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The term “pagan” developed as a way for the West to describe pre-Christian religion. Aside from meaning religions without Christ, “pagan” also described a world without Biblical values. When I think of Biblical values, I think of: a belief in an abstract divinity untethered to nature, monogamy within the context of marriage, two sexes, the end of human sacrifice, and a reliable justice system tempered as appropriate by mercy. Beginning in the 1960s at a covert level, fairly openly in the last 12 years, and with accelerating speed in the last 11 days, the left has used education, entertainment, social...

In 2016, when Trump took office, I lost two friends. One was a NeverTrumper who decided that his conservative values mattered less than his personal distaste for Trump, so he voted for Hillary. Another, to his credit, was at least a hardcore lefty. I didn't drop either of them. Both felt that they could no longer have any social dealings with someone who supported a bantam rooster of a man who nevertheless believed in traditional American values and never strayed from the Constitution. There was one leftist, however, with whom I did stay friends for the past four years --...

Every one of the icky Democrat party candidates is a wannabe tyrant who is not qualified to be president but that doesn’t mean one of them can’t win. I watched the Democrat primary debate and had very mixed feelings. On the one hand, I thought that this collection of despots, whether socialists (everyone but Mike Bloomberg) or just naturally despotic (Mike Bloomberg) doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in a hot place come the general election. On the other hand, the mere fact that five of them are the ones the party faithful have winnowed down as potential presidents and that...

||While driving through Arkansas I had a run-in with law enforcement . . . which showcased professionalism and the benefits of mutual respect.|| I've been driving cross-country across the southern U.S. and it's been a lovely trip. For the past many years, barring one summer trip to Civil War battlefields, my trips have been to Europe and Southeast Asia. They've been great trips and I've seen wonderful things. I don't regret those travels at all. Nevertheless, I really enjoy traveling in my own country. I like how vast America is. I like how friendly Americans are. I like American architecture,...

Watching the Kavanaugh hearing, it's obvious that Leftists who don't believe in eternal damnation have no internal brakes stopping their evil behavior.In 1954, Congress added the phrase "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance, something it did as a direct rebuke to Godless communism. I never really focused on the "Godless" part of the phrase "Godless communism." To me, communism was the scourge, and the Godless part was almost akin to a verbal twitch or perhaps a clear identifier. They're not just communists! They're Godless communists! Thinking about it, though, the phrase "Godless Communist" has a deeper meaning than I...

Because they are constrained by the rule of law, conservative judges are invariably going to be better than Leftist social justice activists on the bench.The ostensible starting point for this rumination is a post I read at Power Line about Administrative Law Judges, which I'll get to in a little while. For me, the real starting point was a few cases on which I worked in the early 1990s, which exposed me to the worst that Leftist judges in San Francisco had to offer and that, although I didn't realize it then, started me on the road to being a...

Have you ever heard of John Pavlovitz?Right. I hadn't heard of him either. Still, thanks to the wonders of the internet, you can quickly learn about him.According to Pavlovitz's online bio, he's a "ministry veteran," which is his weird way of saying that he's been a practicing minister for a while. He says that he is "trying to figure out how to love people well and to live-out the red letters of Jesus." Get that? He's about "lov[ing] people well." He's also a Leftist darling: Pavlovitz, forty-eight, is a Wake Forest resident, minister at North Raleigh Community Church, and father...

I know. I know. It's one of my stranger analogies, but stick with me on this one. Those who have developed food allergies know what it feels like. You have some food you particularly like, and have been enjoying for years. Lately, though, you've been noticing that, while that food makes your mouth happy, it makes the rest of you unhappy.For a while, you're in denial. "I probably had a stomach flu." "It was just a bad batch." "It's a coincidence." Those of you with allergies know precisely what I mean.Then one day, it dawns on you that every single...

I spoke this morning with a friend who lives in Germany. Unsolicited, the friend (who assumed, as Leftists always do, given my socio-economic status, that I am a Leftist too) began to trash Trump. I got the usual litany: Trump will kill Americans because he refuses to save Obamacare; Trump will kill Americans and Koreans because he's threatening repercussions if Kim Jong-Un engages in an overtly aggressive act against the US or its territories; and Trump will kill the entire world because he withdrew from the (meaningless, but expensive) Paris Accords. How in the world could Americans elect the racist,...

The banal news that Donald Trump Jr tried to get dirt on Hillary exposes Progressive delusions as a collective dementia unresponsive to actual facts.In 1848, Charles Mackay published Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. The preface to his first edition explains the idea behind the title: THE OBJECT OF THE AUTHOR in the following pages has been to collect the most remarkable instances of those moral epidemics which have been excited, sometimes by one cause and sometimes by another, and to show how easily the masses have been led astray, and how imitative and gregarious men...

Milo didn't do what he's accused of doing -- but he's being punished nevertheless. That's just wrong . . . and so ickily Leftist. Sometimes the Lefties in this country get lucky. They have a truly dangerous adversary like Milo Yiannopoulos, someone who bravely and wades into the fight, and does so in such a way that he exposes to the maximum number of people how monstrous the ideological enemy really is -- and then self-righteous "conservatives" take him down without the Left having to lift a finger. This is just so wrong. You'd think that people, especially those on...

A friend who really wants to persuade me that Hillary is an honest woman who is being defamed by a whacked-out, jacked-up, vast Right Wing conspiracy, sent me an article from Politico Magazine purporting to explain the “real” story behind Hillary’s server, her emails, and all those BlackBerry’s and laptops. It is a masterpiece of dissimulation that avoids any mention of pay-for-play, BleachBit, immunization deals, people without security clearance having access to materials that were manifestly classified, lies to the American people and, of course, all the laws that Hillary directly violated. According to the article, Hillary is a naif,...

In 2008, when a Progressive friend expressed absolute horror that Sarah Palin was on the Republican ticket, I asked him to tell me why she was less qualified than Obama. After all, unlike Obama, Palin had experience governing. With his back against the wall, my friend uttered the worst indictment he could think of, and it had nothing to do with Palin’s abilities: “She’s not one of us.” As someone who is by birth and upbringing “one of us,” I know exactly what he meant. The “us” people have all attended prestigious schools, whether public or private or large or...

I was discussing with a friend two articles today, when I suddenly saw the future — and believe me, it’s not pretty, or at least not any prettier than Daniel Craig in a lush blonde wig as he carries out his secret agent duties. The first article involved the trauma Milo Yiannopoulos visited upon Rutgers’ students when he gave a campus speech challenging Social Justice Warriors. The second article was learning that the CIA is incorporating into its hiring policies the same activist mindset that SJWs have been demanding on American campuses. The resulting epiphany was how James Bond would...

Bill Whittle is always good. A furious Bill Whittle is even better — and Bill Whittle is mighty angry as he looks at illiberal “liberals” who blame guns for the societal diseases they’ve created, diseases whose outbreaks take the form of angry, vindictive, fatherless boys who need desperately to make all men in the world finally pay attention to them. These are boys and young men, moreover, who are constantly being told that their innate manly virtues, things such as physicality, energy, and loyalty, are disgraceful flaws that lead to rape and murder, and that must therefore be eradicated so...

I haven’t yet seen the movie American Sniper, but I have read Chris Kyle’s autobiography, on which it is based. I therefore believe that I am qualified to write on the topic.Although, come to think of it, I’m not really going to write about American Sniper at all. Instead, I’m going to write about some of the reactions to American Sniper, which function as a Rorschach test of American (and, dare I say, un-American?) values.I have to begin with the fundamental premise, one that drives the Left nuts, which is that Clint Eastwood, with help from a superb Bradley Cooper,...

Since 2007, I’ve been saying that Obama isn’t a mere narcissist but is, instead, a malignant narcissist. He worships at his own altar and is, in his own mind at least, infallible. The manifests itself most obviously in the fact that, once he’s set himself on an intellectual or behavioral path, he is incapable of change — or at least, incapable of change based upon external critique and criticism. To a narcissist, any such external input must either be ignored or twisted so that it conforms to the narcissists own immutable infallibility.Everything that I just wrote is highly abstract. If...

Impressed by the ill-informed hysterical reaction that my “real me” Facebook friends had to the Hobby Lobby decision, I explained to them that the decision is very narrow and will not (a) ban contraceptives across America and (b) lead to anti-gay lynch mobs. Here’s a slightly revised version of my Facebook post, which still failed to satisfy their paranoia and inability to understand the law. I’ve also added a little hypothetical that might open their minds. (No, don’t say it. It’s improbable, but not impossible, that a DemProg mind can open). The Hobby Lobby decision addresses one thing only: whether...

The drive-by media is desperately trying to prove that Eric Cantor lost in the primary because he's Jewish, never mind the fact that the same 7th district in Virginia had elected him repeatedly before, despite knowing that he was Jewish. The truth is a little different:And no, the image doesn't mean Cantor lost because racist. It means that he lost because, despite calling himself a Republican and putting up a decent defense against Obama in 2009, Cantor's position on amnesty has become indistinguishable from Obama's. When that's combined with the images of Latin American young people, many of them ill,...

I. INTRODUCTIONGod forgive me, but I used to be so anti-gun that I donated to The Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence. I know. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Since that time, IÂ’ve done a complete 180 and become a fervent gun supporter and a proud member of the NRA.This change did not come about because I suddenly became a psychopathic killer, with guns as my weapon of choice. I do kill (spiders, fleas, and ticks) and I do eat dead bodies (cows, pigs, chicken, and fish), but IÂ’m scarcely Hannibal Lecter.Instead, my reversal on guns came about...