reason to reach out to these men in compassion—for he, too, had found forgiveness of his sins through Jesus Christ.

That compassion to love his would-be enemies is just one of the many reasons why we recently awarded Bishop John Rucyahana the William Wilberforce Award.

We present the award every year to a person who makes a difference in the face of formidable societal problems and injustices, no matter the opposition. Former recipients include people like Gary Haugen of the International Justice Mission; Benigno Aquino, the Philippine hero; Baroness Carolyn Cox; and Senator Sam Brownback. These are men and women who, as executive director of the Center for Justice and Reconciliation Dan Van Ness says, “challenge our comfortable assumptions.”

Bishop John’s faith does indeed challenge me. He found Christ while growing up as an exile from his native Rwanda. He puts it better than I’ve ever heard before: “I did not accept Jesus. Jesus graciously met me and accepted me.” This is a man who understands how we come empty-handed to Christ.

At a time when John wanted to pursue a degree, God led him and his wife, Beatrice, to start a school for 170 refugee children in Uganda. Today, some of those grown children serve in key posts in Rwanda.

Studying in the States during the 1994 genocide, Bishop John wanted desperately to go back to the ministry he had left behind in Uganda. But instead, he responded to God’s call to face the darkness by going back to his homeland—returning to Rwanda, finding bones bleached white by the sun littering the streets, open graves fouling the air. Still, Bishop John worked with others to establish Prison Fellowship Rwanda.

He helped start the Umuvumu Tree Project, which has brought together tens of thousands of perpetrators and victims of the genocide, offering offenders the opportunity to confess their crimes and victims the chance to forgive. Many have done so.

I wish I had time to share all the ways that Bishop John’s faith challenges our own. In addition to his work in Rwanda, he played a key role in founding the Anglican Mission in America. He encourages American Christians to be unashamed missionaries to their own society, reconciling their neighbors to Christ.

Imagine, African missionaries to us—yes, we need them.

But most of all, Bishop John is a shining example of what it means to love our enemies—and to overcome evil with good.

What the Obama Inaugural Means

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

Watching the inaugural today was a very emotional experience for me. I lived in Washington, DC from 1962 to 1968. I walked that mall back then during that March on Washington (August of 1963) at the mall when King spoke and gave his I Have a Dream speech. The emotions of that moment still flood my mind. It is still amazing what happened from that astonishing non-violent action.

Then JFK was shot (November 1963) and I was caught up in the emotions of Washington with the loss of this leader with his vision of a coming Camelot and our responsibility to make it happen . Part of that vision was to put us on the moon. And that we did. I got to be a part of that vision. After three astronauts died when their capsule caught fire, my company sent me to Houston to check out things there for ideas on how to make those flights safer.

I remember walking the streets of a poor part of Washington one day much later and not seeing not a single person. Off in the distance somewhere I heard shouts. I finally found a lonely walker and asked what was happening. One of the Kennedys’ (probably Bobby Kennedy) was moving down the street in (probably an open) car, and the people were shouting greetings with hope in a coming Camelot.

Then Martin Luther King was shot in April of 1968. Again the emotions of another leader’s death shook the city. I was working at the coffeehouse of a church in the inner city that night, and calls were coming in to us that the city was burning just a few blocks from where we were. We stayed at the coffeehouse. And not even a single window was broken there that night as we worked.

Then, a few months later (June, 1968), we saw the death of Bobby Kennedy. Camelot never came.

Today, again, at this same mall we see the visions that these leaders held in the past beginning once again to break loose of the bondage that has held them for years. The most important thing about President Obama’s inaugural speech, however, is that the President only used the word “I” about three times. What really happens here in this change is up to us. It wasn’t “A change I can believe in” but “A change we can believe in”. The responsibility for leading is with us – not President Obama. What are you going to do about it?

Election Insights: Politics, George Bush, McCain, and Obama

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

We encourage each American citizen to vote in this election. It is a very important election for even the survival of our nation. We encourage you to pray. listen to God, and honor what the Bible says about your political leaders. Remember also the words of George Washington:

The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the enternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.

George Washington, our first president, a man who fought for the freedoms we have that we often take too lightly.

and from the Bible:

“He who rules over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.”

2 Samuel 23:3 NKJV

During the last few years, we have seen leaders that have not honored this. We have seen men in Congress take very large amounts of money from Wall Street leaders to protect the greed and moral inproprieties of Wall Street. Now they want to be reelected or either they are resigning with huge pensions along with their lobbying money. We have seen wars launched on lies and greed. We have seen our Executive branch lie to protect their greed and mismanagement and Congress refuse to stand up for what is honorable to keep that branch in check.. We have an opportunity to change this.

(For more insights, in addition to your Bible search Google on Lou Dobbs and his research on the men who put that bailout package together. See why the CEO guys still get big paychecks and the golden parachutes are still there.)

The Story of the Whale

Monday, March 3rd, 2008

Whale1

If you read the front page story of the SF Chronicle, you would have read about a female humpback whale who had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines.

She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso, and a line tugging in her mouth.

A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farralone Islands (outside the Golden Gate) and radioed an environmental group for help.

Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her.

- a very dangerous proposition.

One slap of the tail could kill a rescuer.

They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her. When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, and nudged them, pushed gently
around–she thanked them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives.

The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth says her eye was following him the whole time, and he will never be the same.

May you, and all those you love, be so blessed and fortunate to be surrounded by people who will help you get untangled from the things that are binding you. And may you always know the joy of giving and receiving gratitude.