Doug Phillips Quotes Cecil B. DeMille on the Law

Doug Phillips Quotes Cecil B. DeMille on the Law

“Our modern world defined God as a ‘religious complex’ and laughed at the Ten Commandments as OLD FASHIONED. Then, through the laughter came the shattering thunder of the World War. And now a blood-drenched, bitter world — no longer laughing — cries for a way out. There is but one way out. It existed before it was engraven upon Tablets of Stone. It will exist when stone has crumbled. The Ten Commandments are not rules to obey as a personal favor to God. They are the fundamental principles without which mankind cannot live together. They are not laws — they are The Law.”

Article source: http://www.visionforum.com/news/blogs/doug/2012/02/9963/

Birth Dearth: Russia’s Crisis Will Soon Be Our Own

Birth Dearth: Russia’s Crisis Will Soon Be Our Own

Once a feared superpower, Russia’s might is fading as their population declines.

Boasting the largest land mass of any nation on earth, the Russia Federation’s population is smaller than both Pakistan and Bangladesh and is decreasing .5% each year. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has warned that, if this trend continues, the Russian population will likely decrease by as much as 50 million people during the next generation. Russia’s vast expanse, Putin argued, could turn “into an ‘empty space’,” resulting in “a geopolitical ‘void.’”

Putin, who is seeking a third term as President in March, recently made a campaign pledge to offer monetary subsidies to Russian parents with three or more children. Not surprisingly, this proposed policy to reward childbirth was met with scorn by many who were nourished on anti-child propaganda in the former Soviet Union. One woman opined, “Putin is like a God. He will restore the birthrate and save Russia. Oh Prometheus!”

Mocking aside, astute demographers are sobered by the startling inevitability of a “Demographic Winter” that will soon grip not only Russia, but many other industrialized nations as well, including Japan, the US, and the countries in Western Europe. This fact is well documented in such films as Demographic Winter: The Decline of the Human Family and Demographic Bomb, and was thoroughly explored at Vision Forum’s Baby Conference.

This looming global crisis hasn’t happened by accident. It has been fueled by an agenda at war with God’s command to be fruitful and multiply, a worldview of selfishness that says that it’s better to have another car in the garage and a bigger 401k plan than it is to welcome more precious souls into the world through the fruit of the womb. We have valued pretty things and “security” above the blessing of children, and our myopic hedonism is hurling much of the world toward economic disaster.

The enfeebling of our old Cold War nemesis should prod us to humility. Rather than gloating over Russia’s struggles, we should realize that our nation is only a few steps behind in its moral and economic decline due in large degree because we’ve rejected fruitful wombs for more immediate temporal niceties.

It’s time we cherish children above “things” and embrace them as our greatest reward this side of heaven.

Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate. (Psalm 127:3-5)

Article source: http://www.visionforum.com/news/blogs/doug/2012/02/9962/

Kirk Cameron Has a New Film: Learn About it At the Christian Filmmakers Academy Next Week!

Kirk Cameron Has a New Film: Learn About it At the Christian Filmmakers Academy Next Week!

Learn more about our events at www.saicfff.org.

Article source: http://www.visionforum.com/news/blogs/doug/2012/02/9952/

Does Your Dog Have Constitutional Rights?

If you train your dog to fetch the paper, bring you your slippers, or perform tricks to entertain guests, you could well be violating the Constitution and suppressing the rights of your canine. At least according to some animal rights activists.

Sound far-fetched?

Not if you’re PETA. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals recently filed a lawsuit in federal court claiming that orca whales at Sea World are “held in slavery and/or involuntary servitude by defendants in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.” It is a case that has found sleigh dog drivers, dairy farmers, Jockey Club members — and yes, even thoughtful pet owners — on the edge of their seats.

PETA general counsel, Jeff Kerr, described the case as a “new frontier in civil rights,” claiming that, “Slavery does not depend on the species of the slave any more than it depends on race, gender or ethnicity.”

As absurd as Mr. Kerr’s position may seem on its face, it is the logical conclusion to an evolutionary worldview. If man is no more than an animal that has evolved from a primordial soup, then man has no greater claim on fundamental rights than any other species that has evolved out of the same bowl of soup.

Yet this thinking flies in face of God’s Word. As much as some animal rights activists may hate or deny it, God set a clear hierarchy in nature when He created the world. God created man in His image — a distinction no animal bears — and he gave man rule over the animal kingdom. The first chapter of Genesis makes this clear:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth Genesis 1:27-28.

The Declaration of Independence, which serves as prologue to the U.S. Constitution, acknowledges this creation order distinction, proclaiming that that all “men” — not animals — “are created equal and are endowed by their Creator, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Our Founding Fathers, as well as the drafters of later 19th-Century amendments to the U.S. Constitution, would find PETA’s claims laughable. Despite PETA’s protestations, no animal rights are recognized or protected by our nation’s founding documents.

Yet this debate is no laughing matter, as PETA’s case against SeaWorld was actually granted a hearing by a U.S. Federal Court, and leading leftist attorneys such as Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe have trumpeted the cause, stating that “non-human animals” (his term) can rightly be defended under the 13th Amendment.

While U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Miller, who recently heard the case, has ruled that the 13th Amendment does not apply to non-humans, PETA’s fight on this issue has gone beyond the vulgar publicity stunts they’re famous for and is gaining some traction in the legal arena.

Following the ruling, PETA’s Jeff Kerr issued this optimistic statement: “This historic first case for the orcas’ right to be free under the 13th Amendment is one more step taken toward the inevitable day when all animals will be free from enslavement for human amusement.”

While Shamu may be their target for “protection” today, your Golden Retriever could be next, as PETA crusades to secure equal rights for all animals.

Article source: http://www.visionforum.com/news/blogs/doug/2012/02/9946/

Live Blogging from the Christian Filmmakers Academy

Live Blogging from the Christian Filmmakers Academy

Article source: http://www.visionforum.com/news/blogs/doug/2012/02/9956/

Ode to the Family Typewriter

Ode to the Family Typewriter

Dear Typewriter, we love you.
Your keys are old, but still prove true,
Your name which speaks of royalty,
Reminds us of antiquity.

We think of men who long ago
Gave us worlds we long for so,
By tapping on your metal letters
And with words free’d us from fetters.

Preachers, fathers, and mothers too,
Would come to you to peck and hew
A life of thoughts and hopes and dreams,
By ribbons inky, metal seams.

Glowing screens and digital books
Will not replace your steampunk looks.
Before your hefty, iron frame,
Our tired eyes extoll your fame.

So thank you for reminding all
That long before the iPad’s call:
Our fathers tapped upon your keys,
And brought down nations to their knees.

Douglas W. Phillips

Article source: http://www.visionforum.com/news/blogs/doug/2012/02/9958/

America the Barbarous: New Pentagon Policy Sanctions Women in Combat

America has become a nation of barbarians.

For more than a decade, women representing the U.S. armed forces have been dying in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We have reported on this fact numerous times at Vision Forum, previously highlighting a 2004 front page New York Times article which featured a gruesome cover image of a wounded female soldier, blood running down her leg, with three men surrounding her, screaming. Rather callously, the Times titled the article, “A Routine Burst of Chaos Leaves a G.I. Wounded.” In writing the piece, journalist Dexter Filkins in no way keyed in on the fact that the wounded G.I. was a woman — he reported the story as if she had been any other male soldier hit by enemy fire.

While the Pentagon’s official policy has been to exclude women from being assigned to most units “whose primary mission” is “direct combat on the ground,” the reality has been far different, as was noted in a 2008 USA Today editorial which we previously cited on our website:

On the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon’s policy on women in combat looks like this: Women risk their lives as truck drivers, mechanics and medics attached to combat units. At checkpoints, they do a job that men can’t: search Iraqi women. They fire rifles and lob grenades. And when they are struck by the IED blasts and suicide bombers that characterize this war, they are wounded or killed just as surely as their fellow soldiers.

In other words, the written policy is divorced from reality.

Now policy has caught up to practice, as last week the Department of Defense announced a formal change in policy to “allow Military Department Secretaries to assign women in open occupational specialties to select units and positions at the battalion level . . . whose primary mission is to engage in direct combat on the ground.”

This will open nearly 14,000 “combat-related positions to female troops, including tank mechanics and intelligence officers on the front lines,” as the Washington Post summarized.

While American servicewomen have been in harm’s way for more than a decade — with nearly 200 coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq in body bags since 2001 — the Pentagon’s new policy now authorizes women to be officially attached to combat units on the ground, the very goal of which is to engage the enemy in battle.

This is a first for the United States of America, and it is a cause to mourn as our nation’s leaders — in the name of “empowering” women — are now self-consciously placing women in combat units to be shot at and killed as men.

What are we to think of a culture that openly welcomes our mothers and daughters being assigned to the heat of battle to have their limbs severed, their faces scarred, and their consciences seared as they lie beneath a flag-covered casket? Does this “enlightened policy” represent the fullest expression of Woman, as feminists would have us believe?

Not hardly. It represents an abolition of womanhood and the perversion of God’s design. It represents a deeply-rooted rebellion against the natural roles and functions by which God has distinguished manhood from womanhood.

Women are to be cherished as the weaker sex, not exploited to fill the roster of an army. Combat is the province of men, and God calls on men to protect women and children. Men fight when their homes and communities are threatened by wicked regimes and lawless rogues who would despoil their loved ones. When necessary, men carry weapons into battle and give their lives to preserve the liberty and sanctity of those they hold dear.

It is barbarians who place their women in the midst of war’s brutalities to fight as men. This is what pagan tribes in Scotland did before they were Christianized and embraced the “Law of the Innocents,” written by the evangelist Adomnan, which forbade sending women into battle.

Though America possesses advanced weaponry and great military might, we have become a nation of barbarians.

It is high time that we as a people repent of our barbarism — that we cherish our women as women, and call on our men to act as men.

— By Elijah Brown and Wesley Strackbein, Vision Forum staff writers

We hope this article was an encouragement to you. Please visit us on Facebook and tell us what you think.

Article source: http://www.visionforum.com/news/blogs/doug/2012/02/9950/

Obama’s Contraceptive Compromise: A Redistribution of Death

Several weeks ago, President Obama jumped into political hot water when he issued a regulatory policy under the new health care law, forcing religiously affiliated organizations to pay for healthcare plans that provide free contraception to employees, including the murderous “morning after pill.” Many religious groups found the policy highly offensive, for, if followed, it would violate their consciences by forcing them to pay for abortions. Many top evangelical leaders vowed that they and their congregants would go to prison before they would assent to pay for the murder of unborn children under the Obama administration’s new edict.

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi sought to defend the President’s policy directive. She and feminist groups complained that to remove the mandate was akin to “allowing woman to die on the floor.” This said, Pelosi confessed with a bit of chagrin, “I’m a devout Catholic and I honor my faith and love it . . . but they have this conscience thing.”

This “women will die if we don’t act” sort of rhetoric is a typical tactic used to expand government by emergency. What Mrs. Pelosi and feminists are saying is that this “conscience thing,” this inalienable right to religious liberty, this inalienable right to life vested in the hundreds of thousands of children that are murdered each year, must be surrendered in order to protect the rare case that a women may attempt to kill herself through an illegal abortion.

Despite Pelosi’s trumped-up rhetoric, religious groups pushed back hard and weren’t about to be cowed by such threats. In response to the growing firestorm, President Obama sought to appease both Christians and feminists by offering a compromise that gives women, who work for religiously affiliated organizations who object to funding contraception, the opportunity to get the drugs they crave directly from the insurance provider “free of charge,” without strings tied back to their employer — at least so far as the contraception pills go. In other words, the President extended a sort of clemency for religious organizations who are affected by this “conscience thing,” requiring their insurance companies to pick up the tab for contraceptives their employees might desire.

But Anthony Picarello, general counsel for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, aptly pointed out that there is no room for compromise on this issue. Picarello explained, “That means removing the provision from the health care law altogether, not simply changing it for Catholic employers and their insurers.” Picarello’s point is this: A Christian employer who owns a plumbing company or any other non-religious related organization is afforded no exemption under the revised policy and is still on the hook to provide and pay for insurance coverage that covers abortion pills. There’s no opt-out for him.

Further, while at first glance it might appear that the President’s compromise would alleviate religiously affiliated organizations from paying for abortions, it will not do so in practice. It is a mere redistribution of death. Someone has to pay the enormous cost for the contraception that women are receiving at “no cost” to themselves. The insurance company will simply raise their premiums to the religious groups that have plans with them to cover the shortfall. While there may be no “line item” in the official agreement between the parties indicating that the insurance plan under contract provides contraceptives and abortifacients, the religious groups will end up paying for it nonetheless.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and there’s no such thing as a free abortion pill. Under the “compromise,” religious organizations and employers will still, in the end, be paying for the murder of unborn children.

Though some misguided observers have deemed the compromise a win-win, the President has assumed extraordinary executive power no where found in the Constitution, acting as “benevolent” autocrat who capriciously decides in what manner religious liberty may be exercised and who will be granted “clemency” to get a temporary pass — all the while mandating that private industry cough up the dough to pay for the death of children.

Let’s call the President’s mandate what it is: tyranny. In essence, the United States government has decreed that women have a right to murder their children, and that Christian employers and insurance providers must bear the expense.

Religious affiliated organizations should not feel relieved just because the tyrannical mandate to shoulder blood money was purportedly “passed on” to another institution — the insurance company. They cannot wash their hands of the affair, because, in the end, they will be footing the bill for contraceptives and the “morning after” pill.

A redistribution of death still results in death — however masked — and this socialist policy of murder must be firmly opposed.

Article source: http://www.visionforum.com/news/blogs/doug/2012/02/9951/

We Will Go Anywhere As Long As It’s Forward

We Will Go Anywhere As Long As It’s Forward

Learn more on Friday, February 24, at 7:00 PM at the Lila Cockeral Theater during the SAICFF. www.saicff.org

Article source: http://www.visionforum.com/news/blogs/doug/2012/02/9941/

Watch the Trailer Inviting You to Come to the family Movie Event of the Year

Watch the Trailer Inviting You to Come to the family Movie Event of the Year

And the Winner Is—A Special Invitation to Come to the Christian Film Event of the Year from Douglas Phillips on Vimeo.

February 23 to 25 are the dates for what is perhaps the most innovative, principled and inspiring event on a defining subject of our modern culture—Christianity and Movies. This year, the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival gives away the single largest cash prize in America for an independent film, and welcomes hundreds of filmmakers and families as we screen more than fifty films and film shorts that move, motivate and speak to the heart of the issues of our generation. Sign up today at www.saicff.org.

Article source: http://www.visionforum.com/news/blogs/doug/2012/02/9926/