Videos Links to my New River Rafting Trip's

Day One Part One
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M48v1No38dY

Day One Part Two
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4owoThqXUk

Day Two Part One
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw7lms9eTEw

Day Two Part Two
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er5A0gkR2RA

Pebble, Stone, Rock, and Bolder

Pebble, stone, rock, and bolder, 

A pebble is easy, and a bolder is

Not hard to understand.

But what about a stone and a rock?

Well the rock is between you and the hard place,

While the stone is just a throw away.

Pebble, a little thing but the thing

Jesus built His church upon, Peter.

Which becomes the monolithic Catholic

 Universal Church of the Lord

Until Marten Luther posted his Bull

And shattered that bedrock with his protest.

Pebble, stone, rock, and bolder, 

More churches now than you can shake a stick at,

And that is just on the Christian’s side.

Islam has its denomination, and they kill one another.

And the Buddhist say there is no God

Just states of awareness.

The Hindu has many gods,

All aspects of the Godhead, they say.

Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Shinto,

Confucianism, Jainism, Taoism all has their point of view.

The atheist’s throws his stone away

Saying there is no God but man.

So many pebbles from which to choose

On what rock do you build your house?

"Into this world you are thrown

Like a dog without a bone",

And when the pebbles get small enough

It is no more than sand

And who wants to build their house on sand

Before finding the bedrock that holds it up?

Pebble, stone, rock, and bolder

Lost in the dark waiting for a light.

Jesus says, “I am the light, I am the way

“No one comes to the Father except through me”.

But then He says, “No man can come to me,

Except the Father which hath sent me draw him…”

So what can you do other than pray to see the light?

Slide Show: White Water Rafting The New River, W Va' 2012.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQUTMVmMPB0

Predator or Pray

He sees a world made up of

Predator or Pray

Where the Law of the Jungle

Prevails.

~

Survival of the fittest,

Let the buyer beware

And if you don’t have a gun

Have a big stick.

~

With no remorse

He will rob and kill.

He always looks

For the easy way.

~

He laughs at the fools

Who says it is not his fault,

That he had a bad childhood,

Or inherited a bad gene.

~

He like what he does

Likes to feel

Crushing bones

And see blood splatter.

~

He will go from the

Girl he just beat and raped,

Leaving her crumpled body

In the alley as he goes to eat.

~

Doing a strong arm robbery

On the way

To pay for his meal.

Like a Lion he sees himself.

~

But the sound of sirens

Make him sulk in the darkness

Like a Jackal until he

Can hale a cab.

~

Tomorrow he will

Be at the bus station

Laid around this town too long

Time to be moving on.

~

The heat is getting too hot,

Too may people

Know him.

Too many have reported him.

~

He has to be moving along

On to the big score

So he does not have to do

His dirty deeds

In the alley.

~

He feels no guilt for in his mind for

The only crime is the crime of being caught.

And if you can’t do the time,

Don’t do the crime.

~

©

Rexx

Opinions

You are entitled to your opinion, when you put forth your opinion into the marketplace of idea it is not you that should be attacked, rather your opinion. In turn you refine and defend your opinion. This is the dialectic art of arriving at the truth, it would be very naive of me to think that everyone will agree with what I think, when someone, like some has often done, challenges me on the facts I put forth, or on the conclusion I have drawn, I must go back and insure that I have my facts correct, and the logic I used to reach my conclusions are sound. One’s worldview will always color one’s opinion, but it should not blind you to reality.

One must start from where ever one finds one’s self to be, and pick each decision as best of their capabilities as they try to move from where they are to where they want to be. If you have chosen to be a champion of a cause, just as I have, our causes may different, mine being Libertinisms and dispelling error as I see it, while you may be the cause of the less fortunate in the world, or to get someone elected. You cannot enter into the fray of ideas with a thin skin; you must strive to improve both your rhetoric and logic in order to get your opinion a fair hearing in the marketplace of ideas.

When we try to convince others of the rightness of our cause we use rhetoric to do so, when we frame an argument we use logic to build its structure. We cannot let ridicule nor ad hominem attacks deter us from championing our cause. Our feeling are of no consequences, our arguments stand or fall upon the logic and rhetoric we use to present them.

I do not believe that anyone has ever found a missing link as to what the horse was before it was a horse. In matters of faith proof does nothing to dissuade only to reinforce what one already believer, one will always pick the facts that reinforce their beliefs and reject the ones that go counter to that belief.  . My God is a God of revelation, if He does not reveal Himself to you, you cannot see Him, He elects who will believe and disbelieves in Him.  In this I am a bigot, as many people are in their beliefs, my mind is closed to any counter argument, you cannot persuade me not to believe.

If this attitude was held only in what we call matter of faith than the conversion of other's opinions to more reflect your own would, indeed, be a matter of  looking at the facts, framing an argument, and delivering it.  The other would either see the errors of his ways or in his argument convince you of yours.  Alas, for many of us,  see our worldview as divinely revealed and beyond the touch of logic.  The true believer, the fanatic, the foot soldier of the cause.  His truth is the only truth, and he knows it is true because it is the Cause.

He is not the leader of the cause, the leader gives him the direction he has been looking for, a cause that give him, in his eyes, meaning.  His faith in his cause is unshakable, he is steadfast, and reliable.  The only opinions that count or the opinions held by the cause.  What is the cause?  Is it a good cause, an evil cause, it does not matter to the believer as long as he can be convinced it is the right cause. External propaganda converts him to the cause, and internal propaganda keeps him blind to any other way of seeing the world.  He only talks to people who agrees with his cause, will not have a conversation with anyone who hold a different opinion, they are at best misguided, and at worst an evil member of another cause.

Left Causes:  Progressiveness, Socialism, Communism, Gay Rights, Occupiers, ACORN, etc.

Right Causes: Christianity, Tea Party, Right to Lifers, etc.

There is no reconciliation possible between the left and right causes, and only traitors betray their cause.

~

~

~

©

Rexx

What Peace Can You Make With Islam?

Jesus said:

“Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”

Muhammad said:

“ Who has sent His Messenger with guidance and the religion of truth, to make it superior over all religions”.

~

Jesus said:

“And whosoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet for a testimony against them.”

Muhammad said:

"He who fights that Allah’s word be superior is in Allah’s cause"

~

Jesus said:

“Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven”

Muhammad said:

“Fight against those who believe not in Allah, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth among the people of the Scripture until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.”

~

Jesus said:

“If he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.”

Muhammad said:

“O believers, many of the rabbis and monks devour the property of the people unjustly and bar others from the Path of Allah [Islam]. Those who hoard gold and silver and do not spend them in Allah’s path, announce to them a very painful punishment.”

~

Jesus said:

“I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”

Muhammad said:

“It was God’s will to establish the truth according to His word and to finish off the disbelievers”

~

Jesus said:

“Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.”

Muhammad said:

“I have been ordered to fight against people till they say ‘none has the right to worshiped but Allah’ and whoever said, he saved his life and property from me except for Islamic law, and his accounts will be with Allah.”

~

Jesus said:

“Thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.”

Muhammad said:

"Paradise has one hundred grades (virgins) which Allah has reserved for the Mujahidun who fight in Allah’s Cause, and the distance between each of two grades is like the distance between heaven and the earth. So when you ask Allah (for something), ask for the Al-Firdaus which is the middle and the highest part of Paradise”

~

I ask:

What peace can you make

With someone who will

Kill you for being you?

~

~

~

©

Rexx

Reconstruction's Legacy

There is two very good reasons that the War Between the States has been much more imprinted upon the Southern mind then the Northern mind, and that is the fact that the war, for the most part, was fought in the South, and Reconstruction and all the hoops that Southern had to jump through to get readmitted to the Union.  This period lasted for about 12 years after the war.

Right after the war only freedmen (blacks who were former slaves) and those white Southern who had not supported the Confederacy were eligible to take the "ironclad oath," as required by the Reconstruction laws passed in 1867 to vote or hold office.  Carpetbaggers (Northerners who moved to the South during Reconstruction between 1865 and 1877) formed a coalition with Freedmen and Scalawags (Southern whites who supported the Reconstruction) in the Republican Party, which in turn controlled the Confederate States for a period of 10 years or more, 1867–1877.

Lincoln wanted to speed up Reconstruction and reunite the nation as painlessly and as quickly as possible, but alas that possibility ended in Ford Theater, and the Republican Congress took over from Johnson how Reconstruction would be run.

This meant that those who thought of themselves true Son of the South had to live under the thumb of an oppressive occupation, with the Union Army enforced the ruling Republicans.  My very own Grate Grandparents lived through this period, and told me of their first hand experiences of the Yankee invaders. As in all wars of that epoch there was a lot of raping, pilings, and looting that the army and civilian officials just looked the other way, if they did not join in the fun.

Whites who had not sworn the oath, and many were not allowed to take the oath for years, were not allowed the use of firearms, and were at the mercy of the armed freedman and the Carpetbaggers’ armed enforcers.  In retaliation veterans of the Confederate Army, most notable Nathan Bedford Forrest, founded the Ku Klux Klan.  Its main purpose, at first, was to resist Reconstruction. It focused as much on intimidating "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags" as on putting down the freed slaves.

The North went on as it had before the war, without a occupation in a land that had not been razed to the ground like Sherman laid waste as the South.  As Sherman said, “I’ve seen cities and homes in ashes. I’ve seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is hell!” those were not Northern cities and homes he was talking about.  It is not at all surprising that the North could put the war behind them a lot faster and easier than the South could.

This hate was passed on, to succeeding generations, specially the distaste of having been forced to accept the blacks as equals, the North had their own problem with this as well, remember it was Cicero, Ill where Marten Luther King, Jr. was stoned by the Polish.  In the 1870s, many whites switched from the Republican Party to the conservative-Democrat coalition, who called themselves Redeemers. Conservative Democrats replaced all Southern state Republican regimes by 1877.

This is the Democrat Party that set up segregation as the law of the land and held the South from then until Regain came and pointed out that, well as he said, “I did not leave the Democrat Party, it left me.”  Of course he was referring to the party’s ongoing tilt to the left and not the oppression of the black people.  Now the Democrats, and for some time in the past, have a lock on the black vote in spite of their history of oppressing the black people.  They set up the sharecropping system in the south to replace slavery with wage slaves.  It was the Democrat Party that fought against the Emasculation of the blacks, and they were the one who stood in front of Federal troop to try and prevent the integration of southern schools.

It is the Democrats that raise race as a political issue at every opportunity, they have fostered the animosity between blacks and whites to divide and conquer.  When they realized that suppressing black would no longer keep them in office they swung to the left, and completely reinvented themselves as the champion of the black man and the poor white man.  I now fear the Democrat Party more than a Sherman army marching across the land, for in their sight is not just the South but the whole country.