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Freedom of Speech {1943}
by Norman Rockwell for
The Saturday Evening Post

Why Christianity has Explanatory Power
Upcoming broadcast - April. 10th, 2009
AM 1380 KTKZ, Sacramento

Listen in as Host John Snyder explains why Christianity has "explanatory power" and why the beginning point of understanding Christianity may not be faith per se, but rather an acknowledgement that we all have a duty to know certain things, especially when we make claims that we and others should act according to rules and moral principles.  It is not sufficient to say, I do not know-the world requires us to act and to act resolutely in certain convictions. Many worldviews have attempted to create a foundation for understanding morality, social order and the purpose of life.  These have been primarily:  philosophical naturalism, (i.e. materialism), Marxism, Hinduism (which is to say: pantheism, polytheism, and  spiritualism), Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Perhaps none of these views is correct, but they remain in whole or in part the primary alternatives to any worldview. Listen in as host John Snyder explains why Christianity provides the best explanation for the problems, the purposes and imperatives of life.

 

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Recent Postings:

Self Evident Truths Lost

Date Posted: 07.04.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

When viewing this evening’s fireworks spectaculars, you will think of all our military conflicts – from Bunker Hill to Baghdad. The 4th of July, of course, has nothing to do with war; it commemorates a day when a group of contentious delegates assembled at the Pennsylvania state house, put aside their differences and unanimously agreed to separate from Great Britain. Unfortunately, many Americans viewing the pyrotechnics this evening are as separated from our Founder’s longing for independence as they are by time..


Madoff in Hell

Date Posted: 06.30.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Among the victim statements made in court - before Judge Denny Chin handed down a 150-year sentence to Bernie Madoff for his $50 billion Ponzi scheme - victim and former Mayer of Fort Lee, New Jersey, Bert Ross, got to the heart of the Madoff’s crime:


ACORN Rears its Ugly Head for Headcount

Date Posted: 05.26.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

President Barrack Obama, the nation's first Community-Organizer-and-Chief, is gearing up for the constitutionally mandated U.S. census. The national headcount will determine whether congressional districts are added or subtracted from the states. In 2000, the Liberal leaning states of New York and Pennsylvania lost two congressional districts each, while the more conservative states of Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Texas each gained two. As 2010 nears, the Obama administration is raising concerns that his Chicago-style to governance will come into play. Enter ACORN, the Association of Community Organizers for Change Now. The Obama administration announced ACORN’s inclusion among a group of organizations working in partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau, which is troubling in light of numerous indictments as well as ongoing investigations of ACORN chapters for voter fraud.


General Powell, The Old Soldier

Date Posted: 05.25.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Several days ago, Rush Limbaugh stunned the mainstream media with the following announcement:

I quit! I resign as the titular head of the Republican Party! There, frankly, is someone far more qualified and capable and more in tune with today’s Republican Party than I…and that would be Gen. Colin Powell. So, I now pass the baton to General Powell as the titular head of the Republican Party. From this day forward, it will be up to Gen. Powell to instruct the party on things it needs to do to win elections in 2010…look to his wise council, his leadership and his words of encouragement for the Republican Party.


Obama vs. Cheney vs. a Darker Reality

Date Posted: 05.22.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

In an address given at the National Archives, President Barrack Obama, his back to America’s founding documents, affirmed his dedication to the proposition that the U.S. Constitution is a suicide pact:


God's Big Bang

Date Posted: 05.19.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

When people think of the conflict between religion and science, the skirmish between Darwin’s theory of evolution and the Biblical account of creation come to mind. The first legal clash over the issue in the U.S. was the Scopes monkey trial – the 1926 Tennessee court case that made headlines in newspapers across America. In reality, the titanic struggle of the roaring 20s between science and God began when a Soviet mathematician and a Belgian priest discovered a glitch in Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which, when corrected, suggested a supernatural origin for everything.


Obama the "War Criminal"

Date Posted: 05.17.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

In early May, U.S. military aircraft dropped 13 bombs, which included 500 and 1,000-pound explosives, on Farah Province in western Afghanistan. The U.S. airstrike killed an estimated 147 civilians. The attack sparked angry demonstrations with Afghan crowds chanting “death to America” and stoning local police. Fearing for their lives, police fired into the crowd in an effort to disperse the mob before it could reach the provincial capitol. It appears Mr. Obama is well on his way to achieving what many on the Left would consider war criminal status.


Bondholders in Bondage

Date Posted: 05.08.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

An American community organizer once said, “I have built my organization upon fear.” If you are a Chrysler secured bondholder, you are forgiven for attributing the aforementioned quote to President Barrack Obama. In fact, the words are those of an earlier Chicago organizer – Al Capone.


None of the Above

Date Posted: 05.05.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

The New York Times heralded the advance of atheism in America, sighting a study released by Harford Connecticut’s Trinity College Program on Public Values. The 2008 study found a 10 percent drop in the number of Americans who identified themselves as belonging to a mainstream Christian denomination, down from 76 percent in 1990. And with the Christian conservatives finding themselves in the same sinking rowboat with Republican politicians, Atheists see an opportunity to lead the Democratic Party to new depths of soulless nihilism. 


Obama to New York: Drop Dead

Date Posted: 04.28.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

At around 10 a.m. on Monday April 27, the sight of a low-flying 747 with F-16 fighter jets in close pursuit terrified office workers in New York's Lower Manhattan. Many thought it was a possible repeat of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in which Islamic extremists crashed two commercial airliners into the World Trade Center. “There were people in my elevator, sweating and shaking. There were women crying. It was not an experience to be taken lightly,” a financial services worker told The New York Times. At 4:39 that afternoon the White House issued an apology for causing the panic and confusion. The White House, it turns out, was conducting a photo-shoot of Air Force One with Manhattan’s diminished post-9/11 skyline as a backdrop. 


Stalin, the Nazis and the West

Date Posted: 04.24.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

For many years, Russia and its many friends in the West strenuously denied the Katyn Forest Massacre –the 1940 murders of over 20,000 members of Poland’s social and military elite by order of Stalin. The denials began with Stalin, FDR’s wartime administration, and continued through the long twilight struggle of the cold war by so-called intellectuals. On May 6th, the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) begins a three-part docudrama detailing the diplomatic deal making that resulted in mass murder and global war. WW II Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West, utilizes once secret documents from official Soviet archives to chronicle, in many cases verbatim, the secret deals reached between Stalin and his two wartime allies – Hitler, and later, Roosevelt.


Reading The Tea Leaves

Date Posted: 04.24.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Anti-tax tea parties took place throughout the United States on April 15th, the day the IRS collects its many pounds of flesh. However, it’s hard to gage whether the protests represent the beginning of a grassroots mass movement or is nothing more than a flash of anger that will dissipate as baseball season heats up with the approaching summer. At first, the mainstream media dismissed the announcements of anti-tax rallies by the tea party organizers. When the protest crowds appeared to be larger than the average pro-abortion gathering, the media attempted to dismiss rally participants as nuts or as Republican shills


Homeland Insecurity

Date Posted: 04.18.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Creating the Department of Homeland Security was President George W. Bush’s concession to the then Democratic minority. Democrats believed creating an unwieldy agency was a muscular response to Islamic atrocities perpetrated on our soil and showed that our nation was serious about the war on terror. With a new administration in Washington, and the retirement of the term “war on terror,” this lumbering bureaucratic monument to Republican bipartisanship is ready to wage war on a threat that stretches all the way back to the Clinton administration – what former first lady Hillary Clinton called the “vast rightwing conspiracy.”



Snipers 3, Lawyers 1

Date Posted: 04.14.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

When Somali pirates boarded the cargo ship Maersk Alabama, seizing its captain for ransom, the guided missile cruiser U.S.S. Bainbridge steamed 500 miles to lend assistance. FBI hostage negotiators were added to the ship’s compliment of fighting men. The FBI negotiator’s motto is Pax per Conloquium, which means “resolution through dialogue.” Luckily for Captain Richard Phillips, Navy Seal snipers fired three perfect shots from the Bainbridge’s sea-tossed deck – at night – killing three pirates, capturing one, and freeing the American hostage. Apparently, hostage negotiations were at an impasse.


Piracy: Perception vs. Reality

Date Posted: 04.11.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Obama appears willing allow Somali pirates to set the terms of the conflict. Former President George W. Bush once declared that the war on terror “will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.” Recently, Obama sent an e-mail to his new Nerf Pentagon that “this administration prefers to avoid using the term Long War or Global War on Terror…please pass this on to your speechwriters.” A new term was crafted to be less offensive in the ears of those men who planned of the World Trade Center attacks–  “overseas contingency operations.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters during her recent trip to Europe, “The administration has stopped using the phrase, and that speaks for itself, obviously.” Obviously.


Democratic Piracy

Date Posted: 04.11.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

It’s unlikely President Obama’s new Nerf Pentagon will employ the U.S. Navy’s sizable military prowess to plunge Somali brigand ships to the bottom of the Gulf of Aden. Seizing American merchant vessels and their crews is, apparently, a distraction from Obama and his party’s swashbuckling seizure of America’s treasure ships now sailing on economic rough seas – the banks. The Democratic Party and its captain in the White House are practicing a form of democracy that existed on the waters off North America between 1680 to 1730 – piracy.


Under a Just God

Date Posted: 04.11.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Cambodian dictator and mass-murderer Pol Pot escaped Earthly, if not cosmic, justice when he died in 1998. During his bloody reign, his Khmer Rouge murdered an estimated 26 percent of his country's population, or about 1.7 million men, women and children. It all came to an end after communist Vietnam toppled the Cambodian regime in 1979, much to the chagrin of the United Nations who regarded the Khmer Rouge as Cambodia's legitimate government. Thirty-three years later, Pol Pot's in-laws, and co-serial killers, face some semblance of justice - maybe.


No Cop on the Beat

Date Posted: 04.07.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Concerning North Korea’s recent test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, Gary Samore – the Obama White House coordinator for nonproliferation – told The New York Times, “I hate to speculate about the North Korean motivations. I’m not sure this is a deliberate calculated action on the part of the North Koreans.”  I may not be as sophisticated an expert on world affairs as Mr. Samore but I think that when a maniacal dictator diverts his nation’s dwindling resources to missile development at the expense of his starving people – in order to threaten the outside world – it’s a clear expression of malevolent motives.


Sympathy for the Devil

Date Posted: 03.30.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Broadway is poised to reinterpret a literary classic for the musical stage. Beowulf, written between the 8th and 11th century, is to be transformed into a quasi rock opera with a Monty Python-like comic edge. The musical production is a collaboration between San Francisco and New York City alternative theater groups. At the official website for “Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage,” the producer’s tease is most telling:


The Enemy Within

Date Posted: 03.27.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Of the recent escalation in murder and mayhem resulting from the bloody drug war now raging in his country, Mexican President Felipe Calderon assessed the situation bluntly. “The main cause of the problems associated with organized crime is having the world’s biggest [illegal drug] consumer next to us.” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton concurred. “Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade.”


Barbary Pirates Reject "Change"

Date Posted: 03.22.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Selling “hope” and “change” was easy when campaigning before a gullible American electorate. Convincing the world’s despots, however, is proving more difficult, especially where Iran’s lunatic leadership is concerned. “We have serious differences that have grown over time,” said President Obama, stating the obvious in his video message to Iran’s ruling mullahs. “My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community…We seek instead engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect.”


Obama's Gold

Date Posted: 03.19.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Truly, we are living in interesting times. A sign of the times is the national obsession with AIG executive compensation at a time when congress is about to give President Obama $3.5 trillion dollars in bonuses for targeted Democratic Party constituencies. What is becoming abundantly clear is that there are no good guys in this bag of snakes; not the political class (left or right), not the corporate class, and certainly not the entitlement deranged American people. There is a war brewing. It is not a war for land but treasure – bailout treasure, and things are about to get very ugly.


Obama's Debt-Bubble Economy

Date Posted: 03.15.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Like the father of the New Deal, Obama is crafting an economic plan that is heavy on government expenditures and includes billions of dollars for make-work infrastructure projects and for financial bailouts of the nation’s banking sector, giving the federal government a controlling interest in their daily operations. With a U.S. Congress controlled by Democrats, and with little criticism from a devoted mainstream media and an incoherent Republican Party, Barack Hussein Obama promises to pick up where FDR left off. So Americans need to ask, just how effective was the New Deal?


Child's Play

Date Posted: 03.10.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

If the sketchy accounts are to be believed, in the year 1212 a young French or German boy had a vision that beckoned him to lead a movement to peacefully convert Muslims to the Christian faith. In time, an army of 30,000 children, together with many elderly followers, marched to the Mediterranean Sea sure in their faith that God would part the waters in order to ease their trip to Jerusalem. Many died on the trip to the sea, while those that managed to secure transport on merchant vessels, died in shipwrecks or were sold into slavery. And so ended what is called the Children’s Crusade.


Rush Limbaugh, The Democrat's Talk-Radio Straw Man

Date Posted: 03.07.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Now that George W. Bush, John McCain and other compassionate conservative reachers-across-the-aisle have relegated the Republican Party to pitiful irrelevance, the political Left and it media allies need someone against whom they can juxtapose the righteous ideals of their cause. Enter Rush Limbaugh.


Thanks For Your Contribution

Date Posted: 03.05.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Long before the Nobel committee bestowed the Peace Prize upon him for ending global war by promoting global warming, Al Gore was the Democratic Party and Clinton Administration bagman for illegal campaign contributions.


Club Gitmo's Five Star Review

Date Posted: 02.21.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

What frightened sensitive nihilists more than the terrorist attacks and carnage of 9/11 was the war on terrorism itself. In general, what horrified them most was the treatment of captured terrorists held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.


Oh Where, Oh Where Did Osama Go?

Date Posted: 02.18.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

On Monday February 16, a missile strike by a U.S. Predator drone occurred in the town of Parachinor in Pakistan’s Kurram tribal region. Two U.S. missiles struck a compound believed to be a Taliban or Al-Qaida hideout, killing 15 people. The target, coincidently, is in a region where UCLA geography professors believe a man on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List is hiding — terror mastermind Osama bin Laden.


What's Behind the Gobal Rise in Anti Semitism?

11111Date1DDate Posted: 02.16.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

While working-out at the gym, Rowan Laxton, a British diplomat, became unhinged while viewing televised reports showing war scenes from Gaza. “#$@...ing Israelis,” he shouted “#$@...ing Jews.” Of the Israeli soldiers fighting to defend their innocent citizens against genocidal attacks by Hamas’ terrorists, Laxton said they should be “wiped of the face of the Earth.” Hamas and its terror-state sponsor Iran couldn’t agree more.


The Specter of Irrelevance

11111Date1DDate Posted: 02.12.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania is most beloved by the mainstream media and his Democratic colleagues. A bloodless creature, he wanders zombie-like across the political landscape, his principles as stained and tattered as the disheveled living-dead of horror movie fame. Anemic moderate Republicans, like Sen. Specter, haven’t the stomach or imagination to lead and, instead, slavishly follow wrong-headed but energetic Democrats.


And the Tax Cheats Shall Lead Them

11111Date1DDate Posted: 02.10.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Like the debauched sovereigns of the past, Democrats rule by a secular manifestation of the divine right of kings. They believe they can do no wrong because, like France’s Louis the XIV, they are “the state.” Their no-opting-out social programs destroy our freedoms while dangerously enlarging the power of an overbearing government. Ignoring the sovereignty of its people, placing no limit on its so-called compassion, is nothing less than an expression of political narcissism masquerading as compassion. But they gain the undying love and admiration of a majority of Americans the old fashion way – they buy it with tax dollars. Unfortunately, many high-ranking Democrats avoid paying the excessive taxes they so effortlessly force upon the rest of us.


The Computer Age

11111Date1DDate Posted: 02.06.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Gary McKinnon, a 42-year-old unemployed computer programmer from England, just ran out of time. His final appeal to the European Court of Human Rights was denied and he’ll be extradited to the U.S. to face federal charges for allegedly hacking into over 90 Pentagon and NASA computers, and, on one occasion, deleting computer files that temporarily paralyzed a U.S. naval weapons station in Sandy Hook Bay, New Jersey. He’s also charged with committing $370,000 worth of damage to the aforementioned computers. If convicted, McKinnon faces up to 70-years behind bars.


Google's Deus Ex Machina

11111Date1DDate Posted: 02.05.09.

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Futurist Ray Kuzweil, NASA and Internet search-engine giant Google announced the formation of Singularity University. Its campus is located at NASA’s Ames Research Center, in Mountain View, California, and is sustained by an annual $3.5-million contribution from Google.



 

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