UPDATE: Joe Carter, a former staff member on Huckabee's election team, weighs in on this issue here.Almost two years ago, I wrote a series of posts on the Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, excoriating him on many of his political positions. One of my main complaints with the man as a presidential candidate (note: I think he's a nice guy on a personal level, but so is Obama) was his propensity to undermine the judicial system by releasing murderers and other dangerous convicts for no apparent reason than his love of "compassionate conservatism" and clearly no real grasp of a Biblical view of justice (Wayne Dumond was the most (in)famous of his monumental screwups). So it was not too surprising to me when I found out today that the main suspect in the murders of four police officers near Seattle this weekend was released by the Huckster in 2000. What was he released from, you ask? From a 108 year sentence for multiple aggravated robbery convictions. He was paroled on the say of Governor Huckabee TWICE {see comment section for more on this}, the second time after being convicted again of robbery. All because Clemmons wrote a nice letter to Huck telling him how he had been raised in a Christian home and was a changed man.
I don't know what his political aspirations are, but let this be a reminder that Mr. Huckabee is not fit for the office of Commander in Chief!
A pox on this site and any other ideas this terrible.
Kevin DeYoung has an excellent piece regarding the Gospel in (it appears) response to Shane Claiborne’s recent letter to unbelievers in Esquire. Read Claiborne’s piece first then check out DeYoung’s response. It’s spot on.
The New Gospel generally has four parts to it.
It usually starts with an apology…
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Then there is an appeal to God as love…
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The third part of the New Gospel is an invitation to join God on his mission in the world…
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And finally, there is a studied ambivalence about eternity…
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This way of telling the good news of Christianity is very chic. It’s popular for several reasons.
1. It is partially true. God is love. The kingdom has come. Christians can be stupid. The particulars of the New Gospel are often justifiable.
2. It deals with straw men. The bad guys are apocalyptic street preachers, Crusaders, and caricatures of an evangelical view of salvation.
3. The New Gospel leads people to believe wrong things without explicitly stating those wrong things. That is, Christians who espouse the New Gospel feel safe from criticism because they never actually said belief is unimportant, or there is no hell, or that Jesus isn’t the only way, or that God has no wrath, or that there is no need for repentance.
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4. It is manageable. The New Gospel meets people where they are and leaves them there. It appeals to love and helping our neighbors. And it makes the appeal in a way that repudiates any hint of judgmentalism, intolerance, or religiosity. This is bound to be popular. It tells us what we want to hear and gives us something we can do.
5. The New Gospel is inspirational. This is what makes the message so appealing to young people in particular.
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6. The New Gospel has no offense to it. This is why the message is so attractive. The bad guys are all “out there.” This can be a problem for any of us. We are all prone to soft-pedaling the gospel, only presenting the attractive parts and failing to mention where Christ does not just comfort but also confronts. And it must confront more than the sins of others. [emphasis added]
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This is no small issue. And it is not just a matter of emphasis. The New Gospel will not sustain the church. It cannot change the heart. And it does not save. It is crucial, therefore, that our evangelical schools, camps, conferences, publishing houses, and churches can discern the new gospel from the old.
Mark Steyn has an excellent piece on the Fort Hood terrorist attack (for that is what it was).
[W]e … are now reflexively conditioned to ignore the flashing neon sign. Like those apocryphal Victorian ladies discreetly draping the lasciviously curved legs of their pianos, if a glimpse of hard unpleasant reality peeps through we simply veil it in another layer of fluffy illusions.
Two joint terrorism task forces became aware almost a year ago that Major Hasan was in regular email contact with Anwar al-Awlaqi, the American-born but now Yemeni-based cleric who served as imam to three of the 9/11 hijackers and supports all-out holy war against the United States. But the expert analysts in the Pentagon determined that this lively correspondence was consistent with Major Hasan’s “research interests”, so there was no need to worry. That’s America: Technologically superior, money no object (not one but two “joint terrorism task forces” stumbled across him). Yet no action was taken.
On the other hand, who needs surveillance operations and intelligence budgets? Major Hasan was entirely upfront about who he was. He put it on his business card: “SOA.” As in “Soldier of Allah” – which seems a tad ungrateful to the American taxpayers who ponied up half a million bucks or thereabouts in elite medical school education to train him to be a Soldier of Uncle Sam. In a series of meetings during 2008, officials from both Walter Reed and the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences considered the question of whether then Captain Hasan was psychotic. But, according to at least one bigwig at Walter Reed, members of the policy committee wondered “how would it look if we kick out one of the few Muslim residents”. So he got promoted to Major and shipped to Fort Hood.
And 13 men and women and an unborn baby are dead.
Well, like they say, it’s easy to be wise after the event. I’m not so sure. These days, it’s easier to be even more stupid after the event. “Apparently he tried to contact al Qaeda,” mused MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. “That’s not a crime to call up al Qaeda, is it? Is it? I mean, where do you stop the guy?” Interesting question: Where do you draw the line?
The truth is we’re not prepared to draw a line even after he’s gone ahead and committed mass murder. “What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy,” said General Casey, the US Army’s Chief of Staff, “but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here.” A “greater tragedy” than 14 dead and dozens of wounded? Translating from the original brain-addled multicult-speak, the Army Chief of Staff is saying that the same fatuous prostration before marshmallow illusions that led to the “tragedy” must remain in place. If it leads to occasional mass murder, well, hopefully it can be held to what cynical British civil servants used to call, during the Northern Irish “Troubles”, “an acceptable level of violence”. Fourteen dead is evidently acceptable. A hundred and forty? Fourteen hundred? I guess we’ll find out.
“Diversity” is one of those words designed to absolve you of the need to think. Likewise, a belief in “multiculturalism” doesn’t require you to know anything at all about other cultures, just to feel generally warm and fluffy about them.
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The brain-addled “diversity” of General Casey will get some of us killed, and keep all of us cowed. In the days since the killings, the news reports have seemed increasingly like a satirical novel the author’s not quite deft enough to pull off, with bizarre new Catch 22s multiplying like the windmills of your mind: If you’re openly in favor of pouring boiling oil down the throats of infidels, then the Pentagon will put down your emails to foreign jihadists as mere confirmation of your long established “research interests”. If you’re psychotic, the Army will make you a psychiatrist for fear of provoking you. If you gun down a bunch of people, within an hour the FBI will state clearly that we can all relax, there’s no terrorism angle, because, in our over-credentialized society, it doesn’t count unless you’re found to be carrying Permit #57982BQ3a from the relevant State Board of Jihadist Licensing.
Ezra Levant, my comrade in a long battle to restore freedom of speech to Canada, likes to say that the Danish cartoons crisis may one day be seen as a more critical event than 9/11. Not, obviously, in the comparative death tolls but in what each revealed about the state of western civilization. After 9/11, we fought back, hit hard, rolled up the Afghan camps; after the cartoons, we weaseled and equivocated and appeased and signaled that we were willing to trade core western values for a quiet life. Watching the decadence and denial on display this last week, I think in years to come Fort Hood will be seen in a similar light. What happened is not a “tragedy” but a national scandal, already fading from view.
Lord Smith of Finsbury believes that implementing individual carbon allowances for every person will be the most effective way of meeting the targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
It would involve people being issued with a unique number which they would hand over when purchasing products that contribute to their carbon footprint, such as fuel, airline tickets and electricity.
Like with a bank account, a statement would be sent out each month to help people keep track of what they are using.
If their "carbon account" hits zero, they would have to pay to get more credits.
NBC gives new meaning to the phrase "green screen" next week, spreading a pro-environmental message across five of its prime-time entertainment programs.
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Trainers on "The Biggest Loser" will instruct their clients to buy organic produce and bring their own mugs to the coffee shop.
One of the Fabian’s suggestions, to bring about a more equal society and thereby lessen poverty was to increase and extend inheritance tax. The money raised would be distributed in one way or another to the poor (minus deductions, of course, for the pay, perquisites and pensions of those who had to administer it, a proportion not likely to be small). For, as he said, it was unfair that some people, by accident of birth, should inherit wealth while others should inherit nothing.Read the rest here...
It seemed to me obvious that, underlying and if you like impelling the proposal was our old and trusted psychological friend, the one who never lets you down, namely resentment. Why should some people, no better than I and sometimes much worse than I, be better off than I, merely by chance, that is to say by accident of birth? Why should some people be handed on a plate what I have to work all my life for, or indeed in some cases more than I can ever hope to earn and accumulate?
Nothing could be less fair.
It is unfair, but is it unjust?
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There are many unfairnesses in life that we must learn to put up with, if we are to have any chance of happiness or even of tolerable contentment. For example, I should like to be taller, better-looking and more intelligent and gifted than I am. Every time I meet someone better-looking than I, taller than I, or more talented than I, which I do very regularly, I experience a brief spark of envy. What did they do to be as they are, my superiors? Why did providence, or chance, endow them with characteristics so much more attractive than my own? Needless to say, I never stop to think that, just possibly, some people might ask the same of me when they meet me.
But the differential endowments of nature are unfair, not unjust, because (at least as yet) no human intervention can prevent them. The inheritance of wealth is not like this: it is a human arrangement that could be abrogated if not easily, for political reasons, at least with some effort. And if injustice is unfairness brought about by human means, then inheritance of wealth is unjust. Ergo, inheritance of wealth ought to be forbidden because it is unjust, and we must always seek justice.
The question, then, is whether we should always seek justice to the exclusion of other desiderata. Is it true that justice always and everywhere trumps other considerations? I think the answer is no.
To those climate change fans (for lack of a better word) reading this, what say you? Honestly, setting aside the politics of it all, if you were told that a group claimed that an apocalypse is coming but all of the "facts," rhetoric, and pseudo science they used kept being proven wrong and the group even admitted it, would you really still lean toward believing that their overall thesis is correct???
Makes me wonder who the real "flat-earthers" truly are...
