In 1978-1979 I attended a fledgling and short-lived seminary called “Minneapolis School of Theology” which featured a resident and visiting faculty with loose ties to Youth With A Mission, Men for Missions, and the burgeoning “Moral Majority” movement which helped to elect Ronald Reagan as President of the United States. It was a school with ambitious aspirations for scholarship to serve as an advocacy for “Moral Government Theology” as taught by the famed 19th Century President of Oberlin College and revivalist, Charles G. Finney.
Oddly enough, the leading visiting faculty were not even theologians. Finney had not been a theologian, either, but rather a lawyer-turned-preacher. Both Gordon C. Olson and Dr. Harry Conn were engineers. Conn was listed in the Who’s Who of Science and Technology, back in the day when that meant something. Obviously, he had a great mind; it’s just that as a lay theologian, he was often motivated by the sentimental aspirations of “soul-winning.” He bemoaned my adoption of postmillennialism as a descent into liberal theology, never mind that Finney was a postmillennialist.
The school’s resident faculty were talented Bible teachers as pastors and youth pastors, but none had any significant seminary credentials. The library was good. It was there that I discovered the works of R.J. Rushdoony, especially his Institutes of Biblical Law, which I devoured. Rushdoony was a prolific writer but was catapulted to national prominence on his classic, Law & Liberty, and the “Christian Reconstructionist” movement which emerged from his Chalcedon Foundation.
I think I can truly say that the happiest time of my college years was listening to Harry Conn’s lectures. He had a wit and a humor about him. But like the organization he led, “Men for Missions,” he was also a “man with a mission.” When he wasn’t traveling about teaching his lectures on Moral Government and the Atonement, he was promoting the revival of conservatism in American politics with lectures on his book, The Four Trojan Horses of Humanism.
And he was making frequent trips to Taiwan. In his after-lecture discussions, he would explain to some of us what those trips were all about: designing a high-tech defense system to protect Taiwan from an invasion from the Communist mainland. Remember, this was 1978, barely 30 years following the Chinese civil war and the flight of Chiang Kai-shek to the island.
Specifically, Conn designed a directional, sonar weapon that could defeat an invading army by scrambling the brains of the soldiers. At the time, this was a truly high-tech kind of weaponry that was both impressive and scary. I do not know if it is anymore, now over 40 years later. But I have often wondered if the reason the Communists have not invaded Taiwan has had more to do with the mystique surrounding this sophisticated weaponry than any fear of an American reprisal.
I say this now in light of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. Obviously, the Russians do not fear the West, economically or militarily. I would like to think that the West has an “ace up its sleeve,” but I’m beginning to doubt it. In coming weeks on his shortwave radio program, James McCanney will be relating his experience with Russian scientists during the 1990s. That was during the time of détente, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the famine years which followed. It is alleged that over 26 million Russians and former Soviet peoples starved to death during that period. (That’s right, I said “million.”) McCanney was trying to help them to modernize their science, technology, and industrial efficiency. Blacklisted by American scientific institutions – a man who probably deserves four Nobel Prizes in science and mathematics – the Russians embraced McCanney and leap-frogged over the West in technological capabilities. Russia has also become the bread-basket of the world. Move over “Monsanto-American agri-business.”
Dogmatizing bad science has consequences.
During the first Iraq War of the early 1990s, I dutifully watched with intense interest the reports of the major networks, and the “blow-by-blow” narrations provided by the 24-hour news services on troop movement and various field battles. Several years later, I learned that none of it was true. By their own admission, their reports were based upon disinformation provided by the military in the hopes of deceiving the then ruler Saddam Hussein, because it was believed that he would be watching the likes of Cable News Network as a source of intelligence.
I do not quarrel with the military’s logic and justification; it was quite clever actually. But I have resolved to never again waste my time with network news. It was then and now propaganda calculated to produce emotions and reactions as a part of group mind control. It is not merely news with a so-called “liberal bias,” it has become outright seditious in its contempt for American values and national sovereignty.
I get my news from other varied sources, but mostly from background knowledge of geopolitics. In other words, your best source of information is prophecy: understanding the world before there is a crisis, when the propagandists have not had a chance to alter reality by their story-telling.
Knowing the centuries-long history of Russia and Ukraine is far more useful. The long, ethnic feud between German and Russian populations, the resentment of the English toward the Tsar of Russia for helping bolster the Union during the American Civil War – when the British Royalists were salivating over a re-acquisition of the American Colonies – and the British-Russian War over Crimea of the 19th century. Wars simply do not pop out of nowhere, but usually have a long inter-generational period of simmering. In other words and to the point, you cannot believe anything from the news media concerning this war, or any other war – but know the people and the circumstances.
Some people are worried that the Communists from the Chinese mainland will invade Taiwan – the Republic of China – having now been emboldened by Russia’s unanswered invasion of Ukraine. I hope that Taiwan still has a secret weapon, because they sure cannot count on the United States for any meaningful help.
Russia and China probably do not have anything personal against Americans. They simply do not believe that a people as stupid and decadent as ours ought to be trusted with nuclear weapons. Try that shoe on for size!
— James Stivers, March 5th, 2022
