There Is No Left Or Right – Only Up Or Down

I am going to talk of controversial things. I make no apology for this.

It’s time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, “We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self government.”

This idea — that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power — is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man. . . .

You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream–the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, “The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.” – Ronald Reagan

From: “A Time For Choosing”

Catholic Cardinal Is No Coward

There are pressures today on Christians to remain silent on the subject of homosexuality. The spread of aberrant sexual ideology is a result of this silence. One Catholic Cardinal, however, is certainly no politically correct coward when it comes to facing this issue head-on. John-Henry Westen writes:

Italian Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, the former Archbishop of Bologna who last year was selected by Pope Benedict XVI to preach the papal Lenten retreat, has authored a new book in which he addresses, among other things, the question of homosexuality. In ‘Sheep and Shepherds’, Cardinal Biffi notes that the Biblical condemnation of homosexuality is explicit and Christians are not “allowed, if we want to be faithful to the word of God, the pusillanimity of passing over it in silence out of concern of appearing ‘politically incorrect.’”

The Cardinal’s book is replete with references to the Sacred Scriptures, with which he makes his case that the societal acceptance of and spread of homosexuality is both “the proof and the result of the exclusion of God from collective attention and social life, and of the refusal to give him due praise.”

Continue reading here. . . .

Josiah Bartlett: “Confess Before God”

Josiah Bartlett

“Called on the people of New Hampshire . . . to confess before God their aggravated transgressions and to implore His pardon and forgiveness through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ . . . [t]hat the knowledge of the Gospel of Jesus Christ may be made known to all nations, pure and undefiled religion universally prevail, and the earth be fill with the glory of the Lord.”

George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation Of 1789

This is the text of George Washington’s October 3, 1789 national Thanksgiving Proclamation; as printed in The Providence Gazette and Country Journal, on October 17, 1789.

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me “to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”

Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally, to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand, at the city of New York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.

G. Washington.

Is The Government Fighting A Fire Or Burning Down The House?

Quoting National Review Editor Jonah Goldberg:

“One of the main reasons there’s all of this ‘money on the sidelines’ out there among private investors is that Wall Street doesn’t know what the government will do next. Will it bail out the auto industry? The insurance companies? Which taxes will go up? How far will interest rates go down? How long will the federal government own stakes in the banks? Will more stimulus checks go out? If so, how big will the deficit get? Interventionists, bailout czars and ‘bold experimenters’ in all parties claim to be like firefighters; they can’t stop what they’re doing until the fire is out. But this analogy only works if you understand the nature of the fire. If it’s a credit crisis, that’s one thing. If it’s uncertainty, it’s quite another. And if the problem right now is uncertainty, then these aren’t firefighters, they’re arsonists. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told Congress he’d spend his kitty of tax dollars on bad mortgage-backed securities. Instead, in the spirit of bold experimentation, he’s spent much of it to date buying banks. Obama insisted he had a specific plan for the economy — but his plan seems to be to ‘project confidence.’ The problem with this ‘In Obama We Trust’ approach is that it makes private-sector decision-making very difficult. If your boss says he will lay off half his employees next month, but he doesn’t know who yet, will you buy a new house this month? In a time of stability and growth, government can afford bold, persistent experimentation. But in a time of uncertainty, the last thing it needs is more uncertainty.”

Who Were The Pilgrims?

From: The Desk of Dr. C. Matthew McMahon

The celebration we now popularly regard as the “First Thanksgiving” was the Pilgrims’ three-day feast celebrated in early November of 1621 (although a day of thanks in America was observed in Virginia at Cape Henry in 1607). The first Thanksgiving to God in the Calvinist tradition in Plymouth Colony was actually celebrated during the summer of 1623, when the colonists declared a Thanksgiving holiday after their crops were saved by much-needed rainfall.

The Pilgrims left Plymouth, England, on September 6, 1620, sailing for a new world that offered the promise of both civil and religious liberty. The Pilgrims had earlier left England in 1608, as the Church of England had curtailed their freedom to worship according to their individual consciences.

The Pilgrims had settled in Holland for twelve years, where they found spiritual liberty in the midst of a disjointed economy (which failed to provide adequate compensation for their labors) and a dissolute, degraded, corrupt culture (which tempted their children to stray from faith). For almost three months, 102 seafarers braved harsh elements to arrive off the coast of what is now Massachusetts, in late November of 1620. On December 11, prior to disembarking at Plymouth Rock, they signed the “Mayflower Compact,” America’s original document of civil government and the first to introduce self-government. While still anchored at Provincetown harbor, their Pastor John Robinson counseled, “You are become a body politic … and are to have only them for your… governors which yourselves shall make choice of.”

The Pilgrims were Separatists, America’s Calvinist Protestants, who rejected the institutional Church of England. They believed that the worship of God must originate in the inner man, and that corporate forms of worship prescribed by man interfered with the establishment of a true relationship with God. The Separatists used the term “church” to refer to the people, the Body of Christ, not to a building or institution. As their Pastor John Robinson said, “[When two or three are] gathered in the name of Christ by a covenant made to walk in all the way of God known unto them as a church .”