Reflections of An Uncommon Common Man

    In the early eighties I had a Mormon friend who challenged me on the issue of polygamy as well as other issues. I am always open to a challenge because that is what leads you to the truth. He was mainstream Mormon so he was monogamous in his personal life but he said that polygamy was okay because it was practiced by the Old Testament patriarchs and kings like David and Solomon. This I could not argue with but I felt the Holy Spirit leading me in another direction. A strong case can be made for monogamy in the Bible. Polygamy in my view is much like divorce. It was given to man by man. It is not of divine origin. God gave us marriage between one man and one woman. Matthew 19:4-8 English Standard Version (ESV) 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they a...

 I am always a irritated when I see the bumper stickers on cars that say coexist or tolerance with each letter representing a different religion or ideology. Why is it that the left feels the need to preach to the rest of us on tolerance when America is the most tolerant nation on earth. In my view we tolerate things that shouldn't be tolerated. I would challenge the people who have these stickers to take a drive through countries like Saudi- Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, China, and North Korea and give us a report on how tolerant they are. The left worries about offending Muslims when Christians are being persecuted and killed by the thousands, not only at the hands of Muslims but Communists. The left defends Islam when the goal of most Muslim countries is the same goal as Hitler. The destruction of the Jewish race. The thing that has always set America apart from most countries of the world is that it has had a national conscience. Like a person that struggles with their conscience ...

Ida B. Wells   Ida B. Wells-Barnett was born a slave on July 16, 1862 in Holly Springs Mississippi. When she was 16 and attending Shaw College her parents and 10 month old baby brother died in a yellow fever epidemic. Ida had six remaining siblings that relatives wanted to place in foster homes but rather than see her family split up she dropped out of Shaw and found work at a black elementary school. She resented that the white teachers were paid 80.00 dollars a month while she was only paid 30.00 dollars a month. The discrimination that she faced made her interested in the politics of race and in improving the education of blacks. In 1883 she moved to Memphis where teachers were payed better. While on summer breaks she attended Fisk University in Nashville. She also became interested in the cause of women's rights. On May 4, 1884 a train conductor told her to give up her seat and move to the smoking car which was filled with passengers. Wells refused to give up her seat 71...

  Pictures can have a great impact on history. Like the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima or the picture of the Hindenburg going down in flames. Pictures do not always tell the truth. An AP reporter named Eddie Adams took this picture at the height of the Tet Offensive in Saigon on February 1, 1968. The media sensationalized this picture. You were left with the impression that the man was an innocent civilian being gunned down in cold blood. The anti-war movement loved this picture and milked it for all that it was worth for it's propaganda value. The following is the real story. The man doing the shooting was South Vietnamese Major General Nguyen Ngoc Loan who was the chief of the South Vietnam national police. The man being executed was Nguyen Van Lem aka Captain Bay Lop. Lem was no civillian. He was a Viet Cong and not just any Viet Cong. He was an assassin and leader of a Viet Cong death squad that had been targeting South Vietnamese National Police Officers and their fam...

Jayne Mansfield   Jayne Mansfield died way too young on June 29, 1967 at the age of 34 in a gruesome car wreck, She was killed instantly but contrary to urban legend she was not decapitated. Jayne was called the poor man's Marilyn Monroe. She had enjoyed about a four year stint of popularity on Broadway and in Hollywood from 1954 until 1958. Her career was in decline in the late 50's and early 60's but she was still popular in Europe and on the nightclub circuit. She took her last name from her high school sweetheart Paul Mansfield when she married him at the age of seventeen. Her second husband was a former Mr. Universe named Mickey Hargitay who was from Norway. The third and last husband was Matt Cimber. Mansfield was highly educated, attending Southern Methodist University, the University of Texas and U.C.L.A. She supposedly had an IQ of 163 and was called the smartest dumb blonde ever. Of course she couldn't be too smart. In 1966, a year before her death, while...

  Many people believe that we are in the last days before Christs glorious rapture. The Bible tells us that no man can know the date and hour that it will happen. Jesus tells us in Matthew 24 that nations will rise against nations. There will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. You will be delivered up to be afflicted and they will kill you. You will be hated of all nations for his sake. There will be false prophets and because of the lawlessness that abounds men's hearts will grow cold. The Bible tells us that men will become lovers of self and children will be disobedient to parents. Men will call good evil and evil good. Knowledge shall increase and men will run to and fro. These are just a few of the signs that we are to look for. Does any of these signs look familiar to you? I once had a discussion with my sister who lives in Hawaii on this subject and she believes that the signs that we are seeing today have appeared to every generation and that our...

  Robert Elliot Burns was born on May 10, 1892 and died on June 5, 1955. He served as an Army Medic in World War I but upon his discharge he was unable to find a good job so he became a drifter. He was from New Jersey but ended up in Atlanta Georgia in 1922. Burns fell in with the wrong crowd and with two other men robbed a grocery store. They netted five dollars and eighty one cents but he was sentenced six to ten years hard labor on the Georgia chain gang. He escaped after another prisoner used a sledgehammer to break his chains. He was able to escape while taking a two minute bathroom break. Burns made his way to Chicago. While living in Chicago he eventually became editor and publisher of the Greater Chicago Magazine. He became involved with a Spanish woman who learned of his past. He married her because she threatened to turn him into the police if he didn't. Seven years later he asked for a divorce because he had fallen in love with Lillian Salo and he wanted to marry h...

  At the end of the Civil War large plantation owners and businessmen in the South who had depended on the free labor of slavery were faced with a huge dilemma. Because of the war the South was virtually bankrupt and their primary labor force had been freed by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. The 13th Amendment had abolished all slavery except the slavery of convicted criminals. Southerners and many Northerners who had owned slaves during the war tried to force their former slaves to work in their fields, factories, sawmills or anywhere that they were needed. They passed Black Codes which forced the Freedmen to sign yearly labor contracts to work for their former masters. If they refused they could be arrested for vagrancy and forced to work for free. Of course the former slaves were focused on trying to own their own land and finding work of their own choosing. To remedy the labor shortage the former slave owners instituted a new form of slavery. The convict lease sys...