Thanks for
reading this. Whether on-line or in
print, I sincerely appreciate it.
There’s an old supposedly Chinese saying, “May you live in interesting times.” One problem though – there’s no known Chinese
saying like that. The closest one is
actually from a 17th Century Chinese short story -- “Better to be a dog in a peaceful
time, than to be a man in a chaotic period." The way things are nowadays, even a dog’s outta luck.
Last week,
I was watching the Director of National Intelligence,
James Clapper,
when he described the current Middle Eastern
refugee crisis as a “disaster
of Biblical proportions." Clapper went on to say that he worries about
the background of some of those fleeing Iraq and Syria. I’ll take, “What Can Go Wrong With That?” for 10,000 Alex. These times are not
just interesting, they’re downright chaotic.
Sadly though, most Americans are simply not interested.
One of the
reasons I‘m thankful you’re reading this – it shows you’re concerned. So many of our fellow countrymen (and
millions of the illegals living here), just don’t care enough about America to
stay informed. I offer Obama’s
reelection and Hillary’s candidacy as sad proof of our uninformed masses.
This
brings me to a recent exchange between Dr. Ben Carson and Donald Trump. Last week, Carson was asked by
a reporter how he was different from Trump.
"Probably the biggest thing -- I've realized where my success has
come from and I don't in anyway deny my faith in God." Carson continued to cite what he said was one
of his favorite Bible verses, "By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches
and honor and life and that's a very big part of who I am. I don't get
that impression with [Trump] him -- Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't get
that."
Aside from the
fact that Dr. Carson demonstrated it’s hard to humbly discuss one’s own
humility, it’s not clear to me that anyone who believes they’re the one most
qualified to assume the highest office in the most powerful nation in the world
could list humility as one of their foremost attributes. Granted, he was just answering their
question. That said, I must agree with Dr. Carson
– I don’t get that impression of Trump either.
Maybe that’s why Trump is so refreshing.
Carson is obviously a
pious man, but he certainly violated the Eleventh Commandment as proclaimed by Ronald Reagan -- our savior from
the Carter years. As “Saint Reagan”
declared, “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.” Perhaps especially when talking about your own
humility. The guiding principle for
these interesting and difficult times needs to be that espoused by the late
William F. Buckley, Jr. Buckley said we
should nominate, "the
rightward-most viable candidate."
Consider now the last seven years under the self-professed
Christian and Constitution scholar Barrack Obama. Christians are being attacked all over the
world – physically in the Middle East, North Africa and elsewhere, politically
in the US and Europe. Islamic countries
are so bad now that Muslims don’t even want to live in them. The Constitution has been trashed to the
point that it’s not even worth the parchment it was written on. And what is our current National Security
Strategy – the Obama Doctrine? Senator
Ron Johnson called it, “Peace through withdrawal.” I’d call it, “Losing from behind.”
Dr. Robert Jeffress,
pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, said it this way, “There
is a palpable feeling among many Christians (as well as non-Christians) that
our nation has been in a downward death spiral during the last seven years
of President Obama’s administration.
Some feel that the 2016 election may be the last opportunity to reverse
that trend...Trump, they believe, is the only candidate with the leadership
skills necessary to lead us out of that mess.”
So why Trump?
Consider this humble proclamation by The Donald, “We’ll win so much if I’m
elected you’ll get bored with winning!”
That’s my kind of boredom. Trump
also said people are shocked when they found out he’s protestant. "I am
Presbyterian. And I go to church and I love God and I love my
church." Maybe he does, maybe he
doesn’t. If I may quote Hillary for a
moment, “At this point, what difference does it make?”
Truthfully,
any of the Republicans would be great, Christian or not. As Pastor Jeffress also said, “Evangelicals
no longer require their president to be one of them; they just want a president
who doesn't hate them.”
This column appears
in The Upson Beacon, 16 SEP 2015 published in Upson County, GA.
4 comments:
I mentioned in a comment on a different blog that it is my understanding that Christian military chaplains are being gagged and otherwise harassed in favor of those who tend to their muslim and even Wiccan "flocks". Obama - self-promoted as supposed a Christian - cannot work up the least interest in the massacre of Christians in the Middle East and Africa. Militant atheists harass Christians who try to continue the traditions of even such barely denominational things such as Christmas wreaths, let alone manger scenes.
As an agnostic, although raised as a Roman Catholic, it horrifies me to see Christianity so widely abused in a country born of Christians who were refugees from religious intolerance, a country where "In God We Trust" was such an important concept that it was struck on our currency.
Like so many other aberrations perpetrated by the Left, the attack on the Judeo-Christian moral code, the successful (so far, at least) degeneration and acceptance of deviancy of moral behavior, and the replacement of true religious tolerance by an insistence upon "tolerance" of everything _except_ Christianity, is an obscenity that should cause even the non-religious such as I a feeling of outrage.
How sad that we have come to the point where we would be happy to settle for a President who doesn't actually wish for our demise. We should NEVER have settled for a President who hates the very country that elected him - and then re-elected him, knowing he (taught for twenty years by "Reverend" Wright), and the steatopygous female he pretends to be married, to hate America.
I fear that the mechanism of voting and the election cycle may be so well controlled by the Left that we may never see a free and honest election again, but if we are able to elect someone actually of our own choosing, it had better be someone like Trump or Cruz. Even though many may feel any Republican would be better than what we currently have for a President, you have only to look at Boehner and McConnel to realize that is not necessarily the case. I really don't believe a Bush or even a Rubio would improve things at all.
Great post. I too follow the Buckley principle, so Trump is not who I plan to vote for in the primary. However, the other GOP campaigns, including my guy, are dying a fast death as Trump has sucked all the oxygen from the room. Trump may get my vote in March only because he will be the last man standing.
He may not be conservative, but he showed up to win.
Clearly, anyone who as achieved the level of success that Mr. Trump and Dr. Carson have achieved must (out of necessity) have a strong ego. Both of them know they're good at what they do -- they can't be otherwise. (I know I wouldn't want a surgeon digging in my brain who didn't think he was good at it -- and had the creds to back it up).
Nor could anyone consider running for any sort of elected office do so without thinking he's the best for the job.
That said, there's a difference between what I think is a healthy ego as demonstrated by Dr. Carson, and an overdeveloped ego as demonstrated by Mr. Trump.
Don't get me wrong, I like a lot of what Mr. Trump has to say -- and it is refreshing to see these thoughts presented forcefully. But I find his obnoxious brashness off-putting. Whereas Dr. Carson shows that he can be equally passionate about the issues without being bombastic.
Sorry, but all of the other potential candidates (excepting Ms. Fiorina) are from the establishment that got us into the mess we're in. Maybe some, like Senators Paul and Cruz, are far enough from the center of it, but they're still part of the it. And I have zero trust and/or respect left for EITHER of the party establishments.
Ecclesiastes 9
American King James Version
4 For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion.
5 For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.
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