Two from the Mighty One!

That is, The Mighty Barrister!

First, my hat's off to his writing. The Barrister can turn a phrase like few in the blogosphere! He can combine tone and expressions like Jeter can flip a ball to second. And what a sense of story-arch; the man can make a 2-graph post sing the Barbers of Seville on closing night!

That said, I'm on to the business at hand. The Mighty One has touched on two disturbing manifestations of the enemy. First, he discusses the role of the occult in the murder of criminal defense attorney David Horowitz:

AP is reporting that the 16 year-old arrested in connection with the slaying of the wife of criminal defense lawyer David Horowitz was involved in Satanism:

The teenager arrested in the slaying of a prominent defense attorney's wife once drew a pentagram on the ground at school and told other students he was reading from the book of Satan, according to former classmates.
...
Another student remembered him drawing a pentagram on the ground with chalk in junior high school and dancing around it with other students.

"He told people the book that he was carrying and reading from was the book of Satan," Keith Kingon said.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the suspect, identified as Scott Dyleski, "carve[d] a T-shaped 'gothic signature' on her back." The Chronicle also reports that he was enrolled in art classes at "Diablo Valley College" and hung out with a "goth group" at the high school.

He notes other criminal acts committed by teens that participated in some occult practice. Then he demonstrates why the correlation may exist:

In The Exorcist, William Peter Blatty's protagonist/victim first encountered Satan through "innocent" contact with a Ouija board. The book is fiction, of course, but there is truth in that scene - when we play with the instruments of Satan, we are inviting The Fallen One into our lives. I was fascinated with that stuff when I was a teenager (thank you, Black Sabbath). I read books by Anton LaVey and other Satanists - luckily, I found them so weird as to defy explanation. I never became a "Satanist," but it certainly had a negative influence on my life, and it is only by the grace of God that I escaped that life. Thank God the Internet, that veritable recruiting office for Satan, was not around back then.

He's right. Goth and Death metal music can prepare a young person's soul for damnation. But not for the reasons you think.

Oh, I'm sure the more libertarian readers will roll their eyes at my agreement with the Barrister. "People are responsible for their choices," they might righly say, "Parents are responsible for their children."

To which I say, "Exactly. That's the reason why a child's casual contact with the occult opens the door of his heart to the Enemy."

A child seeks identification and belonging with the Goth/Death metal crowd only if he's carrying a bloodied void where his heart once rested. This child may have a mother and father; he does not have a family. The parents that brought him into this world have not cared for him. They've either been unable, or unwilling, because of their own demons. Therefore, the child seeks what he should have received from his parents elsewhere.

He looks for love in all the wrong places.

The Enemy, ever on the look-out for those he can seduce, offers this child the illusion of self-fulfillment through belonging to "the group." Now, the Enemy does not invest his nihilism all in one trade; on the contrary, he's a well-rounded investor. Drugs for some, gangs for others, the occult for this crew, neo-nazism for that: He'll use any avenue to seize his prey.

If the child that becomes a Goth dabbling with the occult had a loving family that cared for him as he needed--and deserved--to be cared for, would he have found the Goth way appealing?

I listened to plenty of heavy metal when I entered high school. My family life was far from The Huxtables or The Keatons. My parents struggled against themselves and each other as they wrestled with serious issues (read demons.) Still, they loved and cared for me enough, so that I could discern who I was and who I intended to become. Therefore, I enjoyed the angry lyrics and rapid-fire, pryotechnic guitar works of bands like Iron Maiden and Metallica without taking the enemy's bait. Thanks be to God that my family provide enough of a foundation for me to make the better choice.

Far too many children today lack that foundation.

The more the policies of our government undermine the family, the more potential victims our society offers up to the seductions of the enemy. We owe it to our children to stand against those that would profit in any way from the family's demise. Otherwise, our children will have no future.

Now, for a lesser blogger, this post would be enough. Not for the Mighty Barrister, however: he goes on to expose another of the Enemy's deceptions. This one is more mundane and a tad tired. Unscrupulous, and somewhat clueless, axe-grinders have put on the demagogery and played the race card once again:

The NBA has adopted a new dress code, requiring players to dress professionally while representing the league. This includes business or business casual dress, which means sweaters, turtlenecks, or collared shirts up top, dress slacks, khakis or dress jeans below, and dress shoes or dress boots on the bottom. And no outlandish accessorizing, like wearing big gold chains and medallions.

Response? Dressing in a professional manner is now racist, according to some players:

Pacers guard Stephen Jackson believes the NBA's new ban on bling is racially motivated, but says he will abide by the rules.

The NBA announced a dress code will go into effect at the start of the season. Players will be required to wear business-casual attire when involved in team or league business. They can't wear visible chains, pendants or medallions.

Jackson, who is black, said the NBA's new rule about jewelry targets young black males because chains are associated with hip-hop culture, and he said the league is afraid of becoming "too hip-hop." In protest, he wore four chains to the Pacers' exhibition game against San Antonio.

That reminds me of that Steve Martin/Dan Akroyd "Festrunk Brothers" sketch on SNL, where Martin asks, "How may astral sign medallions can you wear?... Next time, try five of them!" If anything, the NBA policy is anti-Ukranian if you ask me.

My employer has a dress code. We can't wear bling. Is my employer racist, too?

Oh, and Marcus Camby of the Denver Nuggets says, "I don't see it happening unless every NBA player is given a stipend to buy clothes."

Marcus Camby will make $7.15 million this season. The minimum NBA salary is $398,762. The average NBA salary is $3.7 million. Yes, the NBA is a racist organization. Poor Marcus Camby.

Exactly how ridiculous do some people have to sound before the rest of society stops taking them seriously? When I read this, I turned to the Blushing Bride and said, "celebrities like pro athletes and movie stars should pay someone $500,000 a year to tell them when they're making asses of themselves! They need a reality check!" Marcus Camby's utterly incomprehensible remark ranks right up there with Patrick Ewing's protest of the NBA Owner's lockout:

It's difficult to weep for the 348 NBA players, whose average pay last season was $2.6 million. Union president Patrick Ewing says players are "fighting for their lives." In fact, they're fighting for their second and third Porsches. These guys are so out of touch they staged their latest pep rally in Las Vegas. (emphasis mine.)

There was a time when professional athletes understood their role in society. They understood they were entrepeneurs that marketed their talent to a hungry public. They understood that their contracts with teams allowed them to play the game they loved for respectable, and then ludicrous, salaries. They understood that the game they played was also a multi-billion dollar business. Somebody bought their free lunch.

That realization has been lost on the Marcus Camby's of today's NBA. They honestly believe the real world--where NBA teams exist to make their owners money--is a place where they can dress however they want. Because they're grown men.

Please!

Name me an enterprise in which the boss does not set expectations to his workers. Name me the business in which a certain style of dress is not expected. Show me how many Black NBA superstars dressed to the hip-hop nines before the code made explicit what everyone formerly understood. Show me where their's an exemption for white players in the dress code.

Blowhards with far too much money and little sense scream racism--all while still earning more in one year what many in societies across the globe will ever make in a lifetime! They discredit those that genuinely face the victimization of authentic racists every day. Their ridiculous behavior hardens the hearts of those that might take racial issues more seriously otherwise. The Devil laughs all the way to the bank; the discord and obfuscation of the truth he has sown will pay dividends once enough people get lost in it.

There's nothing racist about dressing professionally when one works for an organization as a professional. If the NBA is to subsidize multi-millionaires, can they please hire them PR consultants that will tell them only one thing: "Don't get stuck on stupid!"? That would be money well spent!