Category Archives: Politics

Posted on

Let’s make history in Iraq

The Kurds asked us to help write true religious liberty into their new constitution

Last year the government of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region asked for our help. Please interview Christian leaders, they requested. What religious rights would they want to be specified in a new Kurdish Constitution? Would we then write recommendations spelling out these rights?

                                                Proud to be named honorary Peshmerga

I landed in Erbil on August 20, 2017. The very next day an armed Iranian militia—yes, Iranian—ambushed and detained our team near Mosul. For the next hour, some 100 militants surrounded us with AK-47 rifles, shouting and firing dozens of rounds into the air. We tried to turn around, but machine guns and a huge rocket launcher blocked us in. Thank the Lord, Iraq’s Prime Minister himself intervened and effected our release.

Posted on

Iraq: Full Report – Part II

Wherein we helped make history after we almost died

Last month when Terry Law invited me to join his delegation to Kurdistan, northern Iraq, (Read Part I here.) I leapt at the opportunity. The carrot? The Kurds are preparing to declare their independence from Iraq—now Iran’s puppet—and asked for our help in guaranteeing true religious freedom for Christians and other religious minorities in their prospective new constitution. What Muslim government has ever asked Christians for help in writing a constitution? What majority Islamic nation has ever wanted to establish a true safe haven for Christians and other religious minorities? The answer, until now: Zero.

The Kurds are generally Sunni Muslims, but unlike most Sunnis they are not Arabs. “Kurd first, Sunni second,” they say. A remarkable people, they are descended from the ancient Medes, and like their famed king Cyrus (see Isaiah 45), they have historically looked kindly on Israel. Over the past hundred years, they have also been unfailingly pro-America, despite our nation’s betrayals of their trust, both after World War I and the first Gulf War.

Posted on

Iraq: Full Report – Part I

He grabbed at a soldier, and suddenly the whole world shifted into high gear

I was in Iraq for eight remarkable days last month, and in Part II of this report I’ll tell you how I was privileged to help make Middle-East history. But there was one day, August 21, 2017, our second day on the job, that has since taken on a life of its own. In fact, it was a drama that nearly took several of our lives. And for that reason, it forms a fiery preamble to our historic mission.

We were in Kurdistan, Iraq’s largely autonomous northern province, at the invitation of the regional government. Their Interior Minister/Defense Minister had invited us to interview Christian leaders in Kurdistan and the adjoining Nineveh Plain, and based upon those leaders’ desires, to help the Kurdish government compose clear constitutional guarantees and protections for Christians and other religious minorities, should Kurdistan declare independence from Iraq.

Posted on

A Historic Mission to Iraqi Kurdistan

We'll also travel to Mosul, freed from ISIS mere weeks ago

You’ve probably seen the news that Mosul, Iraq (aka Nineveh) has finally been liberated from ISIS. Well, here’s more news: I’ll be on the ground in Mosul in just a few days!

Here’s what’s happening:

Last week, Dr. Terry Law, my Unmasking ISIS co-author, asked me to return to Iraq’s Kurdistan Region with him from August 18-26. The Kurds are set to hold a September referendum on independence, and passage is a sure thing. As the only Muslim people in the entire Middle East who don’t persecute Christians, the Kurds want their new nation to guarantee religious freedom for Christians and other religious minorities in their pending new constitution.

Recently, their Defense Minister called to ask Terry to gather the Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant leaders of Kurdistan, Mosul and the Nineveh Plains, to specify what protections they would want written into a new Kurdish Constitution. An independent Kurdistan would become a safe haven for non-Muslims (who include 10 million Orthodox Christians).

This would be an historic first in 1,400 years of Islam!

Posted on

Sunday Sermon Taboo: Politics

Stuff we ought to talk about in church but don't

The election of President Trump, as well as rightward movements in Europe, are prompting US conservatives to speak of the death of socialism. This is abject blindness. It is socialists that are being rejected, not socialism.

America has already embraced socialism in the forms of public education, social security, and even healthcare, where we choose between the socialism of Obamacare on the Left and the socialism-lite of Trumpcare on the faux-Right. Our President is a pragmatic populist, not a principled conservative. Hence, when he ran for office he named conservatives to his cabinet because his base wanted them, but once in office has embraced socialism in healthcare because the electorate at large wants it. As for the philosophical differences between the two, they don’t matter to a self-styled dealmaker-in-chief.

Posted on

The Electoral College

Or would you rather have mob rule?

Imagine a neighborhood of 10 homes where a vote is held on whether certain services should be provided by the neighborhood’s association (meaning a hike in home owners’ dues). 9 homes hold from 1 to 4 residents each, with a total of 24 people, while one home is crammed with 25. (I remember immigrant homes in Orange County, California’s Little Saigon back in the 1970s where this was often the case.)

The home of 25 votes for the new provisions while the other 9 homes vote against them.

If each home’s vote counts equally (like the Electoral College and U.S. Senate), then it’s a 9 to 1 win for keeping said services optional at each owner’s expense.

If the popular vote counts, then the one crowded home calls the shots for the whole neighborhood. Everyone’s dues rise.

It’s your neighborhood. Whose vote should prevail?

Before you answer, consider this: If the USA did away with the Electoral College, the voters in a handful of crammed enclaves like Los Angeles County and New York City would decide every election. And you’d be paying for whatever they wanted for the rest of your life.

Posted on

How the U.S. can Defeat ISIS

Nine steps our government can take right now

In “Unmasking ISIS,” Terry law and I recommend nine steps the U.S. Government can take right now. (In a separate post, I’ll list nine steps that YOU can take).

1. Admit that America is at war with radical Islamist jihadists.
2. Destroy ISIS militarily in Iraq and Syria, and take away their caliphate.
3. Secure America’s borders (including enhanced security screening with extra layers of interviews for anyone visiting or emigrating from a Muslim nation).
4. Bolster friendly Middle East alliances and punish hypocrites.
5. Break with Iran and push for a truly independent Federated Iraq.
6. Wage all-out cyber-warfare against ISIS.
7. Wage a massive counter-propaganda campaign against ISIS.
8. Encourage Muslim reformers.
9. Educate and assist Muslim communities in combatting ISIS’ recruiting efforts.

Each of these steps is explained in detail, and thank goodness, some key folks on Capitol Hill are reading it and taking notice. To order your copy, or one for your congressman or senator, click on the book’s photo.

Posted on

Buy the Truth and Sell it Not

Reflections on the new & improved false gods of D.C.

I once heard a perennial local candidate say she was running for office for the umpteenth time because “I love politics,” as though her lust for authority were a qualification for it. In fact, it provided a compelling reason not to vote for her, just as one would not hire a marriage counselor who’s been to the altar several times. (I also heard the late Mickey Rooney say in all seriousness that his eight marriages demonstrated his commitment to the institution.)

Not voting for a bad candidate, however, should never lead to not voting at all, as was the temptation for many conservative Christians during the 2016 Presidential elections. To the contrary, we should participate in the process, not because we love politics, but because we love the God who ordained politics. Romans 13:4 calls the office holder “God’s servant for your good,” so that truth alone makes us responsible both to pray and vote, if not to run for office.

President Ronald Reagan’s awareness of his own accountability to God seemed to settle on him after he took office, and my affection for him grew along the way. Such conviction could never have come from loving politics, but only from a love for Truth. Not your truth vs. mine. Not new truth, but the Truth.

Posted on

11/9/1991: The Day the Monkey Died

Darwinism takes a dirt nap

Charles Darwin succeeded in foisting bad science upon the world only because bad science was preferable to the truth that God really is God and we have to stand accountable before him. Being a smart monkey is a better deal to sinful man than admitting he’s sinful. Grow a tail, lose a soul. Nice trade.

The outworking—effluence actually—of Darwin’s theories culminated in a modern vanity called communism, that state of perfection a society achieves after socialism has worked its magic. Vladimir Lenin promised, in fact, that within two generations he would produce a perfect state, a “worker’s paradise,” where the only government necessary would be a few administrative clerks, and where the public urinals would be made of solid gold. Ah, yes, gold: But would they flush?

Posted on

The Truth about Lies

Why the Left can't govern and the Right can't make a sale

Have you ever noticed that the Left tends to be far better at motivating crowds—especially young, emotional ones—than their counterparts on the Right? I mean, really, wasn’t Bernie more entertaining than Hillary, Ted, Rand and just about every other horse in the 2016 race with the exception of Candidate Trump?

Truth be told, the celebrants of the cultural Left—political progressives, entertainment elites and most news media—are nearly always better at propaganda, because they generally deal in untenable ideals (aka fantasies) rather than reality, and hold little regard for truth other than to turn it into balloon animals they will then proclaim alive. Such truth-twisting is grounded in the moral quicksand of relativism, and it shows up in bogs everywhere from the halls of academia to the Supreme Court, with its “living document” view of the Constitution, to Saturday Night Live, whose stock in trade is caricature trying to come off as commentary.