So I finally worked up the courage to mail a birthday card that I've had in my posession for a month now to a wonderful little boy whom I care for very much. But why do I have this queasy, hard lump in my stomach? Why do I feel like the other shoe is about to drop?
Answer: Because that same wonderful little boy's mother is my ex-best friend. And she loathes the very thought of me. If I were burning in hell and complained of thirst, she would hand me a tall glass of gasoline.
I know, even as I write this, that it wasn't really anything I did. Yeah, trying to block her status updates from my facebook homepage backfired. (I didn't know that "blocking" removes that person from your friend's list. Caveat emptor.) And I'm not pure as the driven snow in all this either. But she changed. She chose this path. She had two lives open to her- one of temporary pain and momentary self-denial, but eventual triumph and gladness; and one of self-centeredness and temporary happiness, but eventual emptiness and disappointment- and she chose the latter.
For my part, I recognize that she has pushed me out of her life forever. And while I regret what happened, I know that those last few months I didn't really care for her at all. The last time I saw her in person, she was positively bubbly. (I thought- selfishly- that it was because she got to see me. But now I know it was because the "addict" had her "fix" back at home. I forgive her, and I still pray for her.) I saw that day through the lies she was throwing at me- about us hanging out, etc. And later, when I found out her ex-husband had hit her, I felt terrible because I wasn't angry. My first thought was "Well, what did you do to deserve it?"
I didn't love her with Christ's love. And mine was spent. I still love her, because now I have Christ's love. I forgive her for all the wrongs she has committed against me- all the lies and manipulations and deceptions. And I pray to be forgiven my thoughts and my anger. We are all sinners. But we are redeemed if we accept to be.
Some days I'm hurt. but most days I just miss her.
---------------------
+++AWESOME QUOTE+++
"An armed society is a polite society.
Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life."
~Robert A. Heinlein
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
"Will America Break Up?" from the Washington Times
by Jeffrey T. Kuhner. Article here.
--------------------
"President Obama is splintering America. The passage of Obamacare was a historic victory for liberal governance. Yet, its true cost may be that it triggers the eventual breakup of the country.
Mr. Obama has achieved what his liberal predecessors - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, Bill Clinton - could only dream of: nationalized health care. Obamacare signifies the government take-over of one-sixth of the U.S. economy. It has dealt a mortal blow to traditional America. We are now a European-style socialist welfare state. The inevitable permanent tax hikes, massive public bureaucracy and liberal ruling elites will stifle competition and initiative.
Republicans vow to repeal Obamacare. Their past record, however, leaves many conservatives rightly skeptical. Since FDR's New Deal, Big-Government liberalism has been on the march - Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Education. The Republican Party has been unable to roll back the tide of statism. In fact, under Richard Nixon and both George Bushes, Great Society Republicans have been complicit in erecting a nanny state.
Socialism is the road to economic ruin and fiscal bankruptcy. It subverts democracy, threatening the very future of our constitutional republic. Socialist states degenerate into some form of autocracy or technocratic neo-feudalism, whereby the productive class is taxed and exploited to sustain a growing dependent class. Factions are pitted against each other; groups vie for handouts at the expense of their fellow citizens. The bonds of economic union and national solidarity slowly dissolve.
"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not," warned Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson was right: Redistributionist welfare policies are undermining our democracy. The resentments in America are growing. Tea Partiers believe that their government no longer represents their interests or values. The heartland is becoming dangerously alienated from the political class, whom it feels has betrayed them.
Obamacare may be the last straw. It strips away fundamental economic liberties, empowering the federal government to de facto nationalize everyone's body by controlling our health. Americans are compelled - upon pain of penalty and eventual imprisonment - to purchase insurance.
Moreover, the law codifies the federal funding of abortion. Taxpayer dollars will be used to subsidize the murder of innocent life. Hence, Mr. Obama has violated the social compact: He has abrogated the conscience of pro-lifers, making them tacitly complicit in the slaughter of the unborn. Obamacare is a radical assault upon fundamental religious freedoms.
The Obama revolution threatens to tear America apart. This has happened before. Slavery eventually triggered the Civil War between the industrial North and the agrarian South. Abortion is the slavery of our time - the denying of basic human rights to an entire category of people.
The bitter debate over Obamacare has exposed the country's profound divisions. We are no longer one nation or one people. Rather, there are now two Americas: one conservative, the other liberal. Increasingly, we no longer just disagree but we despise each other.
Our disagreements encompass everything - politics, morality, culture and history. We no longer share a unifying essence or common values. One half of America believes abortion is an abomination; the other half considers any attempt to repeal it as oppressive and sexist. One half opposes homosexual unions because it elevates immoral and unnatural behavior to the sacred status of marriage; the other half supports it as an extension of civil rights. One half reviles Mr. Obama's socialist agenda, viewing it as the destruction of capitalism and our constitutional government; the other half embraces it as the culmination of social justice and economic equality. One half reveres America's heroes - Christopher Columbus, George Washington, James Madison, Davy Crockett - and its glorious history; the other half is ashamed of its past, seeing it as characterized by racism, imperialism and chauvinism.
Ultimately, a country is not simply its geographical borders with the people inside of it. It is something more - and deeper. A nation must share a common heritage, language, culture, faith and myths. Once upon a time, Americans celebrated the same heroes, sang the same patriotic songs, read the same history and literature, and gloried in its exceptional nature: a city upon a hill, with liberty and freedom for all. It was understood that, for all of our different ethnic and religious backgrounds, America is a product of English and Christian civilization. Those days are long gone.
Instead, we are going the way our Founding Fathers warned us against: increasing balkanization and sectionalism. A constitutional republic - unlike an empire - is only as strong as its national cohesion. It is based not on imperial coercion but civic consent. Mr. Obama is recklessly pulling at the strings of unity, further polarizing us.
In confronting Obamacare, state sovereignty, states' rights and state nullification of federal laws are being asserted. This is what happened in the 1830s and 1840s. They are the signs of growing political anarchy and social frustration - people can only be pushed so far. Mr. Obama's drive for a socialist super-state threatens America's very existence. As Jefferson warned about slavery, it is time we start ringing the "fire bell in the night."
"Things fall apart; the center cannot hold," wrote William Butler Yeats. "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."
Conservatives will not be passive in this onslaught on all our core values. Mr. Obama's true legacy may be that he divides us deeper than ever before - unless he abandons his revolutionary project."
A few personal points: firstly, I do not see the reemphasis on state's rights as a sign of "growing political anarchy". Social Frustration? Yes. But not anarchy. Many Americans forget that the United States was initially supposed to be a Union of sovereign states. And it worked quite well under the Articles of Confederation-- it was only the frustration of certain members of the founding generation who wanted a strong central government that we even got the curent Constitution. Even after its ratification in 1787, many of the Jeffersonian Republicans recognized the power of the States as being a check against an out of control central government.
The only regret, in my mind, is that it took the Federal government acting to seize a significant portion of the American economy before we woke up.
And it seems that more and more people are recognizing the parallels between slavery and abortion. The greatest weakness, in my mind, of Americans is that we find it very easy to relegate other groups to the status of "non-persons". The Cherokee, on the trail of tears. African slaves. The Japanese-Americans in WWII. And now the unborn. When it is convenient- or when it benefits us- we can ignore the humanity and dignity possessed by others and simply sweep them aside.
We slaughtered each other once, over state's rights and the status of a group of people who could not speak for themselves. Perhaps we shall do it again. Only this time, instead of the moral high ground being occupied by the two nations called "America", only one side will carry the twin banners of Liberty and Righteousness.
And its not yours, Mr. President.
---------------------
+++AWESOME QUOTE+++
Fire, water, and government know nothing of mercy. – Albanian Proverb
--------------------
"President Obama is splintering America. The passage of Obamacare was a historic victory for liberal governance. Yet, its true cost may be that it triggers the eventual breakup of the country.
Mr. Obama has achieved what his liberal predecessors - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, Bill Clinton - could only dream of: nationalized health care. Obamacare signifies the government take-over of one-sixth of the U.S. economy. It has dealt a mortal blow to traditional America. We are now a European-style socialist welfare state. The inevitable permanent tax hikes, massive public bureaucracy and liberal ruling elites will stifle competition and initiative.
Republicans vow to repeal Obamacare. Their past record, however, leaves many conservatives rightly skeptical. Since FDR's New Deal, Big-Government liberalism has been on the march - Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Education. The Republican Party has been unable to roll back the tide of statism. In fact, under Richard Nixon and both George Bushes, Great Society Republicans have been complicit in erecting a nanny state.
Socialism is the road to economic ruin and fiscal bankruptcy. It subverts democracy, threatening the very future of our constitutional republic. Socialist states degenerate into some form of autocracy or technocratic neo-feudalism, whereby the productive class is taxed and exploited to sustain a growing dependent class. Factions are pitted against each other; groups vie for handouts at the expense of their fellow citizens. The bonds of economic union and national solidarity slowly dissolve.
"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not," warned Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson was right: Redistributionist welfare policies are undermining our democracy. The resentments in America are growing. Tea Partiers believe that their government no longer represents their interests or values. The heartland is becoming dangerously alienated from the political class, whom it feels has betrayed them.
Obamacare may be the last straw. It strips away fundamental economic liberties, empowering the federal government to de facto nationalize everyone's body by controlling our health. Americans are compelled - upon pain of penalty and eventual imprisonment - to purchase insurance.
Moreover, the law codifies the federal funding of abortion. Taxpayer dollars will be used to subsidize the murder of innocent life. Hence, Mr. Obama has violated the social compact: He has abrogated the conscience of pro-lifers, making them tacitly complicit in the slaughter of the unborn. Obamacare is a radical assault upon fundamental religious freedoms.
The Obama revolution threatens to tear America apart. This has happened before. Slavery eventually triggered the Civil War between the industrial North and the agrarian South. Abortion is the slavery of our time - the denying of basic human rights to an entire category of people.
The bitter debate over Obamacare has exposed the country's profound divisions. We are no longer one nation or one people. Rather, there are now two Americas: one conservative, the other liberal. Increasingly, we no longer just disagree but we despise each other.
Our disagreements encompass everything - politics, morality, culture and history. We no longer share a unifying essence or common values. One half of America believes abortion is an abomination; the other half considers any attempt to repeal it as oppressive and sexist. One half opposes homosexual unions because it elevates immoral and unnatural behavior to the sacred status of marriage; the other half supports it as an extension of civil rights. One half reviles Mr. Obama's socialist agenda, viewing it as the destruction of capitalism and our constitutional government; the other half embraces it as the culmination of social justice and economic equality. One half reveres America's heroes - Christopher Columbus, George Washington, James Madison, Davy Crockett - and its glorious history; the other half is ashamed of its past, seeing it as characterized by racism, imperialism and chauvinism.
Ultimately, a country is not simply its geographical borders with the people inside of it. It is something more - and deeper. A nation must share a common heritage, language, culture, faith and myths. Once upon a time, Americans celebrated the same heroes, sang the same patriotic songs, read the same history and literature, and gloried in its exceptional nature: a city upon a hill, with liberty and freedom for all. It was understood that, for all of our different ethnic and religious backgrounds, America is a product of English and Christian civilization. Those days are long gone.
Instead, we are going the way our Founding Fathers warned us against: increasing balkanization and sectionalism. A constitutional republic - unlike an empire - is only as strong as its national cohesion. It is based not on imperial coercion but civic consent. Mr. Obama is recklessly pulling at the strings of unity, further polarizing us.
In confronting Obamacare, state sovereignty, states' rights and state nullification of federal laws are being asserted. This is what happened in the 1830s and 1840s. They are the signs of growing political anarchy and social frustration - people can only be pushed so far. Mr. Obama's drive for a socialist super-state threatens America's very existence. As Jefferson warned about slavery, it is time we start ringing the "fire bell in the night."
"Things fall apart; the center cannot hold," wrote William Butler Yeats. "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."
Conservatives will not be passive in this onslaught on all our core values. Mr. Obama's true legacy may be that he divides us deeper than ever before - unless he abandons his revolutionary project."
A few personal points: firstly, I do not see the reemphasis on state's rights as a sign of "growing political anarchy". Social Frustration? Yes. But not anarchy. Many Americans forget that the United States was initially supposed to be a Union of sovereign states. And it worked quite well under the Articles of Confederation-- it was only the frustration of certain members of the founding generation who wanted a strong central government that we even got the curent Constitution. Even after its ratification in 1787, many of the Jeffersonian Republicans recognized the power of the States as being a check against an out of control central government.
The only regret, in my mind, is that it took the Federal government acting to seize a significant portion of the American economy before we woke up.
And it seems that more and more people are recognizing the parallels between slavery and abortion. The greatest weakness, in my mind, of Americans is that we find it very easy to relegate other groups to the status of "non-persons". The Cherokee, on the trail of tears. African slaves. The Japanese-Americans in WWII. And now the unborn. When it is convenient- or when it benefits us- we can ignore the humanity and dignity possessed by others and simply sweep them aside.
We slaughtered each other once, over state's rights and the status of a group of people who could not speak for themselves. Perhaps we shall do it again. Only this time, instead of the moral high ground being occupied by the two nations called "America", only one side will carry the twin banners of Liberty and Righteousness.
And its not yours, Mr. President.
---------------------
+++AWESOME QUOTE+++
Fire, water, and government know nothing of mercy. – Albanian Proverb
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