Free Republic

PING. Thought you’d like this ;-)

Here’s the New Republic article: https://newrepublic.com/article/140948/bluexit-blue-states-exit-trump-red-america

Here’s Pat Buchanan’s article: https://townhall.com/columnists/patbuchanan/2017/02/24/is-secession-a-solution-to-cultural-war-n2289942

And here’s an interesting article in the liberal Nation arguing that the New Republic liberal author is wrong: https://www.thenation.com/article/blue-state-secession-is-dumb-and-cruel/

31 posted on 10/17/2006, 12:10:38 AM by piasa: "'In 1972 the four received citizenship. In 1978 they achieved local fame, acting out the parts of evil capitalists in a spy series, Nameless Heroes. They also taught English.' I cannot help but picture a bunch of Nawth K'reans with Southern drawls."

That's funny. Except that it actually happens with some South Koreans.

Talk to a few Korean women who have married American soldiers who brought them back home when their enlistment ended, instead of spending 20-plus years in uniform. The ones who marry an American and spend years in the military learn generic English. Not so if they move to the Deep South shortly after marriage.

Hearing a native Korean tongue saying "ya'll" and "grits" (remember the trouble Koreans have with 'r' sounds) can be funny.

Thank you, Lazamataz, for posting this ad, and to Red Steel for posting Reagan's 1976 speech.

It's well known that I did not support Donald Trump in the primary. While I wasn't a particular fan of Cruz, by the time the Missouri primary arrived, he was the only remaining viable conservative alternative to Trump. While Kasich was still running, I think Kasich, besides being non-viable by the time the Missouri primary came around, might arguably be less conservative than Trump.

I do believe that Cruz's comments about voting one’s conscience have created unnecessary problems. At best they were unwise. There were other words he could have used with the same meaning that didn't carry the connotation that phrase carried at this year's convention. At worst, they've created problems not only for himself but also for the Republican Party.

If Cruz's point was “Trump is terrible, and I'm hinting you shouldn't vote for him without quite coming out and saying that,” then I understand the anger directed at Cruz. That anger would be justified. At this point, encouraging a vote for anyone but Trump is trying to get Clinton elected.

Cruz is not stupid. We'll find out soon enough how Cruz acts in the Clinton-Trump race this fall. If he wants to say his speech did the same thing as Reagan did at the 1976 convention, he'd better do what Reagan did in the 1976 general election with trying to keep Jimmy Carter out of the White House.

I am seriously concerned about what we're seeing in the polls and the last thing we need is Republicans helping Hillary Clinton win. If Trump wins, he's not my preference but we could do a lot worse.

What I emphatically do **NOT** want is to see Cruz helping Clinton by attacking Trump in the next few months.

Time will tell.

27 posted on 5/31/2016, 8:11:10 AM by Little Ray: “The Christian spirit is very strong in parts of Africa, probably because the harsher circumstances under which they live, while the Episcopal and Presbyterian Churches here have become apostate. I know for a fact that the ‘noobs’ could give them a good talking to.”

Not to intrude on an Anglican discussion, but since you mentioned Presbyterianism, take a look at the role of Korean Presbyterians who are doing much the same thing to Presbyterianism that African bishops are doing to Anglicanism.

Far too often, people look at the chaos in the American and European church and despair. There is simply no good reason for that. The rise of the "Third World" to prominence in Anglicanism is a story repeated in quite a few other denominational traditions, though you get more attention because of the way Anglicanism is structured and the role of the Lambeth Conference.

South Korea, with a population a bit less than twice the population of the state of Texas, has more Presbyterians — most of whom are in strongly conservative denominations — than every conservative and liberal Presbyterian and Reformed denomination combined in the United States, Canada, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, i.e., the historic centers of the English-speaking Reformed world. Furthermore, those membership stats are comparing apples to oranges since Korean churches tend to have high membership standards while too many of the liberal Presbyterian denominations have huge numbers of members in name only.

On a true apples-to-apples comparison, there are far more conservative Korean Presbyterians than the total membership of every confessional Presbyterian denomination in the world, not just the English-speaking world but also other historic centers of Calvinism such as the Netherlands, South Africa and Switzerland.

On top of that, Korean Presbyterianism is currently sending more missionaries overseas than the Southern Baptist Convention in the United States, and that's not even counting the Korean Presbyterian congregations and missionaries already in the United States who are members of conservative Presbyterian bodies like the PCA, OPC, and ARPC, or the Korean American Presbyterian Church or the Kosin Presbyterian Church's American sister-church. Even in the old well-established conservative Presbyterian seminaries in the United States, large and growing percentages of the seminary students are ethnic Koreans whose parents immigrated to the United States.

While their numbers are considerably smaller, similar things can be said about the mission work of the Korean Baptists and Korean Assemblies of God.

It doesn't take much to know what happens in about two generations when a national church is strongly committed to high standards at home and aggressive evangelism overseas.

There are reasons why many of the world's conservative evangelical denominations trace their roots to Britain or the United States during a period when both countries had a number of denominations which met both of those criteria.

(Side point: one of these days we're going to see a Republican presidential nominating contest actually make it to California, and whoever the social conservative candidate is that year will give his GOP-e rival a **REALLY** nasty surprise with turnout by Asian and Hispanic evangelicals, as well as traditional Catholic Hispanic voters. California is a blue state today, but I am not at all convinced that will continue long-term if immigrant Asians and Hispanics continue to grow in population. Church-going small businessmen do not make good Democrats once they figure out what the party actually stands for.)

I think demographics may fix our problems in America since liberalism destroys itself by literally killing its own children, but Europe's problems are much too far gone to be solved without massive conversions. If we end up in two generations with an African-born Archbishop of Canterbury trying to keep Britain from capitulating to Islam, and with lots of African and Asian evangelicals sending missionaries to the West, that would not be a bad result. God will raise up new people to follow Him if his covenant people prove unfaithful.

God is, after all, a King, and a King will sovereignly bring new people into His service while punishing those who claim to serve Him but actually serve Satan.

67 posted on 5/29/2016, 9:33:33 PM by little jeremiah: “It’s world turned upside down when the President of Russia is morally superior and cares more for his country than our (quote unquote) president.”

Yes, it is.

Even if we believe that Putin is mostly interested in using the Russian Orthodox Church for political purposes, that is a HUGE development. For most of the last millennium of Russian history (and for that matter, the last millennium and a half of European history) monarchs have regarded Christianity as a useful way to get people to control themselves and act in orderly ways so the government wouldn't have to impose order.

Go take a look at this thread as another example of the rising role of Russian Orthodoxy in modern post-Communist Russia: http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3434424/posts

I am not Eastern Orthodox. I have reasons for not being Eastern Orthodox. Religiously-tinged nationalism has very major problems, and subjecting both the church and the faith to the purposes of nationalistic leaders has been the pattern of Eastern Orthodoxy for much of its history, but that pattern is far better than godless atheism which actively promotes gross immorality.

Even if Putin still thinks religion is the opiate of the people, he seems to understand the ability of religion to unify the Russian spirit.

That would make Putin far better than too many American politicians.

And if Putin really is a believer — well, the Eastern Orthodox certainly understand the ability of someone like Constantine, at the helm of an empire, to completely change the course of world history. America has no eternal promise of divine favor, but we do have a promise that God will hold accountable those to whom much has been given, and will severely rebuke those who turn away from Him. God is just as capable of raising up a Russian president for His purposes as He is of severely rebuking Americans by sending us the sort of leaders we deserve for our deliberate rebellion against Him.

38 posted on 4/29/2016, 8:01:33 AM by TTFlyer: “To the neocons’ worldwide crusade for democracy, Trump’s retort is that it was always a 'dangerous idea' to think 'we could make Western democracies out of countries that had no experience or interest in becoming Western democracies.'”

Two responses:

Germany.

Japan.

Trump may be many things, but I don't think anyone can credibly argue that he doesn't understand business. He's been doing business literally all over the world for decades. I don't think Trump is an isolationist — winning and making America great again includes having a world with lots of other strong economies with people willing and able to buy what America produces.

A functioning capitalist economy doesn't require political freedom, but it sure helps, and a free economy often leads to political freedom as powerful and wealthy business leaders start demanding the government listen to what they want. It may take a long time — even in our own tradition, the power of the urban merchants in the British House of Commons vis-a-vis the landed nobility took centuries to develop, and probably couldn't have happened if the English barons hadn't forced the king to sign the Magna Carta centuries before that.

But I think Trump understands that third-world military dictatorships, or the centralized and planned economies which for generations dominated states like China and Russia, are not good for business.

AdmSmith wrote: “Very often it is possible to read some juicy details in the local Russian newspapers. We have to wait a few days.”

Any details ever come out on this?

Granted, if this yacht involved the Russian mob or a Russian intelligence operation of some sort, the Russian media will not report anything. But if this was a screwup by the North Koreans, or worse yet, an attempt by the Kim dynasty to extort something from Putin, the Russians would have every motive to report their success story in reading the riot act to the North Koreans.

I’m interested, and would be amused to learn how a trained KGB operative and leader deals with the North Koreans. Russians can do things a normal Western country can’t, and also can do things an Asian country won’t.

In dealing with North Korea, the Russians could become useful if sufficiently provoked to annoyance.

And by the way, for those who think I'm a “Johnny Come Lately” to saying I'd rather see Trump than a Democrat — here's a post I made in December of last year saying basically the same thing:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3372955/posts?page=109#109

Key quotes:

“I'm willing to vote for a non-evangelical. The biblical standards for civil rulers are not the same as those for church office. King David was not deposed for his actions in the sphere of the civil magistrate, but would have had to be deposed for his actions in the sphere of the church.

Trump is better than a number of options on the Republican side, and far better than any of the Democratic options.

But if Trump becomes the conservative candidate of choice, we're going to have to have a long, hard discussion about how a man who grew up under the politically conservative and pro-business preaching of Norman Vincent Peale can interact with the Christian conservative base of the Republican Party.

Let's be fair. Trump grew up in what, by the standards of upper-class elite New York City society of the time, was a fairly conservative church. I know more than a bit about what it was like to be in elite upper-class Protestantism of the era when Trump was growing up. I know the Reformed Church in America quite well; even in its liberal East Coast regional synods, the RCA of that era was not really a traditional liberal Protestant denomination, though it has become so in more recent years. In the days before the demographic collapse of the mainline denominations and the rise of the modern evangelical movement, mainline churches were sometimes surprisingly biblical in what got taught by average members in Sunday School even if the preaching was problematic. And again, Marble Collegiate Church, by the standards of post-World War II New York City, was NOT a liberal church. It was not evangelical, but Trump's family could have found far worse places to worship.”

None of this is new. I said basically the same thing four years earlier that Newt Gingrich, if he became the only remaining alternative to Mitt Romney, should be supported by social conservatives.

Four years ago many of the same arguments I made for backing Gingrich once Santorum dropped out apply now to backing Trump once Cruz dropped out. But they're even more important now that the alternative is not Gingrich vs Romney, but rather Trump versus Hillary or Bernie.

96 posted on 5/11/2016, 5:56:18 PM by DaxtonBrown: “We survive Trump whatever his faults. We do not survive Hillary. It is as simple as that.”

Daxton Brown is right. Those of us who didn't agree with Trump need to remember what happens if Trump loses this November. If we think eight years of Bill Clinton were bad, we can barely begin to imagine how much worse eight or even four years of Hillary Clinton will be.

There are not many people who can say they worked harder than I did to oppose Trump's nomination. I stayed quiet on Free Republic — around here, it was obvious that the anti-establishment sentiments were unified, and the debate was which of several anti-establishment candidates were better — but I spent a lot of political capital and goodwill in my own county arguing that we can do better as Republicans than Trump. I wasn't sold on Cruz, but I eventually decided he was the best anti-establishment candidate, and spent a lot of time arguing that the people who were backing Trump needed to be backing a candidate, whether Cruz or some other conservative, who had a better shot at winning in November.

But I said — ALWAYS — that I can think of at least two good reasons to vote for Trump. One of them is named Hillary and the other is named Bernie.

The “Never Trump” movement is, put bluntly, crazy. They have no viable path to success. The only way they can have even the remotest possibility of gaining traction would be if Mitt Romney spends tens of millions of dollars to win Utah, plus maybe Idaho and a few other deep red states, for himself or some other third-party candidate with the goal of sending the election into the House of Representatives.

Does anyone on Free Republic who doesn't like Trump **REALLY** think Romney is better?

That dog don't hunt.

Look, I'm not happy with the nominee. But he's a WHOLE lot better than the alternatives. I've been unhappy with several prior Republican nominees as well, but the alternatives were worse.

A final point for the “NeverTrumpers” who are reasonable and serious and capable of being reasoned with — the number one legitimate concern has been what kind of Supreme Court justices Trump would appoint.

Trump has addressed that with his list of Supreme Court candidates.

Seems to me that the one area where Trump could do real damage beyond his presidency — nominating numerous “sleepers” like Justice Kennedy — has now been addressed.

So for all the people out there who, like me, supported some other candidate: Go read some Hillary speeches. Go read some Bernie biographies.

Then come back and explain to me why you want to get one of those two people in the White House by backing some third-party candidate rather than Trump.

I'll give Trump credit where credit is due. He understands that the way to beat bullies is to face them down, refuse to give in, and smash “political correctness.” Too many Republicans want genteel dinner-party debates, not realizing the radical extremists who have captured the modern Democratic Party want to crush dissent. Look at Mizzou and Prof. Click — the Red Guard wannabees are waiting for a President Hillary, though they'd prefer a President Bernie.

That simply **MUST** be stopped.

Maybe Trump's blunt in-your-face abrasiveness is the way to do it. Maybe not. But as the Republican nominee, he is the only one who has any possibility of getting the job done. Any other alternative is dreamland induced by a California (or Colorado) high, and the “Never Trump” people are fools to even think their way can work.

Sounds like the solution to global warming. /sarc

Hard to argue that Western clothing isn’t becoming decadent, or that piercings aren’t a good idea.

Even broken clocks are right twice a day, and this might be one of the few times the North Koreans have a good idea.

Of course we all know North Korean society is evil. Their “clothing enforcers” are more like Maoist Red Guards than like the teachers who used to check clothing in American elementary and high schools to make sure it was appropriate.

I saw the same item today on Aquila Report. Good for Covenant for taking a stand on this.

For the people who are arguing about the correct day for Sabbath observance — you’re missing the point. If I saw a secular college respecting the right of a Seventh Day Adventist or an Orthodox Jew to not work on Saturday, or the right of a Roman Catholic to attend Mass on Good Friday, I’d be happy that the school was respecting religious freedom.

The issue is that people need to stand up for our religious freedoms or we will lose them. I think most Freepers will agree with that.

4 posted on 2/29/2016, 1:41:09 PM by PAR35: “African name. Although the Christian part was a good hint, as well.”

Yep. He's a refugee from Cameroon. Two university degrees already.

Here's a link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3468712/Christian-student-kicked-university-wrote-Facebook-messages-opposing-gay-marriage.html

Normally a highly educated minority student would be praised by liberals. Obviously being pro-gay is more important to liberals in British social work than being tolerant of minority cultures.

If he's an Anglican this could become an extremely interesting rebuke by the African Anglicans to the “mother country.”

Even if he's not, this is a rebuke to a country which once sent missionaries to Africa to bring Africans out of pagan darkness, and now is receiving Christians from Africa trying to bring Englishmen out of pagan darkness.

43 posted on 12/3/2015, 4:26:23 PM by Zionist Conspirator: “The guy probably has never even heard of chrstian Zionism in his entire life.”

And that's really frustrating considering Trump's background in the Dutch Reformed world. Marble Collegiate Church isn't exactly a stereotypical RCA congregation, but when Trump was a child the Dutch heritage of the RCA on the east coast was still quite prominent, along with many ties directly to the Netherlands as a result of relief efforts to the Netherlands following World War II and Dutch immigration from the Netherlands.

If there is ANY ecclesiastical group outside modern American evangelicalism with a centuries-long history of positive relations with the Jewish people, the Dutch Reformed are that group.

I am quite aware that the East Coast RCA went liberal long before the Midwestern churches. But attitudes toward the Jewish people in the Dutch Reformed world did not change; if anything, they improved by the 1950s. Certainly there was not a heritage of anti-Jewish attitudes in the church circles where Trump was raised.

Trump grew up in those circles. He should know better.

37 posted on 1/25/2016, 1:34:41 PM by wagglebee: "Are you okay with the discarded embryos?"

The issue of discarded embryos does appear to be an insurmountable issue with IVF, even for those who do not accept Roman Catholic teaching. I can see no possible way to argue that destroying a fertilized embryo is anything different from aborting a baby shortly before the end of the first trimester, or at any other point before the baby would be viable outside the womb.

For those of us who believe abortion is murder even if the baby cannot yet survive outside the womb, IVF is at best extremely problematic because of the fertilized embryo issue, even if the biological parents are married and even if every one of the fertilized embryos is eventually implanted.

At best, it creates a major temptation to say "enough" rather than implanting the remaining five or ten "extra embryos."

At worst, it leads to selective reduction of what would otherwise be triplet, quadruplet or quintuplet pregnancies, or to genetic testing for sex selection or avoidance of genetic abnormalities. Just how many parents will willingly and deliberately implant an embryo known to have a life-altering genetic defect?

Even if a hypothetical married couple is willing to implant all 20 embryos, perhaps two-by-two to maximize the chance of a successful pregnancy if both embryos successfully implant, and even implant an embryo which has been tested and known in advance will be a Down's Syndrome baby, there's still the problem that their money is being used to support a business which regularly destroys not just dozens or hundreds but quite literally THOUSANDS of embryos, and is engaged in the creation of large numbers of babies with fathers not married to their mothers.

I don't want to be the one to tell a childless couple seeking IVF that their only chance of having a child is totally unacceptable under all circumstances -- but the whole IVF business seems to be inherently filled with temptations to murder even for parents with the best of motives.

I'm not sure IVF is a crystal-clear, black-and-white, absolute choice between good and evil. Maybe if there were an IVF clinic which refused to serve any non-married couples, and refused to destroy any embryos, it might be less problematic.

But with the way IVF clinics work now, it's basically buying the ability to have a baby from a clinic which routinely kills more embryos than most abortion clinics.

That sure is getting way too close to the edge of the pit for me to be comfortable with it.

St_Thomas_Aquinas wrote: “Well, we know that he*s never asked God for forgiveness.”

84 posted on 12/15/2015, 1:28:26 PM by Patton@Bastogne: “and that remark by Donald Trump, frankly, scares the hell out of me ... “

And it should, Patton. I do not know how much of Norman Vincent Peale's “power of positive thinking” stuff Trump has internalized, but he clearly is acting externally in accord with the “gospel of success” he learned in Marble Collegiate Church.

(I'm sending this to the GRPL Great Reformed Ping List because it has direct reference to the Dutch Reformed background of Donald Trump, something which will be relevant in Iowa but has been forgotten by most if not all of the national media.)

I'm willing to vote for a non-evangelical. The biblical standards for civil rulers are not the same as those for church office. King David was not deposed for his actions in the sphere of the civil magistrate, but would have had to be deposed for his actions in the sphere of the church.

Trump is better than a number of options on the Republican side, and far better than any of the Democratic options.

But if Trump becomes the conservative candidate of choice, we're going to have to have a long, hard discussion about how a man who grew up under the politically conservative and pro-business preaching of Norman Vincent Peale can interact with the Christian conservative base of the Republican Party.

Let's be fair. Trump grew up in what, by the standards of upper-class elite New York City society of the time, was a fairly conservative church. I know more than a bit about what it was like to be in elite upper-class Protestantism of the era when Trump was growing up. I know the Reformed Church in America quite well; even in its liberal East Coast regional synods, the RCA of that era was not really a traditional liberal Protestant denomination, though it has become so in more recent years. In the days before the demographic collapse of the mainline denominations and the rise of the modern evangelical movement, mainline churches were sometimes surprisingly biblical in what got taught by average members in Sunday School even if the preaching was problematic. And again, Marble Collegiate Church, by the standards of post-World War II New York City, was NOT a liberal church. It was not evangelical, but Trump's family could have found far worse places to worship.

I am prepared to believe that Trump understands at least something of what the Reformed Church in America taught in the Heidelberg Catechism. Maybe his “positive Christianity” isn't as bad as it sounds to Midwestern Reformed or Southern Bible Belt ears.

But Trump will have to do a lot to prove he's at least aware of what it means to be a Christian, let alone an evangelical Protestant.

I am not stupid. Neither is Trump. You do not win Iowa as a conservative Republican without spending a LOT of time in places like Northwest Iowa and Pella, where the RCA and CRC and other Dutch Reformed denominations remain strong. Trump will be asked MANY questions about his personal faith due to his background in the RCA.

Dutch Iowa farmers are not stupid either. They understand what the RCA is and will give Trump allowances for looseness. He's not a Baptist and can't be held to Southern Evangelical standards.

But a lot of Iowa “VanderSomethings” will see through Trump real fast if he's trying to sell snake oil to evangelicals. It might work some places, but it won't work in Iowa for a man with an RCA background.

I think a lot of Iowa Baptists and Iowa charismatics and Iowa nondenominational church leaders are on the phone to their Dutch friends asking, “You've talked to Trump. He's from your world. What do you think of him?”

The answers from people whose names start with Vander- or end with -stra, -sma, or -ga may have a lot to do with Trump's rise or fall in Iowa.

5 posted on 11/18/2015, 9:33:00 AM by COBOL2Java: “Hopefully the NPA will be a little more aggressive in interrogating him than our authorities.”

I don't know many people who think South Korean jails are nice places, or that the interrogators are nice people.

This man won't get treated the way he would in Riyadh, Tehran or Baghdad, let alone by ISIS in Raqqah, but it sure won't go well for him, and will be much worse than Gitmo.