SavedByGrace1981

I agree with 'gator - excellent post. And I know you probably meant the part I highlighted to be a lighthearted comment, but I'd like to use it to illustrate that people - all of us - are much more complex than the stupid 'left vs. right' pigeonhole we're constantly put in. I can't speak for others, but I know that I hold views that are probably considered right, left, center - and perhaps a little bit of anarchist thrown in (just kidding about that last part). But if we're ever to get to the point where we actually LISTEN to each other, perhaps acknowledging this would be a good start. Blessings, -Ed

Where are the so-called 'civil rights leaders' who used to preach unity? MLK stood for unity - his dream was for his children to live in a world where people were not judged by 'the color of their skin'. John Lewis, a current member of Congress, marched with King. Lewis, in my opinion, has devolved from a man doing honorable things to just a political prostitute - a hack. Today he spouts no more than the current democrat talking points, yet - because of his history - we're supposed to take him seriously. What about the others? Jesse Jackson (as an associate of Dr. King) used to preach unity as well. Today, all he seems to be about is promoting resentment and division. And he's done very well (financially) from doing so. Al Sharpton? A racist and a joke. One that was invited to the WH during the former administration, however. Yes you can cite things like inter-racial couples no longer being a big deal, but I prefer to look at the bigger picture and where things are trending. The former administration SHOULD have been the nail in the coffin for advancing the ogre of racism in America - yet it was by many accounts just the opposite. Why is that? Shortly after King was assassinated - in the early 70s - a group of black sailors on the aircraft carrier I was eventually assigned to attempted to stop flight ops by gathering on the flight deck in front of the catapults. They were doing this because they wanted separate quarters. (this happened before I was assigned to the ship, so I did not witness it first hand). My understanding is the Captain made it very clear that flight ops would go on - and the men eventually disbanded. I cite this as an example of how race relations began to deteriorate from then on, and I stand by my statement. Leaders can either inspire us to do better; or they can play to our fears and prejudices. Unfortunately, we suffer a dearth of the former and an abundance of the latter. Blessings, -Ed

One of the points the OP attempted to make was the debate (or lack thereof) in this latest controversy. Just curious - were the crosses, the stones and the flag removed as a result of community consensus; or as a result of someone taking matters into their own hands and removing them in the dead of night? If the former, then fine. Community standards should be imposed by none other than those in the community. If the latter, however, that concerns me. As it should everyone. Blessings, -Ed

Exactly. I think people sometimes do not realize the first volley in the 'culture war' battle occurred post WWII when so-called progressives took over education in the US. It happened so slowly that few noticed or cared enough to stop it. If chaos was the eventual goal, it seems it has been achieved. Blessings, -Ed

If, as you say, perception is reality, then: Most Christians are racists, because with few exceptions they attend churches that are either mostly all white or all black. Of course, most Christians ARE NOT racists - so there must be other reasons for the lack of racial diversity in churches. Unfortunately (and contrary to the way it is supposed to be), churches many times simply reflect the cultures they are in rather than influencing them. And the culture is this: Sometime after the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, political hacks and lowlifes discovered more "hay could be made" by dividing the races than by uniting them. And race relations in this country have been going downhill ever since. Blessings, -Ed

Posters' comment: My son, a pastor, wrote this on his blog. I'm posting it here with his permission. It's long, but a good read nonetheless (maybe I'm a little biased). Blessings, -Ed Friday, August 18, 2017 Concerning History We have a BIG problem. That may also be one of the biggest understatements I've ever made. For this post I'm going to start off with a personal story. The year was 1998 and I was a 14 year old kid who was given the opportunity of my life (up to that point): playing in a soccer tournament in Belgium. This was something I was sent a letter and selected to participate in, and I was thrilled. I remember the morning I left. We were going to be flying out of Toronto and my dad couldn't get me to our meeting spot in Buffalo without being late for work. So we decided that I would spend some time with one of my teammates for this trip, and he just happened to be a black kid. I'll freely admit I was nervous, not out of fear or anything negative, but because I hadn't spent much time around black people. I didn't know quite what to say, or do, they were listening to music that was foreign to me. Yet I wasn't afraid, or scared. I was just nervous, this was a fairly new experience. I think we ended up kicking a soccer ball around until it was time to leave. We soon left for the bus to take us up to Toronto, and soon we'd be on our way to Belgium. Our time there was relatively short, just a bit over a week. Sure we'd have the games to play, but the rest of the time was spent sightseeing. We went to an amusement park, visited Brussels, Bruges, Waterloo, and a small fortification just outside of Antwerp, the city we were staying in. It was Fort Breendonk. Sure it's a funny name, but it has a terrible history. It's service began shortly before the outbreak of World War I. The walls had been covered in five meters (over 15 feet) of earth to further protect it from bombing, and surrounded by a moat. It was built to help defend Antwerp, but the Germans found a way to capture the city without having to attack the fort. It's true horror though came during World War II when it was used as a prison camp and a transfer station to the bigger and more well known concentration camps. It was a particularly brutal camp. The prisoners were forced to remove the earth that had been built up around the walls of the fort, and they had to remove it often with little more than pick axes. The commandant would unleash his German Shepherd "Lump" on the inmates for his own amusement. "Trials" held at the fort often resulted in hanging or the prisoners in front of a firing squad, while the others watched. It is estimated that as many as 3600 people were held there between 1940 and the end of the war, though never more than 600 at a time. The fort is very well preserved, actually considered to be among the best preserved prison camps from Nazi rule. The Belgian government has operated it as a museum since 1947, and it made quite an impression on me back then, and it still does to this day. What I didn't think much about then however was how I initially felt just before leaving, and then seeing what fear, paranoia, and hatred of the "other" had led to represented by Fort Breendonk. It's easy to let fear, bigotry, and hatred get out of control and commit violent acts as a response. As much as we want to think our problems are in the past, they're not. It would have been easy for the Belgian government to destroy the fort, to remove it from history because of what happened there. But they recognized that, as much as it represented evil, it could be used to educate future generations and maybe turn them away from the cruelty that occurred there and elsewhere. That brings us to today, where we have the ongoing issue of whether or not memorials to the Confederacy should remain or be removed. I would say it's a debate, but that would be wrong because debates are supposed to be civilized exchanges of rhetoric to try to win support for your beliefs or cause and move others to join you. What we've seen in contrast is fringe groups on both sides turn to violent outbursts, even driving vehicles into a crowd. Meanwhile mobs have taken it upon themselves to not wait for official word and destroyed some of the monuments themselves. Regardless of where you stand on the issue, I would hope we could all agree that the destruction of property by a mob is going way too far. Getting to the underlying issue however is how should our history be remembered? Is it right to say that the Civil War was fought for nothing but the preservation of slavery in the South and the abolition of slavery in the North? Well, we could say that, but would it be accurate? I think one of the most prominent beliefs is that nearly everyone in the South had slaves, but that isn't true. What is true however is that the Southern economy, mostly agrarian, was mostly dependent on slavery. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that what the majority of the Confederate soldiers fought for was slavery, but within the greater context of preserving what they had come to know. This may be especially true if we consider that politicians were convinced that they were losing their influence in Congress, and many preachers were combining a sort of nationalism with a little bit of scripture taken out of context. Given that this is what they were exposed to, they might see their fight in bigger and more important terms than slavery, though let's not forget that slavery did provide the foundation for their way of life. What about the North fighting to end slavery? Well, I don't believe that's entirely accurate either. During its colonial history, New England had been the place where slavery in the United States developed with Boston leading the way. Slavery was still legal into the early 19th century, but even after emancipation was granted attitudes didn't change in any meaningful way. Even with emancipation in the North, the economy, in particular the textile and shipping industries was still dependent on the institution of slavery and likely wasn't in any hurry to see it end. Union general Ulysses S Grant owned at least one slave and managed his father-in-law's property which had several slaves that he looked after. His wife Julia also had slaves who had been her playmates when they were children. Let's not forget that though the North may have been emancipated, it didn't stop slave labor from happening, in particular the Irish. This all leads me to believe that while slavery was a central and an important issue for the Civil War, there were many other issues along with that, and it's not entirely clear which side was more right than the other, although I should make it abundantly clear that I believe slavery, whether in its historical context or in its contemporary iteration of human trafficking, is abhorrent and should be brought to an end. For me though, the real fight that we're dealing with today began in the aftermath of the Civil War. If the Civil War was fought to simply bring an end to slavery and the attitudes surrounding it, then the conclusion of the war should have been the conclusion of the matter. However, Reconstruction proved otherwise. While the "Radical Republicans" wanted to punish the former Confederacy, Democrats fought back and galvanized support against inclusion of the former slaves and black people in their participation of American life and liberty, even up to the late 1960s, 100 years after the War had come to an end. History really is a lot more complicated than what it's made out to be, and we do ourselves and future generations a disservice when we try to reduce the complexities down to whatever suits our own narrative. The bottom line for me though comes down to this: I learned some history on the day I visited Fort Breendonk. Yeah, I had an awareness of World War II and why it was fought, but seeing the museum/monument forced me to confront it in a way that, almost 20 years later, I realize it affected me even more than I realized at that time. Had Fort Breendonk been torn down at the end of World War II, what would the lesson have been? And what does this mean for us in the early part of the 21st Century in the United States? Well, if we reduce the Civil War down to just "freedom vs. slavery", then it would be easy to say "Yes, tear down all those monuments." But I hope I've shown that it is more complicated than that, and that there were people on both sides who expressed attitudes and actions that we find disgusting. If Confederate monuments must be torn down because they represent slavery in our minds, why not be honest and tear down monuments to the Union as well, in particular those to Grant? Why do we forget that Lincoln may have signed the "Emancipation Proclamation" but also supported the former slaves leaving the country rather than staying. So why not picket The Lincoln Memorial as well? Or does fighting for the end of slavery really cover over the others things they did and attitudes they showed that aren't so good? Furthermore, I wonder if those wanting to tear down the memorials also express an appreciation for Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and Chairman Mao. If so, I find that to be an interesting...and disturbing...irony. It means values aren't grounded in anything other than whatever the popular trend is. These reminders of our past force us to deal with the realities they represent. Nothing is accomplished by tearing them down, in fact we might be doing ourselves a huge disservice in the long run. Yet we also do ourselves a disservice by not digging deeper and discovering the truth. These monuments should be put in a context where that can take place. As the saying goes "Those who don't learn from their history are doomed to repeat it", or something like that. The last thing I wish to mention though is tearing down monuments and statues will not erase ignorance, hatred, bigotry, and it certainly won't fix the sins of the past. Better laws, education, opportunity, communities, and societies can only go so far, but they can't heal the wounds either. The only thing that can truly bring about change is a heart that is transformed by the God who created all of humanity in His image, and desires that all take His offer to become part of His family and to be freed from sin and the desire to sin.

Pardon me for not digging into every nit and pick. As to accusing one of racism then, it's pretty much standard when it comes to opposing republican nominees or presidents. I don't think Eisenhower ever was accused of being racist, but Nixon was. Ford probably was. Reagan certainly was. And the Bushes. Throwing 'racist' around is SOP for democrats. I'm no fan of republicans, but for the most part to call them racist is just wrong. It usually works, however. Blessings, -Ed

Anyone can accuse anyone of racism. If there was merit to the accusations, however, Trump would never have been successful in his bid for president. It would not have happened - no way, no how. You're not seriously suggesting, are you, that with 16 or 17 other primary opponents, the democrats, most of the mainstream media - that if there was anything substantial to racism claims it would not have been used? Really? Blessings, -Ed

The Marxist/liberals in academia have a 50 or so year head start. One result we see is the huge support a Socialist (Bernie Sanders) had in the last election cycle - mostly from those under 30 or 40. Through no fault of their own, the majority of these people have basically been 'indoctrinated' and are ignorant of history. I think we may have - as a country - reached 'critical mass' and may have run out of time. If the Lord tarries, we just may be left to wallow in the results of the mistakes that 'we the people' have allowed the ruling class to create. Blessings, -Ed

So Donald Trump - with a 30 plus year history in the public eye yet never having been accused of racism - is all of a sudden a racist? Those in the media doing this are just despicable. Blessings, -Ed

I'd like to expand on this if I could. In your initial post, which I've reposted above, you made a declarative statement (racism is . . . a sin) which to me is obvious - like in the "water is wet" category. (hope that didn't come off as sarcastic - I didn't mean it to be) This is a thread that could have been posted in almost any category - but since it was posted in 'current news/U.S. News' I related it to what is going on at the current time. So called 'racism' is very much in the news these days. There are racists - there always have been. Racism (as you pointed out) IS a sin - and it's as old as mankind itself. I've always believed God doesn't 'catergorize' sins as we tend to do. To Him, sin is sin. It's all bad. And we are all sinners - that is true. But many of us - while we may acknowledge we are sinners, tend to have the attitude that 'well, my sin isn't as bad as his or her sin' - and we get some sort of satisfaction from it. I believe doing this is wrong. Today, being accused of racism or of being a racist is the worst thing that can happen to someone in public life. While there are indeed racists (as there have always been), I believe many people are falsely accused of being racists when they are in fact no such thing. The accusers who do this - knowing how destructive it is - do it to either discredit someone or to shut off any further discussion. That is why I made the point I did initially - that while racism is not specifically mentioned in Scripture (though hating one's brother is), the sin of bearing false witness IS mentioned. One more thing before I conclude - another misconception seems to be prevalent regarding racism. The misconception is this: only white people (i.e. Caucasians) can be racists. That is flat out ridiculous. This is so obvious it should go without saying. Since racism is a HUMAN failing, any HUMAN (of any race, creed or color) is capable of being a racist. It is only though the Blood of Christ that racism (or any other sin) can be overcome. Blessings, -Ed

So Illinois is no longer the "Land of Lincoln"? Blessings, -Ed

Yes, it falls under the banner of hatred, I believe. Christ is the answer, as He is for all sin. But while racism is indeed a sin, I contend that falsely accusing someone of being a racist (i.e. bearing false witness) is ALSO a sin. In fact, it's number nine on the Ten Commandments hit parade. Blessings, -Ed

Yep, the truth and the facts are often multi-faceted. In all likelihood, Sanger was not the saint this article paints her to be nor the villainess her critics claim. 'Painting with a broad brush' and 'guilty by association' is a bad thing. Kind of like when media focal point David Duke* says nice things about Trump. It doesn't mean Trump is a white supremacist. (except to those who rely on broad brush and guilt by association to smear those they oppose.) Can Trump really control what Duke says or does? Blessings, -Ed *I contend that David Duke is nothing more than an opportunist publicity hound who is more than happy to play the media foil to keep his name in the news. Has he even been relevant in the last 25-30 years?

Charlottesville, Barcelona, and the Left's Nostalgia for Nazism BY ROGER L SIMON AUGUST 17, 2017 Within minutes of the announcement of the vehicular terror attack in Barcelona, Jim Sciutto and Wolf Blitzer of CNN were opining that the horrifying events in Spain may have been inspired by (i.e. were a copycat of) Charlottesville. The implications of this comparison are not only wrong-headed, they are reactionary and dangerous to the American public and the world. And this is for even more important reasons than the fact that Barcelona was a catastrophic attack with, as of this writing, 13 dead and over 100 wounded, many seriously. (Coordinated attacks were apparently attempted in other parts of Catalonia.) What happened in Charlottesville? A hodgepodge group of disgusting white-supremacist racists, including vestigial members of the barely-existent Ku Klux Klan and some random neo-Nazis who spilled off a webpage, decided to assemble in Charlottesville, VA, to protest that city's removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. None of these demonstrators -- despite what Donald Trump alleged -- were justified in this protest, because standing with the KKK and neo-Nazis automatically disqualifies you for life, no matter what your reasoning. Nevertheless, they were only a few hundred of these demonstrators, a decidedly puny showing in a country of over 325 million. Another counter-protest consisting largely of the equally disgusting Antifa movement arrived to oppose this demonstration. The two sides, not surprisingly, got in each other's faces violently. The police opted out, as they so often do these days. And one delusional white supremacist dope -- in an act that does not seem to have been premeditated, but entirely out of blind rage -- drove into the crowd of counter-protestors, killing a young woman. A tragedy... ... but nothing at all like what went on in Barcelona. Or in Nice. Or in Paris. Or in London. Or in Manchester. Or in Berlin. Or in Brussels. Or in Stockholm. Or in Orlando. Or in San Bernardino.... Obviously, I could go on. These were all -- to one degree or another -- planned acts of radical Islamic terrorism, designed to frighten the world into submission, not random explosions of reprehensible racist hotheads exacerbated by extremely poor crowd control. How the Police Should Have Treated the Nazis in Charlottesville So why -- beyond the traditional Trump bashing -- are such liberal-lefties, or whatever you want to call them at CNN and elsewhere, so determined to make such an equivalency? Why do they want to magnify the existence and importance of neo-Nazis and Klan members in our society when their numbers are minuscule? We could call this a kind of nostalgia for Nazism, the yearning for a simpler time when the source of all evil was so clearly evident and so directly confronted. Perhaps more importantly, it's a nostalgia for when all evil was supposedly on the right, even though the Nazis, so many conveniently forget, were the National Socialist Party. At least the right could be blamed. And is. It is also a yearning for a time when the source of evil was not so treacherous and complicated. No one knows how many Islamic radicals there are or where they are, although there are apparently a lot of them, probably vastly more than there ever were Nazis, possibly in the hundreds of millions if you add up the results of this Pew poll of eleven Muslim countries. (It may even be understated, given the reluctance to answer such incriminating questions.) Not only that, a significant percentage of the left evinces sympathy for Islamic radicals, identifying with them and justifying their cause, despite the obvious misogyny and homophobia, through such latter-day crypto-fascist inventions as "intersectionality." The Antifa movement, in the forefront of that nauseating sympathy for Islamism, is far more prevalent and dangerous in U.S. society than those few pathetic remaining losers in the KKK and similar neo-Nazi groups. The Antifa thugs are seemingly everywhere, smashing windows and making life Hell for weak-willed university administrators across the country. Nevertheless, overwhelmed by this nostalgia that is, in truth, a masquerade for fear of a gruesome reality, the almost non-existent neo-Nazis are the boogeymen of the hour in the eyes of our friends on the left. Again, what a convenience, because dealing with what happened in Barcelona is surpassingly difficult. It isn't because of neo-Nazis or the KKK that it's been decades since any of us has walked onto an airplane or entered a concert or museum without being examined or x-rayed, that our daily lives have not been the same. A vicious ideological war is obviously being waged against the West and its liberties with its end nowhere near in sight. As ISIS wrote of the Spanish terror, "We will recover our land from the invaders." Like the Nazis of old, they mean it. Will the left ever wake up? Or will they still be talking about Charlottesville when a runaway truck barrels across Times Square and down Broadway? Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media. His latest book is I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn't Already. He tweets @rogerlsimon. https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2017/08/17/charlottesville-barcelona-lefts-nostalgia-naziism/#comments

God Bless Andrew Young. -Ed

Civil Rights Icon Argues for Confederate Monuments to Remain in Place BY CHRIS QUEEN AUGUST 17, 2017 The Left has made the removal of monuments to the Confederacy their cause du jour. The alt-right, white-nationalist rally and its ensuing violence in Charlottesville, Va., last weekend stemmed from the planned removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee, and in the wake of the horrific events in that town, more monuments have come down while others are sure to follow. Stacey Abrams, a Democratic candidate for Georgia's governor, has called for the removal of the iconic Confederate memorial carving on Stone Mountain, just outside of Atlanta. A little further east, in my hometown of Covington, the county Board of Commissioners heard from a handful of citizens who want the Confederate monument at the center of the town square removed or relocated; for what it's worth, our first African-American county commission chair has said that he doesn't want our town to become another Charlottesville. One voice from the civil rights movement has chimed in on the new trend of erasing the history of the Confederacy. Former Atlanta mayor and United Nations ambassador Andrew Young told reporters on Tuesday that the fight to remove Confederate monuments is not worth having. The Atlanta Journal-Constitutionquoted Young: “I think it’s too costly to refight the Civil War,” Young said Wednesday at a press conference in which he and fellow civil rights icon C.T. Vivian endorsed Atlanta City Council President Ceasar Mitchell to succeed Kasim Reed as the city’s next mayor. “We have paid too great a price in trying to bring people together.” Young said that he believes that civil rights movements of the past and present have been mistaken in targeting the symbols of even ugly history and should have concentrated more on fighting for issues like economic progress and education. He also reiterated the tried-and-true adage that nonviolent protests are the way to bring about genuine change. The former mayor turned heads later on in the press conference when he said that the fight over removing the Confederate battle emblem from the Georgia state flag cost the state business and generated more bad attention than good. In the early-2000s, Democratic governor Roy Barnes spearheaded the ultimately successful attempt to change the state flag. Young said that he believed the flap over the flag quashed a deal to bring a Mercedes-Benz plant to South Georgia. The facility would have brought 3,000 jobs to a part of the state that needed them the most. He told reporters, “I’ve always been interested more in substance over symbols." SPONSORED The civil rights icon also reiterated his belief that roiling violence like that in Charlottesville would not happen in Atlanta. In Young's words, the metropolis known as the "city too busy to hate" has too much brotherhood to generate that kind of anger. As WSB-TV reported: "You go to any job in the city or building at any time and you will see black and white on any job in the city," he said. "That is the tradition that has thrived here when it's been threatened everywhere else in the world." He should know. As the South has changed, Andrew Young served alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. during the civil rights movement and later represented Georgia in Congress. Of course, he led the city of Atlanta for eight years in the '80s. I don't agree with Andrew Young on much, but I'll give credit where credit is due. Young understands that removing monuments to the past — even painful, difficult periods in history — does nothing to erase those events, but those memorials can serve as teachable moments that help shape the future. If only we could hear more reasonable voices like his from either side of the aisle. https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/08/17/civil-rights-icon-argues-for-confederate-monuments-to-remain-in-place/

Take it up with the Southern Poverty Law Center. They're all about promoting so called 'white supremacy', y'know. Blessings, -Ed

Oh My: Leftist Southern Poverty Law Center Mentions Charlottesville White Supremacist Organizer as Former Occupy Wall Street, Obama Supporter Katie Pavlich | Posted: Aug 16, 2017 1:25 PM According to the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center [SPLC], one of the white supremacist organizers of Saturday's rally in Charlottesville is a former Occupy Wall Street activist and supporter of Barack Obama. Jason Kessler is listed with SPLC as an "extremist." Here's an excerpt from the information about Kessler published on their website: Relying on familiar tropes of “white genocide” and “demographic displacement,” white nationalist blogger Jason Kessler seeks notoriety with his "Unite the Right" march in Charlottesville, Virginia. Rumors abound on white nationalist forums that Kessler’s ideological pedigree before 2016 was less than pure and seem to point to involvement in the Occupy movement and past support for President Obama. At one recent speech in favor of Charlottesville’s status as a sanctuary city, Kessler live-streamed himself as an attendee questioned him and apologized for an undisclosed spat during Kessler’s apparent involvement with Occupy. Kessler appeared visibly perturbed by the woman’s presence and reminders of their past association. Those speaking at the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” event include Richard Spencer, who spoke at the first Charlottesville rally, Mike Enoch of The Right Stuff, Matthew Heimbach of the white nationalist Traditionalist Workers Party, Augustus Invictus, a pagan neo-fascist who has pledged to bring about a second Civil War, and Michael Hill of the League of the South. Despite overwhelming condemnation from Republicans and conservatives of white nationalism and what happened in Charlottesville, the left and their friends in the media have tried to pin the weekend's violence on the mainstream right. It turns out, they should be looking further left. Over to you Durham, North Carolina. https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2017/08/16/oh-my-leftist-southern-poverty-law-center-lists-charlottesville-white-supremacist-organizer-as-former-occupy-wall-street-obama-supporter-n2369506?utm_content=bufferc292f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

One eternal truth about capitalism - the market is fluid and ever changing. What may have been true yesterday may be a costly mistake, today. I just watched the "Car Week" special on the History Channel - a three-episode special chronicling everything from Henry Ford's Model T to today's Tesla. The auto industry is replete with examples of what sells today may not sell tomorrow. The Model T is what built Ford Motor Company, but the elder Ford tried to hold onto it so long (while his competitors were innovating) that it almost destroyed the company he founded. Also, a lot of the same arguments against on-line businesses we heard 10 and 20 years ago when Wal-Mart was in its hyper-growth stage - i.e. it's putting the local mom and pop stores out of business. As we've seen with the Wal-Mart phenomena, what happens is the ones who can adapt to changing market conditions survive; the ones who cannot, die. It's a perfect illustration of "survival of the fittest". (As long as government doesn't play favorites by declaring a company 'too big to fail', that is). Blessings, -Ed

I read the story at the link and this is one of those where there is no one to root for. The Nazi flag waver is a jerk, but the flag is on his property and he has the right to fly it. Ignoring him (rather than giving him the national attention he seems to crave) is the best course of action. The woman comes off as a lunatic, quite honestly. Blessings, -Ed

It was a joke, son. Blessings, -Ed

It's definitely not from Scripture, but there's truth in this quote just the same . . . "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" ~Pete Townsend, "The Who" Blessings, -Ed

I'm sure Mr. Trump will get the credit for this. In other news, sightings of flying pigs have been reported worldwide . . . Blessings, -Ed

My definition of conservative (true right, if you will) is one who favors as small a government as possible. One that leans toward individual liberty. In other words, I'm an anachronism. A good place for conservatives to start would be the Bill of Rights. To bad so few in government today even acknowledge it - let alone honor it. Blessings, -Ed