ONE OF MY HEROES

I've been an avid reader of Charles Krauthammer's punditry for years, particularly enjoying the way he uses his training as a doctor to diagnose and prescribe treatment for the terminal illness of the current mutation of liberalism infecting our culture. But had no idea he was a quadriplegic until I saw him one evening on FoxNews. If anyone can speak clearly about the opportunities and hype surrounding the stem cell debate, that person is Charles Krauthammer.

Hat tip to Powerline:

While a student in medical school, Charles Krauthammer suffered a spinal cord injury and resulting quadriplegia. In his column today he discusses the John Edwards' testimony to the miraculous healing powers of the election of John Kerry as president: "Anything to get elected." He brings both a special passion and expert knowledge to rendering his verdict on the underlying issues, including the allegation that President Bush has "banned" stem cell research:

"In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately raising for personal gain false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable."

DEBATE SMACKDOWN

I just haven't had time to do much blogging lately as I'm fully engaged in the preparations for the National Conference on Christian Apologetics coming up on November 12 & 13 in Charlotte, NC. The Conference is hosted by Southern Evangelical Seminary and one of my responsibilities is overseeing the planning and preparations for this momentous gathering of some of the nation's most august apologists, including Norman Geisler, Peter Kreeft, Hank Hanegraaff, Ron Rhodes and Egun Caner. Visit the SES website to learn how you can participate in this historic event.

Anyway I did watch the Third Presidential Debate last night but in the blogosphere, that is now old news. What is fascinating however, is all the backlash from several of Kerry's comments last night. I had to watch the debate on a little 13" TV with rabbit ears that only gets CBS and ABC. Between a rock and a hard place, I chose the lesser of the two evils: ABC. I was shocked when ABCs internet poll called it a tie. That clearly meant Bush won hands down.

I sure thought so. I only yelled at the TV twice--first, when Kerry droned on and on about his deep Catholic faith and then said he would never let his faith affect his politics. In other words, he has no faith, except pleasing his extremely liberal constituents. The second time I yelled was when the President didn't answer the question about the minimum wage issue and went right into his talking points about education. I am obviously a fair and balanced yeller. Despite several slips and missed opportunities, I came away feeling energized and encouraged about the President's chances in the election.

I have to admit my mental state was influenced by a long time of prayer just before the debate. I prayed two specific prayers: first, that President Bush would be calm, collected and cool and that he wouldn't talk ahead of his tongue. I also prayed that Senator Kerry's smooth words to tickle ears would be confounded. During the prayer I sensed again the peaceful presence of the Lord and was reassured that my future and my hope isn't dependent upon the upcoming elections, the state of the economy, or the might of our extraordinary military. My hope is in the Lord and if I may misquote our coins, "In God I Trust."

NORTH STATE ROAD TRIP

I got up early today for the 5-hour drive to the Queen City. I live on the NC coast but spend two weeks each month at Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte. There's no good way to do this. I basically have three options: (1) The South Route: 24 to 41 to 74 to 485; (2) The Northern Route: 24 to 58 to 70 to 40 to 85 to 485; (3) The Central Route: 24 to 258 to 40 to 64 to 49 to 485. I'm sure there are short cuts I don't know about so please if you know a better way PLEASE let me know.

I usually windup taking the Southern Route just because I hate fighting through the Triangle traffic jams. I obviously spend a lot of time alone in my truck and I don't really mind. My life has been so crazy lately that the trip gives me time to sort through all the mental notes I've had to file during the previous week. I listen to a LOT of talk radio as well (for some reason music makes me sleepy.)

Today I was able to catch portions of a whole lot of local talk radio between the miles of static. I heard a great interview with Richard Burr on the Fayetteville talk station as I was working my way around Lumberton. He definitely shares my priority and I sure hope he can beat Erskine.

Around Rockingham I was able to pick up WBT-AM and cruised the rest of the to Charlotte listening to host Keith Larson congratulating Park Gillespie, a school teacher from Stanley, NC, for winning the American Candidate competition on Showtime. I've never seen Showtime but it was encouraging to learn that Park is a conservative Christian who ran on a traditional values platform (national security, economic security, and protection of the family) against a bunch of lefties. And won!

I thank God for the privilege of living in this great country. I have lived in over 30 other nations on three continents in my lifetime. Many nations rival our natural beauty and many have remarkable cultures and societies. However, I have never seen another land that has our most precious blessing. As a people we generally have an upbeat and optomistic perspective on life, even in the tought times, because the vast majority of Americans over the generations have believe in God's grace upon this land. Tragically, that consensus has been under attack a long time and our nation is in now at risk. The dreams of freedom, liberty and fidelity of our forefathers is in danger of being lost on our watch. The signs of the time are too obvious to deny any longer. Now is the time for action. Now is the time to take a stand. Before its too late. Pray, church, pray...

THE CHARACTER OF A MAN

I believe the recent debates have afforded us a rare glimpse into the characters of the two men seeking to lead the nation for the next four years. Lately character has become a big deal and I have been searching for contemporary examples of manly character. You see my wife and I raised a wonderful daughter who had blessed us with two grandsons, one soon to turn three and his 20-month old little brother. They are delightfully dissimiliar in personalities and we love them for their uniquenesses, however, we want to begin influencing the development of godly character as their core worldviews are being formed. What are the behaviors of a man with a sound character? I believe Rudyard Kipling summed it up well in his little poem. I encourage you to pass this on to the men and boys in your life:

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

–Rudyard Kipling

SUITCASE FROM HELL

John Kerry keeps labeling President Bush's references to the terrorist's attacks on 9/11 as fear-mongering. If the global terrorists are ever successful in adding a nuclear suitcase bomb to their arsenal, the horror of 9/11 will pale in comparison.

I agree with President Bush. The rules of the game changed on 9/11. We have an enemy who is not interested in negotiating with us like Kerry seems to think. Islamofascism doesn't want our stuff. They want us to either convert to their madness or die. And they are determined to use whatever means they have to bring the battle to our cities. Airplanes, suicide bombers, tanker trucks, boats, and nuclear suitcase bombs. That is why the Axis of Evil must be confronted and disarmed.

An excerpt from Paul William's book Osama’s Revenge in a recent column at Townhall.com, gives us a pretty good idea of what it would mean for a nuclear suitcase bomb to go off in one of our cities:

[A] nuclear explosion is much more than a simple bomb blast. It consists of four deadly components: an air pressure shock wave, both thermal and nuclear radiation, and radioactive fallout. The effects of such a disaster in a city such as New York, Los Angeles, or D.C. would be cataclysmic. The air pressure wave from [one] suitcase bomb would destroy everything in its path, even heavily reinforced steel-and-concrete buildings.

Such an explosion would also emit intense thermal radiation, creating a fireball with a diameter that would expand to 460 feet. The core fireball would reach a maximum temperature of 10 million degrees Celsius. The enormity of this heat can only be realized when one notes that the heat within the World Trade Center towers never exceeded 5,000 degrees Celsius. Metallic objects within 450 feet of ground zero would vaporize. 1,400 feet from the blast, rubber and plastic objects would ignite and melt, and wooden structures would erupt into flames.

The bomb would expend 35 percent of its energy in the form of radiated heat. An additional 50 percent would be absorbed into the atmosphere to become a juggernaut blast -- a wave ripping through the city at 670 miles per hour. The buildings that survived the melting heat would be twisted like pretzels by the force of the incredible wind. No one within 740 feet of the blast could hope to survive; within minutes everything within three square miles would be destroyed. Over 300 thousand people would die instantly. Half a million or more would suffer severe burns and permanent blindness. Two to three hundred thousand people would be killed or injured by the deadly hail of debris and shattered glass.

The survivors of the initial blast would be exposed to intense bursts of ionizing radiation that would devastate their immune system. Those exposed would die in a matter of days. Then comes the fallout … the contaminants … which would then expose those in the area to deadly radiation poisoning, with 50 percent dying in the subsequent weeks and months. If this happened in a place like New York City, it would be an uninhabitable wasteland for hundreds of years. Then comes the other stuff such as the end of our culture, the crippling of our economy, the loss of millions of jobs, and an unprecedented health care crisis. Within days, Americans and much of the world would be tossed into a depression from which it would take hundreds of years to recover.

The terrorist threat to America is real, imminent, and must be defeated. I have two grandboys under three years old and I take my responsibility VERY seriously to protect them from future terrorism. I want it defeated on my watch.

KERRY BROKE THE LAW

Did you know there are precise laws about how an argument is presented? Aristotle called the rules of sound rational thinking the first principles of dialectics. These metaphysical laws operate like the other natural laws designed into creation to reflect God’s intentions for mankind. Break one of these natural laws (say, the physical law of gravity) and you will suffer the painful consequences.

In last night's debate John Kerry broke several of these first principles of sound rational thinking. One of the principles Kerry violated was causality, the principle that everything that happens must have a cause or, as Richard Weaver says, "ideas have consequences."

Well into the debate, Kerry was asked the following question:

“Senator Kerry, suppose you're speaking with a voter who believed abortion is murder, and the voter asked for reassurance that his or her tax dollars would not go to support abortion, what would you say to that person?

Kerry’s response: “ First of all, I cannot tell you how deeply I respect the belief about life and when it begins. I'm a Catholic - raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy. Religion has been a huge part of my life, helped lead me through a war, leads me today.

In the first part of his response Kerry empathized with the questioner and passionately communicated his respect for her belief about life and its beginning as being in alignment with his Catholic upbringing. Although he didn’t clarify his beliefs in the debate, Kerry had previously stated here that he was personally opposed to abortion and that life begins at conception. By Kerry’s own admission, this is a deeply held root belief. Then Kerry continued:

“But I can't take what is an article of faith for me and legislate it for someone who doesn't share that article of faith, whether they be agnostic, atheist, Jew, Protestant, whatever. I can't do that.”

Kerry now interjects the infamous “but” preposition, alerting us that he is about to contradict everything that preceded the preposition. This is where he broke the first principle of sound rational thinking. Ideas have consequences. He had implied that his pro-life beliefs are deeply held from a lifetime of religious conviction. But in the very next sentence Kerry admitted those beliefs are not strong enough to actually influence his behavior as a politician. One has to wonder what is the value of beliefs if they don’t product behavior consistent with those beliefs? That is the meaning of the scripture exhorting Jesus' followers to be doers of His word, not just hearers.

The second principle of sound rational thinking violated by Kerry in the debate was the principle of noncontradiction, the principle that opposites cannot be the same. For the one who affirms that “opposites can both be true” does not hold that the opposite of this statement is true. Kerry’s rhetorical inconsistency exposed his claims of solidarity of belief as false and hollow. A close examination of Kerry’s actual words revealed he didn’t actually say he shared the questioner’s beliefs but that he had “respect” for her beliefs. However, Kerry’s “respect” was not sufficient for him to act consistent with these beliefs.

Kerry’s response was a classic case of liberal cognitive dissonance (acting contrary to professed beliefs). Liberals love this twisting of truth because it allows them to say one thing to pander to one special interest group while doing exactly the opposite to pander to yet another special interest group.

However, the consequences of violating the first principles of sound rational thought are costly. Just look at the facts. In the last ten years the Democrats have lost majorities in the US House, the US Senate, the Presidency, and most state governorships. Remember, ideas do have consequences.