Should Americans celebrate Thanksgiving as a day of gratitude? Or should they mourn it as a day of guilt? Michael Medved, author of The American Miracle, shares the fascinating story of the first Thanksgiving. (See also my MAIN THANKSGIVING DAY POST)
SQUANTO
Dennis Prager interviews Eric Metaxas about his article entitled “The Miracle of Squanto’s Path to Plymouth.” In the discussion what becomes clear is that America had a divine hand in its founding and ultimately the reasoning for this was the overwhelming good in influencing other nations in her history. He has written a book on this a while back:
Just a quick word regarding Mark Dice — who is the guy in the first video (and 3rd n 4th):
While I like their rants (Paul Watson, Mark Dice, and others) and these commentaries hold much truth in them, I do wish to caution you… he is part of Info Wars/Prison Planet network of yahoos, a crazy conspiracy arm of Alex Jones shite. Also, I bet if I talked to him he would reveal some pretty-crazy conspiratorial beliefs that would naturally undermine and be at-odds-with some of his rants. Just to be clear, I do not endorse these people or orgs.
Media analyst Mark Dice asks beachgoers in San Diego, California some basic questions about America’s 4th of July Independence Day celebration and their answers are quite disturbing.
MORE SADNESS:
FOR THE HISTORICAL RECORD:
The signers of the Declaration of Independence (ALL BIOS HERE)
Delaware
George Read | Caesar Rodney | Thomas McKean
Pennsylvania
George Clymer | Benjamin Franklin | Robert Morris | John Morton | Benjamin Rush | George Ross | James Smith | James Wilson | George Taylor
Massachusetts
John Adams | Samuel Adams | John Hancock | Robert Treat Paine
New Hampshire
Josiah Bartlett | William Whipple | Matthew Thornton |
Rhode Island
Stephen Hopkins | William Ellery |
New York
Lewis Morris | Philip Livingston | Francis Lewis | William Floyd |
Georgia
Button Gwinnett | Lyman Hall | George Walton |
Virginia
Richard Henry Lee | Francis Lightfoot Lee | Carter Braxton | Benjamin Harrison | Thomas Jefferson | George Wythe | Thomas Nelson, Jr. |
North Carolina
William Hooper | John Penn |
South Carolina
Edward Rutledge | Arthur Middleton | Thomas Lynch, Jr. | Thomas Heyward, Jr. |
New Jersey
Abraham Clark | John Hart | Francis Hopkinson | Richard Stockton | John Witherspoon |
Connecticut
Samuel Huntington | Roger Sherman | William Williams | Oliver Wolcott |
Maryland
Charles Carroll | Samuel Chase | Thomas Stone | William Paca |
Reagan, Cash, and Harvey
Dennis Prager
Video Description:
Dennis Prager reads from the popular leftist website, VOX. From newspapers such as the N.Y. TIMES, the L.A. TIMES, and the N.Y. DAILY NEWS. These mainstream opinion pieces bemoan and degrade America to the point of hatred. Anti-Americanism is growing on the Left, and in taking these positions these people benighted themselves as our cultural commissars… dishing out their version of history to those unintelligent lap-dog readers they call customers.
Some More History
I want to thank Israel Matzavfor the following, good stuff!
During the 1700s, Philadelphia was an unpleasant place in the summer. Malaria and yellow fever were rampant. There were no cures and no known ways to prevent infection. Most people of means tried to escape the city, if they could.
But in the scorching summer of 1776, scores of our country’s leading men remained behind closed doors in Philadelphia. They were kept there by their work. And what a monumental work it turned out to be.
The 56 leaders, representing all 13 British colonies, signed a declaration that would birth a great nation and illuminate the very future of humankind. It’s this Declaration of Independence that Americans celebrate each July 4.
The document’s first job was to officially announce to the world that all the colonies had decided to declare themselves free and independent states, absolved from any allegiance to Great Britain. That was momentous enough for the years ahead, since in order to make good on that declaration, the colonies would have to defeat the British in a war that stretched until 1783.
But the greater meaning of the Declaration — then as well as now — is as a statement of the conditions that underlie legitimate political authority and as an explanation of the proper ends of government.
The signers proclaimed that political power would spring from the sovereignty of the people, not a crowned hereditary monarch. This idea shook Europe to its very core.
The Declaration appealed not to any conventional law or political contract but to the equal rights possessed by all men and “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and nature’s God” entitled them.
What is revolutionary about the Declaration of Independence is not that a particular group of Americans declared their independence under particular circumstances. It’s that they did so by appealing to –and promising to base their particular government on — a universal standard of justice.
It is in this sense that Abraham Lincoln praised “the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times.”
Of course, it required another war to extend those rights to all Americans, but the fact that they were written down in the Declaration was crucial in 1865, in 1965 and remains so today as well.
“If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence,” wrote noted historian Samuel Eliot Morrison, “it would have been worthwhile.”
As Thomas Jefferson, lead author of the Declaration, put it in 1821, “The flames kindled on the 4th of July 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.”
Those flames, the flames of freedom and opportunity, continue to spread. That’s a truth worth celebrating on the Fourth — and all year ’round.
Even the Minutemen reflected strong religious involvement. While they are generally recognized for their exploits as a group, few today know many specifics about them. For example, these men who stood to fight for their liberties and defend their town were often groups of laymen from local congregations led either by their pastor or a deacon! Records even indicate that it was not unusual that following their militia drills they would go to church “where they listened to exhortation and prayer.”
The spiritual emphasis manifested so often by the Americans during the Revolution caused one Crown-appointed British governor to write to Great Britain complaining that:
If you ask an American who is his master, he’ll tell you he has none. And he has no governor but Jesus Christ.
Letters like this, coupled with statements like that delivered by Ethan Allen, and sermons like those preached by the Reverend Peter Powers (“Jesus Christ the King”), gave rise to a motto of the American Revolution. Most of us are unaware that the American Revolution even had a motto, but most wars do (e.g., World War II—”Remember Pearl Harbor”; the Texas’ war for independence—”Remember the Alamo”; etc.). The motto of the American Revolution was directed against King George III—considered the primary source of the conflict; for it was he who was arbitrarily, capriciously, and regularly violated “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” The motto was very simple and very direct:
How much do you know about Christmas – about its origins and its many beloved traditions? Do you know where the idea of stocking-stuffers comes from? Or how lights found their way onto the Christmas tree? Or why we all have the jolly, red-suited, white-haired image of Santa Claus in our heads? In this video, historian William Federer explores the holiday’s rich and unique history.
“This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here. We’re gonna press on, and we’re gonna have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny fucking Kaye. And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney tonight, he’s gonna find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse.” — Clark W. Griswold Jr.
[What’s The Bottom Line?]This holiday season, spend your time celebrating real holidays like Christmas or Hanukkah, not a fake holiday invented by a Marxist, racist, violent criminal.
Kwanzaa: Racism inDisguise
Preface
This was a “clarification letter” written to my son’s fifth-grade teacher. The in-class activity was to break the kids up into groups and learn about the various holidays, so I politely asked that my son sit in on the Hanukah or Christmas table, as he had been assigned to the Kwanzaa table. I gave some reasoning behind this decision – as I often do about most decisions I make (my wife would beg to differ).
The reason I felt it necessary to clarify the original letter was because the teacher gave the original letter over to the Principle, and I heard through the grape-vine that the Principle called the letter, ergo me, racist. While I sympathized with the Principle a bit… because, well, I “look” like a racist (shaved head and all)… I just couldn’t let this pass by. I am sure that this sixties – Berkley attending – gentleman had gotten away with such a canard before, he unfortunately hadn’t researched his statement in my particular case enough.
First of all, while I look like a racist, I in fact have a wonderful black grandmother. Not only do I have a black grandmother, I also grew up in Detroit, where white kids at the public school and in my neighborhood were a minority. I didn’t just “have a black friend,” I, in fact, had very few white friends… my friends in other words had “a white friend.” Not only did the cultural and geographic peoples and places have an impact on me, but so to did theology. You see, I am a young earth creationist. Young earther’s believe that Adam and Eve were the originators of the human population and that from these first persons came the darker (say, Ethiopians) and person’s like myself (Irish). The Hebrew word for “Adam” is rooted in the word meaning “red-clay.” In fact, out of the 220-or-so stories of a world-wide flood from various cultures (Australian, southern/central/northern Native-Americans, Chinese, Russian, Welsch/British, etc., etc.) about half have a creation story of the first man being made as being red in color.
Not only did this principle not know my history or theology, he apparently didn’t realize that I quoted mainly from either black authors as well as from the L. A. Times for the letter. In fact, after having a sit down meeting with my son’s fifth-grade principle, I realized that he had not even read the original paper, he just assumed that any person who spoke out against Kwanzaa (whether rationally or illogically) was a bigot.
Unfortunately this old-school “sweeping-under-the-carpet” argument that I’m sure guided this gentlemen through many a brushing off of a parent just didn’t work in this case.
I made sure he read this second letter.
Enjoy, Papa Giorgio
Kwanzaa ~ Not Just Another Holiday!
A Letter from a Concerned Parent
(Fifth-Grade/2002 ~ updated 11-11-05)
Who Created Kwanzaa?
Kwanzaa was invented by Ron Kerenga in 1966 as a means to foster and help the Black Nationalist movement in their goal to segregate and separate the races. Ron Kerenga, thus, views people of Jewish decent, much like the Nation of Islam, as “devils,” to be stamped out like weeds. His views towards whites are very similar ~ racist, in-other-words. Let’s look at some of this history.
Kerenga founded and led the United Slaves, a Black Nationalist organization, which got into gun battles with the Black Panthers on occasion with people murdered as a result.
The biggest dispute between the United Slaves and the Panthers was for the leadership of the new African Studies Department at UCLA, with each group backing a different candidate. Panthers John Jerome Huggins and Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter verbally attacked Karenga at the meeting, which infuriated Karenga’s followers. After the meeting ended, two United Slaves members, George and Larry Stiner, reportedly confronted Huggins and Carter in a hallway, shooting and killing them.[1] [2]
In 1970, Kerenga and two of his followers were arrested by authorities for the torture of two of his female followers, Debra Jones and Gail Davis. Kerenga did time in prison for disrobing these two women at gunpoint and having them beaten severely. Kerenga told them that “Vietnamese torture is nothing compared to what we know,” whereupon he forced a hot soldering iron into the mouth of one while the other had a toe squeezed in a vice.
The Los Angeles Times described the events:
“Deborah Jones, who once was given the title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electric cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes at gunpoint. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis’ mouth and placed against Miss Davis’ face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vice. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said.” [1]
Karenga was sentenced to one-to-ten years in prison on counts of felonious assault and false imprisonment. At his trial, the question arose as to Karenga’s sanity. The psychiatrist’s report stated:
“This man now represents a picture which can be considered both paranoid and schizophrenic with hallucinations and illusions, inappropriate affect, disorganization, and impaired contact with the environment.” The psychiatrist reportedly observed that Karenga talked to his blanket and imaginary persons, and he believed he’d been attacked by dive-bombers.
Eight years later, California State University Long Beach named Karenga the head of its Black Studies Department. By this time, Karenga had “repented” of his black nationalism and had become just a harmless garden variety Marxist. This must be our esteemed university system’s idea of repentance![3]
How terrifying for these two women! According to the July 27, 1971 Los Angeles Times, a psychological profile of Kerenga described him “as a danger to society who is in need of prolonged custodial treatment in prison.” The profile noted that Kerenga, while legally sane, was “confused and not in contact with reality.”
The “seven principles” of Kwanzaa that Kerenga created as part of the Nguzo Saba are little more than Marxism transposed into afrocentric key.[4]Therefore, the Kwanzaa celebration, unlike – for instance – the Martin Luther King holiday, celebrates separatism and Black Nationalism. It would be the same as the school teaching and celebrating a holiday created by the Ku Klux Klan, or an offshoot thereof. (I would just as vehemently speak out against this as well, for when the school sets its seal of approval on a celebration, you teach all its goals and aims ~ whether religious or political.)
Created Equal
My point is that I teach my children that all men are created equal and that all men are equal in the eyes of God. This is what Christmas is all about! Jesus came to save the world (John 3:16-17), God’s Word has always stated that He has “made of one blood [i.e. from one man, Adam] all nations of men” (Acts 17:26, cf. 1 Cor. 15:45). Kerenga created Kwanzaa to shun the world and display racism as their main goal for the holiday season, in place of Christmas. In fact, when asked why he designed Kwanzaa to take place around Christmas, Karenga explained, “People think it’s African, but it’s not. I came up with Kwanzaa because black people wouldn’t celebrate it if they knew it was American. Also, I put it around Christmas because I knew that’s when a lot of bloods would be partying.” Great values!
Again, trying to tie in African culture and beliefs with this holiday celebration is a stretch, to say the least. Kwanzaa was created in 1966 by a revolutionary Marxist and racist man – Kerenga – who took here and there from the African culture as well as the Menorah from Judaism[5], and created a new celebration with socialist/Marxist overtones.
I have long-standing family friends who are native-born Africans (Kenyans), who have given their entire life to the mission field. They vehemently oppose this holiday because it creates subversion between the races when love is needed most. Neither do they find a connection with it and African culture. Mason Weaver points out the bottom line:
Professor Ron Karenga made up Kwanzaa in 1961 to counter the Western celebration of Christmas. Dr. Karenga made up a word, made up its definitions and then made up the elements we recognize today as “traditions.” First, “Kwanzaa” does not spell “first fruits” in Swahili or any other language. When I interviewed Dr. Karenga a few years ago, he admitted that the word was changed from the Swahili word “Kwanza” to “Kwanzaa” because he needed seven letters to represent his seven children. Because I spoke Swahili (and he apparently did not) Dr. Karenga was forced to admit that the word “Kwanza” was a Swahili adverb for “first,” and he added the extra “a” and “fruits” because it fit his story. And for all of you who wish to celebrate “first fruits,” the proper Swahili noun would be “Limbuko,” which would have given Dr. Karenga his seven letters for his children had he understood the language. (from Chapter 7 of It’s Okay to Leave the Plantation)
(Updated quote) Ann Coulter, likewise, points out the bottom line:
It is a fact that Kwanzaa was invented in 1966 by a black radical FBI stooge, Ron Karenga — a.k.a. Dr. Maulana Karenga — founder of United Slaves, a violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers. He was also a dupe of the FBI.
In what was ultimately a foolish gamble, during the madness of the ’60s, the FBI encouraged the most extreme black nationalist organizations in order to discredit and split the left. The more preposterous the group, the better.
By that criterion, Karenga’s United Slaves was perfect. In the annals of the American ’60s, Karenga was the Father Gapon, stooge of the czarist police.
[….]
United Slaves were proto-fascists, walking around in dashikis, gunning down Black Panthers and adopting invented “African” names. (That was a big help to the black community: How many boys named “Jamal” are currently in prison?)
It’s as if David Duke invented a holiday called “Anglika,” which he based on the philosophy of “Mein Kampf” — and clueless public school teachers began celebrating the made-up, racist holiday.
Origins vs. Current Beliefs
Do the millions of black Americans who celebrate Kwanzaa think of it as the ritualization of socialism? Doubtful. Do they object to the mainstreaming of Kwanzaa symbols and products? Probably not. Do they know anything about Karenga and his past? It doesn’t seem so. When Karenga spoke at the Million-Man March, he went virtually unnoticed. However, the holiday’s origins in a terrible time and with a terrible person are certainly relevant to its legitimacy.
Neutrality?
I do not mind if the school teaches my son true history, which includes the history of Africa, as well as other Continents. However, having said this, I do not pay my hard earned tax dollars for the school to meet some need of trying to teach and include all the cultural holidays of the world, which apparently must include racist holidays founded right here in California’s radical [recent] past. That is not the schools job; it is mine, if I so choose!
This is why this subject is so “political,” you have in a sense undermined my family’s values and put it upon yourselves to teach my son “multi-culturalism” in a “politically-correct” fashion. This, then, requires the school to make value judgments on how to teach this to my child. Which is why I pointed out that by doing so, you have strayed from being neutral to taking a position on how to present other peoples cultural mores (which now includes racism as mainstream) to my child (in rejection of America’s cultural mores… which is Christmas and Hanukah, i.e., Judeo-Christian).
Back to the Original Premise!
So again, I restate my three points in the original letter[6] on why I asked to have my son join either the Christmas table or Hanukah table in class; in contradistinction to Kwanzaa or the Chinese New Year:
It [Kwanzaa] promotes and supports ethnic separation and segregation. For instance, Hallmark Cards and Giant Foods have a policy of any items related to Kwanzaa be produced and sold only by blacks (William A. Henry III, “The Politics of Separation,” Time Magazine [fall 1993]: 75).
This was also the intent of the founder of Kwanzaa, Dr. Maulana Kerenga, separation, not healing. Christmas promotes the latter.
It is not practiced equally with the traditional (Judeo-Christian) practices. For example: one public schools students and parents were asked to come in and share with the class about Kwanzaa, and other religious holiday practices of their Buddhist faith and Muslim faith as well as the traditions and practices of Hanukkah. When one parent attempted to share the true meaning Christmas, using a Nativity scene as a visual aid, the presentation was prohibited. (Ravi Zacharias, Deliver Us from Evil: Restoring the Soul in a Disintegrating Culture, p. 57).
It takes a political and moral stance. This type of multi-cultural “politically-correct” inclusive teaching takes a moral and political stance that requires value judgments to be made that are at variance with my (and many others) particular political and moral stance on afro-centric history and teaching… as well as putting one set of moral pre-suppositions (Marxism, racism, segregation) above others. Thus, taking a non-neutral position.
[2] Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson (a black-American) is the Founder and President of BOND (the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny, www.bondinfo.org). He is also the author of the book SCAM: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America. For more information, please call 1-800-411-BOND (2663), or e-mail [email protected].
[3] Ibid.
[4] Afrocentrism is a political movement that believes Greek culture was borrowed from Black Africans. Among others on the Afrocentrist side is Emeritus Professor of Near Eastern History Martin Bernal who wrote Black Athena. Among others opposing him is Mary Lefkowitz, classical scholar and author of Not Out of Africa who denies the Greeks stole culture from Black Egyptians. There are some moderate positions, but the whole Afrocentrism controversy is based on concepts of race and racism, and is therefore very difficult to discuss without enraging someone.
[5] Kerenga believes that the black race are the real Jewish peoples, much like Christian Identity – the religious movement of the KKK – believes the white race to be the true Jewish peoples. The bottom line is this: both views are founded in racist ideology!
[6] Carlotta Morrow, the main author I quoted from heavily in my first letter to the school, (a black-American woman) began her research on Kwanzaa in the early 1980’s after her sister, who was a member of Dr. Karenga’s black activist group called the United Slaves (US) Organization, denounced her faith in Christ, claiming that Christianity was a white man’s religion.
Determined to find out the teachings that persuaded her sister’s complete change in faith, she went with her sister to “the Center” to hear what was being taught. She was deeply disturbed at the “us””white man” against the attitude that seeped through the meetings, and especially at the negativity directed toward the Christian and Jewish religions.
Seeing the spiritual and racial harm being subtly encouraged, Carlotta began her trek in learning, researching and exposing the real truth and spiritual seductiveness of the principles behind Kwanzaa.
She has had articles on Kwanzaa appear in the Southern California Christian Times, the Twin City Christian Magazine of Minnesota, Tout Timoun Nou Yo also of Minnesota, (a quarterly for families with children adopted from Haiti) and has been a guest on radio talk shows in the Southern California area which included an on-air discussion with Dr. Karenga on the Mason Weaver Show of KPRZ in San Diego, where the author resides.
President Obama and first lady extended their “warmest wishes” to those celebrating Kwanzaa, the week-long holiday as it began Saturday.
“Today begins a week-long celebration of African-American heritage and culture through family and community festivities,” the couple said in a statement.
“Kwanzaa’s seven principles – unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith – are also shared values that bind us as Americans.”
Ann Coulter recently wrote about the origins of Kwanzaa at Townhall:
Happy Kwanzaa! The Holiday Brought to You by the FBI
I will not be shooting any Black Panthers this week because I am Kwanza-reform, and we are not that observant. Kwanzaa, celebrated exclusively by white liberals, is a fake holiday invented in 1966 by black radical/FBI stooge Ron Everett — aka Dr. Maulana Karenga, founder of United Slaves, the violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers. In the annals of the American ’60s, Karenga was the Father Gapon, stooge of the czarist police.
In what was ultimately a foolish gambit, during the madness of the ’60s, the FBI encouraged the most extreme black nationalist organizations in order to discredit and split the left. The more preposterous the group, the better. By that criterion, Karenga’s United Slaves was perfect.
Despite modern perceptions that blend all the black activists of the ’60s, the Black Panthers did not hate whites. Although some of their most high-profile leaders were drug dealers and murderers, they did not seek armed revolution.
Those were the precepts of Karenga’s United Slaves. The United Slaves were proto-fascists, walking around in dashikis, gunning down Black Panthers and adopting invented “African” names.
And hasn’t that been a huge help to the black community?
THE LID has a good post on Kwanzaa: “Kwanzaa: A Fraud Holiday With A Racist Goal, Created By Criminal Madman”
Those who are around my age woke up one December and discovered that the “holiday season” of Christmas and New Year’s became a trio, with the addition of something called Kwanzaa. Oh, sure there were rumblings of a new holiday. But strangely in this country where political correctness is on overload, a day invented in 1966 by a rapist who ran a Black separatist group is considered by some as a holiday on par with Christmas, or New Year’s. Kwanzaa is exclusively an American holiday and is not celebrated in any other part of the world (including Africa). The name Kwanzaa comes from a phrase of Swahili origin, “Matunda Ya Kwanza”, and translates as “First Fruits of the Harvest.” That’s right it’s supposed to be spelled with only one “a,” the very name of this supposed holiday is a typo.
Kwanzaa runs from December 26th-January 1st. It’s supposed to be a week-long holiday honoring African culture and traditions but is tainted by its founder and original purpose.
The man who created the holiday, Maulana Karenga was convicted in 1971 of torturing two women who were members of US (United Slaves), a black nationalist cult he had founded. A May 14, 1971, article in the Los Angeles Times related the testimony of one of the women:
“Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis’ mouth and placed against Miss Davis’ face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said.”
Karanga was convinced that the women were trying to poison him. He and three members of his cult had tortured the women in an attempt to find some nonexistent “crystals” of poison. Karenga thought his enemies were out to get him.
Now I am not a doctor, nor have I ever played one on television, but this Karenga guy sounds like a paranoid psycho.
Somehow I cannot see rational people wanting to observe a holiday created by such a sick violent man (but then again, Al Sharpton led two anti-Semitic pogroms and he is considered a civil rights leader). Especially this year when sexual assault of women has been in the headlines almost consistently for months, why would anybody want to celebrate a holiday invented by a man who tortured women?
Perhaps Kwanzaa is observed because this part of the Kwanzaa story is rarely mentioned by the mainstream media.
“give Blacks an alternative to the existing holiday and give Blacks an opportunity to celebrate themselves and history, rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society.”
Arguably, this holiday raised by some to the level of Christmas has the totally opposite purpose. While Christmas is meant to unify, Kwanzaa is meant to divide. Or as the then 16-year-old Rev. Al Sharpton explained the feast would perform the valuable service of “de-whitizing” Christmas.
“I created Kwanzaa,” laughed Ron Karenga like a teenager who’s just divulged a deeply held, precious secret. “People think it’s African. But it’s not. I wanted to give black people a holiday of their own. So I came up with Kwanzaa. I said it was African because you know black people in this country wouldn’t celebrate it if they knew it was American. Also, I put it around Christmas because I knew that’s when a lot of bloods (blacks) would be partying!”
There is no part of Kwanzaa that is not fraudulent. Begin with the name. The celebration comes from the Swahili term “matunda yakwanza,” or “first fruit,” and the festival’s trappings have Swahili names — such as “ujima” for “collective work and responsibility” or “muhindi,” which are ears of corn celebrants set aside for each child in a family.
Unfortunately, Swahili has little relevance for American blacks. Most slaves were ripped from the shores of West Africa. Swahili is an East African tongue.
To put that in perspective, the cultural gap between Senegal and Kenya is as dramatic as the chasm that separates, say, London and Tehran. Imagine singing “God Save the Queen” in Farsi, and you grasp the enormity of the gaffe.
Worse, Kwanzaa ceremonies have no discernible African roots. No culture on earth celebrates a harvesting ritual in December, for instance, and the implicit pledges about human dignity don’t necessarily jibe with such still-common practices as female circumcision and polygamy. The inventors of Kwanzaa weren’t promoting a return to roots; they were shilling for Marxism. They even appropriated the term “ujima,” which Julius Nyrere cited when he uprooted tens of thousands of Tanzanians and shipped them forcibly to collective farms, where they proved more adept at cultivating misery than banishing hunger.
Even the rituals using corn don’t fit. Corn isn’t indigenous to Africa. Mexican Indians developed it, and the crop was carried worldwide by white colonialists.
The fact is, there is no Ur-African culture. The continent remains stubbornly tribal. Hutus and Tutsis still slaughter one another for sport.
(…) Our treatment of Kwanzaa provides a revealing sign of how far we have yet to travel on the road to reconciliation. The white establishment has thrown in with it, not just to cash in on the business, but to patronize black activists and shut them up.
So what is Kwanzaa? It’s the ultimate fraud. It is a holiday created by a man responsible for violently torturing two women–and it has a fascist goal of separating the races……..
Spanning from Dec. 26 to the first of January is Kwanzaa, the invented African American holiday celebrated solely by white liberals and clueless public school teachers. Overblown by leftist claiming the holiday has immense cultural significance, a survey by the National Retail Foundation discovered only 1.6 percent of Americans celebrate Kwanzaa.
The “holiday” was created in 1966 by Ron Karenga, who renamed himself Maulana. Karenga, the founder of the United Slaves, a violent rival organization to the Black Panthers, created the holiday for black Americans and derived the name “Kwanzaa” from the Swahili phrase “matunda y kwanza,” meaning “first fruits of the harvest.” That’s about the extent of the deep African roots the official Kwanzaa website claims.
The history of the holiday and Karenga has been seamlessly suppressed by leftists who find the facts inconvenient. Since few know its origins, the current definitions of the celebration are usually nonsensical and made up, much like the holiday itself.
The Guardian asserts Kwanzaa is simply an “opportunity [for black people] to celebrate themselves and their history rather than indulge in the customary traditions of a white Christmas.” The Los Angeles Times says it is “a way to honor African heritage and bring Black families and communities together.”
FrontPage Magazine’s Paul Mulshine writes that “the history of the founder of Kwanzaa has disappeared into an Orwellian time warp.” Indeed, CNN informs readers that Kwanzaa’s violent, racist founder was “a black nationalist and professor of Pan-African studies at California State University at Long Beach,” omitting his criminal and misogynistic past.
Kwanzaa, the “African feast,” really has “nothing to do with Africa and everything to do with California in the 1960s,” writes Mulshine. He contends it was made up to divide Americans, not unite them.
Mulshine explains that the paramilitary organization Karenga ran in Los Angeles in the late 1960s was involved in murder and torture: “In 1967, Karenga was accused of having his thugs beat up a student who asked him an impertinent question at a college forum. In 1969, [United Slaves] got involved in a struggle with the Black Panthers for control of the black studies program at UCLA. All involved carried guns on campus. The US guys were quicker on the draw; they killed two Panthers in a shootout at the student center.”
Karenga himself is a convicted torturer. Here is an excerpt from an article about the May 1971 trial of Karenga for torturing two members of his group:
‘Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis’ mouth and placed against Miss Davis’ face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga, head of [United Slaves], also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said.
Karenga served only four to five years in a state prison.
Karenga is currently a black studies professor at California State University, Long Beach where the administration is apparently untroubled by the fact that this radical racist is also a convicted torturer of women. Despite the troubling past of Kwanzaa’s founder, leftists continue to shove this fake holiday down America’s throat every Christmas.
Woke liberals preach that Christmas in the classroom is intolerant and isolates students who don’t celebrate it. Yet Kwanzaa is permitted because the left argue it is a “cultural” holiday. Tons of teacher aids on the web provide elementary instructors with Kwanzaa coloring prints, songs, games, and crafts. But Kwanzaa isn’t actually a cultural holiday. It is best described as a political product of the 1960s, which should qualify it as inappropriate to impose on young and impressionable students.
The seven pillars of Kwanzaa (unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith), said College Fix editor Jennifer Kabbany, “reads like a communist manifesto.”
Patrick S. Poole also noted that the pillars’ claimed “cooperative economics” is an obvious Marxist reference. Poole noted the principle of “collective work and responsibility” is “why Masai and Zulu tribesmen still live in grass huts, wear animal skins and must walk everywhere.”
“It is a good thing that today we do not have to grow our food, build our houses and tend to our own lands,” wrote Poole. “Division of labor and specialization has fueled the prosperity and progress in the West that all Africans envy. And yet it is the express denial of these important economic tools that Kwanzaa lauds.”
“Karenga said [Kwanzaa] practitioners believe one’s racial identity ‘determines life conditions, life chances and self-understanding,’” wrote Ann Coulter.
Incoming Vice President Kamala Harris recently shared a “Happy Kwanzaa” video in which she says her favorite Kwanzaa pillar is self-determination, or “kujichagulia.” Harris says kujichagulia means “be, be and do. Be the person you want to be and do the things you want to do and do the things that need to be done” — whatever that means.
[….]
This holiday season, spend your time celebrating real holidays like Christmas or Hanukkah, not a fake holiday invented by a Marxist, racist, violent criminal.
While this is cute, it is how skeptics view this passage… as myth.I DO NOT.
The tombs were also opened and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And they came out of the tombs after His resurrection, entered the holy city, and appeared to many. (Matthew 27:52-53, HCSB)
On this Easter and a verse at church about the first-fruits and then ending with the new heaven and new earth… I remembered a book I read from many, many years ago. So I dug it out and excerpted the portion I was thinking of. Enjoy and happy “First-fruits”!
Grant R. Jeffrey, Heaven: The Last Frontier (Toronto, Ontario: Frontier Research Publications, 1990), 25-28.
The Firstfruits of Resurrection
The Bible uses the word “firstfruits” to describe this First Resurrection which leads to eternal life in Heaven. In Israel the Feast of Firstfruits happened in the spring of the year to celebrate the first fruits of the harvest. As the Jews brought these tokens of the bounty of the coming harvest to the Temple they were acknowledging that God was the provider of the harvest. This word “firstfruits” became a proper symbol of this first group of resurrected saints, a token of the great harvest when Jesus, the Lord of the Harvest, will come to gather the saints to meet Him in the air.
The writer of the book of Hebrews, after recounting the many acts of faith of Old Testament saints, told his readers about their life in Heaven. He declares “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1). They still live! They have been transformed and are now in Paradise, watching our walk of faith. Many of those Old Testament saints participated in this first stage of the First Resurrection, when Jesus rose from the grave.
Matthew 27:52-53 describes the amazing and exciting events that happened after Jesus rose from the dead, during the Feast of the Firstfruits: “And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His Resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.”
The various writers who observed this miraculous resurrection recounted it in their histories of the day. Jesus Christ had risen from the dead and won victory over death, not only for Himself as the Son of God, but also for those saints who had died centuries before and for all who would believe in Him as their Lord and Savior for centuries to follow.
Writings by Christians of that time have been collected in the Ante-Nicene Library. They describe that more than twelve thousand of these Old Testament saints walked through Galilee for forty days, appeared in Jerusalem before many, and later ascended into Heaven when Jesus Christ ascended to His Father.
This undeniable fact of Christ’s Resurrection and the resurrection of Old Testament saints who identified themselves to many Jews created a ground swell of belief in the claims of Christ that He was the Messiah and the true Son of God. The Lord proved forever that His power of resurrection and eternal life was available to all who would receive His offer of salvation. God will not force you to accept eternal life, nor will He force you to live in Heaven if you choose not to claim this “indescribable gift” (2 Corinthians 9:15) as Lord and Savior.
These saints who rose from the dead when Christ arose were the “firstfruits” of the first resurrection to eternal life in Heaven. It is no coincidence that this seventeenth day of Nisan in A.D. 32 was the Feast of the Firstfruits. Other notable events connected with resurrection also happened on this anniversary.
On this day the ark of Noah rested on Mount Ararat and the human race was resurrected following the flood. Almost a thousand years later, on this anniversary, Moses led the people of Israel through the Red Sea to be resurrected as a nation from the bondage of Egypt. Forty years later, Israel crossed the Jordan on the seventeenth day of Nisan, and the people enjoyed the firstfruits of the Promised Land. In the sovereignty of God, He caused Jesus Christ to rise from the dead and to bring these saints with Him into new life on this same day, during the Feast of Firstfruits.
These resurrected saints had bodies that were real. Several documents from this era claim that among those raised by Jesus were the Temple priest, Simeon, who had once waited in the Temple to see the baby Jesus, and his two sons who lived in Arimathaea. The records state their resurrection was specifically investigated since they were well-known to the Sanhedrin because of their Temple service as priests. After so many centuries, it is impossible to ascertain the documentary accuracy of these ancient texts, but it is interesting to note that they confirm the details of the event which Matthew recorded in his Gospel.
These records in the Ante-Nicene Library claim that during the investigation each of the sons of Simeon was separately and simultaneously interrogated. They both told the same story, namely that Christ had appeared to them in Hades, preached to all, and that those who had earlier responded to God were miraculously given new bodies and resurrected when Christ rose from the grave.
Matthew’s record of this event is tantalising in both what it reveals and what it conceals. He states that these Old Testament saints “went into the holy city and appeared to many.” Remember that all the events involved with the death and resurrection of Jesus happened in Jerusalem during the busiest season of the year, the Feast of Passover. Every Israelite male who was capable made an effort to come to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. Deuteronomy 16:2 records this as a command of God. Each home in the holy city had upper rooms which were supplied without cost to fellow Israelites who came on these pilgrimages. Therefore, during this Feast of Passover, the population of Jerusalem had swollen to five times the normal number. Flavius Josephus, the Jewish historian, says in his Jewish Wars that, according to Roman records, the number of sheep sacrificed during the Passover was 256,500. Since one sheep would serve as a sacrifice for five people, the conclusion is that during the time of Christ up to 1,250,000 people would come to the city during Passover instead of the usual 250,000 city dwellers.
Both the New Testament and letters of first-century Christians record that these resurrected saints identified themselves to the people as historical, biblical characters. With 1,000,000 visitors already in the city, obviously these resurrected saints must have appeared different in some way from other men, or they would simply have been lost in the crowd. Possibly their faces were transfigured with God’s reflected glory as the faces of Moses and Elijah were on the Mount of Transfiguration.
Those saints who rose with Christ did not die again, according to the writings of the first century. They were raptured to Heaven when Christ was raptured. These saints are now enjoying a “better that is, a heavenly country…for He has prepared a city for them” (Hebrews 11:16). These raptured believers are the firstfruits of the first resurrection, which is “the resurrection of life” (John 5:29).
Paul described this resurrection in his first epistle to the church at Thessalonica: “If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus” and if we are still alive on earth, “we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord” (4:14,17) in eternal life in the New Jerusalem forever. The rapture of the saints will be discussed in greater detail in the next chapter. Those who miss the first resurrection will also rise again, but they will partake of the dreaded second resurrection, which is a spiritual, eternal death in the Lake of Fire (Revelation 20:15).
It is defended regularly by Early church fathers such as:
Ignatius to the Trallians (c. AD 70-115)
“For Says the Scripture, ‘May bodies of the saints that slept arose,’ their graves being opened. He descended, indeed, into Hades alone, but He arose accompanied by a multitude” (chap. Ix, The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. I, p. 70).
Ignatius to the Magnesians (c. AD 70-115)
“…[T]herefore endure, that we may be found the disciples of Jesus Christ, our only Master—how shall we be able to live apart from Him, whose disciples the prophets themselves in the Spirit did wait for Him as their Teacher? And therefore He who they rightly waited for, being come, raised them from the dead” [Chap. IX] (Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds. The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. I (1885). Reprinted by Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, p. 62. Emphasis added in all these citations).
Irenaeus (c. AD 120-200)
“…He [Christ] suffered who can lead those souls aloft that followed His ascension. This event was also an indication of the fact that when the holy hour of Christ descended [to Hades], many souls ascended and were seen in their bodies” (Fragments from the Lost Writings of Irenaeus XXVIII, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. I, Alexander Roberts, ibid., 572-573).
Clement of Alexandria (c. AD 155-200)
“‘But those who had fallen asleep descended dead, but ascended alive.’ Further, the Gospel says, ‘that many bodies of those that slept arose,’—plainly as having been translated to a better state” (Alexander Roberts, ed. Stromata, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. II, chap. VI, 491).
This does not include the *multiple times the phrase was quoted by later church Fathers (Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, Cyril, etc). If one suggests that it was added to the text, they must first grapple with its extended use in these and other very early documents and decide how an error was placed within the text so early in transmission.
The below is most likely where the above responder got his quotes from:
*TO WIT…
This comes by way of an excellent dealing with the topic/Scripture, DEFENDING INERRANCY via Dr. Norman Geisler titled:
(Emphasis in the original) BTW, this section is titled: “A Survey Of The Great Teachers Of The Church On The Passage,” as, “early Church Fathers” are not the only persons listed below.
Tertullian (AD 160-222)
The Father of Latin Christianity wrote: “’And the sun grew dark at mid-day;’ (and when did it ‘shudder exceedingly’ except at the passion of Christ, when the earth trembled to her centre, and the veil of the temple was rent, and the tombs burst asunder?) ‘because these two evils hath My People done’” (Alexander Roberts, ed. An Answer to the Jews, Chap XIII, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, 170).
Hippolytus (AD 170-235)
“And again he exclaims, ‘The dead shall start forth from the graves,’ that is, from the earthly bodies, being born again spiritual, not carnal. For this he says, is the Resurrection that takes place through the gate of heaven, through which, he says, all those that do not enter remain dead” (Alexander Roberts, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5, The Refutation of All Heresy, BooK V, chap. 3, p. 54). The editor of the Ante-Nicene Fathers footnotes this as a reference to the resurrection of the saints in Matthew 27:52, 53 (in Note 6, p. 54.), as indeed it is.
Origen (AD 185-254)
Despite the fact that Origen was known for his Neoplatonic spritualizing of some biblical texts, Origen declared that Matthew 27 spoke of a literal historical resurrection of these saints. He wrote: “Now to this question, although we are able to show the striking and miraculous character of the events which befell Him, yet from what other source can we furnish an answer than the Gospel narratives, which state that ‘there was an earth quake, and that the rock were split asunder, and the tombs were opened, and the veil of the temple was rent in twain from top to bottom, an the darkness prevailed in the day-time, the sun failing to give light’” (Against Celsus, Book II, XXXIII. Alexander Roberts, ed. Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4, 444-445).
“But if this Celsus, who, in order to find matter of accusation against Jesus and the Christians, extracts from the Gospel even passages which are incorrectly interpreted, but passes over in silence the evidences of the divinity of Jesus, would listen to divine portents, let him read the Gospel, and see that even the centurion, and they who with him kept watch over Jesus, on seeing the earthquake, and the events that occurred [viz., the resurrection of the saints], were greatly afraid, saying, ‘This man was the Son of God’” (Ibid., XXVI, p. 446).
Cyril of Jerusalem (c. AD 315-c. 386)
Early Fathers in the East also verified the historicity of the Matthew text. Cyril of Jerusalem wrote: “But it is impossible, some one will say, that the dead should rise; and yet Eliseus [Elisha] twice raised the dead,–when he was live and also when dead…and is Christ not risen? … But in this case both the Dead of whom we speak Himself arose, and many dead were raised without having even touched Him. For many bodies of the Saints which slept arose, and they came out of the graves after His Resurrection, and went into the Holy City, (evidently this city in which we now are,) and appeared to many” (Catechetical Lectures XIV, 16, Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 7, p. 98).
Further, “I believe that Christ was also raised from the dead, both from the Divine Scriptures, and from the operative power even at this day of Him who arose,–who descended into hell alone, but ascended thence with a great company for He went down to death, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose through Him” (ibid., XIV, 18, vol. 7, p. 99).
Gregory of Nazianzus (c. AD 330-c. 389)
“He [Christ] lays down His life, but He has the power to take it again; and the veil rent, for the mysterious doors of Heaven are opened;5the rocks are cleft, the dead arise. He dies but he gives life, and by His death destroys death. He is buried, but He rises again. He goes down to Hell, but He brings up the souls; He ascends to Heaven, and shall come again to judge the quick and the dead, and to put to the test such words are yours” (Schaff, ibid., vol. VII, Sect XX, p. 309).
Jerome (AD 342-420)
Speaking of the Matthew 27 text, he wrote: “It is not doubtful to any what these great signs signify according to the letter, namely, that heaven and earth and all things should bear witness to their crucified Lord” (cited in Aquinas, Commentary on the Four Gospels, vol. I, part III: St.Matthew (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1841), 964.
“As Lazarus rose from the dead, so also did many bodies of the Saints rise again to shew forth the Lord’s resurrection; yet notwithstanding that the graves were opened, they did not rise again before the Lord rose, that He might be the first-born of the resurrection from the dead” (cited by Aquinas, ibid., 963).
Hilary of Poitiers (c. AD 315-c.357)
“The graves were opened, for the bands of death were loosed. And many bodies of the saints which slept arose, for illuminating the darkness of death, and shedding light upon the gloom of Hades, He robbed the spirits of death” (cited by Aquinas, ibid., 963).
Chrysostom (AD 347-407)
“When He [Christ] remained on the cross they had said tauntingly, He saved others, himself he cannot save. But what He should not do for Himself, that He did and more thanthat for the bodies of the saints.For if it was a great thing to raise Lazarus after four days, much more was it that they who had long slept should not shew themselves above; this is indeed a proof of the resurrection to come.But that it might not be thought that that which was done was an appearance merely, the Evangelist adds, and come out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many” (cited by Aquinas, ibid., 963-964).
St. Augustine (AD 354-430)
The greatest scholar at the beginning of the Middle Ages, St. Augustine, wrote: “As if Moses’ body could not have been hid somewhere…and be raised up therefrom by divine power at the time when Elias and he were seen with Christ: Just as at the time of Christ’s passion many bodies of the saints arose, and after his resurrection appeared, according to the Scriptures, to many in the holy city” (Augustine, On the Gospel of St. John, Tractate cxxiv, 3, Philip Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. VII, 448).
“Matthew proceeds thus: ‘And the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arise, and come out of the graves after the resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.’ There is no reason to fear that these facts, which have been related only by Matthew, may appear to be inconsistent with the narrative present by any one of the rest [of the Gospel writers)…. For as the said Matthew not only tells how the centurion ‘saw the earthquake,’ but also appends the words [in v. 54], ‘and those things that were done’…. Although Matthew has not added any such statement, it would still have been perfectly legitimate to suppose, that as many astonishing things did place at that time…, the historians were at liberty to select for narration any particular incident which they were severally disposed to instance as the subject of the wonder. And it would not be fair to impeach them with inconsistency, simply because one of them may have specified one occurrence as the immediate cause of the centurion’s amazement, while another introduces a different incident” (St. Augustine, The Harmony of the Gospels, Book III, chap. xxi in Schaff, ibid., vol. VI, p. 206, emphasis added).
St. Remigius (c. 438-c. 533) “Apostle of the Franks”
“But someone will ask, what became of those who rose again when the Lord rose. We must believe that they rose again to be witnesses of the Lord’s resurrection. Some have said that they died again, and were turned to dust, as Lazarus and the rest whom the Lord raised. But we must by no means give credit to these men’s sayings, since if they were to die again, it would be greater torment to them, than if they had not risen again. We ought therefore to believe without hesitation that they who rose from the dead at the Lord’s resurrection, ascended also into heaven together with Him” (cited in Aquinas, ibid., 964).
Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274)
As Augustine was the greatest Christian thinker at the beginning of the Middle Ages, Aquinas was the greatest teacher at the end. And too he held to the historicity of the resurrection of the saints in Matthew 27, as is evident from his citations from the Fathers (with approval) in his great commentary on the Gospels (The Golden Chain), as all the above Aquinas references indicate, including Jerome, Hilary of Poitiers, Chrysostom, and Remigius (see Aquinas, ibid., 963-964).
John Calvin (1509-1564)
The chain of great Christian teachers holding to the historicity of this text continued into the Reformation and beyond. John Calvin wrote:
Matt. 27.52. And the tombs were opened. This was a particular portent in which God testified that His Son had entered death’s prison, not to stay there shut up, but to lead all free who were there held captive…. That is the reason why He, who was soon to be shut in a tomb opened the tombs elsewhere. Yet we may doubt whether this opening of the tombs happened before the resurrection, for the resurrection of the saints which is shortly after added followed in my opinion the resurrection of Christ. It is absurd for some interpreters to image that they spent three days alive and breathing, hidden in tombs. It seems likely to me that at Christ’s death the tombs at once opened; at His resurrection some of the godly men received breath and came out and were seen in the city. Christ is called the Firstborn from the dead (1 Cor. 15:20; Col. 1:18)…. This reasoning agrees very well, seeing that the breaking of the tombs was the presage of new life, and the fruit itself, the effect, appeared three days later, as Christ rising again led other companions from the graves with Himself. And in this sign it was shown that neither His dying nor His resurrection were private to himself, but breathe the odour of life into all the faithful (Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, trans. A. W. Morrison. Eds. David and Thomas Torrance. Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1972, vol. 3, pp. 211-212).
CONCLUDING COMMENTS
Of course, there are some aspects of this Matthew 27 text of the saints on which the Fathers were uncertain. For example, there is the question as to whether the saints were resurrected before or after Jesus was and whether it was a resuscitation to a mortal body or a permanent resurrection to an immortal body. However, there is no reason for serious doubt that all the Fathers surveyed accepted the historicity of this account. Their testimony is very convincing for many reasons:
First, the earliest confirmation as to the historical nature of the resurrection of the saints in the Matthew 27 passage goes all the way back to Ignatius, a contemporary of the apostle John (who died. c. AD 90). One could not ask for an earlier verification that the resurrection of these saints than that of Ignatius (AD 70-115). He wrote: “He who they rightly waited for, being come, raised them from the dead”[Chap. IX]. And in the Epistle to the Trallians he added, “For Says the Scripture, ‘May bodies of the saints that slept arose,’ their graves being opened. He descended, indeed, into Hades alone, but He arose accompanied by a multitude” (chap.IX, The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. I, p. 70). The author who is a contemporary of the last apostle (John) is speaking unmistakably of the saints in Matthew 27 who were literally resurrected after Jesus was.
Second, the next testimony to the historicity of this passage is Irenaeus who knew Polycarp, a disciple of the apostle John. Other than the apostolic Fathers, Irenaeus is a good as any witness to the earliest post-apostolic understanding of the Matthew 27 text. And he made it clear that “many” persons “ascended and were seen in their bodies”(Fragments from the Lost Writings of Irenaeus XXVIII. Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. I, ibid., 572-573).
Third, there is a virtually unbroken chain of great Fathers of the church after Irenaeus (2nd cent.) who took this passage as historical (see above). Much of the alleged “confusion” and “conflict” about the text is cleared up when one understands that, while the tombs were opened at the time of the death of Christ, nonetheless, the resurrection of these saints did not occur until “after his resurrection” (Mt. 27:53, emphasis added) 7 since Jesus is the “firstfruits” (1 Cor. 15:23) of the resurrection.
Fourth, the great church Father St. Augustine stressed the historicity of the Matthew 27 text about the resurrection of the saints, speaking of them as “facts” and “things that were done” as recorded by the Gospel “historians” (St. Augustine, The Harmony of the Gospels, Book III, chap. xxi in Schaff, ibid., vol. VI, p. 206, emphasis added).
Fifth, many of the Fathers used this passage in an apologetic sense as evidence of the resurrection of Christ. This reveals their conviction that it was a historical event resulting from the historical event of the resurrection of Christ. Irenaeus was explicit on this point, declaring, “Matthew also, who had a still greater desire [to establish this point], took particular pains to afford them convincing proof that Christ is the seed of David…” (Irenaeus, ibid., 573).
Some, like Chrysostom, took it as evidence for the resurrection to come. “For if it was a great thing to raise Lazarus after four days, much more was it that they who had long slept should not shew themselves above; this is indeed a proof of the resurrection to come” (cited by Aquinas, ibid., 963-964).
Origen understood it as “evidences of the divinity of Jesus” (Origen, ibid., Book II, chap. XXXVI. Ante-Nicene Fathers, 446). None of these Fathers would have given it such apologetic weight had they not been convinced of the historicity of the resurrection of these saints after Jesus’ resurrection in Matthew 27.
Sixth, even the Church Father Origen, who was the most prone to allegorizing away literal events in the Bible, took this text to refer to a literal historical resurrection of saints. He wrote of the events in Matthew 27 that they are “the evidences of the divinity of Jesus” (Origen, ibid., Book II, chap. XXXVI. Ante-Nicene Fathers, 446).
Seventh, some of the great teachers of the Church were careful to mention that the saints rose as a result of Jesus’ resurrection which is a further verification of the historical nature of the resurrection of the saints in Mathew 27. Jerome wrote: “As Lazarus rose from the dead, so also did many bodies of the Saints rise again to shew forth the Lord’s resurrection; yet notwithstanding that the graves were opened, they did not rise again before the Lord rose, that He might be the first-born of the resurrection from the dead” (cited by Aquinas, ibid., 963). John Calvin added, “Yet we may doubt whether this opening of the tombs happened before the resurrection, for the resurrection of the saints which is shortly after added followed in my opinion the resurrection of Christ. It is absurd for some interpreters to image that they spent three days alive and breathing, hidden in tombs.” For “It seems likely to me that at Christ’s death the tombs at once opened; at His resurrection some of the godly men received breath and came out and were seen in the city. Christ is called the Firstborn from the dead (1 Cor. 15:20; Col. 1:18” (Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, vol. 3, pp. 211-212).
Eighth, St. Augustine provides an answer to the false premise of contemporary critics that there must be another reference to a New Testament event like this in order to confirm that it is historical. He wrote, “It would not be fair to impeach them with inconsistency, simply because one of them may have specified one occurrence as the immediate cause of the centurion’s amazement, while another introduces a different incident” (St. Augustine, ibid., emphasis added).
So, contrary to the claims of many current New Testament critics, the Matthew 27 account of the resurrection of the saints is a clear and unambiguous affirmation of the historicity of the resurrection of the saints. This is supported by a virtually unbroken line of the great commentators of the Early Church and through the Middle Ages and into the Reformation period (John Calvin). Not a single example was found of any Father surveyed who believed this was a legend. Such a belief is due to the acceptance of modern critical methodology, not to either a historical-grammatical exposition of the text or to the supporting testimony of the main orthodox teachers of the Church up to and through the Reformation Period.
Ninth, the impetus for rejecting the story of the resurrection of the saints in Matthew 27 is not based on good exegesis of the text or on the early support of the Fathers but is based on fallacious premises:
(1) First of all, there is an anti-supernatural bias beginning in the 17th century and lying beneath much of contemporary scholarship. But there is no philosophical basis for the rejection of miracles (see our Miracles and the Modern Mind, Grand Rapids:Baker, 1992), and there is no exegetical basis for rejecting it in this text. Indeed on the same ground one could reject the resurrection of Christ since it supernatural and is found in the same text.
(2) Further, there is also the fallacious premise of double reference which affirms that if an event is not mentioned at least twice in the Gospels, then its historicity is questioned. But on this grounds many other events must be rejected as well, such as, the story of Nicodemus (Jn. 3), the Samaritan woman at the well (Jn. 4), the story of Zaccchaeus (Lk. 19), the resurrection of Lazarus (Jn. 11), and even the birth of Christ in the stable and the angel chorus (Lk. 2), as well as many other events in the Gospels. How many times does an event have to be mentioned in a first century piece of literature based on reliable witnesses in order to be true?
(3) There is another argument that seems to infect much of contemporary New Testament scholarship on this matter. It is theorized that an event like this, if literal, would have involved enough people and graves to have drawn significant evidence of it in a small place like Jerusalem. Raymond Brown alludes to this, noting that “…many interpreters balk at the thought of many known risen dead being seen in Jerusalem—such a large scale phenomenon should have left some traces in Jewish and/or secular history!” 8 However, at best this is simply the fallacious Argument from Silence. What is more, “many” can mean only a small group, not hundreds of thousands. Further, the story drew enough attention to make it into one of the canonical Gospels, right along side of the resurrection of Christ and with other miraculous events. In brief, it is in a historical book; it is said to result from the resurrection of Christ; it was cited apologetically by the early Fathers as evidence of the resurrection of Christ and proof of the resurrection to come. No other evidence is needed for its authenticity.
This was a “clarification letter” written to my son’s fifth-grade teacher. The in-class activity was to break the kids up into groups and learn about the various holidays, so I politely asked that my son sit in on the Hanukah or Christmas table, as he had been assigned to the Kwanzaa table. I gave some reasoning behind this decision – as I often do about most decisions I make (my wife would beg to differ).
The reason I felt it necessary to clarify the original letter was because the teacher gave the original letter over to the Principle, and I heard through the grape-vine that the Principle called the letter, ergo me, racist. While I sympathized with the Principle a bit… because, well, I “look” like a racist (shaved head and all)… I just couldn’t let this pass by. I am sure that this sixties – Berkley attending – gentleman had gotten away with such a canard before, he unfortunately hadn’t researched his statement in my particular case enough.
First of all, while I look like a racist, I in fact have a wonderful black grandmother. Not only do I have a black grandmother, I also grew up in Detroit, where white kids at the public school and in my neighborhood were a minority. I didn’t just “have a black friend,” I, in fact, had very few white friends… my friends in other words had “a white friend.” Not only did the cultural and geographic peoples and places have an impact on me, but so to did theology. You see, I am a young earth creationist. Young earther’s believe that Adam and Eve were the originators of the human population and that from these first persons came the darker (say, Ethiopians) and person’s like myself (Irish). The Hebrew word for “Adam” is rooted in the word meaning “red-clay.” In fact, out of the 220-or-so stories of a world-wide flood from various cultures (Australian, southern/central/northern Native-Americans, Chinese, Russian, Welsch/British, etc., etc.) about half have a creation story of the first man being made as being red in color.
Not only did this principle not know my history or theology, he apparently didn’t realize that I quoted mainly from either black authors as well as from the L. A. Times for the letter. In fact, after having a sit down meeting with my son’s fifth-grade principle, I realized that he had not even read the original paper, he just assumed that any person who spoke out against Kwanzaa (whether rationally or illogically) was a bigot.
Unfortunately this old-school “sweeping-under-the-carpet” argument that I’m sure guided this gentlemen through many a brushing off of a parent just didn’t work in this case.
I made sure he read this second letter.
Enjoy, Papa Giorgio
Kwanzaa ~ Not Just Another Holiday!
A Letter from a Concerned Parent
(Fifth-Grade/2002 ~ updated 11-11-05)
Who Created Kwanzaa?
Kwanzaa was invented by Ron Kerenga in 1966 as a means to foster and help the Black Nationalist movement in their goal to segregate and separate the races. Ron Kerenga, thus, views people of Jewish decent, much like the Nation of Islam, as “devils,” to be stamped out like weeds. His views towards whites are very similar ~ racist, in-other-words. Let’s look at some of this history.
Kerenga founded and led the United Slaves, a Black Nationalist organization, which got into gun battles with the Black Panthers on occasion with people murdered as a result.
The biggest dispute between the United Slaves and the Panthers was for the leadership of the new African Studies Department at UCLA, with each group backing a different candidate. Panthers John Jerome Huggins and Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter verbally attacked Karenga at the meeting, which infuriated Karenga’s followers. After the meeting ended, two United Slaves members, George and Larry Stiner, reportedly confronted Huggins and Carter in a hallway, shooting and killing them.[1] [2]
In 1970, Kerenga and two of his followers were arrested by authorities for the torture of two of his female followers, Debra Jones and Gail Davis. Kerenga did time in prison for disrobing these two women at gunpoint and having them beaten severely. Kerenga told them that “Vietnamese torture is nothing compared to what we know,” whereupon he forced a hot soldering iron into the mouth of one while the other had a toe squeezed in a vice.
The Los Angeles Times described the events:
“Deborah Jones, who once was given the title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electric cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes at gunpoint. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis’ mouth and placed against Miss Davis’ face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vice. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said.” [1]
Karenga was sentenced to one-to-ten years in prison on counts of felonious assault and false imprisonment. At his trial, the question arose as to Karenga’s sanity. The psychiatrist’s report stated:
“This man now represents a picture which can be considered both paranoid and schizophrenic with hallucinations and illusions, inappropriate affect, disorganization, and impaired contact with the environment.” The psychiatrist reportedly observed that Karenga talked to his blanket and imaginary persons, and he believed he’d been attacked by dive-bombers.
Eight years later, California State University Long Beach named Karenga the head of its Black Studies Department. By this time, Karenga had “repented” of his black nationalism and had become just a harmless garden variety Marxist. This must be our esteemed university system’s idea of repentance![3]
How terrifying for these two women! According to the July 27, 1971 Los Angeles Times, a psychological profile of Kerenga described him “as a danger to society who is in need of prolonged custodial treatment in prison.” The profile noted that Kerenga, while legally sane, was “confused and not in contact with reality.”
The “seven principles” of Kwanzaa that Kerenga created as part of the Nguzo Saba are little more than Marxism transposed into afrocentric key.[4]Therefore, the Kwanzaa celebration, unlike – for instance – the Martin Luther King holiday, celebrates separatism and Black Nationalism. It would be the same as the school teaching and celebrating a holiday created by the Ku Klux Klan, or an offshoot thereof. (I would just as vehemently speak out against this as well, for when the school sets its seal of approval on a celebration, you teach all its goals and aims ~ whether religious or political.)
Created Equal
My point is that I teach my children that all men are created equal and that all men are equal in the eyes of God. This is what Christmas is all about! Jesus came to save the world (John 3:16-17), God’s Word has always stated that He has “made of one blood [i.e. from one man, Adam] all nations of men” (Acts 17:26, cf. 1 Cor. 15:45). Kerenga created Kwanzaa to shun the world and display racism as their main goal for the holiday season, in place of Christmas. In fact, when asked why he designed Kwanzaa to take place around Christmas, Karenga explained, “People think it’s African, but it’s not. I came up with Kwanzaa because black people wouldn’t celebrate it if they knew it was American. Also, I put it around Christmas because I knew that’s when a lot of bloods would be partying.” Great values!
Again, trying to tie in African culture and beliefs with this holiday celebration is a stretch, to say the least. Kwanzaa was created in 1966 by a revolutionary Marxist and racist man – Kerenga – who took here and there from the African culture as well as the Menorah from Judaism[5], and created a new celebration with socialist/Marxist overtones.
I have long-standing family friends who are native-born Africans (Kenyans), who have given their entire life to the mission field. They vehemently oppose this holiday because it creates subversion between the races when love is needed most. Neither do they find a connection with it and African culture. Mason Weaver points out the bottom line:
Professor Ron Karenga made up Kwanzaa in 1961 to counter the Western celebration of Christmas. Dr. Karenga made up a word, made up its definitions and then made up the elements we recognize today as “traditions.” First, “Kwanzaa” does not spell “first fruits” in Swahili or any other language. When I interviewed Dr. Karenga a few years ago, he admitted that the word was changed from the Swahili word “Kwanza” to “Kwanzaa” because he needed seven letters to represent his seven children. Because I spoke Swahili (and he apparently did not) Dr. Karenga was forced to admit that the word “Kwanza” was a Swahili adverb for “first,” and he added the extra “a” and “fruits” because it fit his story. And for all of you who wish to celebrate “first fruits,” the proper Swahili noun would be “Limbuko,” which would have given Dr. Karenga his seven letters for his children had he understood the language. (from Chapter 7 of It’s Okay to Leave the Plantation)
(Updated quote) Ann Coulter, likewise, points out the bottom line:
It is a fact that Kwanzaa was invented in 1966 by a black radical FBI stooge, Ron Karenga — a.k.a. Dr. Maulana Karenga — founder of United Slaves, a violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers. He was also a dupe of the FBI.
In what was ultimately a foolish gamble, during the madness of the ’60s, the FBI encouraged the most extreme black nationalist organizations in order to discredit and split the left. The more preposterous the group, the better.
By that criterion, Karenga’s United Slaves was perfect. In the annals of the American ’60s, Karenga was the Father Gapon, stooge of the czarist police.
[….]
United Slaves were proto-fascists, walking around in dashikis, gunning down Black Panthers and adopting invented “African” names. (That was a big help to the black community: How many boys named “Jamal” are currently in prison?)
It’s as if David Duke invented a holiday called “Anglika,” which he based on the philosophy of “Mein Kampf” — and clueless public school teachers began celebrating the made-up, racist holiday.
Origins vs. Current Beliefs
Do the millions of black Americans who celebrate Kwanzaa think of it as the ritualization of socialism? Doubtful. Do they object to the mainstreaming of Kwanzaa symbols and products? Probably not. Do they know anything about Karenga and his past? It doesn’t seem so. When Karenga spoke at the Million-Man March, he went virtually unnoticed. However, the holiday’s origins in a terrible time and with a terrible person are certainly relevant to its legitimacy.
Neutrality?
I do not mind if the school teaches my son true history, which includes the history of Africa, as well as other Continents. However, having said this, I do not pay my hard earned tax dollars for the school to meet some need of trying to teach and include all the cultural holidays of the world, which apparently must include racist holidays founded right here in California’s radical [recent] past. That is not the schools job; it is mine, if I so choose!
This is why this subject is so “political,” you have in a sense undermined my family’s values and put it upon yourselves to teach my son “multi-culturalism” in a “politically-correct” fashion. This, then, requires the school to make value judgments on how to teach this to my child. Which is why I pointed out that by doing so, you have strayed from being neutral to taking a position on how to present other peoples cultural mores (which now includes racism as mainstream) to my child (in rejection of America’s cultural mores… which is Christmas and Hanukah, i.e., Judeo-Christian).
Back to the Original Premise!
So again, I restate my three points in the original letter[6] on why I asked to have my son join either the Christmas table or Hanukah table in class; in contradistinction to Kwanzaa or the Chinese New Year:
It [Kwanzaa] promotes and supports ethnic separation and segregation. For instance, Hallmark Cards and Giant Foods have a policy of any items related to Kwanzaa be produced and sold only by blacks (William A. Henry III, “The Politics of Separation,” Time Magazine [fall 1993]: 75).
This was also the intent of the founder of Kwanzaa, Dr. Maulana Kerenga, separation, not healing. Christmas promotes the latter.
It is not practiced equally with the traditional (Judeo-Christian) practices. For example: one public schools students and parents were asked to come in and share with the class about Kwanzaa, and other religious holiday practices of their Buddhist faith and Muslim faith as well as the traditions and practices of Hanukkah. When one parent attempted to share the true meaning Christmas, using a Nativity scene as a visual aid, the presentation was prohibited. (Ravi Zacharias, Deliver Us from Evil: Restoring the Soul in a Disintegrating Culture, p. 57).
It takes a political and moral stance. This type of multi-cultural “politically-correct” inclusive teaching takes a moral and political stance that requires value judgments to be made that are at variance with my (and many others) particular political and moral stance on afro-centric history and teaching… as well as putting one set of moral pre-suppositions (Marxism, racism, segregation) above others. Thus, taking a non-neutral position.
[2] Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson (a black-American) is the Founder and President of BOND (the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny, www.bondinfo.org). He is also the author of the book SCAM: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America. For more information, please call 1-800-411-BOND (2663), or e-mail [email protected].
[3] Ibid.
[4] Afrocentrism is a political movement that believes Greek culture was borrowed from Black Africans. Among others on the Afrocentrist side is Emeritus Professor of Near Eastern History Martin Bernal who wrote Black Athena. Among others opposing him is Mary Lefkowitz, classical scholar and author of Not Out of Africa who denies the Greeks stole culture from Black Egyptians. There are some moderate positions, but the whole Afrocentrism controversy is based on concepts of race and racism, and is therefore very difficult to discuss without enraging someone.
[5] Kerenga believes that the black race are the real Jewish peoples, much like Christian Identity – the religious movement of the KKK – believes the white race to be the true Jewish peoples. The bottom line is this: both views are founded in racist ideology!
[6] Carlotta Morrow, the main author I quoted from heavily in my first letter to the school, (a black-American woman) began her research on Kwanzaa in the early 1980’s after her sister, who was a member of Dr. Karenga’s black activist group called the United Slaves (US) Organization, denounced her faith in Christ, claiming that Christianity was a white man’s religion.
Determined to find out the teachings that persuaded her sister’s complete change in faith, she went with her sister to “the Center” to hear what was being taught. She was deeply disturbed at the “us””white man” against the attitude that seeped through the meetings, and especially at the negativity directed toward the Christian and Jewish religions.
Seeing the spiritual and racial harm being subtly encouraged, Carlotta began her trek in learning, researching and exposing the real truth and spiritual seductiveness of the principles behind Kwanzaa.
She has had articles on Kwanzaa appear in the Southern California Christian Times, the Twin City Christian Magazine of Minnesota, Tout Timoun Nou Yo also of Minnesota, (a quarterly for families with children adopted from Haiti) and has been a guest on radio talk shows in the Southern California area which included an on-air discussion with Dr. Karenga on the Mason Weaver Show of KPRZ in San Diego, where the author resides.
* Following are some highly recommended resources for the historian/sociologist at heart:
1) Tunde Adeleke, The Case Against Afrocentrism (Jackson, MS: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2009);
2) Stephen Howe, Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes (New York, NY: Verso, 1999);
3) Mary Lefkowitz, Not Out Of Africa: How “Afrocentrism” Became An Excuse To Teach Myth As History (New York, NY: Basic Books); AND, Black Athena Revisited (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press; First Edition, 1996)
The Obama White House extended Holiday greetings to all those celebrating Kwanzaa. Kwanzaa was created in 1966 as a holiday celebration of African culture and heritage — however, as the above and below show well is that this is a racist holiday thru-and-thru.
The Hill reported: Obamas extend Kwanzaa greetings
President Obama and first lady extended their “warmest wishes” to those celebrating Kwanzaa, the week-long holiday as it began Saturday.
“Today begins a week-long celebration of African-American heritage and culture through family and community festivities,” the couple said in a statement.
“Kwanzaa’s seven principles – unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith – are also shared values that bind us as Americans.”
Ann Coulter recently wrote about the origins of Kwanzaa atTOWNHALL: Happy Kwanzaa! The Holiday Brought to You by the FBI
I will not be shooting any Black Panthers this week because I am Kwanza-reform, and we are not that observant. Kwanzaa, celebrated exclusively by white liberals, is a fake holiday invented in 1966 by black radical/FBI stooge Ron Everett — aka Dr. Maulana Karenga, founder of United Slaves, the violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers. In the annals of the American ’60s, Karenga was the Father Gapon, stooge of the czarist police.
In what was ultimately a foolish gambit, during the madness of the ’60s, the FBI encouraged the most extreme black nationalist organizations in order to discredit and split the left. The more preposterous the group, the better. By that criterion, Karenga’s United Slaves was perfect.
Despite modern perceptions that blend all the black activists of the ’60s, the Black Panthers did not hate whites. Although some of their most high-profile leaders were drug dealers and murderers, they did not seek armed revolution.
Those were the precepts of Karenga’s United Slaves. The United Slaves were proto-fascists, walking around in dashikis, gunning down Black Panthers and adopting invented “African” names.
And hasn’t that been a huge help to the black community?
It’s as if David Duke invented a holiday called “Anglika,” which he based on the philosophy of “Mein Kampf” — and clueless public school teachers began celebrating the made-up, racist holiday.
[….]
Now we know: The FBI fueled the bloody rivalry between the Panthers and United Slaves. In one barbarous outburst, Karenga’s United Slaves shot two Black Panthers to death on the UCLA campus: Al “Bunchy” Carter and John Huggins. Karenga himself served time, a useful stepping-stone for his current position as a black studies professor at California State University at Long Beach.
[….]
Back to the esteemed Cal State professor: Karenga’s invented holiday is a nutty blend of schmaltzy ’60s rhetoric, black racism and Marxism. The seven principles of Kwanzaa are the very same seven principles of the Symbionese Liberation Army, another invention of the Worst Generation.
In 1974, Patty Hearst, kidnap victim-cum-SLA revolutionary, posed next to the banner of her alleged captors, a seven-headed cobra. Each snakehead stood for one of the SLA’s revolutionary principles: Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba and Imani. These are the exact same seven “principles” of Kwanzaa. And here’s something interesting: Kawaida, Kwanzaa and Kuumba are also the only three Kardashian sisters not to have their own shows on the E! Network.
Kwanzaa praises collectivism in every possible area of life — economics, work, personality, even litter removal. (“Kuumba: Everyone should strive to improve the community and make it more beautiful.”) It takes a village to raise a police snitch. When Karenga was asked to distinguish Kawaida, the philosophy underlying Kwanzaa, from “classical Marxism,” he essentially said that, under Kawaida, we also hate whites.
While taking the “best of early Chinese and Cuban socialism” — excluding, one hopes, mass murder, forced abortions, imprisonment of homosexuals and forced labor — Karenga said Kawaida practitioners believe one’s racial identity “determines life conditions, life chances and self-understanding.”
There’s an inclusive philosophy for you!
Kwanzaa was the result of a ’60s psychosis grafted onto the black community with the tacit encouragement of the FBI. Liberals have become so mesmerized by multicultural gibberish that they have forgotten the real history of Kwanzaa and Karenga’s United Slaves — the violence, the Marxism, the insanity…..
CONSERVATIVE FIRING LINE has a good post on Kwanzaa: “Kwanzaa: A Fraud Holiday With A Racist Goal, Created By Criminal Madman”
My wife said “Santa just went on the naughty list,” and that “he is wearing the wrong suit, he should be wearing a Grinch suit.” This is by way of ACE OF SPADES:
All this little patriot wanted for Christmas was a nerf gun, and this anti-gun mall Santa chose to push his anti-freedom beliefs on this little boy and made him cry.
Thanksgiving Proclamation New York, 3 October 1789
~ George Washington ~
By the President of the United States of America. a Proclamation.
Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor—and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”
Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be—That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks—for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation—for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war—for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed—for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted—for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.
[A]nd also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions—to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually—to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed—to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord—To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us—and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.
Given under my hand at the City of New-York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.
(Editor’s note: A recent federal bill memorializing as a National Historic Trail what has come to be known as the Cherokee Indian Trail of Tears is based on false history, argues William R. Higginbotham. In this article, the Texas-based writer delves into the historic record and concludes that about 840 Indians not the 4,000 figure commonly accepted died in the 1837-38 trek west; that the government-financed march was conducted by the Indians themselves; and that the phrase “Trail of Tears” was a label that was added 70 years later under questionable circumstances.) The problem with some of our accounts of history is that they have been manipulated to fit conclusions not borne out by facts. Nothing could be more intellectually dishonest. This is about a vivid case in point.
Happens every Thanksgiving, doesn’t? Some bleeding heart liberal you’re “related to” gets on their moral high Crazy Horse and lectures about how horribly rotten the white man was to the Native Americans. Which is why this year we’re throwing in the tomahawk. Time to scalp the facts about the Indians. Feathers not dots….
MYTH: THE NATIVE AMERICANS WERE A PEACEFUL CULTURE TO WHOM THE CONCEPT OF WAR WAS FOREIGN
FACT: MANY WERE BRUTAL, CONQUERING ***HOLES
Native Americans warred with each other since, forever. Sometimes it was over hunting or farming grounds, sometimes revenge, sometimes to steal, sometimes to kill. I don’t say this to demonize them, they were no different than any other regressive, Neolithic cultures on other continents.
But the truth is that the only way settlers were able to conquer this land was through the help of Native Americans who teamed up with them to settle the score with the other, more assholish tribes. You think Cortes was able to conquer with only 500 Conquisadors. Course not, it took 50,000 ANGRY allied Native Americans who’d had it up to here with being enslaved and forced to carry gold for the other, Native Aztecs.
Some of of the Indian tribes were the most brutal in existence.
They practiced enslavement, rape, cannibalism, would sometimes target women and children, tribes like the Commanchees would butcher babies and roast people alive… and by the way, where do you think we LEARNED scalping?
MYTH: NATIVE AMERICANS WERE AN ADVANCED SOCIETY
TRUTH: NOT EVEN CLOSE
Smell that? It’s your sacred cow being torched. After I scalped her, of course. Unlike Rome, Greece, China, or pretty much any great empire which had already existed at that time, the Native Americans didn’t have advanced plumbing, transportation, mathematics or really… anything that led to the iphone on which you’re currently watching this. That whole beautiful “horseback Indian” culture you read about? It’s a lie because they hadn’t even domesticated horses. Not only that, but they didn’t even use the WHEEL. No really. 1400 AD… no wheel.
Even more reason that, when you’re that far behind, the clash of civilizations is going to be THAT much more drastic when the new wheel-using world catches up to you.
MYTH: THE SETTLERS DELIBERATELY INFECTED NATIVES WITH SMALLPOX BLANKETS TO WHIPE THEM OUT
TRUTH: ONLY IDIOTS COULD POSSIBLY BELIEVE THIS
Think about it. You really believe Europeans waged microbial, biological warfare… long before discovery, mass acceptance or even close to an understanding of advanced germ theory?
So it’s not true. You can look forever for historical accounts of mass smallpox blankets being pajamagrammed to the peaceful Indians, but you won’t find them. But there is SOME truth to the myth, which brings us to our final point.
MYTH: EUROPEANS COMMITTED MASS GENOCIDE. KILLING EVERY NATIVE AMERICAN FOR SPORT
TRUTH: NOT EVEN CLOSE
However, it is estimated that at high as 95% of pre-Columbian Native Americans were in fact killed off by disease, WHY? Because Europeans introduced new diseases to which the Native Americans hadn’t developed an immunity not only with THEMSELVES but now contact with animals like again HORSES which Native Americans hadn’t domesticated. Again, because they were such an archaic, unadvanced society.
Sure there were plenty of bloody, horrendous, unimaginable battles that occurred, and generally when it comes to neoloithic tribes and more advances settlers, the guys with the boom-boom sticks win. This isn’t exclusive to America or all that uncommon.
But Europeans were not hellbent on wiping out Native Americans, they were actually encouraged to bring the people into European culture and convert them to Christianity. Plus, inter-marrying was incredibly common. How else do you explain Johnny Depp, Angalina Jolie, Kid Cudi and even imaginary Elizabeth Warren claiming to be 1/16th Cherokee?
Killing people is bad. But so is milking, misleading and guilting all future generations for crimes they didn’t commit. Yep, Europeans conquered the Native Americans, created a Constitutional Republic, and advanced in mere centuries what Natives couldn’t do for thousands of years here on the plot of land that is America. So close this smartphone window, go enjoy your turkey and tell your social justice warrior cousin at the table to shut that mustached, single-origin-coffee drinking-hole. Or just… hand him a smallpox napkin.
SOURCES
Indigenous Americans didn’t invent the wheel: QUORA
Native Americans were introduced to horses by Spaniards: SCIENCE NEWS
A friend wrote this followed by a link to an article by Dennis Prager on her Facebook:
Merry Christmas! It’s happened gradually, we inure ourselves to it but most of this commentary is true. It used to be all about Christmas. Still is for me.
This got some responses, the following two are what I primarily responded to (remember, these are her friends and family, so they are speaking more in a ribbing manner rather than a serious effe-u tone… but they are still challenges worthy of response):
I call bullshit. I have yet to find the place that anyone on the left or otherwise has told someone they can’t say Merry Christmas! Or a school that doesn’t say the pledge. It’s all bullshit. B and in B, S as in S.
Whaaaat? Who doesn’t like Christmas?? Never heard of such a thing from anyone I have ever known. It’s all bs. What will they come up with next?? Can hardly wait!!!!!!!!
There are many examples of this war. It started in the Soviet Union… And has crept into the New Left in watered down versions. Freedom From Atheism Foundation has filed many lawsuits (most activist atheists reside on the Left BTW).
I said two things here… I noted that most atheists reside on the Left, and I brought up FFRF’s lawsuits.
Here are two examples to bolster my statements, the first via THE BLAZE:
…The organization also released the results of a survey that it conducted among its members. That poll, commissioned online between June and December 2015, garnered 8,000 responses, finding that 96 percent respondents are registered to vote. It should be noted that the results are restricted to member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation and may not be representative of atheists more broadly.
Secular members were asked to identify their political persuasion, with 29 percent selecting “Democratic” and 36 percent selecting “progressive/liberal.” While that totals 65 percent, 21 percent selected Independent. On the flip side, only 1 percent identified as Republicans, with 3 percent selecting “Socialist/Marxist” and 3 percent selecting “Green.”
For the seventh year in a row, the anti-religion activists at the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) have erected an outrageous sign outside the Illinois state house denouncing Christmas and Christianity.
Dan Barker, FFRF co-president, said his group is opposed to the nativity scenes and other Christian symbols that appear on public spaces during the holiday season. So the atheist organization wants equal space to spread its anti-religion rhetoric during the Christmas season.
The Illinois state house grounds now feature an offensive red and green sign that reads, “At this season of the Winter Solstice, may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”
And the FFRF is not stopping at Illinois.
FFRF has announced plans to erect similar signs at the Texas and Florida state houses.
This isn’t the only attack to remove Christmas from the public view, either. Already this month the anti-religion organization put up a “Reasons Greetings” (an attack on the term Season’s Greetings) display at the Warren, Michigan city hall. The organization also recently announced a lawsuit that has banned the Concord Community Schools in Indiana from performing their traditional live nativity scene at the school’s 2015 Christmas Spectacular holiday concert.
And as an example of a change from “Happy Holidays” back to “Merry Christmas” is this (2006):
Wal-Mart has told its employees that it’s OK to once again greet shoppers by saying “Merry Christmas” this holiday season instead of the generic “Happy Holidays.”
CNN confirmed that Wal-Mart will announce Thursday that it plans to use the phrase “Merry Christmas” in products and around its stores this holiday season…..
HERE is another 2 examples within the past few years (2015 and 2018)
Santa Claus is banned. The Pledge of Allegiance is no longer recited. “Harvest festival” has replaced Thanksgiving, and “winter celebrations” substitute for Christmas parties.
New principal Eujin Jaela Kim has given PS 169 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, a politically correct scrub-down, to the dismay of teachers and parents…..
An elementary school principal in Nebraska was placed on leave after telling teachers to avoid decorating their classrooms with Christmas-themed ornaments so as not to offend those who don’t celebrate the holiday.
[….]
Decorations that included Santa, Christmas trees, reindeer, green and red items and even candy canes, however, were not acceptable for the elementary school.
The candy canes, according to KETV, were prohibited because Sinclair deemed them to have religious significance. “Historically, the shape is a ‘J’ for Jesus. The red is for the blood of Christ, and the white is a symbol of his resurrection,” she reportedly wrote. “This would also include different colored candy canes.”….
These are not conservatives banning such things. And while many Democrats still celebrate Christmas, all of these “attacks” (political correctness) come either from Lefties or an adherence to a PC culture.
Two more examples before I go to bed. One comes from the Left-wing magazine Salon, where Chauncey Devega “states that the very idea that there is a deliberate effort to denigrate Christmas is a call for white supremacy,” quoting her via AMERICAN THINKER:
There is another dimension to the ‘War on Christmas’ and the broader right-wing obsession with the culture wars. Both are examples of white identity politics and a deep desire (and effort) to maintain the cultural and political power of white right-wing Christians over all other groups. In many ways, the ‘War on Christmas’ is actually a proxy war for white supremacy.
And another example is when Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, while on Fox and Friends, opened up his greeting with, “Merry Christmas,” the Left went wild. here are two articles discussing this.
The point is is that these are people who either vote Democrat or in some cases are elected Democrat officials. No conservative I can think of demand a secession to “Merry Christmas,” or the “Pledge of Allegiance,” etc.
This was the story linked at Drudge (2012), via the DAILY NEWS:
Residents in a Newhall senior apartment complex are protesting an order from management to remove their beloved Christmas tree from the community room because, they were told, it’s a religious symbol.
On Tuesday, Tarzana-based JB Partners Group Inc. sent a memo to staff at The Willows senior apartment building demanding they take down Christmas trees and menorahs in communal areas.
The company has owned The Willows for four years, but this is the first time it’s given such a directive to staff.
On Wednesday, two dozen residents in the 75-resident complex gathered in the lobby to place a neon green sign that read: “Please Save Our Tree.” “We’re all angry. We want that tree,” said Fern Scheel, who has lived at the complex for nearly two years. “Where’s our freedom? This is ridiculous.”
The Willows staff and JB Property supervisor Wethanie Law declined to comment.
JB Partners Group owns apartments in California, Oklahoma and Colorado.
Resident Edna Johnson said Law had told her the tree had to be taken down because it’s a religious symbol.
“We could put out Easter baskets, have turkey for Thanksgiving but no tree for Christmas because it has Christ’s name in the beginning of Christmas,” Johnson said.
Frances Schaeffer, who is Jewish, said she doesn’t understand the property management company’s stance.
“This tree is a symbol of reverence that we can all enjoy regardless of our religious beliefs,” she said.
Max Greenis who has lived at the complex for a year with his wife, Bonnie, said he’s considering withholding his rent in protest of what he calls an abomination of the holiday tradition.
“I’ve got grandkids and they come here and now they’ll ask, `Grandpa, where’s the Christmas tree?’ Then I’ll have to explain that someone said we couldn’t have one. What kind of message is that sending to the kids?” Greenis asked.
After the protest – really more of a gathering over coffee and doughnuts to angrily air their concerns – some residents got so riled that they began taking the tree apart themselves. Some even took parts of the artificial tree back to their apartments in defiance.
“For some folks this is the only Christmas tree they’ll have all season,” resident Robert Troudeau said. “There are people overseas fighting for our freedoms and dying and we’re here fighting over things like this. It’s a shame.”
Some more PLEDGE examples by way of responding to one of the original challenges, even though I had a two-fer above:
And just like that, the Santa Barbara City College Board of Trustees has eliminated the Pledge of Allegiance from all future meetings.
The reason?
The pledge is apparently “steeped in expressions of nativism and white nationalism.”
Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools is unconstitutional, a federal court judge ruled today, saying that the pledge’s reference to “under God” violated school children’s right to be “free from a coercive requirement to affirm God.”
The suit is the second by Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow, who has been trying for five years to remove the pledge from public classrooms.
…CNN reported how, two decades ago in 2000, atheist attorney Michael Newdow filed a lawsuit against Elk Grove Unified School District in California because academic officials were forcing students to listen to the words “under God” even if they were not reciting them, and so violating the First Amendment. The case made it to the Supreme Court in 2004 where it was dismissed for lack of standing
In 2013, the San Francisco Chronicle article, “Many schools skip Pledge of Allegiance,” reported: “Examples abound [in California] of schools that don’t include the pledge as part of the day or at some point in instruction.”
Earlier this year the Santa Barbara City College Board decided to ban the Pledge of Allegiance from its meetings because they believed the phrase “one nation under God” is “steeped in expressions of nativism and white nationalism.”…
(DAILY CALLER) Fox & Friends guest Mark Steyn criticized the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) Thursday after it omitted President Donald Trump’s scene from the movie “Home Alone 2” during December airings.
Conservative commentator Mark Steyn spoke on Fox & Friends about the omission, accusing the broadcast corporation of being “terrified” about reminding people “just how deranged his [Trump’s] opponents are.”
“I think they’re actually terrified that people will remember that before [Trump] was the new Hitler, he was a beloved mainstream cultural figure”
