I know it’s a cliché, but a democracy does get the government it deserves and, apparently, what the US deserves is a con man who has convinced the gullible that he can give them what they want: unlimited, unearned, undeserved hand-outs. God’s punishment to the Romans in Romans 1 was not to rain down fire from heaven, but to allow them to have what they wanted unfettered by God’s restraining morality; here we go again.
Not to worry, though: the fall of a civilisation is a reminder for Christians that we live in two kingdoms, the more important of which is a kingdom that can never be shaken: the kingdom of God.
I weep for my nation.
I weep for Israel.
I trust in the Lord.
Pingback: Bye-Bye USA « Fr Stephen Smuts
Certainly, the US as we [I’m British] have known it for the past 4 or 5 decades will barely exist in a decade or so … still, maybe the Britain we knew in, say, 1965, is now gone … That’s the Decline of the West for you … it probably started in 1914, and will be complete by about 2020. “Civilisations die by suicide, not murder” (attr. A. Toynbee), remember.
The USA is a divided nation. Watching the election coverage last night on CBS made that clear. Only about a half dozen “battleground States” that would decide the whole thing. Comparisons with results from prior elections showed a remarkable consistancy. The New England States and the West Cost States always voting democrat. The South and Midwest States always voting repubican. Florida and Ohio being split almost 50/50.
And so our friends to the South have had their election, and it was almost identical to the one before. Now we can all look forward to another four years with more of the same. Another four years of a sluggish US economy that cannot recover.
I know that a lot of people do not like Ronald Reagan. But he inherited a mess just like Obama did. Within four years Reagan got America working again. Obama? Not so much.
A wee bit over the top, guys.
What I find amusing is that Obama is essentially to the right of our own Prime Minister. You must all be unbelievably depressed about Canada.
Yep rending of cloth and gnashing of teeth, that’s us Canadians. But we only get depressed about hockey.
Approximately 50% of the population re-elected Obama to continue the destruction of the United State’s finances, morality, foriegn policy, and desertion of Israel.
It is not over the top, for the nation is on the brink.
What is more astounding for our nation is that a nationwide Canadian poll revealed 84% of Canadians would vote for Barack Hussein Obama. I guess that is why we are blank and coloured vacuous pink on U.S. maps.
The only bright spot of the Canadian poll was that only 14% of Albertans would vote for Obama.
Apparently Stetson hats protect the brain.
I don’t own a Stetson so it must be the place. Of course he hasn’t made a lot of friends here what with Keystone Xl and nasty anti-Alberta ads
Evidently I need to find my tin hat here, but for all Obama’s faults, do any of you really think Romney would have been an improvement? It has seemed to me for the majority of the campaign that the Republicans have collectively taken leave of their senses.
Does anyone have an opinion on the “marriage equality” campaign going on in the U.S. (and Canada)? Isn’t marriage equality an oxymoron on some level? Just because people want equality on every level doesn’t mean they can attain it or that it is appropriate.
The “marriage equality” bus has left the station and is gathering momentum. It’s happening in the world and will more and more continue to be considered mainstream. Anyone trying to stand against it in the world is fighting a losing battle. But we must stand against it in the Church. This is the Alamo. This is the final hill. But there will always be a remnant of faithful, I think we know that, no how much despised and persecuted by the world and those who seek to conform to it.
Yeah, we white straight males are persecuted daily.
That is pretty well true. The alphabets seem to look at someone who does not enthusiastically support their cause as whatever-phobic. Merely offering an opinion sets them off.
If we express disgust at them public activities, we are scolded.
Why this is even tolerated astounds me. Then they whine that the don’t get government funding for their public spectacles. Use the excuse you are gay to the judge. Try this on Bloor any other day of the year. Even nudists would not go this far, queer is as queer does.
Many of those who stand up publicly for traditional marriage and morality are.
So this is a place where I can write something as silly as “We white straight males are persecuted daily” and it will be taken at face value? How extraordinary.
Hello Vincent,
How about you refer me to an employment equity law that has any type of legal requirement for employers to have hiring practices that ensure white straight males are proportionately included in their staff.
You honestly think straight white males need a law to help them get a fair share of jobs? Look, I am a straight white male, married, five kids. I have had my share of hardship in life. I’ve had some tough times. But I would be embarrassed to say, with a straight face, that my life is as complicated as that of my African buddies here, who have a harder time of it finding a job, and indeed finding an apartment. I look around my own office, and it’s whitesville. Look at politics. Look at higher management. I’d feel a little sheepish and childish were I to whinge about how straight white men are treated in Canada. I’d feel ridiculous.
Well Vincent, you have obviously missed my point. Be either deliberate or by ignorance you have chosen to ignore my request.
We may disagree on this, but I do feel that straight white men are discriminated against in our society today. And my opinion is every bit as valid as is yours.
So I will ask you to get off you soap box of self ritiousness and respond to my request.
How about you refer me to an employment equity law that has any type of legal requirement for employers to have hiring practices that ensure white straight males are proportionately included in their staff.
With respect, I don’t think I’ve missed your point. Not all opinions are as valid as one another. When an opinion flies in the face of reality, it is not as valid as any other. White straight males are not under-represented on the jobs market. “Visible minorities” earn a little over 80 cents on the dollar earned by “whites”. This article breaks it down nicely : http://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/immigration/article/957009–skin-colour-matters-in-access-to-good-jobs
It discusses a Stats Can report, so let’s concentrate on that and not the actual newspaper. 🙂 Hiring practice laws are not put in place to give anyone an undeserved job. They exist to alleviate the perverse effects of an unequal playing field. The idea of a law to ensure white males get their fair share of the jobs market is absurd on its face because it would be addressing a non-existent problem. 🙂
Sorry Vincent but you do not get to tell me to not comment on your newspaper source. The Toronto Star is well know to be the left wing newspaper of the country, and I for one am always very skeptical of anything it publishes. Perhaps you could provide a link to the Stats Can report? That would be more acceptable than the bias reporting of a “liberal rag” newspaper.
If we are to live in a country that actually respects its own Constitution than we should have laws that do not discrimiate against any visable group, white males included. To have employement equity laws that protect everyone except white males is both racist and sexist.
You suggest that the problem of discrimination against white males is “a non-existent problem”. I submit that our school boards are exceedingly dicriminatory against white males. The proportion of white males within the teaching and support staff is grossly underrepresentative of the general population. So it is obvious to me that we have a very real problem, and white males do need protection from the systemic dicrimination that is practiced within our school boards.
And you stil have not shown me any employment equity law that protects white males. Why not? If you are not able to than you should concede that none exist, and that in turn means that our employment equity laws disctimate against these people.
Of course I concede none exist. I did so in the previous post. I contend that such laws are not needed. In any case, I made a mistake: the article was based on a report that interprets Stats Can figures. The report is not in fact by Stats Can. Sorry about that. It is by the Wellesley Institute and can be found here:
http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National%20Office/2011/03/Colour%20Coded%20Labour%20Market.pdf
Just a quick look at the website for this so called institute and I am left with the impression that is little more than a group of left wing social activists. Cetainly not what I would accept as a legitimate source of objective information. If this is the best that you can provide than I must say that I am dissapointed.
Do you think they are lying about the numbers furnished by Stats Can?
Left wing social activists. Those _bastards_. 😀
I think that they are deliberately picking and choosing the numbers they are using in order to suppport a predetermined conclusion.
Also, you’re moving the goalposts. I thought we were talking about the jobs market as a whole. Apparently you’re now talking about “our school boards”.
Not moving the goal posts, not even in the least. I merely provide the school boards as an example. You seem to have difficulty with understanding this concept.
I’m not following you. If you zero in on a specific jobs area and/or category, you’re no longer talking about the jobs market. Taxi drivers in Montréal are overwhelmingly of Arabic and Haitian descent. Are you up in arms about that and demanding a law to help white males get more jobs in the taxi industry? Do you think this situation is the result of unfair hiring practices in the taxi industry? Likewise, the sector I work in is overwhelmingly white and male — there are fewer than twenty non-whites in a building where over seven hundred work. Are you upset about this? Will you ask for a law to make the proportions more in line with demographics, thus removing whites from jobs and replacing them by visible minorities? Furthermore, you look down on my numbers and my sources but have nothing but your own feelings to back your claims so far. Indeed you flat out asserted that your “opinion is every bit as valid as is” mine. Which is very strange. We’re not discussing our respective opinions of a movie, where indeed every opinion is more or less as worthwhile as any other.
I think that you are “not following” me because you do not want to. The concept is rather simple. If employment equity laws are going to exist for some identifiable people in our country than they should exist equally for all identifiable people. That is what is called “equality”. Unfortunately that is not what we have. Instead what we have are laws that offer protection to some, but offer nothing to others, all based upon things like race, gender, ethnicity, and other things that make can identify a person to a certain grouping. This is blatent discrimination, and it is wrong!
No, I wasn’t following because it’s a red herring and I couldn’t imagine you were seriously debating on that level. The problem is that you insist on defining such laws as laws about equality. They are not. They are laws against discrimination. By definition laws against discrimination will not treat everyone the same, otherwise they could have no effect. I believe in solving or helping to solve social problems. Discrimination against gays and non-whites in the West is a fact of life, _regardless_ of the legal framework under which you’re operating. Anti-discrimination laws seek to even the playing field and do so, not unreasonably, by targeting the part of the population that is being discriminated against. So if you have a problem with anti-discrimination laws, it is _your_ job to show that regardless of the law, gays and non-whites are _not_ being discriminated against. And, you know, good luck with that.
Mind you, as a Christian, I tend to look at all this and think that compassion trumps justice. I wish you well. 🙂
Actually discrimination laws do the reverse of what they intend because they elevate the discriminated above those around. Requiring visible minorities and invisible alphabets be considered often bypasses skills and places the employer in difficulty. However, I can be creative and find a perfectly good reason to pick who I want.
Not so much above as to the same level. I’ve never ever met anyone who was incompetent but was hired anyway because he or she was part of a visible minority. I’m sure you’re met lots, but apparently we don’t move in the same circles.
You’re exactly right. And the cost of hiring the-less-than-optimal — marginally competent is not the point — gets passed on to consumers and taxpayers. The workplace is not a charity.
I agree. There is bias in media, but it takes having eyes to see it. And, hire the best person for the job rather than the one who can tick off the most pc boxes.
Lisa, you say: “And the cost of hiring the-less-than-optimal — marginally competent is not the point — gets passed on to consumers and taxpayers.” See, I’m pretty good at what I do, but I have no doubt that there is someone out there who could do it better. We’re all in this together. As negative as you seem to want it to sound, “marginally competent” is actually a wonderful way of expressing it: it is a Christian phrase couched in market-speak, and it describes most of us at the best of times. I thought this community was interested in Christian questions, but it turns out it’s full of ordinary, well-meaning but slightly embittered right-wingers, to whom being a Christian is about being right rather than being kind. To each his own.
Put your money where your mouth is, Vincent. Being Christian, according to your lights, is all about being ‘nice.’ So, instead of just telling us about it, be ‘nice’ and quit your job. Let one of those better qualified people have a paying position.