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Archive for July 2010

Citizens’ rights vs global humanitarianism: rights, responsibility, and amnesty

It’s not uncommon to see a patriot mistreated over the issue of immigration, usually by people who consider themselves part of the human rights/anti-racism movement. But while “global human rights” sound a little bit larger and more glamorous a struggle than “American rights,” both the glamor and resulting anger toward patriots ensue from a major misunderstanding of the importance of citizenship. 

In a proper republic, citizenship extends rights to those who are legally obligated to make sacrifices. We all get the chance to vote, and usually to receive some sort of economic safety net, and be protected by the police and firefighters, and benefit from the infrastructure created through taxation. We have the right to a trial by jury, the right to keep and use weaponry, the right to pursue a job, and the right to reside within our limited territory. But these rights are only inherited by our citizenry because they were paid for with the blood, sweat, and tears of both our ancestors and us.  Read the rest of this entry »

The giving nature of God: proof of His existence in Jesus Christ

There are many ways Christians know Jesus is God, but few more powerful than the testimony of His character.

For instance, as human beings we’re more than aware of our dependence upon other things, most notably through consumption. The human machine was built as a dependent object, something not only needing basic necessities such as food, air, and water, but also personal necessities such as the need to be loved and adored, the need to feel safe, and the desire to accumulate resources for survival.  At the base of our chemical, social, and spiritual existence, we’re really just needy beings, and at the very base of our need lies a personal connection: the need to experience our Creator, to know His presence, to have His guidance.

The average person–maybe even every person–can’t really give every second of the day to someone else without taking something, whether it be time, resources, or appreciation, so when we see people who impoverish themselves in order to give, many people are struck with a sense of admiration; as though, despite what we may all wish about humanity, perhaps charitable behaviors in the extreme were unnatural.  Or to put it another way, we all understand there’s no such thing as true human altruism.  And to a degree, we’re right. Read the rest of this entry »

In defense of “extremism”: why worldview matters

It’s an understatement to say that I’ve undergone some major changes over the past few years.  In 2001, I had just gone from being a fat and nerdy Christian homeschooler to being a drug-addled ultra-liberal party-boy, shedding my video games for the pursuit of women and a reckless lifestyle.  But not long after that, after college, after all the glamor of hedonism began to wear off and I began to feel deep hangover within my soul, I began to slowly drift back into conservatism.  And after that, Christianity.  And boy, did I ever swing back hard.

I swung so far to the right, actually, that my college “friends” we pretty worried.  After the overwhelming majority of them left me, I was stuck with my new self, a radically different person, since the one who’d lived a short while ago was for the most part dead.  But nowadays, even after explaining who I was to many mainstream Christian conservatives who know me (and the Leftists who seem to think that as a straight-laced conservative, I have no clue about Noam Chomsky, or drugs, or homosexuals), I seem to get a uniform explanation about why I swung into radical, unapologetic Christian conservatism.  Read the rest of this entry »

Can conservatism ever really shake the accusation of racism?

It seems that almost since the dawn of modern American liberalism, accusations of conservative racism have been flying, and conservatives have been ineffectively wasting their time trying to fight them. But regardless of how vigorously the movement tries to defend itself, it’s not ever going to clear its name. From a leftist point of view, any conservative movement is “racist” in deeply rooted principle. Even the TEA Party, a strictly constitutional and financial movement which has nothing to do with racial issues, finds itself under attack for many of the same issues that any other conservative movement embraces, since its ranks are publicly known to consist of those who consider themselves “very conservative.” Read the rest of this entry »

Social justice and corruption

One of the most important necessities of true justice is that we apply it equally.  But while most on planet earth would readily agree that granting two people different verdicts for the same crime would be corruption, trends in the United States show us that our society is moving away from an equality-based law-system to one which considers the status of people instead of their actions.

As examples, a couple of major stories have caught the eye of Leftist “human rights” organizations lately. The first one, involving a police officer and two jaywalkers, resulted in an unruly pedestrian attacking the officer, which resulted in the assailant being punched in the face. The second story involved a Mexican smuggler being shot after he and his friends were throwing rocks at our border patrol agents. Read the rest of this entry »

A time to mock: finding the right time for ridicule

Editor’s note: this article first appeared on American Thinker, and can be found here

I can still remember, sometime back in my hipster days a couple of years ago, near the dawn of my own conservatism, entering a bar which used to be my favorite and having something tweak my brain in the strangest way.  There I was, with my long hair, a beard, pants tighter than my own girlfriend’s, and a bright blue members only jacket, entering the well-known hipster bar (at the time, anyway) known as The Cha-Cha Lounge and seeing a sign which read something along the lines of “We will not allow any racism, sexism, or bigotry, so stay out if you like these.”  Like I said, not an exact quote, but the sign had been there for years, and it’s probably still there.

The thing that struck me so powerfully about the sign wasn’t that they were specifically prohibiting certain kinds of offensive judgments, however, but the fact that this bar–this bastion of sleazy, Leftist, Seattle hipsterism–was prohibiting racial and cultural judgment, even though it was widely known to house some of the most judgmental Seattleites the city could afford.  I’d find out just how judgmental they were when I returned after getting a cheap “civilian” haircut and some mainstream American Eagle jeans, and suddenly I could hear people whom I didn’t know telling others, right in front of me, how they’d just been to some terrible “bro” bar filled with guys like me.  So thanks for fighting racism, guys.  I’m totally drenched in love. Read the rest of this entry »

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