What happens when consent is replaced by government force and coercion? Laws lose legitimacy. News sources are reduced to pure propaganda. Political disagreement turns to bloodshed and murder. It is as if society’s cement has instead been replaced by strongmen trying to squeeze humanity’s discrete blocks together with sheer muscle… (Image source: iStock)

While it may sound logical and sound, well, sound what Mr. Shurk has written below Mr. Shurk is a secular writer, a worldly man. Devoid of writing anything accurate as he omits God omits the Bible, omits Christ, and omits the most important part of the equation in his writing — as every person ensnared in the deadly web of the world is, and as too many, an overwhelming majority of professed Christians are indistinguishable from such secular — worldly writers, speakers, pundits, so-called experts, and so on — as Mr. Shurk and the legions like him.

If only including part of the equation in attempting to explain, show, reveal, and inform regarding something taking place in society, in this world, and God is omitted? The Holy Bible is omitted? Christ and the Holy Spirit are omitted? The declaration of sin and man and woman’s rebellion is omitted?

Well, that equation will never add up, make sense, and arrive at the correct result.

No matter who, a person cannot only present 10%, at most 25% of an explanation — an equation attempting to work towards a solution, an answer, to reveal something that will then clearly be understood — if and when omitting the most important parts of the equation! God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Bible, and sin. This fallen world and man and woman’s inherent sin and evil.

But who wants to do that anymore in these times?

Doesn’t feel good. Turns people off although these very same turned off God and all truth and real knowledge and understanding and think that is acceptable and they should then be left alone to drown in the deluded pools of relativistic insanity leading to eternal death!

If, only, unless, and until the most important common denominators, constants, variables, terms, or expression the terms will not reach the correct answer, or lead to the correct solution.

Removing God, removing Christ, removing the Holy Spirit, removing the Bible, removing sin and man and woman’s inherent natures removes the constants, the common denominators, the terms and variables to reach the correct expression and answer to EVERY PROBLEM that man or woman comes across in this life.

Do the math.

Get it right.

Finally.

Or die the eternal death.

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Only 6% of Americans Have a Biblical Worldview 

At the end of the article below the folks at Gatestone Institute included: J.B. Shurk writes about politics and society.

Until, unless Mr. Shurk and EVERY WRITER, EVERY SPEAKER includes in their writing, their speaking the why, what, how, when, and where, the basic elements in the equation of sound journalism or news reporting, or telling a story, providing information including God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Word of God and man and woman’s inherent rebellion, inherent sin and evil minds and natures? Whatever ANY WRITER or SPEAKER may write or say is meaningless. Really. Nonsense. Like being parched and dying of thirst and someone comes along saying they can give you something to take your dying thirst away and restore you, provide what you need, and they pull out a small vial from their coat pocket, unscrew the top, and with a dropper pinch out one tiny drop of water on your tongue and declare you quenched, satisfied, filled with what you need.

Exactly like that.

And the masses are lining up to have one measly tiny drop put on their lying dying tongues rather than doing the math, learning the history, doing their homework, and knowing the fuller, truer, parts of the equation to truly satisfy, inform, help, guide and restore an individual.

Tragic.

Isn’t it?

Where do you go, and what are you drinking these days in order to be sustained and quenched?

All those claiming to be the cup half full, or half empty types are in truth just dried up empty vessels unless they are pouring the Word of God into their writing, their words, their lives.

No matter who. No matter where. No matter what. No matter when.

Why go anyplace, to anyone offering less, thus a faulty equation and wrong answer or solution to everything?

Ken Pullen, A CROOKED PATH, Saturday, July 16th, 2022

How Can Western Civilization Survive with Reviled Institutions?

• A Monmouth University poll released on July 5 reveals that 57% of Americans believe that U.S. federal government actions over the last six months have directly hurt their families. In that same poll, Monmouth compiles the 22 most important priorities of the American people. Neither Russia’s war in Ukraine nor Congress’s January 6 Committee hearings appear anywhere on the list; instead, the top four issues all deal with skyrocketing inflation and economic uncertainty.
• A new Gallup poll documents a precipitous drop in Americans’ confidence across 16 major institutions, including historic lows for confidence in newspapers, the criminal justice system, big business, police, and all three branches of the federal government. The survey’s results represent the lowest overall institutional confidence ever recorded in its decades-long survey history, and not a single institution reflected an increase in confidence over last year’s measures. Only 7% of Americans have a “Great deal / Quite a lot” of confidence in Congress, while only 11% feel similarly about television news.
• Only adding to Westerners’ perception of widespread institutional corruption, an investigation by the British Medical Journal recently documented pervasive conflicts of interest within Western drug and health regulatory agencies whose budgets are funded primarily by monetary gifts from major pharmaceutical companies, the very industry players whose products the government agencies are charged with regulating.
• Westerners increasingly do not trust their governments or their major news media to report accurate and reliable information. They increasingly view government actors as perpetuating two standards of justice and economic security — one for those at the very top of society’s pyramid of wealth and power and one for everyone else.
• Westerners increasingly do not trust their governments or their major news media to report accurate and reliable information. They increasingly view government actors as perpetuating two standards of justice and economic security — one for those at the very top of society’s pyramid of wealth and power, and one for everyone else.
• Surely Western authorities cannot expect to maintain long-term legitimacy if their populations judge governing institutions as irredeemably marred by corruption and political leaders as indifferent, if not downright hostile, to ordinary citizens’ wants and needs.
• It has become fashionable for Western politicians to divide up the global chessboard between virtuous “democracies” struggling for world peace and threatening “dictatorships” causing hardship and chaos. Whatever the West’s “democracies” are today, however, they are not bastions for representing honestly their peoples’ most dire concerns, nor are they above doling out to their citizenries hefty portions of hardship and chaos.
• Institutions can be broadly categorized as those that are created and maintained through human cooperation and consent and those that require force and coercion to endure. In a “democratic” society, cooperation and consent are the principal building blocks, as well as tools, for fashioning strong institutions capable of surviving unknown threats and unexpected emergencies.
• What happens when consent is replaced by government force and coercion? Laws lose legitimacy. News sources are reduced to pure propaganda. Political disagreement turns to bloodshed and murder. It is as if society’s cement has instead been replaced by strongmen trying to squeeze humanity’s discrete blocks together with sheer muscle…

Western authorities cannot expect to maintain long-term legitimacy if their populations judge governing institutions as irredeemably marred by corruption and political leaders as indifferent, if not downright hostile, to ordinary citizens’ wants and needs.

Across the West, there is a sharp divergence between the needs of normal citizens and the worldview articulated and pushed by their “representatives” in government. Faith in the institutions staffed by those “representatives” is plummeting. Shouldn’t this disconnect be setting off alarm bells from D.C. to Brussels? Are we not approaching a Rubicon where the West’s future survival is at stake?

With regard to nearly every contentious issue, the fissure separating the expressed preferences of ordinary citizens and those of their governments is expanding.

Last month the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to renew the EU Digital COVID-19 Certificate infrastructure for another year, despite near unanimous rejection from European citizens responding to a months-long public consultation on the use of mandatory digital health passports.

For decades, both European and American citizens have expressed overwhelming opposition to illegal immigration, yet leaders have done little on either side of the Atlantic to stem the persistent problem. As inflation and social unrest rise in Europe, nearly 60% of EU citizens are “not ready” to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty against Russia’s invasion if doing so necessarily triggers higher fuel and food costs. Still, Germany and France have warned their populations to “prepare for a total cut-off of Russian gas.”

Likewise, the World Economic Forum just released a position paper arguing that “protecting democracy” requires Westerners to endure much higher gas and oil prices. Without bountiful supplies of hydrocarbon energy, however, some analysts argue that global famine and Western economic collapse become inevitable.

A Monmouth University poll released on July 5 reveals that 57% of Americans believe that U.S. federal government actions over the last six months have directly hurt their families. In that same poll, Monmouth compiles the 22 most important priorities of the American people. Neither Russia’s war in Ukraine nor Congress’s January 6 Committee hearings appear anywhere on the list; instead, the top four issues all deal with skyrocketing inflation and economic uncertainty. That said, the U.S. House recently passed the “Federal Reserve Racial and Economic Equity Act” that would require the Federal Reserve to pursue “woke” socialism over financial growth, and President Joe Biden and a willing Congress have already spent more on the Ukraine conflict than the U.S. did during the first five years of war in Afghanistan. Recent polling shows a whopping 78% of American voters judge the United States to be on the wrong track today, jumping 27 points since Biden assumed office. And nearly 40% of Americans now believe the U.S. government is “not sound at all.”

Institutional confidence is cratering.

A new Gallup poll documents a precipitous drop in Americans’ confidence across 16 major institutions, including historic lows for confidence in newspapers, the criminal justice system, big business, police, and all three branches of the federal government. The survey’s results represent the lowest overall institutional confidence ever recorded in its decades-long survey history, and not a single institution reflected an increase in confidence over last year’s measures. Only 7% of Americans have a “Great deal / Quite a lot” of confidence in Congress, while only 11% feel similarly about television news.

Only adding to Westerners’ perception of widespread institutional corruption, an investigation by the British Medical Journal recently documented pervasive conflicts of interest within Western drug and health regulatory agencies whose budgets are funded primarily by monetary gifts from major pharmaceutical companies, the very industry players whose products the government agencies are charged with regulating.

Westerners increasingly do not trust their governments or their major news media to report accurate and reliable information. They increasingly view government actors as perpetuating two standards of justice and economic security — one for those at the very top of society’s pyramid of wealth and power, and one for everyone else. And as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s early forced retirement shows, public tolerance for turning a blind eye to the propagation of this dual and conflicting set of realities is rapidly waning.

Surely this situation is untenable. Surely Western authorities cannot expect to maintain long-term legitimacy if their populations judge governing institutions as irredeemably marred by corruption and political leaders as indifferent, if not downright hostile, to ordinary citizens’ wants and needs. It has become fashionable for Western politicians to divide up the global chessboard between virtuous “democracies” struggling for world peace and threatening “dictatorships” causing hardship and chaos. Whatever the West’s “democracies” are today, however, they are not bastions for representing honestly their peoples’ most dire concerns, nor are they above doling out to their citizenries hefty portions of hardship and chaos.

Institutions can be broadly categorized as those that are created and maintained through human cooperation and consent and those that require force and coercion to endure. In a “democratic” society, cooperation and consent are the principal building blocks, as well as tools, for fashioning strong institutions capable of surviving unknown threats and unexpected emergencies. Representative governments are formed reflecting the democratic votes of citizens and the public’s general will.

When representative bodies create laws that reflect the public’s preferences, citizens generally respect the criminal codes and regulations that restrict their freedoms. When the news media are judged to produce truthful information, they are relied upon as a worthy check against unjust government power. When people who represent a minority viewpoint in society are nonetheless permitted to express their thoughts, seek change, and accrue power, then a multitude of groups with conflicting points of view can coexist without factionalism necessarily leading to political violence.

Voluntary cooperation creates remarkably powerful institutions because individual citizens have a personal stake in their continued existence. Discrete blocks of humanity are hermetically cemented together, so that civilization can rise to towering heights.

What happens when consent is replaced by government force and coercion? Laws lose legitimacy. News sources are reduced to pure propaganda. Political disagreement turns to bloodshed and murder. It is as if society’s cement has instead been replaced by strongmen trying to squeeze humanity’s discrete blocks together with sheer muscle, straining and sweating under the pressure of keeping everything being held up from collapsing on those doing the heavy lifting.

The Soviet Union may have lasted 70 years, but its institutions were built with disintegrating bricks and soupy mortar and held together by a series of obstinate strongmen. That was the most important lesson of its collapse.

For civilizations to prosper, the people must never be ignored. For Western leaders to have missed that monumental lesson, or even worse, for them to ignore that enduring truth today, they put nothing less than the future of Western Civilization at risk.

J.B. Shurk writes about politics and society.