Year: 2014

Rev. Keller Goes Postal on Glenn Beck (and nearly everybody else)

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Last seen urging people to write in Jesus Christ for president of the United States (frivolous, blasphemous, or both?), televangelist Rev. Bill Keller sent me an email yesterday charging Glenn Beck and a cast of thousands with being servants of Satan.

It’s been a while since I’ve read anything as off-the-wall as this six-page rant. Beck is a Mormon, says Keller; the Mormons are a Satan-worshiping cult; therefore Glen Beck is a Satan-worshiper.

Also actively serving the Devil, according to Keller, are all Mormons, Ravi Zacharias, Mitt Romney, the late Jerry Falwell, David Barton, John Hagee, Ralph Reed, the TEA Party, Republicans in general and Dick Armey in particular, and a few people whose names I don’t recognize.

Here is a quote from the email, reproduced as is:

GLENN BECK IS THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN ON THE PLANET, INCLUDING AL-BAGHADADI THE HEAD OF ISIS!!!… Beck is FAR more dangerous than Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIS, since all al-Baghdadi wants to do is cut off your head. Beck on the other hand, wants to help lead your soul to hell!

Ravi Zacharias? David Barton? Jerry Falwell? Well, they had dealings with Mormons, didn’t they?

Personally, I don’t believe that Mormons are, by definition, Christians, any more than Jews or Hindus are. But I’m pretty sure Ravi Zacharias and David Barton are Christians, and I really wonder about this guy Keller, who seems to be saying “Everybody’s a devil-worshipper except me! I’m the only Christian you’ve got!”

If that’s not pure baloney, we’re all in deep trouble.

 

My Fantasy Tool Kit (6): The World of ‘Bell Mountain’

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

I wrote many fantasies before I wrote Bell Mountain and its sequels. None of these got published. I won’t say these books were worthless–if nothing else, they were practice for me as I learned my craft. But they all had one fault in common.

None of the fantasy worlds I was writing about offered the reader any compelling reason to believe in them. They were just… well, just there. They were, none of them, in any sense true.

In Bell Mountain I did something different. I presupposed that the world I was writing about was real: created by the same God who created our world, and who reveals Himself to us in the Bible. Therefore the same laws of righteousness, the same laws of nature, had to apply to the fantasy world as they apply to ours.

At the same time, the fantasy world, because it is a different world, had to follow its own arc of history. For instance, the fantasy world’s Medieval Period comes after its Modern Age, not before. And in the fantasy world, God has done a few things differently. The fantasy world has yet to meet its Savior, although a few of its prophets have hinted at His coming. The Day of Fire, which ended that world’s Modern Age, is analogous to the Great Flood of the Bible. In the historical period in which the action of Bell Mountain takes place, God is shaking the world–not to destroy it, but rather to liberate His Word from its captivity in the spiritually dead Temple of Obann, so that it can spread beyond the borders of Obann into the Heathen nations.

To do this, I have to steep myself in the Bible. The work also requires much prayer and meditation. And I trust the theological brains at the Chalcedon Foundation to set me straight if I run off the rails. Happily, they have not yet had to do this. Finally, I avail myself of input from theologians like R.J. Rushdoony, D. James Kennedy, and others, and non-theologians like C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and others. Great Christian writers are a source of inspiration to me.

What I receive from all this is a fantasy world which is not just there, but has a reason for being there. Because the story is rooted in the Bible, the story becomes, even though it'[s fictional, true: not in a strict allegorical sense, but in terms of its message.

This, by the way, is why it takes me so long to come up with a new book in the series.

And the lesson is, boys and girls (note I don’t say “purple penguins”), that in order for the fantasy to have power… it must be true.

Truth is bigger than the writer; and if what the writer writes is true, then the writer, as far as the reader is concerned, has disappeared. Because what matters is not the writer, but truth; and the truth is of God, and comes from God.

Now You Won’t Need an Operation to Change Your ‘Gender’

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Here’s the story: I leave it up to you whether to laugh or cry.

Because it ain’t fair to ask people to have their parts cut off before men can say they’re women or women can say they’re men, the city of New York is contemplating a move to make it easier for one of these poor lost souls to change his or her birth certificate to list him or her as a member of some sex other than the one he was born into. See the Associated Press report from Nov. 10 (sorry, can’t get the link to work), “NYC weighs easing birth certificate gender changes.”

So now if a man wants to change his birth certificate to make it say he’s a woman, or a woman wants to change hers to say she’s a man, all they would need would be a letter from “a licensed health professional” who has no integrity whatsoever to say that Duke really is a lady or Flossie really is a man.

Has truth ceased to have any value among us at all? Does it have any meaning?

We pile our sins all the way up to Heaven, and add new sins that our fathers never thought of.

I do wonder what God sees in us. I really, truly do.

Self-Publishing and Cruelty to Authors

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

My employer, the Chalcedon Foundation, has a policy not to review self-published books. I adhere to that policy. We don’t want to encourage a shady business.

The other day someone sent me a self-published book for review. I often get these in the mail. I don’t know how much the so-called publisher charged the author, but whatever it was, it was probably too much.

Even at some of the reputable, professional publishing houses, where they pay the author rather than hoodwinking the author into paying them, editing has become almost a lost art. But here the self-publisher took the author’s money, and in this case provided no editing at all. And so the reader is treated to misspellings, quotation marks strewn around the page like confetti, misuse of words, and weird sentences that fall apart before they get anywhere, reminiscent of some of the stairways at the Winchester Mansion that simply end at blank walls.

Speaking for myself, I would be embarrassed if one of my books were published without careful editing. We all need editing!

But to take the author’s money and then publish the book as is, with all the errors for all the world to see–that’s not only dishonest, but cruel. I say no writer can afford to have a book published in a state of nature, any more than he would want to board a bus in the nude. Here they stripped the author and shoved him out onto the sidewalk at high noon.

The immortal Rocky Bridges once said there are three things that everyone in the world thinks he can do: run a hotel, manage a baseball team, and write a book. The expansion of the self-publishing industry feeds the third part of that delusion.

I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said to me, “Yeah, I’d write a book, too, if I had the time.” Sculptors and composers and ballet dancers never have to hear that, but every writer does. Durned if I know why.

I grant that every now and then, a worthwhile book is self-published. But I have been sent many of them that are not worthwhile by any stretch of the most feverish imagination.

If your book is worth being published, you ought to be paid for it. Keep your life savings under the mattress, where the self-publishing company can’t get at it.

Fish or Cut Bait

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

In the immediate wake of America’s thunderous rejection of his policies and his party, and his whole rotten stinking program, President Barack Hussein Ebola has intimated that he’s gonna just go right ahead and declare “executive amnesty” for millions of illegal aliens all at once. Just as if he were king.

This, of course, is unprecedented. To impose a change of such magnitude on America, a constitutional amendment is in order–not a fiat from some community organizer in the White House.

But I’m almost glad he’s going to do this, because it will immediately show us whether the Republicans in Congress intend to do the job for which the voters gave them a clear mandate, or whether they’re going to just wussy out like a lot of girlie-men and spend the next two years fattening off us like parasites. Let’s face it, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are not the kind of leaders you write The Song of Roland about.

Nevertheless, the lawbreaker-in-chief is going to walk right up to them and slap their faces. His “executive amnesty” says, in no uncertain terms, “F___ you, America.” If Congress doesn’t cut him down to size now, it never will: and that will be all she wrote for our republic.

Two things brought out that vote last week: stop amnesty, and get rid of Obamacare. That’s what the people have demanded. That is what the governed have consented to.

So we might as well find out now: are the people still sovereign in America, or are we only waiting for the branding iron to be applied to our backsides?

From Too Disgusting to Quite Disgusting

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

I have a stern duty to report on the degradation of our culture; but there are times when I can’t quite figure out how to do it on what is supposed to be a Christian website.

There is some news which is just too disgusting for words: that is, I can’t find words to describe it without offending many of my readers and maybe abusing the trust placed in me.

After much deliberation, I’ve decided not to report on the new male sex toy that combines high technology with the most pathetic kind of moral imbecility.

So let me tell you about something that’s almost as disgusting, in its own way: public schools panhandling for whatever money is left in the taxpayer’s pocket after the school budget passes.

“Boxtops For Education” ( http://www.boxtops4education.com/ ) allows your local public school to collect box tops and labels, etc., and redeem them for 10 cents each, and use the money to buy “whatever they need.” (I hope this is not connected to the story I decided not to write about; but you never know what public school sex education programs are going to come up with next.)

In my home town, it now costs over $7 million a year for each of our four public schools–more money than is spent on our police, public works, sanitation, fire-fighting, maintenance, municipal administration, and all other public purposes put together. And yet they’re out there schnorring for dimes? How can public education possibly be short of money?

Uh, because the lion’s share of your school budget every year goes to salaries, pensions, and benefits and is not spent on educational programs or materials, that’s why. So teachers can retire at 55 (or even younger) with enough money to move out West and buy a horse farm, or live it up at Monte Carlo, whatever they please. And school administrators do even better.

So they’re scrounging box tops while they’re calling the cops because a kid’s playing hangman, making sure every school has a Gay-Straight Alliance, hiring “gender coaches” to teach the tots in kindergarten that “you can be a boy one day and a girl the next, depending on how you feel,” and doing all the other things they do to make America’s public education both a scandal and a laughing-stock throughout the world.

‘Saint Brigid’s Bones: A Celtic Adventure’ and a Literary Crime

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

You’d think a guy with a Ph.D. in Celtic Languages and Literature, author of a biography of St. Patrick, would do pretty well, writing a novel set in ancient Ireland a few years after Patrick’s death. But Dr. Philip Freeman is here to prove you wrong.

St. Brigid’s Bones is a mystery novel set in an ancient Ireland in which everyone has 21st century attitudes. It seems Ireland in 500 A.D. was a Blue State–who knew? Any moment, I expected the characters to go to Wal-Mart and text each other about it. He shows us the stern old abbess loosening up to have afternoon tea with her good friend, the local Druid wise-woman. All that was missing was the Starbuck’s.

The mystery genre has a rich history of clerical detectives. Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton, Father Dowling by Ralph McInerny (the novels–not the TV show), Brother Cadfael by Ellis Peters–there’s meat to these books. They make you think.

The heroine-detective of Brigid’s Bones is that worn-out, done-to-death cliche, the Street-Smart Nun–or she would be, if they had any streets in ancient Ireland. She is young, liberated, has sex with single guys, and probably votes Democrat.

At one point in the story, she confronts the corrupt, evil abbot with evidence of his guilt. He gets the drop on her with a knife; and then, instead of just killing her and winning the reader’s gratitude, he makes the Classical Movie Villain Mistake and blabs all about his various crimes and how he did them, what he’s gonna do next, yatta-yatta… and he’s so busy yakking, the Street-Smart Nun grabs the knife and beats the stuffing out of him. And do you know what she says, after she has him stretched out on the floor? She says, “I’ll come back and finish this, if you ever again mess with the sisters of St. Brigid.”

With dialogue like that, who needs satire?

Finally, the mystery itself, that has Sister Whatsername traipsing all over Ireland trying to solve it, turns out to be…well, not much of a mystery at all. In fact, it’s a shaggy dog story. It’s the kind of thing that gets a stand-up comedian booed off the stage.

Do yourself a favor, and don’t read St. Brigid’s Bones.

Voters Clobber Ebola Party

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

President Barack Hussein Ebola and Senate Majority Leader Harry Ebola got their disease-importing, open-borders, Global Warming  butts kicked yesterday. A few Democrats survived who would otherwise have been sent packing, thanks to third-party spoilers (shame on you, Louisiana) and the self-indulgent types who voted for them. But by and large, it was a good old country thrashing.

Thank you, Lord.

So we’ve been given a chance, maybe a last chance, to stop the piecemeal murder of our country and its purposeful deconstruction into a socialist, bankrupt, lawless, culturally degraded basket case. (Let me know if I’m being wishy-washy here.)

Now we have to worry about whether the Republicans are up to the job. We’ve put the ball in their hands, and they’d better not have butter-fingers. As Rush Limbaugh put it today, this election does not mean America has, overnight, fallen in love with Republicans.

Republicans must overcome their paralyzing fear of the nooze media, their penchant for venal deal-making, and their addiction to playing it safe and trying to get away with doing nothing. They must realize that we took power away from the Democrats to stop the Democrats, and that’s the job we’ve handed to the GOP. And they’d damn well better do it.

Here’s what we want from you, guys:

*Kill any plan to award any kind of amnesty to illegal aliens.

*Stop the appointment of any more left-wing federal judges and department heads.

*Repeal Obamacare in its entirety; and if that’s not possible, gut it piece by piece.

*De-fund federal policies and programs that are hurting the country.

*Rein in the lawlessness of the IRS, the DOJ, the NSA, the EPA and other federal agencies that have lent themselves to partisan political games, and punish those responsible.

*Take an axe to incontinent federal spending.

It’ll take courage, hard work, and perseverance–qualities foreign to many leaders of the GOP–to undo the havoc which six years of Obamaism have wreaked on the country.

But boy, oh, boy, they’d better do it. Because they will not be given a second chance.

So You Still Believe in Public Education?

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

I dunno, maybe Americans want their kids to be educated by clowns.

Well, for anyone who might actually be swayed by evidence, here is Exhibit 906 million in the Case Against Public Education: “School Forces 5-Year-Old Girl To Sign ‘Suicide Contract’ After An Incident With A Crayon” ( http://2ndamendmentinsider.com/youll-be-disgusted-when-you-discover-the-reason-a-school-forced-a-5-year-old-to-sign-a-suicide-contract/ ).

Yup. A little girl, feeling playful, pointed a crayon at another kid and said something like “poo-poo.” So of course the idiots running the school dragged her off and first “made her take a questionnaire to evaluate her for suicidal thought”–what???–and then had her sign a “safety contract” promising to contact an adult if she was thinking of suicide or homicide. “This all happened while her mom waited in the lobby to pick her up, the upset parent told WPMI,” a radio station in Alabama.

Alabama? But that’s a red state!

The same teacher unions control the public schools in all 50 states. Your child might as well be going to school in Massachusetts.

The child’s mother said “school officials recommended the 5-year-old see a psychiatrist,” WPMI reported.

These are the people you want educating your children? Really? You know, don’t you, that now this child has been marked up as “a suicide risk,” which is going to stay on her record until Doomsday?

More than any other single factor, more so even than what we shamelessly call our politics, public education is responsible for the shambles that America is turning into.

There is no acceptable excuse, morally, for sending one’s child to the public schools.

Britain Moves to Abolish Adulthood

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Hey, what if your brain was aging faster than the rest of you? Uh-oh–dementia’s just around the corner, right?

Well, they’re gonna do something about it–in England, at least. As the Telegraph put it yesterday, “The new system of screening, devised by Public Health England (PHE) means patients will be told how their brain is aging, compared to those with healthier lifestyles, in a bid to shock them into changing their ways” ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/11203786/Middle-aged-to-be-told-brain-age-in-war-on-dementia.html ).

Well, gee, what’s wrong with that?

“Officials behind the idea say they hope the warning will encourage people to make major changes in their lifestyle, which will reduce their chance of dementia. But critics said the plans were ‘heavy-handed and intrusive’ and would frighten millions of people–without giving them an accurate forecast of their true risk of dementia [emphasis added].”

This new scientific technique–lying to people to get them to do what you want them to do, because, after all, it’s really good for them and they’re just too stupid to appreciate your wisdom–was first given respectability in the Great Global Warming Hoax, and is now spreading throughout science. It has been borrowed from politics.

Remember how I asked, a few days ago, at what point will these people feel they have enough power over us, and won’t want any more? And the answer was, of course, that they will never, never reach that point. They will never have enough.

I guess the British government could say to its people, “Well, you leeches and deadbeats, you’ve made us responsible for your healthcare, so you’d jolly well better do as we say! If you think we’ll sit idly by while you all develop dementia because you didn’t run laps and do push-ups when we told you to, you’d better think again!”

And so the English people, once one of the great nations of the earth, are reduced to perpetual childhood by their own government and its hired Experts. Eat this, don’t eat that. You can’t smoke anymore. Hands off that cupcake! Get up from the couch, you lazy sod, and run 15 laps around the block.

That’s where they’re heading.

And we, poor fools, are right behind them.