The Leftist's Designs for the Supreme Court are Glaringly Anti-Constitutional

            

             Although the U.S. Constitution art. 3 is not specific regarding the agenda of the Supreme Court, our founders made their intentions on this matter clear in the Federalist Papers (1777-78) by giving rationale for ratifying the Constitution which was accomplished on June 17, 1778.  In the government document “The Court and Constitutional Interpretation,” James Madison is summarized to have said, “Constitutional interpretation must be left to the reasoned judgment of independent judges, rather than to the tumult and conflict of the political process.  If every constitutional question were to be decided by public political bargaining…,  the Constitution would be reduced to a battleground of competing factions, political passion and partisan spirit.”  The document further says, “Despite this background, the Court’s power of judicial review was not confirmed until 1803, when it was invoked by Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison.  In this decision, the Chief Justice asserted that the Supreme Court's responsibility to overturn unconstitutional legislation was a necessary consequence of its sworn duty to uphold the Constitution.  That oath could not be fulfilled any other way. "It is emphatically the province of the judicial department to say what the law is."[1] 

               In Federalist Paper 78, Alexander Hamilton wrote, 

“the courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority. The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to the Court to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body.”[2] 

            When at the hearings, Democrat U.S. Senators railed against Amy Coney Barrett’s apparent political stance or bemoaned the ultimate standard to which she would appeal her deliberations, they are betraying a profound ignorance of the historical formation and development of the Court. 

---

[1]The [Supreme] Court and Constitutional Interpretation.”  https://www.supremecourt.gov/ about/constitutional. aspx#:~:text=As%20the%20final%20arbiter%20of,Justice%20Charles%20Evans%20Hughes%20observed.

https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-71-80 (all boldface mine). 

Why the Left Cannot Possibly Deliver on Utopia

 “For my people have hewed out…broken cisterns that can hold no water.” – Jeremiah 2:13 

This paper rejects the rational validity of mindless naysaying.  Opponents to a given Presidential candidate are intellectually obligated to name specific reasons why their alternative choice is superior to the former.  This challenge aligns with the investigational path Charles Darwin employed in correlating his data with the thesis of his work, On the Origin of Species, where he conceded that if his views didn’t account for factual reality, his “theory would absolutely break down .”[1]  Consequently, the stakes for the choices about to be made will be greater than wounded, or ecstatic pride; but either good or dreadful concrete consequences.  Each person will reap what the majority in actuality will sow (Gal. 6:7).    

At the outset I want you to note that I am not pitting persons against each other as though some people are innately morally superior to others.  To do that would be to embrace a common ploy of the Left, which habitually dismisses conservatives with their assertion that our views are rooted in a spirit of “hatred” against certain groups of people.  My skepticism of Leftism instead is grounded on assessing the recent (d)evolution, the internal (il)logic, and the current trajectory of the Democrat platform in view of their “promises” for the future that they hold before their followers.

The word “utopia” means “an imagined perfect location” in that such a place has never actually existed with the exception (I argue) of creation prior to Adam and Eve’s fall into sin (Gen. 1:31; 2:16-17).  “Utopia” fittingly describes that “vision” which leftists hold out as both their impetus and the goal towards which they are pushing our society today.  It is on the one hand an utterly obscure vision of the future for the reason that it is nothing more than an anti-vision that consists merely of destroying present realities instead of creating new ones.  In any case it can lead only to chaos.  For both antifa and their toppling of images of the past (statues of forefathers, etc.), and the present practical Democrat platform of “anything but Trump,” a crisply-clear plan for the future is nowhere laid bare.  To the obvious question of how I can possibly associate anarchist thugs with the Democrat party, I reply by highlighting the correlation between Democrat mayors and associates whose solemn obligations are to protect their people, and the actuality of the states of affairs on their very own “streets.”  Notice for example that their charge to oversee well-armed police forces, ironically issues in riotous thugs, ram-paging unopposed precisely for the reason that the hands of the police have been persistently tied behind their backs, figuratively speaking.  Conservative critics are not obligated to psychoanalyze the motives of the former in order to establish that the failure of Democrat leaders to empower, let alone encourage, police to put down such rampages establishes their tacit approval of 14 billion dollars[2] “worth” of destruction plus the death of innocents.  Since, furthermore, no denials of such charges have been issued, it is far-from-safe[3] to conclude that the video cameras do not lie by their exposure that the streets Biden will “build” will not be “paved with gold!”  Yet the bottom line is that this devolution of the Democrat platform extends farther back than Antifa, but all the way to that rebellion which preceded “Adam’s” Fall when Satan defied God’s authority prior to creation (Isaiah 14:12, Luke 10:15,18).  Quite apart from citing biblical texts however, one obvious foundational contention in our day is over whether authority is to be derived from God, or whether it is to be dug out from within one’s own gut.[4]   

---

[1] A Facsimile of the First Edition. (Harvard, 1964), p. 189.

[2] Fox and Friends. Fox News.  09/17/2020.

[3] This phrasing is deliberate.

[4] As for our republican democracy, John Adams stated, “Our Constitution is made only for a moral and religious people, it is wholly inadequate to the governance of another.” (“National Archives.gov. Founders.gov.  From John Adams to the Massachusetts Militia, October 11, 1789).  

Rioting Gone Wild; But Why “No Longer?”

 

            If you have rarely, if ever, tuned to the Fox News Network, you may not have noticed that the unbroken chain of one hundred+ nights of rioting in certain cities across America has largely stopped, since you were never duly informed of their occurrence in the first place.  I am not aware of any actual announcement from any news media that that upheaval had stopped.  The indications that this change is indeed so, is only apparent because of the sudden silence about this matter by Fox News specifically.  It alone is to be singled out regarding this issue, for the reason that every other TV network has intentionally withheld videos of the rioting from appearing on their newscasts.  The only articles addressing this issue at all emphasized instead that Antifa must not be connected to the kindling of some of the wildfires that have devastated Oregon in particular.[1]  How bizarre it is that, in regard to fires Leftists are certain of the innate innocence of Antifa, despite the fact that their riotous destruction is all documented on video.

            The clear reason for omitting an announcement is that such a declaration would almost certainly fatally damage the Democrat Party’s (DP) election chances.  Think about it.  Were Left-leaning news outlets to announce an abrupt ending of the rioting, it would raise the haunting question, “By what power or authority could you possibly make those thugs desist?”  Should such a command be not only announced publicly, but also be received by the perpetrators in a spirit of compliance, it would clearly indicate collusion (either directly or indirectly) between DP officials on the one hand, and a hierarchical-structured group of thugs whose goals aligned with the DP as opposed to the Republican Party (RP).  This connection would strongly indicate that the DP is prepared to create even terror insofar as it serves to advance its purposes.  Since this pragmatic arrangement would be abhorred by the vast majority of Americans, the only viable alternative for an effective strategy for DP leaders is to remove the dreadful scene of rioters who did their deeds unopposed by local Democrat officials, by dismissing them “quietly.”

            In either case, the fact that over the course of a hundred days DP mayors and governors encouraged the nightly devastating rioting by overtly resisting intervention from our President and refusing to protect either innocent citizens or police officers, indicated a harmonious cooperation between the goals of the DP and the anarchist movement in general.  This clear relationship between the two, however, not only condemns the DP in regard to its recent past, but also serves as a warning as to what almost certainly lies in the future.  If Donald Trump wins a second Presidential term, the warnings are clear from Democrats that the rioting will resume.  Does that not mean logically that if the DP actually prevails at the ballot box, terror will be on the table to the further advancement of DP “designs” upon our nation beginning shortly after?

---

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/us/fires-oregon-antifa-rumors.html.  On my search engine this article was surrounded by identical screeds.

Creation Texts Must Reconcile with Science to Qualify as Truth pt 2

What is at Stake in the Weight that Christians Give to Science?

 

The question of scientific authority has no bearing on any measure of God’s power or competence, but instead seeks for the relevant data of nature to indicate how God may have  chosen to fashion it.  I believe God could easily have created the universe in an instant had He willed to.  But the evidence from nature (which Romans says is true) indicates that He did not.

 

I instead endeavor to rekindle a robust biblical delineation of the validity of both the categories of facts and biblical revelation and their relationship to each other.  I also seek to assist parents in offering a more constructive reply to their children when the latter say that the “science” they are learning in school contradicts what they were “taught” from the Bible.  On the authority of the Bible, I affirm both realms to be valid and, at the very least, do not necessarily conflict.  As for the circumstances when they do seem to conflict, two things may be said.  Firstly, a careful study of the text of Genesis 1 shows that nothing specific is said as to exactly how anything was created or formed except to say that God created, or formed, every bit of it!  Secondly, truth can be conveyed in not only scientific language but also in daily conversational speech.  For example, the lines, “You put the right ingredients together and bake them at the right temperature” (science), and “Aunt Matilda loves to bake cakes” (religion), can both be factually true with respect to the question, “Where did this cake [on the table] come from?”[1] 

 

But what must NOT be done is to insist that the Bible demands the last word.  I earlier established that it commands us to trust the witness of nature as a vital means by which God convicts the world that He is its creator.  I then indicated the impossibility of material forces causing the creation of the universe from nothing (material).  In summary, while the Bible blesses scientific insight and discovery, in light of section 3, the latter must also bow to God as the only conceivable cause cosmic existence.  Consequently we believers in the Bible ought to highlight scientific evidence as opposed to hiding it “under a bushel” (Matthew 5:15).  For if we fail to affirm science as an arena of truth, it will be impossible to gain the attention of intellectuals, let alone persuade them, of the truth of the Gospel that God holds out to all people!  

---

[1] John C. Lennox. God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (Lion, 2009), pp. 207-8.

Creation Texts Must Reconcile with Science to Qualify as Truth part 1

         If Christians don’t rethink the Bible’s teaching on the relationship between biblical revelation and scientific knowledge, we will persist in our failure both to keep our children in Christ and reach intellectuals with the Gospel.  Likewise we will also fail to produce Christian scientists.

Creation Texts Must Reconcile with Science

            The Bible makes bold claims pertaining to both the natural order (science) and our relationship to it.  For example, Psalm 19:1 declares as true that both the starry heavens above and the array of living creatures and inanimate things below, in themselves, “declare the glory of God.”  The positive assessment this verse assigns to nature’s witness boldly underscores its’ innate trustworthiness.  Furthermore, Romans 1:18-20 warns that it is sinful to suppress truths derived from our observation of nature, specifically as they pertain to God’s existence.

            The Bible also, everywhere and without exception, assumes[1] as valid the Law of Non-Contradiction which holds that contradictory propositions cannot both be true in the same way and at the same time.  Also, Scripture demands our obedience to truth in this sense, both in our consciences and in all social interactions.[2]  Consequently, young-earth creationism (YEC) cannot be correct if it rejects evidence the universe is billions of years old based on data that is shown to be unassailable.  Even in legal courts, testimony must reconcile with facts and not vise/versa.  Indeed, despite YEC claims, the Bible never asserts its truthfulness by shunning knowable facts, but rather urges us to affirm its truth by testing it in light of the facts of science and history.[3]

Scientific facts DO NOT undermine the Bible.  Indeed, the text of Genesis 1 harmonizes far better with Big Bang Cosmology (BBC) than it does with the YEC interpretation.[4]  

Scientists Too Must Reconcile their Views with Science

               Yet it is not only Christians who must check their sources, but also scientists!  They too are vulnerable to error even in their own fields.  Just like the rest of us, they have biases and shortcomings.  So they too must heed both the principles of scientific methodology[5] (SM) and the validity of their data in order to ensure their conclusions are correct.  Yet many, (not all) of them corrupt their perceptions by insisting on the non-provable materialistic presumption that God (and other soulish beings) cannot exist. This bias leads them to evade all scientific indicators of that beginning, solely because it logically infers the reality of a transcendent[6] personal God.  Materialists also deny that humans (“soul-less machines”) have rational minds even while they absurdly laud the insights of its champions (which contradicts their very own tenet).      

Scientific Forces Cannot Possibly Have Created our Universe 

            While scientific data gives virtually unassailable evidence that our universe began out of nothing at the BB,[7] the cause of that beginning cannot have been a scientific force.  Since prior to its zero-volume singularity there existed neither matter, nor energy, nor space, nor time,[8] nothing material could conceivably have created it.[9]  Physicalist’ cosmologists seek to evade this problem by resorting to abstract conjectures as opposed to testable and measurable evidence.[10]  Yet this ploy disqualifies their “solution” from being scientific since conjectures, by definition, don’t have verifiable facts to validate them.  Science therefore cannot establish that the cause of nature is itself.  Its’ cause can only logically be God, the transcendent[11] Creator.

To be continued...

---

[1] Aristotle clarified but did not invent the principles of logic. Renford Bambrough, ed. The Philosophy of Aristotle. (Mentor, 1963) p. 160f.  

[2] Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. (Thomas Nelson, 2001) lists over 900 biblical references which affirm this concept of truth.

[3] Request my paper, “The Pervasive Employment of Apologetics in the Bible,” at my email address, gjensen549@gmail.com.

[4] See my two papers, “How Genesis 1:1 Easily Accommodates the Big Bang,” and “15 Clues from Genesis 1 that Creation is Ancient.” Op.cit. (3).

[5] Ernst Nagel describes SM as “the persistent critique of arguments [using] tried canons for judging the reliability of the procedures by which [evidence is] obtained, and for assessing the probative evidence on which conclusions are based.” In summary, although there is no single set of principles that apply to every context, SM calls for methodical care. J.P. Moreland. Christianity and the Nature of Science. (Baker, 1989), pp. 57f. 

[6] To “transcend” is to stand entirely outside creation. See my paper, “Was the Big Bang the Big Beginning?” Op.cit. (3).

[7] Hugh Ross. The Creator and the Cosmos. (RTB, 2018), pp. 85-107.  ** William Lane Craig. Reasonable Faith.(Crossway, 2008), pp. 126-150.

[8] William Lane Craig. Reasonable Faith. (Crossway, 2008), p. 140, states, “A watershed of sorts seems to have been reached with Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin’s formulation establishing that any universe which has on average over its past history been in a state of cosmic expansion cannot be eternal in the past but must have a spacetime boundary.”

[9] Frank Tipler. The Physics of Christianity. (Doubleday, 2007), p. 2, says that “Many physicists dislike [an absolute beginning] because it requires the universe to begin in a singularity. That is, they dislike it because the theory is consistent only if God exists.” .

[10] Hugh Ross. The Creator and the Cosmos. (RTB, 2018), pp. 85-107.  ** William Lane Craig. Op.cit. (8), pp. 126-150.

[11] To transcend is to stand entirely the system or circumstance that is under consideration.               

Harris’s and Biden's Naked Lies about Donald Trump’s Character Part 2

Harris’s and Biden's Naked Lies about Donald Trump’s Character part 1

 

“You shall not bear false witness…” (Exodus 20:16)

“Therefore whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light.” (Jesus, in Luke 12:3)

 

At the recent Vice-Presidential candidate debate on 10/7/2020 between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris, she stated to the audience, “The President of the United States took a debate stage in front of seventy million Americans and refused to condemn white supremacists.  And it wasn’t like he didn’t have a chance.  He didn’t do it.”[1]

The question of whether Harris’s statement was accurate can be objectively established since both Trump’s and her words were not only aired before multiplied millions of people, but also officially recorded by the Debate officials so as to become a matter of public record.  The printed transcript of the relevant portion of the earlier, Presidential debate, is as follows:

WALLACE: “Are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups…”

TRUMP: “Sure.” 

WALLACE: “And to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities as we saw in Kenosha, and as we’ve seen in Portland” 

TRUMP: “Sure, I’m prepared to do it, but I would say almost everything I see is from the left-wing not from the right-wing. I’m willing to do anything, I want to see peace…”

WALLACE: “Then do it, sir.”

BIDEN: “Do it, say it.”

TRUMP: “What do you want to call them? Give me a name.”

WALLACE: “White supremacists and right-wing militias”

BIDEN: “Proud Boys” 

TRUMP: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. But I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the left.”[2] 

            The fact that this transcript indicates that Donald Trump answered both of Wallace’s opening questions with the reply, “sure” (in boldface) indicates in no uncertain terms that he was condemning racism, thereby putting the lie to Harris’s assertions.  Yet the transcript ought further to raise an obvious question.  Since Trump already vocally met Wallace’s demands, then why did the latter continue, “Then do it, sir”?  The audio record makes it perfectly plain that immediately after Wallace had posed his questions, he proceeded to talk over him by entering into an oration of his own, to the end that he didn’t bother to listen to Trump’s replies to him.  

To be continued...  

---

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/10/07/pence-haris-spar-over-systemic-racism-breonna-taylor-vp-debate/5919398002/

[2] https://www.newsweek.com/fox-news-host-baffled-why-trump-didnt-condemn-white-supremacists-thats-like-are-you-against-1535285. I added the boldface to the transcript.

“Bully” Who? Which Presidential Candidate is the Real Thug? part 2

              This past Saturday (09/26/2020) Ann and I joined several thousand people at the National Mall in Washington D.C. where two independent, yet harmonious, events occurred including The Return, hosted by Messianic Jew Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, and the 2020 Prayer March hosted by Franklin Graham.  My wife Ann initially hesitated to come due to the potential presence of rioters, while I felt that it would be very damaging to Joe Biden’s Presidential campaign for rioters to threaten these peaceful family Christian assemblies.  So we were pleasantly surprised that neither BLM nor Antifa protestors were anywhere to be found.  Not a single one!  I had based my forecast on the recent dawning realization by the political Left that the public was connecting the destructive riots directly to Democrat goals.  That conclusion is indeed inescapable since videos of those events have appeared every night on Fox News.[2]  Since it so happened that the rioters were nowhere to be found, it is also reasonable to conclude that the Democrat leaders forbade them[3] from threatening our gathering.  For this reason, one may rationally conclude that it was by official decree of Democrat heads that anarchists refrain from traumatizing our assembly by their presence.  Biden declared at the debate (as an isolated voice), “I am the Democrat Party.”  By so doing he effectively claimed his personal high-level role in the relentless brutish conduct that the Democrats have been party to ever since the night of Memorial Day, 2020.  It is for these very reasons that the election of “Mr. Nice Guy” Joe Biden to the Presidency would virtually guarantee on-going social chaos and systemic crises.  By his ongoing silence until recently, he has betrayed an utter indifference to the protection of the lives and property of average citizens and the personal freedoms that our Constitution, by contrast, has guaranteed to uphold.  Jesus once warned us, “Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing” (Matthew 7:15).  

“Bully” Who? Which Presidential Candidate is the Real Thug? part 1

                    “You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel” – Jesus in Matthew 23:24

 

              Donald Trump did himself few favors during his first Presidential debate with Joe Biden in Cleveland, Ohio on September 30, 2020.  I disapprove of his demeanor by excessively butting-in and talking-over Biden during the latter’s allotted speaking time.  It is on those grounds that his sympathizers will surely charge Trump with acting like a bully.  Indeed, the attacks have already begun.  By contrast, Biden is generally celebrated as “an all-around nice guy.”

Nevertheless, “bullying” can be easily achieved second-hand or indirectly, either by command or tacit approval.  At this debate, Biden distanced himself from one issue in particular by denying he had authority to speak on the matter because he was not at that time an elected governmental official.  The circum-stance he was addressing was the 100 consecutive days of rioting which resulted in not only a billion-dollar loss of residential and business property,[1] but also brutal thuggery on numerous innocent bystanders (some to the point of murder) and, with lethal “weapons,” taunting police officers (also issuing in murder in some cases) whose hands were “tied behind their backs” because of direct orders by the municipal officials.  These events happened on scores of Democrat-con-trolled urban areas across our land.   Any suggestion that the cause of these episodes was simple failure in communication is easily refutable due to the fact that they continued not merely just a few days, but over a hundred consecutive nightmarish evenings.  The adulterous Democrat’s “bed-sharing” with the news media (“all-except-Fox”), gives inescapable indicators that they share in the culpability of the devastation—the former by their failure to protect, while the latter by their virtual refusal to broadcast the gross misdeeds.  As for Biden’s appeal to his non-elected status, every other citizen with an ounce of common-sense has cried in anguish over the extent of destruction of life and property.

  To be continued...        

---

[1] That is, a thousand million dollars. (https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-damage-276c9bcc-a455-4067-b06a-66f9db4cea9c.html).

[2] That is, only on Fox News for the reason that every other network habitually refused to broadcast the videos.

[3] By “them” I mean an organized party anarchistic assembly as opposed to, in the words of Biden, “Antifa” being merely “an idea; not an organization.”  As Donald Trump correctly stated, the rioters “have radios, bats, and bricks. They are an organization” (Fox News, 10/01/20). Indeed, televised videos record packages of goods being unloaded from U-Haul trucks by rioters. Further, Biden’s own campaign committee members have financially funded the release of violent rioters from jail.