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Surreal: Obama’s
Fiscal Cliff Proposal Stuns Washington
Republicans said on
Thursday that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner presented the House
speaker, John A. Boehner, a detailed proposal to avert the year-end fiscal
crisis with $1.6 trillion in tax increases over 10 years, an immediate new
round of stimulus spending, home mortgage refinancing and a permanent end to
Congressional control over statutory borrowing limits. The proposal, loaded
with Democratic priorities and short on detailed spending cuts, was likely to
meet strong Republican resistance. In exchange for locking in the $1.6 trillion
in added revenues, President Obama embraced $400 billion in savings from
Medicare and other entitlements, to be worked out next year, with no
guarantees. He did propose some upfront cuts in programs like farm price
supports, but did not specify an amount or any details. No wonder Mitch McConnell
openly
laughed at this outline; how else should one respond to a preposterous
farce? Republicans should counter-offer in kind, demanding full Obamacare
repeal, across-the-board tax cuts, the Wyden/Ryan Medicare plan -- and maybe
toss in articles of impeachment just for kicks. As I see it, GOP door
number one is to negotiate earnestly and try to fashion the, um, least bad deal
possible to avert the cliff (which assumes Obama isn't hell-bent on going over
the side). I still think this is the likeliest outcome -- for now, at
least. GOP door number two is walking away and bringing the pain, even if
it means political disaster in upcoming cycles. That's the
approach Geragthy is kicking around. GOP
door number three is stating opposition, but giving Obama what he wants via
mass "present" votes. This might spare Republicans a political
massacre, but it would also help The One continue the charade and superficially
delay America's bitter medicine...which we're going to have to swallow sooner
or later. So, what is the
Administrations end game strategy.
Surely, they know everyone is stunned by such a blatant offer!?
~~~~~~
Baracka Claus’
Opening Bid Proves That He Wants to Take His Sleigh Over the Fiscal Cliff - Rush
He’s campaigning. He’s still campaigning. He’s at the Tinkertoy factory
in Hatfield, Pennsylvania. He’s out talking to people about what kind of
country we want to be. What kind of country we want to leave to our kids, our
grandkids, our great-grandkids, and the immigrants. What kind of country do we
want to leave. He’s still campaigning for this debt deal. You know, the
election’s over. He won. Folks, if we ever needed any proof of what I have been
saying for the last couple of days, that it’s true, we got it yesterday. That
ridiculous opening bid. It was presented by Timothy Geithner, and it’s
definitive proof that Obama actually wants to go over the financial cliff. As
we were told, his offer has twice the tax increases that he ran on. He ran
for reelection on a tax plan that would raise $800 billion. By the way, you
mighta heard about this. Geithner went up and presented the plan to Mitch
McConnell, and Mitch McConnell just started laughing. I talked to Senator
McConnell today, and he was still laughing. I pick up the phone and say, “Hi, Rush
Limbaugh,” and there’s this guy laughing on the other end of the line. He’s
still laughing about the proposal, $1.6 trillion in new taxes. He wants a new
stimulus, and they want a permanent debt limit that they control. The White
House, the regime, wants to be able to raise the debt limit to whatever they
want without Congress being involved. And they can’t understand why there’s any
opposition for this.
~~~~~~
Charitable
deduction cap would be devastating
A proposal to limit
charitable deductions would be devastating for churches, religious
organizations and other nonprofits if adopted by the federal government, says a
Southern Baptist church-state expert. Leaders in both political parties have suggested further restricting
charitable deductions for at least some Americans who itemize on their tax
returns as a way of helping avert the "fiscal cliff" facing the
country Jan. 1. Without congressional action, the tax cuts implemented under
President George W. Bush will expire on that date, producing about $7 trillion
in tax increases. At the same time, inaction will result in sequestration —
automatic cuts to defense and non-defense spending of $55 billion each. The
idea of capping the charitable deduction "is as serious a threat to
religious organizations as anything the federal government has done in recent
decades," said Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious
Liberty Commission (ERLC). Do you
seriously think the Administration is not aware of this? Do you think it may be intentional? Duh!
~~~~~~
Obama’s Now
Borrowed More Than All Presidents from Washington to W.
The federal government has now borrowed more money during Barack Obama’s
time as president than it did in the period lasting from the time President
George Washington took the oath office until July 2, 2001, more than five
months into the first term of President George W. Bush. At the close of
business on Jan. 20, 2009, when President Barack Obama was inaugurated, the
national debt stood at $10,626,877,048,913.08, according to the Treasury. At
the close of business this Thursday, it stood at $16,323,083,449,604.98. That
means the debt has increased $5,696,206,400,691.90 during Obama’s presidency.
On July 2, 2001, more than five months after President George W. Bush entered
office, the national debt was $5,693,220,327,798.14, according to the Treasury.
By the close of business on July 3, 2001, it had risen to 5,698,195,769,465.40.
Since then, the debt has never again dropped below $5,696,206,400,691.90—the
amount it has increased in less than one full term of Obama.
~~~~~~
One Major Reason
Atheists Get Their Panties in a Wad Over Christmas By Doug Giles
Why do some atheists embarrass themselves year after year trying to
eradicate Christmas from American culture? Why do they make themselves societal
hemorrhoids during this hallowed season? Is it because they are crusaders for
equality, secularism’s saviors and humanism’s heroes? I’m sure that’s what they
tell themselves when they’re pouting on their couches all alone on Christmas
Eve after every single one of their friends has dumped them for being a rabid
jackass. I believe, however, and I could be wrong, that the reason some rage
against the machine is that they hate God and love their sin, and bringing up
Jesus in December is not the way they wanted to finish off the year. Indeed,
Christ really rains on their parade—and they love their parade. Christmas, if
you really get down to the brass tacks of it, boys and girls, isn’t about
reindeer, elves and iPhones, but about mankind’s sin problem and what God did
to remedy it by sending His Son. I know the chief facet most people focus on
regarding Christ’s birth has been the peace on earth and good will towards men
stuff, but if you dig around in the gospels a tad you’ll quickly see that the
“peace on earth” thing is an ancillary perk to the main reason the second
person of the godhead donned an earth suit and decided to hang out with us
dunderheads. The core cause that necessitated Jesus’ incarnation was our
jacked up carnality. Yep, Beavis, it was our sin. There, I said it. Sin.
Yours, mine and ours. Transgression was the reason for the season.
~~~~~~
$100,000 Study to
Teach Female Delinquents How to Negotiate for Condoms by
Gary North
The Feds shelled
out $100,000 for a program to teach teenage girls on probation how to get their
boyfriends to use condoms after the girls are released. The girls live in
Houston. There are not enough of them to constitute a valid sample for study:
30 girls. But, hey, there was an extra $100,000 lying around. Why not conduct
training? When the federal government
shells out $3.8 trillion a year, no one can keep track of where it all goes.
So, some of it goes to bureaucrats with really bizarre ideas of how it should
be spent. I don’t think anyone came to voters and said this. “I’ve got a
great idea. Let’s teach condom negotiation skills to girls who have proven in a
court of law that they have no moral sense. Let’s teach them how to negotiate
with their predator boyfriends on condom use. You pay for it. I’ll administer
it.” As they say: “What’s missing from
this picture?” I’ll tell you: asking permission from voters. It will never
happen. “But it’s for the children!” Yes, it is: if we define “children” as
convicted teenage criminals. The state is relentless in finding ways to waste
money. People get paid upper middle class salaries to devise these ways. They are way ahead of the voters when it
comes to finding ways to spend huge wads of money on projects that are not just
hopeless, but silly. They are spending us blind. See
Above.....
~~~~~~
Muslim Brotherhood
Advising Obama?
Outspoken Republican congressman Louie Gohmert is
continuing to press for investigation of the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence on
the federal government, contending in an interview that a probe is necessary
because of the Obama administration’s “horrendous decisions” in backing the
so-called “Arab Spring” revolutions in the Middle East.
The East Texas lawmaker was one of five Republican Congress members who stirred bipartisan controversy in June by
raising concern about Muslim Brotherhood infiltration in the nation’s capital.
In an interview Tuesday on Gohmert charged that the administration was taking
advice from the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egypt-based movement formed after the
demise of the Ottoman Turkish empire with the intent of helping establish
Islamic rule worldwide. “You look at the
decisions [the Obama administration] made, especially in the last two years, in
going through the revolutions in Northern Africa and across the Middle East and
to the Far East,” said Gohmert, “and the only way you can explain the
horrendous decisions that were so completely wrongheaded would be if the
administration had a bunch of Muslim Brotherhood members giving them advice.”
In July, Gohmert, along with Rep. Michele Bachmann, R, Minn., and three other
Republican House members, pointed to Hillary Clinton’s top aide, Huma Abedin,
as a possible Muslim Brotherhood influence on U.S. policy. The lawmakers asked
the inspector generals at the departments of Homeland Security, Justice and
State to investigate, prompting Democrats and Republicans to rush to Abedin’s
defense.
~~~~~~
Leno: ‘Dangerous to
White House’ if Journos ‘Start Asking Real Questions’
“This week, CBS News became the first news organization
besides Fox to ask President Obama ‘Who changed the Benghazi talking
points?’” “See, this is very dangerous
to the White House if journalists should suddenly start asking real questions.”
~~~~~~
Study: American
Households Hit 43-Year Low In Net Worth
The median net
worth of American households has dropped to a 43-year low as the lower and middle classes appear poorer and less
stable than they have been since 1969.
According to a recent study by New
York University economics professor Edward N. Wolff, median net worth is at the
decades-low figure of $57,000 (in 2010 dollars). And as the numbers in his
study reflect, the situation only appears worse when all the statistics are
taken as a whole. According to Wolff, between 1983 and 2010, the percentage of
households with less than $10,000 in assets (using constant 1995 dollars) rose
from 29.7 percent to 37.1 percent. The
“less than $10,000″ figure includes the numerous households that have no assets
at all, or “negative assets,” which is otherwise known as “debt. So, why do 51% of Americans believe that the current
Administration truly have their best interest in mind?
~~~~~~
Solar firm that got
$26M in Miss. loans is closing - more proof that
Solar power is not a mature industry to hang our hopes for the future
JACKSON, Miss. (AP)
- Mississippi taxpayers may have only an
empty Senatobia building and some solar panel equipment to show for nearly $26
million in loans provided to Twin Creeks Technologies. The California-based
solar technology firm is liquidating, and a company that bought Twin Creeks'
assets does not intend to take over its agreement with Mississippi. The
contract called for Twin Creeks to invest at least $132 million and create at
least 500 jobs. The Mississippi Development Authority's Kathy Gelston says
officials are negotiating for Twin Creeks to repay aid above the value of the
building and equipment. Lenders sold Twin Creeks' technology for $10 million to
GT Advanced Technologies of Nashua, N.H., in mid-November. Gelston says Twin
Creeks received about $3 million from the sale, but says there are creditors
beyond Mississippi.
~~~~~~
Angry New Yorkers
say Obama pledge to cut red tape ignored by FEMA
Storm-ravaged New
Yorkers say President Obama’s promise to cut red tape and get them aid in the
aftermath of Sandy has proven to be hot air. Angry citizens vented at FEMA
officials at a town hall meeting held by the disaster relief agency Thursday,
with tempers boiling over. Some 1,000 people, many left homeless by the Oct. 29
storm, attended the meeting at Staten Island’s New Dorp High School. They were
initially scheduled to submit written questions that would be picked and
answered at random, but the session turned into an angry shouting match where
residents booed FEMA officials and accused them of lying. "I told the
president … that FEMA was giving us the royal finger. And he said, ‘FEMA works
for me.’” - Scott McGrath, Staten Islander left homeless by superstorm Sandy.
“We are the people – we are the middle class, and we are getting the finger,”
said frustrated resident Scott McGrath, who personally spoke to President Obama
and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo when they came to Staten Island to inspect storm
damage earlier this month. “You were there when I met Obama, and I told the
president … that the middle class was getting the royal finger. And he said,
‘FEMA works for me.’” Have you been inundated with this from the MSM? No, of course not!
~~~~~~
Another Dangerous
But Plausible Left Wing Idea John DeMayo
A November 19 piece by N.Y. Times contributing editor, Daniel Altman, a
Harvard economist, seems to have the solution to all our economic problems both
here and abroad. Mr. Altman recommends a new “wealth tax” to bridge the
growing economic gap between the haves and have-not’s created by capitalism.
Mr. Altman claims that the only way to increase economic opportunity in America
is to tax the accumulated assets of wealthy Americans. Yup, the idea of taxing
everything you own is now being floated by Keynesians who have become crusading
visionaries. Mr. Altman believes the real cause of our economic malaise
is more about wealth inequality than income inequality. For him not only
do the rich make more than their fair share, but they also own more than their
fair share; and as a result economic opportunity for all Americans unfairly
sides with the wealthy who are responsible for the peaks and valleys of our
capitalist system. Nowhere in Mr. Altman’s article is there any suggestion
of the root causes of income and wealth disparity. Things like obscene high
school dropout rates, illegitimate pregnancies, the inability to read and
write, drug abuse, and government dependency fail to register on Mr. Altman’s
economic radar. Mr. Altman seems to feel that access to American
opportunity is dependent on wealth being more evenly distributed to all
Americans.
~~~~~~
There
is No Fiscal Cliff
- Newt Gingrich
How many times have
you heard about the terrible, frightening, all-imposing "fiscal
cliff" in the last few weeks? Now we have a constant media drumbeat that
Republicans will have to cave to President Obama's demands or they will bear
responsibility for going over the fiscal cliff. President Obama has increased
his demands for more taxes and more spending. The Left, both the
politicians and the news media, have created a mythical threat which can only
be solved by Republicans surrendering their principles and abandoning their
allies. Yet the fiscal cliff is entirely
a manufactured threat. The same people who are now negotiating worked two years
ago to create the mess which they say is such a threat. At any point they
wanted to, the President and the
Congress could reduce the "cliff" to a series of foothills by
breaking the problem into ten or twenty component parts. They could then focus
on solving each problem on its own merits and out in the open with public
hearings, public understanding and public involvement. Public understanding,
however, would limit the level of waste, favoritism, and special interests which
could be funded. That is exactly the opposite of what the Washington
establishment wants. To get a unique insight into the current
psychological process of chanting "fiscal cliff," it is worth reading
Tom Wolfe's essay, "Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers" (1970). Wolfe
describes a San Francisco welfare office in which the senior management hides
away on the second floor and hires young, underpaid people to catch the flak of
the welfare recipients who show up angry and unhappy. It is the job of the
junior staff to endure the hostility while protecting the calm and isolation of
the senior leaders. The local Samoan community had figured out the game and
decided to change it. As Wolfe vividly describes, they would send very large
Samoans with war clubs into the office. The flak catcher would start explaining
why they couldn't see the senior decision makers on the second floor. The
Samoans would begin chanting and pounding their clubs on the floor. After a
couple minutes of threatening noises, the young welfare worker would decide
they weren't getting paid enough to endure the tension and the sense of threat.
They would let the Samoans go upstairs to make their demands to the senior
welfare officials. This brief description does not do justice to the beautiful
writing and keen insights Wolfe brings to this scene. But hopefully it does paint a picture of what we are living through. The political
and news media Left have fashioned an artificial club called "the fiscal
cliff". They are now standing on national television pounding their club
and describing more and more horrifying outcomes if Republicans refuse to
surrender their principles and appease the fiscal cliff Gods as defined by the
Left. Their goal is to panic the country so the
people will then apply pressure to panic the Republicans. Every time you hear “fiscal cliff” just
remember it is an artificial invention of the Left. Every time you hear a dire
warning about the coming crisis remember the Samoans pounding their war clubs
and chanting. House Republicans should start legislating solutions they believe in,
allow President Obama’s alternatives the honest chance to win a floor vote, and
move forward. The current negotiations are phony, dishonest, and
calculated to produce either a failure to be blamed on the Republicans or a
success defined by the collapse of the Republican policy positions. Republicans would be far better off to
refocus their energy on legislation, appropriation, oversight, and
communication -- and relegate negotiation to being fifth on their priority
list.
~~~~~~
Of Course a
Majority of Americans Support Raising Taxes on Top Earners by
Gary DeMar
Most of the people
who were polled are not top earners, so it’s no surprise that a majority of
them support raising taxes on top earners. Let’s take a poll of foxes who want
to have access to the hen house? How about a poll of wolves who want to eat the
sheep? What do you think the outcome of that vote will be? The income
amendment, the Sixteenth Amendment, was supposed to be a tax on the wealthy.
The people who supported it did not believe that they would ever have to pay
much. This is why our founders did not develop a democracy. Democratic
elements, yes; but not a pure majority-rule democracy.
John Winthrop
(1588–1649), first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, declared direct
democracy to be “the meanest and worst of all forms of government.”[1]
John Cotton (1584–1652), seventeenth-century Puritan minister in Massachusetts,
wrote in 1636: “Democracy, I do not conceive that ever God did ordain as a fit
government either for church or commonwealth. If the people be governors, who
shall be governed?”[2]
James Madison (1751–1836), recognized as the “father of the Constitution,”
wrote that democracies are “spectacles of turbulence and contention.” Pure
democracies are “incompatible with personal security or the rights of property.
. . . In general [they] have been as short in their lives as they have been
violent in their deaths.”[3]
John Adams, the second president of the United States, stated that “the voice
of the people is ‘sometimes the voice of Mahomet, of Caesar, of Catiline, the
Pope, and the Devil.’”[4]
Social philosopher Francis A. Schaeffer
described democracy as “the dictatorship of the 51%, with no controls and
nothing with which to challenge the majority.”[5] The logic is simple: “It means that if
Hitler was able to get a 51% vote of the Germans, he had a right to kill the
Jews.”[6]
In 1928, a citizenship manual was developed by the War Department. Training Manual No. TM 2000-25 on Citizenship, U.S. History and the Constitution was compiled and issued to teach young men in the armed forces the fundamental principles upon which the United States was founded. As the manual states, “Training in citizenship is the most vital of all subjects to that nation whose system of government, security of property, and full power to express individual initiative are based upon the intelligence, education, and character of each individual citizen.” The Manual’s authors expressed fear that if the “proper understanding of the history, ideals, and underlying principles of our political institutions” were ever forgotten the nation would be lost.
~~~~~~
Fiscal Cliff
Austerity: Just Another Meme Designed to Steal What is Yours – by Ron Holland
"Since a politician never believes what he says, he
is quite surprised to be taken at his word."
– Charles De Gaulle
In my home country,
the United States, we are watching the German and EU austerity demands destroy
economies, social structures and entire nations all to protect the leading
banking elites and their profits. In 2013 the false meme of austerity is also
coming to the United States. Leading GOP politicians are now announcing plans
to break their No Tax pledges just as we warned they would. After all, the word
and honor of all but a very few senators and house members means nothing once
election season ends. Of course, common sense tells us that all governments
need to spend and borrow less but they never will. After all, the long running
recession/depression of the West means less tax revenue to governments because
the taxable income of individual citizens is down dramatically. The austerity
meme is the false crisis solution being propagandized by the power elite in
order to build public support for benefit cuts and wealth confiscation. This
fake austerity solution sounds reasonable but it isn't because governments will
continue to spend and borrow. They plan to make up the difference by cutting
government services and programs and increasing taxes to draconian confiscatory
levels.
Equal Opportunity For Once
While the top
echelons of government bureaucrats just like the privileged big business
corporate elites will be exempt except for minor personal tax increases, the
burden will as always fall on the poor and middle classes. The only good news
is throughout the West many low- and middle-level government employees and
bureaucrats will finally get a bitter taste of what they have been dishing out
to those of us in the productive private sector for decades. There are few new
jobs available in the private sector and private industry will seldom hire
ex-government employees, for obvious reasons.
This means those on
the government dole, whether working, on welfare programs or in unions, will do
anything to keep their checks coming. Therefore, as part of the
"necessary" austerity measures their generous healthcare and
retirement plans can be cut, as well as salaries, as most of these wards of the
state will still vote for the big government parties. They have no other
alternatives. Thus, their core constituency status will remain while they now
take their turn being screwed. Simply watch what is happening to benefits,
healthcare and retirement benefits in Greece, Italy and Spain and you'll see
the future in the United States.
Benefit Theft
Many in the US will find themselves
increasingly "means tested" out of their promised and guaranteed Social
Security benefits and forced back into permanent life-long contributions.
Austerity is just another word for nothing left to lose to the government. It
will end when your wealth, benefits and assets are gone. This false meme will
be replaced with another once all of the available wealth, income and gold can
be taken and your promised benefits cut to whatever degree possible short of
generating violence and revolution. Therefore, any supposed credibility in the
success of politically enforced austerity is just another excuse to get more of
your hard earned dollars. Like democracy, global warming and Keynesian
economics, this is just another scam meme to con you out of personal wealth and
liberties.
~~~~~~
Trillion-Dollar
Student Loan Industry to be Bailed Out by Taxpayers
by Philip Hodges
The government’s
problem-reaction-solution strategy to buy votes was summed up best by the late
libertarian Harry Browne: “The government is good at one thing. It knows how
to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, ‘See if it weren’t for
the government, you wouldn’t be able to walk.’”
The government deliberately
causes problems in order to elicit their desired reaction from the public and
then offers their “solutions” that will inevitably earn politicians the
undeserved trust of naïve voters.
Voters are usually bought with some kind of bailout. It could be a moral
bailout as in the case of legalizing abortion, but most of them are financial
bailouts. The Democrats own the black vote, much of the elderly vote, the
Latino vote and much of the female vote all because of “bailouts” in one form
or another that were sold on the premise of a solution to a problem that the
government helped create in the first place.
The latest sector to benefit from
a taxpayer-subsidized bailout is the taxpayer-subsidized student loan industry.
Currently, student loan debt is larger than credit card debt. Collectively,
students have racked up nearly $1 trillion in loan debt. And it’s all
thanks to government taking over the student loan industry which prompting
schools and universities to increase their tuition fees and diminish their own
aid programs. This
bailout hasn’t happened yet, but it’s being proposed as part of the fiscal
cliff negotiations, and I’d be surprised if it didn’t pass. The Student Loan
Forgiveness Act provides debt forgiveness to all student loan recipients who
have paid 10% of their discretionary incomes toward their loans for 10 years.
If the recipients go into teaching, “public service” or medicine in underserved
areas, their debts will be forgiven after only 5 years of such payments. If this becomes the new norm, what
incentive will there be for future students to pay off their loans at all? The
next step will “free” college education for all. No, we will not
leap into Socialism, we will go there in these types of tiny bites. But, be assured, that is where all of this
will lead to.
~~~~~~
Obamacare Is Just
Another Solyndra by Mark Horne
Socialism is just a
cover for graft and corruption, for buying friends and doing favors to get
favors in return. The ideology provides
cover to keep the public money flowing. We all know this is true about
environmentalism and “alternative
energy” (which means: inefficient, overpriced, diminished energy that no one
sees as a real business opportunity). Solyndra and other businesses,
showing all the productivity of Amtrak, are an opportunity for the regime to
trade favors and stay in power. So too, Obamacare. Even if, in the long term, advocates are looking for a future of more
control of the populace, in the near term they just want to take and spend money.
The whole point of the socialist ideology is to provide politicians with new
ways to get money from people and give it to their friends. It isn’t so much
that socialism doesn’t work (though that is true) but that it works all too
well for corrupt bureaucrats and corrupt corporations. In
Russia, there are many millions of poor and starving citizens while there are
many well fed and rich bureaucrats. The same can be said of all of
the centralized government statist countries.
~~~~~~~
Disarming America:
Deep Cuts in Nuclear Forces
A State Department
board of experts is calling for steep cuts in U.S. nuclear forces beyond the
New START treaty limits and recommends unilateral or informal reductions to
avoid expected Senate ratification battles. “Treaties are an important but not
always necessary method for reducing nuclear arsenals,” the new report by the
International Security Advisory Board says. “The United States has reduced its
nuclear arsenal without negotiating a new treaty in the past—both unilaterally
and reciprocally with Russia.” A similar cut in nuclear forces could be
considered again “as the United States reduces the role and number of nuclear
weapons in its national security strategy,” the report says. Disclosure of the
State Department report comes as President Barack Obama, who has advocated
eliminating all U.S. nuclear weapons, is close to approving a formal strategy
that calls for deep cuts in nuclear forces beyond the 1,550 warheads mandated
under the 2010 New START accord. Notice
this did not come from the Defense Department?
Who are these people and who declared them experts? Remember be wary when you here "The
experts say......"
~~~~~~
Evolution and the
Breakup of Christendom by Philip Bell
Over eighty years
ago, a book was written by one Rev. C. Leopold Clarke, a lecturer at a London
Bible college. Not only is that book ‘bang up-to-date’, but
I believe it is more relevant now than when it was first published in
1930. The bulk of this short article (except the subtitles)
is extracted and assembled from Clarke’s own words (with minimal editing), to
bring the admittedly ‘in-your-face’ message to us afresh. Although we are
living in the ‘enlightened’ and technologically advanced Twenty-First Century,
Clarke’s words have a very contemporary ring about them. In fact, if we
consider the moral and spiritual disintegration that has occurred over those
intervening decades (and the ongoing breakup of Christendom in the
once-Christian West), his words are strikingly prescient.
A battering-ram of
unbelief!
Evolution [is] the
greatest and most active agent of moral and spiritual disintegration. It is a
battering-ram of unbelief—a sapping and mining operation that intends to blow
Religion sky-high. The one thing which the human mind
demands in its conception of God, is that, being Almighty, He works sovereignly
and miraculously—and this is the thing with which Evolution dispenses.
Evolution [is] the
greatest and most active agent of moral and spiritual disintegration. It is a
battering-ram of unbelief—a sapping and mining operation that intends to blow
Religion sky-high.
Already a
tremendous effect, on a wide scale, has been produced by the impact of this
teaching—an effect which can only be likened to the … collapse of foundations.
… The faith of the Christian Church and of the average Christian has had, and
still has, its foundation as much in the [truth] of the account of Creation, as
in that of the person of Christ …
Helping people lose
rather than find God!
But how horrible a
travesty of the sacred office of the Christian Ministry to see [church leaders]
more eager to be abreast of the times, than “earnestly contending for the Faith
once for all delivered unto the saints” [Jude 1:3]. … It is high time that the Church separated
herself from the humiliating entanglement attending her desire to be thought up
to date, and to escape the charge of ignorance. What, after all, have the
custodians of Divine Revelation to do making terms with speculative Biology,
which has, and can have, no message of comfort or help to the soul?
The trend of
present day science is not to help men find God, but to lose Him. … Having
decided for us that we have no objective Spiritual certainty, [certain
evolutionary scientists] are kindly formulating plans by which we may keep the
vestiges of the Church and the motives of virtue without [spiritual certainty],
… busy telling us in what light we are to regard Jesus Christ, other than as
the “express Image of the Father’s Person” [Heb. 1:3]. … And these [evolutionary scientists] are the
men that organised Christianity delights to honour, and to give the chief
places at its feasts!
Authority of Christ
and His Word challenged!
The essence of
[unfaithfulness] is to contradict the Divine Redeemer, and that most assuredly
is done in the [modernist Bible] Commentaries. That it should be done while
reverence is professed, is an illustration of the intellectual and moral
topsy-turvydom of Modernism. … “He whom God hath sent speaketh the Words of
God,” claimed Christ of Himself [John 3:34], and no assumption of error can hold water in
the face of that declaration, without blasphemy.
There is no
evidence against the Bible, but there is the violent prejudice of the modern
spirit and the modern cast of mind—the spirit that reckons God Himself to be
out of date.
It is obvious, of
course, that the “falling away” of Christendom from the faith of God could not
proceed while the Bible held its rightful place in the judgment of the
generation. It has been displaced, as was foretold [2 Thess. 2:11], by the invasion of the modern intellect
with the “strong delusion that shall believe a lie.” There is no evidence
against the Bible, but there is the violent prejudice of the modern spirit and
the modern cast of mind—the spirit that reckons God Himself to be out of date.
A sobering
assessment
If the teaching of
Evolution … is inconsistent with the Revelation of God in the Deity of Jesus
Christ; if it is another Spirit, teaching another Gospel; if it is a frank
apostasy from “the Truth as it is in Jesus”; no considerations of Christian
charity, of tolerance, of policy, can exonerate those Christian leaders or
Churches who fail to condemn, and to sever themselves from such teachers and such
teaching. Under the shelter of “scholarship” there stands a compromising,
cowardly, shilly-shallying company of men today … C. Leopold Clarke’s words are a clarion
call to the church today. True Christians must choose whom they will serve,
whose word they will believe, whose cause they will follow. We must all remain
motivated and ensure that we are well equipped to boldly take our stand.
~~~~~~
"Speak seldom,
but to important subjects, except such as particularly relate to your
constituents, and, in the former case, make yourself perfectly master of the
subject." --George
Washington, Public Speaking, 1787
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