How the Arrogant Classes Plan to Run Your Life

From the publisher:

In this bracing collection of provocative essays, Michael Knox Beran examines the false benevolence that characterizes the power classes in contemporary America. Their enlightened pity for their fellow citizens, he charges, conceals an instinct for power rather than compassion. Mr. Beran argues that today’s elites have come to rely on a social philosophy that reduces people to a mass of social groups and types, obscures their individual humanity, and makes them easier to manipulate. While they tragically conceive their desire for authority as a form of virtue, the elite classes have set about remaking schools, rewriting the U.S. Constitution, dehumanizing charity, and making war on tradition in the name of a crude form of Social Darwinism.

At Amazon

Top 50 Blogs by Theology Professors

http://www.masteroftheology.org/top-50-blogs-by-theology-professors.html#18

Today’s Money Shot 12/16/10

Three great sins that the Christian struggles with are these:

“They seek in themselves what they can only find in Christ; they seek in the law what can only be found in the gospel; and they seek on earth what can only be enjoyed in heaven.”

Thomas Manton

 

Femisogynists are ruining America’s Women

Cassy Fiano at News Real Blog has an article titled “8 Ways Fascist Feminists are Ruining America’s Women“. An interesting read. I came across this at http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/

The women’s locker room at my gym are being rennovated and are in a mess. So the gym has asked the men to use that while the women are using the rennovated men’s locker room. Cool. But the way they ask appeals to gender stereotypes, like being a gentleman and doing the right thing for the ladies. Obviously the women should not be allowed to dress and shower in a mess, like the men had to do when their locker room was being rennovated. Subtle message – men, you are animals and this should not bother you; women, you are fragile and need for men to make a sacrifice lest you be submitted to this inconvenience. This is a gym, mind you, where many of the women lift more and run farther than the men do.

Whatever… But it’s interesting how we can’t get our gender stereotypes straight in our culture.

 

The Glory of Christ

From John Piper’s 2008 Together 4 the Gospel Conference message titled “How the Supremacy of Christ Creates Radical Christian Sacrifice”. Christ is supreme because:

He is God’s final revelation
He is the heir of all things
He is the creator of the world
He is the radiance of God’s glory
He is the exact imprint of God’s nature
He upholds the universe by the word of His power
He made purification for sins
He sits at the right hand of the Majesty
He is God enthroned forever with the scepter of uprightness
He is worshiped by angels
His rule will have no end
His joy is above all other things in the universe
He took on human flesh
He was crowned with glory and honor because of his suffering
He was the founder of our salvation
He was made perfect in all of his obedience by his suffering
He destroyed the one who had the power of death
He delivered us from the bondage of fear
He is a merciful and faithful high priest
He made propitiation for sins
He is sympathetic because of His own trials
He never sinned
He offered up loud cries and tears with reverent fear and God heard him
He became the source of eternal salvation
He holds His priesthood by virtue of an indestructible life
He appears in the presence of God on our behalf
He will come a second time to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him
He is the same yesterday, today, and forever

Thanks to Jared at The Gospel Driven Church

The Banks are at it again!!!

Having been part of the sub-prime mortgage mess and on the edge of the CDO scam, and then getting a tax-payer bailout, the same banks are now sweeping into areas and buying the liens put on properties for taxes owed. City and country governments sell liens they have not been able to collect to third parties who then have the right to set a high interest rate, attach legal and other fees that multiply the amount owed. In many cases this results in them actually taking the property.

The banks do this under assumed names so that no one will know that it is the very banks who helped create the liability in the first place who are now benefiting by that liability.

By the way, the former head of Fannie Mae is now “in” on buying these liens. Can it get more absurd than this?

Terry Gross on Fresh Air interviewed Fred Schulte about his findings on investigating this.

This kind of things begs the real question of fairness. Should a person find themselves liable to lose a $100,000 home over an unpaid $300 bill? Is this a punishment that fits the “crime”? Obviously not. And yet it is the American way. As the investigation points out, many of the foreclosures over unpaid tax bills are done on homes where the mortgage are already paid off (often lived in by senior citizens) because then it is not legally a foreclosure and will not be reported as such, not giving the bank even more of a black eye.

Where is Ralph Nader when you need him?????

Here is what is earmarked in the current tax proposal by the Mass delegation

Take a look. Here is what is being spent “under the radar” by our legislators. And this is just in Massachusetts. It makes my skin crawl.

Today’s Money Shot, 12/16/10

“The main thing we learn from a serious attempt to practice the Christian virtues is that we fail. If there was any idea that God had set us a sort of exam and that we might get good marks by deserving them, that has to be wiped out. If there was any idea of a sort of bargain—any idea that we could perform our side of the contract and thus put God in our debts so that it was up to Him to perform His side—that has to be wiped out….everyone has the idea of an exam or of a bargain; the first result of real Christianity is to blow that to bits.”   CS Lewis