Author: leeduigon(patty)

With the Boy Scouts turning into the Gay Scouts, and the rest of our culture being destroyed before our eyes, we hear, and are going to hear, a lot of flatline Christians and spiritual-but-no-religion types pretend to quote the Bible by saying, “Judge not! That’s what Jesus said! Never, never, never make any kind of judgment about anybody or anything!”

They take two words from one verse (Matthew 7:1, repeated in the same context in Luke 6:37) and try to nullify the entire moral teaching of the Bible. Hey–someone breaks each and every one of Ten Commandments every day? Judge not!

But when it comes to the secular teaching that sodomy is good and God, if there even is a God (which they deem most unlikely), is wrong for condemning it; and if you Christians reject it or oppose it, then you’re wrong, too–well, Christians who get conned by the “judge not” argument have totally failed to understand the scriptures.

In this case we do not have to judge, because God has already made the judgment for us, and caused it to be written in the Bible. The judgment is that homosexual activity is an abominable sin, worthy of the most severe condemnation.

And so, by refusing to recognize it as a sin, because we have been buffaloed by the “judge not” chorus and we want them to think we’re nice people, we then set aside God’s judgment for a stupid judgment of our own. It’s for a good reason, of course: we want those people to like us and to think we’re hip to the times.

Lord, deliver us out of this evil age. This is not a time I want to be hip to.

One of the local merchants in our town had his store’s annual fire inspection this week. Everything was found to  be in order–except, said the inspector, “you haven’t yet paid the annual $50 fee.”

“I haven’t paid it yet because it’s not due until June 1,” said the merchant.

“All right, then–for the time  being, I’ll write you up as  being in violation for not paying the fee, and then when you come in and pay it, we’ll rescind the violation.”

“But the fee’s not due until June 1. That’s next week! How can I be in violation for not paying it, when it’s not due?”

And at this point the inspector cut off all discussion with the magic words, “Well, that’s just the way we do it, and that’s what they tell me to do. It’s policy.”

Do you ever get the impression that these people who tell us what to do, from the White House on down to your own town hall, aren’t quite all there?

I haven’t got the heart today to write about the Boy Scouts becoming the Gay Scouts. With a holiday weekend on tap, I find myself waxing nostalgic.

Here are a few of the places that I used to know. They have been erased from the earth, bulldozed, paved over, by that jolly “green” environmentally-friendly political party whose name starts with a D. It is as if they never were.

Well, maybe I imagined them. But if I have, then the world that I’ve imagined beats the living daylights out of the real thing–as Puddleglum might say. Anyhow, here they are: once real, now gone.

1. Hangman’s Tree. This was a mighty tree that stood in the heart of a woodland that no more exists. From high up top in Hangman’s Tree, you could see practically to Egypt. It was a brooding black tree, and kid legend had it that they used to hang people from that huge, slightly curved branch some ten feet from the ground. We once freaked out a new kid on the block by leading him through the woods to Hangman’s Tree, all the while filling his ears with scary stories. Meanwhile, one of our set had gone ahead and hanged a doll from that big branch. So when we got there, we feigned shock and dismay, “Oh, no! They’ve hanged another one!” And you should’ve seen the poor newbie take off. Whoosh!

No trace of it remains.

2. The Spring. Not far from the very edge of the woods, this little spring bubbled up from the ground. The water was cold, no matter how hot the summer day, and indescribably delicious. Everybody in the neighborhood drank from it–my father used to bring bottles and fill them–and no one ever got sick. It’s all under a parking lot now.

3. Daredevil’s Creek. I have no idea how it got that name. It was just an ordinary little brook, bordered by some of the nicest blackberry patches you’d ever want to see. Some of us had the impression that the frogs here were bigger and bolder than elsewhere. The creek was right next door to a seasonal pond that we all used to play in. The pond is now paved over, and the creek has been chased out of existence by a development featuring streets named for poets.

4. The Foxhole. No one had a convincing theory as to why there should be this big hole in the middle of the woods. It was really much bigger than a foxhole, but we children of the Fifties grew up on war movies and we insisted on calling it The Foxhole. Even as a small boy, I sensed there was something magical about the site. But this particular  magic has been paved over.

I could go on. Every place I remember leads me to remember yet another one. I’ve lived in the same town all my life, and there’s practically nothing left of the places I grew up in. A few neighborhoods have remained basically the same.  Oh, but one last memory…

5. Quiet Sundays. These were the sounds of a summer Sunday afternoon here, once upon a time: the faraway crack of a bat, or clink of horseshoes; the occasional “clack-clack” of a non-motorized lawn mower; doves cooing; Mel Allen’s voice on the television, “How about that?” As opposed to what we have now: leaf blowers, heavy traffic, and really rotten music played at high volumes by idiots.

Mai ou sont las neiges d’antan?

“Please detail the content of the members of your organization’s prayers.”

That’s what the IRS demanded of a pro-life group in Iowa when it applied for tax-exempt status, we learned during a Congressional hearing a few days ago, as reported by The Examiner on May 17.

It has taken me a while to wrap my brain around that one. Really–they want to examine the content of your prayers? Now that’s a lulu. Just when you thought they’d reached rock-bottom, they burst right through it on their way to Hell.

Maybe they’d be interested in this prayer:

“Father in heaven, now looks like it would be a very good time for some Old Testament-style smiting. Please, Lord, sweep away these wicked, godless fools and undo all their works: let no trace of them remain. And raise us up some decent, godly leaders to take their place and lead this poor, fallen nation to repentance. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

I hope they like it.

So now I’ve got a new book to write, my regular Chalcedon Foundation articles, this blog, and my News With Views column. Help!

Some people seem to think I’m having fun, handing out Greegie Awards and chronicling the purposeful destruction of my country by the very people who are supposed to be protecting it and building it up. Well, trust me, folks–it isn’t fun. Writing my books is fun. Reporting on all this bad stuff isn’t.

Turning to one of the very few remaining sources of good news:

Turn us again, O LORD God of hosts, cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved. (Psalms 80:19)

Pray it again, and again. God is nigh.

In 1860 an expedition led by Robert O’Hara Burke set out to cross Australia, from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria (from south to north, that is). No one had ever crossed the continent before. Earlier expeditions had either turned back or disappeared.

Burke’s expedition made it, sort of (the last three miles to the sea were blocked by impassable swamps), but only as a one-way trip. All but one man died trying to come back.

Alan Moorehead–a heckuva writer of popular histories–told the story of the expedition in 1963. His book, Cooper’s Creek, is a terrific read. If your local library doesn’t have it, or can’t get it, try amazon.com. There was also a movie made about the expedition in 1985, which critics panned for taking some liberties with the facts.

I’m reading Moorehead’s book now, and I can’t help being struck by eerie parallels  between Burke’s expedition and Capt. Robert F. Scott’s one-way journey to the South Pole, in which the entire polar party perished.

Despite knowing its causes, and knowing how to prevent it, both expeditions managed to come down with scurvy. Both wound up relying on transport animals (camels, ponies) in terrain that couldn’t have been less suitable for the animals. Ponies aren’t great in ice wildernesses, and camels aren’t quite the ticket for mangrove swamps. To bring in another English debacle, the Franklin Expedition of the 1840s, after failing to sail the Northwest Passage, found a way to starve to death in inhabited country. The only thing Burke didn’t do wrong was to hire Eskimos to guide him through the Australian desert.

What hubris drove these expeditions to disasters that could have been avoided? The question is worth taking seriously: the same 19th-century upper-class culture that produced these doomed explorers culminated its morbid thirst for self-destruction in the trenches in World War I. The Norwegian Amundsen, who beat Scott to the Pole without losing a man–in fact, his men ate well enough to gain weight during their polar push–thought the British Empire had a penchant for dying. But it wasn’t just the British.

Get yourself a copy of Cooper’s Creek and see what you think of it.