The Immigration Continuum - Time to End "the Shrill"

Comments:

• The yellow - green - yellow continuum is my creation. Click on it to enlarge.
• The Libertarian view is here: "Libertarians believe that people should be able to travel freely as long as they are peaceful. We welcome immigrants who come seeking a better life. The vast majority of immigrants are very peaceful and highly productive. Indeed, the United States is a country of immigrants, of all backgrounds and walks of life…some families have just been here for more generations than others. Newcomers bring great vitality to our society. A truly free market requires the free movement of people, not just products and ideas. Whether they are from India or Mexico, whether they have advanced degrees or very little education, immigrants have one great thing in common: they bravely left their familiar surroundings in search of a better life. Many are fleeing extreme poverty and violence and are searching for a free and safe place to try to build their lives. We respect and admire their courage and be proud that they see the United States as a place of freedom, stability, and prosperity. Of course, if someone has a record of violence, credible plans for violence, or acts violently, then Libertarians support blocking their entry, deporting, and/or prosecuting and imprisoning them, depending on the offense."
• The Phase down mass migration view is here: "Phase Immigration Down so we can Phase Americans Back In! Immigration is an optional program that is supposed to respond to the needs and desires of the American people. Our government can and should determine admission levels based on what’s best for America, but that's not happening.
• The Constitutional view is [duh] from the Constitution
• Observations:
• Even the Libertarian view is not an absolutist view: "f someone has a record of violence, credible plans for violence, or acts violently, then Libertarians support blocking their entry, deporting, and/or prosecuting and imprisoning them, depending on the offense". It's not anti-Constitutional! It's not the John Lennon - "Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for" - view!
• I tend towards the Libertarian view on many things - I can say that I personally do not hold this view (but I am close to it) and I've never met a true Libertarian who has expressed this view
• On the other extreme, I personally have never met anyone who has exposed this view
• On the extremes: The "yellows" are over-represented in size in my continuum chart for the sole purpose of having enough space for the text!
• Back to the Constitutional view - note the text: "The Congress shall have the power ..."
• We have a crisis today because the Congress has punted! We have laws on the books that have not been followed, exacerbating the immigration crisis
• On the "shrill": Trump's position is not substantially different than Bill Clinton's
• Notable attempts at reform:
• The George Bush plan
• The "Gang of 8" plan

#MiltonFriedman #Quote "It's just obvious you can't have free #immigration and a #welfare state"https://t.co/QyxHQdcwhm pic.twitter.com/sZZ41iAG2i

— James Peet (@jrpeet) March 1, 2017

.@marg1390r @Ill_Mindst8 Good immigration readhttps://t.co/aeSIhhDoVC

— James Peet (@jrpeet) September 21, 2018

Wow ... surprised me. 22Mhttps://t.co/kFU4zPtleU

— James Peet (@jrpeet) September 22, 2018

A broken asylum system all but guarantees entry if you bring children.https://t.co/AB0oscoA3g pic.twitter.com/attl3f9eUa

— James Peet (@jrpeet) April 6, 2019

Ian O'Doherty's column on Trump's election

A two fingers to a politically correct elite - Hillary Clinton has damned her party to irrelevance for at least the next four years in a stunningly self-inflicted defeat. People didn't vote for Trump because of what he is, it's what he's not that appealed

Tuesday November 8, 2016 - a day that will live in infamy, or the moment when America was made great again?

The truth, as ever, will lie somewhere in the middle. After all, contrary to what both his supporters and detractors believe - and this is probably the only thing they agree on - Trump won't be able to come into office and spend his first 100 days gleefully ripping up all the bits of the Constitution he doesn't like. But even if this week's seismic shockwave doesn't signal either the sky falling in or the start of a bright new American era, the result was, to use one of The Donald's favourite phrases, huge.

It is, in fact, a total game changer. In decades to come, historians will still bicker about the most poisonous, toxic and stupid election in living memory. They will also be bickering over the same vexed question - how did a man who was already unpopular with the public and who boasted precisely zero political experience beat a seasoned Washington insider who was married to one extremely popular president and who had worked closely with another? The answer, ultimately, is in the question.

History will record this as a Trump victory, which of course it is. But it was also more than that, because this was the most stunning self-inflicted defeat in the history of Western democracy. Hillary Clinton has damned her party to irrelevance for at least the next four years. She has also ensured that Obama's legacy will now be a footnote rather than a chapter. Because the Affordable Care Act is now doomed under a Trump presidency and that was always meant to be his gift, of sorts, to America.

How did a candidate who had virtually all of the media, all of Hollywood, every celebrity you could think of, a couple of former presidents and apparently, the hopes of an entire gender resting on her shoulders, blow up her own campaign? I rather suspect that neither Donald nor Hillary know how they got to this point. Where she seemed to expect the position to become available to her by right - the phrase "she deserves it" was used early in the campaign and then quickly dropped when her team remembered that Americans don't like inherited power - his first steps into the campaign were those of someone chancing their arm.

If he wasn't such a staunch teetotaller, many observers would have accused him of only doing it as a drunken bet. But the more the campaign wore on, something truly astonishing began to happen - the people began to speak. And they began to speak in a voice which, for the first time in years in the American heartland, would not be ignored. Few of the people who voted for Trump seriously believe that he is going to personally improve their fortunes. Contrary to the smug, middle-class media narrative, they aren't all barely educated idiots. They know what he is, of course they do. It's what he is not that appeals to them.

Clinton, on the other hand, had come to represent the apex of smug privilege. Whether it was boasting about her desire to shut down the remaining coal industry in Virginia - that worked out well for her, in the end - or calling half the electorate a "basket of deplorables", she seemed to operate in the perfumed air of the elite, more obsessed with coddling idiots and pandering to identity and feelings than improving the hardscrabble life that is the lot of millions of Americans.

Also, nobody who voted for Trump did so because they wanted him as a spiritual guru or life coach. But plenty of people invested an irrational amount of emotional energy into a woman who was patently undeserving of that level of adoration. That's why we've witnessed such fury from her supporters - they had wrapped themselves so tightly in the Hillary flag that a rejection of her felt like a rejection of them. And when you consider that many American colleges gave their students Wednesday off class because they were too 'upset' to study, you can see that this wasn't a battle for the White House - this became a genuine battle for America's future direction. And, indeed, for the West. (Emphasis mine/jcm)

We have been going through a cultural paroxysm for the last 10 years - the rise of identity politics has created a Balkanised society where the content of someone's mind is less important than their skin colour, gender, sexuality or whatever other attention-seeking label they wish to bestow upon themselves. In fact, where once it looked like racism and sexism might be becoming archaic remnants of a darker time, a whole new generation has popped up which wants to re-litigate all those arguments all over again. In fact, while many of us are too young to recall the Vietnam war and the social upheaval of the 1960s, plenty of observers who were say they haven't seen an America more at war with itself than it is today.

One perfect example of this new America has been the renewed calls for segregation on campuses. Even a few years ago, such a move would have been greeted with understandable horror by civil rights activists - but this time it's the black students demanding segregation and "safe spaces" from whites. If young people calling for racial segregation from each other isn't the sign of a very, very sick society, nothing is.

The irony of Clinton calling Trump and his followers racist while she was courting Black Lives Matter was telling. After all, no rational white person would defend the KKK, yet here was a white women defending both BLM and the New Black Panthers - explicitly racist organisations with the NBP, in particularly, openly espousing a race war if they don't get what they want.

Fundamentally, Trump was attractive because he represents a repudiation of the nonsense that has been slowly strangling the West. He represents - rightly or wrongly, and the dust has still to settle - a scorn and contempt for these new rules. He won't be a president worried about microaggressions, or listening to the views of patently insane people just because they come from a fashionably protected group. He also represents a glorious two fingers to everyone who has become sick of being called a racist or a bigot or a homophobe - particularly by Hillary supporters who are too dense to realise that she has always actually been more conservative on social issues than Trump. That it might take a madman to restore some sanity to America is, I suppose, a quirk that is typical to that great nation - land of the free and home to more contradictions than anyone can imagine.

Trump's victory also signals just how out of step the media has been with the people. Not just American media, either. In fact, the Irish media has continued its desperate drive to make a show of itself with a seemingly endless parade of emotionally incontinent gibberish that, ironically, has increased in ferocity and hysterical spite in the last few days. The fact that Hillary's main cheerleaders in the Irish and UK media still haven't realised where they went wrong is instructive and amusing in equal measure. They still don't seem to understand that by constantly insulting his supporters, they're just making asses of themselves. One female contributor to this newspaper said Trump's victory was a "sad day for women". Well, not for the women who voted for him, it wasn't. But that really is the nub of the matter - the 'wrong' kind of women obviously voted for Trump. The 'right' kind went with Hillary. And lost. The Irish media is not alone in being filled largely with dinner-party liberals who have never had an original or socially awkward thought in their lives. They simply assume that everyone lives in the same bubble and thinks the same thoughts - and if they don't, they should. Of the many things that have changed with Trump's victory, the bubble has burst.

Never in American history have the polls, the media and the chin-stroking moral arbiters of the liberal agenda been so spectacularly, wonderfully wrong. It was exactly that condescending, obnoxious sneer towards the working class that brought them out in such numbers, and that is the great irony of Election 16 - the Left spent years creating identity politics to the extent that the only group left without protection or a celebrity sponsor was the white American male. That it was the white American male who swung it for Trump is a timely reminder that while black lives matter, all votes count - even the ones of people you despise.

You don't have to be a supporter of Trump to take great delight in the sheer, apoplectic rage that has greeted his victory. If Clinton had won and Trump supporters had gone on a rampage through a dozen American cities the next night, there would have been outrage - and rightly so. But in a morally and linguistically inverted society, the wrong-doers are portrayed as the victims. We saw that at numerous Trump rallies - protesters would disrupt the event, claiming their right to free speech (a heckler's veto is not free speech) and provoking people until they got a dig before running to the media and claiming victimhood.

But, ultimately, this election was about people saying enough with the bullshit. This is a country in crisis, and most Americans don't care about transgender bathrooms, or safe spaces, or government speech laws. This was about people taking some control back for themselves. It was about them saying that they won't be hectored and bullied by the toddler tantrums thrown by pissy and spoiled millennials and they certainly won't put up with being told they're stupid and wicked just because they have a difference of opinion. But, really, this election is about hope for a better America; an America which isn't obsessed with identity and perceived 'privilege'; an American where being a victim isn't a virtue and where you don't have to apologise for not being up to date with the latest list of socially acceptable phrases.

Trump's victory was a two fingers to the politically correct. It was a brutal rejection of the nonsense narrative which says Muslims who kill Americans are somehow victims. It took the ludicrous Green agenda and threw it out. It was a return, on some level, to a time when people weren't afraid to speak their own mind without some self-elected language cop shouting at you. Who knows, we may even see Trump kicking the UN out of New York.

Frankly, if you're one of those who gets their politics from Jon Stewart and Twitter, look away for the next four years, because you're not going to like what you see. The rest of us, however, will be delighted. This might go terribly, terribly wrong. Nobody knows - and if we have learned anything this week, it's that nobody knows nuthin'. But just as the people of the UK took control back with Brexit, the people of America did likewise with their choice for president.

It's called democracy. Deal with it.

Comment: Sent to me by my brother-in-law this morning

Peter Kreeft's Twenty Arguments For The Existence Of God

Twenty Arguments For The Existence Of God

Comments: For philosophers, apologists and Theologians.  Peter Kreeft is a Catholic theologian and the author of the Handbook of Christian Apologetics . Image source 

The other side (anticipating comments): Google reasons god does not exist.

Clinton on deportation of illegal aliens

Bill Clinton: State of the Union Address (January 24, 1995)

Excerpt:

All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That's why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens. In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace as recommended by the commission headed by former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.

Comment: Bill had / has more polish than Trump but I agreed with Clinton on immigration then, and I agree with Trump on immigration today!

What happened to the Ark of the Covenant?

Comments: Above images from Raiders of the Lost Ark (a great film!): In the movie:

• Found by Indy
• Examined by the Nazis - to their destruction
• Crated by US government officials
• Filed away in a massive warehouse
• And the Nazi emblem magically is burned away (as if from the inside)

A great story ... but what likely happened:

• Stripped of it's gold
• The wooden portion burned
• Gone! When Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon destroyed Jerusalem: 2 Kings 24:10-13 "At that time the servants of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up to Jerusalem, and the city was besieged. 11 And Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to the city while his servants were besieging it, 12 and Jehoiachin the king of Judah gave himself up to the king of Babylon, himself and his mother and his servants and his officials and his palace officials. The king of Babylon took him prisoner in the eighth year of his reign 13 and carried off all the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king's house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold in the temple of the Lord, which Solomon king of Israel had made, as the Lord had foretold." 2 Kings 25:8-10, " In the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month—that was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon—Nebuzaradan, the captain of the bodyguard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. 9 And he burned the house of the Lord and the king's house and all the houses of Jerusalem; every great house he burned down. 10 And all the army of the Chaldeans, who were with the captain of the guard, broke down the walls around Jerusalem. "
• Jeremiah (a contemporary of these events) comments on the Ark in chapter 3 of Jeremiah: "they shall no more say, 'The ark of the covenant of the Lord.' It shall not come to mind or be remembered or missed; it shall not be made again. " (vs 16)

It's still a good movie!  

Banks ready to roll out ZellePay

The Big Banks Have Officially Released Zelle Into The Wild To Take On Venmo

Excerpt:

The hype around P2P payments has been fairly turned up over the last few years, and the upcoming battle between big bank-backed Zelle and PayPal property Venmo has certainly gotten quite a bit of attention on these pages and many others. But, curiously enough, when it came time for Zelle to make the great leap forward and out into the marketplace — its emergence yesterday was somewhat muted.

Bank of America announced yesterday that it is officially the first of the big banks to incorporate Zelle into its banking app. That means as of now, BoA customers will have the ability to transfer funds P2P and use the service to even split payments. “When Zelle rolls out among all the partner banks later this year, the platform will provide consumers a faster, easier way to send and receive payments in minutes without leaving the security of their own financial institution,” BoA noted in a release. And that partner banking network, for Zelle, certainly packs a notable punch.

All in all, nineteen banks have signed on for Zelle: BoA, Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp, among others, with one fairly simple objective: catch and pass Venmo in the P2P space. Zelle will most likely be incorporated into other partners in much the way the BoA integration went — as a feature within a bank’s own mobile app.

However, consumers will also have the option of a standalone Zelle payment app by the middle of the year. That app will work with any debit card — regardless of what bank issued it. The race with Venmo will be tough — and Venmo has a big head start, since it was first founded in 2009. It processed $17.6 billion in transactions last year, a 135 percent increase from the previous year. And Venmo’s base is almost inordinately fond of it. “That’s a huge advantage,” said Michael Moeser, director of payments at Javelin Strategy & Research. When presented with another option, ‘‘An avid Venmo user is going to ask, ‘Why do I need something else?’’’

But Zelle has a big advantage all its own — a cemented connection to the big banks where millions of Americans keep their money. Want to request $40 from a friend? Using Zelle means those funds hit the user’s actual bank account within minutes of the transaction.

A Venmo user, on the other hand, would see the funds in the Venmo wallet — but would then have to cash out the balance and wait for its arrival in order to actually turn it into cash. Venmo is working hard to fix that up — PayPal’s deal with Visa and Mastercard earlier this year makes it possible to move money over debit networks, and by the mid-year mark, it should be possible to cash out a PayPal account nearly instantly.

The launch of Venmo’s new competitor has been rolling out gradually — and the first phase will see bank payment apps incorporate Zelle’s options and basic design (though there will be no Zelle branding). Zelle is, in and of itself, a free service — though partner banks can chose to add a charge if they wish. (Few think they will because Venmo is free.)

Comment: Follow the trail: Zelle is a EarlyWarning function and EarlyWarning is owned by the biggest US banks

Early Warning is owned by Bank of America, BB&T, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo

Advantage: Instant transfer of funds

Cash Faces a New Challenger in Zelle, a Mobile Banking Service https://t.co/LvMPwO4Ys5

— James Peet (@jrpeet) June 12, 2017

We use @PayPal for purchases and @Zelle for P2P fundshttps://t.co/NyLwna9BTs

— James Peet (@jrpeet) July 31, 2018

Ten ways in which Christian belief creates a hospitable environment for scientific inquiry

1. The physical universe is an objective reality, which is ontologically distinct from the Creator (Genesis 1:1; John 1:1).
2. The laws of nature exhibit order, pattern and regularity, since they are established by an orderly God (Psalm 19:1-4).
3. The laws of nature are uniform throughout the physical universe, since God created and providentially sustains them.
4. The physical universe is intelligible because God created us to know himself, ourselves and the rest of creation (Genesis 1-2; Proverbs 8).
5. The world is good, valuable and worthy of careful study because it was created for a purpose by a perfectly good God (Genesis 1). Humans, as the unique image bearers of God, were created to discern, discover and develop the goodness of creation for the glory of God and human betterment terment through work. The creation mandate (Genesis 1:26-28) includes cludes scientific activity.
6. Because the world is not divine and therefore not a proper object of worship, it can be an object of rational study and empirical observation.
7. Human beings possess the ability to discover the universe's intelligibility, since we are made in God's image and have been placed on earth to develop its intrinsic possibilities.
8. Because God did not reveal everything about nature, empirical investigation is necessary to discern the patterns God laid down in creation.
9. God encourages, even propels, science through his imperative to humans mans to take dominion over nature (Genesis 1:28).
10. The intellectual virtues essential to carrying out the scientific enterprise prise (studiousness, honesty, integrity, humility and courage) are part of God's moral law (Exodus 20:1-17).

Comment: Douglas Groothuis. Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith (Kindle Locations 1034-1037). Kindle Edition. / Image source below is from ASA website here.

God has two "books" for us:

Nature / Science is the study of the Physical

His Word / Theology is the study of the Metaphysical

Dr. James White - Understanding Islam

Comment: Worthwhile

"Wife Beating" in the Quran - "the 4:34 dance"

The Quran, chapter 4 (An-Nisa), verse 34

Excerpt:

But those [wives] from whom you fear arrogance - [first] advise them; [then if they persist], forsake them in bed; and [finally], strike them.

Comment: Ask a Muslim to defend this! Wiki article is interesting.

Muslim feminist writer Asra Q. Nomani has argued: Indeed, Muslim scholars and leaders have long been doing what I call "the 4:34 dance" -- they reject outright violence against women but accept a level of aggression that fits contemporary definitions of domestic violence

In contrast:

Screen sharing with Mac

How to use screen sharing in Messages for Mac

Comment: So simple / we use screen sharing for our daily Bible time and weekly financial review

The Qur'an and the Scales

Embed from Getty Images

Three passages:

21:47

And We place the scales of justice for the Day of Resurrection, so no soul will be treated unjustly at all. And if there is [even] the weight of a mustard seed, We will bring it forth. And sufficient are We as accountant.

23:99-104

[For such is the state of the disbelievers], until, when death comes to one of them, he says, "My Lord, send me back. That I might do righteousness in that which I left behind." No! It is only a word he is saying; and behind them is a barrier until the Day they are resurrected. So when the Horn is blown, no relationship will there be among them that Day, nor will they ask about one another. And those whose scales are heavy [with good deeds] - it is they who are the successful. But those whose scales are light - those are the ones who have lost their souls, [being] in Hell, abiding eternally. The Fire will sear their faces, and they therein will have taut smiles.

42:16-18

And those who argue concerning Allah after He has been responded to - their argument is invalid with their Lord, and upon them is [His] wrath, and for them is a severe punishment. It is Allah who has sent down the Book in truth and [also] the balance. And what will make you perceive? Perhaps the Hour is near. Those who do not believe in it are impatient for it, but those who believe are fearful of it and know that it is the truth. Unquestionably, those who dispute concerning the Hour are in extreme error.

Comments: This is "works" salvation and the antithesis of the "grace" salvation of Biblical Christianity: Ephesians 2:8-9:

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast

Carplay, IPhone, ITunes & iExplorer

As many know we bought a new car:

The feature I am most impressed with is CarPlay.  Plug you IPhone into the USB connection and voilà one's phone is connected to the car entertainment system!

On my previous MacBook I had ripped many CD's into ITunes. Then I packed as many as I could into my 16 gig IPhone 5s.

When my Macbook died recently I lost that library (on the MacBook). What to do? 

Today I used IExplorer 4  to download all of that library from the IPhone 5s back into ITunes.

The next project is:

• Backup the MacBook ITunes library onto a USB 3.0 Flash drive (128 Gig)
• And begin to use an Apple Superdrive to contine to rip CDs into ITunes
• Next: I need about a 128 gig Iphone. Fun Fun

Shariah Law is the Real Islam Problem

Do you think Islam needs reform?

Excerpt:

Islam does need reform. This is critical to our national security for two reasons that bear directly on the question of which aliens should, and which should not, be allowed into our country.

First, reform is essential because the broader Islamic religion includes a significant subset of Muslims who adhere to an anti-American totalitarian political ideology that demands implementation of sharia — Islamic law.

This ideology and the repressive legal code on which it rests are not religion. We are not talking about the undeniably theological tenets of Islam (e.g., the oneness of Allah, the acceptance of Mohammed as the final prophet, and the Koran as Allah’s revelation). We are talking about a framework for the political organization of the state, and about the implementation of a legal corpus that is blatantly discriminatory, hostile to liberty, and — in its prescriptions of crime and punishment — cruel.

Islam must reform so that this totalitarian political ideology, sharia supremacism (or, if you prefer, “radical Islam”), is expressly severable from Islam’s truly religious tenets. To fashion an immigration policy that serves our vital national-security interests without violating our commitment to religious liberty, we must be able to exclude sharia supremacists while admitting Muslims who reject sharia supremacism and would be loyal to the Constitution.

Second, sharia supremacists are acting on a “voluntary apartheid” strategy of gradual conquest. You needn’t take my word for it. Influential sharia supremacists encourage Muslims of the Middle East and North Africa to integrate into Western societies without assimilating Western culture. The renowned Muslim Brotherhood jurist Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who vows that “Islam will conquer Europe, conquer America,” urges Muslim migrants to demand the right to live in accordance with sharia. Turkey’s sharia-supremacist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, admonishes that pressuring Muslims to assimilate is “a crime against humanity.” The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, a bloc of 57 Muslim governments that purports to speak as a quasi-caliphate, promulgated its “Declaration of Human Rights in Islam” in 1990 — precisely because what the United Nations in 1948 presumptuously called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is neither “universal” nor suitable to a sharia culture.

Voluntary apartheid does not require insinuating terrorists into migrant populations. It requires insinuating assimilation-resistant migrant populations into Western countries. Those populations form sharia-supremacist enclaves, which (a) demand the autonomy to conduct their affairs under Islamic law as a challenge to the sovereign authority of the host country and (b) become safe havens for incitement, radicalization, paramilitary training, fundraising, and jihadist conspiracy — the prerequisites for terrorism.

Comment: Frankly the integration of Shariah Law with Islam is so tight, I'm not sure Islam can reform.

The three D’s of tolerance

The three D’s of tolerance 

Excerpt:

Tolerance Requires a Disagreement

Tolerance is unnecessary when you and I agree on something. What’s there to tolerate when we both agree? Tolerance is required when two people don’t agree on something important. Tolerance is not a celebration of harmonious agreement, but a strategy for peaceful coexistence in the midst of disagreement. Tolerance is the attitude we adopt when we refuse to embrace a notion as true, not the act of embracing that notion as though it were true.

Tolerance Requires a Distinction

Tolerance is required when the two positions we hold are distinctly opposed. Competing worldviews that contradict one another, for example, require us to adopt an attitude of tolerance. That’s why it’s so important to examine what others believe, as well as what we believe (and why we believe it). The more self examined you are in your approach to truth, the more necessary it is to learn to tolerate others. The more you examine truth, the more likely you are to find that others will disagree with you.

Tolerance Requires a Demeanor

Finally, tolerance requires a response in the midst of the distinction and disagreement. The proper reaction is not acquiescence to the proposal or worldview being offered, but is instead a loving demeanor toward those with whom we disagree. It’s OK to hate a bad idea, as long as we remember that we are called to love those who hold bad ideas. I can reject a worldview yet still be “fair, objective, and permissive” toward those who hold this worldview. How I react toward people is what defines me as tolerant, not how I react toward ideas.

Comment: Author is J. Warner Wallace, Image source

The new "tolerance"

On the A Redefinition of Tolerancehttps://t.co/lUtruBDCFw pic.twitter.com/hiQapY3w0Z

— James Peet (@jrpeet) January 18, 2019

14 years of savings

Comment: Although interest rates are historically low, CapitalOne360 is one of the best places to save!

Henry Cuellar a "Blue Dog" Pro-Life Congressman

A Q&A With The House Democrat Who’s Voted With Trump 75 Percent Of The Time - He says that more Democrats should embrace his Blue Dog ways to win back the House.

Excerpt:

My district is about +7 Democratic, but it’s still a diverse district in many ways. I do better than most Democrats here even though I’m a moderate conservative Blue Dog and I still do very well here. My hometown of Laredo, the border area, I’ll get 90, 95, 98 percent of the vote, so I must be doing something right here. I think people know that I will vote my district, and they know I’m bipartisan and they know that I’m not here to represent the Democratic Party. I think the best way to describe my position is what President Lyndon Johnson said many years ago where he said, “I’m an American, I’m a U.S. Senator, and I’m a Democrat, all in that order.”1 And I agree with him in the sense that we’ve got to come up here and vote the district.

The way we won the majority in 2006 was because of the Blue Dogs. The way we win the majority again is through the Blue Dogs again. I told the DCCC, I told the House leadership, and they gave me a nervous laugh. How did we lose veterans? How did we lose a lot of the labor folks to Trump? When people think that you’ve got to be a “pure Democrat” in our image, they’re wrong. When we lost Blue Dogs because a lot of us voted for health care and a whole bunch of other things, we lost the Democratic leadership.

Comment: On Pro-Life. Home page for the Blue Dogs . Facing extinction as the party moves left.

The Assault on Free Speech

The aftermath of me helping a guy after being jumped by thugs. The police and 100's of civilians stood and watched. pic.twitter.com/7hN2iJ4kkf

— Jake Shields (@jakeshieldsajj) February 2, 2017

Jake Shields Reportedly Saves Man From Masked Attackers During UC-Berkeley Riot

Excerpt:

Former Strikeforce champion Jake Shields reportedly came to the aid of an unidentified man who Shields said was jumped by masked attackers during the riotous scene on Wednesday night at UC-Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, Calif. The riots erupted in response to the scheduled appearance of a controversial speaker, Milo Yiannopoulos, whose appearance at the university was later canceled due to the chaos. “Amid an apparently organized violent attack and destruction of property at UC Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, the UC Police Department (UCPD) determined it was necessary to evacuate controversial speaker Milo Yiannopoulos from campus and to cancel his scheduled 8 p.m. event,” according to UC-Berkeley officials.

Comment: The Intolerance of Tolerance (good book)

"If you think free speech is assault but assault is free speech you’re a moron of world-historical proportions."

HT @JonahNRO

— James Peet (@jrpeet) February 3, 2017

How to deal with protesters in 3 seconds. #flashbackfriday pic.twitter.com/OyXiwgmx4S

— ForAmerica (@ForAmerica) February 3, 2017

.@MikeOzanian: "Education is supposed to be about hearing different opinions." pic.twitter.com/mXoFL2fDNI

— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 4, 2017

"@Sean_McDowell : The Berkeley Riot Expresses Dominant Anti-American Campus Culture | Important @FDRLST https://t.co/OM7hrQAeYc

— Mark Goodnight (@Martyrtek) February 7, 2017