Said all that to say this. One of Patheos’ Catholic blogs is Standing on My Head by Father Dwight Longenecker. In a recent post he ripped and ridiculed not only Christian rock itself, but the very notion of it being suitable for ministerial, let alone liturgical use.

Shall we examine his foolishness… er, rationale?

A friend of mine used to quip, “When you’re talking about Christian music it’s pretty safe to substitute ‘bad’ for ‘Christian’.

A friend of mine used to say the moon is a gigantic dusty grapefruit. I didn’t believe him either. But at least he wasn’t a smug, sanctimonious ass.

Who hasn’t had to endure a Christian rock band or sit through a worship with some aging trendy strumming a guitar and inflicting folk music or light rock on everyone?

Gee. I’ve endured many a Christian rock band. I recall many of them giving altar calls at the end. I recall many, many people coming forward to give or recommit their lives to Christ as a result of those altar calls. One of those people was… me. As to worship, I also recall many a moment of folk or light rock bringing many people into a deeper relationship with Jesus, encouraging them to follow Him more closely and be better servants to one another and the world. One of those people was… me. Somehow I doubt Fr. Longenecker has ever been to an actual Christian rock concert or heard quality contemporary worship/praise music. Which, despite his upcoming assertions to the contrary, does exist. In droves.

Why is it that so often Christian music is so awful?

Because the modern church, with few exceptions, has done such an abominable job of finding, nurturing, supporting, and promoting artists? Naah, couldn’t possibly be that.

I think there are a couple of reasons. The first is that the musicians and their audience mistake a worthy message for talent.

Uh, no. If that was the case, every everything every Christian record label releases would sell. It doesn’t. People do both care and have the wisdom to discern what’s worth a listen.

Then they get a martyr complex if they’re criticized. “You’re obviously not very spiritual if you can’t enjoy my music!

Wrong again. I don’t mind if people don’t enjoy my music or that of the artists I like. Where I do call into question someone’s spiritual discernment is when they apply their cultural bias and personal preference to their alleged discernment. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not good and therefore cannot possibly be used by God. I know people who think Pink Floyd is the worst garbage on the planet. Does that make it so? No. So don’t waste my time bringing your petty preferences, inflated with pseudo-spiritual tripe, into any discussion of art’s value or quality. Like what you like; dislike what you dislike. But don’t drag God into it.

The second problem is that the audience are often either totally uncritical or they haven’t the ability to criticize intelligently. Too often the audience actually like the crap that is being dished up.

We’ve addressed this already. Telling people they’re mindless drones for their musical tastes isn’t exactly what I’d consider a strong opening to winning over hearts and minds. Or winning souls for Christ. Or drawing those who already know Him closer.

The third factor is that market forces are usually not in play. Market forces often have a surprisingly sharp and salutary critical effect. Market forces weed out the junk, but in the Christian market they’re doing it for love, not money, so no one is telling them to get off the stage ’cause it won’t sell.

Already addressed this as well. But hey, keep flailing away at that deceased equine if it makes you happy.

These are all the practical problems. There is, however, a deeper problem. Christian popular music is almost always pretty bad,

Feldercarb. (Look it up.)

but the problem with most “Christian” music is that it is secular music with Christian words.

And what, pray tell, makes music secular or sacred? The style? The sound? Are you telling me God’s such an impotent wuss He can’t use whatever variation of His language — for music is God’s language — He pleases for His purpose? What emasculated God are you following? Not the one I know and in my stumbling, bumbling way serve.

In any decent art style and substance are supposed to match up. The meaning and the media are supposed to harmonize.

Which far more often than not they do. Except to those with open mouths and closed minds.

Most “Christian” music is taken from the secular world. Whether it is the music of Broadway musicals, Country Western, Las Vegas ballad crooners or light rock or heavy rock and roll it’s secular not sacred.

Again… it’s music. Music in and of itself is neither sacred nor secular. Did Paul Simon’s “American Tune,” which is an adaptation of an excerpt we know as “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” from J.S. Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion,” which is itself an adaptation of Hans Leo Hassler’s love song “Mein G’müt Ist Mir Verwirret” turn what started life as a secular tune, turned into a sacred one by Bach, back into a secular song? Really?

When you then add sacred words to the secular music there is a natural disconnect.

To people who serve a whipped puppy masquerading as God Almighty, yes. Or if you prefer, to those who are so petrified of themselves they can’t handle life, thus run and hide and cry out for the bad people and/or things to go away. I’m hardly the strongest person you’ll ever meet when it’s sin-resisting time, but I don’t need musical burqas to protect me from the beat menace.

That’s why so much Christian music (even when it is well written and well performed)

You said there wasn’t any. Make up your mind, will you?

doesn’t really work.

Feldercarb on a stick.

Oh sure, people might like it.

How dare they!

They might even have nice feelings about Jesus by listening to it,

What? People enjoying the notion of there being a loving Savior? Obviously a Satanic trap.

but the secular music was designed to produce certain types of feelings,

So? God can’t use it? Do we really need to repeat how small your God is?

and why should those warm sentimental feelings or hard emotional feelings be linked with worship?

Uh… because we’re human.

We might like listening to Christian country Western or a sweet Broadway type ballad about Jeezus or we might get all hyped up listening to Christian rock, but is it worship? Is it really inspiring us to draw closer to God? Is it really deepening our spiritual life or is it just music we like which makes us feel good and it makes us feel even better because it talks about Jeezus too?

Let’s think back a bit about something mentioned above that takes place during so many of those “awful” Christian rock concerts. Altar calls. Exhortation toward Bible study, fellowship and discipleship. Obviously thin disguises for warm fuzzies. But back to reality. You see, Fr. Longenecker, maybe — just maybe — in spite of your sarcasm in regard to and loathing of contemporary Christian music, God uses it anyway. The evidence is all around you. Too bad you’ve chosen to close your eyes to His work.

Forgive me for being cynical,

Don’t push your luck.

but think about it.

I have. Which apparently puts me one up on you.

The worst example is Christian Rock music.

And here we go…

At the risk of sounding too puritanical,

Reality isn’t really a risk, sir.

rock and roll music was, from the beginning highly sexualized, laden with rebellious, heavy and nasty rhythms

Nasty? What is this, a Janet Jackson revue?

linked with the drug culture–designed to alter consciousness and demolish self restraint. The acid rock and heavy rock was also obviously

Obviously.

linked with an occult and demonic sub culture.

And because a few losers played the devil game, stealing God’s language, we’re supposed to concede? Uh-uh. We’re stealing it back.

So you want to put cozy Christian words to all that?

Try listening to the Rez Band song again, then get back to me on that “cozy” thing.

To my mind that’s like putting a gospel tract inside a porn magazine.

Why not? We’re supposed to be reaching sinners, aren’t we?

The same criticism applies when the musical style is not quite so bad as acid rock. You name the popular secular style–the music wasn’t written to deepen prayer, lead to worship or open the soul to the sacred. It was designed to produce shallow emotions about love and romance at best, and lust and sex at worst.

Because we as Christians have been so shallow we’ve let the world run wild. We haven’t promoted our artists. We’ve held them back at best, actively ridiculed and opposed them at worst. We have made ourselves culturally irrelevant. We have paralyzed ourselves into being afraid of our own shadow. We have abandoned the things of God and settled for perpetual self-appointed second class status. That’s why we’re losing.

Pope Benedict XVI comments on this in his book The Spirit of the Liturgy. He acknowledges that down through the ages this has been a recurring problem in the church. Sometimes the hymn writers put Christian words to beer drinking songs. At other times they adopted the popular operatic style. Now they adopt light rock, hard rock, and virtually every other secular style.

Yeah, it was really rude of our forefathers to try and use God’s language for its intended purpose.

The antidote is to be more aware and appreciative of sacred music.

We are. You’re not.

There is a kind of music that on its own–even without words–is designed to open the mind and heart to the sacred.

Yes. It’s called “whatever God wants to use.”

Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony which evolved from it–is the music of worship.

I happen to love Gregorian chant. But it is not the only arrow in God’s musical quiver:

Especially in the liturgy this is the music which we are supposed to use because the music lends itself to worship.

As does most everything else when you let God be God and stop trying to squeeze Him into your box of what He can and cannot do.

It opens the heart and mind to a new dimension and reveals the spiritual aspect to our lives in a way that secular music with Christian words does not.

I’m sure this would be true… if there was such a thing as secular music.

That’s what sacred music is. What is required is catechesis about this music and an effort to appreciate it. Truly sacred music is an acquired taste. It takes some effort. It also takes some effort to produce it at a good and worthy level.

So when are you going to put in the effort, Father?

The problem in most mainstream Catholic parishes is that they’ve had nothing but crap music in church for as long as anyone can remember. The people actually think its okay because they have never heard anything else. They take on board the blend of muzak, Broadway tunes, folk music and light rock thinking that this is all there is. Then if they ever do hear Gregorian chant or sacred polyphony they hold their ears and say, “Geesh, why does Father want to bring in all that gloomy music? We’re outta here.” Alas. Its true.

Yeah, sucks when people want to live in the twenty-first century. Again, I love Gregorian chant and traditional hymns. They’re wonderful. But they don’t always work. Our God is a mighty God. Why, then, attempt to tie Him down as to what He can use? Let God be God. He’s much better at it than anyone else.

Does this mean that Christians should listen to nothing but Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony? Is that all we should ever use in the liturgy? The purists would say so.

I’m very happy for them having discovered backwards time travel and all.

But I’m of the opinion that we have to work with what we’ve got. We have to meet people where they are and move on from there.

Which you are doing in this article exactly how, reverend?

Chant and polyphony are the foundations of the music we should use. In addition to this we have the library  of sacred hymns (and there’s enough there to warrant another blog post completely) the worthy ones of which will serve to complement the words and actions of the sacred liturgy.

Fr. Longenecker… please go away. And don’t come back until you’ve gained some wisdom.

Again you announce while you whirl and bounce
Intentions to pounce on the beat menace
No woman or man could ever withstand
The devious plans of the beat menace

Come to lay you low, we’ve come to vex your soul

Feeling the heat, hell at your feet
Don’t even speak of the beat menace
Something to take away your innocence
Someone to blame it on

Helps you to defeat
Dancing in the street

Come to lay you low, we’ve come to vex you

Resolved in your mind- the nature of crime
Is to swallow the line of the beat menace
Imagination’s on the rise again
So hide your heart away
Dust off the fears and guilts and lies again
The beat is here to stay
Your satellite can reach that Eskimo
He buys a suit and tie
Re-styles his hair like girls in Tupelo
And sings “Sweet Bye And Bye”
He’s meeting all your strange requirements
He thinks you can’t be fooled
He’ll get the rules and laws and sacraments
By sending checks to you

We’ve come to bring you low

(Crossposted at The Conservatory.)

Militant atheists are conspiracy theory fruitcakes’ kissing cousins. Whereas conspiracy theory freaks and flakes claim any evidence provided to disprove their theories in fact validates their manifested psychosis, militant atheists invent out of whole cloth their “proof” there is no God, claiming there is no scientific or archaeological evidence to “prove” that which people have based their faith upon. Then, when confronted with evidence to the contrary, they claim that since the presented evidence is based on faith, a faith whose validity they deny since it is nothing they share, it is therefore invalid.

To the militant atheist, any evidence of a loving God is based on faith, therefore is outside of their personal belief system and therefore cannot possibly be true. Why? Because they don’t believe it. To the militant atheist, that settles the matter. They see Christians as being bigoted and blinded to reality and reason by the faith to which they cling. In reality, they themselves are blinded by their own stubborn insistence that there is nothing in which to have faith. They are what they profess to oppose, but are too blinded by their own pride to realize it, let alone admit it.

Atheists relish in the belief that since love exists outside of faith, and hatred exists in spite of faith, therefore there is nothing in which to have faith. This is an extension of their belief that if I don’t see it, it doesn’t exist, although it’s usually wrapped in a container of “if it can’t be proven, it doesn’t exist.” Very well, then: prove that God doesn’t exist. Go ahead, we’ll wait. Even the atheist’s patron saint Richard Dawkins can’t do that.

Atheists claim that the flawed nature of man proves there is no God. Very well, then: how can the flawed prove there are flaws? What defines a flaw? What constitutes a flaw? That which general consensus agrees upon? Search history and note how often general consensus has condoned that which is now considered evil: war, murder, rape, enslavement. Note also how despite the alleged advancement of man these horrors still exist among us. Who are you to say those who believe these things are wrong and you are right? What is your measuring stick? If it is yourself, again it must be asked: who are you to say what is right and what is wrong? How can flawed man promote lovism and free thought unless you are without flaw? If you are not without flaw, why should anyone believe or follow anything you say? How are they to discern what in you is right or wrong? How can imperfect man claim to determine perfect right and wrong?

Atheists amuse me. They sharpen rather than challenge my faith, much as liberal believers who treat Scripture as a cafeteria sharpen my belief that God’s word is His word. They reinforce my dictum to let God be God and let everything flow from Him. Life without God makes sense only to those who believe themselves to be self-enlightened. In fact, they are the darkest of dark, living in darkness and refusing to admit there is a light.

Rather, a Light.

A large part of the problem has been yours truly doing an unfortunately excellent job of beating himself up lately over what he’s not doing. Which, naturally, leads to nothing being done.

Rather than acknowledge how I am legitimately doing my best to land the next gig, I’ve been berating myself every moment spent not looking online and elsewhere for one, enjoying nothing and berating myself over everything. I’ve tried to do it all myself instead of trusting God that it will work out, I am in His care and doing the work — in this case, to get work — does not translate into me being the one-man gang, whipping myself into frustration and hopelessness leaving me lashing out at God for apparently not caring when in fact He’s never stopped loving me and looking out for me.

It is frustrating beyond words to face each day with the “come on, you’ve got to grind it out” mindset dominating my thinking. I can’t afford to take a day off from the job search. I know this, and thankfully I haven’t. However, I also can’t afford to beat myself up over what boils down to both disrespect for my own efforts and disrespect for God’s providence. Certainly I want this to end now. But if it doesn’t, does God love me any less? Am I working any less hard at finding work? Am I any less in His will or under His care? I’ve filled out eighteen applications thus far this week. There will be many more. I’m constantly studying how to improve my presentation and approach. The sniggerings of the “get a job” crew aside, what else would anyone — including myself — like me to do?

Time to pull back getting on my own back about things, start trusting and start scheduling my time more efficiently. First priority has to be more prayer, Scripture and fellowship time, letting everything else flow from this. Otherwise I’ll continue to be a self-paralyzed, embittered soul. Which is no good for anyone.

Time to reject the tyranny of the urgent and re-embrace the love of God.

P.S. Giving credit where credit is due: the term “tyranny of the urgent” comes from an excellent pamphlet by Charles Hummel.

One day, he was teaching class during a period where there was much tumult within the student body over the possibility of our flexible class scheduling system being changed to a rigid one. We talked about it for a bit, with him finally chiming in after allowing the students to have their say. His comment was that we should follow his philosophical example. Namely, and I quote: “Let it slide.” Don’t get too freaked out over, or caught up in, the moment. Relax. Things happen. Things change. It all works out in the end. Which, in this case, it did; the school board decided to not change the scheduling system.

“Let it slide.” Kind of a hippie paraphrase of Romans 8:28, if you think about it. But a quite accurate paraphrase, really.

It’s important to enjoy the moment, something I freely confess I have struggled with for many, many years and I’m only now beginning to learn how to do. But in learning how to enjoy the moment, when the moment is in fact enjoyable, I’m beginning to wonder if, in addition to enjoying the moment, I should learn how to start enjoying the future.

It makes a certain amount of sense. Since none of us knows exactly what the future holds, stressing out over it a rather futile exercise. Certainly we should plan for, and prepare for, the future as best as we can foretell it to be. But there are so many things about it we don’t know, and can’t know. So why freak out?

So many times the moment is not the be-all and end-all, nor is it the ultimate definition of what is and will be. In what is now the present, but was once the future, the situation that looked hopeless turned out to be not hopeless at all. In what is now the present, but was once the future, the relationship we thought was irreparably broken finds healing and reconciliation. As the Scripture tells us, sorrow endures for a night but joy comes in the morning. And there will be a morning.

That’s my goal. It’s not only to become more adept at enjoying the moment, but to learn how to enjoy and anticipate the future. This isn’t based strictly on the belief of an eternity spent in heaven with Jesus, but on the shared joys of love, life and laughter with friends and family in the here and now. As comedian Michael Prichard puts it, when we get to heaven the first thing God is going to ask us is, “So how did you enjoy My amusement park?” As long as we’re here, we might as well learn to enjoy the rides.

Including the slide.

P.S. The song doesn’t have anything specifically to do with the post. But it fits.

Mrs. Dude (she doesn’t like her name being mentioned on the Internet) and I were delighted to be at the celebration of your fiftieth wedding anniversary yesterday. It was our privilege to spend time with you, your family and your extended family; the people whose lives you have touched throughout the years devoted to ministry through missionary work.

I especially thank you for the gift you gave all of us in the presence of your three children.

Most noticeably, their individual and collective insanity.

Only an insane person in the early 1980s would decide to throw themselves into the maelstrom of playing Christian rock at a time when doing so put anyone daring to expand the boundaries of what was musically acceptable into the immediate category of at best being marginal within the grand scheme of things church-wise. It was embracing a hardscrabble existence of sporadic gigs, broken-down buses and record labels whose primary function was lining their own pockets at their artist’s expense. Yet this is what your children did, they and their brethren in rebellion one drum beat at a time.

And they’ve stayed insane throughout the years, long after the records stopped being made and the tours stopped being slogged through. In fact, they were insane as recently as 2005, when they had the certifiably nutso notion of having another concert; they and their friends playing the songs from two very long decades ago.

I went to that concert, a burned out, embittered and indifferent quasi-believer who had long ago quit on a God I thought had quit on me. Oh, there was still some threads of faith hanging around. But not many, and they all were of the honey badger variety. Namely, don’t care.

That night, I started caring again.

That night, I looked at myself no longer with pity, but with a wondering if somehow I could reconnect with the joy I knew when I first believed.

That night, Jesus became real to me again.

It’s been a rugged road since then, with assorted heartbreaks and hurdles to overcome. But I’ve stayed the course as best I can.

All because of what happened at that concert.

The one made possible by your certifiably insane children.

God bless their insanity.

And you for giving them to the world.

Take care.

As I remember her, it occurs to me that in mourning her loss I am as much mourning my eventual passing as hers. In the faces of our elders as they fade and fall away we see our own inescapable fate. For we too will one day fade and fall away, joining them in the dust. We can rail against their fate and ours all we wish, but it stands nonetheless.

Then I consider the face of Christ, bleeding and dying on the cross, and am reminded of life eternal.

It makes the fading bearable, both theirs and my own.

Time indeed is slipping away. Jesus’ love is eternal.

As are we.

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? (1 Cor. 15:55)

Every once in a while, you come across something on the Internet that shakes all the stuff and nonsense out of you.

Which is always a good thing.

Dana from Roscommon Acres:

What about when things don’t turn out so well?

As I knelt on the floor, the weight of a dresser on my back, trying to keep my son’s head and neck straight as I rolled him to his side so he wouldn’t aspirate on his own vomit . . .

{Was God amazing?}

As I stood shaking in the ER, wanting to be with him (needing to be with him), terrified of being in the way as I heard them trying over and over and over to get him intubated . . .

{Was God faithful?}

And, only minutes after a nurse had told us he would be in room 201, went over the use of the respite rooms, admonished us to be strong for him, as the surgeon came in and told us he couldn’t save our son . . .

{Was God good?}

It isn’t really something we post to Facebook quite like that, but even in tragedy, God is amazing. He is faithful. He is good. Because His character is not dependent on my circumstances. He has done many wonderful things in my life, but His character is not revealed through my wealth nor through my safety nor through my comfort.

His character is revealed through the cross.

And as I think of my son crushed, his skull broken, his form lifeless, I can think of only one thing.

Our Father did it willingly. For me. For you. For the world He loved so much He gave His only begotten son.

Happy Easter.

Read the entire post.

I eventually realized I had to get right with God to get out of the mess I’d made. I finally learned “getting right with God” doesn’t mean purifying your liver, scraping your virginity off the Shell station floor and never, ever sinning again. It means admitting you’re a mess and that you need help and that you’re incapable of being worthy of said help. That… I can do.

Read the whole thing. Now.

Late last night, I exchanged notes online with a fellow member of the unfortunate fellowship, one inducted into its ranks through unimaginable grief: not a child burying their parent, but rather a parent burying their child. The conversation reminded me of how earlier in the day, while processing assorted dreary tasks at the day job, a sardonic “yeah, I’m living the dream” came to mind. I was kidding, of course. Now, here in painful reality was someone living the nightmare.

In a rant of Biblical proportions, conveniently in the Bible itself, James railed against the superficial: “Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it (James 2:15-16)?” Words well heeded. The problem is, what can you do when words are the only tool at your disposal?

The simultaneous beauty and frustration of ever-increasing methods of communication is how we can connect with others we would have never met or even known of before the Internet and its tools such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter, yet even while doing so attempting to overcome the inherent limitations of this fragile medium. We chat online, perhaps on the phone or through streaming video. But we can’t go to our neighbor’s house, or even casually lean over the fence and talk, when thousands or tens of thousands of miles separate us. The immediate intimacy available solely through being together in the same space is unavailable. While the cynics cry this prevents genuine interaction is laughably off-target, it does present a challenge.

How, then, do we create genuinely deep communication?

By holding hands.

But wait, one might say. You’ve already said there are miles in-between us. Doesn’t that make holding hands a tad problematic? Or to be precise, impossible?

No, not really.

Not when you’re holding the nail-scarred hand while the other person holds His other hand.

What is impossible for us alone becomes possible with Christ. We love as He loves. We love because He loves. We communicate not with words alone, but through a shared Spirit. Our communication method’s limitations fade before His power to bring us together. Our joys, our sorrows are interwoven with each other through the power that overcame death. If Jesus can do this, is it any surprise He can bring us together despite the miles?

For those who have yet to meet Him, is it any less? Jesus asks us to be His voice, His hands outstretched to the world, messengers of His life and peace. This does not stop at the border of an church wall. Unless His empowerment, His ability to use His fractured and flawed creation to actively embody His love, is shared with everyone what good is it for us to say we follow Christ? We’re not doing what He’s told us to do.

So yes, we do hold hands. Despite the miles, despite it all. We hold His hand as He connects us with the person whose hand He holds. Together, we care and share in a way that’s impossible by any other means, in person or otherwise.

And together we cry out.

A week ago yesterday, I was in Corona attending a concert that featured Undercover, Crumbächer, the Lifters, Mike Roe of the 77s and Lost Dogs, and the Choir Acoustic. I was positioned in the lobby with my book, of which I sold a few copies. Not many, but a few.

The day’s news was dominated by the horror that had taken place in Tucson. A madman, one about whom one cannot easily dismiss the thought of demonic possession, had shot a Congresswoman, subsequently fatally shooting and wounding others before being subdued. It was a dark day. The concert was a welcome relief.

I preface this next statement by noting I’ve never been a believer who sees demons in every ill-timed sneeze and Beelzebub lurking behind every corner waiting to strike. That said, I sensed during Crumbächer’s set an oppressive spirit, the kind that drives people into isolation from each other. Others there that evening sensed it as well.

Still, the spirit did not prevail despite its best efforts. During Undercover’s set, the closing song “Devotion” moved me into a rare state, one of being overwhelmingly aware of the Spirit and God’s love in my life. As noted above I’ve never been a holy roller, but the depth of what swept through me during the song is inexpressible with mere words. Those of you who have tasted God’s presence in your life know. Everyone else? I pray one day you also will have the kind of moment that transcends mental and physical boundaries. You can’t live there, nor should you waste your and God’s time in perpetual pursuit of such moments. Rather, let them come to you. And then get back to the daily, flush with knowledge that the daily is never all there is to life.

The political daily has been obscenely hideous since the Tucson madman’s bloody rampage. There was an immediate cry that the gunman must have — must have — been fueled by the right. Even as evidence quickly mounted that his actions stemmed from nothing of the sort, but rather a madman’s jumble of Christ- and Christian-hatred, bizarre cult-like teachings and utter failure to grasp reality, pundits both amateur and professional became borderline madmen themselves as they hurled baseless accusations against Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and others. The public rejected their rants. Palin masterfully answered the charges:

Sarah Palin: “America’s Enduring Strength” from Sarah Palin on Vimeo.

Yet they raged on, never once apologizing when the weight of evidence became so great it was too much to continue with the lies.

Now, despite the overwhelming evidence that political discussion had nothing to do with Tucson, the left is chanting the mantra of civility and bipartisanship. Strange, since those words never once crossed their lips when they held the full reins of power. Now that the House has a Republican majority, all should be lovey-dovey.

But of course.

The left spent a week attempting to implement the same oppressive, isolationist spirit that sought to drag down the concert in Corona. They failed, even as the spirit at the concert failed. Instead, what took place was a unification of the right, one where silly squabbles over RINOs versus purists were set aside in favor of a unified front against the lies and venom. The subsequent calls for civility have been mocked as the facetious, disingenuous tripe they are. They are the bleating of pathetic sheep who attempted to mount a baseless attack, were soundly thrashed, and responded by calling for an illusionary truce.

No, there will be no truce. No compromise of the truth. No retreat from important positions strongly held and defended.

Even as there will be no failure to embrace the love and fellowship of the concert, or the moment it brought of sweet communion with God Himself.

No madman, no pundit and politician wolf pack seeking to cast others into hell can triumph against those whose eyes are set on heaven.

Never.