At the time I am writing this article, I an about to perform a Wedding Service for a couple in our church.
It has made me think again how important marriage is, not just for the individuals involved, but for their children and the whole of society. Countless studies around the world have shown that, on average, married people are happier, live longer, and raise happier and healthier children who live more prosperous lives.
The Bible sets standards for marriage that are different from those of contemporary society. Marriage is to be a life-long union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, Jesus was clear that only one reason was permitted for divorce and that was adultery.
If a person goes in to a marriage thinking that if it goes wrong they can walk away, then the chances are that is exactly what will happen.
When marriage is taken seriously, it gives great peace and security to families. It is awesome to know that there is one person in the world who has my back and will never abandon me, no matter what. When you are raising children, it gives them confidence to know that their parents will always be there for them.
The apostle Paul wrote that marriage was like the relationship between Jesus and the church. The faithfulness, commitment and deep love of a husband and wife is a physical sign of the deep love that Christ has for His people. When I recall that my wife and I are so deeply connected it is a reminder also that God would never abandon me.
If you are married, I encourage you to make a special effort today to show affection or gratitude to your spouse.
If you love the Lord, then the world will hate you.
The Bible uses the word “world” in three different was, as we do in English:
the physical planet on which we live
humanity in general “God so loved the world…”
the system of culture, governance and business that operates independently of God, and often in opposition to Him.
It is that world as system which hates all Christians.
Andrew Thorburn was on Monday night announced as CEO of the Essendon AFL Club. By Tuesday he was fired.
His huge crime was that he is also Chairman of the Board of City On a Hill Church, a church which describes itself as being in the Anglican tradition.
Apparently back in 2013 somebody there preached a sermon that was against abortion and another person preached a sermon that said homosexuality is a sin. He was not the preacher of either message, but merely associating with such people is an unforgivable sin.
Dictator Dan Andrews, the Premier of Victoria, condemned him as “hateful” and a “bigot”, currently the worst judgement that can be bestowed on a person by the State of Woke.
So he resigned before he even started,
For the axe of Cancel Culture to have fallen so swiftly, it is clear that there was a “dirt file” already in existence. There are people who are so dedicated to destroying christians that they have already done the research on those whom they hate.
So the AFL, and organised sport more generally, justify their actions by wanting to make the sport inclusive and diverse. Their inclusion and diversity will come by excluding Christians.
The world really does hate you.
Any christian who works in an organisation big enough to have an HR Department now needs to have a Plan B.
Churches and other christian organisations, especially schools, also need to consider what might happen if the Government takes exception to their beliefs, which they will.
We live in a culture that has rejected God’s ways, and rather than seeing the church as a comfort and an ally, it sees the church as the enemy.
Ross Pomeroy, editor of RealClearScience, calls it “one of the most surefire findings in all of social psychology, repeatedly replicated over almost five decades of study: American conservatives say they are much happier than American liberals. They also report greater meaning and purpose in their lives, and higher overall life satisfaction.”
Given their recent embrace of lockdowns and masking as a societal ideal, drag queens as role models, abortion as a good career move, and sanctions against “misgendering,” it might not surprise you that American liberals are much more prone to neurosis, depression, and anxiety, and, as one recent study cited by Pomeroy pointed out, “have become less happy over the last several decades.” Their unhappiness “is associated with increasingly secular attitudes and actions.”
Think about that for a moment. “Attitudes” and “actions” imply that liberals might be people who choose to be unhappy.
That may sound flippant, but it’s a reasonable conclusion, especially given that social scientists often assert that conservative happiness rests on three “attitudes” and “actions” that pretty much anyone can adopt.
The first attitude is religious belief. Now, “religion” is a broad word — sort of like saying “politics” — but in our context, what we’re really talking about is Christian belief, and the action is going to church.
After 2,000 years of Christian witness and theology, and pro- and anti-Christian polemics, it’s reasonable to conclude that on the question of whether Christianity is true, there are respectable arguments on both sides. The odds are at least fifty-fifty that there is a God — a prime mover, a creator, a designer — that the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are reliable historical documents, and that our lives have an eternal purpose. This is against the belief that the universe is the product of chance and random evolution, that the New Testament is a conspiracy theory, and that our lives have only such meaning as we give them.
If it’s a fifty-fifty proposition — and, frankly, it would be easy to calculate the odds much more in favor of Christianity — why would one choose a path shown by the science, albeit the social science, to be the path of neurosis, depression, anxiety, and unhappiness?
Marriage is the often proposed second pillar on which conservative happiness rests. Marriage might be less easily willed because it requires a willing partner, but conservatives are nevertheless much more likely than liberals to want to get married and have children. Liberals apparently see marriage as an inhibition to their freedom. The science tells us that this is the freedom to be unhappy.
The generally cited third source of conservative happiness is “personal agency” or what you and I might call the can-do spirit. Conservatives are much more likely than liberals to believe they can improve their circumstances through hard work. While conservatives revere the past and tradition — where they find examples of American grit and pluck — they are, in fact, future-oriented, focusing on achievement, supporting a family (the next generation), and one’s eternal reward. You could call it: the purpose-driven life.
Yet just as liberal cosmology denies free will, so too does it deny the idea of meritocracy (at least in its popular formulation). We live, in the liberal view, in a world shaped by an oppressive white, male, Christian patriarchy that needs to be overthrown. To that end, we should sort ourselves (if we are not conservative Christian white males) into a wide variety of alleged oppressed minority groups — a rainbow coalition, if you will. Or, if one is a liberal straight white male, one must be an “ally” of alleged oppressed minority groups.
In practice, this sorting leads to a relentless pursuit (intentional or not) of immiseration, pessimism, grievance, and anger — not to mention the creation of ever more obscure (and perverse) group identities. This, again, is a choice.
In the 1970s, a time oft-compared to our own — with its foreign policy disasters, energy crisis, skyrocketing crime, and social upheaval — a tribe of liberals packed up their tents, moved to the right, and proclaimed themselves “neoconservatives” or “liberals who had been mugged by reality.”
But today’s liberals are not much interested in reality — no matter how often it mugs them. They have prior ideological commitments.
If you think we live in a crazy world, it’s because we live in their world, a world where liberals who have lost reason and faith dominate every institution and use their bully pulpits to impose their neuroses on the rest of us.
Luckily, however, there is a cure. The ballot box is one part of it. Making the right choices ourselves is another.
The Spectator has some great news coming out of Canada!
Good news out of Canada!
I’m a native-born Canadian. When it comes to politics I virtually never say, ‘Look at the good news coming out of Canada!’
The left-wing Liberal Party has dominated Canadian federal politics for most of the last century. Recent national Conservative (nickname ‘Tory’) party leaders have been inept; they’ve been afraid of being conservatives or of voicing any conservative policies; they have seemed to function without any value-based anchors (think Scott Morrison); they have regularly adopted the Textor approach to politics for conservatives, which is to park your party a centimetre to the right of the left-wing main party.
All up it has been a disaster electorally as the left side of politics in Canada wins and wins and wins again.
Last weekend, the Conservative party selected a new leader in Pierre Poilievre. This MP would have had zero chance of winning the leadership in Australia because many of his fellow MPs (mostly ‘moderates’) would rather have eaten broken glass than vote for him. But some time ago, the decision of who would be party leader was wholly taken out of the hands of the partyroom and given to the paid-up party membership.
On Saturday, the party membership decision was announced and Poilievre received over two-thirds of the vote. His nearest rival, the establishment ‘moderate’ aka ‘don’t rock the boat’ candidate won just 16 percent of cast ballots.
The first thing Poilievre made clear is that he will not now pivot to the centre.
He has said the Governor of the Bank of Canada will be fired on the first day after he wins an election because of his money printing incompetence these past three years.
Poilievre then repeated his attacks on the bias of the CBC (which is actually a tad more balanced than our ABC). The new Tory leader said he would significantly defund the national broadcaster and that it is not remotely balanced (which is a true statement). Poilievre even went down into the detail of the sort of commentators the CBC brings in and noted they almost all just parrot the left-wing Liberal worldview. Half of the country that disagrees should not have to pay for this.
After winning a few days ago, Poilievre stated that he expected the CBC to come after him – for marching with the truckers whose civil liberties were taken away; for articulating clear conservative policies; and for making clear that the national broadcaster will face financial repercussions from a Conservative government led by him. The strategy is perfect if you believe that the national broadcaster is going to attack any real conservative party and leader anyway.
To quote Shakespeare, Poilievre is making a virtue of necessity.
His other policies include a promise to wind back the regulatory state, to get oil and gas pipelines finished, and to take real steps against politically correct, Woke bureaucracies and even companies.
To say that he has painted the biggest target imaginable on his chest is no exaggeration. And isn’t this splendid… As it happens, the Liberal Party is petrified of Poilievre. He is an adopted baby who grew up with no wealthy parents or any noticeable life advantages. His wife is an immigrant from South America (who has the political advantage of being extremely pulchritudinous).
So, he hates Woke cancel culture. He dislikes the regulatory state. And he is prepared to engage in a front-on battle with the public broadcaster, making that plain before the next election.
Poilievre, despite the name, grew up in Alberta (the most conservative of Canada’s provinces) and only learned French later in life. But his name and now excellent language skills make him a big threat to the Liberals in Quebec. His willingness to stand up against the lockdownistas is now starting to pay significant benefits – he does not concede that the welding people in their homes strategy was a good one.
Friends I know back in Canada who have despondently but correctly predicted a left-wing Liberal win, one after another after another, say that the Tories will win the next election. They are starting to make real inroads into the working class vote. This is the political realignment that benefited both Trump and Boris and that is happening throughout the anglosphere and democratic world.
Rich people now vote left, in general terms. The upper-middle-class, university graduate caste is about the most Woke and left-leaning part of the electorate there is. And another sign of how fighting on values works is that the Green party in Canada is now imploding. You can’t get better news than that.
Anyway, even though Justin Trudeau leads a minority government the other left-wing parties have pledged to prop him up so it could be over two years till the next election. No one knows what will be happening then or who will win. But the omens are good for Conservatives in Canada for seeing a real Conservative party led by a real Conservative win office at the next election. And I cannot remember when I last said that.
If we are to rely on e-vehicles to transport our soldiers through warzones, the Australian Defence Force is certainly doomed. Perhaps we should consider an even more environmentally-friendly, natural means of transport.
Last month, amid great fanfare, an electric version of the battle-tested Australian Bushmaster (a concept E-Protected Mobility Vehicle) was launched in Adelaide.
The original, diesel-powered Bushmasters built in Bendigo served in the Afghanistan theatre. So impressive were they that allied combatants including the Netherlands and Britain purchased 120-plus of them.
Currently, 20 Bushmasters are en route to active service with the Ukrainian Army. Other defence force customers of the Bushmasters include New Zealand, Fiji, Japan and Indonesia.
The diesel-powered vehicle has an operational range of 800 kilometres.
So, now, an all-singing all-dancing concept electric prototype is ready for Army trials. It is anticipated that these e-Bushmasters will be silent and not generate the heat signature of a diesel vehicle.
Limitations
According to your ABC News of August 11, it is anticipated that the e-vehicle will have an impressive operational range of 1,000 kilometres.
That is not yet the case, according to the Defence Department’s release of August 19, which says: “The first version has about a 100-kilometre range, but a planned larger battery should increase this to 350 kilometres. There’s also work to mount small external generators, increasing the range to about 1,000 kilometres.”
A small detail missed in the media hype was that the e-vehicle could not drive to the Adelaide launch. This was confirmed by the Minister’s office, which said the e-vehicle was transported from Newcastle (NSW) on the back of a motorised vehicle.
The lithium battery utilised in the e-vehicle features high-speed recharging; about three hours at an EV station; or, if the crew pull up outside a farmhouse and use the household plug, about seven hours.
An inconvenient feature of the large lithium battery is that if a bullet or shrapnel pierces its casing, the crew will probably be roasted alive. If it should happen in dense scrub, there is the possibility of a bushfire.
A convoy of E-Bushmasters rolling at 100 kilometres per hour from Melbourne to Sydney (870 km) would, with nine stops at EV points, take 36 hours (1½ days) to arrive; while the same 870-km trek in outback South Australia, Queensland, Western Australia or the Northern Territory stopping at farms to recharge would take 72 hours (three days). Diesel-powered Bushmasters can cover the same distance – with driver breaks every two hours – in about 11 hours (half a day).
But do not despair; Assistant Minister for Defence Matt Thistlethwaite said the electric Bushmaster is part of building a “future ready” Army.
Standard Operating Procedure for an army field-force convoy movement is to place the slowest vehicles in the lead. A worry for any convoy commander if he was moving a mixed convoy of motorised and e-vehicles would be the requirement to halt every 100 kilometres to recharge the electric units.
Moreover, not all e-vehicles would stop at the same location because some might “run out of puff” after 90 kms, others at 95 kms, or 98 kms, well short of the recharge point. A convoy with 20 e-vehicles would require a recharge point with 20 EV stations or 20 power points at a farm.
Missing in Action
A timely lesson for the Army comes from the Gloucestershire Constabulary, which boasts the largest full electric fleet in Britain, 91 vehicles. Its problem is simple: the force cannot respond to crime because the batteries “keep going flat”.
Police and Crime Commissioner Chris Nelson said officers had experienced problems finding recharging facilities in the county as the e-vehicles “run out of puff”, and staff needed to change police cars.
Police Scotland invested £20 million ($A34 million) providing 23 stations with e-vehicles but no EV charging points. When their vehicles were plugged into the station’s regular power point, the latter blew up. Now the e-vehicles are left at council car parks overnight with officers reverting to combustion-powered vehicles.
The e-Bushmasters engaged in a limited conflict in the remote outback or even in rural areas and “running out of puff” would certainly meet the Army’s “silent” criterion.
Natural Alternative
While it is easy to criticise a work in progress, any correspondent worth his salt should provide an interim workable solution that will work until the Army’s R&D e-vehicles are perfected before we face an invasion or shortage of liquid fuels.
Australia has (perhaps) a million feral camels roaming the Outback. Australian soldiers rode camels into battle during World War I in the Mesopotamia campaigns. Camel trains were used in remote Australia as each animal could carry 100 kilograms of stores, or be harnessed in teams to haul wagons.
In a military emergency, camel teams could haul “out-of-puff” e-vehicles to the nearest power point. A good camel will travel at five km/h; so, she’ll be right, no urgency; the troops can wait.
The Army’s use of camels would be an innovative carbon-reduction “work in progress” of Labor’s Climate Change Bill, now before the Senate, and would easily impress the UN’s climate barons and other assorted global-warming alarmists.
“All I’ve ever wanted in life is to be a farmer,” says Mike Duxbury, who lost his sight at the age of six through infantile glaucoma. Having grown up on the family farm, he was determined not to let the loss of his sight stop him chasing the only career he ever wanted.
In the late 1980s, Duxbury applied to every agricultural college in the country before being accepted by just one: Warwickshire College of Agriculture. He qualified as an animal nutritionist and graduated in 1990 with a degree in agricultural business management.
Mike Duxbury and his partner Ness Shillito started Inclusive Farm on the premise that people with disabilities should be able to participate in whatever industry they choose. Credit: Alexander Turner
“Even back then, prejudice was very high, but I learned at college to do the things I wanted to do. They gave me every opportunity; they never put up a barrier.”
Today, Duxbury and his partner Ness Shillito have established one of the UK’s first working farms dedicated to training people with disabilities for a career in agriculture.
Woman Who Fled Communist China Delivers Grim Warning to Americans ‘Abandoning Freedom and Arriving Into Socialism’
Photo: YouTube/Fox News
August 29, 2022
A woman who survived and fled China’s Communist Revolution is warning Americans against what she sees as an abandonment of freedom and a dangerous embrace of socialism.
“I just want to say it’s so ironic — 36 years ago, I run away from socialism when I left China to come to this great country for freedom,” Xi Van Fleetsaid on “Fox & Friends Weekend.”“Today, so many Americans [are] abandoning freedom and arriving into socialism.”
Fleet said these people do not understand socialism and have no concept of what it is like to live under its precepts.
In such, a closely monitored and controlled society, she said there are “no choices” and “no freedom,” appealing to her own experience to corroborate her contentions.
“I lived under Mao’s socialism. When the government controls everything and makes all the decisions big and small and decide how much grain, meat [and] cooking oil I could have,” she said. “What I should learn in school, where I should live, and what job I should have and how I should think.”
Van Fleet said there is an intentional intent to weaken and dilute the word “socialism,” explaining how socialism is the first stop on the perilous pathway to communism.
“China is a socialist country. Cuba is a socialist country, and so is North Korea. They are a socialist country run by communist parties,” she said. “And what’s the difference? What’s the difference between socialism and communism? Not much.”
Van Fleet added, “Socialism is the initial stage of communism, according to Karl Marx.”
This isn’t the first time Van Fleet has spoken out about her experience, warning last year that efforts to silence parents speaking out about contentious issues in schools are similar to crackdowns she saw at the hands of Chinese Communist Party officials.
Van Fleet specifically spoke at the time about disparaging labels given to parent protestors by the National School Boards Association.
“When I was in China, I spent my entire school years in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, so I’m very, very familiar with the communist tactics of how to divide people, how they canceled the Chinese traditional culture and destroyed our heritage,” told Fox News last year. “All this is happening here in America.”
Van Fleet continued, “They call them racists for a long time, but that did not work. So, they have to upgrade to ‘domestic terrorists.’”
Van Fleet’s warnings — considering the history — are undoubtedly noteworthy for Americans navigating the difficult moments of the current political structure.
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New Life Narrabri 