David Kupelian's Article from WND

      This rather long, but insightful article by David Kupelian is an excellent explanation of Proverbs 29:27 "The righteous detest the dishonest; the wicked detest the upright," which I mentioned in my post on Sept. 30. It is well worth the read. Hopefully, you will pass it on so others can read it, also. We must "Wake Up" and stand for righteousness before it is too late!

(As usual, I have no idea why there is double spacing between my words in this post or the one before. It doesn't show up until I post it. I can't figure out how to take the extra spacing out. Sorry. I keep hoping someone who knows something about HTML will contact me and help me correct some things.)
 

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Sarah Palin and the war for America's soul

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Posted: October 05, 2011
12:57 pm Eastern
© 2011 WND

       For just a few minutes, clear your mind of the endless political analysis and intrigue that fill the news media, talk radio and Internet. Let it all go, and take a deep breath.

       Now, let's consider together the extraordinary spectacle we see unfolding before our eyes in America today.

       Sarah Palin, who just announced she will not run for the presidency in 2012, is a good place to start. Consider the following Twitter comments made by young Americans earlier this year about the former Alaska governor:

• "Join us in praying to God that Sarah Palin contracts cancer and dies."
  
• "My hatred for Sarah Palin continues to grow. I think this woman should be assassinated."
  
• "I hope Sarah Palin dies a slow and painful death."
  
• "I hope she dies gnashing her teeth."
  
• "Sarah Palin is the single most dangerous threat to the future of the human race. Thick venomous cretin she is. Someone bloody shoot her."

       These are only five out of dozens of similar Twitter messages, all equally horrendous, all calling for a torturous death for Sarah Palin. They came after a deranged man named Jared Loughner tried to assassinate Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in downtown Tucson – and many people, for some utterly incomprehensible reason, decided to blame Palin.

         The irrational hatred toward Sarah Palin cannot be explained in the usual terms of politics and ideology. The traditional divide of "liberal versus conservative" or "Democrat versus Republican" cannot explain such dark, almost other-worldly expressions as "I hope she dies gnashing her teeth" or death threats against the Palins'children.

         As we all know, ever since John McCain chose Palin as his VP running mate three years ago, the left – including the entire elite media – have been pathologically obsessed with her. During the 2008 presidential campaign, the big media couldn't be bothered to investigate Barack Obama, whose background was chock full of Marxists, terrorists, pornographers, criminals and rabid anti-American racists. Nothing of interest there. But they sent platoons of journalists to Wasilla, Alaska, dumpster-diving for dirt on Palin – including, for example, their investigation into who paid for the tanning bed she had installed in the governor's mansion. (She did.)

         Since then, there have been continual attacks and dirt-hunting, most recently with both the Washington Post and New York Times begging readers to join in the witch hunt to find something incriminating in 24,000 Palin emails. Once again, they found nothing of consequence.

       Many pundits have opined as to why there's so much hatred toward Palin: She's too conservative; she's too good-looking; her voice irritates them; she shoots wolves from a helicopter.

Early on, I took a passing stab at this question in "How Evil Works":

Haven't you ever wondered why, when someone on the public stage radiates noble character, common sense and natural grace – like Ronald Reagan did, or more recently Sarah Palin – he or she is regarded by the "big media" with an inexplicable revulsion? Hatred is almost too soft a word. It's because Reagan and Palin manifest the very qualities of character that the jaded media elite lost long ago, and since being thus reminded of their lost innocence is painful and unwelcome, they feel compelled to attack the "reminder."

       Since then, "Robin of Berkeley" – pseudonym for a Berkeley, Calif., psychotherapist – wrote a poignant and meaningful column along these same lines in American Thinker. Here's what she concluded: "Leftists loathe Palin because she has retained something that was stripped from them years ago: a wholesomeness, a purity of heart. People on the left despise Palin because she shines a bright light on their shame and unworthiness, which they try desperately to deny."

       Of course, this syndrome goes way beyond Sarah Palin. In fact, if you look carefully, this is actually the defining phenomenon of modern American life.

We're talking about literally a war between light and darkness. I don't mean that as a metaphor, but as hard reality.

       Michele Bachmann caught some of this recently as a presidential candidate, when Newsweek did a hit piece on her, plastering a maniacal "evil eye" photo of her on the cover and headlining it "The Queen of Rage." Bachmann is one of the most gracious and genuinely caring ladies I've ever met. Indeed, caring for a couple dozen foster children, as she and husband Marcus have done (not to mention five of their own) takes love – not rage.

Of course, the so-called "rage" Newsweek accused Bachmann of being "queen" of is the "rage" of the tea party, for which both Bachmann and Palin are icons.

        Allow me to digress here and point out that leftists are masters of what psychologists callprojection – meaning, you literally accuse innocent people of the very faults of which you yourself are guilty. So the left, which is fueled entirely by rage and envy, accuses the tea party, which is fueled by love of country and concern over Obama's "fundamental transformation of America," of being full of "rage." If you've ever been to a tea party event, this notion is seen as laughable delusion.

          Do you remember in the early months of Obama's presidency, the Department of Homeland Security produced a report warning about the threat of homegrown, radicalized, militant and potentially violent "right-wing extremists"? And who exactly were these scary people? If you were pro-life, had an NRA bumper sticker, were concerned about illegal immigration or government debt, and especially if you were a returning military veteran – just home after having defended your beloved country with your very life – you were potentially a dangerous "extremist" and threat to the country, according to the government.

Ollie North wrote a great piece in response, called "I am an extremist," in which he explained:

According to the U.S. government, I am an extremist.

I am a Christian and meet regularly with other Christians to study God's word. My faith convinces me the prophesies in the Holy Bible are true. I believe in the sanctity of human life, oppose abortion and want to preserve marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

I am a veteran with skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat. I own several firearms, frequently shoot them, buy ammunition and consider efforts to infringe on my Second Amendment rights to be wrong and unconstitutional.

I fervently support the sovereignty of the United States, am deeply concerned about our economy, increasingly higher taxes, illegal immigration, soaring unemployment and actions by our government that will bury my children beneath a mountain of debt.

Apparently, all this makes me a "right-wing extremist." At least that's what it says in the April 7, 2009 "assessment" issued by the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security.

          Fast-forward to August 2011. After the debt-ceiling melodrama in Washington, in which the tea party demonstrated the most sanity of any of the characters, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd – in a column titled "Washington Chain Saw Massacre" – described tea partiers as "cannibals" "zombies" and "vampires." She wrote:

They were like cannibals, eating their own party and leaders alive. They were like vampires, draining the country’s reputation, credit rating and compassion. They were like zombies, relentlessly and mindlessly coming back again and again to assault their unnerved victims, Boehner and President Obama. They were like the metallic beasts in "Alien" flashing mouths of teeth inside other mouths of teeth, bursting out of Boehner’s stomach every time he came to a bouquet of microphones.

        Again, let's be crystal clear who is being talked about here. "Tea party" is just a contemporary cultural label for what used to be called normal.

         Normal people – regular, fair-minded, live-and-let-live, law-abiding citizens with traditional values: work hard, save your money, play by the rules, help other people, don't spend more than you have. These are the people being called "cannibals," "vampires" and "terrorists."

         On this video of Bernie Goldberg on "The O'Reilly Factor," pundit after lefty pundit can be seen passionately comparing tea party folk with terrorists:

• MSNBC's Steven Rattner: "It's a form of economic terrorism. These tea party guys are like strapped with dynamite, standing in the middle of Times Square at rush hour, and saying, 'You do it my way or we'll blow you up.'"
  
• Bloomberg's Margaret Carlson: "They strapped explosives to the capitol."
  
• MSNBC's Chris Matthews: "The GOP has become the Wahhabis of American government, willing to risk bringing down the whole country in the service of their anti-tax ideology."

       Ironically, noted Goldberg, "these are people who don't call real terrorists 'terrorists.'"

And of course, before tea party people were maligned as "terrorists," "zombies," "cannibals" and "vampires," they were "racists." And before that – before the name "tea party" even came into use – the same normal American people were maligned as "right-wing extremists," as noted above courtesy of the Department of Homeland Security.

       Do you understand what we're looking at here?

       There is a growing and highly influential segment of our society that thinks normal, "Ozzie and Harriet," traditional-minded Americans are evil.

The picture of 'normal'

        When I see a tea party scene with a patriot dressed up as George Washington, or a soccer mom with her kids holding homemade signs saying "God bless America," or a grandmother thoughtfully picking up litter after the rally so the city's maintenance crew won't have much to do, I like to think of these good folks as characters right out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

        Rockwell was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for painting "vivid and affectionate portraits of our country" – like the man standing up at a town hall meeting to exercise his freedom of speech and the crowd pledging allegiance to the flag andThanksgiving dinner and Boy Scouts and saying grace before a meal and Christmas andbaseball and hunting and fishing and ... Well, you get the idea.

Norman Rockwell painted the America normal people love.

         But did you know there are influential people in America who hate Norman Rockwell paintings?

Blake Gopnik, until just recently, was the chief art critic for the Washington Post for the past decade.

         Gopnik says he is "offended" by and even "hates" Norman Rockwell's art. "I can't stand the view of America that he presents, which I feel insults a huge number of us non-mainstream folks."

         Hmm. "Non-mainstream" – wonder what that means. If Gopnik hates Norman Rockwell's vision of America, what does he love?

         Here's a clue: He came to the defense recently of a taxpayer-funded exhibit at Washington's National Portrait Gallery by homosexual artist David Wojnarowicz of a film featuring a crucifix with ants crawling on Jesus' body. You paid for this.

         The Wojnarowicz exhibit also featured male sex organs, naked brothers kissing, men in chains and other stuff I'm sure you're delighted to have paid for. This is what the Washington Post's chief art critic for a decade calls "wonderful art." But he hates Norman Rockwell because of the image of America his art portrays – namely, love, affection and respect for this nation.

         The ants-on-Jesus video, with its mocking, demented soundtrack, is so incredibly creepy that it makes normal people want to run screaming from the room. But to some people, "art" from the pit of hell, a creation that is repulsive, disgusting and nausea-inducing ... is "wonderful."

         People, what we're looking at is nothing more nor less than a radical spiritual polarization of Americans – citizens literally of opposite polarities. It's a spiritual battle between darkness and light, playing out in all our lives, and also dramatically on the national stage. And, as has always been the case, darkness cannot stand the light – so it curses it.

How did we get to the point that many of us are comfortable with perversion and corruption and death – but threatened by brightness and virtue and life? (For the whole answer, you'll have to read "The Marketing of Evil.")

         In a nutshell: All of us are shaped and influenced by other people – first parents and family, later on friends, school, college, work and of course our wildly immoral culture. And the truth is, we human beings – just like Pinocchio on the way to school when he meets up with the fox ("Honest John") and the cat – are pretty easily led astray from our common sense and corrupted.

         We are tempted first and foremost into becoming upset all the time by other broken, thoughtless and cruel people around us. Then, once we're living in an upset and confused state, we're easily suckered into every other area – into giving up our modesty and our purity, and embracing garbage philosophies diametrically opposed to reality, and so on.

          A perfect place for losing your common sense and innocence is school. The government ("public") school system and colleges today are a disgrace. One of the dominant features of a modern university campus, something leveraged across every area – from curriculum to campus culture – is the mainstreaming and forced acceptance of sexual perversion, literally the elevation of everything degrading and perverse. The darkness worldview is taught and glorified as something "wonderful" – and all for only $35,000 per year.

          Unfortunately, once we have had our innocence and integrity ripped off and have oozed into becoming a darker, more conflicted version of our former self, now when somebody comes along who simply radiates the wholesome qualities we left behind, we feel uncomfortable. In fact, we feel positively threatened, as though there's something seriously wrong with that person.

          This is what we're witnessing daily – people who are broken and seduced to the dark side, shrieking like a vampire when they encounter a bright, wholesome, outspoken person like Sarah Palin, or the tea party, or Oliver North, or millions of normal, law-abiding, traditionally minded Americans.

          Likewise, this syndrome plays out daily in the Middle East between the Arab-Muslim world and Israel. Though in spiritual terms Israel may be the center of the universe, in worldly terms it's just a little strip of desert the size of New Jersey with no oil and no unusual riches. Yet the Jewish people, with a special blessing of God on them, have made it bloom. And people living in darkness and oppression cannot stand that – they feel persecuted by the light. So their minds invent all sorts of truly insane conspiracy theories to demonize Jews – Jews eat children, Jews never lived in Israel, Jews caused 9-11.

          What's it really all about? Envy – blinding, all-consuming envy. The Islamic world is obsessed, for example, with Al-Aqsa Mosque, supposedly the third holiest place in Islam, which just happens to be located directly on top of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Judaism's holiest of all places in the world.

           There is no mention of Jerusalem in the entire Quran. Mecca, the holiest place to Muslims, and Medina, the second holiest, are mentioned dozens of times. But Jerusalem? Not a single reference, nor is there any historical evidence Muhammad ever went there.

Here's how I see it: The Islamic world's obsession with the Temple Mount – which is exceedingly precious to Jews – is like the desire an angry, jealous sibling has for a toy that his brother is happily playing with. The jealous kid never cared about that toy before, but now that his brother has it and is happily playing with it, the angry boy feels compelled to take it away, because he hates his brother. Of course, the only "happiness" he would obtain by getting the toy is the perverse satisfaction of depriving his brother of it.

           Another example: The Turks degraded and killed 1.5 million Armenians, including my grandfather and many other members of my extended family, all because of envy and a need to scapegoat. Like the Jews, the Armenians in Turkey tended to be more successful and prosperous than the Turks. The Armenians were accomplished and civilized people – merchants, tradesmen, intellectuals – because of their Christian religion and the values and disciplines it imparted. The Turks, a repressed, fear-based tribal culture, hated the Armenians because of their brightness, and so they degraded and killed them. By the way, to this day, the Turkish government denies that the Armenian Genocide ever even took place, which is why Turkey will never be blessed until it repents and admits its great national sin, as Germany did after the Nazi Holocaust.

          Now, let's bring this back home to America and Obama. He's got a bad case of this syndrome of sympathizing with bad guys and being mysteriously repelled by goodness. If you've ever seen him at events with subversive groups like ACORN and SEIU, and especially if you've watched him closely in front of a group of homosexual activists at one of their big fundraising events, his smile is broader, wider and more animated than any smile I've seen on him – almost an uncontrollable smile like a little boy would have at his birthday party when the pony ride arrives. Obama feels deeply at home with weird, perverse, radically dysfunctional people – after all, that's who he grew up with and was shaped by. But get him around normal people – Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu or Gordon Brown, the former British prime minister – and there's this mystifying coldness, aversion and incomprehension.

         This growth of spiritual darkness in America is the result of decades of assault by the political and moral left – a two-front war consisting of confrontation and simultaneous infiltration of almost every major institution in America: our government, our public schools and colleges, our news and entertainment media, the arts, the foundations and philanthropies, psychiatry and psychology at the highest levels, and even our churches.

         Thus, tens of millions of us have been indoctrinated and infected over decades with philosophies and worldviews that glorify everything wrong with human nature and attack America's Judeo-Christian foundation. At the same time, we've been tempted to cross the sacred moral boundary into sexual anarchy, which locks us into the realm of sin and all the irrational philosophies and phony experts we need to justify our sin.

         I'd say some significant portion, but less than half, of Americans have been thus corrupted – not all irredeemably, of course, but right now they're siding with the enemy. Once that percentage passes 50 percent, that's the end of America.

         In closing, let me say I believe God is being very kind to America right now. He still loves us.

       Why do I say that?

       Europe is just a few years ahead of America in all the bad things plaguing the West – Islamic subversion, godless secularism, stupid socialism, multiculturalism and bankruptcy. So we can easily see our future by just peering over the Atlantic. Ironically, just as Obama is intent on "fundamentally transforming" America into a socialist utopia like Europe, socialist Europe is melting down, country after country – Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Italy. And the smaller countries are threatening to bring down the bigger countries, because of the interconnectedness of the European state economies.

         If we in America cannot manage to heed such an obvious and mercifully clear message from God – "Stop. This Is Not The Way To Utopia" – then we deserve the very hard fall awaiting us.

         Our fall, actually, will be harder than Europe's – because the Bible says, "To whom much is given, much will be required." And nobody's been given more than America.

Read more:Sarah Palin and the war for America's soulhttp://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=352225#ixzz1aDXj8C1R