Modern Warfare: US battleship, 1984. Source: Wikipedia

In our previous posts, we’ve seen how believers prayed during the course of World War II. Christians were praying for God’s will to be done, the gospel of Jesus Christ to be preserved and the deliverance of Britain and Europe as a whole.

There is nothing good about war and that’s why most of us hate it, especially what it does to children, wives, innocent people and the bodies of those in combat. Willy Peter Reese was German soldier on the Eastern front in World War II.

He ultimately lost his life there but he left his writings which eventually were published many years later. Rees was wounded, and was sent to a medical station to get help…

I sat in a room with two hundred naked soldiers. Soldiers with frostbite on their hands and feet, bullet woods all over their bodies, shrapnel everywhere, swellings, and, a few, not many, with mental illnesses. Two doctors and two nurses applied bandages in this depot of human misery produced by war.

The doctors did duty for a week at a stretch, the nurses changed daily, since even the hardest hearts and strongest nerves couldn’t stand more of that pussy, rotting, bleeding chaos of pain, devastation, and screams.

I saw flesh fall from dead toes and pale bones glimmer through…..dribble out of festering woods, faces disfigured by tumors, dead skin hanging in ribbons from burn woods, and the stumps of amputated arms and legs sticking out grotesquely and spectrally from bloodless trunks.

Whoever had seen this and dared to speak just one single word in favor of this war was no human; he was worse than a criminal.

After the prophet Isaiah gives a picture of how Jerusalem’s gates shall lament and mourn because of the men who would fall by the sword and the mighty men in battle, he goes on say that in that day seven women will take hold of one man, saying,

We will eat our own food and wear and provide our own clothes; only let us be called by your name; take away our shame of being unmarried (See Isaiah 3:25-26; 4:1 AMP).

Isaiah here foresees a time when the ratio between marriageable men and women will be one to seven in Jerusalem. Whether this applies to our generation as well…I don’t know.

It’s been noted that although more male babies are born than female babies, the number of marriageable men in the world is constantly decreasing. Over 57 percent of the enlisted men in World War I became casualties and the casualties in World War II have been estimated at 33 million. Not counting deaths in the armed forces, the ratio of deaths between males and females was (as of 1960) nine to seven.

This had not been true in previous centuries. So when writing about prayer and war, I’m not inconsistent or in favor of the warfare state, I am just approaching the subject from a spiritual standpoint.

The Bible teaches that, “God makes wars to cease to the end of the earth; He breaks the bow into pieces and snaps the spear in two; He burns the chariots in the fire.” (Psalm 46:9)  

But the main question is, if the common man or woman doesn’t want war, then why do we generally support wars? The first answer is, we are all sinners under the sentence of divine condemnation and that’s why we need a Savior.

Since Adam and Eve, the world has been in a war between good and evil. The fall of Adam’s fall is every man’s story which subsequently led to Cain murdering his brother Abel. The second answer was given by Herman Goring.

During the Nuremberg Trials after World War II, Hermann Goring was visited by a German-speaking intelligence officer and psychologist known as Gustave Gilbert. He was given the job of interviewing the defendants at Nuremberg.

Taking notes, he wrote a book a few years later which came to be known as the Nuremberg Diary, in which he recorded his conversation with Hermann Goring. He asked Goring: “How did Hitler and the Nazis get the German people to go along with such absurd polices of war and aggression?” Herman Goering responded:

Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?

Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor England, nor America, nor for that matter in Germany…. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in every country.

The leaders are able to entice the people into war by scaring them so that they are in danger of being considered unpatriotic if they don’t go along with them. This is what happened in Nazi German. On the night of February 27, 1933, the Reichstag Parliament building was set on fire and Hitler blamed it on the communist “terrorists.”

Historians agree that the burning of the Reichstag was the event that signalled the beginning of Nazi dictatorship. That same year Hitler formed the Gestapo, justifying it to the German people as necessary to maintain “homeland security” in a speech in which he declared:

“An evil exists that threatens every man, woman and child of this great nation, we must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland. Sounds familiar!

Hermann Goering called it “something more sensational to stampede the German people. The public was panicked into accepting war at all costs by the Nazi propaganda machine. General Smedley Butler, an outspoken critic of U.S. military adventurism, agreed with this assessment in his book, War is Racket:

In World War II, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn’t join the army. So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it.

With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, and kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side…. It is His will the Germans be killed.

And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to kill the allies…to please the same God. That was a part of the general propaganda, built up to make people war conscious and murder conscious.

Unfortunately, in times of war the whole effort of the mainstream media becomes one of filling people’s hearts with hate and murder. There seems no place for the spirit of the gospel of love and brotherhood. People will be expected to do all they can to hate, curse, or kill their enemies in wartime, certainly not to love them.

The truth is that the gospel is just the same in peace or in war. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever and every life is eternally precious in His sight. We cannot put any monetary value on a human life, for God loved the entire world so much that He gave His only Son Jesus  Christ to die on our behalf (see John 3:16).

But what about Christians who support these wars? Author Laurence Vance, in his book, Christianity and War and other Essays Against the Warfare State, writes,

The only warfare the New Testament encourages the Christian to wage is against the world, the flesh, and the devil. ….It is wrong to invoke the Jewish wars of the Old Testament against the heathen as a justification for war.

In the Old Testament personal rights were protected by a divinely established system of retribution. Every evil had to be punished in order to establish a proper community by eradicating evil from the people of God. That was the purpose of these laws. The Church is not like old Israel, but a community of believers without political or national ties.

The Church is the Body of Christ whereas old Israel had been both the chosen people of God and a national community, and it was therefore God’s will that they should meet force with force. But with the church it is different, it has abandoned political and national status, and therefore it must patiently endure aggression.

Teaching about revenge, Jesus said, “You have heard the law that says the punishment must match the injury: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also” (Matthew 5:38–39 NLT).

The only way to overcome evil is to pray to Christ for strength to patiently endure aggression and let the evil person fall into the hands of Jesus; otherwise evil begets evil which is why the love of money is the root of all evil.

Opportunities to profit come from war and revolutions.  Conflict can be used by corporations to supply goods and services to the people involved in a conflict. As John Remington Graham reminds us:

The death of the American Republic, that former shining light to oppressed humanity everywhere, was not caused by slavery, nor was its death caused by unfair tariffs, or even States asserting the right of secession.

No, the great American experiment in constitutional government by the consent of the governed was ruined by a plot to gain control of banking and currency.

In fact when you study history before it happens you understand that wars don’t begin with assassinations of kings or queens, sinking of ships or bombings of Pearl Harbors and World trade centers. Those have been called flashpoints; the march to war takes years.

And, at the core of this last war, no matter how it will be historically engineered, it will not or didn’t start because of repressive regimes, the thirst for democracy, religious strife or territorial disputes—it all comes down to “ money, power and greed.

The Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 24 warned us against ethnic or race wars in the last days. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. But this gospel of the Kingdom will be preached to all nations, and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:6–8, 14)

Many of us are asking when the end of this age will come. Jesus said that the end will come when the gospel of the kingdom has been preached in the whole world as a witness to all nations (Matthew 24:14).

This is an important statement that means; wars, politicians, philosophers, and scientists don’t have the real initiative for the history of this world. The responsibility belongs to the church of Jesus Christ.

The church is the only group of people who can bring about the closing of this age by preaching the gospel of the kingdom, which is to proclaim that Jesus alone saves and that He is coming again.

It won’t be the humanistic gospel that is prevalent now, but it will be the preaching of the message that came from the lips of Christ the Messiah Himself, and by the apostles, that must be preached in the entire world as a witness to all nations. It is a message of a Kingdom and a King Who is coming again.

So we must keep awake in this day and hour, watching at all times (be discreet, attentive, and ready), praying that we may have the full strength and ability and be counted worthy to escape all the wars, famines, deceptions, and betrayals that will take place at the end of the age, being able to stand in the presence of the Son of Man (see Luke 21:36).

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was heralded as a hero in the West for his courageous and gifted writings from prison that exposed the horrors and tyranny of Soviet communism. But the reaction in the West was more subdued, at times even hostile, when he began to speak with equal candor about the sins and spiritual poverty of the West, most notably in a commencement address given at Harvard University on June 8, 1978. Among his comments, he said:

But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through intense suffering our country has now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system and state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive.

Solzhenitsyn spent nearly fifty years working on the history of the Russian Revolution; in the process he read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and he contributed eight volumes of his own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. He said,

But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.

What is more, the events of the Russian Revolution can only be understood now, at the end of the century, against the background of what has since occurred in the rest of the world. What emerges here is a process of universal significance. And if I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire twentieth century, here too, I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: Men have forgotten God.

The failings of human consciousness, deprived of its divine dimension, have been a determining factor in all the major crimes of this century. The first of these was World War I and II and much of our present predicament can be traced back to it. It was a war (the memory of which seems to be fading) when Europe, bursting with health and abundance, fell into a rage of self-mutilation which could not but sap its strength for a century or more, and perhaps forever. The only possible explanation for this war is a mental eclipse among the leaders of Europe due to their lost awareness of a Supreme Power above them.

We have forgotten God; that is why it all things now are happening! “Despite of all these mighty acts of deliverance, and all the great works which God has done for Britain, we turned our back upon Him.

The British people, according to Rev. Gardner have torn themselves away from their original Biblical Christian heritage (foundations), and went ahead in throwing all their past history overboard. They’ve done what exactly what Israel did in Judges 2:12. They‘ve forsaken the Lord God of their fathers who has rescued them again and again, and proceeded to fly in His face. 

The author is gripped with the burning and overwhelming conviction that Britain is fast heading towards an extremely severe judgment of God, the like of which she has never before experienced in any period of her long history. He therefore feels convinced that there is an urgent need, like the prophets of old, to sound the trumpet and warn the people.

He was at great pains to point out that it is neither a heathen nor a pagan nation which is guilty of all this. That is the appalling thing. On the contrary, it is a nation which has had a long and rich Christian heritage; a nation which was once known throughout the world as a godly nation- Bible-loving, missionary-hearted and God-fearing.

He indicated how the hand of God has been on the history of this country in blessing right from its very earliest beginnings, and how God has been at work on her behalf throughout all that time in many ways, raising her up until, at various points in her history, she had become a great nation.

God delivered the nation from all the past wars and the national leaders recognized this, and many of them proclaimed at that time, “Britain has been saved for a purpose. God has delivered us and brought us to our present position for some great purpose and now we must seek humbly to discover what that purpose is and then be faithful to it.”

The author lamented that Britain has forgotten all these blessings. She has completely forgotten and even put out of her mind all these great blessings which God has so richly bestowed upon her in the past. Despite the fact that her history has been steeped in God’s miracles of deliverance and acts of divine mercy, Britain has rejected all her rich Biblical-Christian heritage.

What, then, is the burden of the message for Britain? It is being suggested that the urgent need is to pray for revival and a Great Awakening in Britain. The most urgent need today, is for God’s people not just to pray for, but to cry out to heaven for, a mighty visitation of the Holy Spirit upon this country and most especially our churches. This applies to the Western world as a whole, including America.

The author, David Gardner is utterly convinced that there is now nothing that will turn the tide and reserve the trend but that kind of mighty intervention of God Almighty. Evangelism won’t do it anymore.

Preaching by itself won’t do it anymore. Yes, there will be many conversions as a result of evangelism but they will not by themselves, reverse the trend or turn the tide. Only a mighty, heaven-sent Holy Spirit revival will turn the tide—an act of God, without any man being involved.

In the meantime, we as a nation and as individuals must truly repent of our sins and turn back to God very quickly. We need to change your views and purpose to accept the will of God in your inner selves instead of rejecting it.

Secondly, we need to pray specifically for the Lord to deliver Great Britain out of her moral, spiritual, and financial problems so that this nation can fulfil its call of preaching the Gospel to all nations of the world and to once again become a beacon of light, righteousness and justice in the world.

But this will only happen if, as individuals and a nation, humble ourselves, repent, and call on the Lord Jesus Christ to deliver us and then we shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Repent (change your views and purpose to accept the will of God in your inner selves instead of rejecting it) and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of and release from your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. (See Acts 2:37-38)

In a nutshell, history tells us that evil spiritual powers aided the rise of and expansion of Nazism and subsequently World War II. But even so, God’s grace and power were infinitely greater than any demonic influence or evil force.

During the entire period of World War II, as Allied and Axis armies were fighting on different fronts, there was also an intense spiritual battle raging in the heavens, and this had a direct effect on the battlefields in the natural world.

As we’ve seen again and again, God raised up intercessors who prayed throughout the entire period of the war, men such as Rees Howells. In the end, the demonic power that had strengthened and guided Hitler, the S.S., and Nazism, was defeated through the persistent prayer of faithful men and women. Yes prayer does work.

It is not a surprise that Bloody Mary is said to have feared the prayers of John Knox more than the trampling feet of armies. As Christians we have the authority from God to cast out and overcome these demonic forces through prayer and intercession in the name of Jesus Christ.

Part of this article is excerpted from the Trilogy of David E. Gardner, The Trumpet Sounds For Britain, Copyright © Christian Foundation Publications, 2003

Image description: Britain remembers the 50th anniversary in 1995 with a Lancaster bomber dropping poppies in front of Buckingham Palace. Source: Wikipedia

Nazi Occupied Europe September 1943. Source: Wikimedia

During the outbreak of World War II, as we have already seen, the Lord gave the burden to intercessors to pray specifically for this crisis. Many believed that Hitler was Satan’s agent for preventing the gospel going to every creature.

For instance, Intercessor Rees Howells later said, “In fighting Hitler we have always said that we were not up against man, but the devil. Mussolini is a man, but Hitler is different. He can tell the day this ‘spirit’ came into him.” For several years Mr. Howells stressed the fact that God must destroy him, if the vision of the Gospel to every creature was to be fulfilled.

According to author David Gardner, we have sadly forgotten the Lord’s deliverance. “40 years later (almost 72 years now), many people seem to have forgotten that the whole of the continent of Europe had fallen under the domination of a tyrant –Adolf Hitler.

France, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, Poland—all had been overrun by his Nazi armies. The continent of Europe was a subjugated people. It was looking westwards, pinning its hopes on Britain and America for its liberation. Deliverance! That was what they longed for, and no doubt it was that for which, in their anguish, many of them were praying. But the task was great that, to achieve it, God needed a massive instrument.

One was being fashioned, and its four components form an integral part of the next chapter of world history: godly leaders; a clear vision of the purpose set before them; a dedicated force; and a miracle.

Chief amongst the leaders whom God had been preparing down the years were King George VI, with his simple but deep awareness that he reigned through the grace of God; General Montgomery; Admiral Cunningham; Admiral Tovey; General Sir Miles Dempsey, Commander of the British Second Army in the invasion of Europe; and General Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander. All these had a testimony of his faith in Almighty God to declare.

Was it not remarkable that at this vital time in our history the most responsible tasks of leadership should fall to God-fearing, God-honoring, God-trusting men such as these, just as in the case of the Battle of Britain, God had prepared Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding? As at so many critical points in the war, this chapter of our history was opened with a solemn call to prayer and dedication.

On the eve of D-Day, King George VI broadcast again to the nation and to the world:

Four years ago our nation and empire stood alone against an overwhelming enemy, with our backs to the wall. Tested as never before in our history, in God’s providence we survived that test. The spirit of the people, resolute, dedicated, burned like a bright flame, lit surely from those unseen fires which nothing can quench. Now once more a supreme test has to be faced.

This time the challenge is not to fight to survive but to fight to win the final victory for the good cause… That we may be worthily matched with this new summons of destiny, I desire solemnly to call my people to prayer and to dedication.

We are not unmindful of our shortcomings, past and present. We shall ask not that God may do our will, but that we may be enabled to do the will of God.

And we dare to believe that God has used our nation and empire as an instrument for fulfilling his high purpose. Surely not one of us is too busy to play our part in a nation-wide, perchance a world-wide, vigil of prayer as the great crusade sets forth.

There was also the preparation of the forces about to be involved in the coming invasion. The Deputy Chaplain-General, Canon Llewellyn Hughes, indicated how thorough and painstaking had been the task given to the chaplains to prepare the fighting forces spiritually.

He said: “The consecration of our armies had not been a last-minute effort”, he declared. It had been a long and laborious process. We aimed at a permanent attitude of mind, at giving to soldiers such a vision of God’s will as would make the doing of it their main purpose.”

General Montgomery’s chief padre said that many thousands of them went forth for righteousness’ sake, and for no other reason.”

What was involved in that long, laborious but happy process? What was instilled into their minds? The chief padre tells us:

Let an army and a people learn what God stands for, and then they will know when they are for, or against, his purpose. They will then support or oppose with confidence as His commissioned servants.

It is not enough for an army or a nation to have a vague faith in God. “it is not enough for us to rest content that our commanders are godly, and that God’s flag is publicly flown. Faith in God is useless until it governs action.

What does God want done? We believe in God—as what? As a non-entity, content to be recognized, and then ignored? As vague power, meaningless, purposeless, inarticulate, and therefore unfit to command a platoon, let alone a world? No. We believe in God who wants, and means to have done, all that Christ embodied, taught, and lived out.

Then he added:

The leaders of the invasion force wished most of all that God should impart His own life and desires to the men, and they were certain that then the army would have a sound and honest heart, would hate evil and love good, and go upon this liberating enterprise with a free and genuine enthusiasm.

We were asked, and strongly asked, to make our men as Christian as we could, to preach the Word of Christ faithfully because it is true; to bring men to God that he might make them good.

Most of the men are not regular churchgoing men but they are God-going men, and they have their picture of the King of kings in the sanctuary of their hearts.  And when General Eisenhower and General Montgomery in their final Orders of the Day asked us all to pray that God would prosper us, that prayer went up, and went up from honest hearts, freely and fully convinced that the business in hand was a liberation according to the will of God.

The Decision When to Invade

The Supreme Commander, his Commander-in-Chief and their Chiefs of Staff met at 4am on Monday, 5 June, for “the final and irrevocable decision.”  Messages went to all the vast forces concerned: the invasion of France would start on the morning of the next day.  

General Eisenhower gave testimony to the effect that this had on him, when he was speaking in Abilene, Kansas, his hometown, on 4 June 1952 (‘Time’ magazine, 16 June 1952).  

This day, eight years ago, I made the most agonizing decision of my life.  I had to decide to postpone by at least 24 hours the most formidable array of fighting ships and of fighting men that was ever launched across the sea against a hostile shore.  

The consequences of that decision at that moment could not have been foreseen by anyone.  If there was nothing else in my life to prove the existence of an Almighty and Merciful God, the events of the next 24 hours did it.  

The greatest break in a terrible outlay of weather occurred the next day and allowed that great invasion to proceed, with losses far below those we had anticipated.

Therefore, according to Gardner’s argument, the entire period of the war is full of the great works of the Lord. Soldiers, statesmen, our monarch, and the events themselves, all bear testimony to this fact.

The hand of God was clearly on the history of England. I contend that it an indisputable fact that the whole story of the 1939-45 War is a story of one mighty deliverance or intervention of God after another. God was with England.”

No wonder Churchill had said, when addressing three thousand mine owners and mineworkers delegates eight days after the opening of the Battle of Alamein:

I sometimes have a feeling of interference. I want to stress that. I have a feeling sometimes that some Guiding Hand has interfered. I have a feeling that we have a Guardian, because we have a great cause, and we shall have that Guardian so long as we serve that cause faithfully.

And what a cause it is!  In view of the tragic landslide which has happened which has happened since, the British people, whom he once led and inspired, now need desperately to be reminded not only of what he said about that Guardian, but of the condition he laid down for keeping that Guardian: “We shall have that Guardian so long as we serve that cause faithfully.

Victory in Europe Day 1945

On 8 May 1945, victory in Europe was joyfully proclaimed. The Allied forces had accomplished their mission. The whole continent of Western Europe had been liberated.

Mr. Churchill made a speech in which he proclaimed that…

I recollect well at the end of the last war, more than a quarter of a century ago, that the House when it heard the long list of surrender terms, the armistice terms, which had been imposed upon the Germans, did not feel inclined for debate or business, but desired to offer thanks to Almighty God, to the Great Power which seems to shape and design the fortunes of nations and the destiny of man; and I therefore beg, sir, with your permission to move,“That this House do now attend at the Church of St. Margaret, Westminster, to give humble and reverent thanks to Almighty God for our deliverance from the threat of German domination.”

Rev. David E. Gardner writes, “I well remember V.E. Day.  London was rejoicing.  The royal family, the Prime Minister, the Service chiefs, and members of the Cabinet, all appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace before a joyful and tumultuous throng. 

It was a proud moment in our history.  The Service chiefs came to the microphone in turn, made short speeches, and paid tribute to the part which their respective arm of the Services had played in bringing about this great victory.  

The Prime Minister spoke – the one who had always been conscious of that overruling providence, that guiding, guardian hand.  He must have come straight from the Thanksgiving Service in St. Margaret’s Westminster.  

His Majesty King George VI then stepped quietly to the microphone. I can still hear his voice today, as he said with great emphasis:

We give thanks to Almighty God for the Victory He has granted us in Europe.

Excerpted from the Trilogy of David E. Gardner, The Trumpet Sounds For Britain, Copyright © Christian Foundation Publications, 2003

For over a century experts in persuasion have understood that it is the manipulation of emotion that influences an election. However, with computers, algorithms, social media, and the internet, the ability to analyze and influence emotions has exploded.

The vast majority of the American people, media, and politicians in the 2016 Presidential Elections are living in a past tense reality based on a faulty perception of politics and the nation.

The 2016 American Presidential race is a “Pokémon Go” election that is taking place in “augmented reality” where “social bots” motivate people to vote for one candidate or another by manipulating their moods via social media.

Pokémon Go is an augmented reality game where a person follows virtual characters or objects that appear on their smart phones through real world environments.

In the first two trading days after the game was released on the market the stock of Nintendo, the games manufacturer, rose $7.5 billion.

The latest psychological research tells us that voters make choices based on emotions rather than logic and facts. In other words, voters are not making up their minds because of political debates they are watching on the cable news networks where statistics and other hard facts are being discussed.

Across all educational levels people are voting on the basis of emotion.

For over a century experts in persuasion have understood that it is the manipulation of emotion that influences an election.

However, with computers, algorithms, social media, and the internet, the ability to analyze and influence emotions has exploded.

For example, the latest data suggests that the manipulation of emotions can also affect voter turnout.

If tech companies like Google, Apple, Twitter, or Instagram manipulate emotions to increase positive feelings among people who are Democrats or Republicans, that can produce greater enthusiasm about the election.

Depending upon which party the enthusiasm is generated in, that candidate will have far greater turnout. In the same way, if social media is used to generate negative emotions about a candidate, that candidate will get far lower voter turnout.

There are many ways tech companies, political parties, social movements, and governments can manipulate emotions through the Internet.

The term “emotional contagion” means spreading strong emotions to millions of people through social media, emotions such as anxiety, anger, happiness, enthusiasm, depression, despair, hopelessness, peace, and euphoria.

A targeted demographic can consist of any group of people such as those in a specific geographic location, a religious group, political group, ethnic group, or by age, sex, or any number of categories.

By manipulating search engines or rankings or linking negative articles or blocking positive information about a particular candidate, negative or positive emotions can be created in a person using the search engine.

Read more

Copyright © 2016 Paul McGuire, Paradise Mountain Church International 

Christian NFL player Benjamin Watson has opened up about his views on abortion and how it factors into race relations in America today.

In an hour-long interview for the San Diego-based Turning Point Pregnancy Resource Center‘s blog interview series, Watson, a devout Christian who often speaks out publicly on a wide range of racial and political issues, answered questions on whether race plays into the abortion debate, whether men should have any say over whether women get an abortion, and why he is pro-life.

Watson, the author of the book Under Our Skin, has frequently discussed the racial divide in America, whether in his book, Facebook posts or in media interviews.

In the second part of the interview, Watson gave great detail on how race factors into the issue of abortion. He pointed out that the abortion agenda seems to be focused primarily on minorities and how the nation’s largest abortion business was founded by Margaret Sanger, who has often been accused of being a racist and a eugenicist.

“I do know that blacks kind of represent a large portion of the abortions, and I do know that honestly the whole idea with Planned Parenthood and Sanger in the past was to exterminate blacks, and it’s kind of ironic that it’s working,”

Watson said. “We [as minorities] support candidates, and overwhelmingly support the idea of having Planned Parenthood and the like, and yet, that is why she created it.”

Watson criticized minorities for buying into the abortion agenda and suggested that black and hispanic pregnant teens are encouraged to get abortions rather than keep their babies.

“We are buying it hook, line, and sinker, like it’s a great thing. It’s just amazing to me and abortion saddens me, period. But it seems to be something that is really pushed on minorities and provided to minorities especially as something that they should do,” Watson asserted.

“In the public, it seems to be painted that when minorities get pregnant they need to get abortions, especially when it comes to teen pregnancy.

“It’s like when black girls are pregnant, it’s like a statistic, but when white girls get pregnant, they get a TV show,” he added.

Watson explained that his book mentions how many political ideas, such as minorities should get abortions, are “forced into our heads” through “reinforced culture.”

He said it’s difficult for black people to climb the socioeconomic ladder when abortion is so prevalent in the black community.

“We sit here and talk about advancing the black agenda, whatever that means, we talk about our interests, and what’s important to us — like having political power and advancement and all those things — and then we are turning around and we are killing our children,” Watson said. “And we are buying the lie that it’s our personal decision to make.”

“Honestly, I am sympathetic, I am. Because I know it’s a hard decision,” Watson continued. “I don’t know exactly what it’s like to be pregnant and to be a single mom, or even to be a married mom and not want the child. I would never assume people are having abortions flippantly. I know people have them for convenience, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a tough choice for the mothers to make, so I always want to be sympathetic to that.”

Read more at Christian Post

After the fall of Tobruk, a port city on Libya’s eastern Mediterranean coast, this is near the border with Egypt. The Eighth Army was in full retreat, reaching the El Alamein line of defence on Monday June 29 1942. Rommel’s army came up to it next day.

The German radio boasted that Rommel and the Afrika Korps would sleep in Alexandria on Saturday night. Suddenly the advance stopped, the panzer divisions rolled westward. This sudden receding of the tide remains a mystery.

He was very frustrated because the German and Italian High Commands together failed to give him the extra supplies and support just when he most required them. That was the time when the petrol which he sorely needed was reported to be lying about in Southern Italy in profusion, and only had to be shipped or flown across.

It is no wonder; therefore, that Rommel exclaimed in his papers that: “Our sources of supply dried up in front of El Alamein.”

While General Montgomery was making preparations to launch the British offensive against Rommel ad his Afrika Korps, so important did King George VI consider the outcome of the forthcoming battle to be, that he declared his desire that it should be preceded by a National Day of Prayer.

3 September 1942-the third anniversary of the outbreak of the war against Hitler’s Germany—was his specially chosen date, and, in taking this action, he was following in the footsteps which his father, King George V, took in August 1918.

For the first time, a National Day of Prayer was held on a week-day, and for this reason it seemed to many that it was observed far more sincerely than any of its predecessors.

Once people flocked to the churches all over Britain, and Westminster Abbey was crowded to capacity, with the King and Queen, other members of the royal family, and members of Parliament present.

God answered that time of prayer in a marvelous way and a whole series of miracles followed in its wake.

The Lord had already seen to it that two dedicated Christian men were appointed to the most responsible positions in the Middle East on August 15 1942: Field Marshal Alexander as Commander-in-Chief and General Montgomery as Commander of the Eighth Army.

On October 23 Montgomery issued this Order of the Day to the Eighth Army: ‘Let us pray that the Lord, mighty in battle, will give us the victory.’ How did the Lord mighty in battle, answer?

First, when the attack was opened on the German forces, Rommel was absent in Germany! He had been compelled to report sick at the end of September for the first time in his life, and had flown to Germany for treatment.

The Afrika Korps had therefore been caught on the hop without their famous leader, and that at the most critical and decisive moment of their history. Rommel had appointed General Stumme, as commander to take his place.

Secondly, just twenty-four hours after Montgomery’s bombardment opened, General Stumme died from a heart attack, which left the German command structure in a hopeless state of confusion.

Thirdly, to add to this confusion, and incredible as it may seem, the start of the battle found Rommel’s Chief of Staff, General Bayerlein was actually on leave.

Fourthly, due to faulty intelligence, the Afrika Korps was taken completely off its guard when the bombardment began.

Fifthly, the extraordinary fact was that Montgomery’s tremendous pre-offensive build-up had remained completely hidden from the Germans, although it included the movement of literally hundreds of guns and 900 tanks, and the preparation of dumps containing 7,500 tons of petrol. It was a similar miracle to the one which had happened after King George V had called that National Day of Prayer in August 1918. 

Finally, when at Hitler’s personal request, Rommel arrived at his Desert Headquarters from a hospital bed to take command of the situation two days after Montgomery’s barrage had been laid down, he found to his anger that there had been a complete and catastrophic failure of supplies.

He discovered that General von Rintelen, the German Military Attaché in Rome who was responsible for ensuring that supplies of petrol reached the Afrika Korps, had been on leave and had thus been unable to give sufficient attention to the problem!

Consequently, by the time Rommel arrived at his headquarters in North Africa at 8 p.m on 25 October, the battle was already lost. As his General Cramer said, Alamein was lost before it was fought.

We had not the petrol” in fact, Rommel’s Papers reveal that throughout the battle of the next few days his tank forces were frequently standing immobilized on the battle-field for sheer lack of petrol. Surely none of these things could have been due to coincidence.

It cannot be disputed that there is a God who overrules history, and he does so, particularly, in answer to heartfelt, believing prayer. “The Lord, mighty in battle” had most certainly given the Eighth Army the victory, and a result caused the tide of the war to be completely turned.

Churchill said afterwards concerning the battle of Alamein: “Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.”

Then Came A Bumper Harvest 

Throughout the crucial year of 1942 and the months immediately following it, the entire nation was provided with evidence that God was at work in the fields of Britain. During this critical year, the shipping which normally brings food to these shores from overseas was urgently required for carrying men and munitions. Yet the people in beleaguered Britain had to be fed. There was need, therefore, for a bumper harvest.

To that end, a supreme effort was made by British agriculture, and a degree of co-operation and united labor was achieved as never before in our history. Added to this were the prayers of innumerable people that God bless these efforts.

The yields in the fields that year far exceeded all expectations. It had obviously become very apparent to R.S. Hudson, the minister of Agriculture, that God had been with us, for in a postscript to the BBC nine o’clock news on Old Michaelmas Night 1942, he said:

But this also I would say to you, in humility and seriousness. Much hard work and technical skill have played their part in these mighty yields, amongst the richest of all time. But I believe that we have a higher Power to thank as well, and from the depths of our hearts.

Some Power has wrought a miracle in the English harvest fields this summer, for in this, our year of greatest need, the land has given us bread in greater abundance than we have ever known before.

The prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread” has in these tomes a very direct meaning for us all.” God has indeed “crowned the year with his goodness” and granted us the much needed special harvest. Divine blessing continued during the following months, a fact which Fleet Street brought to the nation’s notice. In an article in the News Chronicle dated 6 May 1943, L.F. Easterbrook described the first part of 1943 as this wonderful year” he said:

Mr. Hudson was not ashamed to acknowledge last year the divine power that gave us a record harvest just when we most needed it. Can anyone doubt that the Power has been at work again? It has brought us through what might have been a very difficult winter with an unerring hand. For that, we can be thankful for having sufficient fuel and milk, for wheat in the fields that never looked better, for grass in the meadows that has enabled winter feeding stuffs to be conserved, so that the small poultry keeper is now to get more food for his hens, and the housewife to get more milk for the family. We are still only half-way to harvest, and disaster can still happen. But nothing should take away our thankfulness for a season that has warmed and fed our bodies and cheered our bodies and cheered our hearts more generously than any dared hope.

All Britain therefore was made aware that God’s hand was upon our history throughout those important years of 1942 and 1943, not least by providing enough food.

Adapted from the Trilogy of David E. Gardner, The Trumpet Sounds For Britain, Copyright © Christian Foundation Publications, 2003

Image: Area of Western Desert Campaign 1941–1942. Attributed to Stephen Kirrage. Source: Wikimedia

From about the time of Dunkirk onwards, the course of the war in the Mediterranean also began to be punctuated with instances of divine ruling. For instance, there was the outstanding example of the siege of Malta, a Southern European Island.

The Island of Malta was part of the British Empire and was transformed into a British crown colony in 1813. It gained its independence from Britain in 1964. Its location had great strategic importance as a naval base, and the Island has a rich and long Christian heritage as the Apostle Paul was shipwrecked on Malta.

The Island was lying in the path of Italy’s vital supply lines to North Africa, and on the holding of which so much was to depend. With the fall of France and the entry of Italy into the war, Malta was in a state of extreme isolation.

Those who were responsible for Malta’s defense were fully aware that the Italians had long boasted that they intended to occupy her as soon as war declared. What is more they had said they expected to capture the fortress within a day or two! So Malta found herself faced with immediate threat of a full-scale invasion by sea and air.

The man who took over the great responsibility for Malta was General Sir William Dobbie, who was appointed as Governor of Malta by Divine Providence. He was a man of faith and also proved to testify to the power of prayer.

He was a man who believed that, in fighting Nazism, Britain was involved in a righteous cause; and for that reason, he believed that God was on our side. Since it was obvious to him that human resources on Malta were inadequate, he says he was constrained to “turn his eyes to the hills, from whence came his help” and to encourage others to do the same, he saw clearly where the secret of Malta’s defence lay—in a quite reliance upon God.

Dobbie wrote that “When the siege of Malta began, behind all human factors was God.” The story of the next two years was the story of belief being worked out in quite remarkable ways. Many miracles happened that proved God was a work on their behalf.

The help which He gave was, to the garrison and people of Malta, very obvious and very real. General Dobbie said that they soon became aware that it was the same help which was seen at the time of the withdrawal from Dunkirk and during the first Battle of Britain.

The first miracle which they experienced, for instance was that Italy made no attempt whatsoever to invade them, although at that time everything was in her favor. Commenting on this, General Dobbie writes:

It is truly remarkable that Italy did not attempt the invasion, immediately after she had declared war, when the advantages were all in her favor, nor at any other time.  “We are justified in asking, Why?

By the same token we are justified in asking another question: Why did not the Germans invade Great Britain immediately after Dunkirk? “It is difficult to find satisfactory answers to either of these questions on the human level. It seems that our two enemies each made a colossal blunder when they did not seize the opportunities given them of gaining a decisive success. “What caused them to make these blunders?”Asked General Dobbie.

“The only reason which I can find” he said, “and which seems to cover the facts, is that in each case, God’s restraining hand kept them from attacking us at a time when we were very ill-prepared to meet such attacks. If this is so, and I firmly believe it is, it was not the first time that God has acted in this way. Scripture has many instances of just this thing, instances which are recorded for our comfort and hope.”

If invasion did not take place immediately after Italy entered the war, the aerial bombardment, aimed at crushing all resistance on Malta, did. And here, perhaps, is the second great miracle. For the story of that bombardment is the story, not so much of how God delivered them from this prolonged attack, but of how he sustained, enabled, and protected them throughout it.

The  German  General  Rommel,  on arrival  in  the  Western  Desert in 1941, did not invade either, in spite of the island hindering his  supply  route.  Brigadier Desmond Young   noted later that the Germans were strangely blind in failing to see, until it was too late, that the key to all supply problems and indeed the key to the control of the Mediterranean, was the capture of Malta.

Rommel later wrote in his official ‘Papers’:  “It had actually been intended that Malta should be taken by Italian and German parachute landing forces early in 1942 … but for some unaccountable reason our High Command abandoned the scheme.”  Surely this was a sign of the restraining hand of God resting on the German High Command.

At the end of April 1942, Brigadier Young recorded that Hitler gave permission for a surprise attack on Malta – ‘Operation Hercules’.  It was twice put off and finally postponed “until after the conquest of Egypt”, which never happened. General Dobbie later wrote: 

The very fact that in spite of all her disadvantages, Malta has remained in British hands … that surely is a miracle which cannot be gainsaid.  It is God who works such miracles.”

Adapted from the Trilogy of David E. Gardner,  The Trumpet Sounds For Britain,  Copyright © Christian Foundation Publications, 2003

Image: 1943-1964, Crown Colony of Malta- Source: Wikipedia

Some of the recent political convention speeches were a combination of Tony Robbins-inspired motivational techniques and transparent attempts at controlling and manipulating human consciousness, based on political platforms of outrageous lying and psychological manipulation.

The political conventions with some exceptions were like virtual reality theatre directed by George Orwell. Nothing is what is seems to be and nothing is real.

On the electronic menu of both political parties, false choices were offered up that were nothing more than illusions, and the politicians’ speeches were carefully crafted to appear as one thing, but are in reality completely something else.

All the psychological props and devices were employed to appease the parties’ demographic bases with virtual world candidates who appeared as pop-ups who used words like family, God, born-again, diversity, sustainable, “pro-life, but I don’t vote that way,” environmentalism, and racial identification.

And there were promises and appeals to the working class, middle class, and various racial, religious, and gender groups.

There was a Marxist candidate who apparently sold out his followers for money and globalist-elite candidates who masqueraded as candidates for the common people. The Joker or wild card in the “Holodeck” (a virtual reality facility featured in the Star Trek movies and often used for recreational activities) is the major news media.

The corporate media, which is totally controlled by six corporations owned by the global elite, offers nothing more than a “smoke and mirrors” show of endless babbling by inferior actors posing as journalists, who, with rare exceptions, are in reality nothing more than propagandists who offer almost nothing in the way of facts, accountability, and in-depth insights.

It’s all the land of make believe like the Wizard of Oz, where we are not allowed to see the truth about the Wizard who hides behind the curtain.

How is it that so many of the American people fall for this stuff? Matt Drudge, the founder of the Drudge Report, made the comment that there is a sickness in the American people that makes them susceptible to leaders who lie and the irrational messages they give.

What Matt Drudge was referring to was a kind of spiritual and psychological sickness that infects a very large percentage of the American public. In the last two decades this psychological sickness has taken hold over more and more minds, so that the majority of Americans are easily manipulated through emotion and slogans, rather than actual facts and logic.

Continue reading Here

© Copyright 2016, Paul McGuire

By 5 June 1940, the Germans had launched their final offensive against the French army. This led to an armistice between France and German which had come into effect by 25 June. Britain therefore stood alone.

The whole Continent had been overrun by the Nazi war machine, and the German panzer divisions were standing on the French coast opposite the Straits of Dover. Kent and Sussex had been brought within reach of German fighter cover.

Nothing seemed to lie between Britain and disaster but twenty-five miles of Channel water. With the fall and occupation of France, the threat of a German invasion of the British Isles had become a grave possibility.

Hitler, in his first heady days as Chancellor of the Third Reich, had boasted to an astonished Rauschning: “I will succeed were Napoleon failed. I will land on the shores of Britain.” He seemed within an ace of doing it.

There are those today who belittle this danger as if it was never really there. Author David E. Gardner provides the historical background against which a series of miracles took place. 

By way of refuting such nonsense, Gardner writes: “I would remind these people that Mr. Churchill states in his history of World War II that it was “soon after war broke out on September 3^rd, 1939, that the German Admiralty, as we have learned from their captured archives, began their staff study of the invasion of Britain.”

So invasion was “on the cards” even then. It is now known that, only five days after the fall of France, General Alfred Jodl, Hitler’s personal adviser on military operations, had prepared a memorandum on “The Continuation of the War against England” and that he wrote it with invasion in mind…..

As to Britain’s extreme vulnerability at that time, it is acknowledged that if the Germans could have got a sizable landing-force ashore as early as June or July 1940, it is as certain as anything can be, in historical speculation, that they would have been able to penetrate the British defenses and defeat the British army with little more difficulty than brushing away cobwebs.

They are also some military minds who are of the opinion that the Germans could probably have captured London at the end of May or the beginning of June simply by using their parachute and airborne divisions in no greater strength than they did against Crete in the following year.

In any event, authorities as a whole find it hard to resist the conclusion that had the Germans been able to launch their onslaught against the United Kingdom in July, Britain would have fallen. Another miracle that happened is that Hitler did not follow on after Dunkirk to cross the Channel and invade Britain whose army had lost all its weapons. 

Who then was holding him back? He continued to hesitate all through June 1940, as Napoleon had done before him, giving Britain a breathing space. 

Hitler hoped that the war would end after the armistice with France, and the British Government could be expected to change its policy and put out feelers for peace. But Britain was made of tougher stuff in those days. She realized that if she were to go under, the whole of Western civilization would follow. That was the issue at stake. Britain, therefore, was determined to resist at all costs.

Another miracle was that Admiral Raedar had laid down, at a very early stage, the two prime requirements for the invasion of Britain: 1) that the invasion fleet should have full protection from the Germany’s navy, and 2) that Germany should have complete air superiority.

Later on—in the opening days of German’s Norwegian campaign- the German navy had lost nearly three-quarters of its surface strength. So this hoped-for protection from the navy was entirely ruled out, and it was no longer possible to fulfill the first of these two prime requirements

Again we might ask, “Who had taken care of that?”

Then according to Gardner, there was another miracle in the developing chain of events. In the aftermath of Dunkirk, had the fight for air supremacy been joined immediately after the fall of France, Britain’s Fighter Command could only have mustered 331 Spitfires and Hurricanes against the full might of the German air force exceedingly cruel indeed, and had caused the Chief of the Britis Air Staff to ask a point-blank question of Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, the Commander-in-Chief of Fighter Command: 

What are your plans for defeating an overwhelming number of the German Air Force?”  He replied: “I believe in God.  And then there is radar.” 

By now there was evidence that his faith was being honored. Hitler’s hesitation, causing nearly two months delay over his invasion plans, had provided Britain with a precious breathing-space and in that breathing-space an opportunity to build up her strength in fighter aircraft. I believe we can again see the evidence that the overruling hand of God was at work.

On 30 August, 800 enemy aircraft darkened the skies of Southern England, flying in to put key airfields out of action.  By 6 September, Fighter Command was in serious trouble.  Aircraft and pilots were being lost at a rate far in excess of replacements.  Defeat in the air appeared inevitable, and this would open the way to invasion.

Hitler suddenly ordered the Luftwaffe to switch its attack to London, and this saved the Fighter Command.  For the Germans it was a catastrophic blunder.  Fighter Command built up its strength.  “By mid to late September, we were all right for aircraft. I think it was because we had faith.” 

The King, as if gifted with some foreknowledge, had expressed the wish that Sunday, 8th September, should be fixed as a National Day of Prayer.  There was a tremendous response.  At a crowded service in Westminster Abbey, the final prayer began: 

Remember, O God for good, these watchmen, who by day and by night climb into the air.  Let Thy Hand lead them, we beseech Thee, and Thy right hand hold them.” 

Germany had massed barges in ports from Ostend to Le Havre, sufficient to carry 50,000 men and much of their equipment.  But by 10 September, the RAF had still not been destroyed and abnormally bad weather for the time of year caused Hitler to postpone his invasion plans. Dowding later said.

Even during the Battle, one realized from day to day how much external support was coming in. At the end of the Battle, one had the feeling that there had been some special Divine Intervention to alter some sequence of events which would otherwise have occurred.

I see that this Intervention was no last minute happening ….It was all part of the Mighty Plan. Again, on one of the anniversaries of the Battle of Britain, he spoke of the part that national prayer had played in the battle, and of divine interventions resulting from them.

He later reiterated,

Britain was not too proud to recognize National Days of Prayer” and should therefore not be too proud to acknowledge the results of those prayers. “I pay homage to those gallant boys who gave their all that our nation might live.

I pay tribute to their leaders and commanders. But I say with absolute conviction that I can trace the Intervention of God, not only in the Battle itself, but in the events which led up to it; and that if it had not been for this Intervention, the battle would have been joined in conditions which humanly speaking, would have rendered victory impossible.

Douglas Bader, DFC, later said:

The 15^th September 1940 was the day that the battle was won.  It was a Sunday. 

By the time Sunday worshippers were leaving their churches, the routed German air armada was in full flight.  In the afternoon, Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park commanding 11 Group was asked what fighter reserves were available.  Park replied:

“There are none.”  Ten minutes later, the action ended.  The Germans had cracked.  The miracle had happened. On 17 September, a tele-type message clacked out from the German Supreme Command postponing the invasion of Britain, “until further notice.”

Churchill also later provided further insight into what happened after the German air formations had turned for home. “That same night, he says “our Bomber Command attacked in strength the shipping in the ports from Boulogne to Antwerp.

At Antwerp particularly heavy losses were inflicted. On September 17^th, as we now know, the Fuehrer decided to postpone “Sea Lion” indefinitely. It was not till October 12^th that the invasion was called off until the following Spring.

In July 1941, it was postponed until the following Spring. In July 1941 it was postponed again by Hitler till the Spring of 1942. On February 13^th, 1942, Admiral Raeder had his final interview on “Sea Loin” and got Hitler to agree to a complete stand-down. Thus perished operation “Sea Lion.“ Therefore Winston Church makes it plain that Britain deliverance from invasion was complete…..

The question is why did Hitler abandon “Sea Lion”? Both historians and military authorities say the question still defies an answer. In fact one such authority said: “The development and fate of “Operation Sea Lion” cannot be estimated or assessed in any definite way.

When we stand back, and view events as one complete whole, there is no question at all that this was due to the hand of Almighty God on our history.

• It was a miracle that Hitler did not invade this country in June or July 1940, immediately after the fall of France.

• It was a miracle from God that he continued to hesitate, and so gave Britain breathing-space in which to build up her fighting strength.

• It was a miracle that Germany was deprived of so much of her naval strength at the very time when it was needed to cover such a massive sea-borne operation.

• It was certainly a miracle that Hitler suddenly decided to switch his air attacks to London just at the point when the Luftwaffe had the air superiority within its grasp.

• And it was definitely a miracle that bad weather in the Channel delayed his operation during that very week when the conditions were expected to be favorable.

Victory in the Battle of Britain saved the county from invasion, but the enemy wasn’t giving up so easily, as the battle now continued at Malta and the Gates of Cairo. Tune in next time to find out what happened.

Adapted from the Trilogy of David E. Gardner,  The Trumpet Sounds For Britain,  Copyright © Christian Foundation Publications, 2003

Source of image:

Two months ago I was with the former President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, at his home outside of Medellin.

He was telling me some hilarious stories about his interactions in the early 2000s with Hugo Chavez, who had recently seized power in Venezuela.

Chavez was a fanatic socialist. He believed so strongly in the idea of redistributing wealth from rich to poor.

Yet even when it was clear his policies weren’t working and Venezuela was rapidly sliding into economic chaos, Chavez’s only solution was to double down and redistribute even MORE wealth.

It was the classic definition of insanity.

Chavez failed to understand what Uribe told me so succinctly: “If there’s no wealth creation, there’s nothing left to redistribute.”

We know how Venezuela turned out; its failed socialist experiment led to today’s infamous shortages of food and toilet paper.

But here in Russia is perhaps the most famous example in our modern times.

Marxists came to power in a bloody 1917 revolution with the goal of eradicating poverty and redistributing wealth.

Yet like Venezuela, the only equality the Soviet Union managed to achieve was making everyone equally poor to the point that this vast wasteland of destitution finally collapsed in the late 1980s.

These economic disasters almost invariably start with a rising gap in wealth and income– a growing percentage of the population feeling left behind who rally behind someone promising to “spread the wealth around.”

As Historian Will Durant wrote in his incredible 1969 book Lessons from History:

The concentration [of wealth] may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich. . . which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.

This is exactly what’s happening in the West now.

The statistics are obvious: the wealth gap is bigger than it’s been since the Great Depression.

Middle class wages, when adjusted for inflation, are stagnant.

2015 was the first time in years that the average wage increase in the United States actually surpassed the rate of inflation.

But on a longer timeline, household incomes haven’t kept pace with either productivity or the cost of living.

We can see the effects of this anecdotally.

Thomas Piketty’s 2013 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which criticized such inequality and advocated a global wealth tax, was an explosive best-seller.

A 2011 Pew Research Center poll showed that 49% of US respondents had a favorable view of socialism.

And of course, Bernie Sanders made wealth and income inequality major issues in his presidential campaign, resonating with tens of millions of people.

On the way over to Russia I was reading an article in Newsweek about Uber, the ride-sharing pioneer that is currently worth around $70 billion.

The author was upset because the company’s stock isn’t publicly traded like Apple or Facebook, meaning he’s not able to own any Uber shares for himself.

He complains that the founders of these tech companies have been “actively deciding to keep as much for [themselves] as possible and shut out the rest of the populace by avoiding public stock offerings.”

According to the author, we’re apparently all entitled to our “fair share” of other people’s businesses and private property.

Unbelievable.

He’s not alone– there’s a growing chorus of politicians beating up on Uber, evidenced by Elizabeth Warren’s statement in March 2016 that “all the benefits [of Uber and related “shared-economy” companies] are floating to the top 10%.”

What an ignorant comment to make.

Uber loses billions of dollars each year.

So if anything, investors’ capital ends up in the pockets of the hundreds of thousands of drivers who use the app to generate extra income.

In reality Uber constitutes an enormous transfer of wealth from investors to workers and consumers. So her comment was totally wrong.

But what was more amazing was that she was complaining about how it benefits the top TEN percent.

Usually these people whine about the top 0.1%, then the top 1%. Now it’s the top 10%.

When will they start complaining about the top 20%? Or those evil people in the top 55%, i.e. the percentage of households that actually pay US federal income tax.

Wealth and income inequality is real, and the gap is growing. So is the consequent rise of socialism.

People know they’re getting screwed. And they are. They just don’t know why.

They have no idea how central bankers who conjure money out of thin air have rigged the entire economy against them.

So instead they blame “capitalism” and naturally embrace its opposite.

Seven centuries ago when Europe was just a plague-infested backwater, glimmerings of economic freedom began to appear on the continent.

The West adopted core values, like the sacrosanct protection of private property; the ability for an individual to work hard and build wealth; and spirited intellectual debate.

This is how western civilization became the most prosperous that history has ever known.

But this is all changing.

Being wealthy used to be a virtue worthy of widespread aspiration.

Now it’s met with skepticism and derision.

Similarly, intellectual dissent used to be embraced.

Now it’s increasingly considered “hate speech” that must be banished from university campuses and their infantile ‘safe spaces’.

And the entire west, it seems, is moving towards an ever-expanding, fiscally unsustainable welfare state that creates swelling masses of dependents.

This is a complete breakdown of western values, and that has serious consequences.

It’s incredible how rapidly this trend has unfolded– it’s a very steep line from the economic chaos of the 2008 financial crisis to where we are today.

And given the speed of this pro-socialist trend, just think about where it’s going to be in a few more years.

More than likely, it will progress straight into your wallet.

Copyright © 2017, Simon Black, Sovereign Man-All rights reserved.