AZMike

WOW! A whopping 70.27% of those polled favor the change! The Winds of Change are a' blowin, and the Times, They are a changin'! Wait a minute...that's out of 37 voters....?

That's a good sentiment, Scouter Terry, but I think that ship has sailed away forever. If the Great Compromise passes, a substantial portion of families will feel that National gas compromised its core values in the name of political correctness. They will not associate Scouting with good character as they once did. If the Great Compromise passes, the gay pressure organizations that have used the media and big business to pursue their own ends will not be satisfied unless the local option is abolished and every charter organization is required to admit homosexual leaders and scouts. This is based on their own statements. They do not currently associate Scouting with good character and will not do so until all their demands are met. if the Great Compromise does not pass, those who insist on the local option or the GLAAD option will be not happy and those who favor the new view of moral imperatives on the primacy of sexuality in American life that emerged in recent times will not associate Scouting with good character. There is no possible solution to this available anymore. The balkanization of American politics and the intransigence of those on both sides has led us to a point where some issues do not have a solution that wll make everyone happy, so many of us will have to agree to disagree and accept that there will be hurt feelings.

I have known people who are trying to do the right thing by appying for citizenship, but have been mired in paperwork hell for years. In this digital age, you would think that we would be able to streamline the naturalization process. That would probably reduce some of the problem. As illegal immgration takes a lot of entry-level positions away from poor Americans of all ethnicities, I think we should probably prioritize citizenship for those who are able and willing to start businesses that provide entry-level jobs for American citizens. I think military service should fast-track you in for citizenship (it may already, I'm not sure). Like the Germans, we should probably have schools to teach new immigrants not only language, but American culture and values (although many probably already have a better handle on that than many native-born, and some of their values are probably a lot better than ours), and they should give them some BSA promotional literature for their kids.

First, I would suggest you re-read my post carefully. It doesn't matter if lawsuits in the past by women were found to have merit or not. Again, the merits of your case don't matter if you're not willing to absorb the legal costs of defending yourself in a civil suit against a well-funded opponent. Do you doubt that LGBT legal organizations will stop at the local option? If not, why? Gay organizations and activists have sued over translations of the Bible with which they agreed, to contest the legality of voter initiatives, to make a swimclub consider partners as "household members" rather than "family members", to prohibit therapists from offering "conversion therapy," for exclusion of gay marching groups from parades, for eHarmony not including gays, lesbians, and trannies on their matchmaking sites, for Christian businesspeople who don't want to hold a gay wedding at their bed and breakfast, for not allowing gay men to join an African-American sorority, for transexuals being sent to a women's jail, for transexuals NOT being sent to a women's jail...you name it, that was just off the first couple of thousands of pages of Google searches. If the unsourced report above is part of the an official policy, that is good. Whether the incoming leadership chooses to renege on this issue is another. Will it be included in rechartering?(This message has been edited by AZMike)

This may well be the issue that kills off a lot of troops. I'm not trying to be alarmist here, honestly. But life is not about who's right, it's about who's left standing after the legal battle. The problem with all the claims that have been posted that "Well, the Supreme Court Dale decision will back the COs" or "Well, if the CO is a religious organization they will be allowed to discriminate" is this: It does not matter whether they have a good case or not, if the individual who is suing you, (whether you are a SM or member of the CO) is backed by a political action group with sufficient capital and time. If any of you have ever been in a protracted civil suit, you will know what I mean. The legal fees can bankrupt you, your personal life will become public knowledge and you will be (in this case) crucified in the local and possibly national press, your hours will become an endless cycle of depositions, everything you ever posted on the Internet and every perceived indiscretion in your past will be dissected in the media, etc. Your legal opponents will be backed by zealots and true believers, and legal interns who will be happy to work overtime to bring you down, as it will look great on their CV. You may win, but you will end up wishing you had just acquiesced. Or maybe died. Did you volunteer to work for the Scouts so all that could happen? Or will you a) quit and/or b) compromise your beliefs and just let them do what they want. If BSA doesn't see an upside in covering your legal costs, will your CO's attorneys cover your legal costs against the (quite considerable) resources of the LGBT Legal Defense Fund and the ACLU and whoever else wants to join in to make an example of you? Maybe. But a lot of such decisions wind up being made by insurance companies, who could care less about the actual merits of the case and look at settling as a strict cost/benefits problem, regardless of your wishes. A settlement out of court where your/the CO's insurance company stipulates that you are a discriminatory and horrible person could be entered without your consent. Or will the COs just decide to jettison the troop to avoid the financial problems. Let me be very clear - the merits of your case don't matter if you're not willing to absorb the legal costs of defending yourself in a civil suit against a well-funded opponent. That's been my experience with friends who have been the targets in high-profile civil suits. Stress-related diseases, broken friendships, strained marriages, and empty bank accounts are likely results. I'm not an attorney. I'd be interested to hear what Beavah thinks as a litigator. If BSA does NOT clearly state that they are willing to continue to legally defend local troops under the new rules, what protection does that leave you? That is why many people who have moral objections to the new rules will leave - they won't be able to afford the fight. As far as the issue of whether a religious organization can discriminate, well, look at the arguments the administration is making about whether an organization or business is "religious" or not to satisfy the demands to provide abortfacients and contraceptives to employees under ObamaCare. A Catholic Church? Okay? A Catholic Hospital? No. The standard the administration is using is so restrictive that a BSA troop which is sponsored by a church is not likely to be considered part of the church under the ObamaCare rules. (The forthcoming SCOTUS decision on healthcare may or not make a difference - this is likely to be deal-changer for the Dale decision.) Is every member Catholic (or whatever)? The LDS troops may be able to make that case, as the BSA is their official youth organization, but the Catholics and Baptists and Evangelicals may not be able to make that claim. The Dale decision may still apply, but the crack opened by BSA allowing local option will just be blood on the water for publicity-hungry left-wing legal groups. Are you willing to risk your residence on winning the civil suit against you? Do you honestly think that, having tasted success, the LGBT groups will let you continue to run your troop as you see fit and in accordance with your religious and moral views? Read this article from the Dallas Morning News on the religious response to the proposed changes: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-news/20130129-boy-scouts-future-uncertain-if-group-drops-ban-on-openly-gay-youths-volunteers.ece Here's the money quote Another form of protest involved Eagle Scouts who returned their medals and badges to Boy Scout headquarters. Among them was Nate May, a 25-year-old musician from Huntington, W.Va., who depicted the Scouts' new proposal as "a step in the right direction." Meaning...what? The LGBT groups won a local option and now they will be happy? Right. If BSA goes forward with this policy, and I suspect they will, it's a whole new game. I don't think I'll leave scouting, and I doubt that there will be a massive influx of gay scout leaders into our troop. I sure won't contribute any money to National from now on if they back down, ever again. I suspect a lot of others won't, maybe that will be made up by all the funding from big-pocket corporate contributors. If there is someone I feel uncomfortable having around the boys, I will leave the troop. As our CO is a conservative religious group, in the unlikely event someone wants to join and make a legal issue of it, I'm out of there. It's not worth putting myself at legal risk for a principle if the national headquarters won't back me up. If National is more concerned with raking in the big corporate bucks to bring big-name teen pop singers and laser shows to the jamboree (and to keep their salaries and offices), they are not going to risk any of that by paying legal fees for a non-PC "neanderthal" local troop. If you are going to stay in the game, and think this could be a problem in your area, get a personal indemnity rider to your personal insurance policy, protect you assets as best you can and if you suspect legal problems, document, document, document and make sure you have a witness to any statements you or someone else makes.(This message has been edited by AZMike)(This message has been edited by AZMike)

"Well AZ: the kind of "Christian" (quotes for sarcasm), that come onto a college campus to call all the women adulteresses, and the men homosexuals. The ones that get in people's faces hoping they'll get hit so they can sue the school, yet their theology is weak. The Westboro baptist people come to mind as well. Perhaps I just relate the term "bible thumpers" to hypocritical Christians. That could be an error of mine. " Well, duh. The Westboro Baptist cult is about 0.000000000000000000000000001% of all the Christians. That's like saying that all you white people are as bad as the Ku Klux Klan.

"Best thing to ask a bible thumper Moosetracker: Have you ever sinned? Its fun to watch em dodge the question." What kind of weirdo sociopath Christians are you hanging out with who claim they have never sinned?

I'd like to officially petition the owners of this website to change the title of the "ISSUES & POLITICS" forum to "GUNS N' GAYS". It's all anyone talks about on this forum, and pretty much the entire website, anymore. It's become a lot less interesting to visit here.

Beavah: "or they have curiously inaccurate versions of history like the whole yarn about the Nazis and gun registration / gun control" Okay, let's isolate this claim, for starters. Beavah, which claim regarding the use of firearms registration and the disarming of the Jewish population and the disarming of the occupied countries does your knowledge of history show to be "inaccurate"?

Beavah: "I get that there's a lobbying group that's well-funded by da firearms manufacturers. What I don't get is why intelligent folks simply repeat this lobbying propaganda, much of it exaggerated, some of it false, without exercising even a little bit of a skeptical filter on it. It'd be like me repeating everything da ACLU says just because they're lawyers, eh? And completely ignorin' that they're lobbyists and more than a bit tunnel-visioned. Just doesn't make sense to me." Is it possible that the firearms manufacturers and the firearms owners share the same viewpoint, not because the NRA and firearms manufacturers have performed some sort of sinister mesmerism on the firearms owners, but because they have both examined the evidence and came to the same conclusions, using reason and evidence? Of course the free exercise of constitutional rights under the 2nd Amendment supports the profits of the owners and employees of the firearms industry, but the free exercise of constitutional rights under the 1st Amendment supports the press and Hollywood as well. We don't say that people only exercise their 1st Amendment rights to read "50 Shades of Grey" or play "Grand Theft Auto" or read the National Enquirer because their minds have been manipulated into wanting to do so by Barnes and Noble or the video game industry or the tabloid journalism industry. They do so because they are free citizens with inherent rights and don't need their government's permission to exercise their rights (however regrettable their choices may be from an aesthetic viewpoint.) I support the rights of Americans under the 2nd Amendment because it is in the Constitution, and I have sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution 5 times in my life. No one ever released me from those oaths. I don't have a lockstep view of firearms ownership, and differ in some instances from the views of the NRA, the firearms industry, and other gun owners. I don't know many firearms owners who share every opinion. What I HAVE found is that most of those who advocate for 2nd Amendment rights are very well-informed, very well-read on the subject, and have a very good understanding of the research and the issues involved (historical, legal, and technical) - much more so than those who are opposed to firearms rights, who tend to rely on emotional appeals. That is why most anti-firearms advocates don't do well in debates, and prefer to keep to the bully pulpit. Even on issues where I may disagree with other firearms owners, I find that those with whom I disagree are very well informed on the issues, we just came to different conclusions.

Moggie: "Just a minor point, the British weren't defeated at Rorke's Drift, 150 soldiers of 24th Foot Regiment (now called the Royal Regiment of Wales) held off 3000-4000 Zulu warriors at the station in 1879. Cheers Gareth" You're quite right, Gareth, my mistake. The relevant battle to which I meant to refer was the Battle of Islandlwana. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Isandlwana

You're mixing several arguments together, Beavah - you said, ""History has almost no examples of a citizenry armed solely with da hand weapons of the day successfully overcoming tyranny and da armed forces of the state." If by citizenry you mean solely those forces that arise against an occupying force or an unwanted regime, certainly the Viet Minh, the Zulu, and the forces of the Mahdi qualify, in that they used the hand weapons of the day to defeat superior military forces. They may have replaced them with their own tyrannies, but that's not germane to your original claim - that handweapons, such as handguns and rifles are inefficient against a superior occupying regime. Heck, the Zulus faced British rifles with assegais. The Mahdi's forces used swords and a few rifles to seize the British Army's rifles. Did these forces function as a military force? Undoubtedly, as all revolutionary movements ultimately must. There is no gentleman's agreement that revolutionary forces must remain a rabble. At some point they establish a chain of command and some sort of structure. "Most frequently, popular uprisings with hand weapons yield pogroms, ethnic cleansing, and worse tyranny." As General Giap said when an American told him that they had never defeated an American unit on the battlefield, "That is true. It is also irrelevant." It does not follow that an armed rebellion must lead to tyranny, that is instead a function of the cause for which the rebels fight, and a host of other factors. Of course, it has nothing to do with the rebel's choice of weaponry. Some other internal revolutions that began with handguns and rifles and produced what were arguably better societies, if we use your stricter (if irrelevant) definition of non-standing armies that resulted in better societies than the one the replaced, let's look at the first half of the 20th century as an example: we should include the Mashrutiyyat or Enghelab e Mashruteh, the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1907; the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, which began the second constitutional period in Turkey; the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 in China; the Easter Rebellion of 1916 in Ireland; the Greater Poland Uprising of 19181919; the 1921 Mirdit Revolt, which allowed the region to maintain its Roman Catholic faith in the middle of the Ottoman Empire; the 1926 Catholic peasants' rebellion in Shkodr; the Sao Paulo Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932, which although defeated, resulted in accession to the rebels' demands; the various guerrilla resistance groups (Greek, Jewish, French, Yugoslav, Slovak, etc.) that fought Nazi occupation and puppet governments; the 1945 Democratic Revolution in Venezuela under Rmulo Betancourt; even the "McMinn County War," also known as the Battle of Athens, Georgia in 1946 could be considered a rebellion against corrupt local rule, as armed WWII veterans fought back against voter intimidation. That's just some of the rebellions that I consider justified in the first half of the last century. There are many others that, depending on your politics, could also be considered justified, and which were usually initiated with small arms. I can go back a couple of millennia and give you hundreds more (at least, if you can afford my billable research rate for writing all this down for you...), all the way back to the Athenian Revolution (508 - 507 B.C.) and the Ionan Revolt (499 - 493 A.D.). There are many, many more, Beavah. We can further argue that even if many of these rebellions failed and resulted in brutal reprisals and rebellions, it is incumbent upon good men to resist evil regimes, even at the cost of their own lives. "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil," etc. A sizable number were, in fact successful and were, in fact, initiated with the hand weapons of the day, and did replace bad regimes with better ones, resulting in better lives for those involved. More importantly, and towards the actual point of your claim, throughout these rebellions, we can see that rebels are not required by some sort of unspoken gentlemen's agreement to continue the fight ONLY with handguns and rifles - they use those to trade up in firepower. So the argument that hand weapons are ineffective against a standing army can safely be discarded as an argument. You may have better ones, but that one is a non-starter, based on the lessons of history, my friend.

Beavah: "History has almost no examples of a citizenry armed solely with da hand weapons of the day successfully overcoming tyranny and da armed forces of the state. Most frequently, popular uprisings with hand weapons yield pogroms, ethnic cleansing, and worse tyranny." In the Christero Rebellion (1926 - 1929), in our neighbor to the south: While not a clear victory, the Catholic rebels were able to use hand weapons to fight the anti-religious forces of the atheist president Calles (who received financial support from the Ku Klux Klan) to a standstill. Through a negotiated peace, the Catholics were able to defeat tyranny and secure their rights by forcing the Calles regime from enforcing most of the anti-religious statutes. (The party which Calles founded, the PRI, was just voted back into office in Mexico, incidentally.) Something that is probably overlooked in the "well, handguns and rifles will never defeat the more powerful weapons of the state" trope is that with sufficient hand weapons, you can get BIGGER weapons by defeating units in guerrilla attacks, raiding armories, and through defecting state forces - which is how the Christeros went from rifles and handguns to machine guns and cannons, and how they got some of their best military leaders. Last year's film "For Greater Glory" provided a somewhat romanticized view of this bloody conflict for religious freedom. We could also make the argument that the defeat of the Roman Empire by the barbarians was accomplished with the hand-weapons of the era, and the Battle of Roarke's Drift demonstrated how the most powerful army of its time could be defeated by "primitive" tribesmen using vastly inferior hand-weapons but vastly superior strategy (and who soon gained control of that vastly superior weaponry), as well as the defeat of the British at Khartoum, and the French at Dien Ben Phu...it's kind of hard to know when to stop, there are so many examples in military history. (This message has been edited by AZMike)

Not free, but I use the "Road to Eagle" App on my Kindle Fire, has rank and MB requirements. I need to check to see if it's been updated. It's in the Kindle Fire app store.

Beavah: "As close as I can tell, I can't find any English-language news reports about mass shootings in da German schools in the 1990s, including in reports that purport to list all the worldwide school mass shootings. Germany did have some Columbine-copycat school shootings in the last decade, in Erfurt and Stuttgart." Not sure about the 1990s being the worst for Germany, but you had the Dorum shooting in 1992 (1 dead), the last decade had Erfurt (17 killed, 1 wounded), Coburg (1 dead, 2 wounded), Rtz (student disarmed, no casualties), Emsdetten (0 dead, 37 wounded), Winnenden (16 killed, 9 wounded). The number of school shooting threats in Germany seems to have increased (until recently there was no central tracking as each state kept its own stats) - 2,600 officially registered threats between 2006 and 2010. A more useful (but horrifying) comparison would be the rate of school killings for the last 2 decades in China, which has gun control laws that make Germany look like Arizona. Meihekou in 1995 had 2 dead, 16 wounded. Henan in 1995 had 2 dead, 15 wounded. Hejiang County in 1998 had 23 wounded. Huaiji county in 2002 had 5 dead, 2 injured. Beihai in 2003 had 8 wounded. Suzhou in 2004 had 28 wounded. Ying County in 2004 had 25 wounded. Chenzhou in 2994 had 4 dead, 12 injured. Mingcheng Town in 2004 had 12 injured. Guangde County in 2005 had 18 wounded. Shiguan in 2006 had 12 killed, 5 wounded. Luoying in 2006 had 2 dead, 2 wounded. Chiling in 2007 had 1 dead, 3 wounded. Hengyang in 2007 had 1 dead, 5 wounded. Mazhan in 2009 had 2 dead, 4 wounded. Nanping in 2010 had 8 dead, 5 injured. Xichang in 2010 had 2 dead, 5 wounded. Leizhou in 2010 had 17 wounded. Taixing in 2010 had 32 wounded. Weifang in 2010 had 1 dead, 6 injured. Hanzhong in 2010 had 10 dead, 11 wounded. Zibo in 2010 had 3 dead, 7 wounded. Shanghai in 2011 had 8 wounded. Chenpeng in 2012 had 24 wounded. Those are just the kindergarten and primary school incidents, not including secondary, high school, or colleges, all of which have extensive casualty rates. The attackers were all adults (as in Connecticut). Almost all involved edged weapons and improvised explosive or incendiary devices, as well as some blunt force trauma, defenestration, and homemade firearms. An almost total ban on private ownership of firearms hasn't been effective in China. (This message has been edited by AZMike)

Hollywood's glorification of violence has continued through the decades, and is probably as great or greater a cause of the desensitization of the young as video games. The irony of wealthy hollywood actors who receive their paychecks through an industry that feeds off such depictions lecturing the rest of us has attracted some long overdue attention: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OayyLQi6vE&feature=player_embedded

"In Scouting, I'd like to believe that we teach good citizenship which entails that those to whom much is given, much is expected. Taxation is not taking things away from people, it's people contributing to da nation they love accordin' to the benefits they have received. It is a duty, and an honor, to contribute accordin' to da benefits we receive from this great country. In fact, it's honorable to contribute more than our fair share, just as we teach Scouts that service and generosity are honorable. " It is honorable to choose to give alms to the poor. It's not honorable to demand that someone else's money be used for the poor, or that he should have to give more because he has more. There is no fluffy cloud in Heaven reserved for those who voted to do good with other people's money.

Sad but true.

"Yah, AZMike, I don't see da President as bein' hyperpartisan, eh?" You lost me at that first line, Beavah.

Beavah: "ah, there is some ACLU opposition to involuntary commitments, but a lot of that is justified, eh? Yeh don't really want da government bein' able to lock people up who haven't committed a crime very easily, do yeh? Da system is workable, but it's slow and there are too many hurdles or too many places where folks without sound legal advice can just get lost." You can put the severely mentally ill in 3 places, Beavah: On the streets, which is unacceptable to me as a Christian; in a clinic or hospital where they can receive compassionate care, if if commitment is involuntary; or in a jail, which is the de facto mental health facility of our age. It will be an involuntary commitment either way, but one is inarguably better than the other. "We should address mental health nationwide, eh? I reckon it would be great if both parties tackle that together, with adequate funding and a fair but streamlined system. Most lobbying groups try to build partnerships like that across political divides in order to be effective. It would be refreshing if da NRA reached out to da ACLU and the mental health and education lobbies and tried to build a national political consensus on this vital issue. That might accomplish somethin'. " I doubt that will happen, as I doubt that this administration is the appropriate one to tackle this issue. It has too much baggage and by its way of conducting politics has created the greatest political divide and partisan animosity in decades. There's no doubt that the deinstitutionalization movement of the 1970s and 1980s, which was an unfortunate partnership between the Nixon (and later, Reagan) administrations and the far-left academic devotees of R.D. Laing created much of the mess we are in, when Medicaid stopped paying for institutional mental health services for adults. Many of the long-term care facilities in state mental hospitals were closed, with the idea that hospitals with mental units (and which were always intended to be for short-term care and a quick turn-around) would take up the slack. Didn't work out so well for those without those willing and able to take care of them. The pharmacology revolution has helped many who would have been institutionalized on the past, but the many who have dropped through the cracks and who have no family or who have isolated themselves from their families. Obamacare is likely to exacerbate the situation, as under Obamacare more patients are pushed into Medicaid and have to start a course of treatment with the cheapest medication, not the medication that a doctor feels is right for the individual patient. These restrictions tend to make mental illness worse and expose patients to dangerous side effects, the most common reason for the mentally ill to discontinue medication, as several research studies have shown. As a result, less than half of all people in mental health programs under Medicaid stick to their treatment plan.

Beavah: "So when are yeh calling up da [ACLU] and demandin' it behave like a more responsible, more politically savvy lobbyin' group?" Well, I'd call Monday or Tuesday but the ACLU is closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day...

We should probably ban the ACLU for opposing involuntary commitment of the mentally ill. We should probably ban the makers and stars of films that glorify mindless gun violence from making political contributions, like Obama's largest campaign donor Jeffrey Katzenberg ($2.566 million), or George Clooney.

Feinstein's proposal for a buyback would cost billions at a time when the U.S. government is already over its head in debt. Slate Magazine (hardly a conservative mouthpiece) examines the issue: http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2012/12/20/assault_rifle_stats_how_many_assault_rifles_are_there_in_america.html It would also make millions of Americans who choose not to trust the government felons with the stroke of a pen. Is the level of civil unrest this will produce worth the cost, especially when the DOJ's own study showed that the last "assault weapons" ban was ineffective? It notes that when Australia did this, it raised the money for the buyback through an income tax levy. I'm sure the American people will have no problem with giving up their weapons AND having their taxes raised to pay for it, particularly at a time when (as Beavah noted) the crime rate is actually falling. If we want to reduce the rate of crime committed by those with severe behavioral disorders (which has a high impact on the national consciousness, but is probably a low percentage of the violent crime rate in the U.S.), one of the groups who need to be brought into the "National Conversation" that Obama says we need is the ACLU, which has to agree to withdraw its opposition to involuntary commitment of the mentally ill. (As well as Hollywood, probably.) (Although in practice, when Obama says he wants a "dialogue" or a "conversation" with the opposition, he just means he wants to hector them, to talk about himself a lot, and then they have to do what he says.) There should not be so many people with severe mental disorders homeless on the street. If your disorder makes you resist treatment, there should be a court-mandated process in place to make it easier to commit someone against their will. Parents who have to deal with severely disordered and violent kids should have a procedure to commit them, and there have to be facilities to do that and get them treatment, and to enforce medication if necessary. The ACLU has uniformly fought against any modifications to the current uncaring laws. Unless Obama can get his contributors in the ACLU to bend to his will on this issue, and probably to get his Hollywood financiers to cut back on the glorification of gunplay, there won't be any kind of "dialog" or "conversation" worth having.

Those who are upset about celebrating Christmas in the schools could file a complaint with the ACLU, but their offices are closed on Christmas.

"Because even the day of his birth contains the mystery of his light. That, you see, is what the apostle says: The night is far advanced, while the day has drawn near; let us throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us walk decently as in the day (Rom 13:12-13). Let us recognize the day, and let us be the day. We were night, you see, when we were living as unbelievers. And this unbelief, which had covered the whole world as a kind of night, was to be diminished by the growth of faith; that's why, on the day we celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, the night begins to be encroached upon, and the day to grow longer. So, brothers and sisters, let us keep this day as a festival; not, like the unbelievers, because of that sun up there in the sky, but because of the one who made that sun. That which was the Word, you see, became flesh, in order to be able for our sakes to be under the sun. Under the sun, indeed, in the flesh; but in divine greatness over the entire universe, in which he placed the sun. Now, though, he is also over that sun even in the flesh, the sun which people worship instead of God, because in their mental blindness they cannot see the true sun of justice. - St. Augustine. A Happy Solstice and a Merry Christmas to you all.