The case of Donald Trump is an object lesson how a man’s flawed character can lead to his own undoing. Given his considerable accomplishments—such as the appointment of three Supreme Court justices, brokering a Mideast peace agreement, engineering a revival of the US economy, revitalizing the US military, confronting China’s economic and military threat, stemming the tide of illegal immigration, and much more—he could have been a great US president. But he has been his own worst enemy. Like a figure in a Greek tragedy, his nemesis is his own deeply flawed character, which has contributed to his downfall. This should be a lesson to every Christian, but especially to those in leadership positions, to be mindful of our character development, to try to recognize, as best we can, our own sinful proclivities, and to allow the Holy Spirit to do His work in conforming us to the image of Christ, lest we bring disrepute upon His name.
Craig is right about Trump’s accomplishments, but wrong about the lesson of Trump’s presidency. There have been previous occupants of the Oval Office with worse character. The lesson is that Democrats and their enablers in media, entertainment, education, and even ostensibly non-partisan institutions like the FBI are unquestionably the biggest threat to America as an economically prosperous country of liberty with law and order that puts its own citizens first. There is no backward or unjust law they will not support or moral perversion or mental illness they don’t want to normalize, and they will use any means necessary to get what they want. That is the lesson. Trump was a bigger obstacle to them than previous milquetoast Republicans, so they went harder than ever against him.But make no mistake: the next Republican candidate for president, no matter how upright or milquetoast, will also be literally Hitler. And so will the one after. And after. It’s not about character at all. It’s about how serious of an obstacle one is to the evils of progressivism.
Craig's a highly polished buffoon, never heard of McIntosh but I think he's on to something.
ReplyDeleteAs Steve used to say, what Craig gives with one hand, he takes away with the other! :) Craig has done a lot of good for the kingdom, but he has also done a lot (ahem) less good. Most recently, Craig released a book on the historical Adam. I'd like to read it. However, if his book is sufficiently based on Joshua Swamidass's work for its conclusions, then let's just say I doubt it'll be as intellectually compelling as it might have been otherwise.
DeleteChad McIntosh is also a Christian and a philosopher (PhD, Cornell). Among other things, his Appeared to Blogly has a great compendium of various arguments for Christian theism. But I don't know his specific denomination.
Hawk—
DeleteI have personally known a couple or three academics with the kind of intellectual firepower Bill Craig possesses. They have a tendency to believe that because they are evangelical and world-class stupendous at artificial intelligence or quantum chemistry or analytic philosophy they must also be God’s gift to humanity concerning church history or politics. I actually find it kind of endearing. The kind of thing Southerners would comment on with the tongue-in-cheek phrase: “Bless their hearts!” When I think on it, it makes me giggle out loud. Big, big brains can make childish mistakes.
I guess it's a common problem where experts in field x think that somehow makes them experts in field y too. Or at least somehow gives them more credibility to speak on field y. Like Richard Dawkins or Stephen Hawking commenting on philosophy and theology.
DeleteWhatever a Republican does, even if a leftist does it, is wrong. Romney was skewered for saying he had binders full of woman (their resumes/background/whatever) he was going to go through in filling out positions. He was reamed for it. Biden points out all the women he's putting into certain positions, and he gets applause. It's the same thing. Yet it's wrong when one guy does it, and right when another one does it.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely! The left's double standards aren't even kept hidden. It's just out in the open now. Yet, because the mainstream media is strongly leftist, these sorts of things are barely commented on. If it had been a Republican calling voters "chumps" or "ugly folks" like Biden called conservatives this past election, or if Trump had said "you ain't black" unless you vote for Trump, then it would have been front and center on every single major news station in the nation and Trump and Republicans would have been called immoral or worse.
DeleteWell, it's hidden in the sense that it's not reported, and if it is, not for long. So the facts are out there...but who has time for that? It has to be your job or your all-consuming hobby.
DeleteSadly many (I fear most) Americans don't want or aren't able to research matters further. In fairness, it may be partly due to information overload in our information age. There's just too much information to process and it's difficult to find the time to research.
DeleteAt this point, it might come down to trust. Just believe what one's circle of trusted people believe, I guess. Maybe this is where we are as a society.
Yet, trust of others, including the mainstream media, seems to be at an all time low. And if there's no or little faith in the predominant sources of our information, then what...? I don't know. Hopefully alternative sources we can trust.
One amusing thing going on, at least, is Project Veritas suing the NYT for defamation (which makes me *so* happy they're the ones suggesting a "truth commission").
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMGFRRMdhQw&ab_channel=ProjectVeritas
They've been once source keeping me sane. For example, while on the one hand I don't think there was systematic fraud that gave Biden a win...there wasn't no fraud. So far someone in Texas has been arrested after they went undercover and talked with someone breaking the law. And they're the ones who talked with the mailman in Pennsylvania who said he heard people talking about dating mail in ballots to the 3rd when the arrived after (and who has not recanted, unlike what news organizations claimed).
Favorite part: 7:14
DeleteOh yeah, I highly respect the work James O'Keefe and Project Veritas are doing too! :) Thanks for the link to the video, TFC. I'll have to watch it soon.
DeleteI also doubt there was sufficient enough voter fraud to have given Biden a victory.
That said, the mainstream media, big tech, and leftists in general reacted by immediately trying to clamp down on any kind of debate about voter fraud. This makes the left look dubious to say the least.
So, for example, we can say, there were (if I recall correctly but doublecheck the numbers) approximately 100 million mail-in or early votes out of approximately 165 million votes cast total. First, that's a historic number of mail-in votes in a national election. Second, couple this with the fact that it's arguably much easier to commit voter fraud in mail-in votes than in-person votes. Third, my understanding (again, doublecheck me) is approximately 4% of mail-in votes on average are thrown out due to fraud or irregularities, but this election less than 1% of mail-in votes were thrown out. Of course, there could be reasonable explanations for all of these. Reasonable explanations which the "free press" should have been willing to help clarify for Americans. But because the "free press" did the exact opposite and tried to avoid or even silence questions about issues like this, then it makes it much harder for Americans to trust that the elections were conducted fairly.
In addition, big tech's double standards over censorship:
Delete"YouTube is taking down Trump's 'Save America' speech from January 6th. Download it while you can."
(Source)
A second example from today, with YouTube removing videos of physicians testifying about COVID at the US Senate:
Delete"Google's YouTube has ratcheted up censorship to a new level by removing two videos from a U.S. Senate committee."
(Source)
Big tech companies control so much of what information is and is not available to the public. Something needs to be done about big tech.
Not working, says it's rate limited and to try another site, and I'm past my bedtime. I wonder if it's because knowing the words might lead to questioning the narrative...hhmmm...
DeleteAs to "NO" voter fraud, very rarely in situations where there can be error is there none, so emphatically say there was not one error stinks to high heaven. Medical tests aren't free of errors. Sometimes people have cancer and it's not found, and sometimes patients spend weeks panicking only to discover they're not dying of cancer. Sensors (radar, GPS receivers) aren't free of errors. We have people with all forms of government approved IDs and money that they legally shouldn't have. It looks like California alone has a couple billion dollars going to people during covid that shouldn't have gotten it (don't quote the dollar amount, but it's a non-zero number for sure). But after all that, not one vote was fraudulent. What a miracle, why don't we use that process everywhere?
DeleteGood points.
DeleteThere are different kinds of character flaws. Most often someone who is boisterous is not overly deceptive beyond some measure of hyperbole. Theft, murder, sexual impropriety, corruption, and such things are most often cloaked in a deceptively comely demeanor. Of all the things to fault Trump for, his boisterousness is at least a significant indicator that he believed himself to be basically on the level.
ReplyDeleteI should say I don't have any problem saying Trump is morally corrupt. The irony with Trump is that he is an immoral person who did many good things. In a way, it's similar to someone like JFK who was a philanderer and a womanizer, but he did some good things too. Yet liberals seem to love JFK.
DeleteI'd argue that Obama (for example) was or is morally corrupt, but Obama was often "cloaked in a deceptively comely demeanor" like you say (cf. 2 Cor 11:14). At the same time, Obama was something of an ideologue, but his ideology is leftism, and he often attempted to enact his ideology through less than savory means, but his words would often come across as palatable to many (to be fair Obama was aided and abetted by the mainstream media so that even his fumbles were made light of). In this respect, I think Obama was more insidiously immoral than Trump whose immorality was out in the open.
On JFK, I went to the 6th Floor Museum where he was shot from. Nothing but glowing reviews and the sadness at all the things he could have done if he hadn't been killed. It was quite glowing. Granted, a museum might be the wrong place to just dig up dirt on someone, but it could have been a little less Cameloty.
DeleteAnd at one point there's a family picture with Ted. Ah, yes, "drown em' in a lake" Ted.
HotAir spent Obama's first presidency pointing out his Obamateurisms. They'd point them out daily as they occurred (getting the number of US states wrong, getting the current state wrong, bowing, which is a sign of subservience, to foreign leaders as president...) Obamateurism, a monthly one, and for the grand finale, the yearly one. All based on his daily blunders. It was to point out that blatant double-standard between W being a stupid clown and Obama being a great intellect.
Heck, W was made fun of for almost choking to death.
Thanks, TFC! Really good points. I think the mainstream media wanted to turn Obama's presidency into a kind of Camelot (a la JFK). The mainstream media certainly had (and still has) a romance with Obama, where Obama could do no wrong in their eyes, etc. As a result of how the mainstream media portrayed Obama, many Americans thought of Obama as some kind of an intellectual, indeed a kind of messianic figure, but like you said his Obamateurisms are evidence "the man behind the curtain" is no wizard of Oz.
DeleteI suppose the scariest part of this whole thing is that the mainstream media have the ability to make a person into a hero or a villain or whatever else the media wish to portray him or her as. The media can literally change the outcome of elections as the Tim Groseclose's book Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind proves. Something needs to be done about the mainstream media. The mainstream media is no longer the free press. In fact, the mainstream media tries to squash a truly free press.
Ok, fine, you mentioned it enough that I bought it. But two commentaries on Samuel and one one Matthew stand between any new books and me.
DeleteLol, sorry, TFC! I didn't mean that you should buy it, per se. Rather I mention it in different posts so that anyone who comes across these posts someday would be able to look into media bias for themselves. I think Groseclose has done lectures or interviews about his book, too, which are available to watch online on YouTube at least for now (unfortunately not on Rumble as far as I know), so if someone didn't want to read the book, then they could listen to his lectures or interviews instead.
DeleteHawk & TFC—
Delete1. Concerning JFK’s treatment as an icon of the Left: it’s been pointed out that because the Democratic Party has drifted so much farther left, Kennedy no longer fits. So much of his rhetoric and so many of his policy stances would place him on the right by today’s standards.
2. Concerning Obama’s squeaky clean reputation: I like to point out to Barak’s fans that Nikolae Ceausescu met his wife at age 21 and was so smitten he reportedly never looked at another woman, remaining faithful to her for the next 50+ years. Of course, his status as a solid family man didn’t prevent him from being a ruthless dictator in his day job....
Both good points, Eric! JFK would have been closer to a classical liberal, I think. Heck, even Bill Clinton during his presidency wasn't as left as the Democrats seem to be now.
DeleteAlso, I hear Jimmy Carter is a supposedly good man, but (while I wasn't around when he was president) it seems he was a bad president or at best an ineffectual president. I guess the choice is something like whether one would want a good man who is a bad president or a bad man who is a good president.
Books on the mainstream media and the left that might be worth reading:
DeleteLeft Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind (Timothy Groseclose).
Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism (Sharyl Attkisson).
Fraud: How the Left Plans to Steal the Next Election (Eric Eggers).
Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (Saul Alinsky). See how the left thinks.
Rules for Reformers (Doug Wilson). Pastor Doug Wilson's response to Saul Alinsky.
Funny when Hawk and others on Triablogue kicked me off the team and censored me for posting pro-Trump commentary (I was the lone voice here making a case that Trump would be a solid conservative and take on the establishment). Now they lament that Big tech does the same thing what they did to me——as they are now pro-Trump! Hypocrites.
ReplyDelete1. I wasn't the person who wanted to "kick [you] off". I wasn't even the person who deleted your posts. Yet inexplicably you keep blaming me. This has been addressed more than once including in private email literally addressed to you.
ReplyDelete2. No, you weren't "kicked off" for "posting pro-Trump commentary". It's because you have a history of arguing in bad faith. Your modus operandi is to argue x, but when someone responds to you with good reasons that undermine x, you don't respond to their reasons, but instead you repeat x. You do this over and over and over again to the point where it becomes fruitless to debate with you.
3. In fact, almost everything you've said in this very comment has already been dealt with in the past, but here you are again, repeating the same allegations like they haven't been addressed. You should really know better by now. So this is another example where you're arguing in bad faith.
4. You were far from "the lone voice" about Trump. For the record, I know of at least two other people who also made cases for Trump before the 2016 election (i.e. Jason and John). In fact, was Trump even your first pick before the 2016 election? Didn't you want to see others like Ted Cruz more than Trump?
5. You often have this idealized notion about yourself as a "lone voice" in the wilderness. You often act like you're the "lone voice" in the wilderness against big tech, big pharma, big health, big media, big [insert any other institution or group you want to rail against]. I wonder if this idealized notion about yourself where you're a "lone voice" reflects your theology and eschatology.
6. Anyway, as far as I know, no one disagreed with you regarding the dangers of big tech, big pharma, the mainstream media, etc. I certainly didn't. In fact, I have literally told you I didn't disagree with you about this in the past, but you keep acting like I disagree with you. So this is yet another example of you arguing in bad faith.
7. The disagreement was specifically over your anti-vaxx stance. However, even with regard to your anti-vaxx stance, I have told you in the past (long before our pandemic) that I agree with you that people should not be forced to be vaccinated in general.
8. Where we disagree is over your allegations like vaccines are made from aborted fetuses. We've been over this ground countless times, and I've done my level best to reason with you, but if you don't agree, then there's nothing more I can say to try to persuade you. What's more, I was perfectly fine just letting it go, just agreeing to disagree about this, but for whatever reason(s) you keep bringing it up. Your anti-vaxx stance has become a personal crusade for you. This is another problem with you.
9. Getting "censored" from Triablogue isn't equivalent to getting "censored" from big tech. Heck, you already have your very own popular website where you regularly post whatever you want to say! So your voice is far from being "censored" on the internet - which it would be if your website was hosted on Amazon (AWS) and Amazon (AWS) suddenly refused to stop serving you like they did with Parler. Triablogue doesn't have that kind of influence at all. In fact, Triablogue itself depends on big tech, for Triablogue is on Blogger, which is owned by Google.
Poor Alan. Not sure what caused him to go off the rails. He used to be sensible.
DeleteI don't know either. I'd much prefer to be on good terms with him, but given his behavior ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
DeleteI actually believe that there is some truth in the statements of both men. Trump was his own worst enemy; every issue, every speech, always boiled down to self-praise, along with a list of other human flaws. However, his boldness garnered such explosive reactions - particularly from the left - that we clearly saw that the press had the same new clothes as the emperor, for their bias was the size of an elephant. Doesn't wisdom call for us to see the truth apart from having both feet firmly planted in some camp?
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jan! I agree with you that there's some truth to both statements. Of course, we could debate where the lines should be drawn in terms of emphasis regarding where the truth lies and so forth, but I don't have a problem saying Trump is often his own worst enemy. To take a simple example, I think if Trump had stopped tweeting as president, or at least if he had stopped tweeting in the lead up to the Nov. 3rd election, then that might have been sufficient for him to win the election. His tweets arguably cost him enough votes in an already tight race. (I think he lost by around 40,000 votes across the battleground states in a total of 165 million votes cast? That's an awfully close election if so.) Not to mention his tweets provided fodder for the left to use against him. So even in such a simple case as tweeting I agree he may very well have been his own worst enemy.
Delete