Owing to media characterizations, just hearing “Omicron” can provoke fear and trembling. But the good news is that the latest coronavirus variant is, in contrast to the original Alpha, a real beta. In fact, not only is it apparently less virulent than previous strains but, says an Oxford immunologist, it’s not even “the same disease we were seeing a year ago.”
We may argue about what authors meant to say through works they’ve written, but we don’t argue about whether they meant what they meant. So it’s rather interesting that the men who put the First Amendment in the Constitution opened the inaugural Congress, in 1789, with Christian prayers. This tradition continued (and does to this day), with the prayers remaining exclusively Christian for as long as the Founding generation endured and beyond.
Oddly, it never occurred to these men who gave us the Establishment Clause that government involvement in religion could be a violation of it; we’d have to wait more than 150 years for that great revelation to be delivered by epiphanic, black-robed lawyers who, somehow, apparently knew more about the Constitution than the giants who actually wrote it. Funny that.
As for the Founders’ vision, question: Why didn’t they open one of the early congresses, or some other government affair in the nascent United States, with a prayer to King George III?
“Because he’s not only just a man, but the monarch against whom they rebelled!” is the answer. “That’s a silly question!”
Alright, but would showing such reverence to America’s then-mortal enemy have been any sillier than insisting that a representation of God’s enemy, Satan, must accompany a Nativity at a state capitol at Christmastime?
A “great man knows he is not God,” observed the great and greater G. K. Chesterton — “and the greater he is the better he knows it.” This came to mind when hearing something President Trump said recently — and brought to mind something Barack Obama said many years ago, something a bit odd.
“Our country needs a savior right now,” said Trump while preaching for Pastor Robert Jeffress at Dallas’s First Baptist Church the Sunday before last. “And our country has a savior,” he continued. “And it’s not me. It’s somebody much higher up than me. Much higher.”
Of course, such an admission doesn’t require a heck of a lot of humility. What do you have to be, after all, to not realize you’re not God?
Much has been made in recent years of how “divided” the U.S. is, and it is a reality. Yet it’s also true, new research has found, that rank-and-file liberals and conservatives aren’t as far apart on the issues as they themselves think. Rather, each group believes the other is more radical than it actually is — because of media misrepresentation.
Put differently, bombardment with pseudo-elite opinion has made conservatives think average liberals reflect pseudo-elites more than they do and has made liberals think average conservatives reflect the pseudo-elite’s negative portrayals of them more than they do.
As another testimonial to pseudo-elite power, liberals and conservatives are also more united in embracing certain Establishment lies than many would think.
Pascal Robert cannot be confused with a conservative: He favors socialized medicine and socialized education. He cannot be mistaken for colorblind: He has characterized whites as blacks’ “oppressors.” Robert also cannot be considered American in spirit: His parents emigrated from Haiti and he blames the United States for the poor country’s woes. But on one issue, at least, the attorney and journalist agrees with robust conservatives such as Tucker Carlson:
The obsession with racial politics, the current black/white wealth gap fixation being a prime example, is a sort of con — it “protects” the pseudo-elites.
What does it say about a civilization when it feels compelled to place a satanic display next to baby Jesus at Christmastime? As a general question, you can answer that for yourself. But among other things, in our case it means too many Americans — including judges — wouldn’t know the Constitution from the Communist Manifesto.
The story here is that the baby Baphomet, a goat-like creature worshiped by satanists, has been placed alongside a Christmas tree, a Nativity and a menorah in Springfield, Illinois State Capitol Rotunda. This isn’t just a one-off, either, but reflects now common insanity. It also isn’t just limited to “liberal” states.
I wish you a very merry and blessed Christmas. Let us remember the true spirit of the Holy Day and that today is just the beginning of the Christmas observance.
Here's a nice article on a miracle in the WWI trenches. I wrote a piece on this topic in 2008, but it appears that it's no longer on the Internet. So I present the following.
By Kurt Hyde
In 1914, when the bulk of the soldiers on both sides of World War I were Christian and Christmastime rolled around, fighting ceased, despite orders from superiors.
The fighting came to a halt for many of the troops along the Western Front on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in 1914. Most historians refer to this event as the Christmas Truce of 1914. But it wasn’t a single truce negotiated by diplomats at the highest levels of the governments involved. The Christmas Truces of 1914 were negotiated informally by the troops themselves, most of whom were Christians who sincerely believed they were fighting for a just cause, regardless of which side they were on. But no matter how noble they viewed their cause, they did not want to engage in the slaughter of their fellow human beings on the Holy Day.
Some of the truces were just a head nod in agreement not to fight for a day, while many involved fraternization, meaning the troops visited with each other. There were hundreds of these individual truces, perhaps even a thousand.
There were reliable reports of Christmas Truces along the Western Front from Messines, Belgium, passing east of Armentières to Richebourg, France, a distance of about 20 miles. There were also sporadic reports of similar truces in other locations. Estimates of participation run as high as tens of thousands of soldiers. It was the largest informal truce in recorded history.
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