Laying up short

Most of you know that Tiger Woods added another trophy to his already clogged mantelpiece, this one was his fourteenth major golf tournament second only to Jack Nicklaus' 18. And Tiger's only 32 years old.

For those of you who knew about his win, you'll likely finish this blog. For those of you who think Tiger Woods is a section of the San Diego Zoo, please hang with me.

During this tournament that lasted five full rounds plus one hole of sudden death (tourneys are four rounds), Tiger Woods walked the longest course in US Open history with a torn ACL (way bad knee injury). Despite surgery earlier this year, every time he he muscled his driver, he didn't much care where the ball went because he was doubled up in pain as lightning shot behind his patella.

And still he played. He played some of the most amazing golf in the history of the game.

Now, he's done for the season. More surgery. No promises for the future.

Here's the question: When you're coming off of knee surgery and the knee obviously isn't fixed, why don't you quit and try and save the knee? No doubt each torque-maximized swing further damaged that knee. We would call that "playing it safe." The golfer, rather than going for the green and risking a bunker, the water, or out of bounds, lays the ball up short.

Here's the answer: Playing it safe, laying up short, rarely wins the golf tournament. Much less 39 total and 14 majors...at 32.

Here's the deal: We, like Tiger, have no promise for tomorrow. Why would we not pour our heart and soul into that which stokes our furnace, that for which God has given us great passion and great love? So what if it blows our knee not just for tomorrow but for ever? Tiger has no promise that his knee will ever again get him in contention for a tournament much less a major.

We don't know when God's going to call us home. Until that time, grip it and rip it!

Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

1 Corinthians 10:31

(Associated Press photograph)

Send

Got an e-mail at work today that nearly popped my sockets. An individual speaking on behalf of their boss sent a communication attempting to express displeasure at certain aspects of the quality of paperwork that has been produced of late. Problem was, the boss uses the written and spoken word like a surgeon's laser; this intern used the written word like herd of rogue elephants.

As I write this, I still wince to see what fallout will come.

But also as I write this, I think back to all the times when .00000097 seconds after hitting send, I wished that I hadn't.

E-mail and the blogosphere are extremely dangerous! They are easy. They require no thought...quite literally sometimes. We vomit our ideas or frustrations and hit send. We read and react. It is so easy to type "Well, oh yeah!" without giving a moments consideration to the friend who offered me, in love, an agonizing rebuke.

So, from one who has pert-near the fastest send button south of the Red River, let me offer up two cents worth of advice. When the passion (anger? rage?) bubbles within your belly as your fingers pound the keyboard, take a respite when you've concluded your message. Let sleep pass between the time you type and the time you send. You might find that the best place for your regurgitation is in cyber-oblivion.

You've gotta love the delete key. It's probably saved more friends than the send key.

A man's wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense.

Proverbs 19:11

Right on "queue?"

On our refrigerator door we keep a magnetized pad of paper to jot down our resupplies for the grocery store. Recently, we exhausted our Sam's-sized container of Q-tips, but my bride and I kept forgetting to put them on the list.

Last night when one of our son's came into our room to say good-night, we asked him if, when he went back to the kitchen, he would put Q-tips on the list.

He paused in our doorway, struggled with his homonyms, and asked, "How do you spell that?"

Ah, homeschooling! Sometimes we just overthink, don't we?

QotD: Happy Father's Day!

Not normally a fan of George Bernard Shaw, his quote highlights foundational and fundamental truth:

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.

E'08: Vogue

Madonna Louise Ciccone (not pictured here), known by most simply as Madonna, released a song titled "Vogue" in 1990. A testimony to the magazine of the same name, it spotlit the 8x10 glossy nature of Hollywood. All that mattered was what was "on the cover of a magazine." Gobs of glitz, but makeup can only cover so much.

Such has become our nation, I fear. If that is in fact the case, Barack Obama will dance like Fred Astaire into the White House. On the night of the final primaries, when Hillary Clinton was feeling the stake penetrate deep into the heart of her presidential run, Obama delivered a speech of conquest with lyrical panache. What he said was mostly drivel, but he said it so well, I nearly registered Democrat.

On the flip side, I flipped stations and saw John McCain trying to rally the masses with the grace of Boris Karloff. Trying. Blah, blah, blah...smile...smile bigger...blah, blah, blah...gesture... smile ... nod ...blah, blah, blah. Yikes. Take me back to Iola Kludt's 10th grade English class and there I found far greater enthusiasm and zeal from that schoolmarm than John McCain forced last week. What was his message? I don't remember.

Therein is the problem. Obama, with all of his baggage, will sachet into the Oval Office with a message no one will challenge, a message (see his voting record) that would make Cold War America cringe. McCain will stomp and thump into the history books as an also-ran (see "Bob Dole") with a message no one will hear.

It's all about giving "good face." Barack gives it. John, well, John tries. But this ain't T-ball. Despite the better message (note: not great message), the face prevails.

Pat Sajak has sworn off the talking heads of television recently and only assesses the candidates in the coming election through the printed media. His article is a refreshing look at one who seeks to scrape away the Maybelline to see the real deal.

He, sadly, will be a mere pixel within the 300 million pixel picture.

Just another day? Flag Day minus 1

And the clock ticks...

• Tim Russert - suddenly dead. A shock to the media; a shock to the nation. One of our country's very best journalists. The point in noting it here: no man knows his time. A co-worker asked me today if I thought a life-sentenced inmate found to be terminally ill should receive a special parole. First of all, I have issues with life sentences. Second, we are all "terminally ill." I told him, "No." The guy in the cell next door could suddenly die before the gent who learned he was terminally ill. He gets no parole. No man knows his time.
• Japanese earthquake - 7.0. Are these getting to be a yawner for you? Would it be zestier if it were Knoxville?
  
• Iowa underwater. Iowa?!? The state that comes to mind if states had the capacity for innocence would be Iowa. Maybe it's Radar O'Reilly. Second on the list would be Wyoming. Maybe it's Dick Cheney.
  
• In Zimbabwe, an opposition leader's wife was found brutally murdered by President Robert Mugabe's presiding regime. Nothing funny to be found in this one. Actually, nothing funny in any of these.
  

Only four items today. Only four. Be a praying people.

Can the pastor say that??

Can your pastor legally preach about homosexuality as sin? Is your church at risk for losing its tax-exempt status because it calls gluttony a sin? Will you find police in the pulpit for speaking against strip clubs, pornography or local casions?

What can you say and what can't you say in our country? The First Amendment provides us a great opportunity to speak the truth and to argue ideas in the public square. It does not allow us to yell "FIRE!" in a crowded theater. It doesn't allow us to lie about somebody else (despite what the linked article below states). Really, this is one of the greatest gifts our Founding Father's gave to us.

But it's hated around the world.

You get a glimpse of that through what Mark Steyn is going through up north. That trial has birthed an article from Canada in the International Herald Tribune (it's subtitle: "the global edition of the New York Times." That says a lot.) titled "Hate speech or free speech? What much of the West bans is protected in U.S."

As you read the article, you can see why the clamps are coming down upon our nation (unjustifiably but they're squeezing nonetheless). Ironically, it is because of things like Freedom of Speech that Steyn wrote America Alone and Bill Bennett wrote America: The Last Best Hope (vol I & II). Freedoms are eroding around the world which is why we are so hated; we will not, as yet, permit such a thing in our land.

At the same time it's why foreign folks are busting down the doors to get in.

Will our free speech remain or will our pastors be arrested and our churches closed? Stay tuned...

Just another day? Flag Day minus 3

A cursory scan of the headlines today surfaced these:

• Free speech on trial in Canada for speaking about the spread of Islam
• The most heinous forms of pornography on trial trying to be declared "art" and worthy of free speech
• Tornadoes raze a Boy Scout camp in Iowa killing four
• Most of Iowa and Wisconsin are at flood stage (the radar tonight shows more rain is on the way)
  
• Stocks are swirling down the commode
• Oil prices are making the Saudis fatter than they already are
• Tomatoes are lethal
• Corn prices at record highs

Will any national leaders have the courage to call for national self-examination, repentance, and plea to God for mercy? Will you join me?

E'08: Indoctrination

In the era that we have grown up and especially the era in which our kids are growing up, we hear things over and over that we begin to believe are true. Some of these things we just accept; it's just the way it is. Some of these we've spoken of at length before, but I'll list a few here:

• Evolution as fact
• Homosexuality as just an alternative family
• TV news as a source for learning the truth about events
• Professors are objective

Here's the one I want to key in on tonight:

• We have to pay taxes

Well, yes, if we are going to have any form of government, taxation will have to pay for it. The really cool thing about our government is that it was established by the people who said, "We will pay for our government." Problem is, the things for which our Founding fathers believed the people would pay has grown at malignant proportions so now, we pay for things which are utterly absurd.

Two article give great clarity to this issue in this election season. The first is by John Stossel, investigative reporter, who exposes the bizarre nature of entitlements in our nation's budget. The second is by PhD economist Walter Williams who addresses the redistribution of wealth in our nation, taking money from one person and giving it to someone else who has done nothing to earn it. Here are his opening paragraphs (the second paragraph is a sobering doozy):

Let's do a thought experiment asking whether Americans are for or against slavery. You might say, "What are you talking about, Williams? We fought a war that cost over 600,000 lives to end slavery!" To get started, we might find a description that captures the essence of slavery. A good working description is: slavery is a set of circumstances whereby one person is forcibly used to serve the purposes of another person and has no legal claim to the fruits of his labor.

The average American worker toils from January 1st to the end of April, and has no legal claim to the fruits of his labor for that period. Federal, state and local governments, through the tax code, take what he produces. A small portion of the fruits of his labor is used to provide for the constitutional functions of government. Most of what's taken, up to two-thirds, is given to some other American in the forms of farm and business subsidies, Social Security, Medicare, welfare and hundreds of other government handout programs. As in slavery, one person is being forcibly used to serve the purposes of another person.

Track to the link above to give you a better understanding of what's happening and what ought to be happening with our tax dollars.

Oh, Canada?

In my last blog, I excerpted Mark Steyn's most recent column. As I noted, Mark is an immigrant to the United States from Canada. Tragically, Mark is currently on trial in Canada for an article he had published in Maclean's, a Canadian weekly news magazine, titled "The future belongs to Islam." The article, like his book America Alone, discusses the large influx of Islamic immigrants into Canada and, like Europe, their need to accommodate growing Islamic pressures.

How was it received by our seemingly similar neighbor to the north? He's on trial for hate speech.

Rich Lowry, Steyn's editor at National Review, sums up what's happening north of the 49th parallel in his recent NRO article. We often think of Canada as our chillier sibling, similar in government but with differing affinities toward hockey. Not so. The Human Rights Tribunal in British Columbia and the national Canadian Human Rights Commission convened in response to the Canadian Islamic Congress' displeasure with Steyn's piece.

Gulag's on the Canadian frontier? They're back in fashion in neo-Soviet Russia. Here are a few excerpts from Lowry's commentary in hope that you will be enticed you to spend five minutes and read the whole thing and then ten minutes to read Steyn's original article for Maclean's:

• The Canadian Islamic Congress took offense. In the normal course of things, that would mean speaking or writing to counter Steyn. Not in 21st-century Canada, where the old liberal rallying cry "I hate what you say, but will fight for your right to say it" no longer applies.
  
  The country is dotted with human-rights commissions. At first, they typically heard discrimination suits against businesses. But since that didn't create much work, the commissions branched out into policing "hate" speech. Initially, they targeted neo-Nazis; then religious figures for their condemnations of homosexuality; and now Maclean's and Steyn.

• The national commission has never found anyone innocent in 31 years. It is set up for classic Alice-in-Wonderland "verdict first, trial later" justice. Canada's Human Rights Act defines hate speech as speech "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt." The language is so capacious and vague that to be accused is tantamount to being found guilty.
  
  Unlike in defamation law, truth is no defense, and there's no obligation to prove harm. One of the principal investigators of the Canadian Human Rights Commission was asked in a hearing what value he puts on freedom of speech in his work, and replied, "Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value." Clearly.

• Free speech is a very clean, neutral concept — "Congress shall make no law ..." Once a government begins policing offensiveness, things get much murkier. It has to decide which groups are protected and which aren't — the "who/whom" of Lenin's power relations. So, even though there are plenty of fire-breathing imams in Canada, no one ever pesters them about their hatefulness.

It's not that far from Ottawa to Washington.