No, It Is Not Immature Or Childish to Live At Home

Certain individuals ― it doesn't matter what part of the political spectrum they are on ― seem to have a pattern of thought that is obsessively binary, and sadly, it's not just a left-wing problem either at this point. This example is just the latest in a series of cases in which willful ignorance of nuances and wrongful dismissal of valid reasons as excuses reigns supreme. Yes, I'm talking about someone from Virginia who has the nerve to use the very same "anyone who disagrees with me on X is Y" logic that the left uses by pushing the "anyone who disagrees with him on living at home is a loser" and "anyone who disagrees with him on living at home is a grown child" false dichotomies. There are at least 3 legitimate reasons THAT ARE NOT EXCUSES why these dichotomies are false and if you say that they are excuses anyway then you prove yourself an idiot.

The first reason does seem like a California-specific one but it can apply to other places that receive all of their revenue this way, and that's property taxes being used for nefarious purposes, something I touched a little bit on in this video a minute or two in. See, California's sales taxes are all local, as crazy as that may seem. State income tax accounts for maybe 10% of Sacramento's income. The other 90%? Property tax. So how do you boycott property tax? By not buying a home and not renting from landlords who use the rent that you pay them to pay property taxes until Sacramento changes for the better. I was hoping Travis Allen would make it; John Cox does have many flaws, but he got in anyway, so we have to make do with what's available at this point. Boycotting California property taxes is the only way to make the message clear enough to Sacramento that they WILL NOT use our property tax money to harbor criminals with a known history of committing crimes against property, and also, lest we forget, that they will NOT use taxes on private property to indoctrinate students into believing in abolishing the very private property that they are taxing, something that Sacramento is definitely doing given how many taxpayer-funded state university professors are open Communists.

Another reason is the obvious: SJW employers who simply hate conservatives, a phenomenon that in California, where I am, is particularly rampant. Marxists in groups like Antifa openly state that their reason for doxxing people is so that they can get them fired from jobs, and they have a habit of threatening employers with riots if they hire people like myself who have been interviewed by the media in contravention of their requests. Not only does this problem of SJW employers and Antifa, which really is a case of two sides of the same coin, have the effect of making gullible employers fire people for political reasons but it also prevents hiring by any employer that is not either a church or a gun store.

So, in order to debunk all of the "fascist" lies that Antifa uses as false premises to get people fired and keep them from getting hired I will make what I am in this blog post very clear: I am a millennial Ted Cruz. I am a proud Bible-thumping Christian theocratic dominionist who rightly sees mass immigration as a direct catalyst for the oversecularization of our culture. Using a combination of open borders and welfare to encourage illegal aliens knowing that they are used to voting for big government back home to immigrate en masse is how the left is trying to continue their stranglehold on Hollywood, academia, and the media, and also how they are trying to amass as much political power as they can, in order to attempt to sustain the immigration-welfare-degeneracy feedback loop.

They are then using those venues that they secure through mass immigration to push things like abortion, the false dichotomy that refusal to do business with LGBT must somehow be the same as hating them when in reality they can just find someone else to do business with (thankfully the SCOTUS struck this down), and other ideas that in turn represent a direct threat to Christianity. Again, without mass immigration the left would not be able to do this much damage to the Christian foundation of our society (according to Patrick Henry, "for this reason alone, members of other faiths have been afforded freedom of worship here") that it has, because mass immigration is how they keep bringing in the votes that they need to push this degeneracy. Oh, and lest we forget, there's also the problem of Quran 9:29 ― Islam is also a direct threat to Christianity because all the anti-Christian violence in the Middle East is incited by the Quran itself in that very verse. The left in Europe is aiding and abetting Islamic persecution of Christians by importing Muslims knowing that the Quran incites this very anti-Christian hatred.

The third and final reason THAT IS NOT AN EXCUSE, again, is that home loans are slavery and rent is slavery. My parents learned this the hard way when, back in 2008 when I was 15, they lost their old house in Lake Forest. Why? Because the banksters, controlled by the Fed, doubled the mortgage rates on millions of families, including my own, without warning. They could afford to pay the previous $3000 per month on mortgage with no problems, but $6000 per month? Yes, that's how bad it was. Mortgages and rents are cancer. They enslave you to the banksters, they enslave you to the Fed, and they enslave you to landlords. And don't get me wrong, some landlords are good people, but like the Fed and like they banksters they can and often do raise the rent on a whim, once again causing problems.

Until Sacramento is taken over by people who promise to use property tax dollars the right way I am not moving out. Until employers other than gun stores and churches (the latter I am an employee of, by the way) stop giving into Antifa's demands I am not moving out. Until I can afford to put 100% down on a house I am not moving out. THIS DOES NOT MAKE ME A GROWN CHILD AND IT DOES NOT MAKE ME A LOSER. It makes me a wise decision-maker who knows a lot more about the problems facing California than you do if you call me those things.

Omni-Bust: Trump's Biggest Mistake As President

Many people, especially pro-amnesty leftists, who think of Trump supporters almost instinctively also assume them to be sycophants who constantly pander to him, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Remember what he said at his inaugural address about "taking power from Washington […] and giving it back to you, the American people?" President Trump ran on a right-wing populist and civic nationalist platform. This means, among other things, opposition to globalist trade, opposition to illegal immigration (first and foremost), and policies that favor American workers over foreigners. So, when he makes a decision that causes pro-globalization, pro-amnesty far-left cultural Marxist nihilist commies like Nancy Pelosi to gloat, it's cause for concern to say the least.

That's exactly what happened when the 45th President signed the ludicrous Omnibus spending bill into law earlier today. This bill only increases border security spending by a paltry $1.6 billion and includes in it a provision that restricts the type of barrier to be funded to just a fence, not a wall, which is woefully inadequate as a border barrier because a fence is far easier to climb than a wall is. Meanwhile, it increases military spending by a whopping $700 billion (yes, that's billion with a B). Yes, we do need a strong military, but $700B is overkill if we aren't actually involved in conflict. The bill also wastes $6 billion on the National Science Foundation, $4.491329 billion on foreign aid, $30 billion on the Department of Energy, another $9 billion on 770,000 abandoned federal buildings, and, worst of all, yes, it still wastes money (albeit an unknown amount) on Planned Parenthood. Add in the amounts not disclosed by Sen. Rand Paul in his Twitter thread linked to in the introductory sentence to this paragraph, and you end up with a whopping $1.6 trillion in wasteful government spending.

No, I am absolutely not under any circumstances going to believe the "you were conned" argument coming from the very leftists who conned us with Obama, not one bit, so don't even try it on me. Every single person who has ever made this ludicrous assertion on Twitter not only is pro-amnesty ― something that more than 70% of Americans are not ― but also supports an increase in government spending, an increase in taxes, single-payer healthcare (!), and worst of all they are seemingly OK with the religion of possessive perverts, marital pedophiles, polygamists, and downright terrorists that is Islam. You who use that cliche are the very reason why I voted for Trump in the first place. You want everything that America does not. You want more open borders, more communism, and more hell that comes with all of that. Try to mess with me and you'll be sorry you did. The fact that you have the nerve to accuse me of being conned after having conned me with Obamacare, conned me with the lie that diversity is strength when in reality diversity is our weakness, and wrongly think the reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy to be a valid argument when applied to Trump, only proves just how stupid you actually are. I can see right through that BS for what it is.

Yes, I am still a Trump supporter. No, I am not a sycophant. I am courageous enough to hold him to his words at that January 20, 2017 inaugural address. Signing this bill is hypocrisy with respect to them, and when flip-flops like this happen, it's extremely important to call them out, not sit idly by and sycophantically defend them as Bill Mitchell would often do. I want him to succeed, badly. That means calling out moves that are capable of setting him up for failure. This move is one of them. The May 2017 Syria strikes were another. The offer of amnesty for illegal aliens in exchange for building the wall ― which thankfully didn't pass ― is another still. I do get that the President is under a lot of pressure, not only from cultural Marxists in the mainstream media and in the Democratic Party but also from establishment neocons who like former President George W. Bush would rather send America into another pointless war than see it succeed, but that pressure doesn't matter because it is not coming from his base. The pressure that matters is the pressure from people who voted him into that office in the first place, of whom I am one.

Mr. President, do NOT listen to anyone in the establishment on whether or not to sign legislation, I don't care how many people get turned off. Had you vetoed this and it got passed after overriding your veto, then it would have been an opportunity for members of Congress to be primaried out and more competent potential contributors to the populist agenda voted in. Signing this bill, however, means you own it. There are only 2 possible solutions at this point: Either A, we vote someone into Congress who will repeal this bill ― hopefully Erin Cruz will at least introduce something into circulation that says "the Omnibus spending bill of 2018 is hereby repealed" ― or B, we invoke Article V and convene states together in order to amend the 1-in-2-out rule into the Constitution, making the act of passing bills like this one without also repealing two previous ones unconstitutional. Either way, this is not a good move for the agenda that you ran on, not in the least bit.

Why it is Not Un-Christian to Believe in an Old Earth

When bringing up morality when debating with leftists and particularly secular leftists, pointing out the obvious fact that by believing morality to be subjective they believe moral relativism to be an absolute and by believing moral relativism to be an absolute they contradict their own moral relativism, sometimes I will get "But the Bible can't be absolute because it contains a creation narrative out of touch with the geological record."

In order to answer this objection we first need to ask the question "Who wrote that narrative?" The answer, according to Old Testament scholars, is Moses, given that it is categorized by Orthodox Jews as being one of his five books. Yes, Moses definitely had God's help, but at the same time, Moses was not God. In the New Testament, the Pharisees tried to challenge Jesus on divorce based on another book of Moses, and this was His response:

—begin quote—
“Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”  Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.  I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
Matthew 19:7‭-‬9
—end quote—

Note the boldfaced portion of this quote. If the Israelite people's hearts were so hard that they needed a watered-down version of divine morality in order to be able to accept it without throwing a fit, then wouldn't it go without saying that they were also so dim-witted that they needed a watered-down version of the creation narrative in order to be able to understand it at all?

That seems to be profoundly the case. When people were confronted with facts that contradicted their predeterminations in the ancient world, they always threw fits. If these people had a predetermination that the Earth was young and were capable of getting triggered like SJWs if they were presented with something contradicting this predetermination, then why this creation narrative would get truncated from its original form by Moses suddenly begins to make all the sense in the world. If a fact falls on a hard heart, then it will also fall on deaf ears. So Moses, not God, is the one who presented a truncated, watered down version of the narrative: not to be accurate, but to appease the hard-hearted Israelites who would have cried foul at the idea of the earth being older than their predetermined notion of it. When Augustine challenged that predetermined idea centuries later, he was vehemently attacked for it — during Moses' time, it would have been even more difficult to convey.

With this in mind, if you stretch Genesis 1 out, then it matches exactly. First there was no matter, space, or time at all (Genesis 1:1-2), then there was light, then, about 10 billion years later, there was an Earth with water on it (Genesis 1:6-8), then continents began to peak out from an Earth that was initially 100% ocean (Genesis 1:9-10), then photosynthetic life appeared in order to add oxygen to the atmosphere (Genesis 1:11-13), then the thick Venus-like atmosphere thinned to the point where the sun and moon were both visible from Earth's surface for the first time (Genesis 1:14-19), then Cambrian aquatic life appeared (Genesis 1:20a), then dinosaurs with feathers roamed the Earth (Genesis 1:20b), and, finally, at the very end, human beings are created. There are creation narratives all over the place, but the Biblical narrative is the only one that places all of these events in this exact order.

Lisa Bloom is a Complete Idiot

Lisa Bloom is not a lawyer. She's a career criminal posing as a lawyer. She wouldn't know the law if it slapped her in the face and she got thrown in jail.

No, it is Not Hypocrisy to Advocate for Traditionalism While Young and Single

Last week at the University of California, Irvine, I had the privilege and honor to meet one of the largest counter-cultural voices within my generation advocating for the abandonment of left-wing deconstructionism and the return to the family values of our parents and grandparents: Lauren Southern. Fast forward one week, and this innocent, attractive, intelligent, talented young conservative woman of God is under attack, this time from both the left and the alt-right, why, exactly? Because once again, willful ignorance of nuance has infected both wings of Western politics like the cancer that it is.

Hypocrisy by definition is deliberately and willfully acting in a manner inconsistent with one's words. It is NOT the act of advocating for a change in policy while being in a position in which practicing what one preaches is a political, cultural, religious, or financial impossibility, or, in the case of someone growing up in the complete left-wing degenerate hellhole that is Justin Trudeau's Canada (or, for that matter, Jerry Brown's California), all of the above. Finding someone within the millennial generation who is paleoconservative on most if not all policy positions is difficult enough. Finding another Christian in the millennial generation who happens to also support those issues is extremely difficult ― the millennial generation is the most Godless generation in existence, bar none, and I know that from personal experience with my peers. Being able to support oneself when the cost of living keeps skyrocketing due to mass unchecked immigration that is constantly driving up home prices while also supporting those policy positions, which are capable of getting most normies fired from their jobs if they happen to have SJW bosses (thankfully as a church employee I don't) is even more difficult still. Finding someone who is all of the above in an area culturally overrun by leftists like Toronto (or, formerly, Vancouver) is next to impossible.

Despite how much counter-cultural influence she has, Lauren is NOT a policymaker. Calling an advocate for a return to traditional family values who is exactly 2 years, 2 months, and 2 days younger than I am (source: Wikipedia) a hypocrite simply because, A, she's only 22 years old, and B, virtually all rich 30-somethings who are attracted to people her age are limousine-liberal Weinstein-esque Hollywood perverts who an intelligent conservative like her wouldn't touch in a million years, is either willfully ignorant, narcissistic, dumb, or a combination of all of those things. That, however, is exactly what those obsessed mouth-breathers are doing in the comments. My infamous blog post from September 2016 (and subsequent video remastering of it) does a brilliant job of exposing the problem of fallacious logic in politics, and here we have a case of something that is in fact on both of those lists: a false dichotomy. It's not quite the same false dichotomy that the Religion of Perverts uses, but it's still a false dichotomy regardless, and if it's a false dichotomy then it, like every other logical fallacy, must be avoided in political discourse at all costs.

Apparently none of this matters to those trolls, whose only end goal is either silencing conservatives (in the case of the left-wing ones) or attempting to deconstruct the faith of those they intend to spend the rest of their lives with (in the case of not all the alt-right ones but probably a significant portion of them). Neither of those two scenarios is even remotely worth celebrating: On one hand, whataboutism is perhaps the oldest left-wing tactic used to silence the right, having been in existence as long as communism itself has, and must therefore be defused at every available opportunity, no matter what side of politics it comes from. On the other, extreme secularism is a form of cultural Marxism in itself: class struggle of atheists vs. Christians is just as degenerate as class struggle of the proletariat vs. bourgeoisie, class struggle of woman vs. man, class struggle of trans vs. cis, or class struggle of black vs. white (the latter of which has been especially common as of late). All forms of cultural Marxism are bad, and extreme secularism is no exception to that rule ― the fact that this extreme secularism is being practiced just as commonly on some factions of the alt-right (particularly the Spencer sycophants and/or AB prison gangsters) as it is on the left is therefore especially problematic.

The bottom line is that willful ignorance of nuance is bad no matter what side of the political spectrum it comes from. I'm honestly tempted to return right back to those Liberal Logic 101 memes of 2016, because we're dealing with a case of exactly this: such obsessively binary thought that has infected politics like a cancer, to the point where the ability to even have a discussion without getting labeled has gotten increasingly more and more difficult. That's why voices of reason like Lauren are so important. In order to make a society great again, all decadence must be purged from politics on both sides, and this particular decadence manifesting as whataboutism, which began life as a left-wing tactic, mind you, is no exception to that rule.

If Babying Inner Cities is Racist, Then So is Babying Israel

Because I have been on the scene at rallies more often, I haven't taken to this blog in a while, but recently there has been an issue that the establishment has had with one speaker I met on July 9 who I have since become very good friends with. Johnny Benitez, a relatively new arrival on the new right scene but still a major player who I have been having a lot of fun at rallies with, is being accused of anti-Semitism by establishment RINOs, why, exactly? For opposing all foreign aid packages to all countries including the $38 billion handout that gets sent to Israel every year. Not only is this purely fiscal reason for wanting to cut aid to Israel not in any way motivated out of hatred for the Jewish people at all, but, given the arguments even paleocons like Dinesh D'Souza use as far as welfare dependency is concerned, the exact opposite is true.

100 years after the Civil War, Jim Crow was beginning to break down in the same way that slavery broke down. The Democratic Party, after having lost the slavery argument, passed all sorts of segregation laws meant to keep blacks held down, but that too failed. As a result, President Lyndon Baines Johnson came up with another conspiracy to keep blacks segregated in a completely different manner: through welfare dependency. As Johnson put it, blacks were to be given "just enough to quiet them down; not enough to make a difference" in exchange for "voting Democratic for the next 200 years." All they care about is their vote. They do not care about a change in their condition, and the establishment GOP has ever since then been capitalizing on this LBJ rhetoric.

Why is it, however, that the same establishment Republicans who capitalize on LBJ's conspiracy to keep blacks held down also want to keep our allies dependent on handouts? Regardless of its intended destination, a handout is still a handout. What do handouts do? They keep those whom they're handed out to dependent on them. People who are not trained to manage money wisely go out and spend it all, then beg the government for more, and the vicious cycle continues. A handout to a foreign government carries exactly the same problem. This foreign aid package does quiet Israel down, sure, but does it actually make a difference in Israel's ability to defend itself? It may temporarily, but as soon as Israel spends it all on military equipment, it all disappears. Rather than freeing Israel to defend themselves by unchaining and deregulating their own defense market, establishment Republicans want to make Israel a welfare slave to the United States.

Although Israel's foreign aid package is the largest one, it's not the only one we're dealing with, moreover, and if combined with all the other foreign aid packages that involve, for the most part, taxpayer money being shipped overseas, the result may be very well be a major contributor to our national debt, which is already outrageously high. How much of a debt contributor the packages are is unknown, but what should be noted is that this money which is being offshored to defend other nations, unlike trade deficits, is very difficult to repatriate. President Trump ran his entire campaign on putting Americans first both fiscally and socially, and made repatriation of overseas money a very significant priority when it comes to doing that. If that is the case, then why keep those foreign aid packages in place? It does not make any sense, neither economically nor with respect to the previous two paragraphs.

To recap, we're dealing with a case in which the accusation is not only false, but a total projection of personal guilt onto someone who they clearly do not understand the worldview of. I for one am very hopeful that people begin to realize this given enough time, but if not, we just have to keep pushing. To those who I will be seeing in Laguna Beach on Sunday, August 20 (which includes the very person that this post is defending), I hope this inspires you enough to look into this more, and please make sure this gets shared in order to set the record straight. Thank you.

No, Blocking in Response to Personal Attacks is NOT Being Triggered

In September 2016, I posted (and subsequently updated, numerous times) this infamous post to this blog. Despite it being almost a year old, that post still has a lot of relevance today, so much so that I have to constantly go back to it to correct the record on such. Today, there was just one more example of this on Twitter.

What happened, exactly? Well, a discussion started with a judgmental leftist who had the nerve to call my fellow conservative, fellow philosopher, and virtual neighbor (both of us live in South OC) Mike Cernovich "fake news" because he shared a CBS article about churches being cracked down on. Whoever this leftist was (possibly a bot because it did not have a real name attached to it at all, neither in the @handle nor in the associated name — fake name + fake handle = probably a troll), he, she, or it (if a bot) not only was apparently clueless to the fact that the article was a CBS article (a left wing outlet to boot), NOT an article from Cernovich himself, to begin with, but also was hypocritically spreading fake news about Russia on his or her own profile to boot.

Now, wait a minute, how are Trump's alleged ties with Russia fake news? This Russia story is based on some of the very same fallacies (especially the first one) that I mention in the post that I link to in Paragraph 1. It goes beyond mere fallacies, however, because we also have videos on hidden camera, courtesy of investigative journalist and muckraker James O'Keefe. Producer John Bonifield admitted that the Russia story "is mostly bullshit right now." Anchor Van Jones admitted that it's "just a big nothing burger". Another producer, Jimmy Carr, called all American voters (hasty generalization — also on that list of mine) "stupid as shit," then doubled down on that claim. Ah, but what about Don Jr.? Didn't he have a meeting with a Russian? Yes, with a former Communist lawyer who hates his father and has no political power in Russia whatsoever. Just because someone is Russian does NOT automatically mean that Trump is Putin's puppet — heck, these former Soviets in particular are anti-Putin to boot. This standard of "if you meet with anyone from Russia, you must be a traitor" is one that implicates everyone in government, including leftists themselves, like Nancy Pelosi for example who lied about not meeting with Ambassador Kislyak.

So I called this troll out on the obvious fake news in the previous paragraph and how hypocritical whoever that was for spreading it, and what happens? This troll automatically jumps to the conclusion that I must be triggered. Yes, you heard that correctly. I got called a snowflake simply because I pointed out this LOLworthy double standard. Again, go back to the post that Paragraph 1 links to. What's the number 4 fallacy on that list? A false dichotomy. Yes, that's exactly what this is. This idea of "anyone who calls you out on inconsistency must be a triggered snowflake" is an idea in which two extremes are manufactured and assumed. In reality, there are multiple factors that must be assumed, the least of which is how much time one's opponents have on their hands, and I've got very little on mine. Personal attacks and judgmental language, for the record, are also valid reasons to ignore/block without being triggered, because they are expressions of baseless emotions in themselves. That's at least 5 options, not just two.

So, does anyone else want to troll me? There is clearly an active attempt by leftists to shut me up, but just like with Trump, they're messing with someone who is as persistent as a pit bull and as suffocating as a Burmese python. The more they troll Trump, the more he fights back; the more they troll me, the more I fight back. They have been warned.

VIDEO: The Truth About Trump's 'Trans Ban'

Why Millennials Should Support Economic Nationalism

My generation has definitely been given a reputation, that's for sure. It's a reputation derived mainly from the "safe spaces" on college campuses, and it's definitely a negative one. Fellow millennials, *especially* left-wing ones, have been given a reputation as a bunch of entitled, spoiled brats who let their sensitivity control them. How did this happen? There are a myriad of factors, but one of them is the economy, which the mainstream media used as a ruse to deceive the people into electing Obama.

I was 14 in 2007, when the recession began, and 15 in June 2008 when my parents lost their house to it. Why did they? Because five years earlier, in 2003, my parents were victims of globalism. The people whom they were bosses of had their jobs offshored, and they themselves had their jobs outsourced to other states. Globalism is all about greed. Globalist trade policies create an environment in which businesses exploit the low minimum wages of foreign markets in order to amass more wealth for themselves while giving employees less, all the while also importing illegal immigrants from the third world in order to make the cost of housing more and more out-of-reach for us millennials. In terms of both of these simultaneous problems, my state of California has suffered the hardest.

This offshoring bubble was compounded by Bush era foreign policy. While the war in Afghanistan was certainly justified as a reaction to 9/11, the war in Iraq was a completely pointless one. Whenever a secular leader, like Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, or Bashar al-Assad has his political power weakened, it provides an opportunity for jihadis 10 times more bloodthirsty than they are to fill the void. When Iraq was invaded by Bush and then abandoned by Obama, ISIS filled the void. The result? A humanitarian crisis 10 times worse than the one we started with. Meanwhile, how expensive was that war? Extremely. It created a defense deficit in the trillions of dollars.

So, what's the solution to this one-way cashflow? Enter economic nationalism. That means manufacturing and selling more American product to other countries than what we import. It means selectively tariffing popular outsourcing destinations like China and Mexico far more than less popular outsourcing destinations. It means only taking those tariffs down when the other countries take theirs down. It also means not only reducing unchecked illegal immigration but also reducing the minimum age to work in lieu of that, in order to make sure that it is our youth, and not illegal immigrants, who get to have those unskilled jobs as they work to be able to afford college and, hopefully after that, a better job. Guess what? These are all positions that the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, repeatedly asserts about possessing, and some of those promises, particularly those about repatriation, are ones that he is already delivering on.

People may try to cop out of this by using the tu quoque fallacy, by claiming that his own business represents a conflict of interest, but it's not that simple. For starters, memorabilia like the MAGA hat (which in itself is in fact made in the United States — well, the one I bought online via his campaign website is anyway) only account for about 5% of Trump's wealth. What accounts for the majority of his wealth? Buying and selling American real estate, and employing Americans off the street to work in the construction industry. While he has bought and sold real estate in other countries, the profits from those dealings went straight into his pocket, which is on American soil. Did he have any foreign bank accounts? No, because he has always been against giving money to other countries. Tu quoque is just as much of a fallacy as ad hominem is.

I'm saying this from one child of the recession to another: Let President Trump do his job. The benefits far outweigh the risks, and I fortunately knew this before I voted in November. Sadly, the left and the media have instilled so much hatred in the public that his name has been tarnished for no good reason, but I was smart enough to see right through those attacks and vote based on what he was running on.

Mainstream Media and the Law of Noncontradiction: Is Criticism Constitutional?

One of the major differences between Trump and all other Presidents before him is his open criticism of the mainstream press, both as a candidate and as President of the United States. His supporters will then often chime in with the infamous "CNN Sucks! CNN Sucks!" chant, and while I haven't been to his rallies, I too have said a lot of negative things about the mainstream media in the past. The mainstream press, however, took those comments as a threat. They accused Trump, both before his presidency and during it, of posing an unconstitutional threat to press freedom by criticizing the press. Did he? In order to find out, we must use the second fundamental law of logic, known as the law of noncontradiction, which states that A cannot be both A and non-A at the same time.

Although the right to press freedom is indeed coded into the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the right to criticize (even bluntly) is freedom of speech — also a First Amendment right. So, if criticism of the media was unconstitutional as the mainstream press outlets love to claim, then the freedoms of speech and of the press would contradict each other. If freedom of speech and freedom of the press contradict each other, therefore, then the entire First Amendment itself violates the law of noncontradiction. If the First Amendment violates the law of noncontradiction, then it is logically false.

Now, suppose it is fully constitutional to use free speech against the media and/or press. Again, freedom of speech and freedom of the press are both First Amendment rights, but here they do not contradict each other in any way. If speech freedom and press freedom do not contradict each other, then they can both be true at the same time and be guaranteed alongside each other while at the same time keeping each other checked and balanced. If there is no contradiction in the First Amendment, therefore, then the First Amendment is logically true. In order for the First Amendment to be logically true, however, it must be fully constitutional to use free speech against the press.

So, to recap: Either use of free speech to criticize the media is unconstitutional and the First Amendment is logically false, or use of freedom of speech to criticize the media is fully constitutional and the First Amendment is logically true. Under no circumstances, however, can the First Amendment be logically true and criticism of the media be unconstitutional at the same time. When the media makes this claim, they are actually showing themselves off as living proof of their own bias. The Founding Fathers definitely weren't stupid enough to write contradictory statements into the Constitution, so anyone who spins the First Amendment in this way is also insulting the intelligence of the people who wrote the Constitution and founded this great nation by doing so.

Eleven Common Self-Refuting Statements to Avoid

Some visitors to my blog have noticed my references to self-refuting ideas in the past, but what exactly are they? Simply put, a self-refuting claim is a claim that contradicts the idea that it is supposed to advance. A self-refuting statement sounds reasonable on the surface, but as soon as you apply the claim to itself, it collapses under its own weight. My infamous "Fallacious Politics" post has thus far received a lot of positive responses, and just as fallacies have political implications, so too do self-refuting statements… and just like fallacies, self-refuting statements in politics are almost exclusively left-wing.

1. "There is no truth"

You might think that leftists care a lot about truth — or at least they claim to. I mean, they're marching for it all the time. But do they? Some leftists, especially the pathologically secular camp manifested in atheists like Bill Maher and David Silverman, among others, will often attempt to cop out of debates with Christian apologists like Frank Turek, Sean McDowell, J. Warner Wallace, and myself by making this statement. So, how is this statement self-refuting? You can find out by simply asking "Is that true?" If the person says "yes" then at least one truth exists and therefore the claim is false. If the person answers "no" then they admit that their claim is false. Either way, it is false.

2. "Truth is subjective"

Another claim that is almost exclusive to left-wing ideologies like those of Silverman and Maher is this one. The claim that truth is subjective actually has its roots in Marxism and other forms of Communism — that's why the official newspaper for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was called "Правда", the Russian word for "truth": they believed the ultimate source of truth to be the Communist Party, not objective reality. So, how is this claim self-refuting? Simply ask someone who makes it the question "Is that truth subjective?" If the person answers "yes" then the claim that truth is subjective is itself subjective; if so, then why should the recipient believe it? If the person answers "no" then there is one objective truth out there — namely, the claim that truth is subjective — and thus, the claim that truth is subjective is false.

Trying to cop out of this claim by tacking "and that's the only truth" onto the end of it only makes the self-refuting nature of this claim more obvious. How? Because that addition is an assertion that "truth is subjective" is an objective truth. Truth cannot be both subjective and objective at the same time, yet that's exactly what people assume to be the case by making the "truth is subjective and that's the only truth" claim. I had to block someone who messaged this to me on Twitter because I have absolutely no time for this stupidity.

3. "That's true for you but not for me"

Is that claim also true for the claimant but not for the recipient? If so, then it's false for the recipient; if not, then it's false, period. Either way, it is false. But wait, doesn't the Bible claim that something can be true for the believer but not for the skeptic in Romans 14:22? I got into an argument on Twitter about this once that resulted in my opponent becoming triggered enough to block me over it, but the answer, if examined closely, is no. Anyone who makes this claim commits the quote mining fallacy. The words "these things" in that verse are a reference to Romans 14:20-21, in which Paul makes a reference to Jewish dietary laws. Romans 14:22 is about food, not belief.

4. "It depends on perspective"

Does that depend on your perspective? If it does, then isn't it false for everyone but you? If it doesn't, then it violates the law of noncontradiction, which states that A cannot be both A and non-A at the same time, and is therefore false. Either way, it is false.

5. Any variant of "truth is unknowable"

Is that truth unknowable? Can you know that truth? Do you have that truth? If these statements are what they are, then the person who makes them cannot know that the statements in question are true and therefore does not have grounds to make them. If the person on the other hand answers in the negative, then they again violate the law of noncontradiction and therefore this is a false statement to make. Either way, the claimant is stuck.

6. "Only true if I believe it"

Is that claim only true if I believe it? If the person answers "yes" then the recipient can choose not to believe that claim. If the person answers "no" then they violate the law of noncontradiction. Again, the claimant is in a dilemma.

7. "Only science can yield truth"

Can you test the claim that only science can yield truth using the scientific method? No. The claim that only science can yield truth is philosophical and not scientific in nature. If only science can yield truth, therefore, then the assumption that only science can yield truth would be false because it's philosophical, and if science is not the only thing that can yield truth, then this claim is also false. Either way, it is false.

8. "Don't judge"

Isn't that a judgment? Why are you judging me for judging? Any statement that attempts to convict someone of some perceived injustice is a judgment, and the judgment to not judge falls into that category. Alas, just as Romans 14:22 is often mined out of the context that the previous two verses place it in, so too is Matthew 7:1 mined out of the context that the following 4 verses place it in. The commandment by Jesus to "not judge lest you be judged" is, per Verses 3-5, about hypocrisy, not about judgments in general.

9. "The real world cannot be known"

If you cannot know the real world, then you cannot know that the claim that you cannot know the real world is true either. How can you? Again, this claim violates the law of noncontradiction, and any claim that violates the law of noncontradiction is false for everyone.

10. "You're just playing word games"

Is that a word game that the claimant is playing with the recipient? If the claimant answers in the affirmative, then he or she just implicated not only the recipient but also himself or herself. If the claimant answers in the negative, then the claim itself is falsified and therefore no one is playing any word games.

11. "All white people are racist"

Ah, here we come to what is perhaps the most common self-refuting statement in academia, Hollywood, and the media today. It's a judgment based on skin color, is it not? The very definition of racism is prejudice based on skin color. Pre-judging whites as racist based on their skin color is therefore making a statement that inherently violates the law of noncontradiction by using the race card in a racist manner.

People who make claims like these almost invariably make them because they would rather react than think critically. What they don't realize is that by being as defensive as they are, they are only showing off the very stupidity that they constantly project onto us. Hopefully this cheat sheet will make it much easier to expose this attitude for the folly that it is.

A Cold-Case Comparison of Christianity and Islam

As a detective working cold cases, 2016 reTHINK conference speaker J. Warner Wallace, author of a trilogy of Christian apologetics-related books — Cold Case Christianity, God's Crime Scene, and, most recently, Forensic Faith — had certainly seen an eyeful before his conversion to Christianity back in 1996. One of the first things that he noticed, however, was that all — not just most, but all — of the eyewitnesses who have a motive to lie have the following three motives: pride (a search for power), lust (a search for sexual satisfaction), and greed (a search for wealth). Those are the motives that people always have for lying. How exactly do Christianity and Islam compare on these three fronts?

The people who founded Christianity definitely did not have a pursuit of power — in Matthew 23, Jesus is recorded as having sternly rebuked the Pharisees for seeking power by acting religious. He also is recorded as having rebuked Peter (John 18:11) for attempting to fight in the name of Christianity. Was Muhammad on a pursuit of power? Absolutely. That's why he encouraged Muslims to "fight" and kill anyone who isn't a Muslim or dhimmi (Quran 9:29). Dhimmitude is one of the most basic, classic, blatant examples of a thirst for power in existence — and a thirst for power is one of these three motives that are capable of compelling people to lie.

Jesus also had very strong things to say about lust. In the Sermon on the Mount, He is quoted as saying that "anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matthew 5:28) — essentially equating sinful thoughts with the actual sins themselves. Muhammad and his followers, meanwhile, not only permitted tetragyny (the ability to have up to four wives), but also encouraged female genital mutilation, permitted marriages between adult men and girls as young as 9, and reduced women to the mere property of men, why? To bring sadistic pleasure to men at the expense of horrible pain that the women had to endure through sex with their genitals cut. Like power, lust is another motive that compels people to make up stories, and Muslims are just as full of it today as they were when Islam was in its infancy.

Jesus is also recorded as having some extremely strong things to say about greed. He is portrayed as so angry at the money-changers in the Temple who made big $$ off of the exchange of shekels with Roman denarii that He was compelled to vandalize the temple-turned marketplace by turning the tables over. He also is recorded as saying to an attempted rich follower to "sell off his possessions and give them to the poor" in order to follow Him. What, meanwhile, did Muhammad and his followers (like Abu Bakr, who founded the Rashidun Caliphate) do to those who were conquered and under their jurisdiction? If people under the jurisdiction of political Islam wanted to keep practicing their native religions (among them, Christianity and Judaism), they had to pay jizya — a tax on religion. Muslims did have to pay zakat as well, but whereas zakat is proportional (a flat 10% regardless of income), jizya is a regressive tax; therefore, jizya, being a tax that falls hardest of the poorest of the poor, is the more evil of the two. What did all this jizya money go into, initially? Making the Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, and Ottoman Caliphates stronger. That is greed — a third motive that is capable of compelling people to make something up.

So, while Christianity passes the power test, passes the sex test, and passes the money test, Islam, at the same time, fails all of the above While the earliest Christians had nothing to gain from lying, the earliest Muslims had everything to gain from lying. Granted, this doesn't prove absolutely that Muhammad made Islam up, but it definitely proves that he had all of the motives that people who make things up have. Aside from being a tu quoque argument and therefore a fallacy to begin with, the left-wing accusation that it is hypocritical for the right wing to give Christianity a free pass is completely debunked by basic forensics, and it is for this reason also that Christians must have the same kind of evidential faith that people like Wallace and myself have.

Why Trump-Russia is a Conspiracy Theory, Not a Legitimate Scandal

Did Russia collude with the Trump campaign during the electoral process? Why did he, as President, go on to fire the FBI director? There has been an "investigation" going on for almost a year now, and it hasn't revealed any evidence. There have been debunked dossiers released, which certain leftists within the government are actually believing. Just two weeks before his firing, FBI director James Comey admitted under oath that no investigation was in progress — thus giving President Trump the green light to fire him. Shortly after, a special counsel is hired — but a special counsel is NOT a special prosecutor.

The hypocrisy of this outrage associated with Comey's firing is telling, especially given that in October and November, shortly before the election when the investigation into rival Hillary Clinton was reopened, leftists were calling for his ousting. They were claiming, just as we are now, that it was a travesty of justice, despite being open about wanting war with the only other nuclear power in the world that can rival the United States in terms of proliferation of nuclear weapons. They are constant flip-floppers — just like the Pharisees, who used their positions not only in the temple but also in the Sanhedrin not to do what is right but simply to seek the praise of men, these Democrats are using their positions in Congress — America's Sanhedrin — purely to pump up their own fake piety.

Not one voting machine was hacked into, moreover — they are never connected to the Internet at all. There were, in fact, more than 7 million voters who were registered to vote Democrat in at least 2 states at once — a felony — and if those votes were factored into the electoral tally, it's likely to have been even more in Trump's favor. If voting machines are never connected to the Internet, then it is impossible for a hacker to change votes remotely. As for accepting $ from the Russians, that again is something that there is absolutely zero evidence for when it comes to actual top-level investigators. Flynngate was met with a prompt response by the Trump administration and is therefore not sufficient evidence either. Jeff Sessions is an accusation that it takes quote mining to support. Paul Manafort was never allowed to enter the administration to begin with — thus, just like Flynn as far as disciplinary action being taken is concerned. The only "evidence" that has ever been presented by the media is hearsay, and the sources of that hearsay are sources that the media and press have repeatedly used weasel words to conceal the identity of. News flash: If there are no real names attached to your sources, then the sources do not exist.

There is, indeed, a story of a $145 million bribe being sent by the Russian government to a politician not to change an election but to get the sale of a uranium mining company that controlled 20% of American mines to the Russian state nuclear agency — Rosatom — despite the fact that this would mean giving a large portion of our uranium ore away to a hostile government. This story also involved a $500,000 speaking fee that the Russian government paid to the husband of this politician — Obama's Secretary of State at the time — to give a speech in Moscow in an attempt to further persuade her to approve this corporate merger of hostile nature. Yes, that's right, if there's anyone who should be investigated for ties to Russia, it's Hillary Clinton for that $145M Foundation bribe and Bill Clinton for that $500,000 speaking fee.

This lunacy from the left about Russia is at best a conspiracy theory loaded with lunacy and at worst a manufactured cover-up intended to project the left's own guilt onto an innocent opponent. We are talking about 9/11 denial-grade stuff here — it is the kind of conspiracy theory that formerly only someone as far-left as Michael Moore would come up with — intended to be nothing more than an ad hominem attack not only on the President of the United States but also on the will of the American people to elect him over his opponent by a 77-vote electoral margin. We definitely don't want Civil War II, but to say that the left is asking for it at this point is an understatement.

A Stack of Dominoes: Injustice is Only Possible if Objective Justice Exists

One of the most common arguments that leftists (especially of the Atheist Left) use as alleged arguments against Christianity is one of definitional retreat about evil existing. They claim that if a good and powerful God existed then evil wouldn't exist, and our response is that evil is undefined if absolute good doesn't exist, and absolute good cannot exist if there is no superhuman arbiter who can properly define it. Then they go on to play the relativism card and flat-out exclaim justice to be subjective. Can anyone see the contradiction in this?

I certainly can. If justice were subjective, then it would be just one person's definition of what constitutes injustice against another's. Is murder unjust? Is robbery unjust? Is income inequality unjust? Is rape unjust? If they are unjust for one person but not for another then they aren't unjust at all. No, in order for injustice to be properly defined, justice must also be objectively defined. If justice is subjective then so is injustice subjective; if injustice is objective then so is justice objective. Thinking that you can have this both ways is extremely foolish and intellectually dishonest.

I am used to describing chain reactions using the infamous dominoes analogy. If one domino falls, they all do. The first domino in this issue of evil is the question "Is relativism true?" If it is, then the next domino is the definition of justice, then the next domino after that is the person's right to use injustice — an undefined variable at that point — as evidence to support their claim that their is no God. Finally, after they then contradict their own relativism by admitting that relativistic grounds are problematic ones from which to raise this objection, another domino — atheism itself — also falls to ruin.

This, of course, is completely aside from the fact that relativism is self-refuting to begin with — the claim that justice is subjective has an implication that it is unjust to claim otherwise behind it. If it is unjust to claim that justice is objective, then the notion that it is unjust to claim that justice is objective is itself also unjust. It falls in the very same category as suff that I have already gone over in previous blog posts — truth denial ("is that true?"), relativism generally ("is that relative?"), moral relativism ("is that true for all?"), and other such claims — the claim contradicts the very idea that it intends to advance.

So, are you a Christian or is your entire worldview destined to collapse like a stack of dominoes? If you are the former and know how to properly defend it as a belief system, then you're all good. If you're the latter — a self-refuting relativist — then you'd be a hypocrite for claiming to be reasoned and a hypocrite for claiming to be anywhere near in touch with reality. What's at stake here is… well, everything.

Debunking Foundation Denial: The Problem of Left-Wing Hypersecularism

Has anyone heard the argument coming from leftists denying the faith of the people who founded this country? I have, countless times. It's an argument coming mainly from members of the Nihilist Left — organizations like the FFRF and the ACLU which engage in flat-out denial whenever Christians claim, rightly so, that this country was founded on values that were clearly Judeo-Christian. What they don't realize is that many of the Constitution's original writers not only were Christians themselves but explicitly cited a Christian motive as the reason why they founded this country, three of whom are also cited by Greg Laurie's book "Hope for America" which I am honored to have read.

The most blatant example of a Founding Father who grounded that motive is none other than Patrick "Liberty or Death" Henry. In another work, post-revolution, he wrote, "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great Nation was founded not by religionists but by Christians, not on religions but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this reason alone, people of other faiths have been afforded freedom of worship here." In other words, Patrick Henry stated that it was precisely because of the fact that the country was founded by Christians that they felt compelled by the Christian concept of grace to advocate for allowing religious minorities to worship (or not) as they please.

Another founding father who echoed this was none other than the man who fought for our independence and was elected our first President, George Washington. He stated, "To the distinguished Character of Patriot, it should be our highest Glory to add the more distinguished Character of Christian." George Washington actually believed that it was more honorable to be a Christian than to be a war hero! Of course, anyone who has witnessed someone jumping on a grenade to save his fellow troops should feel quite familiar with this. The person who jumps on the grenade dies, but others are saved. Jesus jumped on a far bigger grenade: our own sin. That's a grenade that is otherwise fatal to all 7 billion of us.

Our third President, and the man who actually drafted the Constitution in its original form — Thomas Jefferson — made a statement that can only be regarded as a stern, prophetic warning for modern Americans. It reads, "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their own firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift from God? […] Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever." Jefferson, like Patrick Henry, was a foundationalist, who believed that American liberty in itself is only sustainable if it is on objective, not relativistic (and self-refuting​ by extension), grounds — and the only possible objective grounds for morality are theological grounds.

Okay, but didn't the founding fathers own slaves? Sure they did, but abolitionism was also grounded in Christian values. Abraham Lincoln — the President who fought a civil war to end slavery — put it this way during his Second Inaugural Address: "It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces […] Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue […] until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'" Lincoln, like other abolitionists including British abolitionist William Wilburforce, believed, rightly so, that slavery was and always has been an injustice. He cited examples like the Exodus and the commandment by Jesus to love everyone, including enemies, just as much as they love themselves to support this belief. People who owned slaves, meanwhile, would claim that because they were pagans back in Africa they didn't deserve to be free, despite the fact that forced conversion is expressly forbidden by Jesus (John 18:11) and therefore is at best hypocrisy and at worst heresy.

There are, I'm sure, countless others, but the point that these quotes make is very clear: Either America is Christian or it will cease to exist as we know it. Denial of this foundation sets the entire country up for polarization and failure, as left-wing anti-Trump rebels are doing a great job of displaying through immoral means (namely, vandalism, arson, assault, and battery). These deniers are the same people who, in a totalitarian manner, label those who disagree with them, often falsely (straw man fallacy), then use those labels as calls to violence. Only when this denial is debunked not only politically but also culturally can this country truly become free again.

Personal Moral Opinions are Red Herrings

Has anyone ever had the following discussion before? A Christian asserts that "if God does not declare something to be wrong then it isn't wrong" only for an atheist to assert that the existence of an all-powerful deity isn't necessary to think that thing to be evil. How? If God is not the source of all morality, then who is? Is it the mere opinion of the atheist himself? Is it government? Is it culture? None of these make any sense when examined closely.

When someone makes this assertion — namely, the assertion that someone can believe that an evil thing is evil without needing God to tell them — then they are changing the subject. The original subject was the existence of good and evil generally. The subject that the atheist changed it to was his or her personal beliefs about morality. Any change in the subject, no matter how subtle, in attempt to justify one's position is called the red herring fallacy. Oh, wait, is it just evil for you but may be good for someone else? Then why are you judging it?

There is a simple way to refute the assertion that all morality is opinion and belief. Simply ask the question "Is that morality a mere opinion or belief?" It's a moral claim, is it not? Then how can that morality be absolute without contradicting the very standard that it is supposed to convey? Moral relativism is a self-refuting idea. It, like truth denial ("is that true?"), denial of the existence of absolutes generally ("is that an absolute?"), and knowledge denial ("do you know that you cannot know anything?"), is a violation of the law of noncontradiction and, thus, false on its own merits.

Appeals to society (which, in turn, is "glued together" by government) as a source of morality don't fare much better than the above. If society were the source of morality, then every conflict would just be one society's moral opinion against another's. Would the Nuremberg Trials have had any valid basis to them if this were the case? No, because that case would just be the opinion of American society against the opinion of Nazi society, and in fact the people making the arguments at the Nuremberg Trials had to admit this in order to give the guilty parties any sense of conviction. When it comes to morality, societal relativism — appeals to society as the source of all morality — is a bad basis.

Cultural relativism — the idea that morality is a cultural construct — is just like the above. Those atrocities committed by ISIS — are they evil? I certainly believe that they are, and so do most atheists that I have debated. Unlike an atheist, however, I know where to properly ground that belief. Islamic culture is a culture, that much is known, and the rationale that ISIS uses is cultural rationale. In order to declare beheading to be wrong, one must go beyond cultural relativism as well in order to judge it as such, because cultural relativism definitely doesn't give an atheist grounds to tell a Muslim that beheading is wrong — any cultural relativist who does so contradicts the very cultural relativism that he or she claims to ground morality in.

Another attempt by atheists to explain morality is moral Darwinism — the idea that evolution can explain morality. See, Darwinism is all about survival of the fittest — the strong become strong, the weak become weak, and some species always exhibits a form of tyranny over all others. It is antithetical to compassion. It is antithetical to the belief that people should be fair to each other, yet fairness is something that all 7 billion of us value greatly. Hitler, in fact, was a huge fan of both Darwin and Nietzsche, and quoted them regularly in an attempt to justify many of his motives — his rhetoric about wanting to create a "master race” and his conviction that one race is somehow inherently superior to all others (as opposed to the identitarian/ethnopluralist view that ALL races have a right to a homeland) were both inherently Darwinian in nature. If Darwinian evolution were the source of all morality, then all 7 billion of us would be little Hitlers — yet we aren't. Because our morality is not all about survival of the fittest, moral Darwinism isn't merely self-refuting, it's morally abhorrent to the vast majority of us, and rightly so. Moral Darwinism is Nazi morality in its most basic sense, so if the people arguing at the Nuremberg Trials used evolution as the source of this universal moral standard, then they would have vindicated the Nazis, not convicted them.

So, moral relativism — fail; societal relativism — fail; cultural relativism — fail; moral Darwinism — fail. Relativism in general is always inherently self-contradictory and the moral values that all cultures have in common are values that are completely antithetical to the Darwinian mindset, yet the only possible explanation for morality if there is no God is either some flavor of relativism or moral Darwinism. Either relativism is true, moral Darwinism is true, or God exists. Relativism is self-refuting and therefore false, and moral Darwinism only makes sense when explaining the morality of cold, uncompassionate, immoral people whose morality contradicts that which all cultures thousands of years old have in common; thus, the only option is the third; namely, that an absolute moral law giver exists who transcends all space, time, and matter.

Dear President Trump: Reagan Doctrine, Not Neocon Hawkery

On Friday, April 6, 2017 — 100 years to the day after racist Democrat and Klanophile President Woodrow Wilson signed a congressional declaration of war that formally entered the United States into World War I — President Donald Trump, acting on emotions stirred in him by a heinous Sarin gas attack on a Syrian civilian target, bombarded the Shayrat Air Force Base with 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles. In order to make sense of this, one must ask four very important questions: What is Sarin? Why would Assad use it on his own people? What could Assad have done differently? What subsequent actions could Trump take that will not piss people off in that volatile region?

Being a nerve agent, Sarin acts by causing tetany: it's an acetylcholesterase inhibitor. It causes a buildup of acetylcholine so rapid that the victim immediately loses control of all of his or her muscles, which uncontrollably tense up, ultimately leading to seizures and eventually death by suffocation as a result of inability to control the diapharagm. There are other acetylcholesterase inhibitors that are much less deadly — caffeine and tetrahydrocannabinol, for example — but the reason why those aren't toxic is because they are metabolized much more quickly and don't bioaccumulate (what should be noted about caffeine, however, is that insects don't have the ability that we do to break it down; thus, it makes a great insecticide). Substances like Sarin, Soman, and VX are not only very biochemically stable in the human body, but can also inhibit large numbers of acetylcholesterase molecules at the same time, which makes them very dangerous.

Why would Assad want to use such a gruesome substance on Idlib Governorate? Because Idlib Governorate is ruled by Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra Front, which is basically the Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate. TaS isn't as bad as ISIS by any means — ever since Bin Laden's death, al-Qaeda has become a much more moderate organization, which after all is why ISIS decided to break away from it: the more radical al-Qaeda members wanted to stay radical and were shunned by al-Qaeda as a result — but it is still a very dangerous jihadi organization regardless. It is this organization that allegedly had a massive cell in Idlib with plans to carry out an attack on the Syrian government. The Russian explanation — that Assad dropped a conventional bomb directly onto a chemical storehouse — would make sense if it were not for one thing: Sarin's decomposition point. In addition to being toxic, Sarin is also flammable — containing mostly phosphorus and hydrocarbons, it can be ignited relatively easily, especially by a conventional bomb, and the combustion products of Sarin are harmless.

Using a chemical strike instead of a conventional strike on this terror cell, however, was the mistake that Assad made. Chemical weapons, unlike conventional weapons, kill not only their targets, they spread to areas far removed from their targets. Cause an explosion and destroy a terror cell, and, sure, said explosion would cause damage and kill those in the terror cell, but the death and destruction would be limited to that cell. Gas that terror cell with something like Sarin, and that gas is going to spread. Wherever it spreads, poison gas kills, and winds can easily spread Sarin from an intended target to an area packed with innocent civilians, resulting in widespread collateral death. Had Assad decided to just drop a conventional explosive (or incendiary) bomb on al-Nusra, we wouldn't have this problem.

Trump's reaction, although it was seen as an overreaction by some, was not without justification. The entire airfield from which the chemical weapons were allegedly launched was utterly destroyed. Notice, however, that his reaction involved missiles, not boots on the ground — Bush's reaction to Saddam Hussein Sarin-gassing Kurdish rebels was to employ ground troops, whereas Trump basically did to Assad what Reagan did to Gaddafi in 1981. The number of casualties was very low compared to the number caused by Assad's chemical attack, and it was only intended to hit that one base. Had that strike been intended to remove Assad from power, it would have been directed at Damascus, but that was not the case. It was direct at Shayrat and only Shayrat.

Only time will tell what this leads to. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's remarks today, Monday, April 10, 2017 about ISIS, not Assad, being Public Enemy #1 are indeed encouraging, however, and to say that the attack infuriated some of Trump's supporters is indeed a valid assertion. Regime change, however, is NOT a good idea either, because Assad is the only thing standing between ISIS and churches. If there is anyone who needs direct support, it's this: After ISIS is defeated ― and again, ISIS must go before we even think about what to do with the lesser evil, who is still evil regardless ― we need a spillover of the Iraqi Christian Babylon Brigades into Syria. We need to encourage Maronites in Lebanon to start a similar militia, then tell the Christian organizations to unite, surround Damascus, and, finally, put a new dictator from a Christian minority into absolute power. Because Vladimir Putin has been practicing Russian Orthodox since the 1990s, the odds of him agreeing to this solution are indeed high. In the short term, however, between Assad, ISIS, al-Nusra, and the jihadi-corrupted FSA, Assad is clearly the lesser of the four evils.

Debunking the "One God Further" Argument

UPDATE: A Twitter user recently brought up the example of Greek mythology regarding Chaos and Chronos as an example of creatio ex nihilo. Right off the bat, there's a major problem with this: According to the scientific (and biblical) explanation, matter is created last after the space-time continuum was created. According to the Greek mythological explanation, time is created last, after matter and space. There would be no such thing as a space-time continuum, therefore, if Greek mythology were true, yet there one and there is also scientific evidence for it.

Original post continues below.

One of the major problems with atheist logic that I encounter when debating online is that they often place the God of the Bible in the same category as pagan deities — which is a false equivalence fallacy. In order to debunk this notion that they are in the same category, one needs to look no further than the Bible's first verse. Whereas pagan gods are seen by their worshippers as creating Earth while residing in the heavens (and thus are indistinguishable from what sci-fi enthusiasts today would call aliens), the God of the Bible is depicted as having created *both* the heavens *and* the earth, and is therefore not only outside Earth but also outside the universe.

Fast forward thousands of years to today, and science now confirms that there was a time when not just matter but also space and, as Augustine asserted in the earliest days of Christianity, time itself did not exist. There was no space, there was no matter, there was no nature, and there was no time. In order to cause space, the "unmoved mover" as Aristotle alluded to must be non-spatial. In order to cause time, that same entity must be eternal. In order to cause matter, this entity must be immaterial. In order to cause nature — which depends on matter existing in order to exist — this entity must be supernatural. The first three of these attributes —  non-spatial, eternal, and immaterial — do not apply to any pagan deity, since all pagan cultures worshipped beings that they claimed created Earth but live within the universe; however, these same attributes are definitely applicable to the God of the Bible. Again, it’s false equivalence to compare these two, and to call this a God of the Gaps requires a false equivalence on your part as a premise. This argument is based on details about the universe and how it began that all other proposals — the multiverse, which is based on an appeal to probability fallacy, and Hawking cosmology, which is glorified circular reasoning that attempts to use gravity (which depends on the pre-existence of space-time [G], mass [m₁, m₂], and density [d²] in order to exist at all) as an excuse — fail to take into account.

In addition to the above, the universe is also permeated with over 200 measurements of how it operates, all of which must be infinitesimally precise even to allow the universe to exist at all, let alone to support life. For example, if the expansion rate of the universe were either increased or decreased by one part in 10¹⁵, then either A, the "Big Crunch" would already have happened, or B, galaxies would never have developed. If the gravitational constant, likewise, were changed by a similarly miniscule amount, then either A, gravity would be too weak to allow matter to coalesce at all, or B, the only existent objects in the entire universe would be black holes. In order for the universe to have been fine-tuned this precisely from the very beginning, the cause of space, time, matter, and the universe must also have been intelligent, and, since you cannot have intelligence without personality, personal as well.

Appeals to the above natural laws as causes for the universe are futile given that they did not exist before the universe existed. How Stephen Hawking, for example, cops out of this is by circular reasoning: he appeals to the law of gravity as an alleged explanation for the universe creating itself from nothing. Gravity by Einsteinian definition is the force that a massive object exerts on space-time. When there was no matter, space, or time, there was no mass, which depends on the existence of matter, or space-time, which depends on the existence of space and time. See the problem here? Space, time, and matter are the three essential ingredients that must exist in order for gravity to even be logically, let alone physically, possible. It's ironic that people as intelligent as Hawking begin to look like total fools whenever this problem is presented to them.

There's only one entity that fits all of the criteria unpacked in Paragraphs 2 and 3 — non-spatial, eternal, immaterial, supernatural, intelligent, and personal — out of all the countless entities out there that people have faith in, and it's the God of the Bible. The Bible is the only religious text in existence, bar none, that teaches that God created *both* Earth and the universe (well, the Quran does too, but it's completely plagiarized). It is also the only religious text in existence that portrays its monotheistic entity as highly intelligent and gives the notion that He can make very good arguments to prove that, and Jesus, whom we Christians believe to literally be God Himself turned into man, is definitely portrayed in the Gospels as far smarter than anyone who has ever tried to argue with Him. In addition, Genesis 1 is the only religious text out there that contains a sequence of events that is even remotely consistent with the sequence of events that the cosmological and geological records show. Finally, we see in the Bible (Exodus 3:14) that this deity literally calls Himself "I Am". If there is any name that is perfectly fitting for the self-existent eternal "unmoved mover", it's that one.

Secular Attacks on Miracles are Circular Reasoning

WARNING: The following are paragraphs, not individual sentences or phrases. Failure to also quote the rest of a paragraph when quoting a single sentence or phrase out of it is quote mining.

In September 2016, I posted (and subsequently edited) a list of fallacies committed by the mainstream media as they attempt to silence both Christians and conservatives. One of them (namely, number 10 on the list) is circular reasoning. Yes, there are indeed Christians who commit this fallacy, but there are atheists who commit it as well. How? By jumping to the conclusion that any piece of text containing miracles must automatically be regarded as a fairy tale.

Around the same time that now-infamous September blog post was posted, I also attended Stand to Reason's reTHINK 2016 conference at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. My good friend, mentor, and world-renowned cold case homicide detective J. Warner Wallace made this point very clear at this conference, and I happen to possess video footage, which I posted to Instagram from the conference, of his refutation of this argument. Keep in mind, this was Detective Wallace's own objection when he was still an atheist. When he went on to apply the same methods that he used in his detective work to the Bible, it was this objection that was his last hurdle. How therefore did Wallace go from atheist to Christian? He learned to think outside the box.

That there is the problem with this objection in a nutshell: It is the box! Naturalism, like scientism ("is that provable using the scientific method?"), relativism ("is that relative?"), truth denial ("is that true?"), and others like it, is self-refuting. How? Because space, matter, and time all had beginnings seemingly out of nowhere. Because when applied to the New Testament, the judicial standard links Irenaeus, who we know has plenty of contemporary writings, only two generations back to the Gospel writers themselves. Because chronology and archaeology, if properly interpreted, do a profound job of verifying the Old Testament. Because the historical-legal evidence supporting the New Testament, when compared to that supporting all other ancient documents, is overwhelming. Atheists have to jump over all this in order to justify their claims, and nearly all of their refutations when presented with this stuff are nothing more than cop-outs.

To be fair, the same is indeed true for the Christian side, but my fellow Christians (and some agnostics, you might argue) are at least open to the idea of this stuff being supportive of Biblical veracity. Atheists will claim that a negative can't be proven, but at the same time also claim that they don't want to believe any belief system that can't be proven. This is a contradiction, because atheism is a negative. If you can't prove a negative, then why do you blindly regurgitate the negative that there is no God? Why do you blindly assert the negative that the supernatural does not exist? Merely denying these without asserting the negatives is called agnosticism; atheism is when you assert the negative in addition to denying the positive. If it can't be proven, then by your own definition you shouldn't believe it.

This is what it comes down to: naturalism is circular reasoning, period. Instead of even opening their mind up to the possibility of something outside the universe — which is itself created because it is proven by science to not be eternal — existing, they simply dismiss all evidence presented to them and move the goalposts — a fallacy in itself — based on the blindly asserted notion that anything supernatural isn't reasonable. Because this notion is circular reasoning, it's therefore a plank in the eye (Matthew 7:3-5) of any atheist who judges a Christian for circular reasoning. You say I'm closed-minded? Anyone who uses circular reasoning is closed minded regardless of his or her belief system.

Orwellian Hypocrisy: 5 '1984' Plank-Eyes that the Left Must Address

It's Friday, February 24, 2017 — one month and 4 days into Donald Trump's presidency. During this short period, he has indeed gotten a lot done — some of which has been met with relatively little obstruction; others, however, have been met with vehement opposition from the opposition party. One such problem position: budget cuts to the National Endowment of the Arts. In response to these cuts, the notoriously left-wing media has decided to screen the film adaptation of '1984' despite the fact that the regime in that book has much more in common with the left than the right. How much exactly? At least the following 5 points.

For starters, the fictional totalitarian regime in Orwell's classic sci-fi thriller novel is, at the most fundamental level, a surveillance state. Devices called "telescreens" in the book resemble what we know as TVs, but with a sinister twist: they're used by the fictional state to spy on its citizens. The repeated slogan, throughout the entire book, is "Big Brother is Watching You", "Big Brother" being the book's fictional dictator. Although much less obvious, more covert, and more stealth (to the point where people didn't know that they were being watched — they knew full well that they were being watched in the book), the NSA's PRISM program was indeed a program of mass surveillance by the US government — and at the time, the Obama administration was in the driver's seat.

As obviously Orwellian as PRISM was when exposed, however, it wasn't the only Orwellian thing the left has done. There is also a part of the '1984' book, near the back, in which the fictional government gives certain minorities — among them, Jews and blacks — first dibs on high-level officer jobs in the fictional regime's secret police force, and basically tells them to use their jobs to get their revenge on those who once oppressed their ancestors. A similar attitude exists in real life in today's Democratic Party, which gives groups like BLM, the Black Panthers, and the Muslim Brotherhood special favors, not to mention gives them a similar message — namely, a manifestation of the lie that two wrongs make a right, when in reality the exact opposite is true — to spread around.

In another part of '1984', a furnace system is described — a bunch of pneumatic tubes that take papers dropped into them to a furnace, which incinerates them. Why? To destroy evidence. Obviously, if such info were to leak from a totalitarian government and the people were to obtain it, the result would indeed be disastrous, so any totalitarian regime must involve lying and destroying evidence. In 2015, a scandal came to the surface suggesting that as Obama's Secretary of State, 2016 presidential loser Hillary Clinton did exactly this: securely deleted 30,000+ emails from her private server using BleachBit, which I as a Linux user am all too familiar with. Why? Again, to destroy evidence — Congress could charge Hillary with perjury if they found any emails on that server containing classified information, which Sec. Clinton denied having ever received in her inbox. To say that destroying evidence is Orwellian behavior is an understatement.

In still another part of Orwell's infamous novel is the subversion of the English language as "Newspeak" — using definitional retreat as a means to turn the English language into a psychological weapon that the ruling party can then use against anyone with whom they disagree. The end goal? Dumbing the people down so that they continue to support the ruling party. What is political correctness? Yup, exactly this. Newspeak is a far more extreme form of political correctness, to be fair, but redefining such words as "racist", "bigot", and anything ending in the suffix "-phobia" with intent to politically weaponize such language is Orwellian indeed.

Finally, Orwell's novel talks about the different parts of cities like dystopian London, in which the novel takes place. There's the upscale areas, which are under constant mass surveillance, and then there are the slums, where the so-called "proles" live. These people are indeed given welfare by the government… but that's about it. The living quarters, despite the provisions, are still in total disrepair, and the people have, to put it in LBJ's words, "just enough to quiet them down, but not enough to make a difference". In 2016, Dinesh D'Souza, in his infamous movie Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party, called American inner cities "urban plantations," and they, like the Orwellian "proles quarters," are governed by similar antics: instead of shackles, the people have welfare, and instead of work, they have elections, but they're still, from an economic standpoint, de facto slaves.

So, let's review: PRISM — that's Orwellian, oppression Olympics — that's Orwellian, destruction of evidence — that's Orwellian, political correctness — that's Orwellian, and urban plantations — that's Orwellian. That's five planks in the eyes of the screeners of this movie, which makes me laugh my head off that they're even doing it. By screening '1984' as a means of protest, the American Left is only incriminating itself, and it's an example of gross ignorance on the part of the Democratic Party to falsely attribute books like '1984' with intent to fit their narrative.

HowTo: Make Ubuntu GNOME Look Like Chrome OS

As someone who has for a time exclusively used Chrome OS, I have since taken on roles ― like Android app development, which I just took a class last semester ― that have put me at odds with the Chrome OS target audience. As a consequence, I now find myself with three machines — an Asus Chromebit, an HP Chromebook 11 G4, and an HP Pavilion G72 desktop replacement laptop, which was originally my sister's, then got handed to my father, and finally handed down to me. Given that I have literally no respect at all for Windows, I decided to use the Chromebook — which was in developer mode at the time — to flash an Ubuntu ISO image to a 16GB USB flash drive using the following command:

$ wget -O - http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ubuntu-desktop/amd64.iso | sudo dd of=/dev/sdb

Then, I used that USB flash drive to  wipe the G72 clean. After installing, I then proceeded to "sudo apt-get install ubuntu-gnome-desktop", install Chrome (the browser, not the OS — particularly the dev channel version), and, finally, remove Unity, Firefox, and Compiz. However, it still took some getting used to — switching from a Chromebook to the G72 and back felt like playing a cat-and-mouse game each time due to the fundamental layout changes between operating systems. How could I make the G72 look more like what I have been used to on the Chromebook and Chromebit?

The first thing I did — and this is literally point 1 — was install the Paper theme, which gives both GTK+ and GNOME Shell Material Design makeovers. It doesn't look exactly like Chrome OS, but it's close. After I changed the GTK+ theme to Paper, I used the GNOME Tweak Tool, along with the Shell extension called User Theme (which I had to use the GNOME Shell Integration Chrome extension to install), to in turn change the GNOME Shell theme to Paper.

But wait, the font doesn't quite match up. For that, I ran "sudo apt-get install font-roboto", then used the Tweak Tool to change the GTK+ font to Roboto. Changing the Shell font, however, meant editing some CSS. I opened a terminal, ran "sudo gedit /usr/share/themes/Paper/gnome-shell/gnome-shell.css", and edited Line 19 to read "font-family: Roboto, Roboto Bold, Sans-Serif". Then I closed the text editor, pressed Alt-F2, and ran "r" to restart the Shell. The result was indeed Material, but still did not have the layout that I wanted. How could I make the desktop layout more like that of Chrome OS?

I decided to browse the extensions page some more, and stumbled across an extension called Dash to Panel, which provided 90% of the changes that I needed. Still, however, it didn't look exactly like Chrome OS because the result wasn't as transparent as the Chrome OS Panel is. So, I had to continue. I then ran across another extension called Dynamic Panel Transparency, which makes the panel fully transparent if no windows are maximized. Finally, to make sure that the notifications were in a position congruent to the position that they are in in the case of Chrome OS, I installed the Panel OSD extension. To improve performance, I also, in the Tweak Tool, opened the Extensions tab, clicked the small gear next to Dash to Panel, clicked on the Behavior tab in the resulting dialog, and unchecked "Animate Show Applications". In addition, on that same page, I also set the "Click Action" to "Minimize window". Ah, but wait, what about the wallpaper? A quick Google search will bring it up, but yes, I decided to make this image the default wallpaper, which can be done simply by right-clicking on the desktop.

Desktop

Overview Mode

The result is indeed something that is much easier getting used to — and vice versa, when I switch back and forth between Chrome OS and Linux, it is now very easy to transition both ways. Plus, unlike some distributions intended to be Chrome OS clones, like Chromixium and Cr OS, the result of this looks far cleaner — those others use Xfce, which, although great as far as performance is concerned, looks terrible as far as being congruent with Chrome OS is concerned. Why? Because Xfce does not allow pinning of apps/windows, one of the key Chrome OS features. This solution does. Moreover, the GNOME Shell overview mode looks much more like the Chrome OS overview mode than anything Xfce has yet offered. Definitely an easy transition, to say the least.