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WONDERFUL NEWS metmom! The answer to my prayers.... I’ll be attending, and will spread the word.

"We each have to sacrifice for the sake of the nation and the collective."

The so-called "collective" is nothing but a pure abstraction in the minds of atheistic, anarchic minds that have been brainwashed by that lunatic, Karl Marx.

In reality, in human nature, there is no such thing as a "collective." There are only individuals, who may or may not congregate with other individuals, as a matter of conscientious free act. Our would-be political masters have no power or authority to commandeer "sacrifice" from free individuals. That would be tantamount to slavery.

A "nation" is not the same thing as a "collective." A "collective" has no soul; but a nation does.

Kamala's screed is all communist crap, designed to manipulate the ill-informed and/or weak-minded. She is a total disgrace....

Indeed. I don’t doubt it.

Sayers was only an English major or whatnot, but the fact she incorporated racemic mixtures of optically active organic molecules into a mystery novel, back in the 1930s, even before molecular mirror symmetry had been identified as the cause of optical activity, was *very* impressive.

Hi greywhiskers! I'm so glad you enjoyed Timothy!

RE: Sayers. I'll have to check out The Whimsical Christian. Just because she was "only" an English major doesn't mean that she is incapable of discerning what science is and its limitations. Indeed, probably it's the case that she is an English major that enables her to see this. [I may be biased in this: I'm a double major in English and philosophy]

Science is extraordinarily limited in what it can know about reality because its method deals only with material things. It either ignores — or outright denies — all things spiritual. And thus it undermines itself at the outset — for scientific inquiry, the creative imagination, and logic itself are NOT material things. They cannot be accessed or evaluated by the scientific method.

And yet the spiritual things are what lay back of the surface reality that science explores, are what finally constitutes both science and reality.

The main inspiration for writing Timothy was the desire to help Christians especially not to feel "outclassed" or rendered "stupid" by science and its claims.

In it own sphere of expertise, science is unparalleled. But it sees only the surface of reality. And the deeper it probes that reality, the more it sees that "matter" itself is but a useful abstraction, a mental construct, and not the ultimate root of reality. (see quantum theory)

Thanks so much for writing, greywhiskers — it's great to see you again!

Martin Luther reported that his conflict with Satan became so intense that at one point it was as if he could see him. In anger over Satan's incessant attacks, Luther picked up his inkwell and threw it at him. It hit the wall with a resounding crash, splattering ink throughout the room. The stains remained for many years, reminding all who saw them of how vivid spiritual conflict can be.

Whittaker Chambers confirms this in his short story, "The Devil," which I excerpted earlier on this thread, with additional details:

"Martin Luther himself has described how, when he was translating the Bible, the Devil often appeared and debated with him the proper interpretation of the Hebrew text. On one occasion Luther hurled an inkstand at him. It missed the Fiend but left. a mark which can still be seen on the wall of Luther's cell in the Wartburg."

There's no question in my mind that the Fiend exists; and not just because of Luther's testimony.

He is also extraordinarily active at this point in history....

I pray daily for a spiritual reawakening in America, that God may heal this land.

Ground Nazi’s gov’t. plane.

Yeah. Let her spring for her own. It's bee reported she is worth $112 million. (Pretty good for a gummint worker bee.) So she can afford it.

Hello metmom! Thank you oh so very much for sharing these insights re: The Enemy. I will not dignify him by naming him here. Suffice it to say he is the Enemy of God and Man, from the beginning. He boasts that his greatest temptation of man, his greatest achievement, has forever been to convince man to believe that he, man's implacable Enemy, the Evil One, does not exist. In our post-modern age, he appears to have enjoyed much success in this regard. But that belief is absolutely fatal to man....

I recently read a wonderful essay by Whittaker Chambers, entitled "The Devil" (1948), which appeared in Chamber's astounding book, The Ghosts on the Roof. It is comparable in many ways to C. S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters. I'd like to share some excerpts with you and your readers here:

"The Devil," said Satan, "Likes to have it both ways. And how the little monsters [we human beings] snapped at the bait! In less than a century I had undone the work of more than a thousand years and knocked the studs from under the religious culture of Europe. Why? Because Evolution explained the universe without Him. They wanted to get rid of Him. Then I knew the secret longing of their nasty hearts. Then I knew I had them.

"The rest followed as a matter of course: the growth of factories to supply the huge demand for material goods which were the only values secular man could really feel; the growth of cities and slums, the corruption by the cities of the countryside which in other times had been the reservoir from which exhausted cultures replenished their faith and forces; the inhuman industrial oppression of men, women and children whose dependence found expression in the inhuman horrors of communism, socialism and anarchism; the debasement of all standards of conduct and taste as God was forgotten and with Him the only absolute standard; finally, the world wars with millions of men dying by all the horrors conceived by secular genius. Consider for a moment the miracle of the flame-thrower; or the spectacle of a government physically destroying millions of people in whose interests it was created to govern. Do you doubt my triumph when you stop to think that the mind of man conceived the concentration camp? Then came the atomic bomb — my ultimate perversion of the highest powers of the human brain and scientific good for the purpose of total destruction."

Here's the part I really love:

"Poor Devil," said the pessimist.

"Poor Devil?" said Satan, plainly taken aback.

"Doomed by the dialective of creation continually to make new good out of old evil. For God, being perfect, would be incapable of further creation were it not for you who, by disturbing the equipoise of His perfection, restore to Him the necessity of new creation. In our time Arnold Toynbee has perhaps best formulated this great concept in his Study of History: In the language of Mythology, when one of God's creatures is temped by the Devil, God Himself is thereby given the opportunity to re-create the World. By the stroke of the Adversary's trident, all the foundations of the great deep are broken up. The. Devil's intervention has accomplished the transition from Yin [perfect stillness] to Yang [dynamic creative activity], from static to dynamic, for which God has been yearning ever since the moment when His Yin-state became complete, but which it was impossible for God to accomplish by Himself, out of His own Perfection." [i.e., What is perfect is incapable of improvement, even by the Perfect Being — arguably, this is the only limit on God.]

A shade of slightly malevolent annoyance crossed the Devil's face. "I have been watching the man Toynbee and his followers for some time.... [A]nd, as a trained theologian, I should like to challenge his proposition with a question: May not there be an end even to dialectics? What you and your dialectical friends may tend to overlook is the fact that I have brought man to the point of intellectual pride where self-extermination lies within his power. There is not only the bomb.... There are the much less discussed delights of bacteriological annihilation. And it is only a question of time until whole populations can be driven ultrasonically insane in time of war by sound which their ears cannot hear but their nerves cannot bear. It would be an amusing paradox if the babble of the cosmic argument were ended once and for all by an ultrasonic silence...."

The. Devil's voice grew less harsh, and he dropped his hand to his side in a gesture of weariness. "Goodness," he said, "is a perpetual benediction, the seed within the minute husk which is the promise of summer, the unmultiplied image of the harvest. Not to know goodness is not to understand creation. In no way is my mark more clearly felt on the modern world than in the death of the creative imagination.

"And yet it is at this very point that man, the monstrous midget, still has the advantage on the Devil: he suffers. For at the heart of all human suffering is the anguish of the chance that the creative seed of goodness, that little flash of inward light, however brief, may not perpetuate itself, that a man can leave this life, this light, without communicating that one cell of himself which is real. [This} is the seal of his divine commitment — this suffering which I cannot feel because of that light which in me is dark. Intellectually I can understand it since, by my origin, I share the intellect of angels. But I cannot feel it or I would not be the Devil. That is the source of my frustration and root of my rage against the breed. That is why I shall never cease working to entangle man in evil until the world becomes one universal graveyard whose lifeless peace is broken only by my shriek of triumph as I plunge into a deeper pit than Hell. For only One knows better than I that should I succeed in making man destroy himself, I will destroy myself with him, having destroyed my function. It still lies with man to make the choice (after all, the filthy beetles have free will): a skeleton beside a broken wall, on a dead planet purged of all suffering because purged of all life; or Him, with all that entails. Personally...I have never felt my chances to be so good."

God bless you, dear metmom!

Hopefully Nancy negotiates in good faith.

Nancy will NEVER negotiate in good faith. It's wishful thinking to hope that she will. She is an utterly corrupt, thorough-going narcissist. She cares about only one thing: the further aggrandizement of her own POWER for her own self-satisfaction. There's nothing else. She'll even betray her own political party (as arguably she is doing) to get what she wants. Period. End of story.

YIKES! Activist lawyers are the bane of human existence. They are selling out America — i.e., We the People of the United States of America — with the collusion of the CoC and other self-appointed political elites.

When will "we the people" get some stones and wake up and get tough???

Well, what can I say, except “the love of money is the root of all evil.”

democrats see the deaths as a way to implement their agenda: businesses destroyed, government raising taxes, people miserable and dependent on government.

This is totally absurd, not to mention irrational. If businesses are destroyed, and the gummint raises taxes, who will pay the taxes? Where will all the money come from to pay for all the gummint programs? Not to mention the lobbyists that work to get politicians reelected?

These people must be psychopathic cases.

YES dear metmom! We'll have to just wait and see; for there is no "poll" or "scientific model" that can forecast, thus reliably predict, what will happen on Election Day in November, five months from now. So much might happen between now and then.

In short, you can't predict the future with certainty using the methods of "polls" and "scientific models." That's like reading tea leaves, or reading the Tarot cards, or the entrails of sacrificial animals in the human striving to discern the future.

But I wonder: How can one discern the future, if one doesn't understand the past?

Anyhoot, I'm thinking about the problem. It need not bother us here.

To cut to the chase: I do not believe that the next election -- presidential, congressional, senatorial, etc., and in the States -- will be decided on party lines.

Rather, I think the next election will be decided on the basis of culture, the strength of appeal of the historical, traditional American culture to the contemporary American voter. Specifically, the strength of support for the ordering structures and customs of the American people over historical time which, arguably, have been vital supports to a culture of liberty and equal justice under law. Not to mention this "ideology" is the main source of American prosperity and strength over time.

Or not.

Time will tell!!!

Meanwhile, we pray that God will continue to bless We the People of the United States of America. And for the well being of President Trump and First Lady Melania and the entire Trump family.

Great observations, one guy in new jersey

I disagree; America is center-left and turning bluer.

Just a minor quibble, ScottinVA. I draw a distinction between "America" and "American government."

Certainly it's true that the present government is 'way left-of-center, increasingly "blue"; and it has been for years. But I do not believe that "America," if by which you mean We the People, is center-left and turning blue. I believe that culturally, the vast majority of the American people are center right, and (regardless of party registration), tend to a generically "conservative" cultural, constitutional and economic point of view, for the simple reason that they have not lost their common sense, their sense of moderation, prudence, personal restraint and responsibility in social affairs.

It does seem true that they have lost traction in political effectiveness over the past few decades. This has been a slow but steady trend promoted by the Progressive Left; but for there to have been any "progress" along these lines, it is due to the fact that the Progressive Left systematically, deliberately lies, cheats, steals, and foments chaos as the methods of their political advancement.

But the "silver lining" of the coronavirus panic (hoax???) is that increasingly, the character and tactics of the Progressive Left (not to mention their ineptness and fecklessness) are surfacing, becoming visible to the American people. The results of their ideological commitments can readily be seen in the scandalous mismanagement and bankruptcy of the Democrat-governed "Blue states." Just check out what asses like Andrew Cuomo, and the governors Pritziker, Newsom, and that idiot in Michigan what's-her-name to name a few, have managed to achieve with their style of "governance": blight, bankruptcy, class warfare, social dislocation, and fear.

I live in the bluest of blue states, Massachusetts. The state has been Left Progressive (and Puritan) for decades now, and corrupt from top to bottom. Even when we elect Republican governors, they govern like Left Progressives — c.f. Romney and Baker. The state seems to be run by a gaggle of weak-minded females. All they care about is "women's 'issues'," hatred of Trump, and Me-tooism (except when it's inconvenient). Everything here culturally is shaped by Left Progressivism and its subbranch, Feminism.

But somehow, I survived the brain-washing. And — miracle of miracles!!! — more and more people I talk to here are seeing what a fraud Massachusetts is perpetrating on her people. Even long-time Democrats and "minorities." (They aren't "minor"!) How much contempt for the Constitution — federal and state — the Massachusetts political class has, although each and every elected or appointed official has sworn an Oath of Office to support and defend same in order to take and hold office.

The people are culpable for not holding their elected "leaders" accountable, and not punishing them for misdeeds by removing them from office or some other suitable means. But, unlike the Progressive Left, who spend all their time organizing and proselytizing to the under-educated, the people have lives to live, families to care for, and work to do. They haven't got the leisure to make a full-time career out of politics, social reconstruction, and "the transvaluation of values."

Yet as things crumble all around them due to the coronavirus panic, increasingly they will be asking who is to blame. The Progressive Left will do everything in their power to lay the blame at Trump's feet.

But as Lincoln said, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time."

In the end, I trust in the common sense of the American people, and their genuine love for their country.

If indeed the people's common sense should fail, I believe We the People would be doomed.

And then you would be right, ScottinVA!

Thank you so much for writing!

‘America, in general, is center left and quite feminized, currently.’

How astute of you to notice the "feminization" angle. The Feminist Movement has profoundly transformed traditional American culture. We are living in what the author John Fowles called "an Eve-flavored age." Think about the ramifications of that.

Plus where have all the MEN gone? It seems 'way too many have allowed themselves to be "denatured" by irrational, power-hungry females.

The “campus experience,” involving vibrant exchanges of ideas

On what planet is he living? Well, I'd have to wager it's planet Earth, but he's old enough to remember (like me) that the "campus experience" once really was like that.

What happened to academe in the 'sixties and 'seventies is beyond disgraceful. Today, one meets lots of people with a slew of advanced degrees who are totally ignorant. Yet arrogant, smug, and self-satisfied. And moreover, consider themselves fit, even entitled, to rule the rest of us....

Sadly, [Trump] is letting Birx and Fauci control the narrative on this.

Oh yes indeed. And they have got him locked in a box that I don't know how he's going to get out of. If he contradicts either of them, the lame stream media will set up a great hue and cry that "Trump is anti-science!!!" That's the kiss of death these days....

It seems to me that Drs. Fauci and Birx see the world through the lens of their shifting (and shifty) model. NOTHING is outside of that model, no other considerations need to be addressed. It's all "data,, data, data," and "testing, testing, testing." But what "data?" And what "testing?"

What qualifies as "data" is what fits their model. Other data are irrelevant. And what on earth are they testing for? That seems to shift around a lot, too.

And evidently they are blithely unaware that contract tracing boils down to monitoring the movements of private citizens and invading their privacy. Are we willing to sacrifice personal liberty because liberty is negligible in their model? After all, you can't weigh or measure "liberty." The scientific method cannot deal with things that are substantially immaterial.

... every business establishment in the country can open and be operating at full capacity as quickly as they were shut down.

I don't think Dr. Atlas is suggesting that at all. It's going to be enormously difficult to recover economically; but the longer we wait to get businesses moving again, the more difficult (and prolonged) the recovery will be.