The Word Police, and the Rights of the “Offended”

If you know your neighbor doesn’t recycle every last shred of cardboard and metal, does that offend you?

How about if they have a bunch of Green Peace stickers on their VW?

Offended yet?

What if your boss is an outspoken evangelical Christian, or if your uncle believes the Earth is heating-up faster than a microwavable Pizza Pocket®? If your local high school’s nickname was the “Indians”, the “Braves”, the “Chiefs” or (gasp) the “Redskins”, …would that offend you?

If you find any of these examples to be offensive, have no fear: we each have the Constitutional RIGHT to be offended.

What we don’t have is a Constitutional right to force those people to shut-up or cease their behavior simply BECAUSE we’re offended.

But the rise of Political Correctness, coupled with various lawsuits and speech codes, has effectively created a veritable Word Police in our society. And everything said or done is apparently fair game for them to find a potential “offense”.

REAL “Saving” on Black Friday

“….It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed.  Jesus is ‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.’

Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”

Acts 4:10 – 12 (NIV)

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May your Black Friday “saving” be eternal….

Thanksgiving Comedy CLASSIC: Louie Anderson on the ‘Tonight Show’

Comedian Louie Anderson just makes me laugh.

His routines were (usually) perfectly clean, and his animated kid’s show “Life With Louie” was extremely funny, yet sweet. Still can’t understand why they don’t formally release it on DVD: it won two Emmy’s, after all.

Anyway, the following clip is from the ‘Tonight Show’ on Thanksgiving Day, 1987…, and it’s just as funny now as it was then.

Happy Thanksgiving, gang.

We humbly trust in the Power of Giving Thanks…

This post from our good friend “Pgh” was a wonderful reminder last year of how and why we should always give thanks, no matter our circumstances.

We’re honored to be able to share it with you again. 

–JTR & GBL

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Every year, on the Tuesday evening before Thanksgiving Day, our congregation gathers to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. And, while we seek to be in a mind of praise and thankfulness EVERY day, there’s something about this particular evening that sharpens that focus.

It is truly a time of praise, worship, and thanksgiving.

This particular Tuesday evening, our Pastor delivered a message on “The Power of Giving Thanks“. It will change MY life forever, and from the heart, I would like to share his thoughts with you.

10 Films That Portray Capitalists as Heroes

Have you noticed how movies normally depict capitalists, executives or business owners?

Whether it’s Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End with the bizarre portrayal of the head of the East India Trading Company, or the main character in There Will Be Blood, business men (and women) are rarely shown sympathetically, often cast as the default villain.

Honestly, it might seem as if all corporate and/or entrepreneurial movie roles are written to be inherently evil, guilty of the sin of simply being in business.

Thankfully, that’s not always the case, and I’d like to share with you 10 films which actually celebrate hard-working entrepreneurs, and show believers in the free market as heroes.

It seems there IS a “pre-existing condition” that CAN raise your #Obamacare insurance cost!!

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy“. 

~Ernest Benn, New York Times Magazine, 1946

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Much has been made of Obamacare’s jettisoning of health insurance Pre-Existing Conditions. I’m not referring to the level/type of care you can expect to receive, but rather the COST of the coverage itself.

So why don’t we take a closer look at that claim, shall we?

Let’s say you’re an intravenous drug-user, and HIV positive. All other factors being equal, will you pay more for health insurance coverage under Obamacare than you would otherwise?

• No.

Hmmm, … what about if you’re diagnosed with cancer?

• Again, no.

“If the Iranians LIKE their enriched uranium, they get to KEEP their enriched uranium”

In case you somehow missed it this weekend, Obama has apparently decided that World War III should happen sooner, rather than later.

To quote Carol Platt Liebau, “If the Iranians like their enriched uranium, they get to keep their enriched uranium“:

Education and Character: Learning to See Clearly (part 1)

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen.

Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

–C.S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?”(1945)

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My years are beginning to show. I am facing the fact that I can no longer read most print without a pair of reading glasses. A cloudiness in my right eye suggests something more ominous, but I’m ignoring that for the moment.

Unlike the floaters I see in the air, which only appear when I stare at a blank surface, I am seeing connecting threads between many different things I’ve been reading in a variety of rich sources lately. Most of these ideas boil down to truths about learning, about character and about perspective, how we look at the world and how that looking affects us.