Year: 2013

The current issue of Biblical Archaeology Review (Sept./Oct. 2013, Vol. 39 No. 5)  includes an article–“Portraits of Ancient Israelite Kings” by Irit Ziffer–that is fascinating for its depiction of how absolute monarchy turns human beings into groveling nebbishes.

Illustrations of ancient monuments show grown men prostrating themselves before kings and actually kissing the ground the king walks on (pg. 43), waiting on the ruler hand and foot (pg. 46), and being presented to him, stark naked, as his prisoners, to kill or enslave as he pleases (pg. 49). These monuments span many centuries of history in Mesopotamia, Canaan, and elsewhere, showing the long persistence of tyranny.

Is this not a shameful way to live? But it seems a way that our own country’s rulers are intent on imitating. Most of the members of our ruling class, if they could trade places with one of those kings, would think they’d died and gone to heaven. Just imagine Hilary Clinton sitting on a throne, grinning at some helpless prisoner, and you’ve got the picture.

While all this was going on around them, God gave His people Israel laws by which they could govern themselves, under God, as free men and women accountable to Him. Unlike their contemporaries everywhere else, the rulers of ancient Israel could not have someone put to death just because they felt like it. Under God’s law, that person had to commit one of several capital crimes, and could not be sentenced to death until he had been convicted by the testimony of at least two independent witnesses.

But of course the people of Israel rejected government by God’s laws and clamored for a king, because all the other nations had kings. God punished them by giving them what they wanted. Over time–as told in the Bible–the kings of Israel and Judah drifted farther and farther away from God, dragging the people with them: and the end result was destruction at the hands of the Assyrians and Babylonians.

We in America have followed the same road; and it will take us to the same destination.

P.S.–To view the article online, visit the BAR website, http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org

Hardly a day goes by without some bozo with The New York Times, The Huffington Post, or The Washington Post, or an overpaid academic, or babbling Democrat prating about the scourge of “income inequality.”

None of these turkeys ever shows up on your doorstep to hand you a check that makes your income equal to theirs. They complain about “income inequality” at $10,000-a-plate dinners.

I propose that from now on, anyone who speaks of “income inequality” as a problem to be solved–especially by government–be pushed down a long, steep flight of stairs.

Could we please use our heads for a minute? The term “income inequality” necessarily implies that there must be such a thing as “income equality.” But does anyone know when that ever existed? Or where–except in a cemetery?

Would anyone even want a state of “income equality”–in which the industrious and the bone-idle, the creative and the dull, the diligent and the indolent, the skilled and the inept, the dedicated and the what-me-worry, the deserving and the undeserving… all get exactly the same income? Why do these morons talk as if such a thing were actually desirable, something we ought to strive for?

Nothing good can come of releasing such toxic stupidity into any discussion of, or meditation on, public policy.

But just try to pry it loose from “progressive” ideology, and see how far you get.

Canada is not the only “free” country that has a problem with freedom.

You may remember the Christian bakers in Oregon who declined to obey a lesbian’s order that they create a cake for her same-sex mock “wedding.” Naturally, the state government treated them like criminals. Hey, when a lesbian says “jump,” you jump.

As reported recently by The Oregonian, the state of Oregon doesn’t want just to punish the Christians. It wants to get their minds right. The Oregonian quotes Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian: “The goal is never to shut down a business. The goal is to rehabilitate.”

Gee, I wonder how the government plans to “rehabilitate” this man and wife who believe the Bible means what it says, that same-sex relations are an abomination, and that they can’t allow themselves to participate in it in any way. It would be easy for the state just to crush this small business and ruin the owners: but that’s not good enough. These thought criminals have to be “rehabilitated.” Their core beliefs must be torn out and new core beliefs, approved by the state, installed.

I am sure this is not what it means to be free. It is probably not even what it means to be human.

Does your local police department have too much money?

The York Regional Police in Ontario, Canada, certainly do. That’s how they can afford to have a special bureau of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” whose job is to suppress any speech or opinion deemed politically incorrect.

As reported in an Aug. 13 communique from the Christian Heritage Party of Canada, the thought cops recently swung into action to stifle free speech at a local synagogue–where an American blogger “critical of pro-Palestinian, pro-Arab, and pro-Muslim activists” was scheduled to speak, by invitation.

“But the ‘diversity’ head of the York Regional Police contacted the rabbi, who is a consultant to the Diversity bureau, and warned him that his status as a consultant might be in danger if he allowed [the blogger] to speak.”

Well, that’s what you get for being a consultant to the thought police. Toldja so.

So once again the “diversity” goons enforce uniformity of opinion, and the “inclusion” bullies exclude speakers and opinions they don’t like. If your police department has anything like a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion  bureau, then your police department has way too big a budget.

Remember when police used to protect you from real crimes, not thought crimes? Dick Tracey‘s Crimestoppers‘ Textbook never had anything in it about stifling anyone’s opinion. I wonder how many stores got robbed while York’s Keystone Kops were leaning on the rabbi.

Oh, but who cares about some pesky blogger being kept from speaking?

But it’s only a matter of time before they silence your opinion.

Which is exactly what happened to that rabbi.