From the monthly archives:

May 2004

On Black Responsibility

by La Shawn on May 31, 2004

in BC Wisdom

A radical concept, I know, but check out this article, “School Equality: A Black Responsibility?”:

“White panelists talking to a mostly white audience about the need for the black community to fix its problems risk coming across as offensively patronizing. But the message of responsibility was most powerfully articulated by a black speaker, Vanderbilt University law professor Carol Swain.

Swain identified a number of cultural factors that may hold black students back, including “dysfunctional abusive homes,” “lack of parental involvement in the schools,” and “negative peer pressure about learning and about high achievement as evidence of one’s ‘acting white.’ ” Better schools may provide some solutions, Swain said, but there must also be cultural change, and “middle-class minorities must take a leadership role in this area.” On an even more controversial note, Swain identified affirmative action as currently practiced by universities — lower admissions standards for blacks and Hispanics — as part of the problem. These policies, she said, have “created a negative incentive structure for African-Americans who have either internalized societal messages about inferiority or have chosen an easier path of not exerting themselves too vigorously” since they don’t have to meet higher standards.”

I guess Swain is just another “old school negro” (as one of my commenters called Bill Cosby) who believes blacks should accept responsibility for at least some of their failures.

(Hat tip: Ramblings’ Journal)

The Dumbing Down Of America

by La Shawn on May 31, 2004

in Cultural Decline

This is good stuff from Neal Boortz :

Let’s cut to the chase. I’ve come to the reluctant but inescapable conclusion that about 50% of the adults in this country are simply too ignorant and functionally incompetent to be living in a free society. They have enthusiastically abandoned their sovereignty to the lure of the welfare state. They are, in fact, afraid to be free. They have no working concept of the responsibilities of individuals who would live free of government tyranny or mob rule. Their ignorance renders them incapable of coping with the responsibilities of liberty. These are people who cannot exist at anything other than a basic level without someone else stepping forward to take care of them. They’re adult children. They need to and deserve to live in a dictatorship, hopefully, for their sake, benevolent.

The real problem here is that the rest of us are constantly suffering encroachments on our own freedoms to provide for the survival of the ignorant. We’re forced to invest (if that’s the word) 15% of our paychecks into a disability insurance and retirement plan that would constitute criminal activity in every one of the 50 states were it not run by government. We must do this, we’re told, because there are just too many people out there who aren’t bright enough to do it on their own. We’re facing the inevitability of socialized medicine. As soon as the social Democratic party gets its way, with no small amount of help from the Republicans, Americans will be waiting months — if not years — for basic elective surgery. Private citizens will be sent to jail for trying to find a private doctor to treat their ills outside of the approved and official government plan. Freedoms are being lost because of political pandering to those unable to cope.

The lure of the welfare state, with its cradle-to-grave promises, is powerful. It’s our nature to want something for nothing. The challenge of life is to rise above that nature.

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Blogger Has Returned

by La Shawn on May 29, 2004

in War - Islamofascism

I was out of town last week and had limited access to a computer. I didn’t watch the news or read a newspaper. I cheerfully admit that I don’t know what’s going on. It’s great!

warI watched a series of documentaries about World War II last week, and the differences between the media then and now are startling. The documentaries were produced and edited by pro-America Americans. It was refreshing!

(For a quick synopsis of some of the battles fought and who’s who in WWII, check out this link).

In 1941, Americans knew who the enemies were: Germany, Japan and any fascist, totalitarian dictatorship trying to make slaves of free people.

In 2004, the enemy is Islamofascism, but I think only half the country knows it. I believe that liberal journalists think of themselves as citizens of the world first, then citizens of the United States. Instead of referring to Muslim terrorists as “the enemy”, they call them “insurgents” or whatever euphemism seems to fit that day. Radical Muslim terrorists want to destroy us and our way of life, but to liberals, they’re just naughty rebels.

soldiersDuring WWII, Americans were focused on destroying Hitler and Hideki Tojo. Their total annihilation was the goal, and nobody cared why they hated us.

Hitler and his band of thugs stormed Europe, capturing sovereign nations at an alarming rate. After conquering Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium and others, he went gunning for Great Britain and Russia. Britain was the last free country standing in the way of Hitler’s goal of conquering all of Europe. If it weren’t for Britain’s Royal Air Force, she would have fallen into Nazi hands. Both England and Russia were able to hold off Germany.

Japan’s plan included conquering China and eventually the U.S., beginning with the bombing of Pearl Harbor in a failed attempt to neutralize our effectiveness in the Pacific.

America entered the war in 1941, coming to the rescue of Britain, Russia, China, and all the conquered lands in Europe and the Pacific islands.

more solidersWant to know the best part about watching old, grainy black and white documentaries about WWII? Coming to the realization that America is still the best country on the planet. And no matter how anti-America/pro-enemy the enemies within are, America will continue to symbolize hope and opportunity for people who come from places where criticizing the government may result in the separation of their heads from their bodies.

Millions of Americans died not for a country, but for an idea: freedom. Remember it well on Monday as our nation honors its war veterans.

Blogger Break Time

by La Shawn on May 22, 2004

in Me, Me, Me

Hello, faithful readers. It’s time for this blogger to take a break. I’ve been blogging 4-5 days a week since November 2003. I’ll return to blogging next weekend, but I’ll be monitoring and lurking and may even comment on comments.

In the meantime, check out a few of these links. So many fellow bloggers have discovered me (or I’ve discovered them) and linked to my blog, but I haven’t had time to reciprocate and tell you about them. Here are few:

Inoperable Terran
Booker Rising
Kerry Haters
Christian Conservative
Bunker Mulligan
Mamamontezz and her spousal unit
Neil Uchitel
Crispus
The True Nature of Reality
Writing to Understand
fallible.com

And this is Cobb. I’m linking directly to the post mentioning me and a few other black conservative (and libertarian) bloggers. He has an interesting proposal.

There are many others, and I’ll acknowledge them when I return in a week. Come back and see me!

Latest Column: The Irony of Brown v. Board of Education

by La Shawn on May 21, 2004

in Columns

And may this be the last Brown article of 2004!

Ominous-sounding headlines like “The Return of Segregation” and “School Districts Resegregating” imply that all is not well in America. The 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) has come and gone, but Brown-inspired social engineering lives on.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) established government-sanctioned segregation, and Brown, however wrongly decided, declared it illegal. Instead of allowing integration to occur at its own pace, however (it would have occurred), liberals set out to radically change America overnight in pursuit of a classless, crime-free, 100 percent equal, racially-mixed utopia.

The experiment failed. By refusing to take into account free enterprise, the existence of evil, differences in personal drive, ability, work ethic and motivation, legitimate resistance to government coercion, and that nagging constitutional right called freedom of association, social engineers used the courts to try and force their idealist vision.

Chief Justice Earl Warren knew America was changing and that it was only a matter of time before the Court was faced with more cases like Brown. But that was only the beginning of a long line of decisions in which judges essentially disregarded laws and wrote new ones to achieve an America that exists only in the Court’s collective mind.

“With all deliberate speed” was the order issued to schools to desegregate in Brown II, a case heard a little over a year later. But progress was slow. By 1964, 98 percent of Southern black children were still in totally segregated schools. The enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 helped speed up things, but the levels of integration liberals wanted to see remained stubbornly elusive.

Beginning in 1968, the Supreme Court authorized one of the worst social experiments since Massachusetts legalized homosexual “marriage”: forced busing. Without a single vote by the people, the Court imposed unconstitutional policies in search of its “racially-balanced” fantasyland. Racial quotas would now be used to create this balance.

The law of unintended consequences was on full display as whites fled government-run schools in droves, leaving black students in predominately black schools. Urban schools began to decay as community tax bases shrank.

At one point black students were being bused from their neighborhoods to predominately black schools across town! Even more ridiculous, hundreds of school districts across America are still under desegregation court orders.

Liberals expected parents — black and white — to meekly play along as academic standards dropped and discipline problems rose. People exercised the rights they had left and moved to the suburbs or put their children in private and parochial schools. That is the legacy of Brown.

Noticeably absent from the anniversary hoopla was a serious discussion about the wide achievement gap that persists between black and white students. Writer John McWhorter and others point to a culture of anti-intellectualism in the black community.

In Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, McWhorter contends that too many blacks choose to embrace a set of counterproductive values and distorted notions of “cultural blackness.” They follow this pattern through life, blaming racism for everything and romanticizing ghetto life.

But the liberal media prefers stories about how society has failed blacks, not how blacks have failed themselves. When segregation was the law of the land, black educational standards were higher, families were stronger, and illegitimacy and crime rates were lower. Today, educational standards for blacks have dropped, the illegitimacy rate is 70 percent and even higher in some inner-cities.

Eighty-five percent of black children living in poverty reside in female-headed households, and the black crime rate is high. In 2000, blacks were over 7 times more likely than whites to commit homicide and 6 times more likely to be murdered. From 1976-2000, 94 percent of black victims were killed by other blacks. Something other than racism is going on.

The irony of Brown is that while it ended government-sanctioned discrimination in public schools, the government still sanctions discrimination in public schools. Race preferences are not only repugnant to the Constitution, but the Supreme Court’s endorsement of this insidious practice smells like “separate but equal.” Ignoring history dooms us to repeat it.

Welcome back, Plessy.

Michelle Malkin Reads My Blog!

by La Shawn on May 21, 2004

in Conservatives, Me, Me, Me

(M.M. pre-blog)

I was so excited to get an e-mail from Michelle Malkin this morning. She said she’s a fan of mine, enjoys my blog (!) and encouraged me to keep going. Classy.

Over two years ago when I decided to try my hand at column writing, I read through Michelle’s older archives on Jewish World Review and more recent ones on Townhall.com. Her style is very engaging.

Last year when she came to the Heritage Foundation to promote her book, Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists Criminals & Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores (You’d be appalled by the government’s failure to secure our borders), I had to go out of town that day and didn’t get to meet her. Next time.

I wrote Michelle about two years ago, and within 24 hours she responded. That inspired me to continue responding to every e-mail I receive (although I’m sure she can’t), even hate mail. I thought, “If Michelle Malkin can do it, I can, too.”

Check out her web site.

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Cosby The Conservative

by La Shawn on May 20, 2004

in BC Wisdom

CosbySeveral readers alerted me to this story, so I thought I should share it with you. I remember hearing about this a few days ago but didn’t follow-up on it.

Whether he considers himself a conservative or not, Bill Cosby is on our team now:

In the presence of NAACP President Kweisi Mfume and other African-American leaders, comedian Bill Cosby took aim at blacks who don’t take responsibility for their economic status, blame police for incarcerations and teach their kids poor speaking habits.

Cosby said, according to Leiby: “Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids – $500 sneakers for what? And won’t spend $200 for ‘Hooked on Phonics.’

He added: “They’re standing on the corner and they can’t speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk: ‘Why you ain’t,’ ‘Where you is’…And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk…Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads….You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!”

Check out the Washington Post’s coverage, too (scroll down). A prominent, respected black man speaks the truth in front of black liberals. I do love it so!

UPDATE (6:00 pm) You’ve got to read what else Cosby said. I know it’s in the WorldNetDaily article, but I wanted to emphasize it:

Turning to criminal justice, he said, “These are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake and then we run out and we are outraged, saying, ‘The cops shouldn’t have shot him.’ What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?”

I laughed. I couldn’t suppress it.

John Kerry Should Read This

by La Shawn on May 20, 2004

in Media Bias

I’ve been watching this guy for a while. Check out his latest column, “Expiating Liberal Guilt”:

A recurring theme in liberal thought is that wealth and poverty are undeserved. Where we end up in the social hierarchy, liberals say, depends far more on happenstance than on merit. Some people are born to advantage, others to disadvantage. But luck shouldn’t play a role in people’s fates, they say, so society must intervene — coercively — to equalize wealth, or at least move in that direction. Those who are wealthy probably don’t deserve it anyway, so it’s not an injustice to them to take some of their wealth (through progressive taxation, for example) and distribute it to the poor….

Liberals have a hard time distinguishing misfortune and injustice. If misfortune is injustice and injustice must be rectified (this latter proposition is a tautology), then redistribution of wealth is required, not optional. It would be unjust not to redistribute, just as it would be unjust not to force wrongdoers to make restitution to their victims. Conservatives have no trouble distinguishing misfortune and injustice, only the latter of which, logically speaking, requires rectification. Misfortune calls for charity, which is incompatible with coercion. Conflating misfortune and injustice, conservatives say, leads to second-order injustices. We might say that liberals deny, while conservatives affirm, that life is tragic.

ACFrom Ann Coulter’s latest:

If liberals won’t move on from the prison abuse photos calculated to incite hatred toward the very troops liberals loudly claim to “support,” I’m not moving on from the fact that the editor of the Los Angeles Times, John Carroll, is instructing journalists on ethics. The editor of the Los Angeles Times telling reporters how to behave ethically is a complete contradiction, like…oh, I don’t know…giving Yasser Arafat a Nobel Peace Prize or something. You know, just patently silly….

This is the same L.A. Times where reporters had to be told in an internal memo (from Carroll himself) to stop injecting opinion in news stories, specifically the practice of prefacing the term “pro-life” with the term “so-called.”

For the non-believers (of liberal bias) in the audience, there it is. Reporters for the liberal L.A. Times were adding their own opinions to news stories, a violation of journalistic ethics. The practice was so obvious that the liberal editor was forced to tell them to stop.

KCEven Katie Couric sees a media bias:

Couric contended that “most people, I think, on the street would say the media it tends, tend to be more liberal than conservative” and she proposed: “Aren’t most people in journalism, primarily, except for say on Fox, and in certain conservative publications, aren’t they for the most part, and of course the media is, are not monolithic, but pro-choice, you know, against prayer in school, probably favor affirmative action? I mean don’t you think that’s, that’s fairly typical? And if so is it, why isn’t it fair to say that liberals, sort of, are controlling the mainstream media?”

For English, Please Press ‘1′

by La Shawn on May 19, 2004

in Illegal Aliens

William Donald Schaefer, Comptroller of Maryland, did a politically incorrect thing and publicly expressed frustration over “English-challenged” employees in the customer service industry. My favorite conservative columnist, Michelle Malkin, writes:

It all started a few weeks ago when former Gov. William Donald Schaefer walked into a McDonald’s restaurant he had frequented regularly for years. Schaefer, a Democrat who now works as comptroller under Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich, ordered the same thing every morning: hot tea and a biscuit. After encountering difficulty with a newly hired worker with poor English skills, he quit going to the restaurant out of frustration. “I don’t want to adjust to another language,” he declared publicly. “This is the United States. I think they should adjust to us.”

Who hasn’t had an exasperating experience like Schaefer’s?….At my local Wal-Mart, nationwide employer of workers of dubious immigration status, I listened as a checkout lady from Africa blabbed endlessly in her native language to two visitors hanging out by her station. She didn’t bother greeting me or looking at me. When I asked for a bag of items that she had forgotten to put in my cart, she ignored me. “Pardon me, can I have my bag?” I asked. “WAH?!” she finally said with a snarl, offended that I had interrupted her conversation.

Whatever happened to “Thank you, please come again”?

My “Schaefer experience”: My apartment building’s former maintenance man spoke very little English. It never bothered me until I began to have “rodent issues.” When he showed up, I asked him to please cover the hole behind the stove (that’s how Mr. Squeaky came in to visit me). He mumbled something in Spanish. I repeated myself. He mumbled something in Spanish. I repeated myself.

I spent the next few minutes gesturing like a cavewoman. Here we were, two people living in the 21st century, pointing and grunting. In retrospect, it’s funny.

What’s your funniest or worst “Schaefer experience”?

The Loony Left

by La Shawn on May 19, 2004

in Lunacy

I’m surrounded by liberals. Their hatred of George Bush has rendered them irrational. That irrationality causes them to suppress their own survival instinct. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m running out of words to express my dismay.

But Thomas Sowell’s got plenty of words in “The Hyena Press”:

Since the whole purpose of terrorism is to maximize the pain from whatever acts they can get away with, the media are making themselves accomplices of our enemies. Yet, despite their zeal for blaming others, there is seldom a second thought in the media about their own irresponsibility, not even after Communist officials in Vietnam have publicly admitted that they were losing the war on the ground there but were depending on winning the war politically in the American media….

Yet the very same media can get very squeamish when anyone calls an evil empire an evil empire or an axis of evil an axis of evil. They were shocked when Ronald Reagan stood in front of the Berlin Wall and demanded that the Soviets tear it down — but they were there with their cameras when the wall was dismantled.

See? They live in a world unconnected to reality. In our PC culture, calling a thing by its name (evil) is somehow worse than the thing itself. Calling someone a traitor is worse than actually being a traitor. That’s too judgmental. Extreme liberalism is a cult of death, and they want to bring us all down with them.

In Part II of Sowell’s article, he writes:

With a guerrilla and terrorist war going on in Iraq, nuclear weapons being made in North Korea, and American troops deployed in countries around the world, do those who are calling for Secretary Rumsfeld’s head think that he should be trying to keep track of every sparrow’s fall down at the level of individual privates and non-coms in the army?

A colonel is lucky to know what all his second lieutenants are doing. A Secretary of Defense who knows what all the privates and non-coms are doing could only be grossly neglecting his job as Secretary of Defense. He wouldn’t have enough time left to learn how to find his way around the Pentagon.

The Bush-haters are convinced that the prison scandal could not have happened without orders from higher-ups. Here then is our third question: “What hard evidence do you have?” The fact that you are just dying to believe something is not hard evidence — except perhaps about your state of mind.

Brent Bozell adds more:

But there’s more to this double-standard story. While NBC aired 58 stories on U.S. prison abuse in the first few weeks of that story, NBC aired only five stories over 16 months on the discovery of Saddam’s mass graves. Abu Ghraib holds 1,500 prisoners, a fraction of whom were abused. Saddam’s graves held as many as 300,000 people, all of whom were murdered. How is Abu Ghraib 10 times more important than that?

Irrational, treasonous and death-inclined is no way to go through life, libs.

The Dinosaur Roams Again

by La Shawn on May 18, 2004

in Dinosaurs

dinosaurI used to presume, a long, long time ago, that educated black folks ran the NAACP. That presumption was rebutted many years before they nominated an indicted child molester for an “image” award.

This morning I read this intriguing headline, “NAACP sues schools in Anne Arundel”, and I wondered what the problem was this time.

NAACP officials yesterday filed a class-action discrimination complaint against the Anne Arundel County school system, claiming blacks are disproportionately removed from classrooms and still separated from whites through advanced-placement classes.

“We believe African-American youths are referred to the [principal's] office more frequently and for racially motivated reasons, which results in greater suspensions and expulsions, as well as greater dropout rates,” said Gerald Stansbury, president of the county’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “Our youth are conspicuously absent from advance-placement classes, the gifted and talented programs, as well as the International Baccalaureate program.

The suit was filed yesterday, the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. What a coincidence!

[click to continue…]

The (Rich) Common Man

by La Shawn on May 18, 2004

in Liberals - Kerry

Wealthy, liberal elites like John Kerry know what’s good for the rest of us. While they preach “tolerance” and “diversity”, they live as far away from black people as they can get.

Yet, they want to force their Marxist ideals on everybody else. Their vision of a classless society doesn’t apply to themselves, only to us ordinary folks.

A man living off the hard work of his wife’s first husband wants it to stay that way, make no mistake about that. But career politicians like Kerry study human weakness. Fanning the flames of class envy and playing on black people’s fears of “racist” conservatives are the quickest ways to get a sound bite (besides having sex with an intern in the Oval Office). Given man’s fallen nature, I wouldn’t expect anything more.

On the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, this is what the man of the people had to say:

“We have certainly not met the promise of Brown when, in too many parts of our country, our school systems are not separate but equal, they are separate and unequal.”

So why did this hypocrite, like so many of his elitist friends, send his kids to private schools instead of “integrated” government-run schools so he could help fulfill “the promise of Brown“?

“Today, more than ever, we need to renew our commitment to one America.”

Does he mean one race? One class? I won’t touch the “one race” thing, but does “one America” mean he’s ready to give up his wife’s first husband’s fortune so he can be “middle-class” like you and me?

“You cannot promise no child left behind and then pursue policies that leave millions of children behind. Because that promise is a promissory note to all of America’s families that must be paid in full.”

“Promissory note” is code for “your tax dollars will continue to finance bloated, failed social programs that make rich liberals like me feel good about ourselves.”

“We should not delude ourselves into thinking that the work of Brown is done when there are those who still seek, in different ways, to see it undone. To roll back affirmative action to restrict equal rights to undermine the promise of our Constitution.”

Equal justice before the law is more precise than “equal rights”, but liberals talk out of both sides of their mouths whenever they utter “equal rights” in the same context as “affirmative action.” There is nothing affirming about lowered standards, and the only action going on is discrimination, which, under our Constitution, is actionable.

When I ask liberals why they’re voting for John Kerry, the answers usually range from anger over “Bush’s war” in Iraq to those “tax cuts for the rich” to “He is not-Bush.” Nothing, and I mean nothing, positive about John Kerry or his agenda.

I have yet to hear or read a coherent argument why anyone who is not white and rich (and living in California, Massachusetts or Manhattan) would vote for an elitist, aloof, race-pandering opportunist like John Kerry.

But I’m a patient woman. I’ll wait until I’m 80 if I have to. But that’s it!

Say You Want A Revolution?

by La Shawn on May 17, 2004

in Cultural Decline

globeWhen I got to the end of Pat Buchanan’s latest column, Rise of a Judicial Dictatorship, I laughed and shuddered at the same time:

“Today, we meekly await the court’s judgment on whether we will have to legalize marriage between homosexuals. Were George III to return to life, he would roar with laughter at what a flock of sheep the descendants of the American rebels have become.”

After reading that, my mind drifted back to my Sesame Street/Electric Company days (I’m dating myself), and I started thinking about those Schoolhouse Rock songs that came on between cartoons. By watching these short cartoons I memorized the Preamble to the Constitution as a child, how a bill becomes law, how the nervous system works and many other things.

My favorite was the one about the American Revolution. As I sang, “No more kings, no more kings!” along with the colonists, I had no idea what that meant. I do now, but it seems many Americans don’t. The American Revolution is little more than a footnote in the history of our country, but Buchanan’s column inspired me to blog about this astounding event.

In a nutshell: King George III wanted his American colonies to remain subservient subjects. As Great Britain’s empire grew, it needed more money, so it passed a series of laws to raise revenue from the colonies, including the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act (which applied to newspapers, pamphlets, licenses, leases, or other legal documents). The colonists began to organize in revolt. Lead by Patrick Henry, the Virginia legislature denounced the acts as taxation without representation.

Concessions were made, but after a brief lull Britian was soon at it again, this time imposing duties on paper, glass, lead, and tea exported to the colonies. The rebellion eventually culminated in the Boston Tea Party, where a group of men disguised as Indians boarded three British ships docked in Boston harbor and dumped the tea.

To bring the colonies back in line, Britain passed a series of acts called Coercive Acts (the last straw!), designed to punish them. The war was on. I think you know how the story ends.

Buchanan reminds us that we’re a nation of laws, not of men. Regarding the Warren Court’s action in Brown v. Board of Education, he writes: “[T]he Warren Court launched a social, cultural and moral revolution and began openly to dictate to what had been a self-governing people.” Whether black or white, we should all be concerned about a runaway judiciary that seeks to write laws rather than interpret them, as designated in the Constitution.

Buchanan lists a series of Supreme Court decisions during the 50 years after Brown, which created new rights for criminals, declared that women had a right to kill their babies, approved continued, blatantly unconstitutional race discrimination (against whites), etc.

The more I read the last sentence of his column, the more I realized how right Buchanan is. Isn’t it ironic that we’ve forgotten how hard-won American freedom was? Blacks should especially be wary of a country run by a Court that routinely makes law. That’s how “Jim Crow” became the law of the land. But as long as they’re getting stuff they like (racial quotas and other perks) instead of stuff they don’t (slavery), many don’t care. Americans — black or white — have no sense of history.

After all, we’re “free.” So why are we still acting like subjects of a king?

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Onward, Christian Soldiers

by La Shawn on May 14, 2004

in Faith

crossThis is a special message to all who are in the body of Christ.

For the past week I’ve been blogging about the war and its atrocities. But as a witness to unbelievers and for the edification of believers, these matters must be put into a biblical context.

I don’t know about you, but in spite of everything that’s happened to this country in the last two weeks, I’m praising God this morning! I’m secure in the knowledge that He is in control, and nothing will frustrate His divine purpose.

Some commenters on this blog have either implied or said straight out that because Christ told us to love our enemies, it is inconsistent with His teachings for Christians to support the war in Iraq (or war in general). This may have been true before the Fall, but as I stated before, war is a consequence of sin. If you want to get rid of war and “give peace a chance”, you have to rid the world of sin.

To determine whether Jesus’ teachings are inconsistent with war, we must let the Bible speak for itself. Philosophical arguments and Scripture stripped from its context do not get to the heart of the matter.

The Bible makes distinctions between individual moral responsibility and governmental responsibility. To believers Christ says, “If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also….Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” The Sermon on the Mount, from which these words come, is a presentation of Christian discipleship, not a call to pacifism. Jesus was referring to our individual persecution as believers. We’re to pray for those who mock or harass us for our beliefs, but we are not prohibited from defending ourselves or others against the threat of robbers, rapists, murderers, etc., as permitted by law.

This is also clearly evident when He tells us that a man has no greater love than to lay down his life for a friend. The laying down of one’s life implies defending that friend against attack, which may result in our death.

When it comes to governmental responsibility, we read about the role and purpose of government in Romans 13:

For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. (3-5)

Our government has a God-given responsibility to protect us from attack, including warring with our enemies if need be. This does not negate individual Christians’ God-given responsibility to pray for evil-doers. Defending the innocent against evil is not inconsistent with Christ’s teachings.

Why must these things be? Rest assured that one day we will know the why of all things. As you read headline after sad headline, remember that Satan is a defeated foe. For God’s own purpose, the evil one is allowed to roam the earth wreaking havoc until the King returns to cast him and his minions into the pit of hell. Christ says, “[W]hen you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is not yet.” (Mark 13:7)

The end is not yet. It will get worse before it gets better. With a follower of Christ sitting in the White House, Satan is working overtime, and it may be God’s will that George Bush is defeated in November. God is awesome and will remain so no matter who our next leader will be.

The culmination of world events — the threat of Islamofascism, rampant sexual perversion, murders committed with glee — is not coincidental. God’s purpose will be revealed, and we know He has sovereignly decreed all things for His glory, though our finite minds cannot fully grasp this infinite concept.

Here is wisdom: When Christ returns, all who “sleep” will be resurrected, some to eternal life with Christ, others to eternal damnation in hell, so that “[A]t the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:10-11) Every creature will acknowledge the Lordship of Christ!

If there is someone reading this blog who doesn’t know Christ, I implore you to heed the warning. You will know Him sooner or later. Right now, you are under God’s wrath. Despite your unbelief, rebellion and hostility toward Jesus Christ, there will be a reckoning for your rebellion.

But our glorious Father in heaven has provided a way to avoid that reckoning through His Son Jesus. Our sin separates us from God, but believing on His Son and trusting Him alone for salvation provides an escape from the eternal damnation we deserve. Confess your sinfulness and unworthiness before God, ask His forgiveness and accept that Christ paid for your sins as He hung on that cross. If you want more information or wish to contact me privately, e-mail me at ***.

“Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to God our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen.”

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The Enemy Within

by La Shawn on May 13, 2004

in Rants

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not traitor, he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman orator and statesman, circa 45 B.C.

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