Christopher Allen Jones

I’m working on a near-future short story where a man purchases some personal genetic enhancements to become more competitive in the job market. I won’t spoil it, but as a reflection I’ll at least ask that aren’t we already genetically engineered? And isn’t this natural world, with its natural human biology, what we’re engineered for? By many observations you wouldn’t think so.

Looking at modern life you would think we were woefully inadequate for any aspect of natural living. And we’ve gone beyond just providing technological conveniences that make life “easier,” and we’ve progressed into an onslaught of corporate manipulation that tries to keep us perpetually in debt, gaze for hours at broadband television and Internet, and consume industrial byproducts as food. The solution is not a benevolent bureaucracy, but rather human independence and freewill and perhaps getting closer to the world that God designed for us.

Mark Mallet writes today on his experience with his new milk cow on his family farm in Saskatchewan:

There is some kind of dance with the Divine when we begin to draw directly from His creation… something transcendent, wholesome, holy. I experienced this divine waltz earlier last year as I drank untreated water straight from our well, worked our pasture, built fences, and planted a garden. It’s as though my whole being fell into a harmony with the Divine order.

Mark goes on to discuss the transformation of the family farm into the farming industry, the reliance upon genetically engineered seeds and their co-designed pesticides, and the impact it is having on our world. As we’ve discussed here, the situation is creating farms that are wholly dependent on renewing their annual license to grow food.

Almost everyone has become dependent upon multi-national corporations to feed us, especially in the Western nations. Worse yet, these corporations have often been experimenting with our food supply by “improving” upon God’s designs through genetic modification, hormonal injections, and other un-natural twists. God has been awakening not only my soul, but many, many people to the reality that we have not been stewards of creation, but abusers, as the “powers that be” experiment with life in rather chilling and self-serving ways.

He is right, and the machinations of those wishing to genetically engineer our food, and even our children, for profit, are chilling indeed.

Mark describes his trials with living closer to the earth in great detail. It really inspires questions about our independence in this modern life we live. Many people completely sacrifice child-rearing and independence just to live in a nice home, close to the mall, with endless shelves of processed food beckoning their patronage, and a TV waiting quietly. What is the reward of such a life? Some of us live off a single income so we can at least raise our own children. But how would society be transformed for the better if more of us tried to forego just some of the trappings of modern life in order to raise our children and eat our food more naturally? We’d be healthier spiritually, emotionally, and physically.

Maybe we won’t have much choice:

We are going to return to a much simpler lifestyle. It is coming, perhaps sooner than most people realize. It is not a cause to despair… but simply prepare.

Go read Mark’s thoughts, and I encourage you to support his wonderful and inspiring work: Of Despair and a Dairy Cow.

Altitude, Oil on canvas, 30” x 48”

“The Crash of Flight 1132″ is a story set in the near future. A man living on a remote piece of property watches a large passenger jet make an automated landing in the vast river valley behind his home.

You can read the story here: The Crash of Flight 1132.

Our Lady of Guadalupe is the patroness of the Americas. This simple painting is my treatment of the miraculous image from the tilma of St. Juan Diego.

Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, Oil on canvas, 16” x 20”

The potential dangers of converting the world’s food supply into corporate-controlled, patented, genetically engineered products are numerous. The most direct and obvious danger is the scientific evidence that these foods are in fact not safe, and may cause very serious and deadly long-term health effects.

A more subtle danger, and perhaps even more deadly in the long run, is the fact the world’s natural food supply, abundant and available for cultivation by anyone, may slowly be replaced, through corporate farming and natural cross-contamination, by privately engineered (and controlled) products. This is just as transformative to society as if water or air were somehow patented and owned. It is very conceivable that at some point in the future nearly all food grown will require a commercial license, and if not renewed, the crops will fail to yield anymore. This is a stunning development. We’ve long envisioned “virtual reality” where a world in a computer seems as real as the outside. Now we’re looking at the reverse, a real world we live in where nature itself is artificially engineered into existence.

In a recent 3-part series author Michael Brown details not only the dangers of genetically engineered food, but the small number of corporations that dominate the market, and the implications for the emerging global consolidation of government and trade (aka the “new world order”).

The implications of new technologies “allow three or four private multi-national seed companies to dictate terms to world farmers for their seed,” writes the author in Seeds of Destruction, pointing out that gene-altered seeds often are fashioned so that they produce plants that do not then create their own new seeds—forcing the farmer to buy new seed from the corporation every year. The plants are also engineered to withstand increased use of herbicides sold by the same companies.

Some geneticists are meddling with peas, tomatoes, peppers, wheat, rice, or corn to alter them such that “in one broad, brazen stroke of his hand, man will have irretrievably broken the plant-to-seed-to-plant-to-seed cycle, the cycle that supports most life on the planet,” as one critic put it.

And reports on the health dangers of this tinkering are quickly suppressed:

Studies showing adverse effects have been quashed despite signs of trouble. Toxins used in 25 percent of modified crops were found to be harmful to mice, butterflies, beetles, weevils, and lacewings—perhaps too accounting for the disappearance of bees and other animals—while a study in Russia indicated that half the offspring of rats fed on genetically-modified soybean diets died in the first three weeks of life.

Genetically-modified ingredients are now in most processed and fast foods and everyday items such as milk and popcorn.

There is also concern that the very people behind the push to replace the world’s food supply with one under their complete engineering control have been on record supporting not only a new global government, but global population reduction.

Some trace the trend not only to genetic engineering pioneered by Rockefeller-funded laboratories, but also to a memorandum penned by Rockefeller-protégè and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who in April of 1974 wrote what was entitled “Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests.”

Known also as National Security Study Memorandum 200, or “NSSM 200,” the memo—kept secret for fifteen years (until organizations affiliated with the Catholic Church forced its declassification)—was commissioned by Nixon on the recommendation of John D. Rockefeller III and made official policy by President Gerald Ford.

“By the early years of the new century, it was clear that no more than four giant chemical multinational companies had emerged as global players in the game to control patents on the very basic food products that most people in the world depend for their daily nutrition—corn, soybeans, rice, wheat, even vegetables and fruits and cotton—as well as new strains of disease-resistant poultry genetically-modified to allegedly resist the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, or even genetically altered pigs and cattle,” writes the author.

“Three of the four private companies had decades-long ties to Pentagon chemical warfare research.”

Do we really want to hand over the exclusive ability to grow food to a select group of people?

This discussion would not be complete without mentioning the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The seed vault is an underground bunker where natural crops have been stashed to preserve their DNA. The first explanation given for the need of this vault was “in case of global disaster.” But if you look at the people behind it, including Gates, Rockefeller, Monsanto, and other powerful persons, you will see that the vault might really be a backup copy for the day when the GMO giants finally wreck things to the point of needing to start over.

The world is in unprecendented crisis on a global scale and from the halls of power come calls for a new world order.

We live in a 24-hour news cycle where media denizens use their own worldview to filter events, twist them one way or another, and present a picture that so many people wish to see: to overcome widespread crisis our world is moving toward unprecedented integration and renewal. As a part of this process is the collapse of the old economic order, a rebirth of enlightenment, and a new era of human cooperation that will leave no one poor, unhealthy, uneducated, or without opportunity. Many things, perhaps those that led to the crisis they say, need to be left in the past. Maybe this includes ideas of economics, or freedom, or perhaps religion, whose oppressive morals and backward ideas have caused so much trouble. These things will need to be remade to fit a new age. Among the utopian promises is a world where healthcare is a right, housing affordable and guaranteed, and where jobs and money don’t have borders. Politicians and the global elite have bought into the promise as well, and a palpable hope encircles the globe: the family of humanity will come together in unity, and build new cities, whose spires will reach into the heavens!

Tower of Babel, Marten van Valckenborch I, ~1595

As we watched America’s economy falter—a mixed economy largely managed by bankers and politicians—calls erupted around the world for a new world financial order. The leaders of France, Germany, and England all voiced support. Worried over the faltering US dollar—itself a Federal Reserve “note” with nothing real behind it—countries like China and Russia called for a new currency. Russian president Dmitry Medvedev went so far as to hold up a coin, engraved with the words “United Future World Currency,” for the press to see as a model.

Many are clamoring for global regulation to manage the crisis of climate change, a cause fully supported by the United Nations. Some alarmists wish to literally terraform the earth using unprecedented geoengineering projects to cool the planet. The purveyors of genetically engineered foods have lobbied governments and organizations around the world to adopt their reckless product under the dual banners of solving world hunger and saving the environment. There is no shortage of crises being used as justification for global authority.

Perhaps as a case in point, a worldwide outbreak of swine flu has erupted prompting the World Health Organization to issue a Level 6 Pandemic warning, a proclamation that catalyzes a chain of events around the world. Many fear forced vaccinations for H1N1 swine flu using a vaccine that has been rushed to market by private pharmaceutical companies reaping billions in public money while enjoying complete legal immunity for any related deaths.

We have the global economic crisis, the climate crisis, the pandemic flu crisis, the healthcare crisis, the overpopulation crisis, and so on, all as justification for a radical new world order, for far reaching global authority to right all wrongs. It comes from many directions, from the leaders of super wealthy multinational corporations, from the media, and from political leaders. But their agenda goes beyond global governance.

Strangely, both the radical activist and the multinational industrialist want to see the same thing: a world that adheres to a new and politically correct worldview, and a global political structure with the power to see it happen. Even if one wants social justice, and the other global market domination, they are both attempting to drive the same vehicle to different destinations.

The common agenda requires a centralized global economy. Will it be benign? Probably not. What started out as natural economic freedom, the ability to freely exchange goods and services on our own terms, has been adulterated by corporations and governments, and turned into a labyrinth of laws and trade regulations that empower large corporations and punish small business. Those business chiefs advocating for international “free trade” in reality want no such thing, they want globally managed trade, where their influence can affect global trade laws, block out the competition, and ensure their own success. In the American bailout era, those companies deemed “too big to fail” saw their losses become public responsibility, while their profits were still privately enjoyed.

The agenda requires that local governments yield their autonomy to global organizations in the supposed name of trade and labor equality or safety. But the same rules that make sure food is safe could be used to allow Monsanto to put organic farmers out of business, as is the concern over the U.S. “Food Safety Modernization,” and “Food Safety Enhancement” acts.

The agenda requires them to destroy small town values, and promote global values. This is the reason that issues like gay marriage, birth control, and abortion take the forefront of so much debate; these traditional values matter to parents in rural communities, but they are obstacles to those wishing to transform society. It is why the government has sued Belmont Abbey, a Catholic College, for not offering birth control in its “health” plan. The agenda portrays traditional moral notions as hateful, or racist, or sexist, and instead promotes a relativity that declares right and wrong to be a personal decision.

It uses environmental concerns to justify eugenic population control under the guise of health care. Already there is an idea in our society that a large, natural family is reckless to the environment, but abortion is promoted globally as an acceptable form of birth control. Increasingly, assisted suicide is encouraged for the elderly who have terminal or troubling diseases, rather than a prolonged course of expensive treatment. The agenda sees 13,000,000 babies aborted in China each year not as a tragedy, but as environmentally responsible. It is a culture of death.

Cloister Graveyard in the Snow, David Caspar Friedrich, ~1810

It is amazing that this worldview of a utopian society, with very authoritarian policies, is accepted by so many as the answer to our problems. But if you look to those who will benefit from this trend, you’ll see a powerful elite that dominate big business and politics. They even have clubs. Groups like the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral commission, and the Council on Foreign Relations. This is not a secret conspiracy, this is just how global business and politics are conducted by the global elite. Regardless of what liberal idealists believe, it is these elite that are bringing globalization and the new world order to fruition through the media, through government, through business. It is no secret that the CFR has openly advocated for an end to sovereignty and the rise of a new international order. It is their stated policy position. The elite are consolidating money and power, perhaps each CEO, president, king, or prince believing he will be the Powerful One to rule it all. The liberal idealist goes along for the ride for the promise of a new era of tolerance and diversity, an updated Marxism that holds all beliefs and morals as equal, a world where there is no such thing as right and wrong, and no material want. A strange and familiar thing that is, the idea of a powerful man ascending to unprecedented political and economic power, and his billions of supporters who seek a world without the judgments of God. Of course, such a situation was long-ago prophesied.

Deeds of the Antichrist, Luca Signorelli, ~1500

And they are accomplishing their goals. We are witnessing in this world the unprecedented collapse of sovereignty. The elite are calling for an end to sovereign nations. And in the United States, the concept of states’ rights is all but forgotten, and those who wish to return to the constitution are called extremists.

Worst of all is the collapse of the sovereignty of the family. When this finally vanishes, there will be no opposition to the New World Order and global tyranny. Already children are viewed as an interest of the state, more so than the family. A judge in California attempted to effectively ban homeschooling because he said the state compels everyone to full-time education. A judge in North Carolina forced children into public schooling during a divorce battle so that they could get a “more well-rounded education.” Sweden is seeking to outlaw homeschooling altogether for religious and philosophical reasons. Germany has arrested homeschooling parents. Groups like the NEA want to see homeschooling made illegal except by government-licensed teachers.

This is a dangerous trend, as the schools themselves have long ago put reading, writing, and math on the back burner. School now is about social adjustment and cultural indoctrination, turning out good citizens with a politically correct worldview that increasingly holds moral judgment and religion in contempt.

The sovereignty of the family, not the global state, is paramount. Parents must have the freedom to lovingly teach their children personal values, to teach them about life, religion, and the beauty of nature. It is the bedrock of independence; it is the essence of the family. Tyranny cannot stand against an independent mind armed with the truth.

Placing children into the clutches of the system is the quickest way to failure. When the state educates you, raises you, and becomes your parent, no one will question authority.

The storm is gathering, the horizon is dark, and they are seeking to subdue you before you even know to put up a fight. It was foretold in ancient pages of Scripture of the world’s oldest living religion. It was echoed again by the one that Scripture prophesied would arrive—the Lamb of God—wounded for our iniquities, bruised for our sins. We have been promised a world in turmoil, in tribulation, and the rise of a self-aggrandizing civilization and its charismatic leader. His promises are a deception, his happiness a veil over what is dark and evil, his prey the poor souls of the willing. And there are so many willing.

Powerful interests have been putting pressure on government and industry to adopt genetically modified foods. The current ploy is to say we can solve world hunger, and the environment, by adopting Monsanto’s twisted products. But there is increasing evidence that not only do the crops not yield, the “food” they produce could be deadly.

In Africa three different corn varieties are failing, and farmers claim Monsanto is not being honest:

According to Monsanto, the crop failure occurred due to “underfertilization processes in the laboratory,” and has only been a problem in “less than 25 percent” of the seed from the three corn varieties.

Marian Mayet of the Africa Center for Biosecurity disputed the company’s claims, however. According to her sources, some farms have experienced crop failures as high as 80 percent. She also expressed doubt over Monsanto’s explanation for the problem, laying the blame instead on the GM technologies used to produce the seed.

“Monsanto says they just made a mistake in the laboratory, however we say that biotechnology is a failure,” Mayet said. “You cannot make a ‘mistake’ with three different varieties of corn. We have been warning against GM-technology for years, we have been warning Monsanto that there will be problems.”

Also today we learn that there may be a link between GM potatoes and cancer in laboratory rats. The evidence is strong enough for the UK to withdraw permission for new GM potato trials at secret locations:

“These trials should be stopped. The research backs up the work of Arpad Pusztai and it shows that he was the victim of a smear campaign by the biotech industry. There has been a cover-up over these findings and the Government should not be a party to that.”

Mr Simpson said the findings, which showed that lab rats developed tumours, were released by anti-GM campaigners in Wales. Dr Pusztai and a colleague used potatoes that had been genetically modified to produce a protein, lectin. They found cell damage in the rats’ stomachs, and in parts of their intestines.

And in the United States it is nearly impossible to figure out which foods are engineered and which are not, since no labeling requirements exist, and more telling, the producers don’t seem to want to tout the engineering as a selling point. And maybe that says all we need to know.

The National Vaccine Advisory Committee is recommending further study of vaccines as a potential cause of autism. Many believe that mercury has been ruled out as a cause, but the NVAC wants to study autism in children who have mitochondrial disease. Theresa A. Deisher, Ph.D., has this to say:

What the NVAC has overlooked, however, in their recommendations, is that epidemic regressive autism is associated with the switch from using animal cells to produce vaccines to the use of aborted human fetal cells for vaccine production. Now when we vaccinate our children, some vaccines also deliver contaminating aborted human fetal DNA. The safety of this has never been tested.

Autism and autism spectrum disorder are polygenic diseases, meaning that multiple genes have been shown to be associated with these diseases. Studies have also clearly shown that there is an environmental component, a trigger, that is required. Vaccines are an obvious potential environmental trigger for autism because of the almost universal childhood exposure to vaccines in first world countries.

She goes onto to describe the potential link up:

How could the contaminating aborted fetal DNA create problems? It creates the potential for autoimmune responses and/or inappropriate insertion into our own genomes through a process called recombination. There are groups researching the potential link between this DNA and autoimmune diseases such as juvenile (type I) diabetes, multiple sclerosis and lupus. Our organization, [3] Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute (SCPI), is focused on studying the quantity, characteristics and genomic recombination of the aborted fetal DNA found in many of our vaccines.

Preliminary bioinformatics research conducted at SCPI indicates that “hot spots” for DNA recombination are found in nine autism-associated genes present on the X chromosome. These nine genes are involved in nerve-cell synapse formation, central nervous system development and mitochondrial function.

It’s a very informative article and should be read. You can read it here: Is Aborted Fetal DNA in Vaccines Linked to Autism?.

If you are interested in the classical tradition and sacred art, you should take a look at the art of James Langley:

James Langley: Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, pencil, watercolor wash, and chalk. (Complete painting: 10′x16′, Altar Retablo, Oil on Canvas)

Langley on the state of Sacred Art today:

To be quite frank, the void of beauty in the Divine Liturgy, in the House of God, and in Catholic culture is all too commonplace. And that’s not simply a subjective judgment. We are suffering a true spiritual loss of great consequence — a loss that is all the more appalling when contemporary art is compared with the magnificent artistic patrimony inspired by the faith.

The great loss becomes evident when we consider the mysterious and sacramental character of beautiful religious art, architecture, and music. True religious art has the power to stir the deepest longings of the human heart for God. Artistic beauty is a sign of God’s presence on Earth and represents the first fruits of a return to God freely given as an offering of praise and thanksgiving, worship, and adoration. Simply put, Catholic art today is salt that has lost its savor.

See the rest of the interview here: The Redemption of Catholic Art.

His web site is here: James Langley.

If we look at history as a reflection of human events, then it is safe to say that all societies rise and fall. Even our own.

In the 19th century there was a painter named Thomas Cole whose style of painting was particularly beautiful, and particularly American. He inspired a movement that came to be known as the Hudson River School. While many of his paintings were beautiful scenes, some engaged in telling stories. Perhaps the most famous of these allegorical pieces is his series of paintings known as The Course of Empire.

The Course of Empire: The Savage State

America was founded on a wild land. Perhaps it was the chance to escape religious persecution, or to pursue the good life in a place where every square inch of land hadn’t already been claimed many times over, that brought millions to the continent. For Europeans, it really was a new world, as the founders had put forth a government based on liberty and individual rights that was radical at the time. Over the years people of all sorts arrived in droves, some were wealthy while others were poor and looking for work, but all were committed to advancing this new American way of life. Many of these people took up arms and defended their fledgling nation during multiple wars. And over time the new nation became great. America became the greatest nation on the face of earth, surpassing in wealth and technological prowess all that came before.

But the nation that grew up on this continent changed greatly, and not always for the better.

The Course of Empire: The Pastoral or Arcadian State

America had its beginnings as an agrarian nation. This type of lifestyle was supported by an intrinsic notion of responsibility, of morals, of religion, and life under the democracy wasn’t about getting free stuff, like health care from the government. Freedom in America’s early days was freedom from oppressive rule, not freedom from responsibility.

But the gears of industrial society continued to turn. The world entered the 20th century amid wars and heard calls for radical new forms of government that would control society, educate all children, force fairness between workers and industrialists, and promise liberation from all of life’s duties. Much of that talk instead led to tyranny. By the time World War II broke out over Hitler’s eugenic and economic propaganda, America’s future was set, and the country said goodbye to its agrarian roots forever.

The Course of Empire: The Consummation

America emerged from World War II and rushed into a new age. The baby boom was erupting and the era of ultra-cheap housing saw the spread of suburbs across the continent. Traditional ideas of family were gradually thrown out. Families surrendered their children to day care and government-run schooling so both mom and dad could pursue careers. We became a nation of consumers, commuting between our jobs and suburban homes, and all the while being told to earn as much as possible, spend as much as possible, to run up debt, to borrow against our homes (which were mortgaged to begin with), and to live the American dream on future earnings. It would be simple to write this trend off as foolish consumerism. It is inescapably true that every person must take responsibility for his actions. But this consumerism is a cultural sickness, and it has been encouraged by the government, and by banks, and by investors. The foundation of our republic for decades now, in both public and private life, has been to buy with money we don’t have.

In the late 1990s, investors dumped money into Internet startups without any regard for business models or actual earnings. Why? Because all they needed was to be acquired by a public company and their stock would become liquid. Profitability would be somebody else’s problem.

In the 2000s what had started as an upswing in home prices in the late nineties continued unabated. If you lived in a growing area it wasn’t uncommon to see the value of your home double in six years. Did your income double? No. The home industry, including mortgage banking, was more than happy to see the huge prices, and pushed for huge loans for everyone. Runaway prices encouraged consumers to borrow against future equity to do anything from pay off debt, expand their homes, or even just supplement their incomes. Creditors were fine with it because the homes could be sold to pay off what was owed. And it would last forever, right?

The Course of Empire: The Destruction of Empire

But the bubble burst. By many accounts we have not even begin to hit bottom. The government is trying to fix things by—you guessed it—spending money it doesn’t have. They are trying to smother the fire with gasoline.

America may have seen her highest point of wealth and power around the turn of the millennium. It was a rapid ascent from World War II and with the “New Deal,” government increasingly saw its role not as a keeper of the peace and a defender of liberty, but rather as the architect of the economy. President Bush, with Obama’s vote, gave out a trillion dollars to the banks. President Obama, once in office, gave out a trillion more for pork projects. And much of the money reeks of corruption. Eisenhower warned us of the military-industrial complex. But the phenomenon he observed has become the model of our government, entrenched in all aspects of our nation. We have the medical complex, the agriculture complex, and even the media complex. All of these industries are dangerously entangled with politicians and government. Corporations have consolidated power from smaller players in every industry. Their CEOs are best friends with D.C. powerbrokers. The corporate elite and politicians game the government to their own benefit. Regulations are passed for competitive advantage, to keep out the little guy, to entrench the big guy. Taxes are raised, bubbles are inflated, and the monetary system is gamed. All reap profits for the elite. All further in-debt the consumer. And perhaps it is our own fault. Believing the government “owes” us things, many of us have voted for those promising to fix our problems and pay for everything. All the while individual debt is skyrocketing and individual liberty is disappearing: Obama has continued the same wiretapping program criticized under Bush.

The Course of Empire: Desolation

Perhaps the saddest signs of decline in our country are not economic at all. Our food is being turned into patented, intellectual corporate property. And this engineering is not to make food healthier, but to withstand proprietary, poisonous pesticides from the same manufacturers. It is designed to require farmers to procure a license every year if they want a harvest. It is not about healthy food and bountiful crops. It is about recklessly altering the genetic makeup of something created by God solely to proclaim your own glory and ownership. It is unethical, as these changes may persist in the genetic makeup of our food for millions of years, if not forever. In order to sell more pesticide, they have dramatically interfered with billions of years of natural DNA development in the epochal equivalent of a fraction of a second. On one hand they tell the environmentalists that this is the solution to the world’s food problems, even though tests have shown the genetically engineered varieties to yield less, and recently 80,000 hectares failed to produce in South Africa due to an “engineering error.” On the other hand they watch their product pollinate neighboring farms and prosecute those farmers for stolen property. It is an offense to ethics and to the sovereignty of private property.

Most troubling is that our respect for human life has declined as well. There are increasing calls for assisted suicide, and encouraging the chronically or terminally ill to kill themselves before straining the government-funded system. Even Obama during an interview said that these people constitute too great a percentage of healthcare costs, and that we as a nation need to have a “difficult conversation” regarding euthanasia.

Sweden recently legalized abortion as a valid form of gender selection.

Our lack of respect for life is encouraging experts to establish a “filter” over what constitutes a life worth living. The parameters of the filter are set by those who think they know what’s best for the environment, for our health care, for our demographic make-up. And the filter itself is death through euthanasia, or abortion.

The advances of science should remove all doubt over whether or not life begins at conception. It surely does, although some claim an embryo is just a “cluster of cells.” At the moment of conception, the unique DNA of a human being is created. Without any spiritual considerations whatsoever, it is a fact that the cells containing this DNA are the new human’s body. The “cluster of cells,” which is very much alive, is the corporeal form of an early human, and it is growing rapidly. As this occurs it will of course develop internal organs, a brain, a heartbeat, and so on, all containing the same directing DNA. Referring to this developing human as a “cluster of cells” is a clever language trick that implies there is no directed development, that there is no biological or genetic independence, that there is not in fact a genetically distinct human attempting to grow. If you accept the fact that the new human’s DNA is formed at conception, and that all subsequent growth is the expression of this DNA, then you must accept that even an early embryo is not a cluster of cells, it is a person’s body.

Confronted with this fact, some will say yes this is technically true, but the body is not a person. They say that only at some future arbitrary point will it cease to be a “cluster of cells” and become an unborn child. Some draw this at a certain level of brain function. Others at viability outside of the womb. And some even claim a newborn baby is not human until it has a recognizable level of self-awareness and cognition. But all of these arbitrary points ignore the scientific fact. The new DNA is created at conception, and the child’s body begins growing at conception.

By disregarding the value of life, by seeing those too old to work as a needless burdern, by turning sexuality into an irresponsible sport with whatever gender we’re in the mood for, we have thrown out the time-honored relationships that have been the bedrock of humanity. Is it any surprise that England recently created an embryo from three different humans before destroying it six days later?

Probably the greatest cost from the abandonment of the natural family is demographic decline. Americans and Europeans are a declining people. Europe in particular is being transformed. It will soon see an Islamic majority fueled by immigration. American birth rates are in decline as well. Western Civilization may finally disappear from the earth.

Do we face desolation? Maybe not. It could be the time that Americans wake up to the lies they’ve been told. It could be a time to return to the principles of small government and personal responsibility. We could see a return to more traditional, natural values surrounding the family. Time will tell.

We don’t know where world events will lead us. With sober eyes we behold a world that is truly in trouble, and it brings to mind the apocalypse, the book of Revelation. We may be in store for a global tyranny. The days of the antichrist may be upon us. But there is also a chance this is not the case, and the hand of God will be held back.

If not, we are headed for ruin and as Thomas Cole might say, thus passes the glory of the world.