Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for January, 2020

Birth Tourism Reform: A Win For Immigration Sanity

Posted in Immigration, tagged , , , , on January 26, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Visa

Q. 62. What is the visible church?

A. The visible church is a society made up of all such as in all ages and places of the world do profess the true religion, and of their children.

– Westminster Larger Catechism

Last week it was announced that the U.S. State Department had adopted a new rule governing the issuance of category B nonimmigrant visas.  The rule, which took effect on Friday, Jan. 24, is aimed at reducing birth tourism.  Birth tourism is the practice of expectant mothers traveling to the United States to give birth on U.S. soil for the purpose of acquiring American citizenship for their children.

For those of us who have advocated for reform of America’s disastrous immigration laws in a way that protects the legitimate interest of American citizens, this was a welcomed, if limited, victory.  It is a welcomed victory in that, in the words of the State Department document outlining the ruling, “This rule will help prevent operators in the birth tourism industry from profiting off treating U.S. citizenship as a commodity, sometimes through potentially criminal acts…”  It is a limited victory in that it leaves open the larger, more important question, of birthright citizenship.  Specifically, the question of to whom birthright citizenship properly applies.

In the opinion of this author, birthright citizenship properly applies only to children born to parents, either both, or at least one of them, possessing American citizenship.  The notion that a child can rightfully acquire American citizenship by virtue of being born on American soil, regardless of the citizenship status of the parents, is foreign both to the Bible and, in the view of this author, to the Constitution.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

Lording it Over Them: The World Economic Forum’s Attack on Freedom and Capitalism

Posted in Environmentalism, tagged , , , , , on January 19, 2020| 2 Comments »

Australia Fires

Burnt trees are seen in Mallacoota on January 15, 2020 , Australia. The Princes Highway between Mallacoota and Orbost remains closed to public due to the risk of falling trees following the devastating bushfires that have swept through East Gippsland in recent weeks.
Luis Ascui | Getty Images

“The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those who exercise authority over them are called ‘benefactors.’ “

  • Luke 22:25

In the event you have a life to live and don’t have hours of free time every day to monitor the latest big plans the master-of-the-universe-types have for the rest of us serfs, peasants, and minions, you may be surprised to hear that the great high holy week of globalism has arrived.  It’s Davos time!

What’s that you say?  You’ve never heard of Davos? Well, you just don’t know what you’re missing.  Davos is a town in Switzerland that once a year plays host to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the exclusive annual January gathering of the world’s great and good where they discuss weighty and important topics that you and I can’t understand and make big plans for how to impose their vision of the future on us.

 

The Corporate Line

I admit, I haven’t paid much attention to the run up to this year’s gathering.  What tipped me off this time around, though, was all the climate change hype that kept showing up on CNBC, a financial channel I follow regularly.

For example, one recent headline on CNBC read “Capitalism ‘will fundamentally be in jeopardy’ if business does not act on climate change, Mircosoft CEO Satya Nadella says.”

This is a new take on climate change.  Generally, what you hear from the mainstream media (MSM) is that it’s capitalism itself that is causing climate change and that it needs to be ended in favor of the sort of Green New Deal Marxist claptrap one hears from the likes various American politicians whose names I won’t mention in this space.

But here’s a businessman – the CEO of Microsoft no less! – announcing to the world that climate change is an existential threat to capitalism.  Adapt or die, seems to be is message.

The article begins by announcing, “The science is clear that environmental sustainability must factor in a corporation’s growth plans, or the capitalist and economic system the U.S. enjoys ‘will fundamentally be in jeopardy.’ “  Now the piece doesn’t say exactly what “science” is “clear” to the point that it requires the radical re-evaluation of the purpose of a corporation as is proposed in this article, but one supposes Nadella is referring to the report put out by the WEF just in time for the group’s 2020 meeting this week in Davos.

It probably doesn’t come as a surprise to you, but about halfway into the article one comes across the obligatory “Orange Man Bad” reference.  You see, unlike righteous CEO’s such as Nadella who care about the environment, Orange Man, “has tapped the brakes on a number of the country’s climate initiatives, such as pulling the U.S. out of the multilateral 2017 Paris Agreement.”

After plowing through a lot of corporate-speak virtue signaling, about “sustainability” and Microsoft’s new “Climate Innovation Fund” we read,

Microsoft’s CFO Amy Hood, appearing alongside Nadella later in the interview, said the eco-friendly program along with the company’s $750 million commitment to affordable housing in Seattle, Washington “are good returns on investments.”

Reflecting on this statement, author Tyler Clifford notes, “She stopped short of projecting what the return on investment in these initiatives would be, but explained that it will be measured and the company will hold itself accountable.”

So the Microsoft CFO won’t offer a projection of the return on investment of these “eco-friendly” programs?  Remarkable.  Her silence on this subject should be a big clue.  Not only will the “eco-friendly” initiatives not be profitable, they almost certainly will destroy shareholder value.

Now one can feel a certain amount of sympathy for Nadella.  He’s the high-profile CEO of a hugely successful company.  As such, he’s expected to talk the talk and walk the walk of the master of the universe types whose good graces he must court.  My guess, he probably doesn’t believe all the sustainability nonsense he talks about.  It’s just the cost of doing business.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

The Bible, Foreign Policy and the Middle East: Part 2, The Very Pernicious Doctrine of Preemptive War

Posted in Foreign Policy, Scripturalism, tagged , , , , , on January 12, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Soleimani_Car Remains

Credit…Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office, via Associated Press

“[B]ecause of our foreign policy of interventionism developed in the twentieth century, and because of our more recent policy of pre-emptive war, the United States has become the primary target of militant Muslims worldwide.”

 

“U.S. Strike in Iraq Kills Qassim Suleimani, Commander of Iranian Forces,” ran the New York Times headline.  Why did the US take this drastic action?  The article’s subheadline explaines, “Suleimani was planning attacks on Americans across the region, leading to an airstrike in Baghdad, the Pentagon statement said.”

This explanation is not something made up by the New York Times.  Rather, it is the same explanation given by official Washington for the deadly January 3 drone strike in Baghdad.

In his remarks from Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump, after asserting that his highest and most solemn duty was the defense of our nation, claimed that, “Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel, but we caught him in the act and terminated him…We took action last night to stop a war.  We did not take action to start a war.”

PBS reports Secretary of State Mike Pompeo giving similar justification in an interview he did with CNN.  According to PBS, Pompeo said that Gen. Qassem Soleimani “was actively plotting in the region to take actions, the big action as he described it, that would have put dozens if not hundreds of American lives at risk.  We know it was imminent.   This was an intelligence-based assessment that drove our decision-making process.”

Reuters reported Pompeo’s remarks from January 3 thus, “last night was the time that we needed to strike to make sure that this imminent attack  that he was working actively was disrupted.”

Finally, the National Review quoted Brian Hook, U.S. Special Representative for Iran, saying, “The President’s first responsibility is the safety of the American people.  Qasem Soleimani was plotting imminent attacks in the region against Americans in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon that could have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people.”

One common thread that links all four quotes above is the word “imminent.”  We are told by all three gentlemen that General Soleimani was not merely plotting to harm Americans, but that his attack or attacks were “imminent.” Therefore, they argue, the President’s decision to drone Soleimani – in his January 3 statement quoted above, President Trump said “Last night, at my direction, the United States military successfully executed a flawless precision strike” thus taking responsibility for the decision – ought not be viewed as an act of aggression, but rather as one of self-defense.

The term “imminent” is key to understanding the reasoning behind the killing of Soleimani as well as determining whether the President’s decision was a moral one.  The reason “imminent” is such a key term relative to Soleimani’s death is that it’s the tip-off, the big tell, that this attack was carried out using the doctrine of preemptive war as the theoretical framework to justify the decision by the President to kill the Iranian general.

So what is the doctrine of preemptive war?  Let’s take a look.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

The Bible, Foreign Policy and the Middle East: Part 1

Posted in Foreign Policy, tagged , , , , on January 5, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Baghdad Embasssy Attack

Hundreds of protesters stormed the US embassy compound in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone [Khalid Mohammed/AP Photo]

I am for peace: but when I speak, they are for war.

  • Psalm 120:7

It seemed like déjà vu.  Watching video of angry protesters storming the American embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday, I couldn’t help but recall similar scenes from 1979.  I was thirteen when angry crowds of demonstrators took to the streets against the Shah of Iran, swept the Ayatollah Khomeini to power in that nation, and captured the American embassy in Tehran, holding fifty-two American hostages for 444 days.

There was, as you may suppose, a good deal of anger directed at Iran from the American public.  Pictures of the scowling Ayatollah, a man whose menacing face seemed to be everywhere, served to drive home the seriousness of the ongoing hostage crisis.

For my part, I recall not so much being angry with Iran as I was puzzled by the whole affair.  Here were people on the other side of the world, in a country I had barely heard of, marching, burning American flags and calling America the Great Satan.   The whole thing just seemed bizarre to me.  As far as I was aware, I had never harmed an Iranian, nor did I harbor anything like hatred for the Iranian people.  So why did these people, seemingly out of the blue, one day start proclaiming how much they hated my country?  It was as if Iran was a nation full of nothing but lunatics.  At least that’s how it appeared to me at the time.

Sometimes I wonder how those too young to have lived through the Iran hostage crisis view that event.  Do Millennials or Gen-Z even know about it?  If so, do they realize how big a deal it was at the time?  This one event dominated the news for over a year.  It even spawned a new news program on ABC called Nightline hosted by Ted Koppel and dedicated to providing the latest hostage crisis updates.  If memory serves, it used to come on weeknights at 11:30 pm after the local evening news.

That was then.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

Radio Lux Lucet Ep.30: Happy New Year 2020: a Look Back and a Look Ahead

Posted in Radio Lux Lucet, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 1, 2020| 5 Comments »

Read Full Post »