Sunday, December 25, 2016

Merry Christmas!

8 In the same region there were some shepherds staying out in the fields and keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; 11 for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12 This will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”13 And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, 
14 “Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.”

I pray that you are enjoying this time of celebration of and reflection on the Incarnation of the Word of God as our Lord and Savior.

-Team Treebeard


Also, if you haven't already joined the Alt-tech revolution, abandoned the SJW-infested and thought-policed Wikipedia (letting the dead bury their dead), and switched to Infogalactic, maybe this will give you some motivation.


Friday, December 23, 2016

The Nations

The nations were created by God as a result of the incident at the tower of Babel. Prior to that there were no nations, just Man.

Previously, Man had become so thoroughly wicked that God destroyed them all, except one man, his wife, their sons, and their son's wives. Then, after being somewhat fruitful and multiplying, Man again became exceedingly wicked. This time, their disobedience included defying the following specific command from God.

And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth." (Genesis 9:1) 
“As for you, be fruitful and multiply; Populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it.” (Genesis 9:7)
God specifically told Noah to fill the earth, which would require that they spread out. But, a few generations later this is what Man was thinking.
Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. 2 It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. 4 They said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” (Genesis 11:1-4)
God noticed Man's rebellion and took the matter out of their hands by breaking them up into groups based on new languages that He created for them.
The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. 6 The Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth. (Genesis 11: 5-9)
No longer being unified under one language (and, I would surmise from the context, one culture), the new language groups went their separate ways. From this break-up the nations, their cultures, and races (genetically distinct groups resulting from population isolation and inbreeding) arose.

This was God's doing. It was a judgment against Man, but He did it for Man's good. It prevented their continued disobedience to the command to fill the earth, and it restrained the degree of evil to which they could attain. (v.6)

Ever since, God has directed the nations according to His purposes, a notable example being Cyrus the Persian. God used Cyrus and the previously non-first-rate power of the Medes and Persians to conquer the known world, supplanting and executing judgment on the Assyrians. Isaiah 44 and 45 make it clear that it was the Lord's doing. Not only did He raise Cyrus up, but he softened his adversaries so that his victory was easier.


Throughout Scripture, God calls the nations by name and directs them as he wills. He created a new nation through one man, Abram, to be his People.

Furthermore, there is no indication whatsoever in Scripture that the nations will ever cease to exist or that the dissolution of the nations is something that God intends or for which God's People should strive.

To the contrary, God gave as his Great Commission to His Church the task of redeeming the nations and reconciling them to Him.
And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying,“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28: 18-20)
Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. (II Corinthians 5: 18-20)
The reconciliation that God's People are to proclaim is that between the World (the nations) and God. It is the nations who are to be the object of the church's ministry and teaching. Nowhere has He directed the church to work to eliminate the nations, to pretend that they are somehow illegitimate or unfortunate, or to consider them to be anything less than His creation for our good. 

The nations also will still be present at the end of all things. "the peoples and tribes and tongues and nations" are present throughout the events described in the book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ. So, any effort to eliminate or unify the nations is not only contrary to God's plan, but is obviously futile. And, if dividing the nations restrained evil, seeking to unify them is to seek to increase evil.
22 I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. 23 And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. 24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. 25 In the daytime (for there will be no night there) its gates will never be closed; 26 and they will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it; 27 and nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. 
1 Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, 2 in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 3 There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him; 4 they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. 5 And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them; and they will reign forever and ever. (Revelation 21:22 - 22:5)
This is a vision of the nations in submission to and reconciled with the LORD.

The point of all this is that Treebeard and I were wondering why there are such negative assumptions flourishing regarding the current trends away from multiculturalism and globalism and toward nationalism.

Secular Progressivism has been trying to recreate the pre-Babel world for decades, and it is understandable why the enemies of God would be opposed to His ordering of the world, but why do so many in the evangelical church also seem to share this agenda?

More on that to come...

Thursday, November 24, 2016

Happy Thanksgiving!

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good;
His love endures forever. 

1 Chronicles 16:34 

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Bread and Wine

14 When the hour had come, He reclined at the table, and the apostles with Him. 15 And He said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; 16 for I say to you, I shall never again eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” 17 And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He said, “Take this and share it among yourselves; 18 for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the kingdom of God comes.” 19 And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” 20 And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood. 21 But behold, the hand of the one betraying Me is with [c]Mine on the table. 22 For indeed, the Son of Man is going as it has been determined; but woe to that man by whom He is betrayed!” 23 And they began to discuss among themselves which one of them it might be who was going to do this thing.

Luke 22:14-23


Without a doubt, Jews celebrating the Passover in the first century were drinking wine and eating unleavened bread when Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper.
However, it is de rigueur in Evangelicalism to substitute grape juice for wine, the roots of such practice going back to the Temperance Movement. Besides the implicit argument that the consumption of alcohol is immoral, other justifications of the practice include the desire not to be a stumbling block to alcoholics and the desire to include children younger than the legal drinking age, although it is not illegal in the context of Communion.

It is also claimed that since we are not commanded to drink wine, we may, in Christian liberty, substitute grape juice. Many, although not all, who use this argument, strangely do not apply the same logic to baptism and assert that immersion is a requirement, although no such command has been given. They will claim that since the subjectively clear example given in the New Testament is one of immersion, we must so do. But, the objectively clear example of unleavened bread and wine is to them not compelling.

There are also many who even insist that the wine used by Jesus and the disciples, and in the early church, was not alcoholic.

None of these reasons is persuasive and some are simply incredible, especially since they were unknown in the Church prior to the moralistic motivations of temperance, which, I suspect, is still at the bottom of the issue. These arguments also arise from an attitude of being fearful. It is not a muscular or manly approach to obedience to Christ and His Sacraments to fear and loath the very element that He used. It is better, to them, to offend God than to offend Man.

The Lord Jesus commanded us to observe the new covenant in His body and blood. He instituted the sacrament with unleavened bread and wine. 

Who are we to change that?

Friday, November 11, 2016

Calexit...please

Some portion of California would like to part ways with the United States and form it's own nation. This is wonderful news. It would free the remainder of the nation from the evil stain and baggage of Hollywood, LA, and one of the three hubs of godless so-called Progressivism.

How could it happen? There are certainly political, Constitutional, and (for some) psychological barriers, but, step one could be a two-part response something like this...

  1. The Federal government will immediately take steps to either relocate or sell all of its assets in California which are located in the counties that choose to leave the United States (see #2). The assets can be purchased by the highest bidder on a piecemeal basis. The proceeds of the sale will be used to finance the new border and to pay off a portion of the existing federal debt.
  2. Every county in California will be given an opportunity to Leave or Stay. Such a vote, however, must result in two contiguous regions. One will Leave and the other will Stay. Any landlocked, so to speak, counties will belong to whichever nation surrounds them. A period of transition time to move will be provided.
How will California respond to such an offer? I'd love to find out.

Sunday, November 6, 2016

Voting

It has been twenty-eight years since I have voted for a President. Once realizing that we have a one-party system with two names and that every four years we are presented with a choice of socialist Candidate A or socialist Candidate B, the futility of the exercise became obvious. It was much more important to me to withhold my consent from either candidate that to engage in hair-splitting to determine the lesser of two evils. Like Treebeard, I was sure that neither candidate was on my side.

It also became clear to me that to a great many people, and especially the voting-advocates, voting was much more than registering one's preference. It was a religious sacrament that the worshipers of Democracy held dear. The act of voting is more important to them than the outcome, because it's an act of faith in the State. Faith in the god Democracy.

This year there is clearly something different. There is a candidate who is not part of the One Party. Donald Trump is hated by the rulers of both factions which, with sham-animosity, are supposed to trade the presidency back and forth every four to eight years, according to some predetermined schedule. That he has upset their apple cart and exposed their choreographed charade is made clear by the numbers of defectors who have announced that they will vote for the "other" candidate, Hillary Clinton, rather than allow this usurper to ascend. He is not in their playbook and he does not follow their Narrative. And, he seems not to care that he is hated by them.

This has piqued my interest, but, two very concrete issues are the greater reason behind why I am going to vote in a few days. 

Firstly, I believe that there is a categorically greater chance of our country becoming engaged in war of some kind with Russia or China if Hillary Clinton is elected. War is hell, and war to maintain or extend an Empire is immoral.

Secondly, Hillary Clinton will continue, and accelerate, the massive and indiscriminate immigration from nations with cultures, world-views, and religions that are hostile to the Christian posterity of the immigrants from the European nations who founded America. Our country is the legacy of Christendom, in spite of the fact that it has to a great extent become faithless to Christ, and its destruction as such is the goal of the Christ-hating elites which are at the heart of the One Party. We have had enough of such immigration and it is time to stop it and roll it back if Christendom or Western Civilization is to survive.

Donald Trump is not a magical candidate. He will undoubtedly fail to live up to the things he has said and will let his supporters down in significant ways. However, if he even partially follows through on his rhetoric, he will be more beneficial to this nation than any other president in my lifetime.

There is a slim chance that is worth taking that Donald Trump will finally break the hold that the One Party wields over every aspect of our lives. Maybe some of them will even go to jail. Maybe the people of this country (Christians in particular) will finally see them all for what they are: corrupt, deceiving, and evil.

I'm going to vote for Donald Trump and I will pray that God's will be done.

Saturday, October 22, 2016

We must have Principles!

It is simultaneously amusing and pathetic to watch so many Christians suddenly acquire principles when it comes to Presidential elections. Neither of the two current candidates that have a chance of winning are acceptable to them because, as a nationally-known local pastor has said, "both fail to clear a basic threshold of personal integrity, sound judgment, and trustworthiness."

This is a hopelessly naive and deluded sentiment. Politicians, as a class, are among the most corrupt and untrustworthy people on the planet, who perennially exercise poor judgment and fail to live up to nearly any of the lofty ideals they express as candidates. This is true of candidates from both of the major parties, or, should we say more truly, from either candidate from the one party with two names, as Fred Reed puts it. To be unaware of this and apparently to believe that this Presidential race is the first time both candidates are morally bankrupt is inexcusable for a discerning mind.

How many of these very same Christians voted for a cult-member in the previous race? One Christian friend told me that he had no problem doing so, because "he was a good man." How many of these very same Christians complained loudly in the past that failing to vote for the lesser of two evils is no different from casting a vote for the enemy? How many of these very same Christians have been criticizing me for decades for not voting?

Suddenly, they now have Principles!

Ironically, their newly discovered devotion to political integrity comes at a time when there actually is a difference between the two candidates that can have an existential influence on our nation. This is the first time in my lifetime that this has been true. But, these Christians are too busy wringing their hands over qualities that no Presidential candidate in my lifetime has possessed. 

Somehow, they have missed this.

On second thought, it is much more pathetic than amusing.

Friday, October 14, 2016

History

One of the crowning achievements of the public school system is its ability to make the amazing and the fascinating seem dull, pointless, and even downright unpleasant. Its goal is not to educate, not to awaken young minds, nor to open eyes to the expansive vistas of the intellectual landscape.

Rather, public schooling aims to propagandize, to induce malaise, and to blind eyes to truth. Once the wings are clipped and the chains secure, it goes about its task of creating good little voters, workers, taxpayers, and (State) worshipers, to paraphrase Jennifer Granholm, a former Michigan governor.

And so, I was not very old before I was agreeing with Henry Ford that "History is bunk." Whatever Ford meant by it, to me it meant that History was boring and irrelevant. I continued to think that way for over thirty years.

My beliefs about History changed almost overnight several years ago after a friend recommended a podcast by a guy named Dan Carlin, called Hardcore History. Carlin is, in his words a "fan of History," not a historian, but his synthesis of the sources and his presentation are illuminating and exciting in a way I never believed possible. He covers topics ranging in time from the ancient world to approximately the era of World War II.

But, highly entertaining though they are, the chief value of Carlin's work is to chronicle and illustrate the nature of Man and the State, neither of which have changed, ever. Mankind does indeed repeat his foolishness from generation to generation. It is also evident that when men do not remember the past, we will believe just about anything.

I would say that his podcasts have become required listening in our homeschool curriculum, but a requirement hasn't been necessary. The children have been listening to them (and buying them!) on their own. My daughter has enjoyed them so much that she is actually interested in reading History. We have conversations around the dinner table about the Persian Empire, the futility of the world wars, and how the entrance and exit of the Mongols from the world stage follows so closely the biblical pattern of God raising up a nation to accomplish His purposes.

Thanks, Dan, for changing my mind about the importance of studying History.

Monday, October 10, was the anniversary of one of the most important events in the history of Christendom, the Battle of Tours. In 732 AD, Charles Martel halted for good the advance of Islam into Europe. At the Faith and Heritage blog, Clive Sanguis writes that had they not,
There would have been no peaceful Middle Ages, no Reformation, no Western civilization, no colonizing of the New World for Christ, no scientific revolution or artistic treasures. The entire history of the West might have been unrecognizable.
Thirteen centuries later, Christendom only exists in remnants living in quasi-captivity within the pagan legacy of Western Civilization. But, the new Islamic invasion has been underway for well over a decade.

History repeats, but I wonder if it will have a different ending this time.

Sunday, October 9, 2016

Book Review: Flatland

Flatland by Edwin Abbott is a book that I have known about since I was in high school, but only got around to actually reading this Summer. It was first published in 1884, ostensibly by A Square, a denizen of a world of only two dimensions. It begins like this,

1. -- Of the Nature of Flatland 
I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.

In this way, A Square begins his amazingly detailed description of the economy, social structure, class divisions, climate, methods of social interaction, differences between males and females, religion, and politics of his world. Flatland is intricate beyond what those of us in Space would think possible prior to hearing of its wonderful sophistication and consistency. 

Our author is a solidly middle-class four-sided man: a square. He has a wife and a number of regular five-sided children. The way that genetics works in Flatland is that the vast majority of men are common irregular (unequal sides) three-sided people. Eventually, after generations of slow improvement and progress, a three-sided family will bear a child with three equal sides and that genetic line will then begin to advance in society. From then on, being a regular polygon, the male offspring will always possess one additional side from his father. Equilateral triangles produce Squares, which produce regular Pentagons, which produce regular Hexagons, and so on. Eventually, a family line may produce a polygon of so many sides that its number is incalculable and it is declared to be a Circle, and admitted to the priestly class.

A Square's quiet existence is interrupted one day when he is visited by a being from Space, a three-dimensional world which can communicate with Flatland. The visitor is a Sphere, and as he dips into Flatland, his manifestation in that world is essentially a cross-section of himself, and so appears to A Square as a Circle which suddenly appears out of nowhere.

To the beings of Flatland, everything about the reality of two-dimensional existence is not only taken for granted as the-way-things-are, but it is exclusively and necessarily so. Because of this, much reasoning and proof is required of the Sphere before he is able to get A Square to comprehend and actually believe in a realm of three dimensions. The simple concept of there being a direction that is "up above" and "down below", being different from the Northward and Southward that were so familiar and conceptually obvious to him, is nearly impossible for his geometric mind to fathom.

Eventually, the Sphere succeeds in his endeavor, but only as the result of an experience in which A Square is somehow granted a vision of a one-dimensional world, which he called Lineland. Through A Square's difficulty in expressing to the King of Lineland the nature of Flatland, A Square has an intellectual epiphany, by analogical extension, of the nature of Space.

Sadly, our happy protagonist's life is made very unpleasant by his new understanding of the nature of the universe. His fellow Flatlanders have a difficult time understanding the wonderful new truths that he attempts to share with them, even though he lacks a vocabulary to do so, and he experiences no little degree of persecution.

I will leave it to you to discover how it all turns out for him.

What I find fascinating and insightful about the story is the analogy of existence as one progresses from the single dimension of Lineland, to two dimensions in Flatland, and, finally, three dimensions in Space, our familiar reality. I say "finally", but that is really just an assumption on our part, like two-dimensional reality being an assumption made by A Square and his fellows. The analogy can be extended out yet another level to a four-dimensional reality with which we have no regular discourse and no way to directly comprehend.

The ability to conceptualize a new direction that is "away from" any of our three dimensions is as impossible for us as it was for A Square. We can only comprehend the possibility of such a thing by analogy.

Another intriguing thought is that when the beings of Flatland look at one another they only see a particular side at any given time. Their methods of distinguishing between the shapes are effective, but are obviously clumsy and incomplete to those of us who can simply look down from "above" and see, all at once, the full shape of the individual. No Flatlander truly knows what any other Flatlander, including himself, looks like, for they can only see each other in parts.

Likewise, we can only see each other in Space incompletely. It would take a Being of at least four dimensions to fully know the form of a three-dimensional person.

What do I look like to God, who undoubtedly can see me in full?

How far off and in error am I from understanding, even a little, God's true nature when I conceive of Him as a being that inhabits space, just like me? I know that He created the three-dimensional universe, and I know in theory that He transcends it, but in my everyday thinking do I drag Him into it, and diminish Him?

I can no more comprehend the majestic totality of God's nature than the King of Lineland can comprehend a Sphere.

Flatland is a mind-bending tale that will keep you turning the pages compulsively for its utter originality and the fascination brought about by the descriptions of worlds that might just be right under our noses.

It has also taught me to be very careful about what I say and think about the nature of God that falls outside of what He has explicitly revealed to us.


Tuesday, October 4, 2016

One of the great things about keeping bees...

...is that they clean up after themselves.

Sunday afternoon, my family and I extracted honey from our two bee hives. It's a sticky mess that leaves the extraction equipment covered in honey. If I had to clean it all up I think I would quit keeping bees.

However, one of the many incredible attributes of bees is that they will remove every trace of honey from any object that you put out for them to find. So, all of the boxes of frames that have had their honey extracted (by a hand-cranked centrifuge), the centrifuge itself, the pots and buckets used to catch the "cappings" and honey - all covered in honey residue - can just be placed outside in front of the hives and the little fanatics will descend.

Tens of thousands of bees, and bee-mouths, go to work recovering the left-overs and restoring it to honey cells inside of the hive to be used for winter food. Almost no honey goes to waste. It is either in a jar in our house, or it ends up back inside the hive.

The equipment is cleaner than if I had spent hours scrubbing it with soap and water.

The cappings are the tops of the honey comb which are sliced off with a hot electric knife and allowed to fall into a pot. They are saturated with honey. Once the cappings are removed from the frames which hold the comb, the frames are placed in a centrifuge and the honey is extracted from the open cells. The cappings are allowed to drip through a strainer until they have no more flowing honey and then they too are put outside to let the bees clean the honey off of the wax. When the girls - all the workers are girls - are through with it we have raw wax that is ready to be processed.

Bees are wonderful creatures and I am convinced that God, from The Beginning, intended that Man would cooperate with them. Their self-cleaning nature is only one of many amazing characteristics with which they have been endowed.


Here they are, cleaning up the cappings
 and two of the hive boxes and frames...listen.


Saturday, October 1, 2016

Who is training your children?

Tom Wood has published a free e-book titled Education Without the State. You can get it here. Tom's short book makes the libertarian case that the state is not necessary to educate children, nor is it even really educating them.

Perhaps the single greatest tragedy in the Church today is that a majority of Christians still willingly and even enthusiastically send their children away from home every day to be educated and trained by unbelievers.

This is not just a problem for individuals, it is a collective sin of the People of God. It is also a sin of pastors and teachers who make public schooling an acceptable practice.

Imagine if the children of Israel voluntarily rounded up their kids every morning and sent them off to Amalekite, Edomite, or Philistine schools.

There are a great many options for Christian parents. Expensive private schools are far from the only way out of public schooling. Homeschooling is accessible to nearly everyone. For the fringe cases, where there are true barriers to it, there are co-ops, and support groups that can help. Parents that are struggling with finding a solution will have help just a URL away, and can always talk with other families in their church who are already doing it.

Most homeschooling families are passionate about it and will be willing to help find a way to make it possible.

And, don't think that the alternative path for education stops at primary and secondary school. Many young people and families are realizing that universities are also not the only option, or even the best option, for obtaining the education, skills, and training needed to become productive, self-supporting individuals.

Praxis is just one such option for motivated people who are not sold on the "benefits" of spending four, five, or more financially unproductive years gaining a credential that they may or may not use, and might even go into significant debt to obtain.

I'll post more about alternatives to college in the future.

In the meantime, here are some additional articles to help you if you are still part of the public schools but are starting to wonder if that's the right place to be.

Your are responsible for training your children.





Thursday, September 29, 2016

Team Treebeard

I don’t know about sides. I go my own way; but your way may go along with mine for a while. … I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side, if you understand me: nobody cares for the woods as I care for them, not even Elves nowadays. Still, I take more kindly to Elves than to others … And there are some things, of course, whose side I am altogether not on; I am against them altogether: these —burĂ¡rum” (he again made a deep rumble of disgust) “— these Orcs, and their masters”.
Treebeard in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Two Towers

Merry and Pippin had just asked Treebeard to say which side he was on.

This is one of my favorite quotes from The Lord of the Rings, and it is the inspiration for the name of this blog, specifically the part about being pretty sure that "nobody is altogether on my side."

Everyone wants other people to join their side.

Many people assert that "you're on the side of X if you don't do Y, or do B, or don't denounce T, or believe Z, or read V."

Their binary thinking insists that you be on a side that they define. They usually only imagine that there are but two sides. 


Don't let them do that.

I'm on the side of Jesus and the Kingdom of God. I'm on my family's side. Those two are clear.

And, like Treebeard, there are clearly things I am against altogether. 


This blog will explore those things, for and against.

Assail the gates of hell.


We love dogs more than kids, I guess.

Isaac Morehouse wonders if we would care for our dogs this way.

"I’m not a dog owner, but everyone else seems to really love their dogs.  So much so, that if I offered the following service, most would consider it beneath them as pet owners to take me up: 
Every work day, you’ll wake your dog before it wants to get up, force feed it some breakfast, and tie it to a pole at the corner of your street, then go to work.  A giant vehicle with no safety harnesses will stop by and load your dog, along with fifty or sixty other dogs, and haul them off to a huge dog daycare center.
The dogs will be crammed thirty or forty to a room, and each room will have one person there to look after them, and make them go through a number of drills and activities that dogs hate, sitting still the whole time, not being allowed to do what dogs really want to do – run around.  This supervisor will be unionized and paid based on years of service, with little or no connection to how well your dogs fare under their care.  Some are good people who like dogs, though many found veterinary school too challenging and would struggle to gain employment as private dog trainers, groomers, or sitters."

Read the whole thing on his site. Every day millions of believers send their kids off to be trained by pagans. I guess we love our dogs more.