A Monday Sermon

Inspired by the new tradition of giving a Monday Sermon containing Bible tips for successful living and the right-on-the-money observation that we no longer have a moral center, I thought I'd add this grist to the mill:

Destroying the human soul, secularism spreads its lethal poison through saturation advertising instead of saturation bombing and relies on ill-informed public opinion rather than ministries of propaganda to further its deadly message. 

Unlike all previous prosecutions, secularism strikes at the very heart of our humanity, destroying all that is special or unique about us. Proclaiming that we can organize our lives apart from God, it ends up alienating us from ourselves and our neighbors. It then demands that we submerge our differences and forget all that makes us unique. Individuality is sacrificed to fads and fashion and all signs of local and national character are swept away. Everything is sacrificed for the sake of economic and political efficiency.

And let's be honest, for the sake of the bank balances of our Millionaire Socialist Elite rulers. So perhaps strike out economics and replace by greed. I'll pass that on to the Editor.

Domus Aurea,

LSP

The Oscars

Thanks for the helpful infographic, WRSA.

Apart from boycott "Dick's" and the so-called "Field & Stream", that is all.

Your Friend,

LSP

Boycott Big Business Gun Control

Big Business or at least 12 chunks of it, has decided to jump on the anti-gun bandwagon by dropping sponsorship of the NRA in the wake of the Florida school shooting.

Companies like Delta and United Airlines will stop offering discounts and perks to NRA members as will their lesser allies, such as AVIS and Budget car rentals. You can read the list here.

Others, like Kroger, Walmart, Field & Stream and the curiously named Dick's Sporting Goods have also re-examined their firearms policy, with Dick's and Field & Stream banning semi-automatic deadly assault rifles altogether. The others have raised the age of gun sales to 21 years old and all appear to be lobbying for more stringent background checks, excluding the "mentally ill" from firearms purchases.

Sounds sensible, doesn't it. Not so fast, where does "mentally ill" begin and end. With being a vet, someone who once complained to their doctor about depression or a person adamantly refused to vote for Hillary Clinton?

President Trump added fuel to the fire, stating, "Take the guns first, go through due process second." Granted, the quote's out of context and it's unlikely that the President will abandon his base to woo leftist votes and their big money, millionaire socialist sponsors in corporate America.  Still, it doesn't sound good.

But the millionaire socialist corporate combine might want to take note. Trump, and with him an anti-left, anti-globalist, pro-freedom, 2nd Amendment administration didn't get elected because they were unpopular.

Message to market, we're going to boycott your stores and you will lose money. See Delta in Georgia. As a parting shot, why wasn't there a cry for gun control after the Mandalay Massacre in Vegas? Good question.

Reflect on that and the near total media blackout on the Vegas shooting. While you're at it, join the NRA if you haven't already.

Gun Rights,

LSP

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

There's a lot of leftist hysteria right now about guns. They want to disarm everyone and replace them with the products of their beta cuck soy boy utopia. 

Borepatch has this to say, proposing a gun rights mind virus:

You meet different sorts of people who advocate for gun control. Some of them are hard core control freaks who just want to crush flyover country, but if you're like me you don't run across them very often. Mostly you run across people who aren't shooters or gun owners, who haven't thought about the issue very much, but who are disturbed about the constant media drumbeat about shootings and who just want to "do something".

We need these people on our side, or at least standing on the sidelines. How do we separate them from the gun control pack.

My last post was how I approach this: I'm not opposed to gun control, I'm opposed to stupid and useless gun control. This is a mind virus that I'm trying to infect them with. I want to sow seeds of doubt in their minds to get them out of the gun controller's camp and onto the sidelines. Hopefully (if the virus really takes) it will begin the process where they actually start to think about things and they may even end up on our side.

It's a battle for the (very large) middle ground. In the long run, we're not viable without it.

My experience has been pretty good with this. Most of these folks are decent people. They want to be fair, and they know that they don't know much about this topic. My mind virus is a challenge to them - is what you're proposing dumb? Will it work? Is it fair? Nobody wants to be dumb, or unfair.

This is especially true with the sentence that has had more impact than any other I've used with folks like this. When they say (and they will say it) "But we have to do something", I reply:

Quite frankly, our choice is to build bunkers or to convince the middle. Building bunkers makes us look like the dumb (and dangerous) ones.

Yes, the people at the heart of the gun control battle are, well, evil. No getting past that. But we don't win without the vast middle. We don't win by starting from "Gun controllers are evil" (they are wishy-washy gun controllers after all). We don't win from "Molon Labe, bitches!" (this seems to make people nervous.

We win from a mind virus that starts to get them to ask themselves the right questions. Truth is on our side; we can lead others to truth if we want.

Do you want to do something stupid and useless? That doesn't sound right.

Well said that man. 

LSP 

Texas Independence Day

What makes this night different than all other nights? That's easy, we celebrate Texas' independence from the tyranny of Mexico.

On March 2, 1836, Texans threw off the yoke of Mexican oppression, declaring their independence as a Sovereign Republic. Almost two months later, on April 21, 1836, the declaration became a reality with the battle of San Jacinto.

After a series of maneuvers, the two small armies faced each other, some 500 yards apart. Then, at 4.00 pm, Texans began a stealthy advance through tall grass to the Mexican lines, pulling cannon behind them. 

At 4.30 pm the cannon fired and the Texans rose up, charging the enemy to the cries of Remember the Alamo! and Remember Goliad! After 18 minutes of ferocious hand to hand fighting, the Mexican army broke and ran.

The slaughter continued long after the main action, with the victorious Texans ill-disposed to give quarter to an enemy that had shown no mercy a month earlier in San Antonio. 

And while General Sam Houston and other officers attempted to stop the killing, their soldiers "continued to chant "Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!" while frightened Mexican infantry yelled 'Me no Alamo!' and begged for mercy to no avail."

650 Mexican soldiers were killed and 300 captured, 11 Texans died and 30 were wounded. Santa Anna, "Napoleon of the West," was captured. 

Less than a decade later, the Republic of Texas was annexed by the United States. Mistake?

You decide,

LSP 

Russians Hack UK Global Warming

In a savage new twist on the War on Weather, Russian bots have hacked UK Global Warming, pounding the Sceptered Isle with a freezing blast of Siberian ice and snow. A storm Brits call the Beast From The East.

A Russian Bot braves the snow in St. James' Park

The Beast has dumped centimeters of snow on the United Kingdom, knocking temperatures down into minus figures and bringing the country to a standstill.

The Beast Rolls In

Shocked Brits reacted to Russia's unprovoked act of climate change aggression by deploying units of the Guards Division and Household Cavalry.

Guards

Some rushed to Tesco's, ASDA and other supermarkets to panic buy milk, bread and similar essentials.

Horse Guards

“It’s snowing here and I’ve just been out to watch the panic buying brigade," stated one person on Twitter, "20 milk and 14 loaves  battling it out in those trolleys like chariots and battering rams."

The Long Retreat From Moscow

Others have been left without heat and power, praying for an end to Climate Change and a return to Global Warming.

A Typical UK Road

"I reduced my carbon footprint but the climate changed anyway," said one stranded panic shopper at the Solihull Sainsbury's, "It's this snow, all I could find was a caramel log."

Panic Buyers

The Beast From The East has joined forces with Moscow backed Winter Storm Emma Watson, promising further disruption to United Kingdom.

Arduus Ad Solem,

LSP

RIP Billy Graham

I know I'm a day late and a dollar short on this, but rest in peace, Billy Graham. Check out Gavin Ashenden on the late evangelist:

The constant dismissal of him as a fundamentalist sets up a hierarchy of assessment based on an admiration of intelligence and sophistication. Those who guarded the study and practice of academic theology in his and our day were aghast and even disgusted by his spiritual and theological values and practice.

They had created a value system which was based on a rationalistic study of theology set in a humanist intellectual and cultural context which looked down on Graham’s evangelism with intense disrespect. The fact that their kind of intellectual snobbery produced adverse results for what became in their hands a dying faith, while his touched increasing numbers in real existential need, was wholly lost on them; obscured by the fog of pride and the heat of hubris.

The fog of pride and the heat of hubris. Well said, you can read the whole thing here.

God bless,

LSP

Prayer Burns Demons

Prayer burns demons? Watch this video to the end and while you're at it, reflect on the fury and hysteria of the Left. What God do they worship?

Russia, freed from decades of Bolshevik Communist oppression, is experiencing a spiritual renewal with thousands of churches and monasteries being rebuilt in a remarkable Christian renaissance. 

A rebirth that our media refuses to report as it shrieks hysterically for confrontation and possibly war with Europe's most Christian country.

Where lies the demon?

Vade Retro,

LSP

Listen Up, Preachers

Check this out, all you sermonizers, a blast from the hallowed halls of academe and DLJ:

Let us face the obvious. You do not get faith in language much beyond the point where you have lost the language of faith. By allowing words whose primary meaning is anchored in Scripture to be de-natured by worldly abuse, we have gotten into a swamp from which there can be no exit without first retracing our steps. We live in a world of babble, what Richard Rorty once called “incommensurable discourse,” a linguistic anarchy which has, contra Rorty, proven insufficiently therapeutic to ward off social calamity. To restore sanity we will need to recognize, as Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas puts it, that in the end there can be no intelligibility without transcendence. A corollary of this axiom is that there can be no sustained morality without ontology, just as there can be no Christian understanding without a diligent and faithful preaching of the Word of God, straight up, no fizz and no ice.

I'd say that was outstanding. You can read the whole thing here. 

Don't say Djinn Fizz.

Your Pal,

LSP

Roving

"It's like Ibiza but, you know, country," I said, dialing up Magic Train of Remove Kebab to maximum volume. It was an Albanian bar in rural Texas and Remove Kebab just seemed right. Everyone agreed. 

"Like this song a lot, 'bout a train with guns. So where you from?"
"From England. I'm a pastor."
"Good to meetcha!"

It turns out we pretty much knew each other thanks to mutual friends and acquaintances, it's a small town; I like that, so much better than living in the plastic-sided splendor of the Metrosprawl. Then, after a quick blast of the perennial classic, Don't Fear The Reaper, I headed for home.

The streets were empty, apart from the occasional cat, slinking across the road and one or two wild dogs. They're a menace and you have to wonder at the genius of the people who abandoned them.

Back at the compound, I reflected on the town and the wisdom of the Baptists and Methodists who helped pioneer it. They cared for people and now their churches are large.

There's a lesson in that.

God bless,

LSP

Don't Fear The Reaper

It's easy to say "Don't Fear The Reaper" as you sit back in the comfort of your happy plastic sided home. But what happens when the mist comes down and the debt's called in?

And you wake up to ghost trees, only to find that the US Dollar is equally illusory and all the ATMs don't work.

Perhaps that will never happen, like the fall of Rome or censorship of the internet. Don't fear the Reaper.

God bless,

LSP

Deluge

Thunder and lightning cracked the sky, shaking the house while  sleet whipped against its weathered wooden walls. That's right, thundersleet, the opening salvo of a Scandanavian death metal band and all at zero dark thirty.

I had to shout at Alexa, Alexa Jones, "ALEXA, TURN OFF WHITE RABBIT." What was the point; you couldn't hear Grace Slick anyway, over the fury of the elements.

One cup of hot tea later, the team was in the rig and advancing to contact through the flooded streets of this once tranquil rural Texan haven. Good thing we had a truck. Then, at an obligatory stop for coffee at the Shamrock Pick 'n Steal, the thundersleet crashed down.

BOOM. It was like a sledgehammer or the Russian guns on the Oder front. But the barrage subsided after an earsplitting frenzy. I reassured the cowering Pick 'n Stealers, stand steady! all the while calmly sipping coffee from a Yeti mug. You can't show fear, it spreads panic.

Then it was back to the Compound through the flood. Armed? Better believe it.

Stormbringer,

LSP