A Second Quote From The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible

Emphasis, where present, is mine and in bold:

One of the essential intellectual building blocks of a liberal democracy--the belief in the fundamental equality of human beings and their "unalienable rights"--is not derived from secular philosophy but from the Bible.

More specifically, belief in human equality is derived from the basic theocentric values of the Hebrew scriptures and intensified in the teachings and deeds of the carpenter of Nazareth. Jesus taught the world outside the small circle of Judaism that God hears the cry of the poor, that the widow's mite is worth more than a king's golden treasures in heaven.

No one in the ancient world believed this.

In fact, there was nothing more self-evident in the ancient world than the fact that men--to say nothing of women--are not created equal.

In The Republic, the Greek philosopher Plato insisted that the gods create superior human beings who are fit to rule--he called them the Guardians--and inferior human beings who are to be ruled.

The inferior classes have few if any rights, and much of The Republic is proto-fascist in its advocacy of "strong men," eugenics, and absolute obedience to the State.

The People of Israel rejected this pagan totalitarianism.

More than 2,500 years before Baron de Montesquieu and John Locke, the biblical prophets Jeremiah, Amos, Isaiah, and Hosea proclaimed the equality of all human beings in the eyes of heaven--and the fact that rulers, too, will be held accountable by God.

The prophet Isaiah delivered the Word of God to the people of Israel in the eighth century BC:

Woe to those who enact evil statutes.
And to those who constantly record unjust decisions,
So as to deprive the needy of justice,
And rob the poor of My people of their rights (mishpat),
In order that widows may be their spoil,
And that they may plunder the orphans (Is 10:1-2).

The prophet Jeremiah, writing a century later, also had harsh words for those who dare trample upon the rights of the poor:

For wicked men are found among my people....
They have become great and rich.
They are fat, they are sleek,
They also excel in deeds of wickedness;
They do not plead the cause,
The cause of the orphan, that they may prosper;
They do not defend the rights of the poor.
"Shall I not punish these people?" declares the Lord, "On a nation such as this
Shall I not avenge Myself?" (Jer 5:26, 28-9)

These sentiments were unprecedented in the cultural history of humanity: The creator of the universe will hold unjust rulers accountable for violating the rights of the poor.

But Jesus went further--always further. He took this profound revelation of the biblical prophets and pushed it to extremes.

Not merely are the innocent poor welcomed into God's kingdom, Jesus said, but all the repentant outcasts and abandoned lowlifes of the world--prostitutes and lepers, scammers and ripoff artists and beggars, liars and crooks (tax-collectors), foreigners, heretics, even despised pagan soldiers.

[snip]

The political and social implications of Jesus's radical egalitarianism are obvious. If all human beings are equal in the eyes of God--if, as Jesus said, God causes the rain to fall on the just and unjust alike--then that implies that human beings, too, should treat each other equally.

[snip]

Another way in which human equality and the concept of fundamental human rights were reinforced was through the Christian ban against infanticide and abortion. Infanticide, which tended to be practiced, then as now, disproportionately against female babies, was forbidden--as was abortion--precisely because life was viewed as a fundamental human right. In the Didache or "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles"--written in 70 AD and one of the earliest Christian documents outside the new Testament--Christians are told that "you shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child" (2:1-2). Many pagan commentators noticed this strange Christian refusal to kill children (a view also shared by Jews).

The fact that all human infants--including even female infants--possessed, in Christian eyes, a fundamental right to life, naturally reinforced in the Christian community the belief that human beings did possess certain rights that no one could legitimately abrogate.

[snip]

The ancient world did not have any true conception of human rights. Socrates insisted that he had a right to teach the truth as he understood it; the Athenian assembly disagreed and forced him to commit suicide for his trouble.

For the ancients, with a few exceptions, the state and religion were one and the same thing: what the state decreed to be just was, in fact, what was just.

[snip]

The early Christian philosophers, strongly influenced by the teaching of Jesus and the theocentric ideas inherited from Judaism, believed in what is now called natural law. In essence, natural law is simply the idea that there is an objective moral order, established by God and grounded in an essential humanity, which stands above mere human law and against which mere human law must be judged.

[snip]

In conclusion, what we can say is this. The ancient world had no concept of what we today call human rights. That concept arose from the assumptions and declarations of the Torah and the biblical prophets, was deepened and radicalized in the deeds and teachings of Jesus Christ, and was further universalized as the early Christian community left the ethnic confines of Judaism and bgan to evangelize in every language and among diverse groups of people.

As the Christian church began to think through the political implications of the belief that every human being is a child of God, created in his image and likeness and possessing an eternal destiny, canon lawyers began to insist that there were God-given rights that could not be justly abrogated by government officials. As these ideas developed, in both Catholic and Protestant countries, the Christian tradition of natural rights eventually developed into a theory of self-government that directly influenced the Founders of the American republic.

Those modern philosophers who rejected the truths of biblical Christianity--such as David Hume, Thomas Hobbes, Rousseau, and Karl Marx--not surprisingly also rejected the biblical, Christian theory of human rights.

In one way or another, I keep saying this: your rights have to come from somewhere, that is, your rights must have an origin. Do they come from yourself? Do they come from society? Or do they come from God? If your rights come from yourself, do not other men's rights come from themselves? Will there not be conflicts as your "rights" interfere with their "rights"? Under such circumstances, who is to say what is "right"? If your rights come from society, cannot society take them away? Of course it can.

If your rights come from God, though, they may not be violated but with His wrath.

Francis Schaeffer Spells Out Our Oncoming Doom

This was filmed back in the seventies, if I recall correctly. I only tell you that because if I didn't, you'd think someone was commenting on the state of our nation today. Listen and weep. It's not as long as it looks; the last half of the clip is mostly credits.

Summing Up Thoughts on Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin's in the spotlight right now, what with her book having come out and all, and the incredibly vicious attacks that I fully expected have commenced.

My thinking on her hasn't changed. I thought I'd go back and quote snippets from things I've written before that pretty much sum up what I think:

Just because I share many of her political ideas doesn't mean that I will ever forget that she is a professional politician. Turning anything and everything to one's political advantage is what politicians do. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and politicians never, ever forget that the whole game is publicity, sound bites, money, and getting elected.

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Do I think she's the perfect candidate? Heck, no. To my mind, she comes across like a reasonably intelligent, tough-minded redneck woman, with a certain amount of basic common sense, and a grasp of history, foreign policy, and economics to match.

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But I will readily admit that Sarah Palin isn't my idea of the perfect conservative. While she is clearly not stupid (despite the repeated attempts to portray her as such) she doesn't appear to be the sort of deep thinker that John Adams was. She doesn't appear to have the expertise that allowed Alexander Hamilton to write his Report on Manufactures. She's no Samuel Rutherford, nor a Thomas Reid. That doesn't mean I wouldn't vote for her; you have to compare her to who else is available, and frankly, there isn't anyone running, as far as I can tell, that I would think of as a real conservative, no one whom I would think of as particularly intellectually distinguished or extraordinarily talented, intelligent, and informed. It seems pointless to complain of Sarah Palin's lack of intellectual gravitas when comparing her to the likes of Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee (I am not calling either gentleman stupid, merely pointing out that they don't exactly come across as intellectual heavyweights, either. And don't get me started on the intellectual heft of candidates on the Left.).

And Sarah Palin does have one thing going for her, one thing that all of us red-state rednecks can see quite clearly, and since so many commentators don't quite seem to grasp it, I'll spell it out for those folks in small words:

She.

Means.

It.

All Republican candidates, for example, blah-blah about the Second Amendment. Sarah Palin shoots moose, and apparently has been doing stuff like that all her life. I mean, my word, the woman pretty obviously actually likes guns! All Republican candidates blah-blah about "values." Sarah Palin cares for Trig, and actually belongs to and has always attended church--not a politician's church, but honest-to-goodness reg'lar ol' redneck churches. All Republican candidates blah-blah about small government. Sarah Palin actually tries to shrink the wretched thing. And so on down the line.

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She may not be a philosophical or theological sophisticate, but she's firm and unabashed about her faith in Jesus Christ and the authority of Scripture. She may not be an economic sophisticate on par with Thomas Sowell, but she knows enough about economics to know that free markets work better than statist controlled economies. She's unashamedly and unabashedly America first. She's committed to smaller government and more liberty. She's firmly committed to the traditional family. She loves guns and hunting and darn near every non-PC point of view and activity you can name. She thinks the Constitution doesn't give government unlimited power. She's a fierce partisan for her point of view. In short, she's about what most people I know are like.

And I think what really scares the left, what really drives them nuts about this woman, is their underlying sense that there may, just may, be enough people like her left in this country to shift the country away from the direction it is currently headed, if only they can find someone to rally around.

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Folks on the hard left despise people like Sarah Palin, and despise folks like me and most of the people I know. When you see how they treat Palin, you see how they will deal with me and thee, should they get a chance.

And there you pretty much have it. That's what I think, and I expect I'm not alone.

I Would Have You Remember This

Yes, I know I posted it recently. Here 'tis again. This needs to be a part of who you are.

I'm Afraid, Statists, That I Can't Promise You Smooth Sailing

As the Senate creeps ever closer to a vote on Obamacare, one thing keeps drumming through my brain: these people don't care what the voters think.

48 percent of the voters voted against the Statist party (aka the Democrats, as currently constituted) in the last election. Rasmussen--the pollster who most accurately predicted the last election, IIRC--conducts poll after poll after poll showing sliding Democrat support in general and a definite tilt against President Obama, with more than half those polled saying that they at least somewhat disapprove of his performance and about forty percent saying that they strongly disapprove. Democrats, overall, took it in the shorts in the last set of elections. It is clear as crystal that voters, including those oh-so-precious independents, do not care for the direction that the president and congress are taking the country.

This is not stopping the Democrats. They appear not to care what happens to them--or at least to some of them--in the next election. I can understand why, to a degree. If Obamacare is signed into law, it will require a massive electoral landslide to overturn it, as any effort to repeal it will face the same obstacle the Democrats are now facing in passing it: the Senate cloture rules.

Right now, I'm discouraged. I think my country is being sold down the river by its elected officials. But I can, I think, say this:

Statists, this will not be as easy as you think. As a matter of fact, it's likely to be very tough going indeed. You are looking at trying to turn a country where at least forty percent of the people are dead-set against you and another 15 percent or more are trending that way into something they don't want.

Good luck with that. You are going to need it, for it is going to be an absolute nightmare trying to maintain the level of statist control you desire over those people.

More on Palin

I thought this, from David Harsanyi, was hilarious:

...one can (as I do) admire Palin's charisma and roots, appreciate her dissent on the policy experiments brainy folks in Washington are cooking up and, at the same time, believe she has no business running for president in 2012.

In fact, all you haters out there motivate me to root for her.

There's nothing wrong, for instance, with The Associated Press' assigning a crack team of investigative journalists to sift through every word of Palin's book, "Going Rogue," for inaccuracies. You only wish similarly methodical muckraking were applied to President Barack Obama's two self-aggrandizing tomes -- or even the health care or cap-and-trade bills, for that matter.

The widely read blogger and purveyor of all truth, Andrew Sullivan, was impelled to blog 17 times on the subject of Palin on the same day Americans learned that the Obama administration had awarded $6.7 billion in stimulus money to nonexistent congressional districts -- which did not merit a single mention. To see what is in front of one's nose demands a constant struggle, I guess.

Something drives people nuts about this woman, drives them nuts, it seems, far out of all proportion to the way anyone else drives (or ought to drive) them nuts. I've written on the subject before, and probably will do a short recap sometime soon, if I can get the time, but, in short, I think it's this:

She's not too far off what America was like, overall, circa 1960-1970, and probably is still not too far off what, oh, somewhere between 40 and 60 percent of the public is like. Even forty percent is an awful lot of people. I think that what some people are afraid of is that as long as Sarah Palin is on the national radar, those people have someone to rally 'round, a visible figurehead, and may actually prove to be sufficiently potent to temporarily (or even permanently!) derail our slide into total statism--an outcome they find completely unacceptable.

I read one local lib blog that regularly puts on full display their complete contempt for anyone who believes the Bible, believes in traditional marriage, likes guns and respects gun rights, likes hunting, doesn't think an expansive welfare state will work, etc., despite living in the heart of a state full of folks just like this, the reddest of the red states (a fact of which I am very proud). Folks on the hard left despise people like Sarah Palin, and despise folks like me and most of the people I know. When you see how they treat Palin, you see how they will deal with me and thee, should they get a chance.

Quote of the Day

Sorry, Dave. I'm swiping your oft-used title.

Michelle Malkin saith:

Yes, we’re “extreme.”

No apologies here for being extremely outraged at Washington’s ongoing generational theft, extremely mortified at our imperiled national security, extremely aggravated at the globe-trotting groveler-in-chief, and extremely disgusted with business-as-usual cronyism, pay-for-play thuggery in the Obama White House.

This is no time for mealy-mouthed moderation.

The only thing kowtowing will get you is rug burn.

I'm all for civility in public discourse, but there's no point in refusing to say clearly what ought to be obvious for all to see.