A Costly Complacency

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Last night, a suicide bomber walked into an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, and blew himself up, killing 22 people and injuring many others. It was another incident in a long line of barbarous Islamic attacks on innocent civilians.

It is a fact of history that Islam is a religion of the sword and has expanded through the use of violence; and that terror attacks were an effective element of war used by Mohammed himself against his enemies. When you allow the barbarians to peacefully enter through the gates, conflict will eventually arise and put the native population at greater risk. We see this everywhere as Muslims emigrate and increase their geographical presence and influence.

There was a time when the British people cared about defeating evil during WWII. They fought hard against the tanks and planes of the Germans because they were British people defending the British nation. If it were today, Hitler would only have to employ diversity and multiculturalism as his weapon of choice against the British to secure an easy victory. It’s hard to watch the West commit civilizational suicide by importing people that hate them and their way of life, and not naming the evil in their midst: Islam.

What a tragic and horrible event, and yet it is an event that we are told is “part and parcel of living in a big city” according to Sadiq Khan, the Muslim mayor of London. Get use to this: more attacks are coming. Get use to this new way of life. Hold a candlelight vigil or write something heartfelt on Facebook, or stand up in solidarity with others against “Islamophobia,” but actually do nothing. If you can’t name the evil; if you can’t eject the evil from your presence, get ready for more, get ready for worse. Submission to terror has never been this easy.

Now in case one thinks I’m being overly dramatic when describing the threat, a 2016 survey of British Muslims revealed some startling facts. Most notably, as it relates to this latest incident:

Four per cent–the equivalent of more than 100,000 British Muslims–told the researchers that they had sympathy for people who take part in suicide bombing to fight injustice. Asked if someone they knew was involved with supporting terrorism in Syria, just one in three would report it to the police.

100,000 British Muslims would approve of this attack and two thirds of them would not report a known jihadist to the police; that’s more than 2,000,000 British Muslims that would not report a known jihadist. The enemy is in our midst and we are inviting more. Is there any wonder why this continues?

There is only one solution for those with any fight left in them: send them all back. Every last one. They hate you and your way of life. This is a cultural and civilizational war that only one side knows they are fighting. Our own values of tolerance and peace are being used as weapons against us. Islam cannot be reformed; it’s original texts will not allow for it. Jihad against the West will continue until all men are under submission to Islam. We can fight, or we can submit. The most humanitarian option would be to repatriate all Muslims back to their homelands and eliminate the strife and conflict that comes with this unworkable type of diversity. Let men live in peace amongst those with whom they share the same values. It is really that simple.

We can remain complacent, but it will be costly. We can light candles or tweet against “Islamophobia” to virute signal that we are a progressive, tolerant people; or we can eject those in our midst that are responsible for the conflict, the terror, the death, that has become too commonplace. There isn’t another option.

The Sira: The Life Of Mohammed

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There is no moderate Muslim and there is no peaceful Islam if the prophet Mohammed is the ‘perfect Muslim’ to be emulated by all his followers. It’s a provocative statement to make in this age of tolerance where we are fed a false narrative on the nature of Islam unmoored from the historical record and the reality of the events around us.

Just as Christians are called to imitate the life of Jesus Christ, so too are Muslims called to imitate the life of their prophet, Mohammed. In order to fully understand Islam, one must have a working knowledge of three different sources: the Koran, the Hadith, and the life of Mohammed as recorded in the Sira. In his book, The Sira: The Life of Mohammed, Dr. Bill Warner gives us a look into the life of the first and “greatest of all Muslims” from the primary sources of his life. When we understand the life of Mohammed, how he lived and all that he did, it is then that we see a true picture of Islam.

Warner’s thesis can be identified early on and he spends the remainder of the book providing details from the life of Mohammed in order to show that Islam is more a political ideology than a religion.

“Islam is primarily a political ideology. No action or statement by Islam can be understood without understanding its origins in the Trilogy. Any analysis, statement, or opinion about Islam is incomplete without a reference to the Trilogy. The Trilogy is the source and basis of all Islamic politics, diplomacy, history, philosophy, religion, and culture.”

Warner further states:

“Islam is defined by the words of Allah in the Koran, and the words and actions of Mohammed, called the Sunna. The Sunna is found in two collections of texts–the Sira (Mohammed’s life) and the Hadith (event’s in Mohammed’s life). The Koran says 91 times that Mohammed’s words and actions are to be considered the divine pattern for humanity…So the Trilogy is the Koran, the Sira, and the Hadith..[This] is the foundation and totality of Islam.”

Throughout it’s history, Islam has been a political force that has advanced by the power of the sword. There has been no missionary movement or caring charity to those outside the faith, only a violent advance of its borders in emulation of their Prophet who advanced his cause politically through the use of force during his 9 years in Medina.

Warner shows through the use of the Koranic text that the Kafir (or unbeliever ie. non-Muslims) can be mocked, beheaded, plotted against, terrorized, cursed, and lied to, all to advance the cause of Islam and bring about the submission of all unbelievers. This is how Mohammed lived and advanced the cause of Islam, and we see this in the Islamic world today as it works to expand its borders. This jihad will not be complete until the entire world is under the submission of Islam.

Mohammed’s success depended on politics, not religion. The Sira, Mohammed’s biography, gives a highly detailed accounting of his rise to power. He preached the religion of Islam for 13 years in Mecca and garnered 150 followers. He was forced to move to Medina and became a politician and warrior. During the last 9 years of his life, he was involved in an event of violence on the average of every 6 weeks. When he died, every Arab was a Muslim. Mohammed succeeded through politics, not religion…Politics was almost a thousand times more effective than religion [in increasing the number of converts to Islam].

Mohammed created a political doctrine of domination covertly cloaked under religious guise. As a preacher of the religious doctrine Mohammed was a failure, but as a commander of a strong political ideology he was a force that controlled the Middle East and much of Europe. Warner writes,

In Mecca, Mohammed demonstrated the initial practice of jihad when Islam was weak: persuasion and conversion. When he moved to Medina, he demonstrated how jihad worked when Islam was strong: using immigration against inhabitants, creating political power by struggling against the host, dominating other religions, using violence, and establishing a government.

It is estimated that in the 1400 year history of Islam, 270 million Africans, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and Jews were the victims of violent Jihad. It does not have a history of tolerance and peace as modern apologists like to portray. To say that Islam is a religion of peace misses the point since the very heart of Islam is political power wielded against the unbelievers and not a peaceful religion trying to bring about good for all people.

To understand Islam, it is absolutely necessary to understand the life of Mohammed. Warner’s book, drawn from primary source texts, goes a long way in painting an accurate picture of the roots of Islam and the modern branches that have grown from it. It is paramount that we understand the life of Mohammed in light of modern Islam that is expanding rapidly into the West. If we want to remain peaceful and free it is necessary to reject Islam as compatible with Western civilization.

The Life And Work Of Horatius Bonar

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In 2004 I completed a three year project compiling the works of the Scottish Presbyterian minister, Horatius Bonar. It was a general admiration for the humble life of a man that led me to complete the 13,000 page project and release it in PDF format; along with the fact that it had not been done before. Below is the short biography I wrote to accompany the work.

Before his death on July 31st, 1889, Rev. Horatius Bonar asked that no memoir of his life be written. Unfortunately for later generations, this request was honoured by those who knew and revered Dr. Bonar, and now little is known about the man apart from that which can be garnered from small biographical sketches and the personal recollections of friends. Despite authoring three biographies of eminent ministers in his own day, Bonar did not want the story of his life and ministry to in any way obscure the glory of Jesus Christ; to whom he hoped his life would point. He was a man who toiled ceaselessly to warn sinners of impending judgment and one whom God used greatly in 19th century Scotland for the saving of souls.

Horatius Bonar was born in Edinburgh on December 19th, 1808. He was one of seven boys, three of which entered upon gospel ministry (John James, Horatius, and Andrew) in their early years. He was ordained a minister in the Church of Scotland on November 30th, 1837, and was later given charge over the North Parish Church in Kelso. Bonar was counted among the dissenting ministers who left the Established Church to form the Free Church of Scotland in what was known as the Disruption of 1843. In 1866 he accepted a call to pastor in Edinburgh at the newly erected Chalmers Memorial Church. He was one in a long line of ministers in the Bonar family. In the May 1908 edition of The Scotsman magazine, they estimated that the Bonar descendants (John Bonar 1671-1747) served a total of 364 years in the pulpits of Scottish churches.

From the pulpit, Bonar’s message was simple and clear: he preached a crucified and risen Christ, whose righteousness alone was the only hope of sinners. He was adept in the exposition of a free gospel through the necessary sovereign workings of the Holy Spirit. His presentation always placed an emphasis on the urgent and immediate necessity of leaving one’s sin and coming to Christ; and this as the only means of reconciliation between man and God. In a rare autobiographical piece, Dr. Bonar wrote of his theology:

“Righteousness without works to the sinner, simply on his acceptance of the Divine message concerning Jesus and His sufficiency,—this has been the burden of our good news…It is one message, one gospel, one cross, one sacrifice, from which nothing can be taken and to which nothing can be added. This is the…beginning and the ending of our ministry.”

Dr. Bonar’s preaching was thoroughly biblical. He added nothing superfluous or superficial. He was not blessed with commanding powers of oration, but rather, was characterized as a sober and erudite preacher. It was once asked of one of his congregants if he was an eloquent man to which was replied, “No, he was not eloquent, but his doctrine was full and clear.” It was not his presence in the pulpit that captivated, for there was nothing in Dr. Bonar’s exposition that aimed at merely affecting the emotions. It was in his powerful and effective presentation of the evil of sin and the approaching doom of the impenitent sinner combined with an earnest commendation of Christ that moved his hearers. He strove to preach a biblical gospel that proclaimed the glory of God in the fullness of Christ; not one ashamedly suited for ‘itching ears’. Commenting on the state of the Christian faith in his day, Bonar once wrote: “It is not opinions that man needs, it is TRUTH. It is not theology, it is GOD. It is not religion, it is CHRIST. It is the knowledge of the free love of God in the gift of His only-begotten Son;” and it was towards these ‘needs’ that Bonar aimed his message.

Dr. Bonar had a modest estimate of his abilities, coupled with a seemingly boundless capacity for work. He edited and contributed to various magazines and periodicals; he wrote books, tracts, and hymns. His pen was scarcely idle. Whether it was a word of comfort to the afflicted saint or sound encouragement for the mature believer, his books were written with the sole purpose of communicating the truths of Scripture to the hearts and minds of his readers. Lord Polwarth, when asked to pay tribute to the writings of Dr. Bonar, remarked,

“…when I think of Dr. Bonar…as a writer, it is like a pure, broad light shining from heaven, where all the promises of salvation to men on earth appear to pour down as the perfect divine revelation, with nothing of man’s embellishment…it is all the divine message from beginning to end. Study the poetry, study the prose, you will feel the heart of God beating through it all.”

While the subject matter often varied, it almost always led the reader back to the central message of Scripture: the person and work of Christ. Christ was the sum and substance of every sermon Bonar preached, and every hymn or book he wrote to instruct and teach the dear saints of God. Two of his most notable works were God’s Way of Peace, and its companion volume, God’s Way of Holiness. In these books, Bonar outlined the doctrines of justification and sanctification and showed the profound importance that each of these play in the life of the Christian. He was also one of the foremost advocates of “pre-millennarian” eschatology and wrote extensively on this subject. He edited The Quarterly Journal of Prophecy for twenty-five years and summarized his eschatological views in a book entitled Prophetical Landmarks. The second advent of Christ was a doctrine that engaged much of Bonar’s efforts as he believed it had been “the hope of the Church through many a starless night when other hopes had gone out one by one…leaving her disconsolate and helpless.” Dr. Bonar strongly held that the knowledge and hope of Christ’s imminent return could dispel the darkness and afford a blessed comfort to the Christian.

The Reverend Bonar’s ministry extended beyond both the pulpit and the pen as he was known to spend countless hours in the spiritual care of the children in his parish. He considered it one of the minister’s foremost responsibilities to instruct and teach the little ones in the ways of the gospel. A young girl recalls her experience in a Bible class conducted by her minister:

“I sometimes wonder if any one else ever possessed the faculty that he had of drawing towards him the affection of young people, which, when you were once brought under the charm of his friendship, could never afterwards be lost or lessened. How well I remember his class for us girls! We would not for all the world have missed that hour on Wednesday afternoon. I think I see the little room…where we gathered, a bright, happy band of school- girls, sitting around to listen to his earnest, loving, faithful teaching. I see Dr. Bonar seated at the end of the long table with the large Bible spread out before him, the Bible hymn book in his hand, his dear handsome face beaming, and the pleasant smile which lighted it up, as some of us gave a fuller, clearer answer than he expected to the question asked. And then the last meeting before the holidays; what a solemn hour it was, as he reminded us that never again here below should we all meet together, and spoke of the meeting-place above. All kneeling down, to be each tenderly commended to the loving care of our heavenly Father, bathed in tears, we could hardly tear ourselves away, lingering long after the usual time.”

It was this affectionate love and concern for the spiritual welfare of these little ones that led him to the writing of hymns. The children he was ministering to had difficulty in understanding the metrical Psalms used in the Presbyterian Church, so he began to write hymns for them that could be sung in their Sabbath school. He set his hymns to simplistic tunes and the children loved them. Dr. Bonar viewed his hymns as a means of both enriching the mind and stirring the affections in the worship of God. He understood the power of music and how that power could be harnessed to effectively teach doctrinal truths. His hymns can be divided into two classes: those that conveyed the riches of Gospel truth, and those that spoke of the return of Christ and the coming heavenly glory. Dr. Handley Moule, the Bishop of Durham, once remarked:

“In Bonar’s hymns, the massive theology of the Reformation, say rather of St. Paul and of St. John, breaks into deep and tender melody, a crystal river from the rock. The glory of the Son of God, His finished work, His never-finished working, the power of His promised Spirit upon the heart of man, to convict, to convert, to train, to sanctify; the awe of guilt and judgment, the wonder of the blood of the Lamb, the sublime freedom of justifying grace, the walk with God through duty and suffering, the victory over death, the unutterable brightness of the promise of the second coming-all lives in his verse, that it may live in the worshipper’s soul as he sings, making the majestic doctrines embrace us, as it were, with a power full of beauty unified with truth.”

Dr. Bonar wrote well over 600 hymns, yet they were not used for public worship on the Sabbath. Theodore Cuyler recalled:

“The first time I ever saw Dr. Horatius Bonar was in May, 1872, when I was attending the Free Church General Assembly of Scotland as a delegate from the Presbyterian Church in the United States…I was glad to be introduced to him, for I was an enthusiastic admirer of his hymns…Although Horatius had won his world-wide fame as a composer of hymns, he was, at that time, stoutly opposed to the use of anything but the old Scotch version of the Psalms in church worship. During my address to the Assembly I said: ‘We Presbyterians in America sing the good old psalms of David.’ At this point Dr. Bonar led in a round of applause, and then I continued: ‘We also sing the Gospel of Jesus Christ as versified by Watts, Wesley, Cowper, Toplady and your own Horatius Bonar.‘ There was a burst of laughter, and then I rather mischievously added: ‘My own people have the privilege, not accorded to my brother’s congregation, of singing his magnificent hymns.’ By this time the whole house came down in a perfect roar, and the confused blush on Bonar’s face puzzled us—whether it was on account of the compliment, or on account of his own inconsistency. However, before his death he consented to have his own congregation sing his own hymns, although it is said that two pragmatical elders rose and strode indignantly down the aisle of the church.”

Bonar was also cognitive of the possible dangers associated with the use of hymns in worship:

“One is often inclined to ask how far some of these exulting hymns may be the utterance of excitement or sentimentalism…hymns are often the channels through which much unreality is given vent to in ‘religious life.’ Song, like music, is often deceitful, malting people unwittingly believe themselves to be what they are not. The amount of superficial similarity which has, in all ages, been introduced into and fostered in the Church by music, is incalculable. High-wrought feeling produced by it in conjunction with song, has in many a case misled both the singer and the listener into a belief that their heart was beating truly and nobly towards Christ, when all the goodness was like the morning cloud and early dew.”

The Signal, a magazine of the Free Church, publicly rebuked Bonar for his role in introducing hymns into the worship of their presbytery as he entered into the last years of his ministry. This was not the only controversy in which Dr. Bonar found himself. In 1843 he was one of the many supporters of Thomas Chalmers during the Disruption in the Church of Scotland. The abuses of patronage in the calling of ministers caused many to break away and form the Free Church of Scotland. The cause of the separation was grounded in the demand of the laity for a voice in the process of appointing ministers in opposition to the heritors whose selections went unimpeded. 474 ministers left to form the Free Church which Dr. Bonar was to remain in for more than forty years. However, the biggest public disputation that engaged Dr. Bonar was his support for the crusades of D. L. Moody in opposition to Dr. John Kennedy of Dingwall. In a series of public tracts, the two Scottish Presbyterians debated the orthodoxy of the American’s preaching and his “hyper-evangelistic” methods, with Bonar defending Moody from the charges of Kennedy.

Horatius Bonar was unable to avoid the trials and afflictions of life. He and his wife, Jane Lundie, suffered greatly when five of their children died early in life. In a moment of deep sorrow, a broken Horatius wrote, “Spare not the stroke; do with me as thou wilt; let there be naught unfinished, broken or marred; complete thy purpose that we may become thy perfect image.” Years later, when his son-in-law was taken early in life, Bonar’s daughter and five children came back to live with him and he was able to joyously write to a friend, “God took five children from me some years ago, and He has given me another five to bring up for Him in my old age.”

Through the tribulations he endured, Bonar was sustained by the sovereign hand of God working through his life and in his ministry. Horatius Bonar lived to the glory of God and the service of others, with little concern for how his own life would be remembered. It is my prayer that this CD will help to paint a clearer picture of this humble servant, while at the same time, showing us the beauty and glory of the One he served.

Angels Landing, Zion National Park, Utah

Angels Landing in Zion is my favourite place of anywhere I’ve ever been. I’ve done the hike 4 times to date and plan to do it many more times before I’m unable to navigate its steepness. It is a 4 mile hike up the spine of a rock structure that gives you an unrivalled view of Zion Canyon. It is narrow in spots and not for the feint of heart but the reward at the top more than makes up for those anxious moments.

This place is special to me for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the representation of the various forms of freedom we experience as humans. I suppose the closer we get to Zion (heaven) the freer we feel.

Capitalism

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I have a real hard time taking the left seriously because we have seen the horrible real world examples of what they advocate and it has always led to colossal failure. Communism and Socialism has failed wherever it’s been tried and yet progressives laud the evils of Capitalism and wish to return to those imposed, oppressive systems which are proven unworkable.

Between 1945 and 1955 the world tried the great Socialist experiment. Korea split into North and South. Germany split into East and West. China and Taiwan also split. These were identical countries and cultures that were divided; one side embraced a radical socialism with government controlled markets while the other remained free. Now some 60+ years later the verdict is in and the results are not unsurprising: the free economies are ahead of their socialist counterparts by nearly every measure of human well-being. They are vastly wealthier. They are safer. They have better healthcare. They have more rights for women and minorities. They have more general freedoms and better environmental records on the whole. And they did not suffer the same levels of violent government oppression that led to the death of millions of its own citizens. The outcomes could not have been more different.

Capitalism is not an economic system; it is what happens all by itself when men are free. Socialism, by contrast, can only happen by force and imposition upon a free people. It never just happens naturally of its own accord. This is why progressives are the real fascists; for everything they want is an assault on what men desire most: the right to live and act freely without government interference. Or simply put: freedom.

How can anyone remain a Socialist and advocate for political candidates that espouse Socialist rhetoric after the glaring history of failure for these collectivist ideologies is idiocy on a grand scale. It renders these advocates naive and historically illiterate. This is not to say that capitalism is flawless and not open to abuses; for men are naturally selfish and corrupt. But it is a platform that allows for honest trade and commerce between two parties and leads to fairer outcomes.

If you want to live in a Cuba or a Venezuela with empty grocery store shelves and few technological advances, then by all means, move there. Do not agitate for more government controls over the free movement of goods and the redistribution of another man’s wealth. Do not speak against the system that has provided you with the many modern conveniences you enjoy.  And don’t be surprised by opposition from those who want to retain their personal freedom and not have a system that is a proven failure foisted upon them by fools. We’ve seen this play out too many times already, and it has never ended well.

Religious Wars

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It is a tired and inaccurate argument made by atheists and the generally ignorant that religion is the main cause of war and strife in the world. We hear it time and again that if humanity could just eradicate religion, the world could live in peace. The argument is common, lazy, and wrong.

Vox Day did much of the heavy lifting in destroying this argument by presenting the evidence against it in Chapter VI of his book, The Irrational Atheist, published in 2007.  Day looked at the historical evidence put together by Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod in their Encyclopedia of Wars; a three volume set which catalogued 1,763 wars in the recorded history of mankind and the reasons and motivations behind them.

Day went through their work and tallied up all those that were attributable to religion and found that the number was,

“123 wars in all..[and]…that these 123 wars represent only 6.92 percent of all the wars recorded in the encyclopedia…It’s also interesting to note that more than half of these religious wars, sixty-six in all, were waged by Islamic nations, which is rather more than might be statistically expected considering that the first war in which Islam was involved took place almost three millennia after the first war chronicled in the Encyclopedia, Akkad’s conquest of Sumer in 2325 B.C.”

“In light of this evidence, the fact that a specific religion is currently sparking a great deal of conflict around the globe cannot reasonably be used to indict all religious faith, especially when one considers that removing that single religion from the equation means that all of the other religious faiths combined only account for 3.35 percent of humanity’s wars.”

“The historical evidence is conclusive. Religion is not a primary cause of war.”

Two points can be made here.

1) It is not in the least bit reasonable to blame “religion” for all the wars and strife around us since just under 7% of all wars had religious motivations. The history of humanity is the history of war; war has always been a part of mankind and will be until the end of time. Men are evil by nature and the outworking of this evil culminates ultimately in the wars between peoples and nations.

2) If one were to look at the violence that has been done in the name of religion, history teaches us that Islam stands atop them all. Islam bore responsibility for 3.57% of wars while all other religions combined were responsible for 3.35% of wars; quite a large discrepancy that highlights the violent nature of Islam.

This should help to dispel with those who argue that religion is the primary driver of discord in the world. Human history is a bloody one and at times religion did play a part in this, albeit a more minor one than people naturally assume. And yet, it is nothing compared to the body count of more than 100 million people that lost their lives under the atheistic regimes of the 20th century (Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, et al). It will be hard to beat the body count that occurred under the godless totalitarians of the previous century.

 

The Coming European Conflict

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Last weeks terror attack in the UK by a British Muslim was just another in a long list of Islamic terror attacks across Europe in the last several years. These attacks are increasing in frequency and will continue as long as we are afraid to stand up and name the enemy: Islam.

The British Muslim population has seen a steady increase over the last couple decades to almost 3,000,000 now in 2017. At current birth rates and immigration rates, a couple studies show that England will be a majority Muslim nation some time between 2060 and 2080. If this occurs, will we still be able to say that England is English? The answer is, no.

A nation is its people. England is England because it contains English people. The character of a nation is determined by its people and the common values they hold. Men are tribal and nations that thrive are homogeneous in culture and values. Take all the Irish out of Ireland and it ceases to be Ireland. We may still call the land mass Ireland but it is no longer Irish in any meaningful sense once the people are removed or replaced.

There is no “magic dirt” that makes Muslims living in England English, or that will make immigrants coming there something they are not. This latest attacker, even though he was born in the UK, was not British and no amount of thinking it will make it so despite what his passport might have told us. The more diverse a population that a nation has, the greater the conflict that comes with it. Diversity is not strength, and in fact the opposite is true. This is an observable fact and this latest attack is more evidence that there is a cultural divide between Islam and the West. The West is committing societal suicide by allowing the migrating horde of Muslims to invade, and it is an invasion by any definition of the word. England will cease to be England once the English people are supplanted and become a minority in their own land.

In a generation Europe will be transformed into a barbaric Islamic cesspool (imagine the Middle East without oil revenues) with all it’s customs that are antithetical to the tolerant West. It will be a bloody 40 years ahead. Europeans will see their lives threatened and transformed and there will be war, if human history is to be our teacher. An invasion of this scale has always led to conflict and it will again. If the British want to remain British and preserve their nation for their posterior, they need to expel every Muslim and immigrant in their midst; it is the best solution for both the British and for the immigrants as it will avoid a most certain, future bloodshed.

We will watch as things continue to crumble in Europe; our wives and daughters raped and exploited, gay people beaten and murdered, those of other faiths executed and those that reject Islam honour-killed. The British, the Germans, the French, the Dutch, and others have all handed over their birth-rite to those that want to rule over them. This will continue unless good men rise up to reclaim their nations and preserve them for their children. The history of humanity is the history of war and these have always been fought along tribal lines. It will be no different now.

The American Dichotomy

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I’ve spent many years and miles driving through various parts of the US. It is a beautiful country in so many respects, yet hard to look at in others. It is a nation that bears testimony to the power of freedom and hard work.

Being “the land of opportunity”, some of its people have amassed great wealth while others live and suffer daily in crippling poverty. Opportunity will never knock on all doors equally. This is a fact of the human condition and cannot be changed.

America showcases its opulence and at the same time tries to hide some of the most saddening displays of poverty. For every coastal mansion or large yacht there seems to be an unending supply of rusting mobile homes that house the impoverished and forgotten. You can’t drive through small town America without seeing the ruins of a people left behind.

I am for the free markets and the free movement of capital but one cannot survey the landscape of the US without seeing what greed and the corrupt nature of man has wrought. Despite the irrational rantings of liberals and those that seek to redistribute the wealth of a nation, the poor will always be among us. There will always be those for whom opportunities seem fleeting and unattainable.

I do know what the solution is. I also know that man will not do, nor can he do, what is necessary. It will get worse. The divide will grow. Hope and despair will always live side by side.

Civilizational Cycles

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It’s an historical fact: eventually all societies die out or collapse. They are conquered by another or they collapse under their own decaying weight.

Civilizations are born from struggle and undergirded by virtue. Individual responsibility and personal restraint are its foundation and have proven time and again to lead to happiness and prosperity. But prosperity is a double-edged sword for with it comes the tendency towards complacency and complacency to laziness and entitlement. These in turn lead to the rise of vice and the ever increasing need for self-gratification.

Personal restraint and virtue are mocked by the progressives who have a new vision for the world and begin to undo all those things that were the very requirements for civic prosperity.

Foundational pieces are removed or done away with one by one as gratification becomes the ultimate attainment for the new narcissistic classes. Once a sturdy foundation is removed or altered a house cannot stand, and it collapses and disintegrates under its own weight. And the next generations fail to learn the lessons of those who have failed before them and begin again with a new found zeal to repeat it all over again.

It is almost axiomatic: Virtue leads to a prosperous society, and prosperity leads to complacency, vice, and the rise of a liberal progressivism; and this progressivism leads to cultural decay and disintegration.

This cycle will continue as the very nature of man dictates that it necessarily will. Weak men create weak, decaying societies. Out of the ashes of a weak and rotting society will arise strong men. Strong men will once again create strong societies until vice is allowed to rule and the cycle will continue. Very few ever see the walls crumbling around them until they are buried in the rubble.

Horseshoe Bend, Page, Arizona

This photo was taken on my second trip to Horseshoe Bend in Page, Arizona in 2016. Clouds and lighting change the look of the area with its mineral-rich coloured rock and dark water. It is a breathtaking vista at any time of day as one looks out over this picturesque bend in the Colorado River.

It’s a 1,000 foot drop down to the river and many tourists venture perilously close to the edge. It’s an easy walk from the parking lot and an absolute must-see when in the area.

Thoughts On Abortion

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During World War II, the Nazis referred to the Jews as “rats.” Amidst the Rwandan genocide of the mid 1990’s, the Hutus called the Tutsis “cockroaches.” Written into the US Constitution during the time of slavery, the Three-Fifths Compromise defined each black slave as three-fifths a human being, or put more succinctly, less than fully human.

The same thing has occurred in the modern abortion debate: a human life, a baby, is now unaffectionately referred to as a fetus, removing from it the human connotation and making it appear to be less than what it really is. When one defines their opponent in such a way as to make them appear to be an animal or sub-human, their eventual extermination becomes more palatable to the average person. (For more on this phenomenon read Less Than Human: Why we demean, enslave, and exterminate others by David Livingstone Smith). We see this same tactic used in much of what passes for political discourse these days. Demonize and dehumanize the object of your scorn and you subtly delegitimize their value.

Both sides struggle to frame the abortion debate in ways that make their own positions appear more acceptable. Is a person pro-choice or pro-abortion? Is another pro-life or anti-choice? No matter how one characterizes themselves or their opponents, we can never lose sight of the fact that at the very heart of the issue we are talking about life, not just a clump of developing cells akin to a growth or tumour. To define a baby in such a way is to make it’s termination and extraction seem far more remedial a procedure and far less distasteful to the average person. We are a culture where our personal comfort is the “value” we cherish most, while doing what may be difficult (raising a child of an unplanned pregnancy) proves to be too much of an inconvenience for many.

Words have powerful meanings. Those that have sought to exterminate their enemies in times past have known that and have defined them in ways that questioned their humanness. We must be just as strong in exposing this tactic and calling it what it is: evil. But that assumes one even has the categories of right and wrong, good and evil, in their vocabulary to begin with.

There is much more I will say on this subject over time, but for now I leave you with this:

How can we speak of the termination of a pregnancy when what we really mean is the destruction of a human life? How can we talk of therapeutic abortion when pregnancy is not a disease needing therapy and what abortion effects is not a cure but a killing? How can we talk of abortion as a kind of retroactive contraception when what it does is not prevent conception but destroy the conceptus? We need to have the courage to use accurate language. Abortion is feticide: the destruction of an unborn child. It is the shedding of innocent blood, and any society that can tolerate this, let alone legislate for it, has ceased to be civilized. -John Stott

Time Almost Stood Still

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I turn my back to the wind
To catch my breath,
Before I start off again
Driven on,
Without a moment to spend
To pass an evening
With a drink and a friend

-Time Stand Still, Rush

This past weekend I was cleaning out a few boxes and came across an old photo a friend had gotten signed for me circa 1996. Most would think it a kind gesture, but the story still makes me scream, “Are you kidding me?!!!” in my head.

I have been a die-hard Rush fan my entire life (well, since 1978 anyways) and recounting this story brings back a weird feeling of “oh, what could have been!” I’ve never been one to hold celebrities in high esteem but this represented two thirds of the greatest rock band in the world! So THIS was different.

A friend of mine, who I’ll call Tom, use to frequent a restaurant in Toronto called Pronto. At times a little stuffy, Pronto was known for a good wine list and on occasion would host some high-end wine tastings. Another frequent patron of Pronto was Alex Lifeson.

It was another Friday night wine tasting and Tom found himself seated across from this funny blond guy who really liked his wine. They got to talking about their wine collections, their love of golf, Toronto restaurants, and places they had travelled. At the end of the evening, the funny blond guy told Tom he was having a few friends to his house the following night for a little food and wine and he’d like to invite Tom to join them. Tom thought it sounded like a fun night and accepted.

While not really into music, Tom was able to connect some dots and figure out that Alex was in some Canadian band called Rush.

Tom showed up Saturday night and instantly the wine was flowing. There were six of them in total exchanging grape-flavoured tales, and one of the fellows present was another guy in the band named Geddy. Weird name, he thought. After awhile, the conversation turned to stories from the road and music.

At one point, Tom said, “I have a friend who is just crazy about you guys but I had no idea you were actually quite popular.”

“Well, we’re just getting started. Why don’t you call him up and invite him over. There’s plenty of wine,” said Alex nonchalantly.

“Yeah, call him him up!” Geddy replied while raising a glass.

One of the other men present said, “Do it. I’m sure he won’t even believe you.”

Now it’s at this moment, I cannot believe the turn the story takes. It seems like an invite of every Rush fans dream. Tom really had just one job at this point. One job. Pick. Up. The. Phone. But something happened in Tom’s brain that to this day remains inexplicable to me.

“I would, but he’s not really a wine drinker,” Tom stupidly muttered. “If you guys could just sign something for him that would be great.” Now to be fair, 20 years ago I wasn’t much of a wine drinker but have come to enjoy it over time. But, but, but….I certainly could have faked it for a night!

Apparently, the night continued well into the morning. More wine. More stories. Headaches had by all. I wouldn’t know though, because I wasn’t invited!

Monday morning came around. Tom called me early at work and said, “I’ve got something for you, let’s meet for lunch.” We met at our usual spot and Tom began recounting the story I’ve just told. I remember it almost word for word, and the feelings of disbelief and despair. I almost didn’t believe him until he handed me this:

Alex: “Join us for a drink next time”
Geddy: “Too bad you don’t drink.”

Tom had a big smile on his face, thinking he had done something good. I looked at him, totally speechless. (I am not ungrateful, but in that moment, yeah, I was).

“So let me get this straight, Alex and Geddy wanted YOU to invite ME over to hang out with you guys, and you didn’t think that was a good idea?” I said to him incredulously. “Like, not even for a second?”

At that moment Tom realized the gravity of his error in judgment as he sheepishly said, “But, I was drinking.”

We are still friends to this day. I sometimes think about missing out on that moment “to pass an evening with a drink and a friend.”

I did get to meet them both years later at a charity event, but it wasn’t the same.

The Gods Of The Copybook Headings

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In 1919, Rudyard Kipling published his poem The Gods of the Copybook Headings which represented the time-tested and proven wisdom of old, pitted against the new ideas and moralities that proved pleasurable and fleeting, yet in the end, destructive.

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place;
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four —
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man —
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began: —
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Kipling seemed prescient in his ability to see where the “new wisdom” would lead, and in fact did lead, and how the principles of old held true time and again in the face of those who denied them. It is far more pronounced today and the progressive experiments we see all around us, that deny that which works and the way things were meant to be, will ultimately fail. But the progressive mind is not one that understands nor learns from history; and becomes evermore puzzled as to why they are doomed to repeat it.

Peace Will Come

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“Carry on, you will always remember
Carry on, nothing equals the splendor
Now your life’s no longer empty
Surely heaven waits for you.”

“Carry on my wayward son,
For there’ll be peace when you are done,
Lay your weary head to rest
Don’t you cry no more.”

-Kerry Livgren, Kansas, 1977