Why They Hate President Ronald Reagan

Once upon a time, there were two great superpowers on Earth. There was the Union of Soviet Socialist "Republics," (USSR), a.k.a. the Soviet Union, and there was the USA.

The USSR was controlled from Moscow by the leaders of its Communist Party, with an iron grip over the official Soviet "republics" of Russia at the others, and the Eastern European puppet governments of East Germany and such. It was a massive land expanse all under the control of the elite Soviet men.

A "cold war" existed between the Soviets and free nations such as the USA and UK, with global nuclear war presented a serious and eminent threat.

The USA had series of Presidents as follows:

FDR - A Big Government Democrat who expanded the federal government enormously. Most terms of any President.

Harry Truman - First became President with the death of FDR, as he was FDR's last VP. A Democrat who pushed for the United Nations and national health insurance.

Dwight Eisenhower - Republican who did not make limiting government a driver of his campaign or Presidency. He'd been a successful WWII General.

JFK - Democrat. While some of his positions sound downright conservative today, since he was a young, handsome, well-spoken, charismatic Democrat who apparently won a public standoff with the Soviets (the Cuban Missile Crisis) and was assassinated, he has been revered to this day. He had been Senator.

LBJ - Democrat who pushed for the Great Society government expansion after first serving as VP under JFK.

Richard Nixon - Republican who ended the gold standard, set some price controls, ushered in the EPA, and did not make limiting government a driver of his campaigns or Presidency. He had a long political history, including having been VP.

Gerald Ford - Republican who basically prostrated himself in the wake of Nixon's resignation. He'd been in Congress and then VP under Nixon. He did not make limiting government a driver of his time in office.

Jimmy Carter - Democrat who continued to increase the size and powers of government. Americans were basically told to accept higher energy prices, and by this time more and more on the Left were accepting the Soviet Union and its control over Eastern Europe as permanent and just another, valid way of governing. Carter had been Governor of Georgia.

Then there was the election of 1980.

Of course the Left and partisan Democrats wanted Carter to win a second term over any Republican.

The Republican nomination came down to two choices: Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Bush was much like the other recent Republican Presidents. He had been in government forever and was milquetoast. He'd "waited his turn." Reagan was a "cowboy" who had served as Governor of California, interrupting the Brown Democrat Dynasty, but had been out of office since early 1975 and had no other political experience. He spoke about limiting government, government often being the problem. With talk like that, the Left wasn't going to be able to push through to nationalized health for all and all sorts of new federal governments they claim to be birthrights. He took a stance of being aggressive in defending liberty against the Soviets, and unreservedly claimed we were the good guys and the commies were the bad guys.

He cut taxes and built up the military. A terrible economy recovered well under Reagan.

What Reagan did was ruin what they saw as a great march to globalist progressivism. He revived modern conservatism and patriotism, unashamedly touting the benefits of capitalism and private industry. He lead a revival of our country.

They predicted Reagan was going to lead us into war and nuclear annihilation. Instead, his policies and collaboration with UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II lead to the collapse of the Soviet empire and new freedoms for a significant portion of the world and renewed strength and leadership for the USA.

Yes, it's true, he didn't drop everything and overhaul the organization of the federal government and spending to try to eliminate a negative consequence of the entirely voluntary activities of bloody and rough anal sex with strangers, and sharing recreational drug needles.

And he wasn't perfect. No President is flawless.

But what he did was ruin "everything" for the Left and certain political cultists, and so to this day they hate him with a passion.

He was one of our greatest Presidents.

The Gipper

I Thank God I Was Born in the U.S.A.

People risk and lose their lives trying to get here. People lie, cheat, and steal to get here and stay here. Me, I was blessed to be born here, making me a citizen simply by surviving Roe v. Wade.

So many people sacrificed and fought and worked to create and build and preserve this nation, from the explorers who made the journeys across the Atlantic and had to turn around and make the journey back, to the pilgrims and others who settled here, to the revolutionaries who broke away from the monarchistic mother country and later set up the greatest Constitution in history, to the pioneers who ventured west, to people who insisted that human beings should not be treated as property, to the people who went around the world to defeat Naziism and Soviet Communism.

I thank God they did. I thank God my ancestors dared to come here.

I thank God I can choose my job, choose where to live, choose what to buy (when government hasn't shut down businesses for simply operating normally), choose my doctor, choose what to drive, choose to have as many children as I can, and openly worship Jesus Christ, pray, and study the Bible.

Our nation is not perfect, but it is the best place in the world, and it does have the ingredients for further greatness. We must now implement the recipe to preserve and further that which is good and discard or change that which isn't. We must fight to make the government work to protect our rights instead of infringing on them. We must work hard to raise the subsequent generations with the morals, values, and priorities that produce good citizens and aid in limiting government.

Our way of life is under attack – from enemies both foreign and domestic.

One way we can fight them is to declare our independence, and continue declaring it - our independence from: being governed by those not operating under our Constitution; the failed promises of politicians; the failed and restrictive programs of the federal and state governments; the tyranny of the minority; the activist judiciary; socialist labor unions; academics who hate America; media with a Leftist bias or that degrade our culture; churches that have become lukewarm; family and "friends" who are sociopaths, malignant narcissists, unrepentant evildoers, or enabling cowards.

Pray. Study the Bible, the Constitution, and history. Go to a healthy, well-balanced church. Get informed. Tell others. Vote at the ballot and with your dollar. Stand between evildoers and the innocent. Civilly disobey unjust laws, rulings, or orders.

Happy Independence Day and God Bless America!

Pat Robertson Passes

Most of what I saw and heard from Pat Robertson was from news and outrage reports, meaning if his actual words were included, they were just snippets out of context. If I recall correctly, I read one book attributed to him and some fundraising pleas, watched one political convention speech, and maybe heard him talking to radio program hosts over the years.

I'm not going to even try to defend everything he said or did. Nobody is perfect, and anyone who appears in as much media as he did, especially if any of it is unscripted, is going to say things that are erroneous or sound strange. Whatever he did wrong is now between him and the Lord.

I will say that Robertson was not wrong advocating that Christians participate in politics. Christians have every right to run for office, vote, speak up, support candidates, causes, and actions, and oppose others, including doing so based on their religious beliefs. 

Also, I have noticed outrage reports about him have often taken what he's said out of context have "interpreted" what he said without quoting him. Assuming he actually said some of the more strange things attributed to him, such as about the rumored actions of some people on the Left or who identify themselves by certain behaviors, Robertson and conservative Christians hardly have a monopoly on that. I don't know if a day goes by that I don't see some bizarre claim from the Left, or antitheists, or abortisexuals about what Republicans/conservatives/Christian are planning to do or are already doing.

It isn't some wacky fringe idea that there is Divine judgment for nations, and that a nation turning against the Lord is going to suffer some judgment as a result. This has been something believed throughout history by many cultures. That doesn't automatically make it right, but it is a Biblically sound idea, and Robertson considered the Bible to be Scripture. Sexual morality and ideals of the sort proclaimed by Robertson also haven't been fringe and certainly aren't unique to a few prominent religious broadcasters. Like it or not, if more people lived by them, there would be a lot less disease, unwanted pregnancies, and broken hearts.

The haters, predictably, are celebrating the passing of Robertson. Every time they react this way to the death of a prominent Christian preacher, Republican, or conservative, those haters are reminding many of us why they should never have power over any of us. The hate, the vitriol, the bloodthirsty behavior should remind everyone why limiting government and being prepared to defend yourself and the innocent are necessary.

Earth Day and Origins: Why Celebrate Accidents?

Well, it's time for Earth Day, when New Age and pagan Earth worship takes center stage, and many theists go along for the ride. I'm all for conserving God's creation, but I recognize that the creation is wearing out, even with the best conservation efforts. Only a resurrection will redeem it.

I prefer to worship the Creator, and admire the creation.

Speaking of that, from letters to the editor printed in the Los Angeles Times around Earth Day 2008, inspired by a commentary by Richard Dawkins:

Ken Savage or Palm Desert chimed in:

Everyone has faith in something that is beyond science to prove.

That is true. Even a statement such as "Science discovers all truth" is a philosophical statement outside of science itself, and thus can't be true.

Dawkins has a similar problem to those who cannot explain where a complex God came from. Where did the Big Bang come from, and what existed before?

As I understand it, one of the explanations is "nothing". If the entire universe could come from nothing without a cause outside itself, how can we trust any lab results? How do we know matter/energy is not emerging in the middle of such experiments, thus skewing the results? Another answer I've been told is "We don't know, but we know it wasn't God!"  Uh, okay.

If Friday Was Good, Sunday Was Spectacular

A carpenter, with questionable parentage, from an unremarkable town, walked the countryside. He attracted followers, keeping twelve with him closely and three of those especially close as he spoke to groups large and small. He was part of an oppressed group - a Jew in a Roman-occupied part of the world. He said and did things that confounded the dominant religious authorities of the day. People flocked to him for a miracle. There was something he claimed that was outrageous to his fellow Jews: He was God. Arrogance? Insanity? Fraud? From a man who urged people to forgive each other and love each other?

For thousands of years, it had been pounded into the minds and hearts of the Jews that there was ONE God and that He was spirit, not an idol that could be kept in a room. He was a unique, personal being, not a "force" or something we all could be or have if we meditated enough.

And yet here was a Jew, this guy who was extremely familiar with the Scriptures – including the ones that said there was just one God - walking around claiming to be God. He wasn't part of the recognized system of priests and religious leaders, so he posed a threat to them and their comfortable, established way of doing things. This guy even had the nerve to disrupt their moneymaking schemes.

Enough was enough!

They handed this guy over to the Romans and demanded that he be executed. He was a threat to the religious leaders, and since he'd claimed to be a king, he must be a threat to the Romans, too. Furthermore, anyone claiming to God was being blasphemous, right? The Roman leader, while spooked a little, didn't find anything wrong with the man, especially after the man explained that his kingdom wasn't of this world. Yet the Romans needed to keep order, and people were demanding that this "king" die. The "king" was taken and scourged - whipped so brutally that his skin was shredded. That wasn't enough. The people wanted this "king" to die. And so this carpenter, who had worked with wood for years to make useful things for other people, was forced to carry the very wood he'd be nailed to so that he could hang on a cross bleeding and losing his ability to breathe.

This man who'd preached loved and forgiveness, who had urged people to turn from their sins, who had healed the sick, who had done some controversial things but never anything wrong, was beaten and executed, all in excruciating pain.

That was what we now call "Good" Friday.

If that was all that happened, most of us would never have heard of Good Friday. Someone may have mentioned this carpenter in an obscure list of Jews who claimed to be the Messiah, but most of us would never have heard of this Nazarene.

But it wasn't all that happened.

On Sunday morning, once the holy days and feasts were over, some people who loved this carpenter were returning to care for his body as a final sign of respect.

The body was gone, though. Nobody ever found the body. To their shock, this Jesus, who had been scourged and killed, was alive and well - very well - though he still had the holes in his hands from the nails and the hole in his side where a spear had shoved into him to make sure he was dead. He talked with them, they embraced him, they felt him, they ate with him. He'd come and go as he pleased over the next several weeks. Finally, having done what he'd set out to do, he was taken away in a "cloud"... probably a description of what appeared to be a blindingly bright light.

Because of that Sunday when Jesus was first seen alive after being killed, we now have Good Friday. Why is Friday "Good"?

It is no coincidence that Jesus was executed during the Passover season (the Last Supper was a Passover Seder). Many years before, when the Jews were enslaved in Egypt, there was a night when they slaughtered lambs "without defect" and placed the blood of a lamb on their doorways. Overnight, when the Lord passed through Egypt with righteous judgment, the firstborn of every household was struck down - but the Lord "passed over" the homes with the blood. The Jews were subsequently freed from their slavery.

John the Baptist referred to Jesus as "the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world." Jesus was the ultimate Passover Lamb "without defect" who shed his blood to free all of us from our enslavement to sin. That Friday was Good because it is the day that our sins against God were paid for... by someone other than us!

But that Sunday...

We've all dealt with death in our lives. We've all had loved ones that have died. Thousands of years of recorded history tell us that dead people stay dead.

Yet this miracle-working carpenter was seen alive after his death. People touched him, talked with him, ate with him. They stuck their fingers in his wounds.

Being modern people, we are understandably skeptical of this. We don't have video proof. But what we do have is history, and the testimony of those who were there. Good Friday had left the followers of Jesus afraid and feeling defeated. They had shown themselves to be cowardly, and their leader was dead.

If Easter (Resurrection) Sunday did not happen, how did such people go on to change the world? Unless they actually encountered a resurrected Jesus, these people would have no reason to face ostracism and martyrdom to proclaim that resurrection and spread the teachings of Jesus. It is easy to deny the truth to save your life. Would people be willing to give up everything they had and die for something they knew to be a lie? No way!

So what does this all mean for me today? It means that I have a way to be right with God, because even though I have done things against Him, Good Friday was the day that those sins were paid for. I am forgiven. I also have someone who is my friend, my advocate, someone who knows what it is like to live life on Earth and knows what it is like to feel pain, suffer loss, and to die. And that Someone has promised me that if I follow Him, everything will be okay. Death is not the end. He has conquered death, and someday death, pain, and sorrow will be taken away from me. He has backed up His "blasphemous claims" with action, showing them not to be blasphemous at all.

He doesn't want me to cut the heads off of people just because they don't believe in Him. He doesn't want me to fly airliners into skyscrapers to kill people going about their lives. He wants me to do things like love others and take care of the needs of others. This is why so many have built hospitals, universities, and charities in His name.

It isn't about going to church regularly. It isn't about trying to convince people that my life is perfect. It isn't about making sure I can retire wealthy. It isn't about getting everyone else to see things the way I do. It isn't even about keeping a checklist of rules and sticking to that checklist. It isn't about "getting it right" on my own before I can approach God, because that will never happen.

It IS about having a peace with God, knowing that He forgives the horrible things I've done and may yet still do if I simply ask Him to, having sincerely repented. It is about having fellowship with that Nazarene who rose from the grave and still lives, because He deserves my allegiance and because He did life right.

There are people who believe that everything is an accident, a series of extremely unlikely coincidences. Sunsets. Surf. Waterfalls. Roses. Redwood trees. Chocolate. Wine. Galaxies. Eagles. Puppies. Kittens. Sex. Newborn babies. Mozart. DaVinci. Those are all accidents? I don't think so. All of the complexity in the cells of our own bodies, all of the symbiotic systems of the natural world, where organisms depend on each other for survival. Those all "just happened"? I don't think so. The world is beautiful and amazing, and it is not accidental or inconsequential that a Jew who was without sin and claimed to be God suffered and died at Passover and then rose from the dead.

Yes, there is something broken about the world, as evidenced by all of the suffering. But the fix is in. The victory was demonstrated almost 2000 years ago. I can't ignore that. That has to have an impact in my life, how I view life, and how I live life. My Lord humbled Himself, suffered and died for me. And then, He beat death, and someday, He's going to kick death - and its parent, sin - down the stairs, and shut the door on them. The world won't be broken anymore. I can't know everything about what the future will bring, but as long as I'm holding on to Him, I'll be in the best company there is. And since I love Him, as long as I'm around, I should seek to love others, meet their needs, and follow His lead.

May you have a Joyous Resurrection Sunday.

The Good Thing About Good Friday

Unless you are living under sharia law and are kept ignorant of such matters, you know that this coming weekend is the weekend during which Christians especially commemorate the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The books of the Bible claim that that both of these events were historical events - that they actually happened.

If both of these events did actually happen, then they are the most significant events in all of history.

The resurrection of Jesus is not a mere resuscitation of a man destined to later die and decompose, but rather a restoration of life to His dead body and a transformation into a glorified state in which He will never die again - eternal life. He is the first human being to resurrect to eternal life.

It was the resurrection of Jesus that confirmed the significance of His crucifixion. As C.S. Lewis put forth, Jesus was either "a liar, a lunatic, or Lord". Since then, "legend", as in never having existed, has been added to the "possible" choices by the scholars and philosophers who seriously discuss these matters. The assertion that Jesus never really existed requires ignoring or "explaining away" quite a bit beyond just the books of the Bible, it also requires a discounting of the non-Christian references to Jesus in Roman, Jewish, and Gnostic writings, and an alternate explanation for the emergence of a sect of Judaism into the Christian church.

Over the years, people have tried to explain away the resurrection, attacking it as impossible (as if they have ultimate knowledge that God can't ever have performed miracles), a hoax, or a legend.

Hoax theories have included such claims as "Jesus didn't really die on the cross, he merely passed out", "the disciples stole his body", and even "Jesus had an identical twin" to explain away the basic documented facts of the death of Jesus on the cross, the empty tomb in which He had been buried, the appearances of Jesus alive after the crucifixion, and the rise of early Christianity among a group of Jews.

But for it to be a hoax, it would have been a hoax perpetrated by a powerless group of ordinary people who then maintained the secret of the hoax in the face of hardship, persecution, and death. We've witnessed the willingness of people to die for what they believe to be true, but would a group of people be willing to die for what they knew to be lie, when they could save their skins by recanting? Plus, why didn't the non-Christian Jewish authorities ever record that Jesus had a twin? As for the "legend" theory of the resurrection, it requires an elaborate alternative explanation for how a group of ordinary Jewish people started Christianity in the first place and why they would do it in the face of opposition from the Jewish and Roman authorities.

I'm convinced that both events – the crucifixion and the resurrection - happened, and that changes everything. Jesus' resurrection proves Him to be Lord. It means that Jesus is Messiah, Christianity is true, Jesus is God, and Jesus is Savior, and all of us who follow Him have been forgiven of our sins and will fellowship with God, having eternal life.

Nothing could be more significant.

Have you accepted Him as your Lord and Savior? Have you cast your sins and burdens at His feet and bowed down before Him? It's the best decision you could ever make.

More on this can be found here:

http://www.christiananswers.net/dictionary/resurrectionofchrist.html

Checking in on Quantum Leap

Last year, before the series started (or, resumed), I wrote about what we might see and not see in this revival of Quantum Leap. 

Was I right? And what are my other thoughts and observations?

It was smart of them to make this a continuation instead of a remake. This instantly hooks those of us who were fans of the original series and are willing to give a revival a chance.

So far, this series seems less "playful" than the original, although I could just be missing a lot of easter eggs. For example, in one episode, when the lead character organizes a makeshift Rube Goldberg operation, he gives a nod to The A-Team.

Like the original, it makes use of the Universal Studios backlot and various episodes seem inspired by hit movies from other the years. For example, one episode was reminiscent of "The Bodyguard."

A significant difference this time around, which, given what's happened to television and sci-fi isn't a surprise, is that much more of it is set in the present day, at Project Quantum Leap headquarters and mostly nearby, with ongoing storylines involving the characters who work there. As such, episodes typically bounce back and forth between where and when the Leaper (Dr. Ben Song) is, and PQL HQ (and where the members of the team go). In the original series, Sam was pressured to leap because of official government actions. This time, Ben apparently went rogue even against the staff of PQL, including his own fiancee. So while the original consisted of mostly self-contained episodes, this is more of a primetime soap opera. So far, it's working.

So far, 12 episodes in, elements from my previous post I've noticed are:

• Promotion of Leftist ideology regarding gender (transgender, genderfluid, non-binary, etc.)
• Greedy landlords and business owners/executives
• "Dreamers" and "undocumented immigrants" with hearts of gold and contributions to the USA

I'm not sure they well full-speed on the last one. The character might be a legal immigrant, but he joined the military for citizenship purposes, and was portrayed as having a clean record.

One of the actors is out as nonbinary, and their character is, too. Amazingly, there was great restraint in not mentioning it until several episodes in. Anyone who can see and hear knows from the start "something is up" with the character. I looked up the actor. But don't worry! They made up for their restraint in Episode 12!

Episode 1 touches on healthcare costs.

Episode 3 depicts PTSD from Vietnam.

Episode 5 depicts an old west town in the Nineteenth Century with "diverse" residents, fighting off the greedy railroad. I'll give you one guess at the gender and skin color of the main villain.

Episode 8 depicts am abusive boarding academy for troubled teens in 1996. Of course one of the several who have been abused and are running away is pretty much just there at the academy because she's a lesbian.

Episode 10 kind of does a bit of "The Fugitive" thing with Big Pharma.

Episode 11 features a military cover-up involving nuclear technology in the 1960s.

Episode 12 gets us a double dose! Ben leaps into a high school basketball coach in 2012 who has a son who thinks he's a girl, and wants to play basketball. Of course it has to be that way, because nobody gives a damn if a girl who thinks she's a boy wants to play on a boys basketball team. And in the present, team members visit a transgender poet. The Leftist narrative on transgenderism wasn't pushed in the original series. I guess the people who made that series must have been a bunch of bigots? Or is it that the current push didn't start until about midway through 2015. Hmmm... I WONDER what happened then?!? (A disclaimer: This is the one episode I haven't seen yet as of this writing. I'm relying on an episode description. But yeah, do I really have to watch it to know it unquestioningly accepts the Left's narrative on transgenderism? How about leaping into someone, who in the original timeline, underwent "treatments" and later detransitioned, so that they don't make the mistakes of getting "treatments" in the first place? Or even better, their parent??? Detransitioners do exist, like or not. Denying that they exist and their understanding of themselves is valid means you want to kill them, or so I've been told.)

This may be when I cease watching and simply read recaps. Leap the shark?

State of the Union

It's that time of the year again.

I sure with a President would stand up and say...

Locking down entire states profoundly hurt people, and we are going to be dealing with negative results of lockdowns for a long time. It should never happen again. The People should never let it happen again.

We are public servants. We are the employees of The People. Our powers are delegated to us by The People.

We must stick to the powers enumerated in the Constitution.

We are a Union of States.

Some powers should not be exercised at the federal level, but rather the state level.

However, none of us here in the federal government, nobody in your state government, nobody in your county or city government are your parents. We aren't your sibling. We aren't your boss. We are your employees. We are public servants.

It is up to you, and the connections you make with family, friends, neighbors, in voluntary organizations, to make your life the way you want it.

If you want this country to be strong, you'll make yourself as healthy and strong as you can. You'll make strong connections with others, you'll treat people right. You'll learn how to defend yourself and the innocent. You'll earn your money, invest it wisely, engage in prudent charity, and hold your public servants accountable. 

Everything anyone has is a result of someone putting in the work, and likely some trading, and perhaps some gifting and charity. It doesn't magically come from government or some big business. It takes work.

Government should take away as little of what someone earned as possible.

If someone has told you something different from any of these, they're trying to sell you lies.

It will never happen.