Culture

Churchill and the Crusades

There’s been a lot of online banter about both Churchill and the Crusades.

My main response is that it is amazing how many people want to judge history based on modern events and perspectives. We have seen this recently with the American founding, the Civil War, etc. And now with Churchill.

Was Churchill an imperialist? Absolutely. And that was wrong. But at the time it counted most, Churchill fought against German imperialism, going to the defense of smaller countries to keep them from being swallowed up by the Third Reich. His actions ultimately led to the demise of the British Empire, which no longer had the men or wealth to stay whole. Churchill’s actions were the opposite of Franklin Delanor Roosevelt’s response to Soviet aggression. He abandoned much of Eastern Europe to the Soviet Empire. And used the war to expand the American empire. Historian Darryl Cooper is wrong to call Churchill the “villain” of WWII using his revisionist history.

On to the Crusades. Apparently, some in the church are using the Crusades as a motivational tool to get young men to run from the feminized version of men being taught in much of our culture. This has led some to suggest that using as models men who led many men, women, and children to their deaths in the name of Holy War might not be best for our young men today.

The Crusades are a mixed bag. Much of what happened in the Crusades can be laid squarely at the feet of popes who used them to gain power and wealth. Likely, much of the Crusades never would have happened without the popes and those who likewise sought to benefit from them.

Yet we have to think about the Crusades in their historical context. At that point, for about 400 years, Muslim invaders had been driving Christians out of their homes and countries or killing them before they could get away. The Muslims had already taken Northern Africa, Turkey, and Spain from Christians. And Muslims had their sights set on the rest of Europe. In many ways, much of what happened in the Crusades was defensive in nature. Either because Europeans sought to retake lands that had been Christian not so long ago or to prevent future incursions of Islam into Europe.

I’m not sure I’d point to the Crusades as a model for young men today; I’d suggest Abraham, Jacob, Joshua, David, Stephen, and Paul are great role models. But I will say this for many of the crusaders, they knew who the enemy was: Islam. Which is a lot more than I can say for many in the West today, including many in the church. Islam has been set on eliminating Christians and Christianity for better than 1300 years and shows no indication of stopping.

What makes me sad is that over the centuries hundreds of thousands, or perhaps millions, of brave men died successfully protecting the West against the invasion of Muslims. Yet, in the last thirty years or so, our governments have essentially surrendered to Islam and turned places like London, Malmo (Sweden), the Twin Cities, the Paris suburbs, and other Western cities into strongholds of Islam. From which, unless Westerners and Muslims both repent, it looks like the Islamic invasion may succeed because of the West’s moral and intellectual decline. We could use some of past’s clarity today.

Don’t get me wrong; I am a long-term optimist. Jesus Christ will defeat His enemies in history, and every knee will bow before Him as Lord and King. As this happens, Christianity will be victorious over Islam. I just wish these things would come to pass without so many examples of our foolishness and rebellion against God. His will be done.

If you’d like to learn more about the Crusades, I’d recommend Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam, by Raymond Ibrahim.

A Waste of Brainpower and Money

Americans spend more than $50 billion a year on space exploration. This includes not only money spent on rocket ships, space stations, and satellites, but also on scientists and researchers at universities and elsewhere.

But a funny thing is happening. The more money we spend, the more most of the scientists find out they are wrong. Here are a few examples from recent headlines:

Of course, it is okay to be wrong; the scientific method is based on making guesses about something then testing to see if you are right and wrong. The problem here is that most of these billions are being spent on proving ideas we already know are wrong.

All of the headlines and much of the research and exploration are related to our search for origins, of the universe, our planet, life, etc. No doubt there are things be discovered in this search. But we won’t find much that is meaningful and we will waste billions of dollars if the search begins with a lie, the denial of Genesis 1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

Denying this is a lie for all humans, just not Christians, as Romans 1:19–20 makes clear:

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

In the Bible, we have eyewitness accounts of God creating all things (Christ and the Holy Spirit). Yet scientist continue the search for dark matter, which they have never found any proof for (see above), because it is needed to substantiate the increasingly falsified Big Bang thesis. Even many secular scientists have given up on the Big Bang and are looking elsewhere for answers.

Of course, they’ll keep coming up snake eyes until they look to God. No need looking for secret lives of universes, the multiverse, or galaxies swallowing galaxies to figure out where we came from.

One wonders what we might be able to learn about God and His creation if all that brainpower and money (not that the government ought to be funding it) were focused on research that begin with the premise, “God created the heavens and the earth.” If you’d like to get a taste of what could be accomplished with this, I recommend visiting the Biblical Science Institute founded by Dr. Jason Lisle, a Christian astrophysicist. Another good site is Creation Ministries International. And Answers in Genesis.

Gene Veith is a Lutheran evangelical and former cultural editor at World magazine. In a recent article ($), he details what is being called black flight, i.e., blacks leaving traditional inner-city enclaves like Washington D.C., Chicago, and Detroit.

Washington, D.C., has long been a “minority majority” city. It isn’t any more. In 1970, more than 71% of the population was Black. According to the 2010 census, the percentage was 59%. Now, though, according to the latest census, that number has dropped to 41%.

Chicago has been a major center of Black culture since the earlier 20th century. In 1980, some 40% of the city’s population was Black. Today that number has dropped to 29%.

A similar exodus has taken place in nine of the ten American cities with the largest Black populations. Politico is running a series on the phenomenon entitled The Next Great Migration.

Why are black Americans moving? They seem to be moving away from bastions of liberalism in cultural and economic decline in the Northeast and Midwest to the same places whites are moving to, often in the South, where they can get jobs and experience less economic oppression.

Anyone paying attention has noticed that Whoopi Goldberg was suspended from The View for two weeks for "her wrong and hurtful comments" about the Holocaust.

Of course, we have heard a lot about hurtful comments of late; much of it coming from adults who were pandered to as kids and are now trying to recreate the coddling of their parents in their universities, jobs, news feeds, and social media hangouts. So before jumping onto the "Cancel Whoopi" bandwagon, perhaps we should examine what Goldberg actually said to see whether the accusations against are accurate:

Let’s be truthful about it because [the] Holocaust isn’t about race. It’s not about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man.

One can see why people might be upset about this; throughout history Jews have been attacked simply because they are Jewish. Yet, it is impossible to argue against Goldberg's third sentence. The German extermination of more than six million Jews is one of the most inhumane man against man acts in world history. Though we can think of some others:

the murder by Pol Pot and the Communists of 1.5 to 2 million Cambodians, nearly one-quarter of the nation's population, from 1975 to 1979
perhaps as many as 1 million Tutsis killed in Rwanda in 1994 by the Hutu nationalists
the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Turks during World War I which resulted in perhaps 1 million killed
the 5 million or more Russians--including about 4 million Ukrainians--starved to death by Stalin and the Communists in the Soviet Union between 1931 and 1934
the more than 63 million American babies killed in (or near) the womb since the Supreme Court of the United States made abortion legal in all 50 states in 1973

As horrendous as these acts are, it is no mystery why they occur:

“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

“Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.”

“There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Romans 3:10-18)

We had a great conversation in my church recently about the issues coming up at next week’s General Assembly, thanks to the great work of several elders wading through all the overtures and presenting to us the details.

Probably the issue that brought about the most conversation was the ongoing concern by many in the PCA about an openly gay, though celibate, man (Greg Johnson) serving as a pastor in our denomination. There was some discussion about the extent to which he “identifies” as gay, so I thought it worthwhile to share what he spoke on the floor of GA in 2019:

“I knew I was gay at age 11 … that was the day I realized Christians hated gay people. … At this point I am 46 years old and still same-sex attracted. My orientation has not changed. … I love Jesus and I want to serve Him and I am willing to suffer for Him and yet, friends, when I read Article 7 of the Nashville Statement, it hurts, because Article 7 says it is a sin to adopt a homosexual self-conception. And we don’t do that for any other people group. We don’t tell alcoholics that it is a sin to conceive of themselves as alcoholics because drunkenness is a sin. It is the beginning of learning to manage your alcoholism in obedience to Christ so that it doesn’t define you. We don’t tell paraplegics that they should conceive of themselves as able-bodied because that is God’s ideal.

Johnson also made statements about his beliefs on being gay in his "coming article" article in Christianity Today:

Bill, I’m gay. ... There were two sons in our happy secular household. I was the gay one. ... I got my Easy-Bake Oven. But then I was sentenced to not one but two terms on a boys’ soccer team. ... At age 11 the realization hit me. The fact was that I felt toward other guys the way they felt toward girls. ... So there I was. A gay atheist teenager trying to cover over my shame. ... Decades have passed, and at age 46 I’m still a virgin fighting a constant battle for sexual holiness. (Goodness knows, for the last 15 years I haven’t been able to trust myself with an unmonitored internet connection.) ... When I welcome people to my fantastic little condo with my Saarinen table and Corbusier chairs, I compulsively mention that my undergrad was in architecture. It’s an instinctive strategy to obfuscate their gaydar. ... Even the language of same-sex attraction—which many believers have found helpful as a way to disassociate themselves from assumptions about being gay—feels to many others like a tool of concealment, as though I were laboring to minimize the ongoing reality of sexual orientations that in practice seldom change. ... Jesus hasn’t made me straight. But he covers over my shame. Jesus really loves gay people. ... My sexual orientation doesn’t define me. It’s not the most important or most interesting thing about me.

It is a good thing that Johnson says his sexual orientation doesn’t define him. Yet his narrative is clear that he was/is gay and is currently same-sex attracted. He also finds its hurtful that the GA would say “it is a sin to adopt a homosexual self-conception.” He sees himself as gay or same sex attracted and finds no problem with that (as long as he does not act out his attractions), though he does have problems with those who have problems with him or others adopting a homosexual self-conception.

I would add here is that Johnson is wrong when he says that “We don’t tell alcoholics that it is a sin to conceive of themselves as alcoholics.” Yes, we do. In fact, Scripture tells them that in Galatians 5:

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

We all know that people who have been drunk can go to heaven. It is when someone’s identity is in their drunkenness rather than in Christ that they are not going to inherit the kingdom. So when someone goes around identifying themselves with their sin (to be clear—it is not sinful to be a paraplegic), as in “gay” or “gay Christian,” or as a drunk, a murderer, or an adulterer, it is a very dangerous thing. Of course, drunks, gays, fornicators, etc. can repent of this identification and still inherit the kingdom. Which is why it is important for the church to tell them that persisting in identifying themselves with their sin can cost them their lives.

Our same-sex-attracted PCA pastor needs to hear this as much as we all do. Though I do not doubt the sincerity of his confession as a Christian, I believe—based on his public statements—that allowing him to continue as a pastor is not good for his spiritual well being and harms the witness and peace and purity of the church.

by Victor Davis Hansen

What will be the future of the mass hysteria spawned last summer? No one knows.

But its destination, if unchecked, will be ethnic tensions and sectarian strife at best akin to those in Brazil and India—or at worst Lebanon, Syria, and Rwanda.

Until just a few years ago, racial differences, according to polls, were more or less receding. Intermarriage between racial groups is at historic highs.

But by 2014-2015, with the birth of Black Lives Matter, its courting by the Obama Administration, and the emergence of the electronic social media mob and cancel culture, such progress seems to have ended. We have ceased seeing race as increasingly incidental, rather than essential to who we are.

The benchmarks of the Black Lives Matter and affiliated woke movements are overt racism, systemic untruth, and the hypocritical privilege of their elite architects.

by Liz George

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider a gun-rights case addressing the extent to which the Second Amendment protects Americans’ right to carry concealed firearms outside the home for self-defense.

NY State Rifle & Pistol Assoc. v. Corlett challenges the New York state requirement that individuals show “proper cause” to carry a gun, a rule that is often cited when applicants are denied the right to carry.

The case marks the first time in over a decade that the nation’s top court has agreed to step into the Second Amendment debate. The last time occurred in 2008 with District of Columbia v. Heller, which determined Americans have a constitutionally protected right to keep a handgun at home for self defense.

Justice Clarence Thomas has criticized his colleagues on the court for their refusal to hear similar cases in the past, saying, “The right to keep and bear arms is apparently this Court’s constitutional orphan.”

by David Horowitz

No one in his right mind could have been surprised by the verdict in the Minneapolis trial of Officer Derek Chauvin for the killing of George Floyd. For 11 straight months cities have been burned, people have been murdered and billions of dollars of property damage have been caused by a national lynch mob determined to be its own judge, jury and executioner.

Headed by Antifa and Black Lives Matter and supported by every so-called “Civil Rights” organization, the Democrat Party and its malignant leadership – Biden, Harris, Pelosi and Schumer, this lynch mob has been on the attack against law enforcement a decade and more. Their threat, No “Justice” No Peace, is a threat that more cities will be attacked, more people will die – perhaps even Chauvin case jurors – if the verdicts they want aren’t delivered. This is a criminal movement with a criminal mission: to substitute its own vigilante justice for America’s justice.

On the eve of the Chauvin trial the City of Minneapolis gave a $27 million settlement to the family of George Floyd – a career criminal and dangerous drug addict. The alleged crime was the wrongful death of Floyd. The settlement was made in advance of the evidence and of the trial. It was a blatant effort to put the authorities and taxpayers of Minneapolis in the camp of the lynch mob – telling the jury that the only justice lay in absolving Floyd of any complicity in his own death and the mayhem that followed.

Nonetheless, anxious that anything might be left to chance, Democrat congressional leader, Maxine Waters, demanded a first degree murder conviction, days before the verdict. The Farrakhanite Attorney General of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, hadn’t even charged Chauvin with First Degree murder, because it was preposterous. But Maxine was not content with letting justice take its course. The Alzheimer President couldn’t contain himself either. According to his opinion – as though he had watched and weighed the hundreds of hours of testimony, the evidence of Chauvin’s guilt was “overwhelming.” Really.

As soon as the formality of the trial was concluded the verdict demanded by the lynch mob was delivered with lightning speed: Guilty on all charges – murder and manslaughter, even though the murder charge didn’t make any legal sense, unless you think arresting a drug addled forged check passer and illegal substance ingester is a felony in itself. Second degree murder involves a killing in the course of committing a felony, and nothing else.

The speed of the decision was itself evidence that the jury hadn’t deliberated or even considered any of the evidence presented in the trial, as to what actually caused Floyd’s death, whether Chauvin acted in accordance with the standard procedures of the Minneapolis Police Department, and therefore whether there was any malice or inhumane disregard for Floyd’s life involved in Chauvin’s actions.

Read the rest of the article on the Powerline Blog.

Thought's on the Derek Chauvin Verdict?

by Andrew C. McCarthy

If you did not watch the Derek Chauvin trial, but only heard the inflammatory comments spewing out of the White House and the media-Democrat complex, there are things about it you would never know. And you’d be apt to believe the claims that American law enforcement is systemically racist. I watched the trial day in and day out, so let me cut you in on a few basic facts.

Not a shred of evidence was introduced at the trial that Derek Chauvin is a racist. None. There was nothing in the weeks of testimony that even hinted at such a thing. The prosecutors who aggressively urged the jury to convict Chauvin of murder never intimated that racism played any role in the crimes. They convincingly argued that he was a bad cop, not a racist cop.

The police did not hunt down George Floyd. They did not randomly happen upon him. They did not make a discriminatory choice to hassle him. Instead, the police responded to a citizen complaint from a local market, Cup Foods, based on a report by a young black cashier that Floyd had passed him a patently counterfeit $20 bill.
The young cashier considered not telling his manager about what Floyd had done. But then, under the Cup Foods rules, the $20 would have come out of his own pocket, which wouldn’t have been right.

Still, the police were not called right away. A complaint was lodged only after Cup Foods employees (including the young cashier) pleaded with Floyd, not once but twice, to return to the store and settle the matter. Floyd, who was parked across the street in the company of his suspected drug-dealer companion, was obviously high on drugs and uncooperative — to the extent he was responsive at all — in replying to the employees’ pleas.

Chauvin was a late arriver to the police interaction with Floyd. The first two cops on the scene were rookies: Alex Kueng, a young African-American officer who had joined the Minneapolis Police Department with the aspiration of helping make it more diverse and empathetic, and his partner, Thomas Lane — who, like Chauvin, is white, a fact that had no bearing on the case (i.e., there’s no evidence that Lane is a racist, either).

Floyd did not merely pass a counterfeit $20 bill. He was obviously under the influence of narcotics while seated behind the steering wheel of a Mercedes-Benz SUV. And he was obviously the driver; in the back seat of the SUV was Shawanda Hill, an old friend who testified that Floyd had offered to drive her home.

Had the police searched the car, which they would have had probable cause to do, they would have found at least one more counterfeit bill and illegal narcotics (which were found later). Floyd had methamphetamine and fentanyl in his system (enough of the latter, potentially, to be fatal to a person who had not built up a tolerance to it by years of opiate abuse). Police also later found pills containing these two controlled substances with Floyd’s saliva on them.

This simply was not, as the conventional narrative holds, a case of police overreacting to a trivial counterfeiting violation (and by the way, passing false currency is a crime under federal and state law).

Read the full article on NRO.

by George Parry

The accused’s presumption of innocence is a sacrosanct principle of our jurisprudence. But, as a practical matter in criminal jury trials, it’s a complete fiction. Despite the judge’s stern instructions about the presumption of innocence and the prosecutor’s unshifting burden to prove each and every element of the crime charged, most jurors will assume that the state must have had good reasons for arresting the defendant and, subconsciously or otherwise, start the case with a pro-prosecution bias.

So it is that, despite the legal presumption of innocence, as a matter of human nature, in almost all trials the defense bears the inescapable burden of overcoming the jury’s assumption of the defendant’s guilt. Consequently, in order to prevail, the defense must win the jury over either by picking apart the prosecution case or refuting it with compelling evidence.

And that did not happen in the trial of Derek Chauvin.

Let me pause at this point to make one thing clear. None of what I’m about to tell you is a criticism of Chauvin’s lawyer, Eric Nelson. In my opinion, Nelson showed a great deal of courage, grit, and determination in taking on the unpopular and dangerous task of defending Chauvin. As will be explained below, the court’s denial of the defense motion for change of venue out of the Hennepin County war zone sealed Chauvin’s fate before the trial even began. No lawyer, no matter how committed and capable, could have won this case under the oppressive threat of mob violence that prevails in Minneapolis.

Moreover, by last count, Nelson was up against a prosecution team of 17 lawyers (many of whom were on loan from big law firms), which occupied two full floors of the Hennepin County Government Center. The task of slugging it out in court under these stressful and difficult circumstances required cold nerve, unremitting effort, and commitment, all of which Nelson admirably demonstrated.

To be sure, I would have taken a much different approach to defending the case. But that doesn’t make me right and Nelson wrong. Given the dire and difficult circumstances that he faced, Nelson did a very creditable job.

As I argued in The American Spectator months ago, the defense had the impossible task of picking a fair, impartial, and unintimidated jury in Hennepin County where riots, looting, burning, and violence followed the death of George Floyd. Because the court denied the defendant’s motion for change of venue, Chauvin was tried before a jury that had to have been concerned about a repeat of riots, violence, and personal safety should they vote to acquit.

Read the rest of the article.

by Michael Tracey

You probably have noticed that corporations, academic institutions, elected officials, and virtually everyone else with a public-facing profile is extraordinarily passionate about “the work” of rectifying racial injustice in the United States. Often their passion compels them to recite almost the exact same words and phrases in response to current events, such as the Guilty verdict rendered Tuesday in the trial of Derek Chauvin. These displays of independent thought and moral reasoning are worthy of our deep and everlasting gratitude.

Some reactions to the verdict were abnormally intense, such as that of Vermont state legislator Kesha Ram, who reported having something like an out-of-body experience:

I don’t feel like I can get a full breath of air into my lungs. And the symbolism of that, and of what this country does to Black and Brown Americans praying for the faintest glimmer of justice, is not lost on me. It should not be lost on you, either. #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd

— Kesha Ram (@KeshaRam) April 20, 2021

My whole body is trying to absorb this guilty verdict and revoked bail with a disbelief lodged deep in my soul. It is accountability, and in this nation, the arc of the moral universe has just bent slightly toward justice. Prayers for the Floyd family. #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd

— Kesha Ram (@KeshaRam) April 20, 2021

But more typical were corporations, academic institutions, and elected officials vowing their resolve to continue “work” of an unspecified nature. Professional sports franchises have especially placed themselves at the vanguard of this new revolutionary consciousness. For example, the Minnesota Wild hockey team proclaimed that there is “still much work to be done.” And although the precise details of the forthcoming “work” were not clarified, we can all rest easy knowing that this hockey team has pledged its commitment to doing work of some kind, at some point in the future.

by John Davidson

Recent polls show about a quarter of American adults either don’t plan to get a COVID-19 vaccine or want to wait on it. The numbers have held steady for months: 27 percent in a recent Quinnipiac poll, 25 percent in an NPR/Marist poll from late March, and 30 percent in a Pew survey from mid-February. After federal health officials called for a pause in the distribution of Johnson and Johnson’s one-shot vaccine last week over fears of severe blood-clotting, the number of vaccine-hesitant Americans could be slightly higher now.

That means tens of millions of American adults won’t be getting a vaccine, at least not right away. Why? For corporate media, the answer is simple: those people are idiots who have either bought into crazy conspiracy theories about the pandemic or are simply too selfish and lazy to do the right thing. Dr. Anthony Fauci, for one, is very frustrated with them.

by Samuel Sey

Christians who embrace critical race theory are right about one thing: many white Christians are not loving black people. Except, they don’t know they are speaking about themselves.

If you love black people, you should hate critical race theory. If you love critical race theory, you’ll be tempted to hate people—especially black people who hate critical race theory.

When we choose to disagree with God to agree with critical race theorists, we’re not loving God and we’re not loving black people. When we choose to love critical race theory, we’re not choosing to love people, we’re choosing to love a philosophy—a philosophy that encourages us to love sin.

This is why some of the most hateful words I’ve ever received are from white people who believe they are loving black people by hating me.

Ian Fleming’s James Bond is the classic example of iconic figures sprouting from the popular spy/military/crime thriller genre of literature. Others include the French detective Jules Maigret who appeared in 75 Georges Simenon novels. More recently, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan topped the charts. But my favorite of them all is Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp.

Sadly, Flynn died of prostate cancer in 2013. Since then, the Mitch Rapp books have been written by Kyle Mills, who has done a good job of capturing much of what made Flynn’s novels so enjoyable. However, his latest in the series, Total Power, is clear evidence that Mills does not fully grasp the theme that had made Flynn and Rapp so popular.

Raise your hand if you think the police murdered George Floyd? Ok. Anyone believe they just wrongfully contributed to his death?

Given the role that Floyd's death has played in the turbulence and violence in our culture for much of this year, these are important questions to ask. Especially within the church.

In some ways, the death of George Floyd reminds me of the death of Duk Koo Kim. You may remember him. He was the Korean boxer who died while fighting Ray Mancini in the 1980s.

I'll never forget the picture above from the end of the fight. Kim is standing against the ropes--the referee just having called a TKO. But Kim is already a dead man--his brain was hemorrhaging. Just nobody knew it yet. This was not unlike the scenario for George Floyd by the time he encountered the police.

Of course, like most analogies this one eventually breaks down. Kim died because Mancini hit him. Floyd's death was entirely self-inflicted.

Kamala Pledges to Get Rid of Trump Tax Cuts - Breitbart

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) spoke to Hispanic Americans at a campaign stop in McAllen, Texas, on Friday, telling them that she and former Vice President Joe Biden’s “first order of business” is to get rid of President Trump’s tax cuts. “I promise you this — as a first order of business, Joe Biden and I are about to work to get rid of that tax cut,” she said to cheers.

ANTIFA: Rise of the Black Flags

Biden Pledges to Gut Religious Freedom Protections - PJ Media

Joe Biden made no bones about it: If he wins the presidential election, he will gut religious freedom protections that allow faith-based homeless shelters, charities, and small business owners to act according to their consciences. Specifically, he will shove LGBT ideology down the throats of religious Americans in the name of fighting “discrimination.” On Wednesday, the Democratic nominee told Philadelphia Gay News that President Donald Trump has given “hate” a “safe harbor” by protecting religious freedom and enabling what Biden condemned as “discrimination.”

Having watched the corporate media "disappear" the Hunter Biden story, what would stop them from "disappearing" a Trump election victory and collectively reporting it as a Biden win? As crazy as that sounds, they already proved it is feasible.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) October 31, 2020

We Should be Very Concerned About Censorship - Michael Brown

When people as disparate as John Cleese, of Monty Python fame, journalist Piers Morgan, and Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald raise their voices in concern, you know that there’s a problem. A very big problem. Censorship by the giants of media and social media has gotten out of control.

Ted Cruz’s grilling of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has rightly gone viral. Yet the answers given by Dorsey were chilling. To paraphrase, 'Even though we blew it, if the New York Post' – yes, the Post, one of the nation’s leading and historic newspapers – 'wants to access its account again, it must remove the tweet we don’t like.'

Election Day Minus Two - Mark Steyn

As I said a few months back, there's never been a better time to be in the plywood business - especially when the election race transitions to the election brace. The New York Times:

Boarded-Up Windows and Increased Security: Retailers Brace for the Election

The San Francisco Chronicle:

Bay Area Cities, Restaurants Boarding Up — Bracing for Potential Election-Night Unrest

Forbes:

City Business Across U.S. Brace For Election Day Unrest, Board Up Storefronts

Just another election day in a two-and-a-third-century long-settled republic. Manhattan celebrities (some of whom you might actually have heard of) have ordered up private armed guards for their luxury apartment houses - because, since they started calling for "defunding the police", getting someone to pick up at 9-1-l seems to be taking a little longer than it did back in the spring. I suppose it's conceivable that a few of these celebs and CEOs are so woke they believe their own bullsh*t and genuinely expect mobs of Trump voters to come rampaging through midtown Manhattan and start trashing Chanel and Dior. According to the tireless lads at The Hill, what Dan Rather used to call "the shadowy right-wing militias" are back:

Study warns five states at high risk for election-related armed violence by militia groups

Oh, my! After six months of looting and burning by perps who get their bail paid by Biden staffers and Hollywood celebs, OJ is now warning that the real killer may show up on Tuesday night.

There may be three or four owners of upscale emporia worried that the right-wing haters will show up in their ladies' wear department before #BLM has finished cleaning it out. But most of these guys surely know all too well exactly who'll be coming for them:

#ShutDownDC is organizing groups of protesters to target Republican officials and government buildings during a series of planned election-week demonstrations.

Gee, it's almost like they're expecting to lose.

See the difference? Me neither. pic.twitter.com/vRkGJOoyZ9

— Renée Graham 🏳️‍🌈 (@reneeygraham) October 31, 2020

The Church, Silenced - Michael Quinn Sullivan

My question, though, is: Why are [MacArthur] and his congregation so rare? Why aren’t more churches speaking out against government intrusions into the constitutionally protected “free exercise” of religion? Why do they tremble before earthly powers? Why fear death? Why fear societal rejection, mockery, and abuse?

Churches that have shuttered their doors – whether out of fear or in appeasement – have laid the groundwork for further capitulation. What else will they sacrifice to escape criticism from bureaucrats, or gain approval from the media? What the dictators in China do to Christians by force and violence, American pastors risk doing to their congregations through their cowardly silence.

When shepherds cower in fear from the howl of government wolves, they shouldn’t be surprised to find their flock in decline.

But let’s be honest: pulpits went silent on calling out the “fashionable” sins of the cultural elite long before government bureaucrats ordered churches to close this spring.

A Collusion Tale: China and the Bidens - Andrew McCarthy

Ye and CEFC had enticed Hunter and the Biden family with promises of a huge financial score. Ye had been seeking connections with eminences on both sides of the Washington’s political aisle. These feelers eventually landed Ye a May 2017 meeting with Hunter in Miami. They began negotiating a joint venture between CEFC and the Biden family, the $40 million LNG project on Monkey Island in Louisiana — which Hunter, in familiar Bidenesque exaggeration, described in his recorded rant as “a $4 billion deal to build the largest f***ing LNG port in the world,” adding that he’d negotiated the deal at Ye’s “$58 million apartment.”

Mass looting breaks out at clothing and shoe store during tonight’s BLM riot in Philadelphia. pic.twitter.com/htXN1rsbCk

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) October 27, 2020

The Combustible Politics of a Coronavirus ‘Dark Winter’ - Matthew Continetti

If Biden takes office during the "dark winter" he prophesied at the final presidential debate, he will have to decide, in addition to his national mask mandate, whether to put the country through another "30 days to slow the spread." The bureaucratic pressure to shut down will be immense. The media, entertainment, and technology sectors will be sure to support and promote his decision. Polarization between "red" states and the nation's capital will intensify. The commanding heights of culture and business will consign the Republican Party to the ash heap of history. And opposition to the restoration of progressive rule will manifest itself as a populist revolt whose character, magnitude, disposition, and endgame can only be imagined.

My Resignation from the Intercept - Glenn Greenwald

The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression.

The censored article, based on recently revealed emails and witness testimony, raised critical questions about Biden’s conduct. Not content to simply prevent publication of this article at the media outlet I co-founded, these Intercept editors also demanded that I refrain from exercising a separate contractual right to publish this article with any other publication.

The Biden Scandal is Real and Not Going Away - Tucker Carlson

It's been obvious for decades now that the Biden family has gotten rich from selling influence abroad. Joe Biden held a series of high level jobs in the U.S. government. Based on that fact and that fact alone, Biden's son and brother approached foreign governments and companies, sovereign wealth funds, energy conglomerates, Third World oligarchs and dictators, and they offered to exchange favors from Joe Biden for cash.

The polite term for that practice is influence-peddling. Sometimes it is legal under American law, sometimes it is not. But it has always been the economic engine of the Biden family. They've never done anything else. Until recently, no one debated this fact. Several liberal news organizations, in fact, have written detailed stories about the Biden secret business dealings over the years. Look them up, assuming you still can. It's only since Joe Biden received the Democratic nomination that anyone in the media has claimed otherwise.

Christians Have Very Good Reasons To Fear An Increasingly Hostile American Regime - Nathanael Blake

Christian conservatives have not triumphed. Rather, cultural defeat and the near-total exclusion of social conservatives from power in the Democratic Party have left us with no options except the GOP and a defensive crouch in the court system. Thus, we end up supporting anyone who will work with and protect us, whether he is a boorish real estate developer and TV personality or a Mormon technocrat with a pro-choice record.

Trump Derangement in Overdrive - Steven Hayward

Speaking of riots, the left has organized massive protests around the country for next Wednesday “if Trump takes action to undermine the results.” You can read all about it at ProtectTheResults. I’m sure these protests, if they come off, will be “mostly peaceful.” No need to board up your storefronts or anything. It appears, from their partners page, that just about every left-wing group is part of the coalition—you might even call it a “vast left-wing conspiracy.” It looks like the largest attempt at a left mobilization since the Vietnam War.

Election Day Minus Five - Mark Steyn

The real election issue, as it has been for two decades, is that western civilization is sliding off the cliff very fast, and most of the inheritors of that civilization aren't even aware of it. As noted in yesterday's Laura's Links, the French are butching up on some of this stuff, at least by comparison with the rest of the west. (Yes, yes, I know, damning with faint praise: Best gay bar in Riyadh and all that…). Having given the world postmodernism and its ever uglier progeny, France has somehow managed to wind up with an education minister who denounces intersectionality and Islamo-leftism. In reaction to the recent decapitation of a school teacher, M Macron himself has said that people have the right to draw and publish Mohammed cartoons.

Islam is not inclined to take that talk lying down. So the latest member of Local 437 of the Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolves launched the Rampage du Jour this morning at Notre Dame Basilica in Nice, less than half a mile from the scene of the 2016 Bastille Day bloodbath. Today's Islamofanatic beheaded an elderly lady at the font and then a sacristan, fatally stabbed a second woman and wounded others before being taken down by the gendarmes. As he was arrested, he yelled …oh, go on, take a wild guess. Two hours later another would-be Allahu Akbutcher started threatening the same-old-same-old on the streets of Avignon, a 150 miles or so west. The coppers shot him dead.

No Matter Who Wins On Tuesday, There Will Be No ‘Return To Normalcy’ - John Daniel Davidson

Setting aside the impossibility of normalcy during a global pandemic, there is nothing normal about what Biden and the Democrats are proposing to do if they gain power.

Packing the U.S. Supreme Court is not normal. Creating new states as a way to pack the Senate is not normal. Abolishing the Electoral College is not normal. Establishing a South African-style “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” is not normal. Codifying Roe v. Wade into law and forcing taxpayers to pay for abortions is not normal. A ban on fracking—or, as Biden likes to put it, “transitioning out of fossil fuels”—is not normal. Passing any version of the Green New Deal is not normal. Raising the top income tax rate to a level not seen since the Carter administration is not normal.

These things are radical, and Democrats broadly support all of them.

Biden's Destructive Education Program - Paul Mirengoff

President Trump has tried to combat the rot in higher education. As Stanley Kurtz points out, Trump’s popular Executive Order on Campus Free Speech was followed by an Executive Order banning the use of Critical Race Theory, not only in federal training sessions but for federal contractors and grant recipients, including colleges and universities. And the Trump administration has tried, through Department of Education “guidance,” to bring fairness to the college disciplinary process, so that male students can’t be tossed out of college without proper process on the mere allegation of sex harassment.

A Biden administration would reverse these initiatives. But that’s only the tip of iceberg of mischief his administration would impose.

Kurtz identifies the additional consequences of electing Joe Biden:

If Democrats manage to pass the Equality Act, transgender students will win dorm assignments and compete in college sports based on their chosen gender identity rather than their biological sex. Privacy and basic fairness for female students will be a thing of the past.

Faith-based institutions will be thrown back on the courts for protection. That protection will surely fail should Democrats pack the Court.

Will Minnesota Go Red? - John Hinderaker

President Trump will visit Minnesota on Friday, stopping for a rally in Rochester. Minnesota’s far-left Attorney General Keith Ellison is doing what he can to suppress enthusiasm for the president:

Trump’s Minnesota rally will be limited to 250 guests due to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison putting pressure on the campaign and business owners, needling them for a “COVID Preparedness Plan,” as Breitbart News reported:

The rally was initially planned at the Rochester airport, but Ellison’s office demanded a “COVID preparedness plan” from officials from the City of Rochester, Olmsted County, and the Rochester airport, as well as the Republican National Committee to ensure the event was safe.

The event was then moved to Dodge Center, prompting Ellison’s office to ask the Trump campaign and the owner of the building McNeilus Steel for their “COVID Preparedness Plan.” That prompted the Trump campaign to move the event again, back to the airport.

“Thanks to the free speech-stifling dictates of Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, only the first 250 people will be admitted,” the campaign said in a statement on Thursday.

“Without question, Minnesota Democrats had hoped that the President would simply cancel the event, but he will not allow partisan politicians to deprive people of their First Amendment rights to gather peacefully to hear directly from the President of the United States,” the campaign continued.

A fair amount of evangelicals are going Pro-Joe! Or at least declaring they will not vote for President Trump. Here are some excerpts from articles explaining why they are wrong:

Election and the Spirit of this Age: A Response to John Piper - Mark and Timothy Belz

Yet, by God’s providence, there is a team of men and women in Washington today who are doing all that they can, politically speaking, to resist the Democrats’ efforts to take our nation down these roads. That team is the current administration. We may wonder why the Lord has blessed this particular president with such a team; it seems to us to be an unlikely “fellowship.” But there it is: hundreds of Christian men and women of like precious faith both in the administration and on the benches of the federal courts nationwide.

We view this as a startling answer to our prayers over the last 50 years. We would not have expected it, but of course are thankful to God alone that it has happened and is happening. Amy Coney Barrett has just been confirmed by a Republican senate to take Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s place on the Supreme Court. Every Democrat in the Senate voted against this Christian, pro-life woman. Every one of them.

7 Reasons Why It Is Possible for Christians to Vote for Trump in 2020 Without Getting a Defiled Conscience and/or Losing Their Soul - Douglas Wilson

Okay, so here’s the plan. We need to send Biden/Harris packing, and still feel good about ourselves afterwards. Can I get an amen?

For some this might be a really tall order, but my goal in this post is to explain why and how this can be done. The idea is to vote for Trump, without any need for subsequent groveling apologies. So the proposal that follows is intended to enable you to go and vote for Trump, ideally without a mask, and not give way afterward to any temptation to flush red or laugh a little furtive heh heh if asked about it.

You are not a criminal. You are not insane. You are not a fascist. You are not a hazard to the republic. You are not trying to ring in The Handmaid’s Tale. You have good reasons, oh ye easily gaslit evangelicals.

Churchgoing Biden Voters Question the Bible at Alarming Rates - Luke Macias

If a church member or pastor has a fellow church attender proclaim their support for Biden, their first thought should not be: “How do I get this person to vote for Trump?” It might be best that their first thought is to take the conversation away from politics and instead try to talk about biblical truths the congregant is more than likely rejecting or questioning.

Pro-Abortion Evangelicals - Bill Peacock

Just as President Trump is finalizing what might be the first pro-life majority on the court in the last 50 years, David French is trying to convince us it doesn’t matter. Just so he can ignore reality and vote for someone who is pro-baby killer. All this brings us down to this point: if you have already voted for or are going to vote for Joe Biden, you are a pro-abortion voter. The ethics are inescapable. ... If you do not want to vote for Donald Trump, ok. But if you have voted for and/or supported candidates like the Bushes or Gov. Abbott in Texas, you cannot credibly base withholding your vote from Trump on the grounds of character.

A Vote for Joe - Ben Zornes

So my dear reader, as you can see, a vote for Joe is not merely a vote for a kinder, gentler sort of politician. Joe, and his party, wants mothers to be able to slaughter their child up to nine months (and even after birth). Joe wants eight year olds to have their genitals mutilated and their natural hormones surpressed to appease the sexual ethic of the left. So no, a vote for Joe is not consistent with a biblical worldview. It is a vote for the madness of guilt-ridden crowds. It is a vote for chains. It is a vote for all the self-centered pride that got us here.

Voting for the Lesser of Evils - Kenneth Gentry

Some Christians refuse to vote for Donald Trump because of his attitude and some past sins. I sympathize with them. However, like it or not, we will be electing only one of two candidates for President: Donald Trump or Joe Biden. This causes us to have to consider Lesser-of-Evils voting. I happen to believe we have the right to vote for a lesser-of-evils candidate. In this and the next few articles I will be summarizing my argument from my book Political Issues Made Easy. I will not be voting so much for Trump, but for his policies. And I will do this on the basis of his policies being far superior to Joe Biden’s. I will be reflecting on our political hopes and strategies for a strong Christian influence on America’s future.

A Second Round on John Piper, Me, and the Cool Shame Election - Douglas Wilson

I grant this point, and do not want conservative Christians to follow in the pathway of Trump’s manners and mannerisms. But the vile people who are burning the country down were vile people quite independently of the gentleman from Queens. They got there all by themselves. The only real evidence presented for thinking this is a matter of Trump’s “influence” is that the behavior of Trump’s enemies followed Trump’s election. In order for John to make his point, I believe that he needs to show previously sweet people becoming nasty, and justifying it because “the president does it.” But virtually all the nasty I have seen has already been going on for years and years, and Trump’s sole contribution has been his uncanny ability to get them to have their conniption fits in public.

“Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden” Commit Two Major Mistakes in Ethics - Cal Beisner

This use of the term “pro-life” runs directly contrary to standard dictionary definitions, all which define “pro-life” as opposition to abortion—not opposition to hunger, not opposition to poverty, not opposition to practices that lead to poor health—opposition to abortion.

Far worse, the new statement demonstrates serious ethical failures: the failure to distinguish between intentional and accidental harm, and the failure to distinguish between life and death, on the one hand, and better and worse health, on the other.

By so doing, it obscures the meaning of “pro-life” and undermines the pro-life movement. In abortion, every “successful” procedure intentionally kills a human being.

Poverty, lack of health care, and smoking often lead to poor health and sometimes to death, but none of them involves someone intentionally killing another person—and neither does climate change.

Pro-Life Evangelicals For Abortion? - Samuel Sey

If you’re familiar with what God says—or doesn’t say—about poverty, climate change, and health care services in the Bible, then you probably know the draftees of the statement are not merely suggesting Joe Biden is more pro-life than Donald Trump. They’re also insinuating Joe Biden is more pro-life than God.

If a private healthcare system is a form of injustice—then God’s (healthcare) system for ancient Israel was unjust and anti-life. If the Green New Deal is the pro-life approach to supposed climate change, then the Bible’s words about how we should steward the earth makes God inconsistently pro-life.

If poverty is intrinsically an injustice, then Jesus Christ is guilty of injustice against poor people (Matthew 26: 6-13 ). But like Judas, many professing Christians—like the Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden—use their supposed commitment to helping poor people as an excuse to dishonour Jesus.

Indeed, God commands Christians to help poor and vulnerable people in our communities. But we’re commanded to voluntarily help others. We’re not instructed to petition our government to use tax-payer money to end poverty. We’re not commanded to pass off the Church’s responsibility to the government. Serving poor and vulnerable people in our communities should be the Church’s responsibility, not the government’s. After all, who can help poor and vulnerable people better than King Jesus and his bride?

Here is a series of tweets, excerpts, and links about where things stand and where they are heading:

A November Surprise: Trump And The Coming Red Wave

Zogby Analytics:

Trump Approval at 51%

(poll released on Oct 9; 833 likely voters; conducted 9/25-27) pic.twitter.com/cvTLFBlvH3

— PollWatch (@PollWatch2020) October 9, 2020

Don’t Get Suckered By The Establishment Psy-Op - Kurt Schlichter

The next few days will be a Cat 5 hurricane of mainstream media spin and Democrat bullSchiff designed to make you think that you’ve already lost this election. They want your morale shattered, your spirit broken, and you to put a lid on your participation in saving your country from leftist tyranny.

It’s all a lie.

It’s a psychological operation designed to keep you on the sidelines.

We got this.

All you need to do is vote.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has not endorsed a Republican for president since 1972.

Today they endorsed @realDonaldTrump based on:

✅Economy/Jobs
✅Trade
✅China Policy
✅Fracking/Energy
✅Keeping America Open
✅Supreme Court
✅Stamina for the Jobhttps://t.co/83meT1aiKO

— Tim Murtaugh (@TimMurtaugh) November 1, 2020

Highly-Respected Poll Finds Trump Surging Ahead In Iowa - Daily Wire

A new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll, conducted by the highly-respected Selzer & Co. of Des Moines between October 26-29, found that President Trump was leading former Vice President Joe Biden in Iowa by seven points, 48%-41%, a huge change, considering that in September, the same pollsters found the two candidates were tied at 47%.

New @trafalgar_group #2020Election #BattlegroundState #AZpoll conducted 10/25-28 shows undecideds starting to break and Trump still ahead:
48.9% @realDonaldTrump,
46.4% @JoeBiden,
2.3% @Jorgensen4POTUS,
1.7% Other,
0.7% Und. See Report: https://t.co/82DWAxq44d pic.twitter.com/jV0U6s2uTU

— Robert C. Cahaly (@RobertCahaly) October 31, 2020

Our new @trafalgar_group #2020Election #BattlegroundState #MIpoll conducted Oct 25-28 shows a steady Trump lead:
49.1% @realDonaldTrump,
46.6% @JoeBiden,
2.1% @Jorgensen4POTUS,
1.2% Other,
1.1% Und. See Report: https://t.co/6PrhQlDSRp pic.twitter.com/o3Eoi95uBq

— Robert C. Cahaly (@RobertCahaly) October 29, 2020

Trump will be reelected — here is his path to an Electoral College victory - David Bossie

I believe the president will carry Texas, Indiana and all the other reliably red states for his first 163 electoral votes. In 2016, his road to victory ran through Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Iowa. In 2020, this path remains intact, with the addition of Georgia and Arizona.

With repeat victories in these states, plus the electoral votes in Maine and Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional Districts, that brings President Trump’s tally to 260 electoral votes — just 10 votes shy of the magic number of 270.

Pennsylvania has 20 electoral votes, Michigan has 16 and Wisconsin has 10. In this scenario, with the president sitting at 260 electoral votes, he needs to win just one of these three states to prevail.

Trump Ought to Be Winning in a Landslide

https://youtu.be/FUa7AD9eIlU

New Analysis & Commentary from Dr. Brian Joondeph, aka @retinaldoctor

"Betting against Trump is a losing bet, as the last five years demonstrated, especially when he is confident and, on a roll, as he is now."

Trumpmentum Rolling Toward Election Dayhttps://t.co/9HACQOSE3R pic.twitter.com/wjqirSlVBh

— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) October 31, 2020

Trump Victory Will Kill Trust In Polling Industry Once And For All - Daily Wire

After the polling debacle of 2016, pollsters and the media who presented their findings as fact, were contrite, apologizing for their failures, and promising to fix their mistakes and implement new strategies so the same thing would never happen again.

Actually, that’s not what happened. After taking a victory lap on the few states they correctly predicted, pollsters and the media washed their hands of any blame, claiming no one could have predicted a Trump victory—a surprising admission from the self-proclaimed arbiters of truth.

The polling industry has spent the last four years offering token promises of reforming their practices, rather than making substantive changes that will help them rebuild the trust of the American people. And that trust is waning, with the majority of Americans say they no longer believe political polling.

This lack of trust is displayed further when you take into account what the American people think will happen on election day. In 2016, seven in 10 Americans said they expected Hillary Clinton to win, a number surely impacted by the polls they were seeing. In 2020, despite facing polls that show him with a larger lead than Clinton, just four in 10 Americans say they expect a Biden victory.

Donald Trump is Going to Win - R. Emmett Tyrrell

Last week, I reported that 56% of people polled by Gallup in late September affirmed they were better off now, amid a painful pandemic, than they were four years ago, before Donald entered the White House. Another 79% of Americans said the economy was one of the most important issues for them in the race. And still another 56% of Americans said they expected a Trump victory. Forgive me for jumping to conclusions, but I, too, am expecting a Trump victory. Apparently, I am not alone. Last week, Michael McKenna, who writes for the Washington Times, was equally fetched by these 56-percenters. Maybe I will not be so lonely this election day.

Trump's paths (plural!) to 270 electoral votes and victory - James L. Swofford

I recently argued that the toss-up states may be different from what media and pollsters present and what you think. Based my view from the 2016 results, I have the race at 231 electoral votes for President Trump, 183 electoral votes for Mr. Biden, and 124 electoral votes as toss-ups. This implies that there are several paths to 270 electoral votes for a Trump victory. These many paths give us all many states to watch on Election Night.

What the Pollsters Could Be Missing — Purposely and Unpurposely - Rush Limbaugh

So they’re out basically predicting identical results as they did in 2016. The only difference is that it’s for Plugs instead of Hillary. So the question is: Is it possible for the pollsters to get it wrong again? Oh, yeah! It doesn’t seem likely, but is it possible? Hell, yes! And maybe not on purpose. Maybe it’s possible to get it wrong out of laziness or out of confidence that they’re not gonna be held accountable.

President @realDonaldTrump officially takes the LEAD in ARIZONA ‼️‼️‼️ pic.twitter.com/Py8uHUReVj

— Kayleigh McEnany (@kayleighmcenany) October 31, 2020

https://youtu.be/wHM1MnRmjB0

A barrage of election lawsuits threaten to delay final results for weeks or more - Just the News

With memories of Bush v. Gore in 2000 hanging over this Tuesday's presidential election, a record number of mail-in ballots has resulted in a large number of court cases across the country in many battleground states. They range from local cases all the way up to the Supreme Court, and cover a wide range of issues. The rulings could determine the outcome of the election, as most of the focus is on whether or not ballots will be accepted after Election Day, and by how many days. Election rules differ from state to state, which is why some extensions are allowed while other states have clear rules on an Election Day deadline.

Sorry Liberals, But Trump Still Has a Very Clear Path to 270 - Elizabeth Vaughn

The left has tried to convince Americans for four years that President Trump is evil, unhinged, rude, crude and unfit for the presidency. They have tried to destroy him over and over again, but every time they think they’ve got him, he slips out of their grasp. This year, Democrats have weaponized the pandemic, the lockdowns and the deep economic recession against him. Yet, despite their perpetual pursuit, it remains entirely possible that he may win a second term. The President has a very clear and achievable path to victory.

Have you ever noticed how much more complicated it is to cover up the truth rather than confess it?

For instance, God tells us: "And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished" (Genesis 1:31-2:1).

Yet rather than simply confess, as the Westminster Divines did, that "it pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ... to create, or make of nothing, the world ... in the space of six days," a number of evangelicals have attempted to accommodate evolutionists' need for a world that is billions of years old by coming up with this:

Exegesis indicates that the scheme of the creation week itself is a poetic figure and that the several pictures of creation history are set within the six work-day frames not chronologically but topically. In distinguishing simple description and poetic figure from what is definitively conceptual the only ultimate guide, here as always, is comparison with the rest of Scripture.

In other words, the distinctive feature of the Framework interpretation is its understanding of the week (not the days as such) as a metaphor. Moses used the metaphor of a week to narrate God’s acts of creation. Thus God’s supernatural creative words or fiats are real and historical, but the exact timing is left unspecified.

Why the week then? Moses intended to show Israel God’s call to Adam to imitate Him in work, with the promise of entering His Sabbath rest. God’s week is a model, analogous to Israel’s week. The events are grouped in two triads of days. Days 1-3 (creation’s kingdoms) are paralleled by Days 4-6 (creation’s kings). Adam is king of the earth and God is King of Creation.

Got that? Neither do I.

Then there is the one-hundred and forty-three page report produced out of the Missouri Presbytery's (PCA) struggle to understand and "account[] for the controversial nature of Revoice and homosexuality:"