Terence P. Jeffrey writes at CNSNews:

In a legal argument formally presented in federal court in the case of Hobby Lobby v. Kathleen Sebelius, the Obama administration is claiming that the First Amendment -- which expressly denies the government the authority to prohibit the “free exercise” of religion -- nonetheless allows it to force Christians to directly violate their religious beliefs even on a matter that involves the life and death of innocent human beings.

Related
Hobby Lobby Won't Drop Christianity Over Extremist Abortion Drugs 
Why Pro-Abortion Is Anti-Science

Professor Ellis Washington writes:

According to the comprehensive research by JPFO [Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership], all of America’s present gun-control laws have Nazi origins, evidenced by the group’s shocking accusation that the Gun Control Act of 1968 was plagiarized almost word for word from Nazi legislation.

According to Prof. Washington, the JPFO has also produced a chart "detailing the history of global gun control laws in just a few selected countries over the past 100 years; it is a Who’s Who of hatred of liberty, government fascism, disarmed civilians and genocide."

Related
Fascism Is Back 
Fascism Watch: Village Voice and Pro-Existence

Becket Adams reports at The Blaze:

Embattled French President Francois Hollande suffered a fresh setback Saturday when France’s highest court threw out a plan to tax the ultrawealthy at a 75 percent rate, saying it was unfair.

In a stinging rebuke to one of Socialist Hollande’s flagship campaign promises, the constitutional council ruled Saturday that the way the highly contentious tax was designed was unconstitutional. It was intended to hit incomes over €1 million ($1.32 million).

"Americans can sit by and watch government ignore the Constitution and all the principles that made the country great. Or they can take action, like they did in 2010," Joseph Farah writes.

"Americans can get out into the streets and let the government know, in no uncertain terms, they will not accept the imposition of Obamacare, they will not accept the endless spiraling debt, they will not accept unlimited government, they will not accept intrusions into our personal liberties, they will not accept rogue government doing what it pleases, when it pleases and to whom it pleases.

"In fact," says Farah, "it might be time to resort to civil disobedience in defense of the Constitution."

Sen. Mitch McConnell, via Shannon Bream of Fox: "I'm hopeful and optimistic."

Not Sen. J. Richard Pearcey: "Another comedian. But go ahead and quit your day job."

CBN News reports:

The owners of Hobby Lobby say they must remain true to their faith, despite the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to block the Obamacare contraception mandate. . . .

"The company will continue to provide health insurance to all qualified employees," attorney Kyle Duncan said in a statement posted on Hobby Lobby's website.

"To remain true to their faith, it is not their intention, as a company, to pay for abortion-inducing drugs," he said.

The federal government has no constitutional authority to impose anti-life insurance regulations upon any state, person, or business. Or to threaten Hobby Lobby with fines of more than $1 million a day for refusing to submit to Obama's state-imposed religion of secularism. 

Not only is this action imperialistic and immoral, it's not even Washington's job. We the People hire them to protect life and liberty, not to kill life and liberty. What's the matter with you, Washington?

Nothing could be further from the mainstream U.S. position on the freedom and dignity of the individual -- see the Declaration of Independence -- than that a central power structure would violate its constitutional oath of office to force a company to enable the killing of the unborn.

Obamacare is, therefore, extreme and uncivil. It is inhumane and degrading. It is anti-life, anti-science, and anti-freedom.

Hobby Lobby is standing with the angels on this. And with science (the two are in no way opposed). But Team Obama walks "in the counsel of the wicked." Shame on you, "Christian" Obama.

Related
Why Pro-Abortion Is Anti-Science 
Obamacare: Antithetical to the Declaration
Warning: Obamacare Gives Feds "State Police Power"

Susan Jones reports at CNSNews:

Americans value their children, their safety, and the right to pursue their dreams without fear -- and those "common values" trump the rights set forth in the U.S. Constitution, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said last Friday in a speech at a Washington, D.C., elementary school.

In the name of  "the children" (don't tell the aborted millions), "safety" (and who could possibly be more safe than defenseless children in a "gun-free zone"?), and the pursuit of "dreams" (controlled and directed by the Federal Department of Happiness, funded by monies pilfered from workers by governmental theft, aka, "social justice" and "redistribution"), Obama and Co. prepare the human battlefield for open and direct assault on the rules of freedom. 

The counter-freedom hippie revolution of the sixties has produced hip extremists today who wear suits and ties and run the show in Washington, D.C.

Perhaps the matter they and their collaborationist media least want Americans to realize is they are the targets of a massive, well-funded, well-orchestrated transgenerational campaign of propaganda and community organizing against the rules of freedom and human dignity as set forth in the Declaration and U.S. Constitution, rooted in a real Creator who gives real unalienable rights.

You may not be interested in government and politics, but government and politics are interested in you. And in your money. And in your children. This may be why they show up in schools and make a really civil case for dispensing with a free society. 

Plus, you get an Obamaphone. Batteries included. What could possibly go wrong?

That Americans might smell the wolf terrifies Capitol Hill and media extremists. Hence the daily doses of appropriately massaged "news" to discourage the reawakening of a populace with the backbone, means, and comprehension to put the federal government back in its cage and establishment radicals out of business.

Suit and tie tyranny decked out in pseduo-compassion may fool the civility police, but it is not cool. It hurts, too. Women, children, and minorities suffer the most.

It's the Christmas Season -- and, therefore, as every schoolboy and girl ought to know, a time to think:

Cause and effect has little to do with modern-day religion, private spiritualities, personal ethics, Eric Hoffer’s “true believer,” varieties of religious experience, or with assorted “people of faith.”

Let us also not discriminate against orthodox secularists and naturalistic scientists who create their own private truths and valued feelings in an effort to cope as humans with an otherwise unbearable life.

The standard line these days is that questions directed to these private realms are considered impolite, out of bounds, and over the line. Presidential candidates get to pass “Go” and collect votes if they promise their faith really is just theirs -- that is, something merely private and inward, not public and not applicable to policy.

The Creator, and the information he communicates about life in the world, is permitted to inspire during devotions inside closets or during limited times of public tragedy, but he shall have no substantive impact on public life, foreign policy, and so on.

In contrast to a retreat into subjectivity, the Biblical mentality, including the world-altering events that launched Christmas in the first place, has much to do with the natural order.

The Bible knows that messages and songs and other intellectual and aesthetic content come not out of nothing.

Roman edicts are the creations of Roman Caesars, inns too full are the effects of a finite number of rooms plus many travelers hitting the road at the same time.

First-century people did not have electricity, but they knew night skies are not illuminated to reveal familiar daytime geography without a cause of light.

What is given in the Bible is a framework for distinguishing between campfires and angels, both of which are natural phenomena in a cosmos that is the product of a living Creator.

But both of which are also supernatural in a cosmos that is reduced, as some theorize, to particles cold and unaccounted for, arranged without reason in greater or lesser degrees of complexity.

Joseph and Mary knew where baby humans come from, how they are conceived, and how they arrive.

“There is one thing often said about our ancestors which we must not say,” C.S. Lewis writes in his essay “Miracles,” in God in the Dock (emphasis in original). “We must not say ‘They believed in miracles because they did not know the Laws of Nature.’ This is nonsense.” Why? Because “when St. Joseph discovered that his bride was pregnant, he was ‘minded to put her away’. He knew enough biology for that. Otherwise, of course, he would not have regarded pregnancy as a proof of infidelity.”

Mary and Joseph had questions that speak to this issue of cause and effect.

How could she be pregnant without physical relations with a man? Should Joseph reconsider marriage since knowledge of the natural order indicates Mary is not the virgin she claims to be?

They received answers that are reasonable in light of information from a Creator who has within himself the power of being and is free to act into history, just as human beings are empowered to act as well.

In effect, the God of Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and David says he will again act into human history, into what after all is his cosmos, to bring about a physical change in the living, physical environment he created in the first place.

John Coleman explains:

Reading and writing poetry . . . develops creativity. [Poet] Dana Gioia says, "As [I rose] in business . . . I felt I had an enormous advantage over my colleagues because I had a background in imagination, in language and in literature."

Noting that the Greek root for poetry means "maker," Dana emphasizes that senior executives need not just quantitative skills but "qualitative and creative" skills and "creative judgment," and feels reading and writing poetry is a route to developing those capabilities.

Indeed, poetry may be an even better tool for developing creativity than conventional fiction.

Clare Morgan, in her book What Poetry Brings to Business, cites a study showing that poems caused readers to generate nearly twice as many alternative meanings as "stories," and poetry readers further developed greater "self-monitoring" strategies that enhanced the efficacy of their thinking processes.

These creative capabilities can help executives keep their organizations entrepreneurial, draw imaginative solutions, and navigate disruptive environments where data alone are insufficient to make progress.

When I was in college, English majors could take poetry, drama, or novels
-- but my advisor said the smartest students always came out of the poetry course. The intensity of interpretation that poetry requires seems to train the brain . . . So of course, I signed up! It turned out to be my favorite course in college.

Daniel Harper writes at Weekly Standard:

David Gregory mocked the NRA's Wayne LaPierre for proposing that armed guards be at every school in America. But the NBC host seems to have no problem with armed guards protecting his kids everyday where they attend school in Washington, D.C.

"The Gregory children go to school with the children of President Barack Obama, according to the Washington Post. That school is the co-ed Quaker school Sidwell Friends," Harper writes.

In the Foreword to the new edition of Pro-Existence, Udo Middelmann writes:

Life in the circle of reality does not consist only of observing what happens, in holding people's hands and washing their faces to accompany them in their sad state. Human beings have a calling from God to be human, to gain dominion by figuring out how creation and the human being works in order to build with those insights, vary and embellish life, as well as to actively oppose the decline towards the permanment lure of evil.

Elijah was sent to a king to denounce his evil reign. Jesus came to do the Father's will, to heal the sick and argue with false teachers. Paul defended himself all the way to the court in Rome against mistreatment. Isaac dug a well to irrigate the fields for his sheep.

All such actions follow from the encouragement to Adam and Eve after the fall to stop accusing each other, to put the hand to the plow against an encroaching nature, and to have babies against the approaching death. Their work diminished the weight of a pitiless fallen nature. Their son Cain carried on to develop cities, metallurgy and music, as God encouraged and protected him.

To be human is to actively engage life and not simply to react to events, hide in prayer closets, or to blindly accept the status quo, whether it is thought to be set by media, politics, or by any group, religion, or orientation that erases a human being's God-given individuality.

Yesterday's press release announcing the formation of the Francis Schaeffer Center for Worldview and Culture states, "Courses created by FSC will give students a unique opportunity to work through
. . . foundational resources on worldview and cultural engagement."

Middelmann's book Pro-Existence is a "foundational resource," in my view, and I would recommend it to any person seeking to better understand what it means to stand as a human being living in community with God and man in today's world.

Heather Sells reports at CBN News:

In tiny Wichita Falls, Texas, the Harrold Independent School District allows teachers with concealed handgun licenses to carry guns in the classroom.

The policy dates back to 2007. Harrold ISD Superintendent David Thweatt said he believes it has and will prevent a school shooting.

"My goal is that if someone comes in and tries to hurt my little ones that they are killed," Thweatt said.

One student said, "I like it because it kind of makes me feel safer because it's Harrold -- we don't have a police station here."

Mark Tapson at Frontpagemag.com explores "how deeply blacks are in thrall to the divisive racism of identity politics."

Related
How Obama Replaced Jesus Christ Among Blacks

Nancy and I can now gladly, with thanks, announce today the formation of the Francis Schaeffer Center for Worldview and Culture, located on the campus of Houston Baptist University. 

This is a developing story. More information will follow.

Emily Esfahani Smith writes at Acculturated.com:

Earlier this fall, I spent an afternoon with Camille Paglia at the Philadelphia Museum of Art to talk about her new book, Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars. For Paglia, the art world is in spiritual crisis -- it has not had a new idea in years. Why? Because it sneers at religion. Paglia thinks that the spiritual quest defines all great art.

The internet has empowered freedom movements across the globe. But now, heavy-handed governments have persuaded the UN to give them power to control the internet.

This regressive change did not go unnoticed by L. Gordon Crovitz at the Wall Street Journal. He writes:

The open Internet, available to people around the world without the permission of any government, was a great liberation. It was also too good to last. Authoritarian governments this month won the first battle to close off parts of the Internet.

At the just-concluded conference of the International Telecommunications Union in Dubai, the U.S. and its allies got outmaneuvered. . . . A majority of the 193 United Nations member countries approved a treaty giving governments new powers to close off access to the Internet in their countries.

'"Authoritarian governments are highly motivated to close the Internet off. But just as in the Cold War, these regimes are doomed to lose if free countries resolve to fight," Crovitz concludes.

"Whatever governments want, people prefer freedom and eventually will get it, including on the Internet."

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Craig Bannister writes:

The problem of mass violence in the U.S. is more a reflection of contempt for the sanctity of human life than of a love for gun ownership. . . .

People who genuinely believe in the sanctity of human life won't take another life -- by gun or any other means
-- unless it is absolutely necessary.

Not so in a society that views human life as subjective and revocable.

"In a society that condones, funds, and promotes abortion and excuses euthanasia, human life is cheap," Bannister explains. "When a woman has a right to kill an unwanted child growing inside her simply because it suits her to do so, life is robbed of its value."

We note a similar attitude applied to men. "Likewise, if a husband has the right and power to prevent a hospital from continuing to feed his wife, thus starving her to death a la Terry Schiavo, the message is clear: Life can be extinguished by decree and desire," Bannister writes.

Bannister concludes: "People who do not believe human life is sacred can be more prone to base life and death decisions upon emotion, convenience, and hubris.

"Thus, when it comes to preventing mass violence, the answer is respect for life and self-control -- not gun control."

Related
Emily Miller on Self-Defense and the Connecticut Tragedy 
Obama Tears Up: "Hearts Broken" Over Connecticut Killings
Gun Control Fallacy

Congratulations to Udo Middelmann on the publication of the new edition of his book Pro-Existence, released by Wipf and Stock Publishers. Middelmann is president of the Francis A. Schaeffer Foundation, based in Gryon, Switzerland.

Pro-Existence: The Place of Man in the Circle of Reality includes the following:

Foreword (this is new)

Chapter 1: Creativity and the Value of Work

Chapter 2: Creativity and the Value of Property

Chapter 3: The Circumference of Reality

Chapter 4: The Limits of Selfishness

Chapter 5: Pro-Existence and the Return of the King

Afterword (This is new)

I highly recommend this book. You might pick up a copy for your own development, but also possibly as a gift to a student, parent, artist, journalist, pastor, or professor.

Pro-Existence is also a terrific resource for group discussions on the relationship of Christian worldview to issues of work and creativity, property, the objectivity of truth, the place of the individual, and one's relationship to the state in a broken world.

At Houston Baptist University. Updated website, etc., to follow.

I'm very honored to be able to accept this academic appointment!

Here's my current "About" page at The Pearcey Report. This page, too, will be updated.

Emily Miller writes at the Washington Times:

The tragic murders Friday at the Sandy Hook Elementary School break the heart of every American, and that includes gun owners. Those of us who belong to the 47 percent of families who have a gun in the home for self-defense are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, grandparents, aunts and uncles who think of our own little ones as we mourn the terrible scenes from Newtown, Conn.

It is human nature to want to find someone or something to blame for a tragedy like this. Parents want to find a way to prevent it from happening to their own children. The horror of a man so deranged that he could shoot a small child is almost impossible to understand or to accept. However, those who use this tragedy to call for more gun-control laws are misguided.

"The Sandy Hook school was a gun-free zone, meaning Mr. Lanza knew that no one could shoot back when he entered the school or the classroom," Miller writes. "The shooting in July in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. was also in a gun-free zone."

Miller recommends: "Rather than engaging in yet another debate about the Second Amendment, perhaps we should be discussing whether security is enhanced or weakened by not allowing a school to be armed for self-defense."

Related
Obama Tears Up: "Hearts Broken" Over Connecticut Killings
Gun Control Fallacy

At Frontpagemag.com: The "Chief Islamic Judge of the Palestinian Authority, Who Said 'Where Hitler Failed, We Must Succeed,' Wants to Run for President."

From FB: 

Obama tears up for these fallen children, as he should. As he should.

And yet, where are his tears for even littler children, "the least of these," condemned to die by choice, by command, by desire in hospitals and in Planned Parenthood "clinics," run by devotees who fund his rise to power?

"Pro-choice" Obama rejects the Creator and his knowable rules for life and freedom and then weeps at the brutal world of easy death he helps to create.

Let us make America in our image say the gods of now, the lords of nothingness. Idols destroy those who worship them.

From FB:

You can't trust a man with a gun, but you can trust gov't with all the guns. Civilian man with a gun = bad. But many gov't men with guns = good.

But here's the deeper challenge: The central problem concerns what's in our hearts, not what's in our hands.

Lone shooters kill in tens. Unleashed gov't shooters kill in thousands and millions.

A humane critique is not naive about the horror that comes in tens nor the horrors that come in millions.

Daren Jonescu writes at American Thinker:

If Barack and Michelle Obama feel comfortable allowing Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn to babysit their children, that is their problem. The question is, would you allow them to babysit yours?

Let's take that a step farther: Would you let them raise your children?

Would you give them exclusive supervision over the majority of your children's daylight hours up to age eighteen, primary control of your children's academic curriculum and teaching methodology, and authority to arrange the broad social and moral framework within which your children will be educated?

No? Then why do you accept modern public education?

Furthermore, why, after having delivered generations of children into this Marx/Dewey/Marcuse/Ayers educational program, is anyone perplexed at people's inability to respect individual freedom, understand property rights, or hold themselves to standards of character and reasoning higher than that of a mugger?

Related
Public Schools Turning Teens Into Relativists
Obama on Rev. Wright's Church: "Best education that I ever had"

John Jalsevac reports at LifeSiteNews:

Mail trucks with United Parcel Services (UPS) will be carrying a lighter load this Christmas season after one of the top conservative organizations in the country announced they are dropping the mail carrier.

Family Research Council (FRC) expressed frustration after UPS decided to cease funding Boy Scouts because of the Scouts’ policy of not accepting openly homosexual Scout leaders or members.

In November, FRC sent a letter to UPS urging them to reconsider and reverse their new policy.

However, FRC President Tony Perkins now says that he has spoken personally with UPS executives, “but they showed no willingness to back down on bullying non-profits into abandoning their values.”

If UPS chooses to side with intolerant anti-family radicals who discriminate against the Boy Scouts and against the Creator and His emancipatory norms for marriage, family life, and human sexuality, well, bless UPS's extremist corporate heart.

But neither FRC nor any free-thinking individual or group needs to help fund that kind of unethical, hateful corporate lack of social responsibility.

Loving thy neighbor includes the honest stewardship of one's financial resources.

UPS should stick to delivering parcels. And practice positive corporate responsibility, not its anti-family opposite.

And when UPS starts pushing extremism or undermining sanity, it's time for free-thinkers who respect the Creator and the blessings of family and liberty to push back.

Love always means taking a stand against hate.

Well done, Family Research Council.

The Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson writes:

Most blacks today are looking for Barack Obama and the federal government to take care of them.

Before the civil-rights movement, nobody -- not even the president -- could have come in as the “lord and savior” of the black community.

And yet, Peterson states, "95 percent of black Americans worship" Barack Obama "as if he’s the messiah. Why?"

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Philosopher, author, and debater William Lane Craig writes:

The American Humanist Association is promoting a new Web site that is designed to furnish children with a naturalistic or atheistic perspective on science, sexuality, and other topics. The stated goal of the Web site is laudatory: “to encourage curiosity, critical thinking, and tolerance among young people, as well as to provide accurate information regarding a wide range of issues related to humanism, science, culture, and history.”

The problem is that those values have no inherent connection with naturalism, which is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that there is nothing beyond the physical contents of the universe. One doesn’t need to be a naturalist in order to endorse curiosity, critical thinking, tolerance, and the pursuit of accurate information on a wide range of topics.

Ironically, the AHA has been remarkably uncritical in thinking about the truth of naturalism and of humanism in particular. 

"The new humanist Web site never encourages kids to think critically about the tough questions concerning the justification of humanism itself," Craig observes.

"Humanists tend to be condescendingly dismissive of theism and oblivious to nihilism," he concludes. "Meanwhile, they blithely extol the virtues of critical thinking, curiosity, and science, apparently unaware of the incoherence at the heart of their own worldview."

To visit William Lane Craig's website, go here.

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How Critical Thinking Saves Faith
Fascism Watch: Village Voice and Pro-Existence
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That would be "Bo Obama," a Portuguese water dog. Thus the savior of Obamaworld.

In contrast, real Christmas is about a verifiable and rationally knowable Jesus of Nazareth entering occupied territory in space and time to lead a movement of resistance against alienation, sin, death, and decay.

Of course the dog and the card arrive with soothing words: "This season, may your home be filled with family, friends, and the joy of the holidays."

But it is: Rank Hypocrisy. That soothes to conquer.

"Family" for Obama is merely a social construct, a counterfeit at war with the Creator and His liberating norms for family life and human community.

The dumbed-down Obama "family" is an arbitary power arrangement gift-wrapped under an authoritarian state that, among other violences, delegates to females the terror to decide who lives and dies. "Hi, Mommy. Good-bye, Boy."

Friends? Obama's "friends" work in secret day in and day out to ensure that the objective meaning of Christmas is censored from the public eye, lest the truth sets them free.

Tyrants from Herod's day until ours cannot stand the arrival of any challenger to their pretensions to power and authority over all. Beware comrades and cronies bearing gifts.

And "joy"? Tell that to a people living in darkness and oppression under an extremist regime of bread and circuses, carrots and sticks, and of hatred for and discrimination against the Creator and the rules of freedom, of which He alone is the source.

That kind of "joy" does not end well. Go ask the Gulag.

Obama for Christmas would have America focus on a dog. Dogs have leashes. What Obama wants for Christmas is America on a leash. 

Tom Tancredo has a message for the Republican Party, having just "snatched defeat from the jaws of victory":

History teaches is that if a party learns the right lessons, an electoral defeat can be a springboard for greater victories in the future.

On the other hand, if it abandons its base and starts aping the opposition, it can be a short joy ride into oblivion.

But the challenge the GOP faces, says Tancredo, is deeper than that of abandoning its base. For the "current rules are rigged not only against conservatives inside the GOP but against the Constitution itself. The nation faces not only a fiscal cliff, but a constitutional one as well."

Thus, "is it any wonder that Sen. Jim DeMint has decided to jump ship and move to The Heritage Foundation?" Tancredo observes.

"If the Republican Party leadership cannot win a public debate with Obama on economic growth and job creation," Trancredo continues, "pray tell what debate can they win? . . . Perhaps DeMint can use his new position as president of The Heritage Foundation to develop a new strategy for reversing our nation’s slide into socialism and dictatorship."

Tancredo says he does not have an "answer for the question that is on the minds of conservatives and patriots everywhere, the question 'what next?' But one thing is now clear. If the answer comes from conservatives in the Republican Party, it will be shouted down."

This quote is from Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, one of four Republican congressmen stripped of key committee positions, according to the "Inside Story of Boehner's Conservative Purge," reported by WND.

It is suggested that this purge is merely the enactment of party discipline.

However, by punishing these conservatives, GOP Speaker of the House John Boehner may be demonstrating the political equivalent of slitting his own throat. And that of the Republican Party.

A political party increasingly alienated from the rules of freedom, as set forth in the Declaration and U.S. Constitution, either rejects the leadership of hypocritical elites or it dies with them.

It is true: A house divided cannot stand. This is true of political parties and of national communities.

Rome wasn't built in a day, and there is no reason to expect that freedom in the U.S will fall in a day. But Rome did fall, and so the U.S. and freedom in the U.S. equally can fall.

The Democrat Party already wars aggressively against the rules of freedom. Thus its extremism is exposed when measured against the liberating mainstream of America freedom and dignity.

It would be a dying shame to see the GOP go down into that same pit. "We the People" need not follow.

". . . I'd be a Democrat."

This just in from the Heritage Foundation:

Edwin J. Feulner, the man who first envisioned, then built The Heritage Foundation, will step down as president next April, the think tank announced today.

The top spot will be filled by Jim DeMint, the senator from South Carolina who, over the last decade, has organized an influx of principled conservatives to serve in the U.S. House and Senate.

"Jim DeMint has shown that principled conservatism remains a winning political philosophy," Heritage Chairman of the Board Thomas A. Saunders says. "His passion for rigorous research, his dedication to the principles of our nation's founding, and his ability to translate policy ideas into action make him an ideal choice to lead Heritage to even greater success."

Related
Jim DeMint: "It Must Be Repealed"
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Columnist Erik Rush writes:

I find it both ironic and sad when I see blacks come out for gun control measures, particularly since the earliest gun-control legislation in America was aimed expressly at compromising blacks’ rights under the Second Amendment.

Historian, author and Second Amendment expert Clayton E. Cramer contends that the historical record provides ample proof that there has always been an undercurrent of racism behind gun control legislation, and that at one time, gun-control laws were an openly stated and understood device for keeping the black population in check.

"Liberal blacks who defend gun control on the basis of violent crime in the inner cities are also off base in overlooking that these urban areas have been under the complete political control of liberals for decades," Rush notes.

A little more critical distance vis-a-vis the real-world results of the liberal status quo may be in order. As Rush explains:

It is the destructive social policies of the left that have precipitated the dysfunction that leads to violence in the black community.

Indoctrinated blacks, of course, do not see the method behind the madness and thus eagerly embrace the simpleton’s impossible fix: Erase guns from the equation.

Like so many other Americans, blacks also accept at face value politicians' feigned concern for our safety.

"The bottom line," Rush argues, "is that Americans need to wake up to the fact that . . . all gun-control measures are efforts on the part of the political left to disarm Americans. As governments have known for millennia, unarmed populations are infinitely easier to control than armed ones. This effort will continue to move 'Forward,' particularly since Barack Obama was re-elected."

What is the point of the Second Amendment? Rush explains:

The Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America was intended to facilitate citizens’ protection from a tyrannical government should the occasion ever arise.

In layman’s terms, this means militarily engaging the operatives of a criminal regime -- with guns.

"The current administration is bristling with radical Marxists," Rush concludes, "and I would wager that 80 percent of Americans aren’t even capable of conceptualizing the lengths to which they are prepared to go to manifest their decades-long dream of a Marxist America."

Related
Obama: 2nd Amendment About "Hunting and Shooting"
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Michael W. Chapman reports at CNSNews.com:

Conservative leader L. Brent Bozell III, a nephew of the late William F. Buckley Jr., criticized a commentary in the New York Times that claimed his uncle, if alive today, would seek to purge “fringe” Tea Party folks and other “moon-bat” conservatives from the GOP.

Bozell said Buckley instead would argue that “moderates” such as Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and Karl Rove should be “driven from our ranks.”

In the Dec. 3 commentary, writer David Welch, a former research director for the Republican National Committee, equated the Tea Party and conservative talk radio  with the John Birch Society, the latter which Buckley did expel from the conservative movement in the 1960s. . . .

Chapman quotes from Bozell's letter: “Let me suggest to you what my uncle would have said instead, while laughing at Mr. Welch’s proposal: ‘Given that the Tea Party is definitely not the John Birch Society, we therefore do not need moderates like Jeb Bush or Chris Christie and operatives like Karl Rove running the conservative movement. They are ideally suited to be driven from our ranks.’”

Chapman reports that "Bozell is chairman of ForAmerica, a grassroots conservative group committed to traditional American principles. He is also president of the Media Research Center, the parent organization of CNSNews.com."

For more on the "fringe" Tea Party, "How the New Resistance Can Win the Culture War" may be of interest.

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A Tribute to the Empyreal Buckley 
Really? "Extreme" Limbaugh, Tea Party Cost Romney the Election? 
What Is "Mainstream" America"?

Arnold Ahlert writes at Frontpagemag.com:

In Tennessee last May, Republican Gov. Bill Haslam appointed Samar Ali as international director of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (ECD). Attempts to connect her to stealth jihad have been ridiculed.  Yet when one connects the dots between Ali and several organizations and individuals, a number of troubling relationships arise, especially regarding the phenomenon known as Sharia-compliant finance (SCF).

SCF is best explained by Deroy Murdock in a 2008 column: “Turn your clock back 70 years. Imagine that Wall Street banks and brokerages sold Nuremberg-compliant bonds and stock funds in 1938,” he writes. “American Nazi sympathizers bought financial instruments certified by Berlin-based advisors as free of ‘Jewish profits’ from, say, Salomon Brothers and Bloomingdale’s.”

That’s the first half the equation. Then comes the far more important second half. “In turn, a percentage of such funds’ gains underwrote pro-Nazi charities, like the German-American Bund, and similar organizations in the Fatherland, like the Hitler Youth.” In short, Murdock is using an apt analogy to illuminate the true nature of SCF: it is a money-laundering operation used to underwrite international terrorism.

Michael Snyder writes at Infowars:

Do you think that is an alarmist headline? Well, I am not the one saying this.

Law enforcement authorities all over the country are telling citizens that they can no longer deal with all the crime and that people need to lock their doors and prepare to defend their families. 

This report at Infowars calls to mind the opening words of Francis Schaeffer in his video series titled, How Should We Then Live? 

Says Schaeffer:   

There is violence and a breakdown in society up to the point in which it is unsafe to walk through the streets of many of the cities of the world.

On the other hand there is a danger of an increasing authoritarianism to meet the threat of chaos in our own countries and internationally.

Should we despair and give in? If not, how should we then live?

If there are not sufficient police resources to quell the criminal element, of course families should take it upon themselves to protect themselves.

In point of fact, this is a reasonable course of action in a broken world: Self-defense always begins at home. Waiting on police to arrive to save the day may make you and family a day late and far more than a few dollars short.

Seconds can be a matter of life and death.

In addition, a police force large enough to relieve individuals and families of the responsibility to protect themselves would be so powerful that it itself would constitute a danger to public safety.

Such a force would need to be virtually omnipresent. But then who would police the police?

History is replete with examples of authoritarian government "protecting" society by brutal, totalitarian methods. 

Thanks, but no thanks.

What is helpful about the Schaeffer film series mentioned above is that it offers both analysis and real-world solutions.

The battle against social breakdown cannot be won by defensive measures alone. "Locking doors" may address an immediate tactical situation, but what must be done, strategically, on offense, to address challenges beyond the front door?

Moreover, looking today to massive government to solve such a crisis is to unleash a monopoly of power and manipulation that would have made dictatorial elites of the 20th century salivate with expectations of transgenerational total control.

Instead, a humane and civil society must rise up against chaos and authoritarianism to reassert both form and freedom (a helpful Schaefferian phrase) in their proper balance.

"Should we despair and give in?" Absolutely not.

To find out why, I recommend, as a starting point, that free-thinkers, creative artists, writers, thought leaders, and church groups (which really should be among the avant-garde) think through the information, analysis, and proposed solutions set forth by Schaeffer in How Should We Then Live?  

You will want to move out from this starting point -- to deepen foundations, to extend positive applications to business, the arts, family, science, government, and so on. But this is a super place to begin to explore future horizons.

When it comes to defending your family, the best defense is a great offense.

Madeleine Morgenstern reports at The Blaze: 

The first same-sex wedding ceremony will be held Saturday at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point’s Cadet Chapel, USA Today reported.

Two women, Brenda Sue Fulton and Penelope Dara Gnesin, will exchange vows one year after the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy banning gays from serving openly in the military came to an end.

Here's what's really happening: In the name of a pseudo-intellectual theory of liberation, the policy called "don't ask, don't tell" has been replaced by a form of oppression and discrimination that demands "don't question, don't speak." 

If you are a free-thinker, if you are willing to think outside of the closed-down, closed-in homosexualist box, consider:

Wrapped in the typical liberalist marketing language selling the "sizzle" of "freedom," "equality," and "love" . . . [is in fact] a product loaded with hate, discrimination, and intolerance.

That would be hatred for the rules of freedom (rooted in the Creator [see the Declaration of Independence] who gives both unalienable rights and liberating norms for married love and human sexuality).

That would be discrimination against the wonder of the male-female diversity, oppressing vive la différence with a steamroller of mono-dimensional sameness and flatness (Oh, yeah, "equality").

And that would be intolerance against people who think for themselves and prefer real marriage, real family, and real diversity to pseudo-intellectual counterfeits all gussied up for the county fair in liberaland hickville (imposed by government extremists from Washington).

People who say they are "conservative" should not allow themselves to be duped by the superficial sizzle of "gay" marketing.

Arguing there is a "conservative case for 'gay' marriage" is as sound as arguing there is a conservative case for counterfeit money. You can make it, but only fools bank on it.

As for the GOP, that party needs to realize that human beings do not live by economics alone.

It needs to start thinking, quit reacting, and refrain from allowing marriage-counterfeiters to impose their extremist agenda upon a free people that prefers reality and wholeness over escapism and reactionary pet theories.

Far better, GOP, is to affirm social policy consistent with rules of freedom grounded in reality, instead of submitting to liberty-denying compromises with inflexible counterfeiters who would eat your lunch, not to mention your country. For

. . . a "house-divided cannot stand. The choice is yours -- the rules of freedom vs. the rules for radicals. Choose freedom and you will live. Choose the extreme radicalism . . . and you will not live. Remain a house-divided and you will collapse."

The antithesis is real. Say yes to reality. And throw the well-baited counterfeits of hate, discrimination, and intolerance onto the ash heap of history.

What is true of military struggle is true in society at large: The most deadly assaults always begin from the inside.

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