Dying of Thirst Next to a River

Kentucky -- Recently when in Tennessee, I was speaking with a 17 year old young man of normal mental capacity who has a job and has had average public schooling opportunities with what he called “average” grades. I mentioned the American Revolution. Quite seriously, he said he believed he may have heard of that war before. “That was something that happened like 100 years ago or something right? Yeah, I hate history.” I guess he does.

In old Indian cultures, one way that a captive would be put to death by torture was to tie him up and leave him at the edge of a lake. They would leave him tied up, and let him die of thirst.

In America, we have at our finger tips more information than we can handle. In our libraries, in our museums, and of course on the internet. One can find out almost anything about anything simply by looking it up. I understand that the method of making an atom-bomb is public knowledge for anyone who wants it.

However, we know almost nothing. We are dying of ignorance on the banks of a vast sea of knowledge, and our hands are not even tied.

On a popular television show the host asked the guest a question about a country in Europe, the reply: “I thought Europe was a country.”

There is a lot of dullness going around. One does not have to be brilliant to figure out that even basic ingenuity is not as highly advanced and appreciated as once it was.

We have stopped thinking and reasoning. We do not sit down with the evening news and logically think out what is true and what is false, we rarely even question it. We are intellectually lazy. We want to be spoon fed our information, if we do not get all of the facts about it from the documentary and then the Wikipedia articles then we forget about it. We forget what we did learn too.

It is a dangerous habit. It is impossible to wage a war without having a clue about what is going on around you. What you don’t know can kill you.

Andrew C. Abbott

The Homecoming of Howard Phillips

A great man is dead.

Howard J. Phillips died on April 20^th, yesterday his mortal remains were laid to rest.

Three time presidential candidate, founder of the Conservative Caucus, leader of the moral majority, founder of the United Tax Payers alliance and Constitution Party, Howard Phillips was not only one of the most courageous men of his generation, but also one of the few who stood for right no matter what it cost them. As appointee under President Nixon, he sought to shut down the Department of Economic Opportunity, and worked tirelessly against oppression from the government.

Just as no statue can fully embody its model, so no tribute can fully embody a great man. Howard Phillips has passed out of this world into a better one, while we grieve, we also remember and are inspired. May God make us such men of principle, may we not waver, may we not falter.

Through His Strength We Will Conquer,

Andrew C. Abbott

Class Warfare

The idea of class warfare, a term that to some means horror and to some means utopia, comes from the Communist Manifesto.

“The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.” (Communist Manifesto 1848 part two.)

The Manifesto states that there must be war between the haves and the have-nots, battles in the streets, riots, and burning down of buildings. The idea is that those who are successful must either redistribute their wealth to those who are not, or must pay the consequences for it in social revolutions.

The idea of redistribution of wealth and even of land is as old and perhaps even older than the Greek Republic, when in the 500s B.C. the reformer Solon was asked to redistribute the wealth of the rich to those less fortunate.

In modern America, Columnist Richard Reeves said yesterday “…there is indeed raging class war in the United States.”

The class warfare mentality states that those who have nothing should take it from those who do, as seen in the poem Gods of the Copybook Headings by Rudyard Kipling.

…they promised abundance for all/By robbing selective Peter/To give to collective Paul.

While there are those who genuinely acquire wealth through unlawful and unjust means, and thus should be punished, many rich men, corporations or families became wealthy through hard work and wise investment. It has been seen that even giving everyone a fresh start does not work.

Solon was not the first Greek reformer, less than 40 years before, another one, Draco, had tried reformation and things were still bad when Solon came on the scene. In fact, over the next 90 years there would be two more major reformations of Athens. However, all four of them stopped short of redistributing land, as they realized that success was not the issue, greed was.

The United States has been a land of equal opportunity, not equal outcome. We do not guarantee that you will be successful, you may start the next Wal-Mart or Google, or you may lose your shirt in the next dot-com collapse. This should not inspire bitterness at the consumers or at those who did succeed. We should understand that capitalism allows the best to survive in the market, there are still opportunities to be employees for those that fail as employers. One of the four market place freedoms¹ is the freedom to fail, and many make full use of it.

Andrew C. Abbott

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1: These four freedoms are: Freedom to buy, freedom to sell, freedom to try, freedom to fail.

Let’s Not Deport Freedom

In 2008 the Romeike family fled to America from Germany because of laws making it impossible to homeschool there. The USA Today website reported: “Homeschooling is so important to Uwe Romeike that the classically trained pianist sold his beloved grand pianos to pay for moving his wife and five children from Germany to the Smoky Mountain foothills of Tennessee.”

School attendance is compulsory in Germany.

“When the Romeikes wouldn't comply with repeated orders to send the children to school, police came to their home one October morning in 2006 and took the children, crying and upset, to school” the article went on to state.

The family was granted asylum in the U.S. in 2010, but appeals were made which they lost. In the court hearing yesterday, in which they were defended by Michal Ferris, the judge stated that the reason the government of Germany has made school attendance compulsory is to teach tolerance. Farris countered, "If that's tolerance, it's a tolerance unknown to a free society" the Christian Examiner reported.

The attempt is currently being made to have the family deported, although the decision may take several weeks to hand down after yesterday’s hearing.

In the United States, that a judge would even consider deporting this family shows how far we have fallen, even while upholding a fair stander of “Tolerance.” I wrote my article on tolerance yesterday before reading reports of the hearing, if I had read the reports first, it would have been about twice as long.

The current administration is attempting to reform immigration, while millions are here illegally. On trial is not whether any particular law should be upheld but rather whether or not homeschooling, Christianity and freedom will be tolerated by those pushing for “Progress” and “Political Correctness.”

This is a blatant attack on Christianity, as the government moves closer towards a police state, where they not only teach the children and take care of the old, but all those not willing to follow the system are marginalized and punished.

If the case is lost it will not only be a blow to freedom and Christianity, but also to the Constitution and America itself. The rights of life, liberty, and property are not as defined by the government but as defined by God. The word “Liberty” includes liberty to be educated at home, without an all-powerful agency being certain that your child has factored enough trinomials today.

Through His Strength We Will Conquer,

Andrew C. Abbott

“Please, Let’s be Tolerant Everyone”

Tennessee--“We began as a nation of religious tolerance and ended as a nation that cannot tolerate religion.”

There has been a long war on God in this nation. For about a hundred years or so, and even sometime before that, there has had been a concentrated effort to remove God from the public eye. He is offensive to those who do not want to obey Him.

In school, praying is not allowed in the classroom, and Bibles are a part of free speech not permissible to anyone in school. There have been successful court cases to remove public monuments which uphold a higher stander of morality. One example would be the case about a decade ago in which judge Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court was removed from his position as chief justice after refusing to take down a display of the Ten Commandments from public display at the court house.

In America, if you want to shout profanity at the top of your lungs in a public square, or put half naked bodies on display there is little or nothing anyone is going to do about it. Put a display of the Ten Commandments up, and that violates other people’s freedom from offense.

They will use the First Amendment, which says that there may be no state authorized religion (they except Atheism of course) to protect their right to take away yours.

You may say almost anything except something that means anything. The Supreme Court has ruled that shouting “Fire” in a crowded theatre is impermissible to the public safety. Perhaps proclaiming truth is a fallen world falls under this category.

In any event, we have come to be tolerant of almost everything except liberty. There is toleration for all tolerant religions. There is no toleration for those who are intolerant. “We are intolerant of intolerants.”

In the list of constitutional liberties which we have, there is no freedom from offense, that someone would say such a thing is highly offensive.

Andrew C. Abbott

Infotainment: Bad News

On August 11^th, 2004, a massive breakthrough in medical science occurred. The British began delving into cloning human stem cells at Newcastle University. The CBS Evening News intended to carry such a gigantic story. Then they changed their minds.

They replaced it with a one minute fifty-two second story about one of their own newsmen. He had been eating a meatloaf when someone had tried to tow his car. He fixed the problem, although he would have to appear in court. The viewers were assured however that the meatloaf tasted fine after being warmed in the microwave. The important story was dropped. Of the others: ABC told it in 19 words, and the last of the big three, NBC, dropped it altogether. America never heard about it, at least not from their major "news" outlets.

America is under informed, and thinks they are highly informed. They hear disconnected stories on Asia, China, and America, but are not told and have no idea how all of these things fit together. Much of the news is for entertainment-infotainment. We feel like we are learning about our world, yet in the end we know very little. Since it is all for entertainment, the anchors or executives would rather tell us what the rock star’s dress looked like than about a civil war in some far off country we have never heard of.

Tom Bettag, news head; stated: “When they say it isn’t about the money, it’s about the money.”

Much of the time it is much cheaper and simpler to package news than to go and get it. The stories become nothing other than other people’s reports stamped with a media slogan. That is why the articles say at the end of them “The Associated Press contributed to this article.”

Much of ours news, or what we think is news, is sensationalism. The nightly news, according to Tom Fenton, former news face for CBS states, in his book Bad News: The Decline of reporting, the Business of news, and the Danger to us all, consists of nineteen minutes of news, and the rest of it is commercials, tabloidism, and headlines to keep you watching.

But, Walter Cronkite says, the media wants to earn money. Not a bad thing, but if they do it honestly. But the people stand for what they get, so they get more of it. Two days ago, while speaking with a friend, we got on the subject of big business. I stated that “big business, and big government, is only as big as we let it get. If we stop buying, the business collapses, if we stop voting for them, the current government changes. It is all up to us.”

I should have added the news media to that list. If we demand better news, we will get it. The people let it be known that they liked Justin Beiber, so now we know when he spits on his neighbor or writes in a guestbook at a museum. If the public let it be known they wanted real news, that they truly wanted to know words events and how it effects them, we would get it.

In the days after the 9/11 attacks we found out that some had known for years of threats, but had never reported them to the general terrorist attacks, but it would bore us. What we don’t know can’t hurt us. Actually, what we don’t know can kill us.

Mr. Fenton ends his book by stating: “America, demand more and better news from those responsible for providing it. It might save all of our lives.”

Andrew C. Abbott

The American Journey: Does it all still work?

On the same day that we as Americans found out about the recent Bombings in Boston I bought a book by Columnist Richard Reeves, entitled American Journey. The book, white with black letters on the front, was written in 1982, it was a question to all of us: "Does America Still Work?"

After all, unemployment is up, crime is rampant, corruption in government seems to be a norm, and the media keeps lying to us. Taxes are too high and the government cannot sustain itself forever on the current system.

Although Reeves had written 31 years ago, I found that everything he addressed as being problems in his time were problems in ours. That caused bigger questions to form. Since this was not an isolated incident,-America having problems-and the same problems then seemed to still be problems, did America really work at all? Reeves said, many of his problems, some of course excluded, were already problems in the 1830s when Alexis de Tocqueville wrote a somewhat similar book with a similar question.

After reading Reeves work, I took a trip to the capitol of Tennessee, at Nashville.

While there I saw many, many things. At the news stand was USA Today, with a front line news story speaking of the government's manhunt of the suspects in the bombings. There was no hiding of motives, everything was open. The law enforcement officers were not bursting into houses without warrants, and the man would still be innocent until proven guilty.

As we drove, I read a book by a talking media head criticizing the government, calling them all sorts of unpleasant names, at times calling the government almost a grand cover up, and at others reminding us how great it was. If that man had tried to write such a book in some countries, say North Korea, he may have never gotten the book to print, and if he did he would not have lasted very long once he got it published.

I turned on an iPhone, here we had an app detailing every shift of the stock market. No one could hide which companies were doing good and which ones were not. If someone did try to hide, we would all call "foul" and have him locked up.

The sheer mass of information we are allowed is amazing. On a sidebar of my computer I have a counter monitoring seven top world currencies against the dollar. If I want to, I can watch how every little move of the government directly affects me, and if I do not like how it does so, and enough people agree with me, out goes that government.

On shops along the street in downtown there were people buying and selling. No police officers were stopping people to ask if they had bought any banned books. There were officers around, but none of them were asking why I was walking around with a notebook.

People were eating without ration cards, there were no bombs falling from the sky. I could walk down main street unarmed and not fear armed robbery. The food and water would not get me sick, and I could have as much as I had resources for. Food, religion, speech, information, all was there for all to have.

While there I asked author and army veteran J. Charles Buck a couple of questions as we stood across the street from the capitol, near a gigantic courtyard where people were sitting around a pool, listening to music, eating, and sleeping.
First, I asked him the question that troubled me most.

Q: What is the American Dream?
A: I am 58 years old. There is one thing I have learned about America. I have done the two things I wanted most in my life. I have raised my family and I have provided for them. The American Dream is that you can do anything you want, if you are willing to work for it.

Then I asked him the one question on which all the rhetoric stands or falls.

Q: Sir, I need to know, the American Dream, the Constitution, does it all work?
A: When I was in the military, I traveled all around the world. I have seen lots of different places. And when I come back this is what I know. America is the greatest nation on earth....If you have a military unit, everyone has their own job. This person does this and this person does that. If everyone does their job, everything works well. That is America. People don't always do their job though, and that's when you have problems. That's when you vote em' out. America works. I have traveled all around the world, if it does not work here, there is nowhere else is it working."

As I was leaving, I stood in a large courtyard near a gigantic statue with a warrior, who, I believe, was supposed to represent Liberty. Someone there said "This is a grand country isn't it?"

I had to agree with them. The very best.

Not everyone always does what they are supposed to do, then we vote them out. At times there are bumps in the road, but that is all a part of the American Journey.

Through His Strength We Will Conquer,
Andrew C. Abbott

Progress

"…there reigns in America a popular and universal belief in the progress of the human spirit.”-Joel Poinsett, former U.S. Secretary of State.

Wednesday, after an attempt to impose stricter gun control laws failed 54-46, the president stated that the voting down of the bill yesterday stood in the way of progress.

After hearing that word, it reminded me of other times throughout history the word has been used. The word marches through our history like a family ghost, always there, always at our elbow, edging us ever onward.

It seems that in modern America, progress is the byword. The “march of progress” must not be stopped for any reason. The New Deal? Progress. The New Society? Progress. The atomic bomb? Progress.

The word progress does not seem very well defined. The Space Program and the Civil Rights act were both labeled progress, yet I fail to see how they are alike.

For many, it seems, progress means progressing forward with the American dream, the ideals that America was built on.

If those ideals are not known then progress cannot be defined. I doubt the founding fathers would have called the recent gun bill “progress” they would have called lost ground-lost ground after everything they had fought for.

Real progress is building a better and freer market economy, building a better and freer society built on the ideas of the constitution. Real progress is marching forward in the right direction, not turning around and marching in the wrong one and saying “we are moving forward.” The American Dream should not progress into the American Nightmare.

If we want to progress, we need to look the right way first, and then we can really have some progress.

Andrew C. Abbott

Lexington and Concord Anniversary

238 years ago this morning General Gage sent out the first patrols from Boston, preparing for an advance to find stores of powder hidden away by the dangerous rebels.

Although he attempted secrecy, the alarm was given by the highly active American spy network and taken to Dr. Joseph Warren, who alerted Paul Revere and another man named William Dawes. Soon, the famous “midnight ride” began, as the two men rode away from Boston to alert the countryside of the advance of the British.

The British advanced with over 600 men.

Revere was captured by a patrol, but let go after shots were fired somewhere nearby, and the regulars were told by their prisoners they were “all dead men,” they let them go and retreated. The night wore old and the 19^th of April, the day on which the American Revolution was destined to begin, had begun.

The British advanced into Lexington, where they were met by 80 or so men of the local militia. There was a standoff, and then there was the “shot heard round the world.” The Americans fell back after losing several men, and the British advanced.

After marching forward through the town of Lexington, the British arrived in Concord and began to look for the ammunition. The militia, which was still gathering, watched them from a distance.

Then the minutemen advanced.

The defenders of the North Bridge attempted to pull of the planks, but stopped and then ran. Shots were fired by the regulars, the militia men returned it. The British retreated.

Minutemen and militia continued to swarm in, and soon well over a 1,000 had arrived.

The British force falling back towards Boston was exhausted when they were met by Lord Percy with a rescue mission. The combined force of 1,700 men arrived late in Boston that night, exhausted, bleeding, and having lost men.

The unshakable British Empire has lost to its own colonists, and the revolution had begun.

This is a good day to remember not only the actions of the founding father's, but also their beliefs. In the wake of horrific catastrophe, the same God that gave them the victory then can give us the victory now.

 Andrew C. Abbott

The Boston Bombings

When we as Americans turned on the news on Monday, we did not expect to find that over 170 people had been hurt and 3 killed in what the President has labeled an "act of terrorism."
The marathon is a statement on human greatness, and Monday we got a statement on human weakness.
We weep and pray for the families that lost their loved ones, but we cannot feel their pain as they feel it, and there is no one who can.
This is not a time for Christians to hold signs at funerals thanking God for death and destruction. Those that think enforcing those realities on the relatives of the victims is so important would spend the time better in personal prayer and repentance.
While we cannot assume to know the mind of God, we do know that America, as a nation that is one of the greatest in world history is slowly falling. Judgement always follows sin. (Romans 1:18)
Again, all true Americans are outraged and saddened by this horrific attack and loss of human life. Such things as these bombings are not statements, they are wastes.

Andrew C. Abbott

Propaganda

“Men’s opinions become alike as the conditions of their lives become alike…though any one of them could part company with the rest and work out his own beliefs, in the end they all concur, unconsciously and unintentionally in a certain number of common opinions...”-Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America.¹

Most of my readers will be familiar with the question posed by the Greek philosopher thousands of years ago: “Does a fish know that he is wet?”

And most will be as familiar with the answer: no, when you are immersed in something, you know nothing else.

The history of the rise and fall of revolutions, the rise and fall of ideas, has been that the one who shouts the loudest almost always wins. Many times no matter how much better “the right’s” ideas our, we still lose the fight. The most reasonable arguments, the most persuasive speeches, can only make an impact if they are heard over and over again.

The ancient Romans were master imperialists and propagandists. They knew how to make their empire the centerpiece of everything. Every public building, the baths, the coliseums, the palaces, the parks, they all proclaimed the glory of the Roman Empire.

Even the roads were to proclaim the glory of the empire. The roads that all led to Rome were all as straight as possible. If your house was in the way, it got knocked down. The statement was that empire was eternal, victorious, and unshakable, no one would stand in its way, or that someone would very soon be gone.

They built massive architectural marvels, such as the pantheon, and had massive parades with thousands of men for one purpose only, to show themselves and everyone else how great they were.

The entire existence of Rome was one of propaganda-on how great they were.

There are two main forms of propaganda. One type is the one that the Communists used. Leaflets, magazines, public meetings, books, manifestos, all telling you just how great Communism is. (It has also been used for other things, but that is one of the more well-known and easily identifiable.) Those types of propaganda can be argued against. What is difficult to argue against is the ones that shout without necessarily shouting for the root idea.

That is the immersion of culture that is quickest, and deadliest. It takes a thousand forms, billboards, commercials, school teachers, signs, words, radio shows. Culture itself is a form of propaganda, and the most deadly killer of ideas.

We do not necessarily reject the idea that murder is wrong, (and it is) because we have heard a detailed argument as to how wrong it is that we sat down, considered, and then realized our beliefs. We have been immersed in a culture that says that it is wrong, so we too believe that.

The most violent form of propaganda we can use is to use what they have always used against us-Total war on our ideas in a thousand forms.

To eradicate the ideas from a culture, we must first eradicate it from our own minds. That is difficult to do. Next, let your life be propaganda. If you take every thought and every action captive, that is a form of propaganda that will be very hard to fight.

Through His Strength We Will Conquer,

Andrew C. Abbott

Notes:

1: Quoted by Reeves, 1982, pp. 52.

More Gun Control

In the wake of several mass shootings across the U.S., many are calling for sweeping assault gun bans as well as bans on ammunition clips holding more than ten rounds at a time. In Washington D.C. families and friends of the Newtown victims, as well as other pro-gun control activists are on a “name vigil” in which they are going to be reading the names of victims of shootings around the clock until a bill scheduled for debate today is voted on.

The bill, according to Fox News, will require background checks on gun transactions over the Internet or at gun shows to be done only after a background check has been made. Currently there are no weapons bans or high-capacity clip bans in the bill, but those could still be added later as amendments to the bill once it gets into the debate stage.

The bill does not currently include requirements for background checks on private transactions between close family members.

Background checks currently apply only to transactions handled by the country's 55,000 licensed gun dealers.

The bill will need 60 votes to pass the Senate, but it is hard to tell if it has that sort of backing, Pennsylvania Republican Senator Pat Toomey said to CNN, and it will be difficult to tell if it will pass. There are 52 Democrats in the Senate and two Democratic leaning independents.

The bill has the support of at least two Republicans, while there are several Democrats who are wavering on giving their support for it as they are up for reelection soon and are from districts with high pro-gun rights activities and lobbying.

The Star Telegram reported Republican Senator Susan Collins, as saying in a statement that the plan would "strengthen the background check system without in any way infringing on Second Amendment rights.”

“The question is, are we willing to take modest measures to achieve this goal that I think we all share…There is no law that is going to guarantee that a criminal is not going to get his hands on a weapon. But cannot we make a little more difficult?” Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said today in the Senate Debates.

The second amendment states “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

If the gun as a weapon ought to be regulated, then we ought to also ought to regulate knives as well, if the knifing in a Texas college last week is any indication. That the current bill would not have stopped the Newtown shootings is recognized. The right to keep and bear arms is not only the right to shoot ducks and deer, but also as a defense against tyranny, to which armed resistance is the last and most extreme act against an overbearing government.

Andrew C. Abbott

Believe

There are many religions in the world. Ones that see reason as the highest state of all things, and the greatest pinnacle to which we can achieve. There are others, such as various Eastern Religions, which think that logic and reason ought to be stayed as far away from as is humanly possible.

To say that we believe in Christ because the universe had to have had a creator is not necessarily a good argument. Why could Allah not have done it? The fact that there was a designer does not mean he was your designer. Where are we to discover which one of the religions best fits the facts? If we have a problem we would look at the data, and then if we found that one theory was right in every particular we might say that that was a good theory and ought to be followed. If the designer lied one time on one thing then we would have the right to walk away. So we look at the internal and external consistency of the writings, and the fact that the over 40 authors who wrote the cannon of scriptures-that they wrote them over the span of hundreds of years- they are totally consistent with one another although they were written in different languages on different continents in different social settings, and in different time periods. Some books were written by learned men, others by fishermen, yet there are no errors. Those are good reasons to believe in Christianity, however, they are not the reasons we must believe in Christianity. We must believe because we are commanded to believe, and no matter what other evidence is brought that by faulty human interpretations seem to disprove the Scriptures, there are times when we have to believe in spite of what the facts seem to say. We must believe because we are without excuse. (Romans 1:20)

Through His Strength We Will Conquer,
Andrew C. Abbott

The Street Sweeper

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”-Martin Luther King Jr.

If you sweep streets in that way, you will not long remain a street sweeper.

Proverbs 22:29 “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.”

Through His Strength We Will Conquer,
Andrew C. Abbott

700 Pages of Madness: Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20 1889, about 19 years since the last great German War. In his book, Mein Kampf, or My Battle, he speaks of being a little boy who wanted to be a painter, but his father would not let him be. In the end he tried to be an artist, but was unable to pass the exams at the college he applied to. He became a lay about, then a soldier, then he started a political party, then he became the president, then he started a war.

I was once told that the best way to understand the opposition is to watch them. However, since I could not watch Hitler, I decided to read him. 700 Pages of Madness; that was Mein Kampf. Hitler begins by telling people who he is, his story. He speaks of himself as a child, as a cute little boy wanting to paint and not being allowed to.

At Hitler’s time in history, in 1918, Germany had lost World War I, and the country was in massive turmoil. They were falling apart. The parliament was doing nothing, and the government was little more than a joke. But then, Hitler promised something new. The National Socialist Party. They were new, they were interesting. Hitler looked around, and the found an enemy for himself to latch onto.

Charles Darwin prepared Germany for Hitler. In his book On the Origin of Species, Darwin says that there are different levels of people, and then states that only the best must survive. Hitler then states in his book that he has found that master race: the Arians.

All who are not of the good race in this world are chaff.¹

However, there must always be something to attack, without an enemy, there is no reason for a war. Hitler gave his people an enemy. Racked with hate he stated: If the Jews were alone in the world, they would stifle in filth and offal…the Jew is led by nothing but the naked egoism of the individual.²

Hitler may have been a mad man, but if he was or not, he was a brilliant propagandist. I wish I could say he was insane, but I believe he knew what he was doing. He knew how to present, he knew how to convince people to his way of thinking, and he knew how to gain power. The party started with 7 men. Within less than a decade, they were a national party. They began with no money. And they took over Germany and began World War II. Small groups of men can, through planning and persistence, take over a nation. Hitler did it all the wrong way, he was wrong on every single things except one-persistence conquers resistance.

Hitler seemed to forget the Scriptural statement that all men are of one blood. However, what he did was not new, nor has it entirely gone away. Hitler was an idiot and a fool, wicked, wrong, dumb...

That such a man could go so far towards realizing his ambitions, and-above all-could find millions of willing tools and helper: that is a phenomenon the world will ponder for centuries to come.-Konrad Heiden.

 

Through His Strength We Will Conquer,

Andrew C. Abbott

Notes:

1: Mein Kampf: pp. 296

2: ibid: pp. 302

"Just"

Reforming the world for Christ is not standing up in front of thousands and giving them rhetoric. Christianity demands action. Movements, men, books, and speeches, are to spur us to personal action. Reforming everything in sight is great, but the best time to do that is when looking in a mirror.

The Great Commission is a commission to “teach all things” whatsoever Christ has commanded us. Those include why we eat and sleep, the proper view of government, the proper view and place of vehicles, the proper view of warfare, in short, everything that can be imagined. “The scripture is authoritative on everything which it speaks, and the Scripture speaks to everything.”

The Great Commission is a call to teach the gospel of Christ, which reforms the world. Thus, if, in your life, right now, that takes the form of “just” being respectful to your parents, then you are reforming the world. If you are just being kind to you brothers and sisters when they break something of yours or ask for your time, then you are reforming the world. If you are “just” spending your time to glorify God in whatever you are doing, even if it is “just” being a faithful son or daughter, then you are reforming the world.

Through His Strength We Will Conquer,

Andrew C. Abbott

Roe V. Wade: 40 years Part 2

The Supreme Court, in 1973, decided to allow for “termination of pregnancy.”

“(a) For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician.

(b) For the stage subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health.

(c) For the stage subsequent to viability, the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother.”¹

 

That is to say that a state may make abortion against the law in later trimesters., because, to quote the official decision, the wish to protect the life of citizens grows with the fetus. However, to quote: “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.”² If they do not know how life begins, how can they speculate as to abortion? Could it be that they are unwittingly murdering? Their own logic leaves the door open to such a possibility.

Justice Stewart, in his concurrence said “Clearly, therefore, the Court today is correct in holding that the right asserted by Jane Roe is embraced within the personal liberty protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”³

The constitution states that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law. Thus, if the fetus is a person, than to kill it without a trial is to murder it. The above statement makes clear that the court is not sure if the fetus is a person or not. They even attempt at one point in their argument to give us a sort of possibility that it may achieve personhood gradually.

The prevailing opinion is that when the baby is born it is a person, few would also dispute that a person cannot be killed without due process of law, to violate that is to commit murder. If a child was born a week before its due date it would, in all likelihood, be fine. In fact there have been children born at five months and still they have survived. To say that they only achieve personhood at birth is a misnomer, to say they achieve it gradually is to leave logic behind. If not at conception, then when, and if we do not know when, then how can we ever kill it? If they did achieve it gradually then we could at any moment be killing a person, not a pleasant prospect, unless you do not mind committing murder.

Justice Rehnquist, in a dissenting decision, addressed the argument that the woman has a right to privacy, and thus an abortion. “I have difficulty in concluding, as the Court does, that the right of ‘privacy’ is involved in this case. Texas, by the statute here challenged, bars the performance of a medical abortion by a licensed physician on a plaintiff such as Roe. A transaction resulting in an operation such as this is not "private" in the ordinary usage of that word.”⁴

The mother cannot plead privacy to murder a child of five, because that child is a person. Nor can she plead privacy to murder a child five months in the womb, because that is also a person.

Rehnquist replies to the argument that historically abortions were fine by stating: “By the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, (the due process amendment) there were at least 36 laws enacted by state or territorial legislatures limiting abortion. While many States have amended or updated their laws, 21 of the laws on the books in 1868 remain in effect today. Indeed, the Texas statute struck down today was, as the majority notes, first enacted in 1857…”⁵(parentheses added). When the law against depriving persons of life without due process was enacted, the overwhelming idea of the time was that “persons” included the unborn. If it is a person, if you kill it you are a murderer. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal with certain unalienable rights, and that among these rights is life…”⁶

“Even today, when society's views on abortion are changing, the very existence of the debate is evidence that the "right" to an abortion is not so universally accepted as the appellant would have us believe.”⁷

Through His Strength We Will Conquer,

Andrew C. Abbott

Notes:

1: Roe V. Wade 410 U.S. 164

2: 410 U.S. 159

3: 410 U.S. 170

4: 410 U.S. 172

5: 410 U.S. 175-76

6: The Declaration of Independence

7: Roe V. Wade 410 U.S. 174

Roe V. Wade: 40 years Part 1

In 1969, a single woman by the name of Norma L. McCorvey was pregnant with her third child, whom she wanted to terminate in an artificial abortion. In Dallas Texas however, where she was at the time, it was against the law for an abortion to take place except in case of rape and incest.¹ Under the law it was a criminal action. She attempted to plead rape, but there was no police report to substantiate her claim. Miss McCorvey was denied, and filed a law suit. The defendant was Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade.

The case was argued before the Supreme Court on December 13, 1971, and then again on October 11, 1972, on January 22, 1973, the case was decided, with the majority decision of 7 to 2 ruling in favor of “Roe".  The name Roe was taken from her alias Jane Roe.

Justice Blackmun wrote the majority decision, in which he stated aptly:

“We forthwith acknowledge our awareness of the sensitive and emotional nature of the abortion controversy, of the vigorous opposing views, even among physicians, and of the deep and seemingly absolute convictions that the subject inspires. One's philosophy, one's experiences, one's exposure to the raw edges of human existence, one's religious training, one's attitudes toward life and family and their values, and the moral standards one establishes and seeks to observe, are all likely to influence and to color one's thinking and conclusions about abortion.”²

Miss Roe had stated that she had a constitutional right to privacy, thus insuring her the right to “terminate” any unwanted pregnancy.³ Her physician also claimed he had the right to practice medicine under the constitution, and that he had a fundamental right to give abortions.⁴ The district court held that the "fundamental right of single women and married persons to choose whether to have children is protected by the Ninth Amendment, through the Fourteenth Amendment,"⁵

To sum up the argument, they had a right to abort.

The doctor’s complaint was dismissed as being meaningless to the case. The doctor was already in trouble with the law for previous abortion violations.⁶

The majority decision quotes Plato, along with Greek and Roman law, to support the theory that anti-abortion measures were a relatively new phenomena, and not supported by common law.⁷

They quote common law theorists to support their claim, and then turn to British Laws to support the theory that an abortion may take place if the mother’s life is in danger.

The decision quotes a report from a committee of the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association in 1857, stating:

"The third reason of the frightful extent of this crime (abortion) is found in the grave defects of our laws, both common and statute, as regards the independent and actual existence of the child before birth, as a living being. These errors, which are sufficient in most instances to prevent conviction, are based, and only based, upon mistaken and exploded medical dogmas. With strange inconsistency, the law fully acknowledges the foetus in utero and its inherent rights, for civil purposes; while personally and as criminally affected, it fails to recognize it, and to its life as yet denies all protection."⁸ (parentheses mine)

The Committee then offered, and the Association adopted, resolutions protesting "against such unwarrantable destruction of human life," calling upon state legislatures to revise their abortion laws, and requesting the cooperation of state medical societies "in pressing the subject."⁹

The committee than pressed that is was “unlawful and unprofessional for any physician to induce abortion or premature labor without the concurrent opinion of at least one respectable consulting physician, and then always with a view to the safety of the child -- if that be possible,"

The Court than states that the old laws against abortion, to paraphrase them brutally, represent the dark ages, and when they were made there was no safe way to do abortion. However: “Modern medical techniques have altered this situation.” It is now “relatively safe.” They then state that it may even be safer than normal birth.

The Court recognized that nowhere in the constitution is there a right to privacy, however, in a string of cases going back to Union Pacific R. Co. v. Botsford, (1891) this right has been inferred and assumed.¹⁰

“We, therefore, conclude that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified, and must be considered against important state interests in regulation.”¹¹

Thus the court had ruled, essentially, that all people had the right to a decent life, as well as a right to privacy. The stating that this right also included the right to “terminate a pregnancy” intimated that the “fetus” was not a person, just a fetus.

“If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment. The appellant conceded as much on reargument. On the other hand, the appellee conceded that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.

"Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment contains three references to "person." …None indicates, with any assurance, that it has any possible pre-natal application.”¹²

“All this, together with our observation, supra, that, throughout the major portion of the 19th century, prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word "person," as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn.”¹³

 I will reply, quoting from the dissenting opinions, in another article.

 

Through His Strength We Will Conquer,

Andrew C. Abbott

Notes:

1: Arts. 1191-1194 and 1196 of the State's Penal Code

2: 410 U. S. 116

3: 410 U.S. 120

4: 410 U.S. 121

5: quoted: 410 U.S 122

6: 410 U.S. 127

7: 410 U.S. 232

8: 410 U.S. 241

9: 410 U.S. 242

10: 410 U. S. 152

11: 410 US. 154

12: 410 U.S. 157

13: 410 U.S. 158

Undeclared Wars

In American history we have had five declared wars.

The War of Eighteen-Twelve (1812-14)
The Mexican-American War (1846-48)
The Spanish American War (1898)

World War I (1917-18)

World War II (1941-45)

 

Thus America has only been in a state of declared war for a total of 14 years.

Or has it? In the above list there is no mention of the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the Barbary War, the Second Barbary War, the Gulf War, or the Present War. As well as dozens of other “police” actions.

The Constitution gives Congress the sole power To declare War.¹ However, to declare war looks bad on a voting record, if you are the one to vote for young boys to die, no matter how necessary the war, it will still costs you votes.

So the power is given for Police Actions, or some such name. The peaceful nation of the United States has lost, in the Vietnam and the Korean wars alone over 100,000 in a time of “non-war.”²

That is not to mention the other wars above, as well as many, many other foreign “police actions” and deployments. However, these were not wars. Attempt to tell that to hundreds of thousands of grieving relatives. Then tell them what business it was of ours. If in the city of New York there are crimes, the NYPD takes care of it. They do not try to take care of crimes in Baghdad. They were wars, not police action-in the end they were wars on liberty.

Rome, for hundreds of years fought wars against foreign countries for the sake of conquest, to build the empire-to build their power. However, Rome collapsed, Rome fell because it could no longer be sustained. America is stretched, and stretched thin. Monetarily, bailing out other countries, and militarily, with bases in over a hundred countries-including South Korea.

If there is an attack by North Korea, will there be a declaration of war? No. It looks bad on a voting record. Power is too important to lose for some. A reformation will only come when principle is worth more than power.

Through His Strength We Will Conquer,

Andrew C. Abbott

___________________________________________________________________________________

Notes:

1: Article 1 section 8 of the Constitution.

2: Report from: America’s Wars Department of Veteran’s Affairs: America’s Wars, Nov 2011