The Grandmothers Of Bolshevism Celebrate ObamaCare

"[W]e are convinced that health care is not a privilege, reserved for those who can afford it, but a right that should be available, at high quality, to all."

-- National Council of Churches

"[A] huge step in the right direction [single payer health care] and we celebrate provisions in that law that continue to fill the gaps and expand existing health care, particularly to low-income Americans."

-- United Methodist Board of Church and Society

"We rejoice today as the Supreme Court rules to uphold [the] constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act."

"[S]ingle payer [is the] best vehicle for providing such health care resources."

-- Presbyterian Church USA 

"The Supreme Court decision today is a clear signal that we as a country are moving toward the realm of God on earth -- the realm of this merciful, compassionate God, full of love for all."

-- United Church of Christ

(source)

"Now, all Communist systems in the West are in fact derived from Christian theological thought: More's Utopia, the Sun State of the Dominica Campanella, the doctrines of Luther's disciples Karlstadt and Thomas Münzer, and Fichte's State Socialism. What Fourier, Saint-Simon, Owen, Marx, and hundreds of others dreamed and wrote on the ideals of the future reaches back, quite without their knowledge and much against their intention, to priestly-moral indignation and Schoolmen concepts, which had their secret part in economic reasoning and in public opinion on social questions. How much of Thomas Aquinas' law of nature and conception of State is still to be found in Adam Smith and therefore - with the opposite sign - in the Communist Manifesto! Christian theology is the grandmother of Bolshevism. All abstract brooding over economic concepts that are remote from any economic experience must, if courageously and honestly followed out, lead in one way or another to reasoned conclusions against State and property, and only lack of vision saves these materialist Schoolmen from seeing that at the end of their chain of thought stands the beginning once more: effective Communism is authoritative bureaucracy. To put through the ideal requires dictatorship, reign of terror, armed force, the inequality of a system of masters and slaves, men in command and men in obedience - in short: Moscow."

-- Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision, 1933

Some Evidence Of Outsiders' Dim View Of Jesus' Origins

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.

Then Joseph her husband, being a just [man], and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily.

-- Mt.1:18-19

I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father.

They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham.

But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham.

Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, [even] God.

-- Jn.8:38-41

Nora Ephron's Religion: You Can Never Have Too Much Butter

Transcribed remarks here:

WERTHEIMER: You think this movie might bring back butter as some�

Ms. EPHRON: Well, it should, because you can never have too much butter. That is my belief. And I stuck it into the movie. If I have a religion, that's it.

May she rest in grease.

How To Know When You're In The Wrong Church

When the pastor asks for proof texts teaching the doctrine of original sin, you mention Psalm 51:5, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me," and everyone laughs.

Philistines At University Of Virginia Oust President Who Wouldn't Axe "Obscure" Academic Departments Like Classics and German

I drew you a map.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The money-grubbing transformation of academia began long ago. First the principle of selectivity in admissions had to go, with the introduction of the GI Bill. Then Latin had to go as a requirement. Then any foreign language at all, or even any core classes. At length college football and basketball became the centerpieces of the public face of universities. Its education graduates who now teach your sixth grader can't spell in their own language, let alone reason in it. The latest development is only the logical conclusion in this process of relegating the central to the periphery, and now to the useless.

Read all about it here in The Washington Post:

The campaign to remove Sullivan began around October, the sources said. The Dragas group coalesced around a consensus that Sullivan was moving too slowly. Besides broad philosophical differences, they had at least one specific quibble: They felt Sullivan lacked the mettle to trim or shut down programs that couldn’t sustain themselves financially, such as obscure academic departments in classics and German.

Ich bin ein Berliner. Sie sind verruckt.

And I Love Not Hearing You

Jeffrey Goldberg Thinks Mormonism's Bad Rap Is Due To Its Proximity To Our Own Times

For Bloomberg.com, here:

In talking to my Mormon friends (some of my best friends are Mormons), the answer is clear. The practices and origin stories of most religions, when viewed by outsiders, all seem fairly strange. But Mormonism seems just a bit stranger than the rest. The great fear is not that Americans will see a Mormon politician as too sinister to lead the country (the way that some Baptist leaders once saw the Catholic John F. Kennedy) but that Americans will see a Mormon as too bizarre to be president.

They point to the issue of “sacred underwear,” the derisive term for undergarments worn by some Mormons to remind themselves of their religious responsibilities. Many find the concept odd, but should they? Is Mormonism really that much stranger than other religions?

I vividly remember learning from a Catholic friend that, each Sunday, his family would attend church to drink the blood of Jesus and eat his body. Freaky. But is it any freakier than the sight of a bunch of Jews gathering around an 8-day-old boy to watch a man with a beard snip off the tip of the baby’s penis, and then to eat blintzes afterward? Religious Jews, of course, also wear a variation of “sacred underwear” -- zizit and tallitot, traditional garments that date back thousands of years, to the ancient Middle East.

The Mormon tradition dates back less than 200 years, to Palmyra, New York. What Mormons suffer from more than any other major religion is proximity. The foundation stories of Mormonism took place in the age of skeptical journalism, and they took place in the U.S.

This seems right to me, except that the lineage factor is missing from the analysis and what significance that has for the progenitors, which cannot be understood apart from an appreciation of doctrinal matters. 

Jews find Christians especially strange because Christianity is an heretical sect of Judaism which crossed the line and made a god of a man.

Christians find Islam strange because it is an heretical sect derived from an heretical sect of Christianity which crossed the line and made a man of a god.

Mormonism is an heretical sect of American Christianity which American Christians historically found objectionable more on moral grounds than theological, so much so that they quite literally drove the Mormons out west to Utah.

In point of fact, the Supreme Court of the United States itself ruled against statehood for Utah until Mormons officially abandoned polygamy because the practise was considered by the Court to be destructive of public (Christian) morals. No state in the union was going to be allowed to be a polygamist enclave.

Imagine such a ruling today, say about same sex relations.

Theologically Mormonism's problem for Christian America is its divinization of not just one man but of all men. But as far as I can tell, the Mormon in the race for president is probably the last Mormon I'll have to worry will push his ideas on anyone.

I'm not convinced he has any.

Compared with the ideas of his opponent, however, I can live with that. 

"Z", It Seems

 

We that acquaint ourselves with ev'ry zone,

And pass the tropicks, and behold each pole;

When we come home, are to ourselves unknown,

And unacquainted still with our own soul.

-- John Davies

You Feel Better That There Are Some Things You Have Never Seen

"The nakedness of thy father, or the nakedness of thy mother, shalt thou not uncover: she [is] thy mother; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness."

-- Leviticus 18:7

"Y" Plays the Tyrant

 

 

Love is your master, for he masters you:

And he that is so yoked by a fool,

Methinks, should not be chronicled for wise.

-- William Shakespeare

Unexampled "X"

Virtuous and vicious ev'ry man must be,

Few in th' extreme, but all in the degree;

The rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise,

And ev'n the best, by fits, what they despise.

-- Alexander Pope