I'm an equal opportunity opponent of despots!

I heard a few days ago that Lt. Governor, Casey Cagle, threatened to use his position as president of the state Senate to kill a proposed sales tax exemption on jet fuel. The move was aimed at Delta Air Lines after their recent announcement they would no longer offer discounts to NRA members. Then, this morning, I hear that lawmakers officially struck down the exemption yesterday. From Reuters.com, we read the following:

Delta said it was ending a discount program for NRA members and had asked the gun rights group to remove its information from the group’s website after the Feb. 14 slaying of 17 students.... Georgia Republicans had criticized the airline’s move to cut its ties to the NRA. They were led by Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle, president of the state senate, who vowed to kill any tax legislation that benefited Delta. The bill that passed the Georgia House of Representatives and Senate on Thursday had previously included tax exemption language that had been projected to save Delta some $40 million a year in jet fuel tax.

Really, people?  OK, I know this isn't rocket science but come on!  The first amendment is supposed to protect us against government retribution when we speak out on certain issues. If the NRA speaks out against gun control, people have the right to protest them. If a company like Delta Air Lines decides not to offer discounts to members of the NRA, that's their right. I don't have to like it. I don't have to fly on Delta. I can go on social media and tell everyone who will listen that they should boycott Delta because of their actions toward the NRA. That is what freedom looks like. When government officials use the power of their office to punish a company exercising its God given rights of speech and association, that is what tyranny looks like.

A straightforward reading of the First Amendment shows that it specifically forbids the government from infringing on our right to free speech or association. In other words, the First Amendment doesn't restrict what Delta can do or what the NRA or what I can do; it restricts what the government can do. I will also remind you that we're talking about gun control – a heated political issue. So GA Republicans are specifically punishing Delta Airlines because of its political speech! How much more blatant of a violation does this have to be before more conservatives speak out against it?!

It was just a few years ago when I spoke out against my own state of KY for trying to take away a sales tax exemption from the Ark Encounter. How is this any different? It was Democrats then but I'm an equal opportunity opponent of despots. As they say, "What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander."  I do not overlook tyranny just because the tyrants have a little “R” after their names.

People have the right to be stupid and Delta has the right to offend millions of NRA members. They will have to live with their decision when the offended members stop flying on Delta or start calling for boycotts. But when they suffer political reprisal because of their position, they will have an ally in me. I do not want the government choosing sides in political debates, even if they happen to be on my side this time.

Further reading:

More Liberal Bigotry

No Christian Owned Businesses Allowed In Boston!

Liberals don't understand rights

Too Quick to Forgive

Selective outrage by the liberal media and its consequences

It's no secret that I'm not a fan of many mainstream media. Everyone knows most cable news channels have a liberal slant. You know what, though? I would even watch liberal news shows if they presented the news. What we have instead is a bunch of channels presenting half-truths and radical opinions with the objective of smearing republicans and excusing democrats. They're not news shows – they're the propaganda arm of the DNC.

A recent example was this non-response of a CNN panel to the Kathy Griffin photo/video showing her holding the severed head of Donald Trump. Jake Tapper introduces the clip calling Griffin's photo, “disgusting” and saying, “it's hard to imagine how anyone would think that's appropriate.” As he is saying this, though, you can hear him chuckle so obviously he's not overly disgusted and certainly not outraged. This is about as harsh a criticism the panel can muster.

Next, Tapper quotes Donald Trump, Jr as saying, “This is now considered to be acceptable discourse by the left,” and turns it over to his panel for discussion. Molly (I don't even know her last name because most CNN contributors are that unimportant to me) and Tapper share another chuckle before she admits, “I have a hard time bringing myself to even care about something like this.” She even goes so far as to blame the Trumps for making a big deal about this saying it, “speaks to the need to see themselves as the victim.” The remaining two panelists added nothing except to say that there are bigger issues than Kathy Griffin.

There were no calls to tone down the rhetoric. There were no pleas for people to come together. It was just pompous rebukes by liberal elitists telling the Trumps to stop whining.

I don't watch CNN. I guess most people don't watch CNN. Conan O'Brien said the only people who watch CNN are the people who clean the offices at CNN. Now that's funny. Anyway, the only reason I'm writing about this is to draw attention to the precise reason I don't watch shows like CNN.

Most people will remember from before the election, the leaked audio tape of Donald Trump joking with a male reported. In a high school like display of machismo, in what was thought to be a private conversation, Trump bragged that women will let a celebrity grope and kiss them. For months there was non-stop coverage about how Trump is a sexual predator and misogynist. CNN has held on to it like a dog with a bone. Now, a high-profile celebrity, in an intentional attempt to incite, holds up a terrorist-like image of her holding the bloody head of the President, and CNN says... meh.

The left calls Trump divisive. That's a laugh. They see an evil motive when Trump doesn't attend the White House Correspondents' Dinner. They shout “unfair” that the President gets two scoops of ice cream. But they can't even bring themselves to care about Griffin's incendiary display. //RKBentley shakes his head//

The selective outrage of liberal media has consequences that reach far beyond a lack of viewers. Kathy Griffin recently held a press conference which, in my opinion, was probably her funniest performance ever. In it she lamented that Trump is a bully who is trying to ruin her career. Hilarious, right? I mean, come on – Griffin poses with the President's severed head and Trump responds in a Tweet saying she is sick and should be ashamed. Now she's the victim? Excuse me while I have a chortle.

Griffin also expressed her concerns over the death threats she's been getting because of this. Here's the problem: for months, conservative pundits like Ann Coulter, Ben Shapiro, and Milo Yiannopoulos have received real threats when they appear somewhere to speak. These aren't anonymous letters or emails – they're rioters who wear masks and burn buildings. Black Lives Matter protesters march in the streets and chant they want dead cops now! The mainstream fake news media simply makes excuses and tries to distance the violence from the ideology. The typical liberal commentator usually starts with something like, “I don't condone violence but....”

The violent rhetoric has reached a fevered pitch and it's all coming from the left. The response from the right has been relatively mild. How far will CNN and news outlets let the line be pushed? If the political rhetoric needs be toned down, they need to stop providing cover to the purveyors of the worst hate speech.

There have been other folks on CNN who have been a little more firm in their condemnation of Griffin but her actions were so far over the line they simply realize there's no excusing it this time. I think if there hadn't been a history of complicity between liberal media and the Democrat party, Griffin might have thought twice before doing the photo shoot. When the people who are supposed to report the news sit silently by while mobs riot and threaten, it allows the violence to escalate.

CNN, I don't care that no one watches you. I hope you lose more viewers. I hope your station goes bankrupt. I wish I could hurry it along. I'm just sorry that you've endured this long.

Stop spouting facts... the science is settled!

According to Wikipedia, scientism is a term used to describe the universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or the most valuable part of human learning—to the exclusion of other viewpoints. Followers of scientism tend to be zealots, more devout even than the average followers of traditional religions. What makes them especially stubborn is that they tend to not think of their beliefs as their “religion;” instead, they think scientism is simply the default way of thinking for any person and so they cannot comprehend any argument made from a different point of view. To them, if something can't be examined scientifically, it can't be true.

Now, you would think that people who practically worship science would welcome scientific debate. They say they do. Actually, they brag that they do. In the new Cosmos series, Neil deGrass Tyson offered these five, simple rules for science:

(1) Question authority.

(2) Think for yourself.

(3) Test ideas by the evidence gained from observation and experiment.

(4) Follow the evidence wherever it leads.

(5) Remember: you could be wrong.

Ignore the self-contradiction going on here – like, how can someone test the idea that we should test ideas by evidence? My point in citing these “rules” is to show how skepticism is supposed to be at the heart of science. According to Tyson, I'm not supposed to accept a conclusion just because someone in authority says it's true. I'm supposed to think for myself. Right? I could be wrong but maybe it's the person making the claim who is wrong.

There are real scientists who are skeptics. At the risk of sounding cliché, scientific advancement often comes when people think outside of the box. Science Alert once published a list of 8 scientific papers that were rejected during peer review before going on to win a Nobel Prize. Obviously, these authors were on to something and the scientific establishment just couldn't see it. How often has one radical idea, one that other scientists may have thought sounded crazy, turned out to be true? Maybe we should ask Galileo.

Devout members of scientism aren't skeptics. They claim to be but they aren't. They blindly follow the majority opinion without question. You can often identify them by their frequent use of the phrase, “The science is settled.” To them, truth is whatever is accepted by a majority of scientists. Anyone who disagrees is considered a heretic. Actually, they don't call them heretics – they call them, “science deniers” but, in scientism, it means the same thing. Doubters of some scientific theory aren't ever called “skeptics” or “free thinkers;” they're “deniers.”

Let me give you a few examples of scientism's doctrine. The first is obviously evolution. I cannot tell you the number of times I've heard rabid evolutionists defend their theory by saying no credible scientist denies that evolution happened. Note the use of the word “credible,” but never mind blatant No True Scotsman fallacy. Truth is not decided by popular vote. Evolutionists often refuse to debate creationists on the grounds that “the science is settled,” “there is no debate among scientists whether evolution is true,” and debating the theory with a creationists gives the impression there is still doubt over the theory. Followers of scientism want to squelch any dissent over evolution by suing public schools who want to “teach the difficulties,” rejecting any creationist paper submitted for peer review, and even protesting a privately funded, religious organization like the Creation Museum.

Another long standing doctrine of this godless faith is climate change. Once upon a time, it was called “global warming” but after decades of no noticeable increase in the global, mean temperature, they had to replace “warming” with the much more ambiguous term, “change.” Actually, none of the dire predictions made by these alarmists have happened. In 2008, ABC aired a video montage showing all the terrible things that would happen by 2015 because of climate change: New York flooding, hundreds of miles of scorched earth, and skyrocketing food and fuel prices. I remember 2015. It was nothing like the predictions made by the video but followers of scientism aren't embarrassed by their failed predictions; The “science is settled” concerning climate change and bad things are going to happen unless we do something now. //RKBentley shakes his head//

Bill Nye was recently embarrassed by Tucker Carlson when he tried to pull that “the science is settled” crap. Carlson was asking basic questions about climate change and Nye was obviously making up the answers. Before we spend trillions of dollars on this “crisis,” we need to have some answers: the most fundamental question is, is there even any warming? The trend for the last few decades says no. If it is happening, to what extent are humans causing it? If we could stop warming, should we? What is the earth's temperature supposed to be? Every air-breathing animal produces carbon dioxide. Humans produce about 2 pounds of CO2 per day. Even if we converted the entire world to 100% emission-free energy, humans will still produce billions of pounds of CO2 every day just by breathing. How can that be bad? Plants require CO2. What will happen to our forests if we could reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere? These are legitimate questions but they are heresy to dogma-driven zealots like Nye. A real scientist on CNN recently brought up some of these points and Nye scolded CNN for, “having one climate change skeptic, and not 97 or 98 scientists or engineers concerned about climate change.”

The most recent political discussion which followers of scientism have weighed in on is the transgender issue. Scientists now “know” that things like gender identity or even our biological sex aren't immutable but exist on a spectrum. You would think that after 6,000 years of human history, the science would at least be settled about who is a male and who is a female. Wrong! Now we're being told that doctors sometimes got it wrong when they checked “male” or “female” on a birth certificate. I'm a 51 year old white guy. Why can't I identify as a 65 year old person and start receiving social security? Why can't I say I'm a black guy and maybe qualify for affirmative action programs? But I can say I'm a woman and folks like Nye will rush to defend my delusion as being normal, usual, and healthy. Anyone who disagrees is a hate-filled, homophobic, bigot. Colleges are adopting strict policies requiring the use of gender-neutral pronouns. If I call a female, “she,” suddenly I'm the one who has the problem. Several years ago, I wrote about California's ban on gay-conversion therapy for minors. Really? So after little Johnny was abused by an uncle, he seeks help because he doesn't like the sexual feelings he now has toward men and the only acceptable response is, “You're gay, Johnny, you can't change it. You'd better learn to live with it!”

Bill Nye has said that being a creationist suppresses critical thinking. I believe Nye's religion of scientism is a far worse assault on critical thinking than being a creationist could ever be. He does not want debate. “Science deniers” must be ridiculed and insulted until they have lost all credibility. Maybe they should even be put in prison. Nye and folks like him have their minds are made up. Stop confusing them with facts. The science is settled.

Let me tell you what I find offensive...

So, I'm having breakfast with my wife at McDonald's on Saturday and I read this headline on FaceBook: Community Shocked Over Christian Church Sign: 'Muhammad not Greater than Jesus.' And they aren't kidding when they say shocked. One resident, Eric Cohn, is reported as saying, “I literally had to stop and back up and make sure I saw what I saw, and I was profoundly offended and upset by it.” Cohn also felt moved to write a letter to the editor of the local paper where he said, “Disparaging another group’s God is completely out of line.... Please, take it down — now.”

Another offended resident said in the same editorial, “I want to complain openly about the marquis in front of the Missionary Baptist Church on Belmont Drive. The message on the west bound side of the sign promotes ignorance, bigotry and hatred, none of which are regarded as true Christian values.”

In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes to the Father but by me.” The message of Christ is one of exclusivity. There is only one name by which men may be saved: it's Jesus – not Allah, not Muhammad, not Buddha, not Confucius. If Jesus is right, then all these other religions are wrong. Liberals say I'm intolerant but the truth pretty much is exclusive. I find it offensive – and more than a little hypocritical – that liberals say I'm bigoted and intolerant for believing the words of Christ. They say I'm wrong for believing someone else's religion is wrong yet liberals can't see how they are calling my religion wrong.

Even the mayor of Hood River, OR, had an opinion on the sign. Mayor Blackburn said, “I was really annoyed and sad. I am annoyed that in this political season there's a solid case of ugly going on. I think it norms up this kind of behavior like 'oh it's okay to be a bigot now.'”

The other thing that offends me is when elected, public officials abuse their office. Is this mayor aware that the Constitution protects our freedom of speech and the right to freely exercise our religion? If private citizens want to write letters to the editor or protest a church, they have a right to do so. But when the mayor, a representative of the state, uses the sway of his office to mock and ridicule the religious speech of a church, it erodes our liberty. Mayor Blackburn is a despot, a tyrant, and an offender of freedom!

OK, now fast forward to Sunday. My wife and I are having lunch after church and see the news of the shooting in FL. A radical Muslim called 911 and pledged allegiance to ISIS before shooting more than 100 people, killing 50 of them (later it was amended to 49). How sad.

I find it strange that the “peaceful” religion of Islam continuously spawns worshipers who would shoot people in a night club, burn Christians alive, behead people on TV, fly planes into buildings, and strap bombs to themselves to blow people up in a mall, while brain-damaged liberals continuously call for tolerance. Yet let a Christian church puts out a sign that says Jesus is greater than Muhammad and militant bleeding-hearts seem ready to riot. Really?

Oh, and I'm getting a little offended that the shooting is being characterized as an attack on gays. It's sort of like the President calling the Ft. Hood shooting a case of workplace violence. This was a jihadist. He would have found any reason to shoot innocent people. If it weren't a gay nightclub, it could have been a bus full of first-grade kids. It didn't matter to the shooter. At the end of the day, he wanted to create terror. If we don't identify the problem for what it is, it only distracts from the issue. We need to deal with radical Muslims who want to kill all of us; this is not the time to talk about gay rights or gun control.

It is God's will that we should all come to believe in the Son and have life (John 6:40). It is the plan of terrorists to kill non-believers. Christians want the lost to hear the truth. We want to reach them with the gospel – the good news. There is life in Jesus and none other. We plead with people, we reason with them, we pray for them – we don't shoot them. Are liberals really so thinned skinned that they're offended by a sign that says the Muslims are wrong?

I'm offended by stupidity.

Liberals don't understand rights

From the Huffington Post, we read this new tactic of one, radical liberal who wants to foist gun control on us:

The Second Amendment is highly contested. There is no doubt that people do have the right to carry and have a stockpile of guns (“the right of the people to keep and bear arms”) and a state has the right to organize a well-regulated Militia. But, the main issue is on the right to self-defend with a firearm.

The main problem with the notion of self-defense is it imposes on justice, for everyone has the right for a fair trial. Therefore, using a firearm to defend oneself is not legal because if the attacker is killed, he or she is devoid of his or her rights.

OK, so it's not that new – I've heard variations of this argument before. I just think it's hilarious. I really don't think such an assault on common sense could ever gain much popularity among the population at large and certainly couldn't become law. Still, liberals have surprised me before so I never take their crazy ideas too lightly.

Do I really even need to explain what's wrong with the idea of making self-defense illegal? Such a bizarre concept can't even stand up to its own logic: The constitution also says I have the right to life, liberty, and property. Therefore, an attacker who intends me harm or an intruder who intends to steal from me has already infringed upon my rights. So the liberal's solution is that I should let this person victimize me so he can face a fair trial later? This is why I say liberals are brain damaged.

I believe the flaws in this argument are self-evident so I won't waste any more time pointing them out. Instead, I want to use this as an opportunity, once again, to educate liberals in the concept of rights.

Our founding fathers believed our rights are endowed by our Creator. It's not the government or the constitution that grants us our rights. They are literally, God-given. We establish governments to do things like keep the peace, build roads, and defend our borders. We give them the power to make laws and we agree to live by those laws. We also understand the government needs money to do the things we expect it to do so we also agree we'll pay taxes.

When we grant the government so much power, we risk creating a tyranny. To help prevent this, the founding fathers placed specific restrictions on the government saying there are certain things we will never allow it to do: it cannot infringe on our right to practice our religion, for example, or to speak, or to assemble, or to own guns. The government can't search our homes without a cause and, if we're ever accused of a crime, we must have a speedy trial and be judged by our peers – not by some bureaucrat. The thing to remember about our Bill of Rights is that the restrictions are meant to limit what the government can do and protect us!

Private citizens aren't restricted by the Bill of Rights. One right I have is the freedom of speech. This specifically means I am able to share my thoughts about politics or religion or whatever strikes my fancy and the government cannot censor what I have to say. Believe me when I say I have a lot of opinions and I exercise my freedom to speak every time I blog. If you have a different opinion than mine, go start your own blog but don't expect me to open my blog to you so that you have a forum. If I want to censor the comments people leave on my blog, I will. If I should censor someone's comments, I'm not “violating” his free speech. He's free to speak somewhere else. I'm not obligated to provide someone else a forum to speak but neither can I stop him.

Liberals have a misunderstanding about rights. They believe the constitution gives us our rights and that it's the job of the government to guarantee that we get to exercise our rights. For example, liberals believe there is a “right” to health care. Therefore, they want the government to either provide medical insurance (like medicare or Medicaid) or force private employers to provide insurance. In other words, if someone doesn't have medical insurance, liberals think everyone else is obligated to provide that person with insurance so that his right to health care is not infringed. This attitude about rights is exactly backwards. It grants more power to the government and places more burdens on citizens.

The liberals' abuse of rights can be seen in many forms. I've already talked about the “right” to healthcare. There's also some imagined right to birth control so Obamacare requires insurance companies to provide contraception for free. There's a right to have an abortion so federal funds are made available to groups like Planned Parenthood. From time to time, liberals bring up the fairness doctrine that would require radio stations that air conservative radio hosts, like Rush Limbaugh, to provide equal time to people with a liberal point of view. They believe this “protects” the freedom of speech by ensuring the speech is “balanced.” That's funny, I don't remember the word “fair” being part of the first amendment – only “free.”

So now liberals want innocent, law-abiding citizens to become victims so that rapists, murderers, and burglars can be guaranteed their right to have a trial. I'm sorry, but that's not my job. The criminals are the ones who are putting their lives and liberty at risk when they choose to commit crimes. If someone tries to harm someone in my family, I will let God judge him; I'll also do what I can to arrange the meeting.

It's OK to say someone is wrong!

It's the law statewide in WA but will soon be coming to a restroom near you – the end to gender discrimination! What discrimination? They mean the barbaric practice of having separate facilities (restrooms, locker rooms, spas, etc) for men and women. How archaic it is that modest people do not want to disrobe in front of people whose gender is different than their own!

It's the usual tactic of liberals to force the majority to kowtow to the minority. Last time it was gay marriage. It wasn't enough that a gay couple had the right to have a ceremony and call themselves married, liberals wanted to make everyone else to treat them as married. Now they're doing the same thing with gender-confused persons. They can't just pretend to be another gender, we're being forced to accept their stated gender.

The problems I have with this are the same problems being discussed by everyone else. Why do I have to share a locker room with a woman because she's confused about her gender? And what's to stop a grown man from using these laws to spy on little girls in restrooms? If a man wants to wear a dress and say he's a woman, he can. There wasn't a law against it. But now there are laws that say women have to welcome him into their locker rooms and restrooms. What about my rights? What about my right to privacy? What about my right of association? What about my right of religion? It's the majority that is made to feel uncomfortable for the sake of sparing the feelings of the minority. It's insane.

But none of this is really the point of my post. Instead, it's about this twisted attitude of tolerance that says we must accept people for who they are. Here's a short video that really drives this point home.

At the end of the video, the interviewer sums it up well. How can we discuss complicated issues if one side believes no one should ever say another person is wrong? A 5'9”, grown, white man could say he's a 6'5”, 7-year-old, Chinese woman and enter the first grade. You can see the college students hemming and hawing in the video, struggling to be tolerant of what they knew were ridiculous claims, but they just couldn't bring themselves to say the interviewer was wrong. It's funny, because I'm sure these same students would have no problems telling me I'm wrong to believe in creation or that Christians are wrong to call someone a sinner.  It's my opinion that this brand of tolerance is dangerous. 

I've heard about a strange disorder called xenomelia (literally, “foreign limb” in Greek). People with this disorder do not identify with one or more of their extremities. They might feel like their foot, for example, doesn't really belong to them. Victims of xenomelia will often ask doctors to amputate the intruding limb. Fortunately, most doctors will refuse.

My point in raising xenomelia is to demonstrate that the correct treatment for victims of dysphoria is not necessarily to indulge their disorder. Since we don't amputate the healthy limbs of people with xenomelia, why should we perform gender-reassignment surgery on people with gender-identity disorders? From a Federalist article we read:

[A] study commissioned by The Guardian of the UK in 2004 reviewed 100 studies and reported that a whopping 20 percent (one fifth) of transgenders regret changing genders.... The review of 100 studies also revealed that many transgenders remained severely distressed and even suicidal after the gender change operation. Suicide and regret remain the dark side of transgender life.

I'm not a medical doctor – but neither are most of the liberals (or these college students) who are pleading for tolerance and acceptance of the transgendered. It seems to me the jury is still out on the best treatment of gender-confused people and this rush to normalize them isn't helpful to anyone, especially the victims. I believe we've let political forces influence our medical decisions. It will not surprise me if laws are passed that ban counseling for gender-identity disorders if the goal is to rid the victims of the desire to change genders.

But this phenomenon to “not judge” people for how they identify themselves isn't limited to gender-identity. We see similar “tolerance” of other types of body modification like tattooing, piercings, gauging, and even more extreme examples. There are also examples of people obsessed with improving appearance through plastic surgery and boob jobs. At what point do we tell people they're harming themselves? Or are we just supposed to indulge any behavior because that's how they identify themselves?

Yet more than all that, I feel this attitude is especially dangerous in the Church. How many times have you heard Christians say something like, “we have to hate the sin but love the sinner”? I agree, but part of loving the sinner is to tell them they are sinners in need of forgiveness. We cannot water down the gospel by telling people, “Jesus loves you just as you are.” If we allow people to think it's OK if they are gay or a philanderer or a drug user or whatever other vices they may have, we're telling them they don't need a Savior!

1 John 1:8-9 says, If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

The key to the gospel is repentance. Unless a person is convicted of his sin, he will not feel the need to repent. If we are telling people they have no sin, the Bible says we're lying! If we love people, we need to tell them the truth. It's for their own good! It's OK to tell people they're wrong!

Why are there gun free zones?

An Oregon college campus was the site of another mass shooting. Nine innocent victims were killed before the deranged shooter took his own life. Before nearly any facts behind the shooting were known, the President was already on the air calling for more gun control laws. Since we knew hardly anything about the shooting, how could the President know that any gun law he was suggesting would have done anything to prevent the shooting? He couldn't have known, obviously. He was merely exploiting the tragedy to push his agenda. Shame on him. However, we did know one thing about the shooting almost immediately – it happened in a “gun free zone.”

I saw this meme on FaceBook the other day. We defend the President with guns. Celebrities defend themselves with guns. When money is delivered to my office, I've noticed the armored car courier carries a gun. Why then do we “protect” our most precious treasure, our children, with signs that say, “This is a Gun Free Zone”? It seems counter intuitive that if guns can help protect the President from harm, that they couldn't also help protect children. Why then do some people still want gun free zones – especially in the case of protecting the children?

Not being able to completely understand the insane logic known as, “liberalism,” I did an internet search, trying to find out why people think gun free zones are a good idea and found a lot of rhetoric rebutting criticisms of the concept. Here are some of the “facts” being presented by defenders of gun free zones: I took these quotes from one source, but I've found the same points being made by many people so I'm considering them to be representative.

Mass shooters are completely unconcerned about whether or not an area is a “Gun-Free Zone.” A study conducted by Mother Jones found that, in 62 mass shootings over 32 years, there were exactly zero instances of a killer targeting a place because of a gun ban.

OK, that's interesting. I've read some criticisms of the Mother Jones study but let's assume this point is true. Even if mass shooters never target any place because he thinks unarmed people are softer targets, how is that an argument for gun free zones?

Furthermore, thirty-six mass shooters in the Mother Jones study committed suicide at or near the crime-scene, and 7 more committed ‘suicide-by-cop’ by engaging in a knowingly unwinnable shootout with police. This is not the sort of behavior that suggests that mass shooters are deterred by the prospect of gun-imposed security.

Hmmm. It also shows the shooter is not deterred by a sign that says, “this is a gun free zone.

Instead of guns deterring crime, not one of the 62 mass shootings surveyed was ended by an armed civilian

I'd laugh if it weren't so tragic. If law abiding citizens are observing the “gun free zone” restriction, it's not surprising that there weren't any around to prevent or stop the shooting once it started.

Also, does this study take into account those times when guns are used to stop crimes? There is the case, for example, where an armed, “resource officer,” Carolyn Gudger, confronted a gunman at Sullivan High school, Blountville, TN, and held him at bay until deputies arrived. The gunman was killed in a shootout with the police. Since no students were harmed, this incident didn't qualify as a mass shooting. However, it is certainly a case where an armed civilian very possibly stopped a massacre. I might post some videos sometime of showing guns being used by civilians to stop criminals. It happens all the time.

Despite the fact that one-third of our nation’s schools have armed guards or officers, there is no evidence that these measures have deterred or de-escalated mass shootings.

I believe the Gudger incident I cited above is one example where an armed guard deterred a mass shooting. Maybe there are more. But let's again assume armed guards do not deter mass shootings. We can still see clearly that neither are mass shooters deterred by gun free zones! At least if there are armed guards present, there is someone on hand to stop a shooting spree once it's started. That's not the case in a gun free zone.

As I read article after article defending gun free zones, what I mostly saw were weak rebuttals to the criticisms of them. I found very little arguments as to why we should have them in the first place. The article where I found the quotes above only had this to say in favor of gun free zones:

While there is little evidence to validate the efficacy of armed guards or officers, there is a plethora of research showing that a large armed presence on school grounds institutionalizes the early criminalization of Black and Latino males. Armed officers at schools are quick to make arrests and write tickets, fast-tracking these students into the criminal justice system, rather than college, having an overall negative effect on net educational outcomes.

Am I reading that right? Does it really say that if we have armed guards in schools then blacks and Latinos are more likely to become criminals? But then again, liberals are racists so it shouldn't surprise me that they would think if a security guard arrests a student, it must be a black student.

The more common argument made in defense of gun free zones is the possibility of accidental shootings. The cartoon I reprinted from the Armed With Reason article paints a straw man image of students walking around with rifles and lunch boxes. You do realize we're not talking about having students carrying guns, right? Now, I concede that it is a reality that the mere presence of a gun comes with the risk of accidental injury. After all, it's impossible to accidentally discharge a gun if there is no gun present. But apparently the President isn't so worried about that possibility that he won't protect himself with armed guards.  And by the way, how is it that celebrities and the President think they should protected with armed guards but don't think “the masses” have the same right?  We as parents in local school districts should be the ones to weigh the risks and make the final decision on how to protect our children.  If Rosie O'Donnell wants to protect herself with armed, security guards, I demand we have the right to make that same choice to protect our children.

So what's left then? Why are liberals so bent on imposing gun free zones? I have a theory: I think liberals would really like to have all of the US become a gun free zone where only the aristocracy (liberal politicians, celebrities, and the mega-wealthy like Warren Buffet) have guns and “the people” are unarmed. I believe that they think if students are raised in a gun free environment, they will be less likely to protest tighter gun restrictions in the future. I sincerely believe that gun free zones aren't intended to make kids safer but are all about controlling us. It's always about control with liberals.

Liberals are also lazy

One of the reasons more people don't turn away from liberalism is that they're just plain lazy. They're too lazy to expend any effort looking into an issue beyond a 30 second sound bite they hear on the radio between pop tunes. I'll give you a case in point.

Liberals have run for cover in light of the damning videos taken of Planned Parenthood executives and employees brokering deals to sell aborted baby parts. Their first response was a blanket denial but that turned out to be fruitless since people could watch the videos for themselves and see Planned Parenthood officials, like Dr. Mary Gatter, literally haggling over the price per “specimen.” The most recent tactic is to dismiss the videos as “doctored” and “heavily edited.”

A YouTube channel by a group called, The Young Turks, posted its own video “debunking” the controversial videos. Here's an excerpt I've transcribed from the Young Turk's rebuttal:

“The NY Times has done its due diligence and has investigated the two videos that were released by the Center for Medical Progress.... Now, I'm glad a member of the mainstream media has delved into this and is actually telling people the truth about those videos – how many of the statements were taken out of context or how the statements were misrepresented.... No one else in the media is saying that. Everyone else in the media is saying, 'Oh look, here's what the Center for Medical Progress is saying they experienced. Judge for yourself.' No, no, no! Don't judge for yourself. Be a journalist and actually investigate this and figure out whether or not the claims are true. And thankfully, the NY times did do this.”

The video continues by quoting the findings of the NY Times investigation. It's rather hilarious that these young liberals, who stage their video like it's a news program, exhort people to be journalists and investigate the claims of the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) while they themselves seem to have not done any investigation beyond reading the NY Times article. Have they bothered to investigate the CMP? Oh, and have they bothered to investigate the NY Times? It sounds to me like theirs is a case of simply believing those with whom they agree. Their channel isn't journalism – it's propaganda.

Listen to me, all ye who are liberal: The entire, unedited videos taken by the CMP are available on YouTube. You can watch them for yourselves here. They're not doctored. They're not edited. They are the raw footage of Planned Parenthood employees and partners discussing the selling baby parts. If you think the 8:25 version of Dr. Gatter haggling like a used car salesman is taken out of context, you can watch the entire 1:13:38 and see if she made any other comments that might paint an entirely different picture of her intentions. Go ahead and watch it. I dare you.

So my question is, why didn't the Young Turks bother to watch the unedited videos for themselves? Instead of posting quotes from the NY Times claiming the edited parts of video were exculpatory, they could have included the relevant parts in their phony news show. I sincerely believe that even at the time the Turks posted their own video, they had not bothered to watch the unedited videos provided by the CMP. It wouldn't surprise me if they haven't watched them even to this day.

I think the liberal elite is counting on the fact that the peasant class they call their base is too lazy to sit through an hour long video. People like Nancy Pelosi repeatedly call the videos “heavily edited” knowing that none of their base will ever learn that the unedited versions show the same things as the shorter versions. By the way, neither has Pelosi watched the unedited videos.

The liberal aristocracy can throw around works like “doctored,” “edited,” and “fake” and your run of the mill liberal will believe without question – all the while, the truth can be found with the click of a mouse and a small investment of time. But a small investment of time is too much to ask. Most liberals are too lazy.

Too Quick to Forgive

The Bible commands us to forgive. Sometimes, though, someone may have committed such a great wrong against us that we have trouble forgiving him. In those cases, we feel justified in holding a grudge. Nevertheless, the Bible is clear – if the sinner repents, we are to forgive him.

Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.”

Luke 17:3-4

The words of Jesus are clear: we rebuke the sinner but then we forgive him if he repents! Christians, in general, tend to be very forgiving. In the case of our personal dealings with other people, it's probably always the best thing to do. Don't hate. Don't hold a grudge. Just forgive. However, from a political perspective, I believe we're a little too quick to forgive.

I was reading and article online about the Fire Chief in Atlanta who was just fired for having written a book (completely on his own time) that discussed his Christian perspective on sexual morality. Considering that this is a municipality, a governing body, punishing a person for expressing his religious beliefs, I don't see how this is not a violation of the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment. The mayor of Atlanta said, “I will not tolerate discrimination of any kind within my administration.” Now that's funny. I guess he means, “discrimination of any kind against gays.” He seems to have no problem with personally discriminating against Christians.

Now, I hold government bodies to a different standard than I do private employers. I believe the state cannot be allowed to discriminate at all. We could not, for example, have a fire department that refuses to enter a black neighborhood or a police department that refuses to arrest white people accused of crimes against blacks. On the other hand, I believe private individuals and employers should have the right to discriminate. If this fire chief worked in another capacity for a private employer, I wouldn't be arguing that his rights were violated. However, I would still hold it against that employer.

The fire chief article included a link to the Duck Dynasty fiasco that happened about a year ago. I don't watch the show, but I understand one man on the show expressed his religious beliefs about gay marriage and A&E, the channel which carries the show, tried to drop him from the show. Cracker Barrel, a restaurant chain that offers southern style cuisine, also said it would no longer sell Duck Dynasty merchandise. Well, the backlash they received from the public was so severe, both reversed their decisions within 48 hours.

Since both A&E and Cracker Barrel are private businesses, I believe they were acting in their rights. They shouldn't face government fines for their decisions but these employers need to be held accountable by the public. Frankly, I'm getting sick and tired of businesses discriminating against Christians for the sake of tolerance toward gays.

When A&E and Cracker Barrel made these decisions, the public let them know they didn't like it. But even though they reversed themselves, I wonder how repentant they were. A NY Daily News article quotes A&E as follows:

“We at A&E Networks expressed our disappointment with his statements in the article, and reiterate that they are not views we hold,” the network’s statement continued. “But ‘Duck Dynasty’ is not a show about one man’s views.”

Hmm. That doesn't sound very repentant. To me it sounds like they're saying, “We still hate Robertson's views but we're going to keep him on the air because we don't want to lose all the viewers who agree with him.” I would have liked to hear something more like, “We were wrong and acted rashly. Robertson expressed his deeply held religious beliefs and we should have respected his right to do so. We believe in tolerance and that should include tolerating even those views different than ours.”

Cracker Barrel was slightly more contrite. Another NY Daily news article says:

You flat out told us we were wrong. We listened. Today, we are putting all our Duck Dynasty products back in our stores. And, we apologize for offending you.... We respect all individuals' right to express their beliefs.... We certainly did not mean to have anyone think different. [They should apologize for their poor grammar. They should have used “differently.”]

Do see what I mean by only, “slightly more contrite”? You told us we were wrong. We apologize for offending you. We didn't mean to have you think we don't respect everyone's beliefs. Where's the part where they said, “We were wrong”?  We're constantly being abused by intolerant businesses and government officials and we accept their non-committal apologies. 

1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins.” What kind of “confession” is it if I said, “Forgive me, God, if I've done anything wrong”? In such a weak prayer you're not even admitting to any sin, let alone confessing one.  If these companies would admit to being wrong, I would forgive them. But since they don't, I won't. They need to be held accountable for their sins. We need to make them see that we won't forgive them until they repent. If we hold their feet to fire every time they make a bad decision, they might become a little more circumspect. Maybe they'd reconsider their corporate philosophies. Maybe they'll stop making such bad decisions in the first place.

Shut up and write the check!

So, I've told you before that liberals are brain damaged. Here's another example.

Liberals claim to be tolerant, right? I think their favorite Bible verse is, “Judge not lest ye be judged.” It's probably the only verse some of them know. If a person wants to have sex without being married, with multiple partners, or even with same sex partners, it's none of my business. What happens between consenting adults is a private matter and my opinion of the behavior is not welcome. I even hear similar things from Christians: how, if a young, single woman gets pregnant, we need to support her as a church and not judge her. Does any of this sound familiar?

Here's where the brain damaged part comes in. Liberals are champions of the “right to privacy” but what happens when these people contract a sexually transmitted disease or a young girl gets pregnant? Often they seek out public assistance!

How many millions are we spending on AIDS research? How about welfare, food stamps, and rent subsidies to single mothers? And don't forget the tax payer money going to Planned Parenthood to pay for abortions! When these people were engaging in their reckless behavior, it was a private matter; now that they have to face the consequences of their bad decisions, it's suddenly not so private anymore. Now they expect to be supported by the public.

It's not just the people who engage in this type of behavior that bother me; it's also the enablers, those who defend them. The same people who are telling me not to judge those who do these things are also telling me I have to pay more in taxes to help them.

It's rather pathetic. Liberal elitists view themselves as tolerant (by not judging others) and compassionate (by wanting to support them). What they don't understand is that this kind of tolerance and compassion only exacerbates the problem. People need to be told that bad decisions have consequences. They need to hear that having a child before being married virtually guarantees a lifetime of poverty. They need to be told that abstinence is 100% effective at preventing pregnancy and STDs. They need to understand that “safe and legal” abortions can have severe and lasting physical and psychological side effects. We also need to stop subsidizing poor choices with government programs that only perpetuate poverty.

If the public is paying the bills, then shouldn't the public have a say in the matter? What is wrong with telling young men and women it's a bad idea to have sex or to live together without being married? Yet if I say this, then I'm the one accused of being “intolerant” or that I'm trying to force my religion on everyone else.

Liberals are 100% backward in their thinking. The compassionate thing to do is to tell people it's wrong to engage in certain behaviors. If we truly care for these people, we need to set them on the right track. The liberal solution is that I should shut up and write a check!

More Liberal Bigotry

Liberals are bigots. It's a symptom of their ideology - an inevitable consequence of their political agenda. Bigotry is as fundamental to liberalism as swimming is to fish. You cannot be a liberal without being a bigot. Liberals, for example, see every black face as a victim. They don't believe blacks are able to take care of themselves so they must be subsidized with tax payer dollars. Liberals stereotypically believe every black person is the same – they think the same, they struggle the same, and they are all equally victims of whites. Never mind Dr. King's dream that men should be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, if a black man wants a job, or to go to college, or to start a business, liberals automatically think he needs special consideration because he's black. The color of his skin is the first criterion liberals consider. It's called, “affirmative action.” To liberals, blacks are “disadvantaged” as though being black is like being handicapped.

Because they are bigots in their very core, liberals are blind to they own bigotry. It's kind of like that stinky person who can't smell his own body odor. If a conservative should disagree with a black person about anything, then liberals assume the conservative is only disagreeing with the person because he's black. They just can't understand the concept of judging a person (even a black person) by his actions or words. Likewise, if conservatives talk about “welfare reform,” liberals accuse them of racism because the liberals think most people on welfare are black. And heaven forbid if a black person dares to believe he's not a victim and works hard to improve himself because then that person is accused of trying to “act white” and labeled an “Uncle Tom.”

I moved to Kentucky in the summer of 1970, when I was only 4 years old. Even though I was a more than a decade removed from Segregation, I remember some of the racial tensions that still lingered in the South. Being white myself, I can't say I can entirely empathize with the struggles blacks faced in the 50's but I can at least say I'm sympathetic to it. I can imagine, at least a little, the smoldering defiance Rosa Parks must have felt when she refused to give up her seat to a white man and move to the back of the bus.

Certainly there was racism then. For the record, I'm against racism but I'm still for liberty. If a person wants to be racist, I think it's his right to be a racist. However, the real problem wasn't necessarily the racist attitudes that were prevalent at the time but rather it was the segregation laws that put teeth in racism. For example, it would be sad if a black man wouldn't marry a white woman for fear they might be shunned by a racist society. It's a far worse thing, though, to make laws against interracial marriage. It was the laws allowing segregation that truly made blacks the victims of racists.

Democrats back then were all for institutional racism. For example, it was Democrat governor, George Wallace, who stood blocking the steps to a segregated school in Alabama and said, “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” Since then, Democrats may have officially denounced segregation, but they are still not able to divorce themselves from the racism inherent in the liberal wing of the Democrat party.

So where am I going with all this? I mention this now because here in my own beloved state of Kentucky, liberal Democrats have abused the power of their office to impose their racism on another class of people – Bible believing Christians. Just recently, our Democrat Secretary of State, Bob Stewart, advised Ark Encounter, LLC, the group building the Noah's ark themed attraction in KY, that the state has changed its mind on the group's application for a tax incentive KY makes available to tourist attractions. The Ark Encounter will not be receiving the incentive after all.

When I first wrote about the Ark Encounter project 4 years ago, it had already been approved to receive a special tax incentive the state of KY makes available to lure tourist attractions here. It's not really a subsidy, per se. Instead, new tourist attractions can receive a partial rebate of the amount of sales tax they generate for the state. In other words, for every sales tax dollar the state receives from Ark Encounter visitors, they would give a few cents back to the park. So it doesn't cost the state any money – the state is making money from the park. What's more, it's only paying the incentive out of funds received by people visiting the park! No money is being taken from property taxes, income taxes, etc.

Some other attractions in KY that have received this same incentive are the Newport Aquarium and the Kentucky Speedway.

When the park originally applied for the incentive, it was clear this was a for-profit endeavor but was still overtly religious in nature. From the get go, folks like Barry Lynn objected to a religious organization receiving “tax payer funding” but the incentives were approved notwithstanding. With that approval in hand, the group raised the necessary funds, purchased the land, got the permits, and began building. Now, the state has changed its mind and told the group they will not receive the incentive after all. They claim to object on the grounds that AiG intends to use the park to proselytize (AiG has always been very clear about this) and that workers are required to sign a faith statement – which is a federal right for religious organizations. So the objections sound rather shallow since very little has changed about the park's stated goals since the state approved the original application.

I'm not sure how much the group relied on this incentive to make its decision on where to build but I know it was at least a factor. Its location is only a few miles away from OH and IN so the group had other options on where it could build and still be reasonably close to the Creation Museum. It's a rather dirty trick to lure the business in with the incentive and then take it away after it's too late to change its mind.

But besides that, what annoys me the most about all this is how the state is hurting Christians with its racist policies. We saw the same thing when the Boston Mayor wanted to ban Chick-fil-A because its president supported traditional marriage or the confiscatory fines levied against Hobby Lobby because they did not want to pay for employees' abortion inducing drug prescriptions. Time after time, the government treats religious people and businesses as second class citizens. Sec. Stewart said in his letter that the Ark Encounter, “will generate jobs and visitor spending that will be welcomed in the local economy.” I'm sure it will and he is happy to accept it; he just won't offer the same incentive KY has given to non-religious attractions. It's sort of like the bus driver who didn't mind receiving a fare from Rosa Parks but still didn't want her to sit in the white people's section.

If this were a black owned business, Democrats would be falling all over themselves to give away subsidies because they believe blacks can't run a business without help from white liberals. But this is a Christian owned business and they treat Christians differently. They can't see how refusing to give a religious business the same incentive available to anyone else is discrimination.

I'll say it again. Liberals are bigots.