Jack Pelham

I went along with you to where
I did not know how to go myself.
And what seems the wonder of it all
Is that you did know—
That there are wondrous places and things that
One will not know already,
To which he can be guided by someone who already does.

And along the way, I did not know if the destination
Would be worth the journey.
But you already knew it was.
You knew it was worth it.
And so you helped me to make it there, too,
That I could see it for myself,
And take somebody else there someday—
Them wondering whether they should have
Come along with me—
Just as I, too, had wondered that at the journey with you—
Until at last, I saw it for myself.

Here’s a little sampler for my friends. It’s the accompaniment and rehearsal tracks for a Christmas piece I just wrote for my combined choruses. There are no words in what you’re about to hear. You’ll have to come to my concert to hear that! (Or wait until we’ve posted a video afterward!)

Billy has got his mind made up that he’s a Christian, and for him, that settles it. There’s no need to consider how much he knows about Jesus or his teachings—or how much he understands them. There’s no need to weigh out whether he has learned to reason like Jesus or treat people like Jesus. There’s no need to survey himself as to how much be believes each one of Jesus’ teachings is true and accurate and desirable. There’s no need to consider his failures, and the number of times he does in fact not act like Jesus, nor according to his teachings.

A non-Republican, non-Democrat perspective.

by Jack Pelham

Globalists (by which term I mean Communists) have been slowly chipping away at the defenses of the United States for a very long time. They promised back in the 50s to do it, and if you read their long-known strategies, it’s scary to see just how much they’ve accomplished since then.) America has grown dull, however, and relatively few among her see these developments as particularly alarming—yet–even though elected officials from both major parties are complicit in this subterfuge.

Yes, it’s that classic frog-in-the-slowly-heated-pot thing, where they play the “long game” against us, working under the radar of our awareness so that they don’t overwhelm our ability to keep pretending that things are pretty much OK. America has had her alarmists, of course, but she has not listened, and is still not listening. And so, she is about to learn the hard way, and history may well write “They told you so” on her headstone.

I am a true Constitutionalist who thinks that the US Constitution, while not perfect, presents a form and function of government that is superior to our modern-day de facto version of it. As a Constitutionalist– a strict one — I cannot throw in with either major political party. (And I don’t like the minor parties, either, for many of the same reasons, along with some other reasons that I won’t bore you with here.)

There is a fire that burns in the hearts of some—an American Fire.  It’s a fire of the mind that starts when certain principles and ideas are mixed together.  Not every American has it, nor does every American want it—nor understand it.  Yet in a few, it burns so fiercely that it startles the rest to see someone care so much.

Here’s my 3-part video primer on my philosophy of Reality-Based Thinking (honesty, rationality, and responsibility). It’s based on years of studying cognitive science on the psychology of rational thinking (since 2011). And I note that while it doesn’t quote the Bible directly, it does jibe really well with my lifetime of Bible study.

In my frequent discussions about truth/reality, I’m often asked a question of this general sort:

“But which reality? The one about how things actually are, or the one that people perceive or believe?”

It’s a very common point of confusion in our society, yet to me, the difference between the two is like night and day. The definition of reality that I use goes something like this:

It’s easy enough for you to say,
“Come, Lord Jesus!”.
But if he did,
Then it wouldn’t just be
You saying religious stuff.
No, it would be you saying religious stuff
And Jesus standing there
Hearing you say it—
Face to face.

In these dark days
When corruption abounds in the land—
When the tyrant and the scoundrel
Seem all one can find in the public hall—
And no hero can be found
Who is true to the core—