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Archive for January, 2019

nicholas maduro

Nicholas Maduro, who at least for today is President of Venezuela.

“…Large protests all across Venezuela today against Maduro. The fight for freedom has begun!”

    – Donald J. Trump

“To end the Maduro regime with the minimum of bloodshed, we need the support of pro-democratic governments, institutions and individuals the world over.”

    – New York Times Editorial, January 30, 2019

Much is made of the current acrimony in American politics. Trump supporters can’t stand Nancy Pelosi, and the SJW’s in the orbit of the Democratic party detest the very mention of Trump’s name.

What is more, the longest government shutdown in American history just ended with a temporary cease fire between the White House and Congressional Democrats over funding for the border wall.

America is a house divided, so we’re told. Quite obviously, the cold American civil war some have written about is ready to explode into a real civil war. Right?

Well, not so fast. It seems there’s more unity, at least among the American establishment, than one would gather from watching the evening news.

Want proof? Just consider the two quotes above, one from a recent Tweet by President Trump, the other from today’s New York Times editorial page.

Some may find the agreement between Trump and the Times surprising. After all, the Donald and the Times have pretty much been locked in a state of verbal warfare ever since the New York billionaire declared his candidacy in the summer of 2015. Trump is the Yin to the Times’ Yang, how is it possible for them to agree on anything?

And yet, they do.

In this case, they both believe in America’s exceptional right to decide who the leader of a foreign country will be.

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american gothic

 

“In a short while, I will sign a bill to open our government for three weeks.”

– President Donald J. Trump

 

Today’s post is the third and final installment of this series titled The Wall, The Donald and the Democrats, the purpose of which has been to analyze the debate over the border wall.

This post was written last weekend, before President Trump’s decision to temporarily end the government shut down without first securing funding the border wall.

This is a deeply disappointing development from the perspective of those, this author included, who had hoped, for once!, that the Republicans would stand up to the Democrats and actually do something about border security.

Perhaps the wall still will be built, but I’m less optimistic today than I was before Trump’s announcement on Friday 1/25 when he indicated that he was bringing the government shut down to a temporary end.

But even if the wall is built, Trump’s decision to fold on the shut down raises an important question. Namely, even if the wall gets built, will the political price be so high as to strip it of all benefit to the American people?

The word is that Jared Kushner is floating the idea of giving green cards to the DACA recipients. Who knows, Kushner may even offer them citizenship. If either of these two options occurs, then we’re right back to the same situation where we’ve been in the past: The Democrats get the immediate benefit of new Democratic voters via immigration amnesty while Republicans get promises – promises which somehow never seem to materialize – of future border security.

In other words, once again Lucy will have tricked Charlie Brown by pulling the football away.

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american gothic

“President Trump, I have news for you: your wall won’t work.”

    – Gavin Newsom, Governor of California

“We believe CNN declined a report from KUSI because we informed them that most Border Patrol Agents we have spoken to told us the barrier does in fact work.”

    – San Diego TV station KUSI

Last week we started our look at Donald Trump’s proposed wall along the US-Mexico border and addressed a couple of objections to it. This week’s post will further examine the arguments for and against the idea.

Do Walls Actually Work?

On Sunday, November 25, 2018, Fox News reported that “Hundreds of migrants try rushing toward California port of entry, as Trump threatens to close entire border.” The article went on to quote Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen saying that some of the migrants “attempted to breadh legacy fence infrastructure along the border and sought to harm CBP (Customs and Border Protection) personnel by throwing projectiles at them.”

Here’s some footage of the event:

In pretty dramatic fashion, the “legacy fence infrastructure” along the border between San Ysidro, CA and Tijuana put a stop to the migrant border rush.

Contrary to the naysayers, walls do work.

This wasn’t the only time the migrants – the same people whose virtues the MSM can’t lecture Americans enough about – attempted to force their way into the US.

On January 2, 2019, Breitbart ran a headline that read “Border Patrol: ‘Violent Mob’ Attacked Agents, Attempted to Push Minors Over Barbed-Wire.” According to Breitbart, “The migrants gathered at the San Diego sector of the United States border with Mexico on New Year’s Eve tried to force their way over the barrier. When turned back by Customs and Border Patrol agents, some in the group started throwing rocks and attempted to push children over the barbed wire atop the barrier.”

Lovely. Just the sort of folks we all want as neighbors.

But the big takeaway, apart from exposing the criminal mob mentality of many of the so-called migrants – invaders is a better term – is that one again, the walls held.

I think I’m starting to see a pattern.

Could it be that Gavin Newsom’s real fear is not that Trump’s wall wouldn’t work, but that it would, and all too well?

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prayer

It’s how in the course of looking for one thing you find something else.

In my case, I was doing a little research tonight on the Democratic Socialists of America. Maybe you’ve hear of them, you know, the hipster lefty organization that boasts rock star socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) as a member?

At any rate, while looking for something on AOC, I found instead this piece titled “Prayer is Not a Weapon” by Colleen Shaddox, whose author bio-describes her as “a Roman Catholic writer and activist who concentrates on poverty, immigration and mass criminalization.” She has some journalistic clout too, for the bio goes on to say that her work’s appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, among other publications.

From her article, it appears that Shaddox was triggered by Vice President Mike Pence’s call to prayer at the start of a recent meeting with Congressional leaders. His insistence on prayer, says Shaddox, “is offensive for myriad reasons.” One such reason, Shaddox mistakenly notes, is that government’s founding document, by which she means the Constitution, “forbids the mingling of church and state.” Of course, the Constitution does no such thing, rather, the First Amendment merely prevents the federal government from establishing a state church funded by taxpayer dollars such as the Church of England in the UK.

Shaddox continues her diatribe, calling Pence’s instance on prayer “an obscenity.” This is remarkable, considering the New York Times article to which Shaddox links explains that the prayer given at the Vice President’s request was delivered by Mitch McConnell’s chief of staff, who “asked God ‘to bring us together’ when negotiators met” to resolve the ongoing government shutdown. O, the horror of it all! And here I thought all along that liberals were all about being uniters not dividers.

At any rate, back to the idea that prayer is not a weapon. This seems a bit strange to me. After all, the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians that “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God.” In Ephesians, he was more pointed as to just what those weapons were and closes out his exhortation to the Christian soldier with a call to prayer. Further, the imprecatory Psalms of the Old Testament call God to take vengeance on the psalmists’ and on God’s enemies.

If Shaddox can’t handle Pence’s prayer for unity, what would she do with David’s words, “Pronounce them guilty, O God! Let them fall by their own counsels; cast them out in the multitude of their transgressions, for they have rebelled against you”? Such weaponized prayer surely would cause her an epic meltdown.

If Colleen Shaddox actually believed the Bible, which she doesn’t, she’d know very well that prayer is indeed an indispensable weapon for any Christian seeking to fight the good fight of faith, including Christians whose job it is to run the government.

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american gothic

Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi as American Gothic, a parody of their rebuttal of Donald Trump’s Oval Office address on January 8, 2019.

“A wall is an immorality. It’s not who we are as a nation.”

– Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi

“He [Donald Trump] has made clear he will hold parts of the government hostage for a petty campaign pledge — that’s all it is.”

– Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer

Another post on immigration. Can you believe it?

Contrary to what it may seem it’s really not my intention to turn Lux Lucet into a full time immigration blog. There are other things going on in the world that deserve attention, a fact of which I am fully aware. And yet I find myself time and again drawn to write about this topic. So just why is that? Why would I focus on immigration as opposed to some other, worthwhile topic such as foreign policy, a refutation of feminism or the ongoing economic problems of the United States,

In the first place there’s the matter of immigration’s intersectionality. Yes, I’m stealing a term from the feminists here. But in spite of the its rotten origin, it’s not a bad way to describe a topic that brings together so many different issues. The topic of immigration, migration and refugee resettlement is exceedingly broad. Depending on the focus, economics may be at the forefront. At another time, politics. Then there’s geopolitics or international relations. Then a matter of supreme importance, the longstanding conflict between Protestantism and Romanism, of which conflict between the Protestant Westphalian World Order and the Romanist New World Order is but one aspect.

In the second place, immigration is a topic crying out for sound, Biblical commentary. Very little has been written in recent years by Protestants on immigration. And what little has been written is, in general, of very low quality. For the most part, instead of actually looking at what the Bible says about immigration, Protestants have been content to let Roman Catholic scholars do their thinking for them. As a result, most “Evangelical” commentary on immigration sounds as if it could have been written by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). This disgraceful situation must needs be rectified. My writings on immigration are my own small contribution to this end.

Third, immigration has been weaponized by the globalists, and poses a serious threat to the continued existence of the independent nation states of the world, first and foremost, the ancient nations of the West. Mass, taxpayer subsidized immigration, migration and refugee resettlement is the globalists’ sledgehammer which they intend to use to break the historic nations of the West and to roll the shattered remnants into their hoped for, world spanning superstate. God approves of nations, for he formed them with his own hand. As Paul said in his Mars Hill sermon, “He [God] has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on tall the face of the earth.” And why did God do this? Paul does not leave us in the dark. He said, “so that they [the nations of men] should seek the Lord.” But the globalists? They want to drag us all back to wicked Babel.

The fourth reason I’d give you for spending so much time on immigration is that, quite simply, I find the topic endlessly fascinating. Why that is, I can’t tell you other than to say that immigration commentary is a work to which God has called me. I had a conversation with a Clarkian friend last week, who reminded me of the important point that it is Christ himself who is our only teacher. That was the central point of Augustine’s treatise De Magistro,
On the Teacher. What we learn, ultimately, isn’t up to us. It’s up to Christ who teaches each man what he wants him to know. My interest in, and knowledge of, the immigration issue is, in the final analysis, what Christ has taught me from his Word.

One word of caution is warranted here. Lest anyone suppose that I’m boasting when I say Christ has taught me, I make no claims for myself that are not true of everyone else. Whatever any of us knows, he knows because Christ has taught him. As John notes in the first chapter of his Gospel, “Christ is the light who lightens every man coming into the world.” If you know something, if you have a gift or a talent for something and take delight in it – whether than gift is academic, athletic, artistic, skill in some trade, etc. – it is Christ who gave that to you.

So there you have it, the reasons why I write so much on immigration.

Now I told you all that, just so I could have a good excuse to tell you my thoughts on the Wall, the Donald and the Democrats. So let’s have at it.

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2019 year in review

Better late than never, or so goes the old saying. I’d hoped to get this 2018 wrap up posted last week but, as usual, my ambition was greater than my reach. But late or not, it still seems good to me to take a little time and reflect on the year in blogging that was as well as to look ahead to 2019.

As always, I’d like to give a big thank you to my readers and commenters. It has been my prayer that you’ve found the work on this blog edifying in your Christian walk. We live in an age where it seems that almost everything is fake. But the words of Jesus Christ and the words of all Scripture are as real and true today as when they first were written down so long ago. It has been my endeavor to apply those words to the events of our own time, not only to help readers see the world through the lens of Scripture, but also to encourage.

Sometimes it can seem as if our problems are such that no one in any previous age ever saw their like. And yet as the Apostle Paul wrote, “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man.” Yes, it’s true that we face a world of problems, but God has not left us in darkness without hope in the world.

If there is one idea that I hope to impart to readers of this blog, it’s this: No matter how great the struggles we face in our personal lives, no matter how great the crises we face as a nation, the Word of God makes us complete and thoroughly equipped to address them. As Gordon Clark and John Robbins rightly taught, the 66 books of the Bible have a systematic monopoly on truth. Further, it is the ignorance, perhaps even knowing rejection, of this simple idea that had led the formerly Christian West to the brink of disaster.

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