Lincoln’s Prayer Proclomation – second posting
October 20, 2008
After months of isolation, I nearly lost my desire for occasional solitude. After years of corruption, I nearly lost my conservative balance. While the election cycle recovers from the full-tilt we experienced over the past two weeks, I find I’m left with prayer and deciding between the Prayer of St. Francis and the Prayer of Lincoln.
Lincoln’s Prayer Proclamation
In 1863 Abraham Lincoln called the nation to repentance, confession of our national sins and turning back to God. We believe America, more than ever, needs to do this again. Seven months prior to his Proclamation for a National Day of Thanksgiving, Abraham Lincoln issued the following:
A Proclamation for a National Day of Prayer
Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the supreme authority and just government of the Almighty God in all the affairs of men and of nations has by a resolution requested the president to designate and set apart a day for national prayer and humiliation.
And whereas, it is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God: to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon: and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord:
And insomuch as we know that by His divine law nations, like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people?
We have been the recipients of the choices bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown; but we have forgotten God.
We have forgotten the gracious land which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God who made us:
It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
All this being done in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the divine teachings, that the united cry of the nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering country to its former happy condition of unity and peace.
Abraham Lincoln
Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury,pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen
Alas, my favorite:
Let this be a holy place for the human spirit consecrated to the forces which magnify the soul.
Why I Like Sarah Palin
October 16, 2008
Sarah Palin is unashamedly conservative. She is proud of her family. She does not pretend to be anyone other than who she is. She is a social conservative. She is a Christian conservative. She appears to be a fiscal conservative. She pulls no punches. She is charismatic. She attended 6 colleges and earned a bachelor of science degree in communications-journalism from the University of Idaho.
Reasons I won’t vote for Sarah Palin. She is another pure-oil politician. Her executive experience is unimpressive. She blurs the line between personal and professional agendas (troopergate). I expect our next executive officer to have a comprehensive working knowledge of basic political philosophies such as The Bush Doctrine (preemptive war) and The Carter Doctrine (military defense of US interests in global oil supplies). I can stand about 40 yards from my parents front door and look both at their home and Kentucky at the same time. This does not make me an expert in bestiality nor animal husbandry. (Apologies to your wife brotherfour). Don’t get me wrong. I suspect Governor Palin could be given a crash course in international affairs, national security and perhaps even a rudimentary vocabulary for use while discussing the economic theories relevant to our present economic turmoil. As John McCain has said, though, this is no time for on the job training. (NOTE Obama’s academic credentials: Columbia University – B.A. political science with a specialization in international relations & Harvard – Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude). Note as well the Nobel Prize for Economics given to Paul Krugman for work that he started 30 years ago that today provides an outline of the Bush policies that led to our present global banking crisis. Yes, I know, Rush Limbaugh doesn’t approve of Nobel Prize winning egg-heads who go around poking holes in the existing world order. We do have to think for ourselves from time to time though. Sarah is a fine person and I am confident I would enjoy her conversation over a cup of coffee. My attraction to her position on a few social issues will not get my vote, nonetheless.
Additionally, there are many very well qualified and successful female politicians and business people with experience that is relevant to this brave new world filled with lost jobs, lost income, lost retirement accounts and a brand new vocabulary of scary words like recession, depression, derivatives and credit default swaps. Look for a link below to top female candidates. I have a personal attraction to her personality, her support for life and her support for gun rights, but she brings only one genuine contribution to the McCain campaign… distraction. Keep your eyes on the ball America. Our retirement funds and real estate investments are paying the price for two decades of collective indifference. I do really like the way she winks and nods.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Does_Sarah_Palin_hold_any_degrees
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Which_college_degrees_does_Barack_Obama_have
http://mobile.reuters.com/mobile/m/FullArticle/CTOP/ntopNews_uUSTRE49C37520081013?p=1
Did Democrats Cause Crash?
October 10, 2008
Let’s put this in perspective. The entire global banking system is imploding. Governments across the entire planet are propping up, buying, nationalizing, insuring, lending to nearly every bank and investment firm in existence. Those not yet affected will be affected by those presently failing as well as those yet to fail. They all rely on each other. When one fails another loses assets. It is a positive feedback loop with devastating consequences.
As we ask ourselves, did the democrats cause this, we have to put it all in perspective with this question; Is is possible that a calamity of this magnitude was caused by Barney’s equal housing campaign? Let’s think this through. The sub-prime market was but a small piece of the global economy. There ARE many factors at play. Sub-prime is only one of them. Congress may have encouraged sub-prime experimentation. Congress did not pass any piece of legislation, though, directing any bank or investment firm to abuse derivatives or credit default swaps. This problem is exponentially bigger than a trillion odd dollars in sub-prime mortgages that still have a true present and future cash value.
The Bush administration did in fact push this bubble up and up and up. Please open a new browser window, go to www.google.com and put the words Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in the search window. Dig and dig, America. There is plenty of blame to go around, and much of it lands squarely on the Bush administration.
All this said, within the past three weeks John McCain said the economy is fundamentally sound. We now know without any doubt that John McCain’s understanding of the gravity of the situation could not have been more wrong. John McCain is not qualified to lead America at this time. Sit down, John. Take a deep breath. Then retire.
Go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis
Conservative Angst
October 10, 2008
I am an independent conservative who ten years ago moved from my family’s red state to Illinois. The family-nurture influences on my social perspectives were Christian, Catholic, social conservative, fiscal conservative… you know the drill.
Many of “their” values remain mine. That’s why the arguments that I now have with conservatives leaves me, literally, with knots in my stomach. The present administration has betrayed its party, its constituents, its country and democracy itself. They have abandoned fiscal conservative restraint without even the pretense of accountability.
Along the way, they have ignored the constitution, under-taxed the profiteers who bankroll their elections, lied their way into war, botched that war at every turn, created multiple civil wars in the Middle East, incessantly fed the pressure points that have driven up the price of crude oil, dropped interest rates dangerously low for extended periods of time, encouraged unethical & immoral banking practices and brought the worlds banking system to its knees through misregulation … The list of betrayals is too exhausting to continue.
What hurts most is that my defense of conservative values today results in my being labeled a liberal. Lib. Progressive. Fairy. Tree Hugger. Green Freak. Atheist. Commie Pinko Pig. What kind of mind control is going on in this country? Why do those betrayed not see this betrayal?
This is a republication of an earlier post. The American climate feels right to put this one out there again. New reader & contributors are welcome.
Perspectives on Barack Obama’s Minister
October 7, 2008
Hard edit underway. The link below takes you to an article titled: Reformation: Medieval Roman Catholic Doctrinal Background. It explores church teaching and rules associated with admission into heaven, taxation and much more. Be careful. The details could send ice cold chills down your spine. The people of the time accepted these principles as natural and normal. Given that he medieval church brought safety, security and sanity to Europe, the church’s strict, punitive and abusive policies were in fact a reasonable and fair trade-off for security and protection. Regional and tribal conflicts came slowly into submission and Western Europe was born. Strict Medieval Catholicism pulled Europe through an age of chaos and assimilated the wisdom & knowledge of older civilizations. A harsh, judgmental and terribly corrupt church set in motion a culture of empires that evolved steadily into what we now know as “The West.” America itself was fashioned out of the forests of North America by Christians of a more patient, more kind nature than that of the Medieval Church. These founders were, nonetheless, descendents of a brutal crusading Catholic empire. At the time of our countries founding the crusades were over and the church had entered a long state of denial. Many early American Christian leaders no doubt took pride in the distance they had come from those horrible, murderous years of war, pillage and murder. Islam, Arabia and Persia, (the Middle East) no longer suffered under the wrath of the Catholic Empire during the Spanish (Catholic) Inquisition and the American Salem Witch Trials.
African American slaves were not yet so lucky. Their age of slavery was well under way when America broke free England which had long before broken free from the Catholic Church.
Each of the three paragraphs above describes a time and place that, in 2008, are abhorrent to the American-Christian sensibility. During each of these three periods, though, millions of “good” Christians found nothing at all wrong with the teachings and actions of their church, it’s leaders and members. We can have little doubt that many churchgoers of each era described above were pained by the abuses that surrounded them. Many became courageous visionaries and brought about the reforms that led to our present world order.
As you weigh the stories you hear about Sen. Obama’s former minister, please brothers, consider the slow process of change and liberation that is at this very moment in time gradually lifting the emotional burdens of the African American experience. Slavery ended but about 70 years before the birth of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. From this perspective, from the perspective of church history, from the perspective of Medieval Christians whose church sold admission to heaven, from the perspective of Christians of the Inquisition who burned accused witches at the stake, from the perspective Jeremiah Wright’s grandfather who undoubtedly lived his entire live in the dark and overwhelming cloud of slavery, from the many other real and valid perspectives, is Jeremiah Wright an American traitor, or is he a great American struggling to overcome the culture of his forefathers.
From the perspectives of history and time, is Sen. Obama a strong, courageous believer who wants nothing more than to pull his fellow believers into a new age that is free of the temperament of the times that created Rev. Jeremiah Wright? Yes, I believe he is. Did Sen. Obama understand over the years that change comes about from within? Did Sen. Obama show remarkable courage in his decision to stay with a church in need of reform? Yes, I believe he did. Is Sen. Obama the traitor that McCain, Palin and Limbaugh want us to believe he is? Or is he in the end a great American who has shown the courage we now need in the White House? Yes, he is. Obama is a great American.
The character attacks we are now seeing from “the republicans” points directly to the republican ticket’s own lack of vision and competence.
Does Obama Have Terrorist Connections?
October 6, 2008
Palin Credibility Spiraling Downward Again
William Ayers was a leader in an activist organization during his college days. Members of this organization including William Ayers were associated with a bombing in 1969 in which no one was injured. William Ayers supports Barack Obama. Therefore, Barack Obama has terrorist associations.
Wiley Drake was elected 2nd Vice President of the Southern Baptist convention. Wiley Drake endorses violence and terrorism against abortion clinics and doctors who perform abortions. Many abortion clinics have been bombed over the years, and a number of doctors associated with abortion clinics have been killed in the name of Jesus. The Southern Baptists endorsed John McCain for President. Therefore, John McCain has terrorist associations.
John McCain and Sarah Palin need to take a refresher course in logic. Perhaps one of the six colleges Sarah attended while earning her one four year degree will send a professor out on the campaign trail to help them improve their ability to connect the dots in a way that does not insult the intelligence of the American voter.
Dr. William Ayers is a respected faculty member at the University of Illinois, Chicago. During the most culturally violent decade of our life times, Dr. Ayers participated in an act of controlled civil disobedience in which no one was injured. He supports Sen. Obama for President. These facts no more impugn Sen. Obama than do the facts outlined above linking Sen. McCain to pro-life terrorists. This link between McCain and a Christian leader who literally endorses and approves of killing doctors as a form of pro-life protest is direct and undisputed. This link does not give McCain terrorist associations. Candidate Palin and Sen. McCain are quickly losing credibility.
Please take a few minutes to explore the links provided below. Please, America, do your own research. Brothers, your agreement and disagreement both are welcome on this blog.
AP Article on Obama, Ayers & Terrorism
Abortion Clinic Bombers Are Terrorists
John McCain Is a Southern Baptist
