Eccl.
2:11 KJV Then I looked on all the works
that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to
do: and, behold, all was vanity and
vexation of spirit, and there
was no profit under the sun.
_
God gave Solomon the means and inclination to explore fully all the
ways of fallen man, that is, man separated from direct spiritual
revelation of the LORD God.
_
God gave Solomon the spiritual inspiration and skill to fully
summarize his lifelong experience of the results of merely worldly
wisdom.
_
God has directly and spiritually inspired the writing of
Ecclesiastes.
_
God has preserved the integrity of this writing, through both
miraculous and providential means.
_
In our times, God has provided the technology that makes
Ecclesiastes, and other, more directly helpful. God-breathed writing,
freely available to us.
_
And yet, we, like pigs, return to mire, and, like dogs, devour our
own vomit ( 2Pe 2.22 ). *
_
Praise the Lord, that, nevertheless, He has made complete and eternal
salvation available to those who would rather spend eternity with Him
than without Him (Isa 55.3; John 5.24; Rev 22.17 ). *
Liberal
Nihilism in a Nutshell
pjmedia.com
[/] Article printed from Works
and Days:
https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson
[/] By
Victor Davis Hanson
December 7, 2015 [/] URL to article: [http://j.mp/0BubbleHeads or] https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/liberal-nihilism
Barack
Obama entered office in 2009 with overwhelming popular goodwill and
solid majorities in both houses of Congress. He chose not to
translate that political heft into passing “comprehensive
immigration reform” (i.e., open borders and amnesties) or more gun
control.
He
opposed gay marriage. He warned that he could not use presidential
fiats to grant amnesty, close down Guantanamo, or remake the EPA in
his own image. He borrowed as never before, in vain hopes of
kicking-starting a natural recovery that he would soon abort through
his own anti-business jawboning, more regulations, growth in
government, and tax increases.
So
far Obama’s legacy is a sudden crash in energy prices and an
unforeseen huge expansion in U.S. oil and gas production that came
despite -- not because of -- his efforts.
Indeed,
Obama scarcely succeeded in ramming through Obamacare — and only
through untruths that it would lower costs and premiums, expand
coverage, and ensure continuance of existing plans and patient
doctors — and then wisely quit trying to strong-arm other
legislation that could have cost him the 2012 election.
Lies
about a renegade video maker causing the deaths in Benghazi, an Al
Qaeda “on the run,” and “leaving behind a sovereign, stable and
self-reliant” Iraq after the U.S. pullout, as well as calcified
“Bush did it” smears, relieved just enough voters of their unease
over a growing mess abroad.
In
other words, Obama and his party wanted to keep winning elections,
and therefore apparently felt that they would not if they openly
pushed a liberal agenda that was unpopular with the American people.
Obama
had been elected in 2008 not on what he stood for or wished to
accomplish — indeed voters had no idea of what "hope and
change" actually meant — but largely for his iconic status as
the first mixed-race president, and because of a perfect storm of
events that favored his nontraditional Perot-like candidacy: the
September 14, 2008, financial meltdown that at last saw him take a
permanent lead in the polls, unhappiness over the Iraq war, the
absence of an incumbent vice president or president in the race (the
first time since 1952), and John McCain’s lackluster campaign whose
central premise was to avoid any negative campaigning that might be
libeled as racially driven. The result was that voters did what they
had never done in the last half-century: elected a liberal from north
of the Mason-Dixon line.
Obama’s
dilemma was the same one facing the new nihilistic Democratic Party.
Its agenda, once equal opportunity was achieved, became an equality
of result, engineered and coerced by the federal government — an
ideology opposed by a majority of Americans. The natural expressions
of that nihilism were symbolically expressed in the strange careers
of "Mattress Girl," Sandra Fluke, Ahmed the clockmaker,
Eric Holder, the National Council of La Raza, and Jonathan Butler,
the multimillionaire’s son who went on a hunger strike in Missouri.
Its iconographies were the Pajama Boy ads, the "Life of Julia"
video, and the hockey-stick climate graph.
The
ideological success of Obama-ism, to the degree that it exists, rests
largely in using sympathetic media, universities, foundations, the
entertainment industry, and billionaire progressive activists — in
the other words, the small but highly wealthy, influential and
powerful coastal populations — to convince Americans that it is hip
and cool to support agendas that they otherwise suspect, and to scare
them that the alternative is a racist, sexist, homophobic America run
by wealthy, cruel white male Christians.
The
goal of mass migration, open borders, and an expansion of the welfare
state was to create new voters, who would be both dependent on those
who administered and promised greater government largess and yet
enraged at those privileged enough to pay for it. The message was
embedded within the non-ending administration disparagement ("spread
the wealth," "you didn’t build that," "no time
to profit," "punish our enemies," "nation of
cowards," "my people") and presidential incitement in
the Ferguson and Travyon Martin cases.
Otherwise,
there is no Democratic agenda per se that is workable. Progressivism
has become as nihilistic as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter,
and the cry-bully movement on campuses—all liberal children that
devoured their parents while winning zero support among the populace.
Note
how Hillary has no real blueprint and will end up trimming Obama-ism.
What might she advocate?
More
deficit priming to go beyond the $20 billion debt?
Years
more of zero interest rates?
An
expansion of Obamacare?
Mandatory
cap-and-trade?
More
open borders and sanctuary cities?
Greater
withdrawal from the world abroad? Another reset? Much needed
reductions in the defense budget?
More
of the same from the GSA, EPA, Justice Department, IRS, NSA, Secret
Service or VA?
Obama-ism
accepts that intrusive government, fueled by equality-of-result
ideology and pop multiculturalism, has few answers to today’s
existential crises. Will we really stop terrorism by banning
semi-automatic weapons (as well as box cutters, pipe bombs, and
remote-driven toys?), on the theory that taking away guns from those
who follow existing gun laws will make us safer from thugs and
terrorists [and crazies off their meds] who don’t?
Since
the government could do nothing about enforcing the ban on the
transference (illegal without re-registration) from friend to friend
of weapons used by terrorists, or the illegal modification of
weapons, in the San Bernardino shootings, can it at least achieve
psychological penance by outlawing some other models used by
law-abiding citizens who might comply?
Perhaps
the liberal solution to ending the threat of jihadism is to further
expand government indoctrination about the dangers of Islamophobia?
Or
let in more refugees from the war-torn Middle East to expose them to
the benefits of pluralistic democracy and multicultural tolerance and
thus to mitigate radical Islam by hearts-and-minds outreach?
Or
eliminate coal burning to stop global-warming-induced Middle East
terrorism?
Or
do we need still more presidential speeches damning the Crusades and
high-horse Christianity, while apologizing for slavery, racism,
genocide, climate change, and inequality — to convince radical
Islam that their furor has a “rationale” and “legitimate”
basis and thus we understand why we are their enemy?
Or
change more vocabulary to mask reality, to build upon terrorism as
workplace violence, jihad as a personal odyssey and the Muslim
Brotherhood as largely secular? On the theory that gravity did not
exist until the post-Newtonian world found a name for it, so too
Islamic terrorism will perish if we banish its nomenclature. Is that
why President Obama called the San Bernardino violence the result of
generic “extremist ideologies"?
At
last Obama has no more elections to worry about and can begin “to
fundamentally transform” America in a way his electoral worries
restrained him on four prior occasions. His dilemma is that he has
lost all legislative and popular support for his agenda, and now
relies either on executive orders or public petulance to demonize,
slander, or otherwise reduce his critics and opponents to caricature.
The president gets away with it due to the media stereotype that a)
Obama was a constitutional law “professor” (once upon a time
part-time lecturers claiming that they were full professors was a
pedantic campus sin) who would correct past Bush legal overreach, and
b) Obama was once a healer and so would never do what he now
precisely does.
So
we are left with liberal nihilism for the next 13 months. A
self-described constitutional law professor will seek to unravel the
Constitution in ever more ingenious ways, and as a "hope and
change" healer he will tear the country apart through as many
fault lines that he can leverage as possible.
What
is the alternative to such nihilism? A new liberal agenda that will
win over the American people, jumpstart the economy, pay down the
debt and restore solvency, keep us secure here and abroad, and unite
the people?
It
[(for those in Rio Linda, a non-suicidal leftie agenda)] does
not exist, because it could not exist.
[My emphasis.]
N.B.
The
term “bubble head” which I have used in my custom designed
bitly.com links in this post/email
(their sidebar/popup tool is particularly useful) does not primarily
imply that lefies are empty-headed. Bubble head, analogous to pot
(marijuana) head or (Grateful) Dead head, refers to their addiction
to existence within the leftie/liberal/progressive/Marxist/fellow
traveler/useful idiot/etc. bubble that our big ed/big media/big gov/
big finance/big psych pointy headed pseudo-intellectual elites have
carefully constructed to keep them free from contamination by common
sense, non-PC notions, and other dangers to the delicate
sensibilities of men without training in normal fertile and generous
emotion, our new castrati.
*
- Text of verses cited above:
2
Peter 2:22
KJV But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The
dog is
turned
to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing
in the mire.
Isaiah
55:3
KJV Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear,
and your soul shall live;
and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even
the
sure mercies of David.
John
5:24
KJV Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and
believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not
come into condemnation; but is
passed from death unto life.
Revelation
22:17
KJV ¶ And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that
heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever
will, let him take the water of life freely.
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