Ben Stein Commentary

Our only  hope is that we find GOD again before it is too late!

The following was  written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS  Sunday  Morning   Commentary.
My  confession:
I  am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors  was Jewish.  And it does not bother me even  a little bit when people call those beautiful  lit up, bejeweled trees, Christmas  trees...  I don't feel threatened..  I  don't feel discriminated against.. That's what  they are, Christmas  trees.

It doesn't bother  me a bit when people say, 'Merry Christmas' to  me.  I don't think they are slighting me or  getting ready to put me in a ghetto.  In  fact, I kind of like it.  It shows that we  are all brothers and sisters celebrating this  happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all  that there is a manger scene on display at a key  intersection near my beach house in Malibu  .  If people want a creche, it's just as  fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred  yards away.

I don't like  getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I  don't think Christians like getting pushed  around for being Christians.  I think  people who believe in God are sick and tired of  getting pushed around, period.  I have no  idea where the concept came from, that America  is an explicitly atheist country.  I can't  find it in the Constitution and I don't like it  being shoved down my  throat.

Or maybe I can put  it another way: where did the idea come from  that we should worship celebrities and we aren't  allowed to worship God as we understand  Him?  I guess that's a sign that I'm  getting old, too.  But there are a lot of  us who are wondering where these celebrities  came from and where the America we knew went  to.

In light of the  many jokes we send to one another for a laugh,  this is a little different:  This is not  intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's  intended to get you  thinking.

Billy Graham's  daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and  Jane Clayson asked her 'How could God let  something like this happen?' (regarding  Hurricane Katrina)..  Anne Graham gave an  extremely profound and insightful  response..  She said, 'I believe God is  deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for  years we've been telling God to get out of our  schools, to get out of our government and to get  out of our lives.  And being the gentleman  He is, I believe He has calmly backed out.   How can we expect God to give us His blessing  and His protection if we demand He leave us  alone?'

In light of recent  events... terrorists attack, school shootings,  etc..  I think it started when Madeleine  Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found  a few years ago) complained she didn't want  prayer in our schools, and we said OK.   Then someone said you better not read the Bible  in school.  The Bible says thou shalt not  kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your  neighbor as yourself.  And we said  OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin  Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when  they misbehave, because their little  personalities would be warped and we might  damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son  committed suicide).  We said an expert  should know what he's talking about..  And  we said okay..

Now we're asking  ourselves why our children have no conscience,  why they don't know right from wrong, and why it  doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their  classmates, and  themselves.

Probably, if we  think about it long and hard enough, we can  figure it out.  I think it has a great deal  to do with 'WE REAP WHAT WE  SOW.'

Funny how simple it  is for people to trash God and then wonder why  the world's going to hell.  Funny how we  believe what the newspapers say, but question  what the Bible says.  Funny how you can  send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like  wildfire, but when you start sending messages  regarding the Lord, people think twice about  sharing.  Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and  obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace,  but public discussion of God is suppressed in  the school and  workplace.

Are you laughing  yet?

Funny how when you  forward this message, you will not send it to  many on your address list because you're not  sure what they believe, or what they will think  of you for sending  it.

Funny how we can be  more worried about what other people think of us  than what God thinks of  us.

Pass it on if you  think it has  merit.
 
If not, then just  discard it... no one will know you did.   But, if you discard this thought process, don't  sit back and complain about what bad shape the  world is  in.
My  Best Regards,  honestly and  respectfully,

Ben  Stein 

"Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.  We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.  We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount." 

OMAR BRADLEY

What kids do when using their imaginations!!

A few weeks back I had the privilage of keeping the Great Nephews, when the tv was turned off this is what they did!!

The Decleration of Independance

 With all the political talking going on I thought a brief history lesson would be nice.

 

Declaration of Independence

Here is the complete text of the Declaration of Independence.
The original spelling and capitalization have been retained.

(Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776)

The Unanimous Declaration
of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776