O Holy Night - Luciano Pavarotti

O Holy Night! The stars are brightly shining,

It is the night of the dear Saviour's birth.

Long lay the world in sin and error pining.

Till He appeared and the Spirit felt its worth.

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!

O night divine, the night when Christ was born;

O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!

O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!

Led by the light of faith serenely beaming,

With glowing hearts by His cradle we stand.

O'er the world a star is sweetly gleaming,

Now come the wisemen from out of the Orient land.

The King of kings lay thus lowly manger;

In all our trials born to be our friends.

He knows our need, our weakness is no stranger,

Behold your King! Before him lowly bend!

Behold your King! Before him lowly bend!

Truly He taught us to love one another,

His law is love and His gospel is peace.

Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother.

And in his name all oppression shall cease.

Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,

With all our hearts we praise His holy name.

Christ is the Lord! Then ever, ever praise we,

His power and glory ever more proclaim!

His power and glory ever more proclaim!

God Enters the World of Man

 

 

In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

 

 

. . . That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of the blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father.), full of grace and truth (KJV, John 1:1-5, 9-14).

 

 

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3:16).

 

 





The Birth of Christ

Merry Christmas!

 

 

 

 

 

 



Four More Years of Insanity

 

The First Four Years:  A Pictorial History

LibyaGate

  

 

Objectivism: The Uninspired Religion of "Reason"

By Michael David Rawlings

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute. —Ayn Rand¹
 

 

The politics of Rand's philosophy (called Objectivism for the postulate that all human knowledge may be objectively derived from reality via discovery rather than presupposition) calls for a minarchistic model of laissez-faire, an ideal arrangement of power whereby the state is not permitted to ameliorate the consequences of irresponsible behavior. Some critics on the left argue—due to their mindless reverence  for the politics of  bread and circuses—that Objectivism promotes rational anarchism (or anarcho-capitalism), despite the fact that it emphatically repudiates that model.

Government redistribution of wealth is a form of initial force (or coercion) that subsidizes and, consequently, encourages the sort of behavior that leads to poverty and dependency. It's the stuff of legalized theft exacted against the assets of individuals who aren't responsible for the circumstances, choices or failures of the recipients. In other words, beyond the general defense of the nation and the preservation of liberty and private property, including the necessary provisions and administrations thereof: it's immoral for the state to deprive a person of any portion of the fruits of his labor for the sake of persons who didn't earn them.

(Think President Barack You-Didn't-Build-That Obama.)

A Dirge for J. Alfred Prufrock: The Last Hurrah

By Michael David Rawlings

With hat in hand and at the feet of T. S. Eliot

Copyright © 2012

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. . . .
 

Let us go then, you and me,
And stroll beneath a cloudy sea
As evening spreads across its face like a toothless grin.
Let us go a-meandering down narrow-minded suburban lanes,
Silky slick with sullen rains
And hemmed in by redundant four-bedroom stalls and grated sewage drains;
Past the immaculate parks and the quaint, steepled churches,
    the lofty perches,
Where the vagabond Riffraff lurches in the pristine shadows:
A restless Crowd that chases dreams of easy grace and meadows
And sings a melancholy hymn, a petulant brew, that lingers at your nervebone.

A chorus of crickets roll their eyes
And dance beneath the cloudy skies.

The Air is still tonight—drenched with slumber.
A withered leaf dodders on spindly legs across Its gnarled spine.

And above the tiny rustlings, above the glistening lanes,
Above the languid shadows that creep and close on the mournful strains—
The Stars draw back the shroud and peep,
Shake their bearded chins, cast their pearly eyes away and weep.
And below, crookbacked lampposts unfurl their hazy-white plumes and glare
At the four-footed heaps, at the white picket fences,
At the cracks in the sidewalks, at the manicured grasses,
As the musty night seeps through our senses.
And through the parlor windows we may see, you and I,
The flickering glow of that babbling flow on the walls:
The Soma of the enervated masses.

Morpheus has alighted on his throne at the commencement of another dreary evening. . . .

The "New Math" of American History and the Unobscured Truth

By Michael David Rawlings

Virtually all leftists and the occasional libertarian confound the history of America's cultural-political heritage. For many, their ignorance is a function of a deep-seated prejudice against religion in general and especially against the notion that the tenets of Judeo-Christianity played some role in the articulation of the Republic's founding.

 

Like many leftists, lots of libertarians are "freethinkers." That is to say, they're atheists (See also "Objectivism:   The Uninspired Religion of 'Reason' ".).  Hence, there is a strain of libertarianism that like the contagious rot of progressivism is wont to go on about the supposed primacy of the democratic theory of Classical Greece or of the monolithic repudiation of religion in the thought of the Enlightenment. My favorite red herring along this line is something or another about the Founders and the naturalistic, nonthreatening religion of Deism.

[T]he much ado over the fact that many of the Founders were Deists is about nothing. First, most of them weren't. Second, it's the sociopolitical principles extrapolated from the Judeo-Christian moral tradition that matter. Both the Deist and the Christian of the Anglo-American Enlightenment embraced them. —Michael David Rawlings, "Abortion on Demand, Homosexual "Marriage": what will they think of next?"

The salient, recurring theme in all of this: only "benighted Christians" actually believe that Judeo-Christianity significantly influenced the development of democratic political theory. God Darwin forbid that the most gloriously prolific system of thought in world history might have had something to do with it!

Actually

By Michael David Rawlings

Thomas Jefferson is not the father of the phrase pursuit of happiness, and it's not merely a poetic turn  or an allusion to something new or different. It's a construct with a great deal of history behind it. That very terminology was used by John Locke and other classical liberals before Jefferson. Jefferson's terminology regarding the third element of Locke's triadic formulation of natural law—life, liberty and property—was used to emphasize the meaning of property in its entirety.

Neither Locke nor the Founders held that one's personal property was merely the material possessions or assets that one might own. Personal property in the political sense begins with the ownership of one's own self, the ramifications of which are (1) the right to be secure in one's material possessions, (2) the right of personal well-being and (3) the right of freedom of opportunity. Those familiar with the terminology of the emerging political theory of natural law understood why Jefferson used that phrase.

Hence, pursuit of happiness refers to the ownership of one's own self and to everything that entails.