THYME Magazine American Renewal Issue II

Citizen Journalism with a Better Flavor


Volume VI, Issue XXIII

The Hijacking of Activism
By Donna Lou Shickel - © 2013 Donna Lou Shickel Publishing Co. Distribute freely with permission

After the West won the Cold War, waged by atheist communists, we let our guard down. We have failed to “guard the garden” of the greatest Country in the history of the world, by compromising with those who make the fruit forbidden by God look like a good and necessary concession. And in the process, successfully plant seeds of doubt in the sovereignty, wisdom and goodness of our Creator, Almighty God – Whose very precepts this Country was founded upon. Now we are close to losing the ‘Culture War’, waged by more of the same, godless deceivers, who recognized that utter destruction of our Christian Judeo values would not come with outright revolution. THEY, at least, pay attention to history. No, the complete demise could only come by undermining and subverting the values and ideals of the Christian Judeo society and deceiving her citizens to become silent, unwitting partners in their sinister schemes. So have we traveled too far down this road of destruction to turn things around? Welcome to A Place of Grace, I’m your host, Donna Lou. If you look at history, the answer to that question, beloved, is up to us. But let’s not forget: the very fact that those working to further this out-in-the-open, communist, socialist agenda see our Christian Judeo traditional faith and values as their number one obstacle to achieving their goals validates the power WE possess over such evil. We only need to choose to exercise it.

Friends, just as we see in the Garden in Genesis, the enemy’s attack is on God’s sovereignty first, THROUGH the family by sowing seeds of doubt in God’s Will in favor of human sovereignty. And deceiving mankind into believing the two can coincide for the accomplishment of a good and utopian state. This utopian vision, of course, is achieved by those who knowingly or unwittingly follow the same deceiver, to persuade, manipulate, or coerce well-intentioned followers to entrust their every need and right into the hands of totalitarian leaders who promise a better world than God could ever offer. Are we on that path? A century ago, Democrats were a little left of center, and Republicans a little right. But today both parties have moved much further to the left. Completely left means total government control and no individual rights, and completely right is anarchy, no government which historically is barbarism. But groups who move far left favor more and more government. Those who favor totalitarian government openly state that they must achieve their power and authority by removing God’s. And ironically, they promote their open agendas by convincing citizens to cooperate with their work, which they claim is all about social justice. So how did we move so far from our Founding Father’s vision of a government by the people, for the people? Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher of the late 19th century who convinced many people throughout the world that true human freedom would only be achieved by accepting that God was dead. Charles Darwin convinced many that human beings were simply evolved animals. Karl Marx took the godless philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche and Charles Darwin to promote his own philosophy to promote Communism throughout the entire world to . Margaret Sanger used the philosophies of Nietzsche and Darwin to found Planned Parenthood, and her openly stated goal was to prevent African Americans and other minorities and all disabled people from inhabiting the world, the reason most abortion clinics are located in minority communities. Many accounts of couples whose lives have been blessed with a developmentally child tell of an obstetrician who urged them to abort that very baby who taught them the true meaning of sacrificial love.

 But if you follow Nietzsche, Darwin and Sanger, if people are animals, and God is dead and this life is all there is, then what’s the problem with having a superior race of human beings, and slaughtering anyone, born or unborn, to achieve a utopian world for the fittest? No, we cannot compromise with any part of an agenda that opposes God’s plan and our Christian Judeo values. And Communism knows that to succeed, the traditional family must go. Socialism and communism says, my life will be better if certain others do not succeed or exist. Christianity says, I offer my life so that others may live. Communism says there is no eternity, no God. Christianity is the enemy of our objectives. So there is no way to blend the two since they not only have nothing in common but are at completely opposed to each other. We talked last time about what Communism is, and what its openly stated objectives are. But what you and I need to understand is how America has unwittingly cooperated with nearly every one of these goals based on seemingly good and logical reasons. You’ll notice, the socialists or communists are not conceding or compromising with us as Christians. But what we’re seeing is that we as Christians are inclined to abide by God’s laws until economic matters are at stake, or whenever personal standing or belonging are threatened. When it hits home and inconveniences us, when it begins to cost us, we tell our leaders to just fix and we’ll look the other way when you lead us to compromise our God-given values. Regarding ECONOMIC reasons; let me give a current example. The vast majority of Americans opposed the Affordable Care Act and saw it as an absolute disaster for the economy and another means of violating our religious and conscience rights. But when our elected representatives, who represent our values, hold firm against these mandates in the Health Care Mandates, we turn against them and now blame them for the government shutdown. We don’t want unfit people to bring more children into this world – we’ll have to pay for it. So we consent to man’s law over God’s Law, and convince ourselves and others that it is the lesser of two evils. What else can we do, we ask. Many of you wrote after last week’s show to express your support, and I thank you. I was planning to focus today’s discussion on communism’s infiltration of the American education system. But in my studies, I couldn’t help but notice the communist agenda, which is very orderly, before it addresses education designed to dummy-down and indoctrinate our children, first addresses the elimination of our children. So I’ll plan to address the attacks on education and share with you my experience at a Students for a Democratic Society meeting in college.

 But one listener asked me to discuss the women’s liberation movement as the cause of all the problems we have today. The listener wrote, “It always starts with a woman – First in the garden of Eden, and now in America.” Yes, and that’s where we first see the woman blaming the devil, and the man blaming both the woman and God Who gave him this woman. And we’ve blamed each other to hide our own shame over our own failure to totally submit to God’s Will ever since. Well, an important part of America’s history of American women has been wiped out of our school textbooks of today. The early feminists - Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Elizabeth Cady Staunton - fought for women’s right to vote not because of the glass ceiling, but first for the abolition of slavery and later because of forced abortions and child labor practices. They knew if they had the vote, as women of God, they could work to eradicate these social injustices. Without exception, the original feminists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries opposed abortion and sought to address the root causes that forced women to abort. Women were forcibly held down by doctors, husbands and even some pastors to have their child aborted. And many children who came to term were forced into factories. All for economic reasons. These women, called suffragists for good reason, were maligned, beaten, and jailed to set an example for any other women thinking of joining their cause.

 Despite having the image of creating a ruckus, the suffragists staged silent protests at the White House. And as one would be arrested and taken away, another woman would take her place. The ruckus only began when men, including husbands, would intervene, and beat the women while the police looked on. Alice Paul, a young suffragist whom Susan B. Anthony had passed the movement on to, organized the first peaceful protests at the White House. The “silent sentinels,” just stood with signs, dressed in white, asking for the right to vote. In 1917, what the press called “The Night of Horror,” 200 men who had organized showed up and began beating the women while the police looked on. They stood at the White House every day. The women were arrested and taken to the Occoquan, VA workhouse and when one woman was arrested, another would take her place. At the Occoquan Workhouse they were stripped and beaten with the approval of officials and officers who looked on. Lucy Burns was hung by her handcuffs from the ceiling of her cell overnight, bleeding and gasping for air. Jailed leader Alice Paul went on a starvation protest, but eventually she was held her down by prison doctors and jailers and force-fed her through tubes until she vomited. That went on for two weeks until the press got a hold of it. And with all the pressure from publicity over the arrests and brutality of these early feminists, President Woodrow Wilson finally lent his support to the suffrage amendment in January 1918. Congress approved it, and after three years of silent protests and arrests, on August 18, 1920, with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, women achieved the right to vote.

 Don’t you wonder what these women would say if they knew that today, only 25 percent of Christian women in our Country vote? But when the elderly Alice Paul was asked 50 years later of her thoughts on the modern women’s movement and legalization of abortion she replied, “Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women.” So what connection does communism have in the modern feminist movement? Bella Dodd helped organize the Congress of American Women, a forerunner of the modern feminist movement. – Bella Dodd became head of the New York State Teachers Union and was a member of the National Council of the Communist Party U.S.A. until 1949. She testified before a Congressional Committee in 1953 following her Christian conversion that she was only one of hundreds who had successfully implemented communist agendas in US schools and had also personally recruited over one thousand communist sympathizers to infiltrate Church seminaries. She said the Communist Party operates by infiltrating and subverting social institutions like the churches, schools, mass media and government. Its aim was "to create new types of human beings who would conform to the blueprint of the world they confidently expected to control." She said communist groups had been successful in subverting every one of these institutions, including the American education system by taking over the American teacher's unions and learned societies. Only people who accepted their philosophies advanced in education, she testified. Again, I’ll talk more about their plan, largely executed, for education next time. But back to the communist efforts behind the modern feminist movement. Betty Friedan founded NOW, the National Organization for Women and wrote “The Feminist Mistique,” the 1963 best-seller which many historians believe was the impetus for the women’s liberation movement.

But three decades later, after the damage had been done and the economy dictated “no turning back now,” and communists throughout the world praise her to this day, Betty Friedan Goldstein gloated in confessing that by furthering the science of victim-ology onto American women, she was just doing her job as a Communist and a disciple of Joseph Stalin when she wrote her book, “The Feminist Mystique.” That’s right, friends. In the 1990’s it came out that she wasn’t really a frustrated housewife, trying to help other women who were victims of, “a comfortable concentration camp” as she called it, she was just doing her job as a communist to dismantle our American families. She said the Communist party USA celebrated the legalization of oral contraceptives and abortion because they knew these practices would actually enslave, not liberate, the American woman and homemaker, who once was the most privileged class of people in the entire world. Another influential woman for the communist cause, Norma McCorvey, who became Jane Roe of Roe vs Wade, made her case for legalization of abortion by claiming she was a victim of a gang rape when it was just a casual affair. It wasn’t until many years later, again, after the damage was done, that Norma revealed this too was a lie. Her ACLU attorneys needed an extreme case to gain the public’s sympathy. We don’t hear much about her, but since 1995 she’s dedicated her life to overturning Roe v. Wade. She says in her video ad, “I think it’s safe to say that the entire abortion industry is based on a lie…. “I am dedicated to spreading the truth about preserving the dignity of all human life from natural conception to natural death.” When abortion was legalized, it was intended to be safe, legal and rare, as its proponents put it. Dr. Bernard Nathanson, key witness for Roe v. Wade, confessed after his Christian conversion that he had lied when he testified before Congress. It was later revealed that leading abortion proponents knew the statistics were false but considered it to be “useful” in their public relations campaign. Even Planned Parenthood’s own leading statisticians admitted that the official statistics on deaths resulting from illegal abortion in 1972 were 39, not the thousands testified to Congress and the media. Does the media ever report that 400 women are documented by the Center for Disease control as having died from legalized abortions? A figure most believe is understated? Are you sensing a theme here?

When the enemy sets out to attack us from the inside out, the obvious solution is Grace – God living on the inside. We can’t do this without Him. When a young woman has an abortion, she goes back into to the same situation that drove her there. We must get involved with our children, our youth, especially in our churches – which most kids say never even address the issues they’re most confronted with!!! Let it be known you ARE someone they can come to if they are in a crisis, and you will be there for them through it all, and tell them a life of virtue is what they were created for, God wouldn’t command it if it was impractical to carry out, come on beloved! One baby aborted every three seconds in our country – why be appalled at the heinous acts committed by a generation raised under the philosophy of: a better world for one person, if someone else doesn’t exist. And it’s understandable for someone to believe that a baby born into an underprivileged situation could have no future and would be better off to never have lived – if you don’t believe God can and will intervene if we just cooperate with Him instead of the deceiver. Listen, I personally know women, nurses, who are, “in the trenches,” with troubled youth and grieve with them as they abort their babies. They’re hearts break for these girls and they do genuinely care. But they see no other option. Those many groups offering real solutions for at risk pregnancies get no government funding, and no platform in the press. But they’re out there. Just contact your area pregnancy center, and you’ll have plenty of options for your time or donations.

Friends, God is asking us to make sacrifices to help these young people up OUT of the trenches, not to make life more bearable down in there! This war against human life isn’t even logical. We spend nearly thirty billion a year in health costs to save the lives of premature infants who are wanted. Will eliminating thirty million in medical care for preemies be the next “logical” step in saving health care costs? Let’s be candid, we need to bring these discussions out in the open. Many Christian men and women will say, as I myself once did, that abortion is wrong but in the case of rape, it wouldn’t be fair to force that girl, and some say “my daughter”, to give birth to the reminder of that rape. We care, but we don’t always think. As if ending that pregnancy could wipe away such a reminder and persuading the innocent victims of such an act to now become partakers in a different kind of violence would heal that memory! As a humane people we decided that mutilating the rapist was unconscionable, but mutilating both the victims of rape is acceptable! Women who’ve given birth to babies conceived in rape or incest don’t see it that way. Look up their testimonies. They love their child as God’s way of bringing the ultimate blessing out of what was intended as evil. And what about women who’ve divorced because they were abused by their husbands and have a son or daughter who looks just like their father? Will it become understandable, since that child is a constant reminder of the abuser, for them to do away with THAT child? Abortion has played into the hands of the communist activists who promoted stigmas against pregnancy and motherhood, as well as the proven falsehood of the population explosion. They’ve been so successful they’re gloating on all of their blog sites, look them up and read what they are saying. And watch how we speak and joke to or about couples who obey God’s command to be fruitful and multiply and have more than two children! The over-population myth is another lie openly promoted by communists and swallowed by good people - Who’ve forgotten God’s plan in giving us the pro-creative act! Pregnancy resulting from the marital embrace isn’t an unfortunate side effect! Safe sex? What is that? Like safe driving means you get in your car but don’t go anywhere? We say each human being was created in God’s own image. But now we rationalize that life doesn’t really begin until, well until some time later. But was Jesus not God made flesh from the moment the Holy Spirit conceived Him in the womb of the Virgin Mary? Or was Jesus not really Jesus until, what, the second trimester? How many Christian parents have told their children they expect them to, not abstain from sex, but rather ATTAIN to purity and modesty? It’s a virtue, not a curse or a state of deprivation. It’s a gift to one’s self and their future spouse.

The Dad’s on Duck Dynasty aren’t afraid to pass that virtue on to their children, and the Young Life leaders at our son’s schools weren’t afraid to invite the kids to each sign a purity pledge and keep it as daily reminder to combat the daily barrage of sexually immoral messages they receive, another objective on the communists’ open agenda! After my interview with Mercedes Wilson on natural family planning, I heard from many of you, who after checking out the data were asking, “Why doesn’t our government promote natural family planning since, as one listener wrote : “Dear Donna Lou: My wonderful husband and I have been practicing natural family planning since we were married in 1995. There are lots of us out here! NFP is more effective (98 to 99 percent as opposed to 92 percent average for oral contraceptive use), more healthy, (doesn’t lead to infertility, breast cancer and blood clots as those steroids do!), it costs nothing and it promotes romance and unity in our marriage (divorce rate for couples practicing NFP is only one out of fifty verses 25 out of 50. Why doesn’t everybody know about this? Well, any communist would tell you, you answered your own question. It costs nothing and the other means cost you your quality of life. Am I exaggerating?

 In a 2005 press release, the World Health Organization released data from studies of 21 working scientists from 8 countries that declared that oral contraceptives are carcinogenic to humans and named them a class one carcinogen along with arsenic and asbestos. A 2006 release of nearly two dozen studies published by the Mayo Clinic showing that oral contraceptive use is associated with an increased risk (ranging from 26 percent) of breast cancer later in life. And that the biological basis for such a link is the same as the biological basis for an abortion-breast cancer link. One of the authors, Chris Kahlenborn, M.D., aware of high level efforts in government and medical associations to keep these kinds of studies from the public (even the 2005 World Health Organizations findings were covered over in the secular media while we hear all about arsenic TRACES in our rice or apple juice!) stated, "Anyone who is prescribing oral contraceptives has a duty to tell women that 21 of 23 studies showed an increased risk." He added, "As more information comes out, it's going to be increasingly difficult to suppress [the documented evidence from medical studies]. There's a growing sense that it's really just a matter of time before the lid blows on this thing. . . . We will start seeing a new attitude towards the pill, and it will be fueled by lawsuits." Not women’s health, but money will again do the talking.

 The goal to promote immorality through artificial birth control and to normalize disposing of an unwanted child is continuously, openly promoted by the Communist Party USA and the NEA to well-meaning people to eliminate poverty and child abuse, but they knew better. Skyrocketing statistics of our social and economic plagues coincide with the introduction of oral contraceptives and legalized abortion. Now we’re trying to put band-aids on the consequences, or call these evils good. Are there reforms needed? Yes, there always have been and always will be. But subverting God’s way with man’s way has never, ever, ever accomplished anything but a far more disastrous result. We’ve all been lied to, and we’re seeing the fruit of swallowing those lies. Not a single study has ever been published which shows that abortion, for any given reason, actually benefits the physical, emotional, economic, or social health of women, but rather only harms them physically, emotionally and spiritually. Problems that, in the long run, cost us far more than raising a child who most often becomes a tax payer. But all of this information is kept hidden from us, by our own government health agencies, who promote deadly practices as “every woman’s right.” All for economic reasons.

The only people benefiting from legalized abortion are not women, but the abortion industry profiteers and socialist/communist operatives who lie to us to our faces and laugh at us on their blog sites as they boast that we are pawns, Lenin’s “useful idiots” in their work to take America down. Is it too late? Well again, the very fact that they see our Christian Judeo traditional faith and values as their number one obstacle to achieving their goals, validates the power WE possess over such evil. We only need to choose to exercise it. To find the backbone to call evil “evil” again. And stop being like the Rich Man of the Gospel of Luke 16, ignoring the need outside of our own circles. And be what we were created to be: Radicals – it’s radical love of God and neighbor that overcomes evil. Have we traveled too far down this road of destruction to turn things around? The answer to that question is up to you, and me. So let us CHOOSE, this day, Who we will serve . . . and we must believe with our very lives that WITH GOD, ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE.


The 'real' Lone Ranger, Bass Reeves.

"Who Was That Masked Man," Really?

He was an African-American lawman who lived among Native Americans in Oklahoma. The Story of Bass Reeves [click to read] is far more interesting than the modern portrayal of it. Born in slavery before the Civil War, Reeves found freedom in the midst of that conflict.

"His slave-keeper brought him along as another personal servant when he went off to fight with the Confederate Army, during the Civil War. Reeves took the chaos that ensued during the war to escape for freedom, after beating his “master” within an inch of his life, or according to some sources, to death. Perhaps the most intruiging thing about this escape was that Reeves only beat his enslaver after the latter lost sorely at a game of cards with Reeves and attacked him." -- Political Blindspot.

Fleeing to Oklahoma, Reeves found a home among the people of the Creek and Seminole Nations there. He really did become a U. S. Marshall and he worked alongside a Native American tracker. Like the legend he inspired, he was an expert marksman and is responsible for putting a number of criminals into the Federal Prison in Detroit.


Morning over the Blue Ridge Mountains.


Old Rag Mountain.

Dennis Prager Asks: "Is Evil Rational?"

If So, Can Reason Alone Make a Better World?


From: Prager University [click to read].

Psalm 91 Illustrated

Hope and Promise for Our Troubled Times


Doves. Detail of a Mural by Kristina Elaine Greer and Bob Kirchman

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my G-d; in him will I trust.

Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.

He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;

Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.

A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.

Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.

Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation;

There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.

For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.

They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.

Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.

Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.

He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him.

With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.

Psalm 92 Illustrated

Hope and Promise for Our Troubled Times


Chocolate Flax Unicorn. Detail of a Mural by Kristina Elaine Greer and Bob Kirchman

It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto thy name, O Most High:

To shew forth thy lovingkindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness every night,

Upon an instrument of ten strings, and upon the psaltery; upon the harp with a solemn sound.

For thou, Lord, hast made me glad through thy work: I will triumph in the works of thy hands.

O Lord, how great are thy works! and thy thoughts are very deep.

A brutish man knoweth not; neither doth a fool understand this.

When the wicked spring as the grass, and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish; it is that they shall be destroyed for ever:

But thou, Lord, art most high for evermore.

For, lo, thine enemies, O Lord, for, lo, thine enemies shall perish; all the workers of iniquity shall be scattered.

But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of an unicorn: I shall be anointed with fresh oil.

Mine eye also shall see my desire on mine enemies, and mine ears shall hear my desire of the wicked that rise up against me.

The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.

Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our G-d.

They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing;

To shew that the Lord is upright: he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.

C. S. Lewis, Why He Matters Today

"When the Pupil is Ready, The Master Will Appear"


"Imagination is the organ of understanding." -- C. S. Lewis


“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” -- C. S. Lewis

THYME Magazine American Renewal Edition I

Citizen Journalism with a Better Flavor


Volume VI, Issue XXII

Threats to America's Foundations
By Donna Lou Shickel - © 2013 Donna Lou Shickel Publishing Co. Distribute freely with permission

Most of us are well aware of the war on Christianity. Our Founder, Jesus Christ, promised us that from the beginning. And that through these attacks we will be given the call to choose God’s way or the world’s. But what we may not be aware of, are the ways we Christians today have compromised and cooperated with the decline and decay of Christian Judeo values in our society by trying to choose both ways. And in the process, are we jeopardizing our own standing before God by consenting to laws that oppose His? Welcome to A Place of Grace, I’m your host, Donna Lou. You may not be aware that socialism, which is without exception in human history the final and necessary step leading into communism, is in fact a pagan religion. The socialist religion was founded primarily on the teachings of the pagan Greek philosopher and writer Plato. His book “The Republic,” written 400 years before the time of Christ teaches a "World Republic" led by a royal prince, a "World Philosopher King". Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Marx and Mao were great followers of Plato, Frederick Nietzsche and Charles Darwin and they all shared the same vision of a world prince (whom they all hoped would be themselves) who would solve all human ills and reign over this new utopian world. The foretelling of this prince was also given us by Jesus Christ. This prince is better known as the anti-Christ, the man of Satan. We’re going to talk about the indoctrination of Satan’s religion in our schools today.

Well friends, if you thought that the economy and radical Islam are our only problems, you might be surprised to learn that there are more members in the Communist Party worldwide and in the U.S. than ever before. Most are no longer using the name, “communist,” but rather they now describe themselves as Progressive. If you go to the Communist Party websites, you’ll find that all of the policies they support are now labeled, “progressive.” And if you compare the goals of the Communist Party USA, over 150 chapters in America, not counting their offshoot groups, with the goals of the NEA, the National Education Association, you’ll see that they, whatever they call themselves, have been incredibly successful. These people have an agenda and that is the destruction of our children’s Christian faith and morals to replace with the religion of socialism and immorality. And what is so deceiving about these people is that they claim to work toward fairness and reform, but take what is good to infiltrate it with something evil and call that social justice. And anybody who cries foul is attacked as intolerant, unjust and uncaring. Teaching God’s Commandments has been labeled a hate crime. And teaching early sexual behavior, anti-patriotism, and group consensus rather than individual reasoning have been openly stated goals of Communists who hate Christians for holding civilization back with our outmoded theology.

 Noah Webster, early Father of American Christian Education said, “The Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children under a free government ought to be instructed.” Of course, our students today won’t find that quote in their textbooks. Because John Dewey, father of modern US education, who completely transformed it said, “There is no God, there is no soul. Hence, there are no needs for the props of traditional religion.” John Dewey, in his 1934 essay, “The Great American Prophet,” claimed capitalism imposed a restriction on freedom, and “socialized industry and finance” would be the vehicle by which people would reach their full potential. And Dewey decided that American schools would condition children for the desired "social order". In the 1930’s he promoted that teachers must stress "mutually helpful living" in order to indoctrinate children in collectivism. Deemphasize facts, knowledge, and real-world skills to create a generation who could become totally dependent on government, thus ushering in the religion of socialism. John Dewey, known communist, changed school curriculum, discipline and class structures. Our “father” of modern American education said, “The kids don't need to understand "economic value. Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent."

Dumbing down our children was a prime goal in the Communist party USA, to raise generations for the collective whose only salvation would be big government. Even though a slight increase in student SAT scores is released now and then, they are still LOWER than they were fifty years ago, because this open agenda has been in effect now for sixty years. Only one in ten high school graduates believe there is an absolute right or wrong. Those who hate American Christian Judeo values and founding principals have been writing school curriculums containing hatred and revisionist history, and pushing laws denying parental rights and we regurgitate their lies that say we can do nothing about it. See, we’ve been dumbed-down over the last 60 years too. We’ll watch a liberal news broadcast, where they no longer report news, but rather opinions as facts, and swallow whatever they feed us and regurgitate it at every opportunity. How could this happen in Christian America, you ask? Well again, these plans were begun over a century ago. They’ve been patient and dedicated to their religion for over a hundred years! After last week’s show, a listener wrote to say that our government “tried” abstinence education in the schools “for two years” and it didn’t work. It didn’t work! How many others said the same thing regarding this or other Biblical values? God’s way doesn’t work?! Being brainwashed to even THINK that a certain child would have been better off if they never had lived, let alone say it, has led many a young person to agree and take their own lives. When we know, that according to Jesus, contributing to the harm of ANY little one would leave US, not that child, but US better off if WE had never been born! So let’s look back a century or so. In the 1920’s, John Dewey, along with others from the Communist Party USA and the National Education Association, traveled to the Soviet Union to study how the communists succeeded so well in educating their children as to make them a generation of puppets, and to bring their method back home to America. The Bolsheviks admired Dewey and his work so much they translated his books into Russian. But as part of his goal to transform the US through education, Dewey co-authored and signed the Humanist Manifesto in 1933.

 Humanism is a worldview that focuses on human wisdom and denounces God’s Divine Wisdom and refers to itself as a religious movement to transcend and replace previous religions. See, separation of Church and State (as now interpreted) only applies to Christianity. Dewey said it would be necessary for American teachers to promote the Theory of Evolution to further humanism and remove God from the minds of children. He also implemented plans for children to be re-educated away from the traditional values of the parent, get them into government schools at birth if possible, which remains another goal of the National Education Association. They say this would make kids better citizens for the new world order. Dewey promoted the redistribution of wealth and called for universal socialism, as all progressives today say, for the cause of social justice. Again Dewey wrote, “You can’t make socialists out of individualists. Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society, which is coming, where everyone is interdependent.” And now it’s here. Among his many continuing honors, John Dewey was the first honorary president of the NEA. Think about their goals – federalized standardized testing and groupings of desks for the collective, not individual thought. Teach to the test, bypass individual reasoning and logic, tell them that three times four equals eleven (that fact was at least reported by liberal media last year!) and kids will grow up to believe whatever they are fed. Even I thought it was wonderful when I saw they had little groupings of desks in our sons’ elementary schools, until I found out this was part of the socialist plan to dumb-down our kids. Not by these wonderful teachers, most of whom love our children and commit their lives to providing them with a good education, but by communists and socialists who’ve set out to destroy our Christian Judeo values. See, even communists know that faith comes by hearing. How many parents “make” their kids go to church on Sundays, but throughout the week spend no time in family Bible study or even have a conversation about their faith, but will get behind their children to do their best in sports, make good grades without taking a look at their assignments, never miss their kids games or favorite TV shows, but can’t get to a parent teacher conference once a year?

A few weeks ago I spoke to a frustrated mother who said her nine year old son had been given a low grade on a school project. The mother said he was so upset, because he knew the right answers but the other three students insisted on the wrong answers, so all four were given a “collective” low grade, in a system that has replaced the Ten Commandments with “the pillars of character.” Another local mom I spoke with a few days ago said her fifth grade son had come home from school so upset about his fifth grade sex education and begged her that he not have to take it, and said, “Mom, if I want to know about that stuff, I’ll ask you and Dad. It’s just weird.” Now there’re some involved parents who have set a foundation of godliness and trust for their children. But how many of us church-going parents can say that? Home-schoolers, who continue to be demonized in our culture, are out-testing everyone, and they’re turning out to be very successful taxpayers which will come in handy when the average child in Virginia entering kindergarten today can expect to cost us taxpayers over $136,000 by the end of high school! So why this maniacal effort to prevent parents from having school choice and vouchers to save over a hundred thousand per student? You do the math. Opponents who say vouchers erode public schools by taking away money and teaching jobs (what?) violate the separation of church and state only want our tax dollars to promote their own religion. And they’ve been very successful, with the majority of Christian children denying their faith by the time they leave college and only one in ten high school seniors believing there is such a thing as absolute right or wrong. Let’s look again at some of the 45 Communist Goals updated in 1958 which I shared with you two weeks ago on part one of “God or Government”:

Goal #28 – Eliminate prayer in the schools on the grounds that it violates the principle of “Separation of Church and State.”

Goal#40 – Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

Goal #17 – Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for Socialism…soften the curriculum. Get control of teacher associations.

Goal #24 – Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them censorship and a violation of free speech and free press.

Goal #25 – Break down cultural standards of morality by pro-moting pornography in books, magazines, motion pictures and TV.

Goal #26 – Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural and healthy.”

Goals # 20, 21 are to – Infiltrate the press. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

Goal #27 – Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible.

How have we permitted this indoctrination of our children? There was an offshoot of the Fabian Society, in accord with Communist goal 42 which states: Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems, founded groups like Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS. There were chapters popping up at nearly every American University. When I was a student at Old Dominion University I was invited by my English professor to attend a meeting of Students for a Democratic Society. This professor had given us as a reading assignment, “The Feminist Mystique,” by the lying Betty Friedan who confessed later she was only doing her job as a member of the Communist party USA in destroying America, and another book by Saul Alinsky, “Rules for Radicals.” Students for a Democratic Society was a radical communist/socialist group begun in the 1960's by the Fabian Society and spread throughout US Colleges, and it became one of the main representations of the New Left, now progressives. I thought it was only what it advertised: “The most powerful collaboration of American college students with America’s most powerful leaders to help the poor and disenfranchised. It also promised that working with these powerful figures in government, education, and the media had gotten thousands of college students high ranking jobs right out of school! Wow, a means to fight for minorities and the have-nots AND get connected with a good job when I graduated? Hey, I was in. And I would have stayed in, but for a few things that made my first meeting my last. Yes, they delivered what they promised. The meeting room was filled with students just like me, and lots of professors, including the English professor who had personally escorted me to the meeting. But there were so many older professional men who looked out of place schmoozing young college students like me. It gave me a really creepy feeling, and in their speeches, these men seemed to be fueled more with hatred of what they claimed was wrong with America than they were with love of the down and out. They promoted lifting up minorities by tearing down the white capitalists; elevating women by degrading men; by capitalizing on every individual failure of members of “the establishment” and, this really got me - to never underestimate the influence one person has to take down the “autocratic” Church with mockery and division. Promote divisions wherever they arose to divide and conquer. No, they didn’t seem to be very nice people. Afterward, my professor insisted I meet the speaker, and I remember asking him about the organization’s name, “Students for a Democratic Society - Worker-Student Alliance.” I thought Students for a Democratic Society was just like Young Democrats, but what was the Worker Student Alliance about and how were they connected. But I didn’t hear what the man said, because while he was talking I saw behind him, on the other side of the room, a man, about 60 or so, in a suit wearing an armband, and I thought I was seeing things, but the emblem was a Nazi swastika. Someone else looked to be arguing with the man about the armband and that’s when I started feeling sick. When I got back to my apartment I called my Dad to tell him about the meeting. He lost it. Dad knew all about this radical group, its goals and its roots in the Fabian Society and Communism. Dad said, “I didn’t sacrifice all those years to give you girls a Christian education and pay college tuition just so you can get involved with communist groups who hate God and America!” My Dad’s name was William A. Foster, and that’s when I learned about William Z. Foster, General Secretary of the American Communist Party in the thirties, forties and fifties, who ran for US president in 1924, ‘38 and ’32. William A. Foster ordered me to the campus library to check out a book by this Stalinist called “Toward Soviet America.” And here’s a quote: "Among the elementary measures the American Soviet government will adopt to further the cultural revolution are...[a] National Department of Education...the studies will be revolutionized, being cleansed of religious, patriotic, and other features of the bourgeois ideology. The students will be taught the basis of Marxian dialectical materialism, internationalism and the general ethics of the new Socialist society."

So that was my first and last meeting of Students for a Democratic Society, which has over a hundred chapters throughout our Country today – including Virginia, filled with unsuspecting young people who are taught that to eradicate injustice you have to destroy whoever enjoys justice. And to do so, you must transfer all individual rights to the government who will see to it that everyone is taken care of in a just manner. Remember, a child’s nature is to trust those in authority, and we’re warned we won’t enter Heaven without this childlike trust in God’s ways, not man’s. But now the vision of federal government control is precisely the plan of “Common Core” – which violates the Constitutional rights of States and local boards to govern education and transfers them to the Federal Government. Our Constitution was framed so that this immense power could not be placed in the hands of one dictator! But these standards, promoted by the NEA without the input of state legislators, local school boards, teachers or residents level all schools to one, low national standard. Federal bureaucrats set the test standards and federally redistribute education funds among school districts. Fortunately, Governor Bob McDonnell pulled us out of Common Core, along with a few other states. But this socialization of education is precisely what the National Education Association lobbies for every election. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, in 2009, the NEA collected over $377 million dollars in 2009, mostly from unsuspecting teachers around the country who believe the NEA has their best interests at heart. These beautiful teachers, who have to pay out of pocket for supplies and special projects, paying dues to the country’s biggest “progressive” union touting itself as a professional employee organization. But they put little of their money toward teacher professional development and most on lobbying for goals from a Communist Manifesto and padding their own salaries. Union statisticians and the Department of Labor list over 450 officers and staff making six figure incomes, with their executive director making $492 thousand a year. Go to the NEA Website and look up Professional Development. where teachers can learn about the importance of unions, how to identify students who can be groomed as activists, how to engage others in politics, assertiveness training which teaches how to move to “an assertive mode of behavior.” Look up the NEA “diversity day” calendar. They’ve added Oct. as a day to celebrate the founding of communism in China by Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. And for many years, they’ve promoted and sold a book by Saul Alinsky as recommended reading for ALL teachers, called “Rules for Radicals.” That was the other reading assignment from my college English professor. By Communist Saul Alinsky in 1971, it sets forth plans of action that I plead with you all to look up. At least look at the opening dedication in this book, where Alinsky wrote: “Acknowledgement to the very first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively, that he at least won his own kingdom – Lucifer.” Again, look up Saul Alinsky and see for yourself who in our administration today embraced and even taught his plan to others. This book was the inspiration behind the Cloward-Piven Strategy, or “Crisis Strategy” which seeks the collapse of America by providing financial entitlements beyond its means, making people so dependent on government, that they will turn to the very people they trust the least to rescue them in a time of crisis, and gladly submit to marshal law, giving up their weapons of self-defense, stop standing for whatever it was they were standing for before, like the unborn. Alinsky wrote, "Make the enemy (that’s us!) live up to their (sic) own book of rules," When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, . . . human agencies (like our churches) inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one. So, for example, even if the majority of the country is opposed to paying personally for unlimited abortions, sterilizations of women (not men, just women), giving your hard earned dollars to pay for contraceptives and Planned Parenthood’s pornographic propaganda (which is given out in elementary schools without parental knowledge or consent) and say the majority is opposed to any language in a health law that could even remotely be interpreted to deny your elderly grandparents health care, Alinsky-ites say that when the finances of such Christians are affected, we’ll abandon our own “book of rules”, (like the Bible, the Constitution and Bill of Rights) and those we elected to stand for us. John Adams, America’s second President wrote at the time,  

“While our country remains untainted with the principles and manners which are now producing desolation in so many parts of the world; while she continues sincere, and incapable of insidious and impious policy, we shall have the strongest reason to rejoice in the local destination assigned us by Providence. But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation [that is, hypocrisy] towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation while it is practicing iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candor, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world; because we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

So beloved in Christ, what say you and I join hands for the sake of our children and future generations before it’s too late? And under the sovereignty and power of Christ our King, grab that whale by its tale, before he makes it all the way through, and fling him back to hell where he belongs?

A Reading from 'The Crossing' by Jack Levin

Overwhelming Obstacles Faced Washington's Men


Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851. Oil-on-canvas painting by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze. The painting commemorates General George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River on the night of December 25–26, 1776, during the American Revolutionary War, the first move in a surprise attack against the Hessian forces at Trenton, New Jersey.

Last night, Dr. Mark Levin challenged the gloom in the Conservative community with a reading from his father's book: The Crossing [click to read] Beginning with Washington's humble acceptance of his commission to command the Continental Army, Jack Levin then goes on to detail the string of setbacks and overwhelming odds against which Washington and his soldiers struggled.

Bootless men tied rags around their feet and still their blood stained the snow. Crossing a river full of ice flows, they went on to become a part of history!

I was in the studio listening intently to the reading, challenged by the faith and courage that Dr. Levin and his father so vividly brought to life. Faith and Courage! We need those stunning Virtues now more than ever.

If Washington felt unworthy for the task, my own unworthiness is greater. Yet, these are the times that call for such as us to keep up the good fight. Washington sought help from the Divine, and His Grace and Mercy are "New every morning!" -- Lamentations 3:23 They are available to us!

"And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." -- Galations 6:9

THYME Magazine: Looking to the Future

Citizen Journalism with a Better Flavor


Volume VI, Issue XXI

Motivated by the Hope Unseen

"Give me one hundred men who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but G-d, and I care not whether they be clergyman or laymen, they alone will shake the gates of Hell and set up the kingdom of Heaven upon the earth.” -- John Wesley

Consider for a minute the amount of energy expended worldwide to persecute people of Faith. Organizations like Voice of the Martyrs [1.] report that it is at an all time high. Christians and Jews seem to often find themselves in the cross hairs of world opinion. Why should this be? Could it be that those who want to set up earthly kingdoms or earthly Utopias know better than the Saints the true power of the Kingdom of G-d?

In his book Under the Influence [2.] Alvin Schmidt lays out a compelling case for the positive influence those who have pursued the Kingdom of G-d have had on the world. Far from being of "no earthly good," people of faith have revolutionized healthcare, care for orphans and the poor and generally improved the welfare of the places they have been carried to, in fulfillment of the admonition in Jeremiah 29:

"Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the G-d of Israel, unto all that are carried away captives, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem unto Babylon;

Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them;

Take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; that ye may be increased there, and not diminished.

And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the Lord for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace."

Generally the abuses so quickly cited as reasons for limiting the influence of the church occurred as kings and clerics misappropriated the language of faith in pursuit of earthly power. The National Socialists in Germany may have artfully spun the language of the church, but why then did they find men like Dietrich Bonhoeffer [3.] so dangerous? In earlier times men like Meno Simonsz [4.] stood in opposition to what they saw as the church succumbed to the culture around her.

Presenting a clear alternative to the prevailing paradigms of the culture, men and women of faith serve an unseen kingdom and in doing so influence the world. William Wilberforce eliminated the vile institution of slavery [5.] in England. George Müller changed the way society viewed orphans [6.] along with Charles Dickens [7.]. Florence Nightengale and Dorethea Dix [8.], inspired by faith, worked tirelessly to improve the human condition.

Which brings me back to the original question: Why should a society so diminish those institutions and people who have contributed so much? Perhaps it is time to take another look at the power and place of faith... especially the place it has in one's own life. To that end Billy Graham, one of America's most prominent spokespersons for faith, presents: My Hope America [click to view]. This series of programs, culminating in November of 2013, offers a foundation of hope to a nation who's moorings have been deeply shaken.

Journey to Jesus Framed for Church Nursery

The Original Mural Reduced for a Smaller Space


The Journey to Jesus painting is originally 82 feet long. Here it is reduced to six feet of framed image. Mural by Kristina Elaine Riley and Bob Kirchman

Greenmonte Fellowship's newly expanded infant and toddler nursery will soon feature a framed print of the Journey to Jesus painting. The painting depicts children from the world's nations coming to the Saviour and their names (along with their meaning) make an interesting lesson for young people.

The Epic of Human Civilization: Isaiah 60, Rev: 21


Click Here for larger image.


Click Here for larger image.

THYME Magazine Special Shutdown Edition IV

Citizen Journalism with a Better Flavor


Volume VI, Issue XX

America's Obama Problem

The 'other' weekly news magazine last week featured an interesting cover on their Overseas Editions [click to read]. Michael Bloomberg may aspire to be "Mayor of the World," but Barack Hussein Obama seems to be more intent on conquering his own country's Tea Party than asserting the cause of stability, peace and freedom around the world.

Edward Klein, in his book The Amateur [click to read]  has some harsh criticism for the President, presenting us with: "a withering portrayal of a radical adrift, in over his head, drowning in his own incompetency -- while being weighed down by a small circle of "advisers" who are compounding the problem of the Amateur in the White House."

"On issue after issue, President Obama remains his insular self, refusing to seek counsel or input from others with more experience. Critics believe he has made a mess of foreign policy precisely because not only does he have a dearth of experience in this area, but because, under our system, foreign policy is one of the few areas where a president enjoys almost unlimited power. Thus, he is free to formulate his own agenda regardless of the views of others and the damage these policies cause."-- Ed Lasky

Indeed it is Obama's inability to deliver the sort of openness and constructive dialogue he promised in his campaigns that is dogging him now. Seeking to "fundamentally transform" this country, he and his fellow Progressives pushed their unpopular healthcare law through Congress in spite of strong and reasoned opposition. Rather than listen to less disruptive ways to deal with The Preexisting Condition Problem [click to read], Obama insisted that the ONLY solution was to create a massive government driven solution encompassed in a 2000+ page piece of legislation which was merely the outline of a structure to be designed later by bureaucrats. Indeed, the scope of the legislation seems driven by the desire of Progressives to eventually arrive at a Single Payer system, though that end is clearly unpopular.

As the Manhattan Institute's Roy Avok points out: "Obamacare’s approach to pre-existing conditions helps a small number of people gain coverage in the short term, but the law makes the fundamental problems worse by driving up the cost of health insurance and requiring employers to sponsor health coverage for their workers, even when workers would be better off owning their own policies."

So, Obama wrestles with a Congress essentially doing its job. "Legislation by Appropriation" is nothing new. Already scores of Obama friends in business have received waivers from the "employer mandate," the exchange website is beset with glitches and in spite of a fawning media there is no way to gloss over the fact that this legislation is wreaking havoc on the system. Costs are rising, employers are shifting thousands of employees to 'part time' status to control their budgets. When the dust settles it is estimated that there will still be thousands uninsured and projections do not show that there will be funds to care for them.

As Obama fiddles, the world burns. The President is missing the opportunity to speak forcefully into the Iranian nuclear crisis and his generally weak and ambiguious foreign policy leaves a gap that nations like China, who DO aspire to world leadership, are moving to fill. Thankfully there are leaders like Binyamin Netanyahu who are not afraid to assume the authority American Presidents once possessed in world affairs. It is THEIR leadership that will have to carry us through this present time of crisis.

John Bunyan Inspired Board Game

The Game of Pilgrim's Progress


1875, McGloughton Brothers Manufacturers, New York, from the John Bunyan Collection of Erskine Seminary.

THYME Magazine Special Shutdown Issue III

Citizen Journalism with a Better Flavor


Volume VI, Issue XIX

Taking the Narrative Back

Blogger Bill Evans Writes in a piece entitled NPR and the Power of Narrative [click to read]:

"Most of the government is shut down.” So we repeatedly hear from mainstream news outlets like National Public Radio (NPR), as they continue to hammer the narrative that American wellbeing and the interests of the common person are threatened by a small group of selfish “Tea Party extremists” who have seized control of the Republican Party in order to subvert the Constitution and representative democracy.

Of course, the reality is that the facts don’t support this narrative. According to informed estimates, 83 percent of the government continues to operate. And this, in turn, explains why lots of Americans don’t seem particularly worried, despite mainstream media efforts to portray the situation as apocalyptic or worse."

Dr. Evans continues: "Moreover, the Republican Party is, in fact, a splintered and messy conglomeration of main-street business interests, neo-cons, libertarians, cultural conservatives, religious conservatives, and yes, Tea Party types. And for the record, despite the whining of the current President, in this instance the government is working exactly as the Founding Fathers envisioned."

Dr. Evans goes on to point out that a body of citizens who possess little knowledge of how our government was designed to work look to the narrative as they form their opinions and make choices. He who controls the narrative controls the discussion. Using the example of the Matthew Shepard murder in 1998, Dr. Evans cites NPR host Rachel Martin's interview with author Stephen Jimenez about his book: The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard (Steerforth, 2014).While the narrative surrounding the murder was that it was undoubtedly a "hate crime," Jimenez' own investigation proved otherwise. Jimenez is a gay man himself, but his honest investigation and NPR's airing of the interview are laudible.

Still, the narrative of the "hate crime" became the driving force behind President Clinton's push for the subsequent Hate Crimes Legislation. Even as Jimenez, who admits wrestling with this confrontation of the truth, determined that the truth was what really mattered.

To be perfectly honest, all of us resort to the narrative. I recently considered a purported Bill Cosby quote that underscored MY narrative for inclusion in THYME. There was a problem though, my research pointed to the strong possibility that Cosby didn't say it. The quote was dropped. Another wonderful story hit my desk about NASA scientists "discovering" a "missing day," thus corroborating Scriptural accounts. The problem here was that there was no reference to any actual paper or research.

Truth matters. Sadly Mr. Jimenez is a rare force in journalism. Many in the mainstream media will continue to reinforce the narrative that "the government is shut down," but how many of them will consider the plight of those outside their narrative: "So the next time you hear NPR journalists talking about how “most of the government is shut down” (when it’s not) don’t be surprised. And the next time you notice NPR and the rest of the mainstream media studiously ignoring the people whose health insurance costs are skyrocketing because of the now ironically named Affordable Care Act, and at the same time paying no attention to part-time workers whose hours are being cut or who are losing their jobs due to the quite predictable impact of Obama Care (as anybody would have known if they had bothered to read the bill), don’t be surprised."

Taking Back the Narrative

Conservatives OUTSIDE the political process, ironically, are masters of the narrative  on their home court. (If you are reading this, you probably are Conservative or Libertarian; or one of my colleagues just being nice). Creating beautiful publications like American Conservative [click to read] and City Journal [click to read], we are great at telling a more complete, more truthful story. The problem is who we're NOT reaching.

If anything, the current government shutdown offers us a great opportunity. Our friends and family who are furloughed government workers have time on their hands... dare I suggest we give them some THYME? As self-serving as that may be, it behooves us to attempt at every turn to create provocative presentations of beauty and truth and share them. Hopefully we can insert solid dialogue and reason into the narrative.

THYME Magazine Special Shutdown Edition II

Citizen Journalism with a Better Flavor


Volume VI, Issue XVIII

"What Happened to America?"
A Conversation with Donna Lou Shikel
© 2013 Donna Lou Shickel Publishing Co. Distribute freely with permission

(This is a transcript of This Broadcast [click to listen] of Donna Lou Shickel's program: A Place of Grace. It is a very well researched beginning to a series she is presenting on this program. Here is presented a very concise, but thorough picture of what has happened to our nation. This is essential information for those of us who wish to reclaim it).

A Decline by Diabolical Design? 

What has happened in America in the last half a century? How have the foundational blocks of a Judeo-Christian society, dissolved so quickly? How has the greatest country in all of the world’s history moved toward the brave new world, right under our noses? And are we, without even knowing it, part of her decline? Welcome to A Place of Grace, I’m your host, Donna Lou. I used to think people who spoke of what I’m about to tell you were conspiracy theorists. Back when I didn’t want to listen because somewhere, in my heart, I knew if I did, I would be compelled to investigate, and then do something about it. And regret that I had other matters more pressing – family, faith, and freely sharing that faith even at state sponsored events. Matters which will all play out very differently for my children because I figured someone else would take care of it. This is America. But ever since beginning this program, I have had countless letters from listeners, especially our World War II generation, wanting to share their fears over where America is headed if we as Christians do not stand for America’s Judeo-Christian values and founding principles. I once dismissed people who spoke of America’s decline as alarmists, sky is falling chicken littles. Because that’s what they were so commonly labeled. Today we call them haters. As I’ve researched this progression for the past six months now, in preparation for today’s show, I have been struck by just what one person with an ordinary background can accomplish through lies for the sake of evil. And today, as a Christian, I am convicted that with G0d, as a disciple and ambassador of Christ Himself, how much more can one person do in His Love for the sake of Truth?

You may know, more people were slaughtered in the 20th century than in all previous centuries combined. According to the Congressional record, one hundred and thirty-five million - martyred for the cause of Communism, which says there is no law higher than the state – the government. And in order to achieve that end, they must create new types of human beings who would conform to the blueprint of a world in which they have great faith they will one day control. The Communist Party operates by infiltrating and subverting social institutions like the churches, schools, mass media and government. And according to Vladimir Lenon, founder of the Soviet Union, the first and necessary step toward Communism is to implement socialism – socializing every institution under the nation’s government. And the main thrust of this philosophy is to first destroy all Judeo-Christian culture and values. No longer by force, because that hasn’t worked, but by subverting from the inside out. But we thought Communism was dead. The Berlin wall came down! No, Communism is alive and deadly for one and a half billion people in South and Central America, six countries in Latin America, Africa, China, Cuba, North Korea, Viet Nam, Russia, Eastern Europe, and proponents of its philosophy serve in governments and universities all over the world. How can this be? Well as Whitaker Chambers, former Soviet spy and member of Communist Party USA said after his conversion: “Communism succeeds because most people who promote Communist causes are not Communists—the useful idiots, as Lenin called them—giving an air of legitimacy it would never have if it were identified with communists or Communism.” So are well-intentioned people becoming useful idiots? And why would anyone be in favor of promoting socialism that without exception always leads to communism and the mass murder of more people in times of peace than all of the wars of history combined?

Denying a Divine Design for Society

History has proven that the free society of a Judeo-Christian nation best benefits all people. In my research in trying to be fair and see both sides, I discovered that Socialists and Communists have no hidden agendas. They are wide out in the open, and despite changing their label from socialists to progressives, they are not ashamed not too complacent to promote their agenda. But without having knowledge of this agenda, today in America, have many good people, including the targeted Judeo-Christan populace, cooperated with socialist/communist goals? Do we follow Jesus, Who came to serve? Do we claim the words of the Apostle Paul, 10 I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ (1 Corinthians 12 verse 10) Or have we bought in to the notion that we are entitled to be free from hardship and deserving of being served? All ideologies that set aside God’s plan to “make life fair” for mankind by man’s plan only succeed by devaluing and destroying certain groups of human beings first, then eventually, everyone but those in power. Dictators like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro all came to power by claiming to bring change and make life and the world fair and just for all people. But facts show that there is no example in history that big government does NOT prepare the platform for just such an evil dictator, even using well-intentioned predecessors to prepare the way, that’s what’s so scary, and it’s the reason our Constitution is set up the way it is. But the Constitution, the law, is being broken time and time again, to use against the very Christian faith of DIVINE justice it was founded upon. And we just shake our heads. Because like the nations before us, no one dared even suggest that such wonderful people as their country’s leaders could have anything but the best plan in mind for them -even as they were promised justice for all in the process of having every individual freedom stripped from them to create greater dependency on the state.

Frogs in the pot? No, I don’t think so. Had the frog been told he was the frog in the pot he would have had the sense to at least fight to get out of the pot. Socialism, the first necessary step, is taking things by force, not godly charity and justice, from one person to freely give to another. Up front, it may look fair and just. Most people in our country don’t see the evil behind this at all because it’s the utopian vision that will finally bring world peace and justice. So many good people in our country, and government, are sincere in raising up the down and out. But before you can get people to the place you can take by force, you have to demonize certain groups, elevate others, create divisions between them and by the time they are in so much fear (also part of the plan), all they can think of are their own personal interests, and others are dehumanized. No longer compassion and love of neighbor, but disconnected and even repulsed by certain other groups of human beings. Because as is in their open agendas, socialists know they must get citizens to dehumanize others in order for the plan to progress. History shows us that whether it was Hitler’s National Socialism or Stalin’s Soviet Socialism, the people eventually revolt, and the government, who has already prevented its people from being armed with their own weapons of self defense, responds with mass murders. Could never happen here? Not in civilized Germany either. Ever hear the story of the cattle cars full of Jews that would pass behind a certain Christian church, and in the middle of their worship they would hear the train and the cries for help? The good people, what could they do at this point, would pick up their hymnals and sing as loud as they could to drown it out. People would be too afraid to even make such associations. And not a one of us can judge a person’s heart, or whether their motives are good or evil. Or some of both, we don’t know. We don’t know who is a well-intentioned pawn and who is the wolf in sheep’s clothing. But we do know that what is happening in America is evil. And we have to call evil, evil. Because the nest phase of this evil plan is to create chaos, then government steps in as the solution. Because by this point, in the midst of fear and chaos, people will turn a blind eye to the demise of others while bowing to those in authority. They will cooperate with the very leaders they trust the least to come to their aid!

First, they must destroy family, law, productivity, prosperity, and methodically eradicate individual freedoms. Degrade the culture. Infiltrate education, media, call it political correctness, but it’s really cultural Marxism, then it becomes traditional Marxism which is socialism then it becomes outright communism, where the government controls every institution and individual. But if we remember history, why wouldn’t we look at this and take a stand? Well, much of this history has been removed from our children’s textbooks, and replaced with a vilification of our free market system as evil, along with the magnification of all of America’s social ills while removing her legacy of charity and heroism. And the influence of Christian Judeo values, which once was acknowledged as at the heart of every American victory over evil, for G0d and fellow countryman, has been taught to an entire generation, that now the CAUSE of every civilization’s problems and wars, is religion. You even hear this propaganda from pulpits. We’ve been too brainwashed to cry foul over being stripped of our religious freedoms, we’re the bad guys now. We can only turn the other cheek and convince ourselves that Jesus will return next weekend. Problem is, in doing so, we’re unwittingly cooperating in the destruction of the many souls Christ sent us to reach. A generation has been raised on this, and its founders are tenured, ordained and in public office.

Friends, none of us wants injustice in our world. But few of us want a real leader, because a leader is someone who leads the people to become involved in their plan to move forward. We’ve gotten too complacent to even educate ourselves on the issues, as we see with our government Health Care Plan. (Although no one was allowed to read the bill until it was passed, and if we did? We’d read what it proposes, and say, yea, but that’s a scenario that could never happen.) Most people decide who they will vote for not by doing research, but by “charisma” and charm, and slants from their misleading advertising and the secular media. We’ll go by emotions, not facts. That takes too much time and trouble. Again, the mission of socialists, or progressives, always sound like a good thing. But the agenda, which we’re going to talk about, is a nightmare. In 1992 the Communist party USA split over differences in how to take America down. One side wanted outright revolution. But the other side recognized that all of those efforts throughout history have failed. They saw that the best plan was to infiltrate America from the inside. Because a people united in faith in God and in sacrificial love of their fellow citizens could not be brought down and ruled by government no matter what you do to them. But if you destroy the human will and character, if you work to rot away the sacrificial life of those who would give their lives for the greater good, then people will become so dependent that they will want you to rule and reign. If you can break down individual integrity, destroy and degrade the family, then you can penetrate the culture with a cultural revolution. Precipitate and actually create crisis and government can step in and once the chaos comes, people are very eager to step aside and let the government step in. The more this happens, the more dependency on big government you can create, the more quickly people will compromise their G0d-given values. This is so evil, and contrary to everything we stand for as children of G0d.

 The Forty-five Goals of the Communist Party

If you look up the Communist Party USA, which has chapter members in every state and growing, once you read past their opening mission statements of helping the poor and disenfranchised, you will easily discover their agenda consists of something entirely different, and outrageously evil. And very much in effect in our country today. Their goals, which originated in Europe, were reaffirmed after their split in 1992 and were confirmed in a book called “The Naked Communist” written back in 1958 by Cleon Skousen, a former FBI agent investigating communist activities. The book outlines 45 goals set forth by Communists in the 1930’s, which were updated from the original Communist goals outlined back to the 1880’s in Europe. The first two goals require U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war and U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war. Number three says: “Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.” The goals continue with promotion of alliances, free trade and aid to Communist countries. Number eleven says: "Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces because (it says), (some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. 

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party. 
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths (like the Pledge of Allegiance). 
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office. 
15. Capture (infiltrate) one or both of the political parties in the United States. 
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights. 
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. (If you look up the National Education Association’s agenda, you would be shocked to see how effective they’ve been.) Put the party line in textbooks (promote communist ideals in US textbooks, and we have many individuals with connections to communist organizations who are in the highest ranks of education – just compare the history books of today with from when you were little . 
18. Gain control of all student newspapers. 
19. Use student riots . . .. 
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of (book-review) assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions. 21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures. (that was easy) 

Number 22: Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. Eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms. Again, people in these government positions are connected to Socialist/communist organizations. 
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art. 
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press. 
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV. 
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy." 
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a "religious crutch." 
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools (again, this from 1958!) on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state." 
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis. (Again, a generation indoctrinated would agree with this statement.) 
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man." 
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." (again, just pick up one of the textbooks) #32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized (government) control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc. 
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus. 34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities. (abolished in 1975) 
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI. 
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions. 
37. …and of big business. 
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat]. 
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals. 
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce. 
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents. 
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use ["]united force["] to solve economic, political or social problems. 
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal. 
 45. Repeal the Connally Reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike."

That is from the 1958 book, “The Naked Communist.” As I said, most socialists and communists, other than the Communist Party USA chapters, are now labeling themselves “progressives”. They’re even getting rid of the label of “liberals.” Many of whom probably don’t realize they are cooperating with the open agendas of Communism, or if they do, think it’s an acceptable compromise for change. But in any case, the first attack is on all of our traditional Christian Judeo, moral values - the traditional family. These Communist Agendas begun in America in the 1930’s and in Europe in the 1880’s, ratified in the 60’s, 90’s, and you’ll find them when you look up the Fabian Society, from 1880’s still alive and growing, or the Students for a Democratic Society, later the Weather Underground Organization, busting at the seams, ACORN, well you get the point. On our own soil, under our noses, calling members to work to promote infidelity, divorce, co-habitation and sexual immorality and immodesty. Fuel the women’s liberation movement, promote discontent and anger between the sexes. Belittle and degrade the father as head of the family and get women into the workforce to remove children from parental influence and into government programs as early as possible. To increase governmental power, destroy business and the free markets, demonize business owners, both large and small, as “the wealthy and privileged” - enemies of the poor, despite their being the largest source of remedy for underprivileged, I mean 10 percent of nothing is still nothing) and paint businesses as the enemy of the environmental movement which the socialist/progressives in the organizations I cited, state is “as essential to the destruction of capitalism as was the legalization of the birth control to getting women to abdicate their own children” who were then ripe for indoctrination, and to destroy the traditional, bourgeois family, as they labeled it. Discourage business growth with new laws, taxes and red tape. Didn’t business majors at James Madison University (along with other schools) just get singled out to pay thousands more in tuition to make life “more fair” for the other majors? I couldn’t compare the work business majors had to do compared to me as a liberal arts major. The news release called this singling out of business majors as a means to “even the playing field”. Not for science or engineering majors, who generally make higher salaries - no, just business majors. One more link in the chain of imprisonment to make independent business the villain and government the hero.

Class Warfare as a Part of Their Agenda

Another important part of their open agenda is to destroy unity in America by igniting class divisions. Promote hatred between the races, the rich and the poor, men and women, the young and old, between the North and the South, within religions, get behind any discontent and fuel it and vilify anyone trying to heal divisions. Use political correctness to demonize anyone and everyone in your way. Take your biggest swing at the Church, and promote vilification of Christians, and anywhere there is division between Christian entities, jump in and promote it. One method of openly degrading morality I discovered in a Students for a Democratic Society meeting I attended in college, and I’ll have to tell you about that bone-chilling experience next time, but the statement was actually to incite hatred against any churches teaching the virtues and sacrificial life. To promote sexual immorality and the traditional, archaic Christian values, you can accuse anyone who teaches a life of virtue and sanctification of promoting a “salvation through works” theology. Christians just look for reasons to hate each other,” the speaker said. And people laughed. But all these groups call members to incite prejudice and bigotry after maligning and slandering us to the extend that those activists sincerely believe they are crusaders in a cause for what is right and what is good. I’ll tell you also next time of some of the radical, socialist leaders who’ve infiltrated our education system, government, news media, Hollywood and churches to dismantle Judeo-Christian values, morality and to fuel any divisions and prejudices that ordinary people like you and I can participate in and see as “harmless”. Am I being dramatic or alarmist? Or a hater? Well, no one decided one day to simply start throwing Jewish families into ovens.

No soldier with a conscience would participate with a Communist leader forcing starvation on millions of their own countrymen. And no civilized American would tolerate health care that jeopardizes their grandparents or anyone else who can’t speak up. It starts with an insidious plan in which the majority who cooperate with are well-intentioned but blind to. And you can and must do your own research and decide how successful they have been, and consider which of these trajectories we have compromised with that started so small, the lesser evil, but now we see how far from the Truth that we profess, they have taken us. And don’t fear. If you’re involved, praying, believing G0d, and standing firm in His Truth, Who is Christ, you won’t fear. But if you’re doing nothing, if you won’t even take the time to go to your children’s parent teacher’s conference, or you’re too chicken speak to an errant pastor, or take the time to even cast an informed vote, well then, trust me, fearing is all you can and will do. Burying your head is a scawy, dark place. But who feels afraid in the Light? Come on, beloved! As I said in the opening, in six months of researching this topic which we’ll continue with part 2 and 3 if we have to, I’ve been AMAZED at just what one person with an ordinary background can accomplish through lies for the sake of evil. But as a Christian, I am convicted that with G0d, as a disciple and ambassador of Christ Himself, with two thirds of the hosts of Heaven and countless saints cheering us on, how much more can just one person do in His Love for the sake of Truth? Join the battle for Truth and Divine Justice. And know at least, if we go down, we’ll go down on the winning side.