Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Victory Over Victim Demagogues

By Rick Pearcey

As columnist Ralph Peters sees it, Barack Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright "is only one of many demagogues in all races and creeds who foster cults of victimization around the globe."

The demagogue succeeds by shifting blame: "Your failures aren't your fault -- it's all their fault. Whitey's to blame, or people of color, or the Jews (those Elders of Zion sure do stay busy) or black helicopters from the UN. It's a formula for the perpetuation of failure."

The solution? "Fortunately for us," says Peters, "this paralyzing cult of victimhood is the antithesis of the ethic that allowed the United States to achieve the quality of life the vast majority of us enjoy today. What built our country was the get-up-off-your-butt belief that God, by any name, helps those who help themselves" (italics added).

It is true that God helps those who help themselves.

This is clear in the data we have from the Creator, who informs us from Genesis onward that human beings made in His image indeed are significant creatures able to make choices, shape history, form cultures, build civilizations, and otherwise develop creation in ways that honor the Creator and demonstrate respect for nature and our fellow human beings.

Of course, we're sinners; that's something we did, in our infinite wisdom. But the "scientists" and atheistic materialists need to go back to the drawing board. We're not space junk or cosmic victims. That's why no one, including a Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, wants to be thrown into a trash can or live in a garbage dump.

But not any name will do, just as not any "God" will do. Try calling your wife Mary when her name is Susan and you'll see what I mean.

Names matter. Not as arbitrary signs plastered onto meaningless globs of human flesh (Sartre was wrong) or as merely religious symbols stuck onto some kind of unknowable spiritual being (Kant was wrong, too).

As far as I am aware, only the Creator Deity set forth in the Biblical data and self-identified as Yahweh, verified in history and available to rational investigation, qualifies as a being who thinks, acts, and cares about what happens in this world, including how we treat the planet and how we treat our brothers and sisters "red and yellow black and white."

This Creator is not a mythological Zeus, distant Allah, impersonal "All" of pantheism, or an eternally existing Darwinian cosmos that couldn't care less whether Whitey lynches blacks or an Austrian nut case kills off 7 million Jews.

This Creator acts in history. This Father stands up, sends prophets, and allows his Son to subvert evil, judge hypocrisy, slap religious leaders upside the head, die on a cross, rise from the dead, and smash the gates of Hell.

Why? So people can have an ethical and juridical basis for renewed community with their Creator, each other, and the world in which we are to work, live, and play.

That's a full plate. Not a lot of time left over to play the victim.

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Rick Pearcey is editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report (articles).

Monday, April 28, 2008

Dungeon Incest Story Shocks

By Rick Pearcey

"Woman Held in Dungeon for Two Decades," screams the headline at Der Spiegel. "Incest case shocks Austria." Lead paragraph:

An Austrian woman was kept in her father's basement for 24 years behind a concrete door locked with an electronic code. She bore seven of his children, but relatives, neighbors and officials all deny any knowledge of the case. Many are wondering how that was possible. . . .

Shocking, yes. But for how long?

Imagine a different scenario. Imagine there were no religion, no heaven above, no oppressive structure below.

Imagine just you and me and “love,” as defined by the latest scientific study, poll, or 60s-style focus group, massaged by San Fran marketers and pushed by big money, big celebrity, big ads, and energetic websites.

What if, in this kind of secularist spirituality, the daughter “loved” the incestuous father, the children were well-cared for, and choice was at the center of the relationship?

Would this be love, tolerance, diversity, strength, progress, liberation, family? “Love without boundaries," as it were?

Or might “love without boundaries” really mean passion, yes, but also an autonomous will-to-power in an ethically indifferent universe? A kind of trendy t-shirt fascism from the ground up, imposed from below -- one person, two partners, and several social groupings (aka “families”) at a time.

So why not two incestuous fathers and two incestuous mommies, and 14 sons and 17 preteen daughters? Not in an ugly, uncool Austrian basement, but openly, honestly, proudly, and with "dignity" in a really rich Hollywood suburb.

Or maybe a ranch in Texas.

Maybe “incest” is just another word for nothing left to lose. Just one more hangover from the Dark Ages when words had meaning, love had content, family had form, and kids had childhoods.

Granted, there may be an evolutionary adjustment period during which young sons and daughters appear to struggle with advanced and advancing understandings of tolerance and progress.

But the schools can fix them. Either that, or Mr. Orwell’s Ministry of Love.

Related
*
Court Watch: Does McDonald's Support This Lesbian Attack on Family?, by Rick Pearcey
*
"Faggot" Easy to Defend: Surprising Help From Secular America, by Rick Pearcey
*
O'Reilly, Letterman, and the Culture War, by Rick Pearcey

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Rick Pearcey is editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report (articles).

Friday, April 25, 2008

Beyond "Expelled" -- Nancy Pearcey on NewsTalk Radio This Morning

By Rick Pearcey

Nancy is appearing on NewsTalk 1260 WFTW radio this morning. The station is located in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., and you can listen live locally or online here.

Time: 9:30 am EDT, 8:30 am CDT.

The station talk lineup includes Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage.

Nancy will be speaking in the area May 8. She'll discuss "Beyond Expelled," at the Mattie Kelly Arts Center of Okaloosa-Walton College.

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Rick Pearcey is editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report (articles).

Monday, April 21, 2008

Ronaldinho Too Expensive for AC Milan?

By Rick Pearcey


Barcelona soccer genius Ronaldinho may be too expensive for Italy's AC Milan. Let's hope not.

Here's the latest from GOLTV:
AC Milan vice-president Adriano Galliani said Monday the club's bid to lure Ronaldinho to Italy was far from being a done deal.

Following Milan's 5-1 thrashing of Reggina on Sunday, Galliani claimed that Milan had failed to agree a fee for Ronaldinho with his Spanish club Barcelona.

The news comes just over a week after Galliani said that were Ronaldinho to move from the Catalan giants, it would be to Milan.

More . . .

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Rick Pearcey is editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report (articles).

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Reader Responds to "No McDonald's Today"

By Rick Pearcey

A reader named Julie responds to "No McDonald's Today":

Please excuse my ignorance, but what is it that you mean by "homosexual agenda"? Do you believe that homosexuals are trying to turn your children into homosexuals? If that's the case, then do you reject any evidence that homosexuality is biologically based, and believe anyone can choose to become a homosexual? Or do you think it is biologically based, but that those who have those tendencies should suppress them because to follow through would be sinning?

I don't mean to be rude; I'd just like to better understand your opinion as it's not one I'm familiar with (I'm a homeschooled high school student with scientist parents; they always told me homosexuality was linked to certain hormone levels during pregnancy). I don't agree with some things the organization in the article supports (like hate crime laws, which seems too close to legislating thought), but I was confused by the fear for your children you and other commentors expressed. Sorry to be so long winded; any clarification you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

My response:

Thank you for writing. As to the homosexual agenda, I recommend that you do your own research, fact-checking, etc., and think through for yourself the basic questions this issue raises.

My own approach is that of a free-thinker, following the evidence, the data, etc., wherever that might lead. With that qualification in mind, you may find "Rosie O'Donnell's Oppressive Coat" an article of interest insofar as her approach reflects such an agenda. Here's the link.

As to your misstatement regarding "fear for your children," etc., I should report that you're talking to the wrong person and the wrong family. We're about enjoying a full and challenging life as individuals and as family -- violin, blues guitar, frogs, snakes, dog, piano, art, museums, film, soccer, discussion, questions, ideas, people, different cultures, languages, etc.

Yes, there's a healthy concern to leave the world a better place than you found it -- and this suggests the need to question authority, rebel against evil, challenge the status quo, religion, mysticism, scientism, the peer group, PR machines, whatever happens to be "in," etc.

This too is part of being human, exercising a critical distance vis-a-vis the challenges of life, and cultivating a positive, humane existence. Where there is much joy and love, there's not a lot of room left over for their opposites.

Related
* Court Watch: Does McDonald's Support This Lesbian Attack on Family?, by Rick Pearcey
* "Faggot" Easy to Defend: Surprising Help From Secular America, by Rick Pearcey
* O'Reilly, Letterman, and the Culture War, by Rick Pearcey

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Rick Pearcey is editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report (articles).

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Court Watch: Does McDonald's Support This Lesbian Attack on Family?

By Rick Pearcey

Will homosexualist ally McDonald's support a lesbian's attempt to separate mother and daughter? Does "Big Mac 'Social Responsibility'" mean inflicting this kind of family damage is OK?

Below is a CWA press release announcing a "Prayer Rally for Virginia Supreme Court" in support of "Parental Rights and Traditional Marriage."

The rally is tomorrow (Thursday, April 17) at 8 a.m., at the Old Bell Tower, SW corner of Capitol Square at 9th and Franklin in Richmond, Va. CWA says the event will be followed by a press conference.

Here's the press release:

Washington, D.C. — On Thursday, April 17, the Virginia Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the Lisa Miller custody case. Concerned Women for America (CWA) and our supporters will be present to rally for prayer outside the capitol courthouse.

Lisa Miller is a born again Christian who is faithfully working to raise her child according to Biblical principles. Janet Jenkins, Lisa’s former partner from a previous homosexual relationship, has diligently worked to destroy this bond and undermine Lisa’s faith. Jenkins, who is neither an adoptive nor biological parent, filed papers to gain full custody of Isabella Miller, Lisa’s daughter. Since then, both Virginia and Vermont courts have ruled in the case.

The Virginia Supreme Court must decide whether it will respect the Federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and Virginia’s own constitution or allow Vermont to redefine marriage and family in the Commonwealth. In 2006, Virginia decisively passed (with 57 percent of the vote) a constitutional amendment which was designed to protect families against just such an attack. The amendment specifies that Virginia “shall not create or recognize” “civil unions” or “same-sex marriages” from other states, nor can it recognize rulings which stem from such “unions” (like Vermont’s custody ruling).

Matt Barber, CWA’s Policy Director for Cultural Issues, said, “This case is of paramount national importance. Not only is a little girl’s spiritual, emotional and physical well-being at stake, the Virginia Supreme Court will essentially be signaling whether states like Vermont and Massachusetts get to radically redefine marriage and family for the rest of the country.”

CWA of Virginia State Director Janet Robey said, “We’re asking for people to join us in praying that the Virginia Supreme Court will protect little Isabella, her mother Lisa and the bedrock institutions of legitimate marriage and family. We’re also asking for people to join in praying, as little Isabella has requested, ‘that Janet Jenkins would ask Jesus into her heart,’ and then with God’s help, deliverance from homosexuality is possible.”

* For more information, contact Natalie Bell at 202-488-7000, ext 126.

Related
* No McDonald's Today, by Rick Pearcey
*"Faggot" Easy to Defend: Surprising Help From Secular America, by Rick Pearcey
* Rosie O'Donnell's Oppressive Coat, by Rick Pearcey

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Rick Pearcey is editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report (articles).

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

National Radio: Rick Pearcey Discusses McDonald's Homosexual Alliance

By Rick Pearcey

On Friday, April 11, 2008, I was interviewed on Point of View, a national radio talk show hosted by Kerby Anderson and Kelly Shackford.

We discussed my "No McDonald's Today," which roiled homosexualist circles and attracted comment from leaders such as Andrew Sullivan. "No McDonald's Today" was published at Pro-Existence the previous Friday (April 4).

The well-nigh universal diatribic response from the monosexists was in keeping with the PR strategy outlined in The Marketing of Evil, by David Kupelian.

Here's the first chapter, "How 'Gay Rights' Is Being Sold to America."

You can listen to the POV program at the radio archive, here.

Also on that day's radio program:

* Jordan Lorence, senior counsel, Alliance Defense Fund
* Gary Bauer, president, American Values
* Brent Bozell, president, Media Research Center

Related
* Chicago radio host Sandy Rios and I discussed "No McDonald's Today" at 4:35 p.m. Monday afternoon, April 7, 2008. More here.
* See also, "Faggot" Easy to Defend: Surprising Help From Secular America, by Rick Pearcey
* See also, Rosie O'Donnell's Oppressive Coat, by Rick Pearcey

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Rick Pearcey is editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report (articles).

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Ventura Art: 3 From Elyane

By Rick Pearcey

The joy of art is one of life's brilliant necessities. Here are three pieces by Elyane, who lives in Ventura, Calif.



Elyane is French.

She specializes in landscapes.


Thank you, Elyane, for sharing your life and your creative gift.

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Rick Pearcey is editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report (articles).

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Antony Flew Over America

By Rick Pearcey

I enjoyed reading There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, by Antony Flew (with Roy Abraham Varghese), on a recent trip to Santa Barbara.

My brother works at UC Santa Barbara as a computer analyst. A lovely campus. The photo above was taken during the return flight back to the East Coast.

By the way, one of the reasons jets fly is because they are intelligently designed. And they're maintained by flight mechanics, not by rolls of the dice nor by impersonal laws that unaccountably popped into existence out of sheer, absolute nothingness.

These kinds of facts give free-thinkers such as myself lots to think about. It's a willingness to think freely about the basic philosophic questions that led me to consider secular, pagan, and biblical data with an open mind.

The atheistic, naturalistic case is just too weak intellectually -- the theory of the world required by the mobilization of its presuppositions does not accurately describe the actual external world in which all people must live, atheist or not. There are no atheists in jets formed out of nothing by chance or impersonal law.

The Flew book itself will help you see why. So will this review essay by Gary Habermas of the philosophy and theology department at Liberty University.

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Rick Pearcey is editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report (articles).

Monday, April 7, 2008

Rick on Chicago Radio at 4:35 p.m. CT to Discuss "No McDonald's Today"

By Rick Pearcey

Chicago Radio host Sandy Rios and I are scheduled to discuss my article "No McDonald's Today" at 4:35 p.m. Central Time today.

Listen live here.

Here's the WYLL-AM call-in number: 847-956-5042.

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Rick Pearcey is editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report (articles).

How to Have a Race War

By Rick Pearcey

From Frontpage:

If whiteness stands for all that is evil, blackness symbolizes all that is good. “Black theology,” says [black liberation theologian James] Cone, “refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community . . . Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.” Small wonder that some critics have condemned black liberation theology as "racist idolatry” and “Afro-Nazism."
Before you can have a race war in America, you must first set forth an ideology that legitimizes race hatred and keeps that kind of hatred at a boiling point. The theology of Cone seems to be on this path, absolutizing "blackness," which in turn gives the KKK, Aryans, and kindred spirits an excuse to absolutize "whiteness."

The result? Two gods vying for supremacy, locked in mortal combat, with no possible resolution, even if by fire, as some groups seem to want.

For neither god can afford rational discourse by free-thinking individuals who question authority. Such gods rooted in creation place skin color, race, or group hatreds above rationality, evidence, consideration, and discussion. Lost is the Biblical responsibility to ask questions, wonder, examine evidence, subject theology and putative prophets to information from the Creator. Instead, we see a media dash to charges of bigotry and other attempts at verbal terror and intimidation, all of them beneath the dignity of Man.

The only possible outcome of this recipe, if consistently pursued to its logical conclusion, is race warfare.

If you use racism to drive out racism, what you have is not a solution, but a new racism taking over from the old. This is called regress not progress. And it has nothing to do with information given by the Creator about all people having been created in his image and that the dilemma we all face is ethical not pigmentary.

Black liberation theology? White liberation theology? It's hard to imagine a better recruitment tool for fascists of every hue or stripe. Red, yellow, brown, pink -- the entire rainbow.

Related:
* Black Jesus Does Not Exist
* Church of Oprah Exposed

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Rick Pearcey is editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report (articles).


Nancy's No. 1

By Rick Pearcey

DL, a blogger, writes:

Mrs. Clinton is next on my list of Women Changing the World for Better or Worse!

But the good news is . . . your wife is the first on my list
for women changing the world for better. The article is, at the time of this writing, the most popular one on my site and has the potential to be viewed by thousands of bloggers.

Two comments seem in order:

First, DL is clearly a blogger of great insight!

Second, Nancy is No. 1 on my list as well. She officially started changing my world for the better in August 1976.

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Rick Pearcey is editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report (articles).

Friday, April 4, 2008

No McDonald's Today

By Rick Pearcey

My son and I often stop by McDonald's for a bite to eat after homeschool bowling on Fridays.

But not today.

I first heard about McDonald's in 1963. I was a kid. Kennedy had been shot. I heard the news on the radio in a new white Ford station wagon while crossing a D.C. bridge.

We were returning from having been stationed in Germany. The Cuban missile crisis had come and gone. I saw the howitzers in Gelnhausen, lined up and ready to roll.

Sometime later, stateside, we were in Columbus, Ohio. Twenty-five cents, I think, for a McDonald's hamburger. What fun! A great welcome home!

But not now.

Not today, in light of reports that McDonald's has decided, apparently, to declare war on my family. And to declare war on the civilization of liberty, independence, creativity, and humanity under God that my Dad fought for in World War II.

Reports such as this -- "Pink Arches? McDonald's Buys Into Homosexual Agenda."

And reports such as this: "McDonald's Gives Support to Homosexual Agenda."

And this: "McDonald's Signs Onto 'Gay' Agenda."

For Christians, this is a matter of stewardship and "loving thy neighbor" -- Why spend good money on a morally and socially corruptive business?

For families, this is a matter of child protection -- Why support a business that helps fund organizations that disrespect the heart of family life?

For human beings, this is a matter of liberty under God -- Why help finance groups that turn their backs on the Declaration of Independence, the Founding vision, and the living Creator who holds it all together?

If you say you can do without all of that, then I say we can do without McDonald's.

Why, apparently, those McDonald's people can't tell the difference between right and wrong.

Between the wrongness of discriminating against someone on the basis of his or her beautiful and God-given skin color and the correctness of rejecting trumped-up victimhood and pretend discrimination based on membership in an ethically challenged but politically powerful interest group.

Information from the Creator, not to mention simple lessons in biology, says there's a difference between diversity and perversity, between being pulled over for driving while black and being guilty of sinning while human.

A hamburger's worth giving up and giving in to all that?

Hardly.

McDonald's is now on trial.

The fries are good. Even great. But the worldview they support isn't fit for human consumption.

Maybe we'll stop by Chick-Fil-A instead. It's a little out of the way, but I hear they like families.

Real families -- not ones made up by the ACLU last Tuesday.

And what's an extra mile or two to vote with your pocketbook? One way or another, you always pay for your convictions.

* Update: Chicago radio host Sandy Rios and I are scheduled to discuss "No McDonald's Today" at 4:35 p.m. Monday afternoon, April 7, 2008. More here. Central Time.

** Update: See also, "Faggot" Easy to Defend: Surprising Help From Secular America

*** Update: See also, Rosie O'Donnell's Oppressive Coat

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Rick Pearcey is editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report (articles).

Modern Secularists Not So Brilliant

By Rick Pearcey

The Founding Fathers understood that human rights are rooted not in the state but in the Creator, in whose image all people are made.

Thus, the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.
The Founders were brilliant in that they understood that a humane balance of form and freedom in society and governance could be achieved if "we the people" as individuals self-consciously built our polity upon information given by the Creator.

Not so brilliant are modern secularists, who reject the truly progressive Judeo-Christian concept of a Creator whose liberating norms speak to all of life, public and private.

Now comes this today from AP, "Clinton promises to expand homosexual rights":
Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said she would defend and expand homosexual rights as president.

Clinton said states such as New Jersey and Massachusetts are extending rights to homosexual couples "and the federal government should recognize that and should extend the same access to federal benefits across the board. I will very much work to achieve that." Clinton's comments came in an interview with the Philadelphia Gay
News that was posted on its website Thursday.
The problem, in a word, rogue government. Rogue, as in "vicious and solitary."

Vicious? Yes, for few things are as savage and destructive and hateful as the "gay" attack on family, freedom, and human nature defined not by the subjective imaginations and pretended "rights" of finite interest groups pushing private agendas, but by verifiable, empirically vouchsafed data from the Creator himself.

Solitary? Yes, for what the Hillarys of the world are pushing is a social order alienated from the Declaration, alienated from community with our true Creator, and alienated from our true selves as amazing creatures male and female created in the image of God. How dark and confining and inhumane is the "light" of secularism.

It demands that human beings reduce themselves to the embrace of genes, groups, genitalia, and skin color under the power construct of an autonomous federal government cut loose from the spiritual-intellectual framework that lifted the U.S. up from the Greeks, Romans, and barbarians not so long ago. Against this human nature properly and necessarily rebels.

Far better to rebel for God, man, and neighbor. Far better to say yes to love, but no to an expanding vicious "rights regime" imposed by a temporary power establishment. Yes to community, yes to humanity, but no to the loneliness of the empty, secular soul.

It's how you keep a republic.

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Rick Pearcey is editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report (articles).

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Church of Oprah Exposed

By Rick Pearcey

A friend writes via email:
I think most of you know how I feel about "forwarded messages." This one was so striking, however, that I felt I needed to pass it on. I recommend that, if at all possible, you spend 6 minutes looking at this You Tube video. It is startling.
The video is titled "The Church of Oprah Exposed," and it runs approximately 7 minutes.

In it is an Oprah quote regarding Jesus: "There couldn't possibly be just one way." (She says it, that settles it.)

Oprah discusses "God" with an author of one of her book-club selections: "God isn't something to believe; God is . . . and God is a feeling experience, not a believing experience . . . . If God for you is still about a belief, then it's not truly God . . . " (But what if God is a fact of life -- say, of the sort that could be born in a place called Bethlehem?)

Also noted is Oprah's endorsement of Barack Obama for president.

The YouTube video concludes by pointing viewers to a website that promotes a new book, Don't Drink the Kool-Aid.

Biblically, of course, the data demonstrate that God is a rational, personal, objective being who thinks, acts, feels, and has spoken in history, space, and time so that human beings as thinking people do not have to escape from the facts of reality to affirm meaning in life, the dignity of man, or solid answers to moral dilemmas in an ethical universe.

This is not about big or small churches, big or small TV ratings, mesmerizing gurus, pantheistic celebrities, private belief systems, or private faiths where "God" is no longer in a "box" but can be whatever floats your boat, diet, gender, weekend, or TV show -- whatever you want he, she, it, or all of the above to be, since rational categories no longer apply.

But if rational categories no longer apply, how do we rationally conclude that Jim Jones and his suicidal Kool-Aid theology were wrong? His "god" was out of the "box" and people died. If rationality is irrelevant to spirituality, then we cannot say Jones was "wrong," for the word "wrong" is a meaningful linguistic symbol bound to the box of rationality beyond which certain gods, apparently, live.

Yes, there were warning signs, but the cult leader preached community and "welcomed people of every race and ethnicity," notes a PBS story. Apparently the Kool-Aid reverend did nice things for lots of people before the real world came crashing down upon his private theology and those who drank deeply of it.

The humanness of the Biblical data provides a way out. Here, human beings get to ask tough questions and resist sales pitches. Here we observe a concern for objective truth, fact, evidence, and that which accurately describes the world in which all people must live irrespective of their subjective imaginations, bank accounts, or political affiliation.

"Test everything," says 1 Thess. 5:21. That includes celebrity, religion, prophetic wannabees, presidential hopefuls, "God," etc., etc. It's the Biblical, humane, and wise thing to do.

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Rick Pearcey is editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report (articles).

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

We Challenge Chuck Norris

By Rick Pearcey

UC Santa Barbara -- Working on The Pearcey Report today, I'm in my brother Terry's office here at UCSB, where he's a computer analyst.

I read him the conclusion of the Norris commentary titled "Bruce Lee vs. Me."

Says Norris, "So, would I have beaten Bruce Lee in a real competition or not? You'll forgive me for answering with another Bruce-ism: 'Showing off is the fool's idea of glory'."

That answer may be just a bit too humble. In any case, Terry suggests a way to settle the question: "Computer simulation."

That seems doable. And imminently watchable. Video, cable, gaming?

I believe the kick is in your corner, Mr. Norris.

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Rick Pearcey is editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report (articles).