I
recently went to watch the movie "Am I Racist?" The movie
made me cringe throughout as it exposed the logic of the DEI and
Racism industry. I came away with a new appreciation for what is
actually happening,
This is an industry that has done some amazing things most notably
on the marketing front. But let's look closer from the perspective
of this being a business that is trying to grow.
1. Do they have a product? Those making money in this industry are selling a wide array of
classes, training, books, certifications and similar products. The
materials for the training are presented by experts in the field and
seem to be directed toward those in Human Resources. Keynote
speakers and the like are also available on the topic and command a
wide range of prices. 2. Does the customer recognize value in this product? Evidence would suggest that yes, customers do find value simply
because the industry exists and people pay for this product today.
However, actual ROI is extremely difficult to measure due to the
intangible nature of its benefits. There are some measures that are
used such as:
Employee Feedback Surveys
Diversity Metrics
Customer satisfaction and loyalty
Enhanced innovation and creativity
Level of employee engagement and retention
However, these measures are vague at best. Even under stringent
analysis, the number of variables makes most of these measurements
unreliable when in comes to root cause. This tells me that the
perceived ROI is more important that genuine ROI. I suspect a
psychological or marketing benefit that drives purchases rather than
real tangible results. The biggest contributor to this value is likely the inability to
participate in bidding on projects that are sponsored by government
and other large organizations that require evidence of some sort of
DEI implementation. Most of those contracts also make these
requirements cascade to subcontractors. This would be the only
direct means to measure value from what I understand. 3. Will the customer pay the price for this product? It seems so. Globally, DEI spending is expected to reach $15
Billion by 2026 where the US is 45% of that market. 4. How will they get the word out about this product? Each of the companies that sell particular DEI products does some
level of marketing. However, the impact of popular media and
politicians cannot be understated for it’s effectiveness in setting
expectations for compliance. This effort to make DEI common and
expected is a tremendous boost to the industry. The thing that I notice the most about this industry is that it
targets the shame sensitivity of the most conscientious people.
These are the people who work hard and tirelessly to achieve some
goal. Much of their drive comes from wanting to matter and to be
useful. They are those who are sensitive to social cues to help them
produce good products, provide value and be useful. These people
find meaning in serving humanity in the method that they do. This
social sensitivity is being exploited by those that condemn
productive people, shaming them into “doing more” even if that
means self harm. The other insidious aspect to this is that it is
framed in such a way that no matter what or how much you do, you will
not be successful in eradicating your hidden and invisible biases.
This reminds me of the framing of climate change. If the climate is
changing, it’s your fault. Same here, if people don’t have the
same outcomes, it indicates hidden bias that requires more
self-flagellation. Without real ROI, this industry will perish unless they can
solidify their place through fiat. I believe that this is why those
that peddle DEI are insistent on codifying their goals into law.
That is their vulnerability and our opportunity to halt the madness
that wastes our resources with no positive result. Just thinking.
Everyone is familiar with “before and after” pictures. Some show a positive difference – “before and after” diet photos – and some a more negative result – usually pictures of celebrities “then” and “now.” But whether they flatter or expose, they make a point that cannot be ignored. These images are designed to inform the viewer of something that they might not otherwise see or understand; that is, the changes that have taken place to the individual involved – over time. But it isn’t just people who become manifestations of the treatment, or mistreatment of time! We see similar photos of things both natural such as landscapes or man-made objects such as buildings or cities. The passage of time affects all things but often terrible things occur that had we been aware, we might have stepped in and prevented or at least alleviated to some extent the damage those things created. The problem with such issues is that there is a point in time at which it is almost impossible to prevent the inevitable. But there is no doubt that the passage of time does much to hide the decay that is taking place, a reason why these “before and after” images are so uniquely informative! When you see the difference between what was and what is, sometimes even the most brain-dead wake up at least a little bit but usually when it is decades too late to do anything! Alas, often the result of knowing is painful when you realize that you did or accomplished nothing to prevent what you now lament. Now I did have a “Eureka!” moment when I recently watched that famous “Christmas” movie, It’s a Wonderful Lifedirected by Frank Capra. The story arose from a “Christmas card” created by its author. It’s an interesting look at how the matter went from a sort of pamphlet that the author couldn’t sell to a publisher and so ran off himself and mailed as a Christmas greeting, to the film itself. It wasn’t all that popular at its release but over time has been recognized as the great “story” that it is. In short, the narrative deals with one George Bailey, who, at the climax of the film is facing ruin for an accident in which he had no part but that his good nature will not allow to be blamed on his good natured if none-too-bright Uncle Willy. George, in despair, decides to take his own life, but is prevented by his guardian angel. In turn, Clarence – his guardian angel – is permitted to fulfill George’s desire to “never have been born” and thus be spared disgrace and ruin. Now, most people never realize the influence that their lives have on those around them, but George’s life was particularly powerful. For instance, as a child, he saves his brother from drowning and deliberately fails to deliver a prescription into which the local pharmacist for whom he works, put in the wrong drug when the man is overcome upon learning of his son’s death from influenza. During the war, George’s brother saves the lives of a group of soldiers and is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroism. When he grows older, George takes over his dead father’s business and by so doing allows decent, ordinary people to buy houses and live good lives, something that he later learns would not have been the case otherwise. The owner of the local bank, a man named Potter, is a real villain to the point at which he keeps the money that George’s sweet but rather inept uncle accidentally leaves at Potter’s bank on Christmas eve, the absence of which now finds George in danger of criminal prosecution and imprisonment. This is the point in the film at which he goes to the river to commit suicide and is interrupted by guardian angel Clarence who grants him his wish never to have been born. My “E” moment came when George, now never having lived, returns to Bedford Falls – the name of his home town – and discovers the consequences of his life – or rather the consequences of his never having lived. The first thing we learn is that the town is now named “Pottersville” proof that evil old Mr. Potter accomplished all of his aims because George wasn’t there to prevent. The town is filled with bars and strip joints and George sees a young woman friend whom he had helped to a better life being put into a paddy wagon after she was taken from a “place of ill-repute.” All during his time in Pottersville, George learns such things as the fact that the druggist had been imprisoned for twenty years after poisoning the patient whom George had saved, that his mother had become a worn out, unhappy woman running a boarding house, that the housing development his company had financed was still a vacant lot and eventually, he finds his brother’s grave in the cemetery. George tells Clarence that his brother could not have died because he had saved all of those men. Clarence then responds, “All those men died George, because your brother was not there to save them because you were not there to save him!” George also meets his wife, who has become a lonely and unhappy spinster. It is then that Clarence points out to George, whatever would happen to him as a result of the lost money, his life was worth living, that it truly was “. . . a wonderful life.” At this point, George takes back his wish and his life is restored. Neither does he care what his own fate will be. It is enough that what was will be restored! The film then shows him running through the streets of Bedford Falls in the snow and blessing his business that had done so much for so many as well as all the beloved, ordinary, decent stores and homes on the Main Street. He passes the movie theater and the film being shown is “The Bells of St. Mary’s” a wonderful uplifting film of the mid 40s. Incidentally, the actor who played Clarence also appeared in that film! In other words, Bedford Falls is the decent, godly blessed home that it had been though, of course, nothing has changed as far as George’s circumstances are concerned. He still faces possible prosecution and imprisonment but it doesn’t matter! His own fate is insignificant compared to the lives of so many other people whom he has helped during the course of his life. Of course, he goes home and finds that word has gotten out that he was in need and everybody in town comes and brings him money from small amounts to large so that the missing $8,000 is rapidly replaced. In other words, God has stepped in and answered his true prayer when he stopped trying to force his will upon God! But the most important thing is that George now understands that no good man’s life is without value and that the “before” is worth fighting for lest it become the “after.” Ah, but what was my “Eureka!” moment? That moment was when I could see the difference between Bedford Falls run by and peopled with decent men and women and that same town in the hands of evil, godless people. “Welcome to Pottersville” is the “after” in a “before” (Bedford Falls) and “after” period of moral decline. We have left the Bedford Falls of my youth – and that was probably not all that innocent even then! – and are now full-time residents of Pottersville, and it’s not a pretty picture at all. Neither do I believe that it is possible for us to undo what has been done. Why? Because the people in Pottersville were the same people who had lived in Bedford Falls with the exception of George Bailey, but they had succumbed to Potter and those who served him. We see a hint of this at one point in the movie after George’s father dies. George wants to go away. He’s bored with Bedford Falls and the Building and Loan and has accumulated a little money to go on his adventures but the board members tell him that they want him to lead his father’s company. George says no, that his Uncle Billy should do it. But they know Uncle Billy isn’t able and they tell George that if he doesn’t stay, the board will “vote with Potter” who will close the Building and Loan down as he had been trying to do for years! And so George stays. In other words, the moral decay was always there, but George’s presence prevented Potter from turning Bedford Falls into Pottersville. Alas, no person or even group of people were there to stop our downward moral path from our “Bedford Falls” to our present “Pottersville.” Oh, there were good people from time to time but soon the whole milieu became too corrupt for any one person or group of people to influence the direction in which we were going. Even our churches became defenders of the indefensible whether it was abortion or sexual perversion or the Spirit of the Age. As I write this in the third decade of the 21st century I realize that all our signposts now say “Welcome to Pottersville” but, alas, there is no George Bailey or Clarence to return this world to a time of wholesomeness and decency. We are condemned to reside where evil has triumphed and it’s our own damned fault.
It appears that when the Deep State is in need of a “diversion” to distract the American people from its egregious misgovernance, a “mass shooting” takes place – usually at a school. Dead kids are great distractions! A good number of books have been written on this phenomenon, but like all “false flag” ops by Uncle Sam, these “events” have common threads running through them. Actually the first acknowledged modern “mass shooting” took place on August 1st, 1966 when after murdering his mother and wife the previous night, Charles Whitman, a Marine veteran, took weapons to the observation deck of the tower at the University of Texas at Austin, and proceeded to open fire on people on the streets below. Over the next 96 minutes Whitman shot and killed 14 people and injured 31 others. The incident ended when two policemen and a civilian managed to reach Whitman in his aerie and kill him. At the time, the attack was the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in U.S. history. It is believed that Whitman's violent impulses, with which he had been struggling for several years, were caused by a brain tumor found upon autopsy. But that the matter caused such a stir with the public was not lost on the government and though the next “single gunman” massacre did not occur for another 18 years – The San Ysidro McDonald’s shooting by 41 year old James Huberty that killed twenty-one and wounded another nineteen – there can be no doubt that Uncle Sam put the matter into his files to be brought out against such time that further efforts at “gun control” were being considered. Since that time, every one of these unfortunate incidents has been immediately followed by heartrending demands to “disarm” all but those who, according to the “experts,” should be armed like the police and the military! That this is totally contrary to the thinking of the Founders and to the Bill of Rights never derails the narrative. But there have been other “incidents” in virtually all of these matters that bear close scrutiny as they tend to debunk the idea that things are what they appear to be – at least according to the media. For instance, let’s look at the fairly recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas on May 24th, 2022 that left, we are told, nineteen dead students and teachers. The shooter was identified as Salvador Ramos, an 18 year old former student of the district with a great many mental issues that would have precluded him from obtaining a sling shot much less the armaments he brought with him in his attack [see below]. But as is the case in most of these issues, we know – and learn – very little until the matter disappears from the front page and the internet becomes just one more bulletin board for us to be told about the deadly affect that guns (presumably all by themselves!) have on the culture (yeah!). Yet, what has disappeared from public view is of the utmost importance as it tends to put the lie to the ongoing “gun control” narrative that somehow these loonies manage to get a few guns (because it is so easy!) and then go and murder all those innocents. Of course, the offshoot of this narrative is that if all guns were removed from the culture, well, the innocents wouldn’t be “gunned down” – or at least if they were, it would be done by the proper authorities. To show how very wrong this whole scenario is and why this information must, perforce, “disappear” lest it interfere with the desired narrative, below are some oddities regarding the Texas School Shooter, for your consideration, especially when you’re told that “gun control” will prevent such crimes: Salvador Ramos was an 18-year-old who lived with his grandmother. He had just quit a part-time job at McDonald's (8 hours a week) at minimum wage. Ramos dropped out of school because he was obsessed with video games. And here is where things began to get very, very strange. Oddly enough for someone in his financial condition, Ramos owned a brand new expensive game console! He also owned a brand new F250 “fully loaded” pickup! Somewhere, there is a huge gap between the young man’s income and the monetary value of his possessions. It might be easily believed that he obtained those belongings through the “generosity” of others. They couldn’t be stolen because even if he could have hidden a game console in his basement apartment, a fully loaded pickup would soon have been reported stolen by somebody! And then we have his arsenal of weapons. These included two brand new Daniel Defense (brand) AR15/M4 rifles, with military-grade optics. If I understand it properly – and perhaps I don’t – such “accessories” are not available at the local gun shop! Each rifle runs between $3,000 and $4,000! One of these would have been prohibitive for a man in Ramos’ financial situation, but TWO?? He also had thousands of rounds of expensive military-grade ammunition and as a kicker, a thousand-dollar bulletproof vest! So, let’s put this rather astonishing non-lethal possessions and cache of weapons together to see what Mr. Ramos would have required monetarily to obtain what it is admitted he owned and used in his assault: Ford F250 Platinum $71,000.00 Game Console $500.00 Rifles $6000.00–$8,000.00 Military Grade Optics $1000.00 Ammo $900.00 Body Armor $1000.00 TOTAL - $80,400.00 And we are to believe that he obtained all of the above working part-time at McDonald's at minimum wage??!! REALLY??? Actually, it seems far more likely that someone was both funding and training not just Ramos, but many if not all these young men! Then, of course, the question is, WHY? I will not insult your intelligence by making suggestions. For anyone with half a brain, the answer to that is very simple indeed! And there is another and further oddity here! It has been “discovered” that Mr. Ramos just happened to have known Payton Gendron who on May 14, 2022, orchestrated a mass shooting at a Tops Friendly Markets supermarket in Buffalo, New York. Ten people, all of whom were African Americans, were murdered and three were injured. Gendron was white. Seriously?! And where did they meet, one wonders given that one lived in Texas and the other in northern New York? Possibly at some training facility? Something is very, very wrong with all of these “mass shootings.” The timing is always “spot-on” for the government’s crusade against an armed citizenry even where there is proof galore that one armed “good guy” can bring such catastrophes to an end poste haste! Another interesting “tie in” here is the fact that Ramos’ rifles are identical to the rifles used and owned by the Las Vegas "shooter” Stephen Paddock who, On October 1st, 2017, opened fire on a crowd attending a music festival, killing sixty people and wounding at least 413, the deadliest mass shooting in American history! Ramos and Paddock’s guns were identical right down to the optics and the vertical fore-grip, a particular configuration that is legally available only to "Military and Law Enforcement!” Of course, Paddock was found dead having committed suicide – or so they say. Certainly one – perhaps the only one! – conclusion that makes any sense is that our government is finding and then training these misfits as a means of ending our Second amendment rights, leaving us helpless before the military might of the Deep State. Most of them want their fifteen minutes of fame and have no problem if such is followed by death as they have no respect for human life – including their own. And finally, the Texas shooting took place just before the NRA Convention! How timely for the anti-gun lobby . . .
Disband The FBI Posted on October 5, 2024 by john Dear Friends, It seems to me, at this point the FBI needs to be disbanded. The organization has become too corrupt to repair. It has to be eliminated, and if in a decade or so people are foolish enough, some other federal law enforcement agency can be created. How could I say the FBI is beyond repair? History, pragmatism and the Pareto distribution. The history of the FBI is one of corruption. From J Edgar the cross dresser and blackmailer to today’s FBI that specializes in false flags and frame jobs. They’re as corrupt as a dead hog next to I 20. If we judge a thing pragmatically… by results, then the FBI has to go. It keeps visiting oppression on us while allowing crimes to go unchecked. Finally, there’s the Pareto distribution. Which is the most damning reason the FBI and indeed the deep state is beyond reform. The history of the FBI is one of utter corruption. J Edgar Hoover was a deeply disturbed man. The utter corruption the FBI it started with was sweetened by their history of failure. Ruby ridge was not only a disaster for the dead family, but highlighted the pure malevolence of the FBI. Of course who could forget the Waco siege. Started for nothing illegal but ending in the burning to death of dozens of people including children. If we go back to the FBI’s heydays, the 1940s… where were they when Alger Hiss was selling American secrets to the Soviet Union? He was a top man in the administration. What an intelligence failure that was! Or was it a failure? Maybe they turned a blind eye? We’ll never know, but we do know, at the time J Edgar had a dossier on everyone in power. The FBI doesn’t as much stop crime… as creates it, then exploits it for political purposes. Take the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping frame job. Where the FBI infiltrated a club and pushed them to commit a crime. The members said, “No your crazy.” The FBI put more and more infiltrators into the club, until the FBI infiltrators outnumbered the patsies, voted to do the crime… then indicted the marks for it! Getting Gretchen Whitmer a ton of votes in a year she had a tough race. Plus vilifying American citizens for speaking out against usurpation. Even then it took double jeopardy and denying them their Rights to get them convicted. The field agent in charge was sent to Washington DC to oversee the January 6 frame job. Which he did splendidly. Both are evidence the FBI is beyond reform. The Pareto distribution applies not only to highways, income and creative output… but to ethics as well. In any organization then, 20% of the people will exhibit 50% of the ethics. The other 80% having the rest of the ethics, morals, standards, etc… So if an organization drives out the 20% with ethics, that leaves the 80% without them in charge. As the FBI has done. Which means, those ethical people are no longer a moment of inertia that has to be overcome, for the organization to become evil incarnate. The elite at all the three letter agencies have expunged those with ethics, morals and good from their fiefdoms. By forcing out the good, and leaving only the bad, those organizations have become bad. Which means the FBI, CIA, NSA, ATF, IRS, etc… all need to be eliminated, not merely reformed. While those are all good reasons to dismantle the deep state, the most pressing one is the damage that it’s doing to the fabric of our republic, economy and society. They fray the fabric of trust by their corruption, they corrode the foundations of our republic with their usurpations as our economy is hollowed out by the political law enforcement. We need to be pragmatic. Instead of focusing on the sunk cost, let’s pry the rotting and dead hogs from the wheel well. They’re holding us back. If the bureaucrats are as smart as they claim, they’ll be rich in no time. So don’t worry about them. Worry about your future and that of your kids. Demand from your representatives and senators, to get rid of the deep state, the FBI, ATF, CIA, NSA, etc… for the sake of our nation, it’s people and the future. Sincerely, John Pepin
Recently, a commentator on a conservative talk show made an observation worthy of dissemination; that is, that the current murderous climate in this country – and the world! – is no longer a matter of Left vs. Right, but of “in” vs. “out” – that is, insiders vs. outsiders. The Left vs. Right battlefield is long gone as so many “conservatives” have become, for all intents and purposes, little different from their “leftist-liberal” colleagues. Indeed, they have become so different from their fellow conservatives that the very term “conservative” has been split into two definitions: traditional conservatives or paleo-cons and the present big government types now known as neo-cons. Former President (supposedly conservative) Richard Nixon once told a newly elected Republican Congressional Representative that, “. . .we’re all big government conservatives here.” Of course, the very definition of a “conservative” involves the rejection of “big government” so it is obvious that over the years, those who were against socialism but still believed in what Mussolini called “corporatism” – the merging of government and big business, also known as fascism – could not retain the label of conservative but neither could they be regarded as liberals who wanted everything run by government (that is, themselves). Hence the “neo-con” was born and all that that label entails with regard to the fight against the growing power of the government and its merger with Big Business – presently defined as the “Deep State.” This situation has resulted in lots of people on the “outside” and far fewer people on the “inside.” Previously, power tended to flow to groups that had the largest numbers but in the present circumstance, the distribution of “heads” is diametric to the distribution of “power.” For the insiders have all – and I do mean all! – the power today! Even ordinary political disputes are not between those on the inside versus those on the outside, but only among those on the inside as that group has become so diverse as well as powerful as to be the only place where such disputes can – and do! – take place. Of course, this situation means whatever power is being exercised has nothing to do with those of us on the outside looking in. We have been reduced to spectators in our own world absent the power to cause or prevent whatever agenda is eventually determined by the “insiders.” Nowhere was this reality made better known – perhaps known at all! – than in the candidacy and election of Donald Trump in 2016. The creeping power of our various government and its agencies were becoming known to Americans at large, but it was so well camouflaged that it wasn’t until an outsider was introduced into the “Deep State” that the totality of our enslavement became obvious to even the apathetic and the naïve. It became even more obvious when, after four years of the Deep State’s ongoing war against the People’s duly elected President, the matter was finally “decided” by a fraudulent election whose illegality could be neither hidden nor at least successfully denied. Many people believed – because they were told by supposedly knowledgeable sources! – that the military would overcome the crime, but few knew that Communist change-agent, former fake “President” Barak Obama had already destroyed America’s military by removing so many of its faithful leaders. A list of those removed as of March 17th, 2014, was compiled by General Paul Vallely. The General made this comment at the end of his very extensive list: “Absolutely every communist regime on the planet did this as soon as they got in power. I am surprised this communist traitor with his feet up on our furniture in the White House hasn't done this until now!” Of course, Obama remained in office for an additional 1,016 days after General Vallely’s list was published and it can be assumed that he continued to gut the US military to the point at which we are left with what we have today. It is no wonder that neither Donald Trump nor his supporters could take any comfort in the belief that America’s military would prevent his being illegally removed from office! There is an old saying that especially and specifically applies to our present crisis, to wit: “Which is worse, ignorance or apathy?” The response? “I don’t know and I don’t care.” Still, it is true that while ignorance may not lead to apathy, the reverse is very much the case. Ignorant people, knowing that they are ignorant, may want to learn and thus not remain ignorant. But apathetic people seldom care about anything and so make no efforts to overcome ignorance even where it is known to exist. And God knows! we Americans have been apathetic about our nation’s condition for a long, long time. Sated by entertainment – bread and circuses! – we have chosen to ignore or, perhaps, not see things that should have forced our attention on matters suggesting that our “leaders” were leading us down the primrose path to tyranny – and death. And so, because we in the West (and not just Americans!) played our personal fiddles while our civilization was being burned by its enemies, we now find ourselves locked out of the very processes by which we believed we could overcome what was happening – has happened! – and reclaim our birthright. Wrong! You cannot play the game if you are no longer recognized as a legitimate player – and we “Deplorables” as we were defined by a woman whose wickedness makes Jezebel of old look like Mother Theresa! – allowed that woman and her miserable and equally wicked “husband” together with their whole “congregation of evil” to slowly, quietly and with malice aforethought remove us from the very culture and civilization our ancestors had created. Having burned Notre Dame in Paris, they are “building it back” as a shrine to something far different from Our Lord’s Holy Mother! Having removed and/or destroyed the monuments to American heroes, replacing them with horrible works dedicated to horrible people and things, we now have learned that those of us on the “outside” have lost all control over what we believed to be our culture, our country and our future – and the fault is ours. We chose to look away when they began to remove our God from the cultural and governmental structures including our schools. We chose to ignore the sexualization and degradation of that same culture. We chose to allow “the government” to take charge of our children because it gave us, the parents, more time to earn money and follow our own interests. We chose to adopt technologies that promised ease but delivered addiction – and worse! We chose to avoid confrontation with liars either through cowardice or the desire to appear “tolerant,” “benign” and “public-spirited” when what we actually did was to surrender our culture and our humanity to their malignancy. The only question remaining is, can we come back? Can we move the “insiders” out of command of humanity and put back God and His people to run this world? Alas, that is a question that I cannot answer – at least not from my place on the outside.
[I write this with many intellectual gaps. The responses and your thoughts are to fill in these gaps. I wrote this as an example of how when one reads, their minds drift into the meaning of things they have learned and in many case now believe. I purposefully did not link words and ideas with other authors or academics. I did not include religion. I left this as wide open as possible. My purpose here is to draw you into the depths of your own thoughts (as sophomorically as this attempt has been made). I am here, I am I. This is me trying to escape this shell of a body into more than what I physically am.]
When you are born into this world, it’s your mother who cares for
you. It’s you father
who cares for you. But what is the metric to which it is measured? Who decides what
that is and who decides its value? Mother and Father? A nosy
neighbor? Society? Government? A nebulous political idiotology? I’ve responded to
people who believe Socialism is people centered. It is not. These
same people believe capitalism is evil. It is not. It’s just a
word. Some would ask, ‘isn’t Socialism a word’? Why, yes it is.
But ‘Capitalism’ is never mentioned when describing
civilizations. It’s either Democracy or Socialism. The irony is
Democracies vote themselves into Socialism. Once you are Socialist,
your nation, your civilization will end. The method to do this?
‘Capitalism’.
Socialism is the
interference of ‘Capitalism’. I’ve defined ‘Capitalism’
before; here it is again for those with short memories: ‘Capitalism
is the exchange of goods, services and currencies for other goods,
services and currencies.' That’s it. It is not a system. Socialism,
like all pathological idiotologies, interferes with with the free
exchange of goods, services and currencies. Gee Rick, what about
people getting the shaft and not getting a good value for their
goods, services and currencies? Gee Questioner, what about the
pathological fools in government who use their power to decide this and enrich themselves? Who’s the bigger fool? The politician or the
fool who believes the politician? In this election,
you have to ask yourself, who truly cares for you? The answer is
trivial for me. Only I truly care for me. In other words, only you
care for yourself. It’s your life, When you select a Socialist to
run your life, you have no life. You are officially a slave. The true
crime is you believing you are free under this idiotology. Now you‘re just a fool.
Government Profligacy Posted on September 27, 2024 by john Dear Friends, It seems to me, no matter how frugal you or I may be, the government’s profligacy puts us in debt anyway. While temperance was a fundamental American ethos, at the founding, the elite have made it passe. Leading by example, the elite’s opulent and hedonistic lifestyle, has oozed down to the whole of society. Where their spendthrift really comes out is when they’re spending other people’s money. Then, the cause must be funded, no matter how counterproductive. It’s the thought that counts. So the elite have made it impossible to live by Ben Franklin’s advice… to be thrifty. Because no matter how individually frugal a person may be, government has spent him and her into bankruptcy. We could, spend like a drunken sailor, try to disengage or step up and do something about it. The elite only see an income problem, their spending is never the issue. The need is unlimited so the funds should be unlimited too. No matter how limited the well. If the government, billionaire or benevolent aliens, made everyone rich tomorrow, by next week there would be poor again. In a year the ratio would be 20% owning 80% of the wealth again. Once again the distribution of wealth would be by Pareto. No matter how many times the experiment was tried. The trick then isn’t to make everyone equal, that’s impossible, the trick is to make the bottom have a decent standard of living. Pragmatically, the only way to do it is by free markets. Nevertheless, government benefits from redistribution far more then those redistributed to. So government profligacy isn’t going away. The elite appear to be ignorant of how they lead by example. They seem to think they live in a bubble. Their actions don’t appear have consequences. But they do. People look up to those in power. Many follow their example. Because, if you want to get ahead, you follow the example of those who are ahead… not those who are behind. As a result, the ambitious follow the elite into corruption. Divorce was never a thing in the US… until Hollywood gave us exhilarating examples of it. The stars all had multiple failed marriages. Glamorizing divorce. Now, we’ve followed, and most of us have multiple failed marriages. Isn’t that progress? More to the point, the lack of temperance of our elite lead many of us to lack temperance. Lowering not only our lot but the lot of mankind. America was built on hard work, thrift and Christianity. The elite have worked diligently to eliminate all these societal myths. Bestowing upon us the country we have now. Crime ridden, hopeless, drug addicted, low family creation, low life satisfaction, dropping standard of living, normalized pedophilia, democracy free elections, censorship, and the courts openly defying the plain wording of our Constitution. Hard work has been replaced by the welfare state. Thrift has been replaced by opulence. Meanwhile, our once openly Christian nation has established materialist atheism as the State religion. Making Christianity unwelcome anywhere but in people’s hearts, and that’s being expunged with thought laws. Suggesting the goal all along… was to tear down America. We could follow our leaders like many have… and say what the hell. Carpe Diem. Live for the day. And borrow until the bank won’t lend us more. Then live in the bar ditch. Others might try to disengage. Use only cash, have no bills and be as independent of the system as possible. Like the Amish. But recent history shows, disengagement won’t work. They’re coming after all of us. Cut spending, leading to cuts in taxes and the deficit. How to cut? Lay off 99% of the bureaucracy. Including and especially the national security apparatus. Because they don’t protect us, they’ve become a mortal danger to us. Government intemperance is one of our biggest threats and therefore among our biggest problems. If we tackle it, it could be dealt with, if we give up, it’ll strangle us. Like Kudzu does to a hornbeam. Sincerely, John Pepin
In February of 1997, Samuel Todd Francis [1947-2005], a conservative intellect and journalist wrote a piece entitled “Something Like Waco.” Wikipedia’s “biography” of the man is a combination of reluctant praise liberally sprinkled (overwhelmed?) by gleeful charges of racism and white supremacy. For instance, the site points out that Francis “. . .was a columnist and editor for the conservative Washington Times until he was dismissed after making allegedly racist remarks at the 1995 conference of the American Renaissance.” It is most probable that the gentleman refused to bow to the reigning attitude about the superiority of America’s minority citizens and the truth in such an instance was, as usual, considered unacceptable! The site then went on to say that “ . . . Francis would later become a "dominant force" on the Council of Conservative Citizens . . . (and) was chief editor of the council's newsletter, Citizens Informer, until his death in 2005.” Then the whacky Wikies pulled out all the stops with the these “identifying markers:” “Political scientist and writer George Michaels, an expert on extremism [!], identified Francis as one of ‘the far right’s higher-caliber intellectuals.’The Southern Poverty Law Center [!!], which tracks extremist groups, described Francis as an important white nationalist writer known for his ‘ubiquitous presence of his columns in racist forums and his influence over the general direction of right-wing extremism’ in the United States. Analyst Leonard Zeskind called Francis the ‘philosopher king’ of the radical right, writing that ‘By any measure, Francis's white nationalism was as subtle as an eight-pound hammer pounding on a twelve inch I beam.’ . . .To Jared Taylor, ‘Francis was the premier philosopher of white racial consciousness of our time.’” It is necessary to identify the man whose viewpoint I will cover in this article, an article that Mr. Francis entitled “Something Like Waco” because what he wrote and warned about is being made more obvious day by day some twenty-five years after the gentleman made his most cogent comments! Perhaps if we had listened back in the nineties. . . But then, there are no “do-overs” or “mulligans” in life. I begin with the entire first paragraph of the article because it sets the tone for all that comes after and as so much time has passed between the event that is the foundation of that article – the attack on the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas – this “revelation” becomes necessary: “About a year after the raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, I was invited to take part in a discussion of the Waco incident on a program on the National Educational Television network. The program was a call-in show, and after my hosts and I had recounted the facts of the Waco raid and its aftermath, I was struck by the remarks that several callers from various parts of the country had to offer. Some of them claimed to know or to have heard about similar incidents in which local, state, or federal law enforcement agencies had staged armed raids on private homes or businesses, without adequate proof of wrongdoing by those against whom the raids had been mounted, and with results that often left innocent citizens injured or their property and rights violated. Although neither I nor my hosts on the TV show had heard of these incidents and to this day I have no way of verifying what the callers were reporting, it began to occur to me then that Waco was perhaps far from being an isolated case. Not too long after the show, however, news of just such mini-Wacos began to creep into the light of day.” The author then fills an article that runs for eight pages with information that should have scared the Bejesus out of all of us, but apparently failed to do so as we can see by the situation extant today. Let’s look at the first point Mr. Francis made: “. . . on January 10, 1994, officials of ten different organizations concerned with civil liberties or Second Amendment rights (including the liberal-to-left American Civil Liberties Union and the conservative Citizens Committee to Keep and Bear Arms) had sent an eight-page letter to President Clinton. The letter detailed several cases of what it called "widespread abuses of civil liberties and human rights" and a pattern of "serious abuse" of the law or proper police procedures by federal law enforcement agencies—the ATF itself, but also the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the FBI. The cases included the Waco assault as well as the attack on Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in August 1992, but the letter also discussed several other incidents that were generally unknown to the public and to this day have not received the public attention they deserve. He then went on to point out: “The letter noted that ‘federal police officers now comprise close to 10 percent of the nation's law enforcement force’ and that ‘some fifty-three separate federal agencies have the authority to carry firearms and make arrests.*’ Arguing that the cases reviewed involved abuses such as the ‘improper use of “deadly” force; physical and verbal abuse; use of para-military and strike force units or tactics without justification; use of ‘no-knock' entrances without justification; inadequate investigation of allegations of misconduct; use of unreliable informants without sufficient verification of their allegations; entrapment’ and several other improper or illegal procedures, the letter called on the President to ‘appoint a national commission to review the policies and practices of all federal law enforcement agencies and to make recommendations regarding steps that must be taken to ensure that such agencies comply with the law.’" [*Remember the story of the man who was assailed by armed federals from the Department of Education because his ex-wife had failed to make payment on her student loans? Who knew that the DoE was armed!] Francis writes that he had been told by one of the signers of this letter to Clinton that “. . .no response had ever been received, and obviously no such national commission” had been appointed. Columns by Francis and columnist Nat Hentoff had been published at the time citing some of the abuses of civil liberties and even actual crimes committed by the government in the name of “enforcing the law” but nothing had come of that, a matter perhaps influenced by the total absence of media coverage. Francis further commented that “. . .if some correction and restraint are not administered, the day will come – perhaps soon – when cases like these are not extreme or unusual but routine.” The article then goes on to document individual cases of assault on the innocent by the full might of the armed federal bureaucracy: 1. The assault on the home of San Diego businessman Donald Carlson in August of 1992. The home was raided using a warrant based upon the allegation that Carlson’s home was a vacant drug storehouse. Carlson had arrived at his home around 10:30 that evening while the house was under surveillance and could easily have been arrested at that time if he was considered a criminal. Instead, it was past midnight after he had retired that the federal agents smashed through the door. Carlson believing this to be a home invasion reached for a firearm to defend himself and was shot three times – once in the back after he had been disarmed! He survived, but will require a lifetime of medical expenses as a result of the injuries he sustained. As it turned out, no drugs were found. The agents had relied on a paid informant named “Ron” who later told the Los Angeles Times that he had never identified a specific house as a storing location for the drugs! 2. Though the ATF was not involved in the Carlson case, they were involved in a similar raid conducted on September 5, 1991, against a woman named Sina Brush in New Mexico. ATF agents and 60 other agents from the DEA, the National Guard and the U.S. Forest Service assaulted Brush’s home in the belief that illegal drugs were involved. No drugs were found, but Brush and her daughter were handcuffed in their underwear and forced to kneel in the middle of the room during the search. As in the Carlson case, the agents had used an unreliable informant and had entered without knocking or showing a warrant. 3. Less than two months after the Carlson raid, agents from the DEA and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department burst into the home of Donald Scott and his wife looking this time – supposedly! – for marijuana plants! Scott’s wife screamed when she saw the unidentified men breaking in and Scott, 61 years old, grabbed a licensed handgun to defend them. A deputy sheriff shot and killed him. No marijuana plants or other illegal substances were found. In the Scott case, a later report written by a Ventura County District Attorney stated that the “initiative” for the raid probably came from the sheriff’s office rather than the feds and that “a primary purpose for the raid was a land grab by the Sheriff’s Department.” Of course, the law is very liberal in distributing the property of “drug lords” alive or dead to the government but all agree that it is easier to do when they are dead. Francis then presents two further egregious cases of illegal government force that included a raid on the home of Louis Katona, III, a part-time police officer and gun collector who owned an extensive – and expensive – collection begun by his father. On May 8th, 1992, the ATF launched a raid to seize the collection valued at many thousands of dollars, the premise being that Katona had forged the name of the local police chief on forms required under the National Firearms Act for registering certain types of firearms. In fact, Katona had done no such thing, leaving forms for the chief to sign that he would later retrieve. After the assault, Katona was indicted for these alleged forgeries, but the case was dismissed in at least a semblance of justice. Meanwhile, Katona knew of the ATF plan and cooperated with it but during the four hour raid, agents became abusive and began to take photos of various Vietnam war memorabilia displayed in the house including the man’s uniform, medals and awards. Also, Katona’s wife, several months pregnant, returned home and upon attempting to enter the vault area in which her husband kept his collection, an agent pushed her violently against the wall in denying her access. That night she miscarried the child she was carrying, something she declared to be the result of her treatment by the agent. Another legal gun collector, Harry Lamplugh found himself surrounded by armed men in uniform on May 25th, 1994. These were ATF agents looking for illegal firearms. According to Lamplugh, his wife and their lawyer, former ATF Assistant Director Robert Sanders, the agents ransacked his home and office, seizing not only business but personal records including birth certificates, marriage and baptismal records and mortgage and medical records. Lamplugh was suffering from cancer and told the agents that the medical records were essential to his treatment as were the bottles of medication the agents deliberately spilled over the carpets. The agents also killed one of the couple’s cats. Throughout the raid, the family testified that the agents used abusive language called Lamplugh a “motherfu–er” and threatening his wife with incarceration in a “cell full of lezzies” unless she “informed” on her husband. The agents told Lamplugh, “We don’t mind you selling guns to niggers because they just kill each other.” The couple and their son were later charged by a federal grand jury with several counts of federal firearms law violations as well as perjury. According to Francis, “Those charges are still pending.” Later in the case, the government continued to hold on to thousands of dollars belonging to the Lamplughs despite rulings of the court that these should be returned. Francis spent considerable time in his columns clearly delineating the reasons for these assaults to prove them inadequate for the violence of the federal response. For these, he received responses from the agencies involved and he noted in a letter from the ATF, “with one exception . . . [the letter] failed to contradict much of anything of significance I had said in the column or had been alleged in the letter to . . . Clinton.” Francis also noted that the ATF “may be correct in its account of the details of the searches” but went on to note that he watched a video produced by the National Rifle Association about the Lamplugh and Katona cases in which the families “offered their sides of the story” while, according to the narrator, “. . .the ATF declined to be interviewed.” Francis noted that the testimony of the families was “more persuasive” than that of Mr. Hynes of the ATF! The victims also recounted “repeated instances of anonymous harassment by the ATF, including the slashing of tires on their cars, the placing of dead animals on their doorsteps, harassing phone calls, and harmful and untrue rumors spread about the men among their friends and business associates.” Such actions are more worthy of organized crime than a legitimate government but then, from what we can see today, our government has ceased to be “legitimate” and has BECOME “an organized crime.” The article goes on to describe other instances of horrific government “overreach” including a raid on the home of Paul and Patty Mueller in which the agents threatened to kill the family dog that had become frantic during the assault, the physical “restraint” of the couple and, as the agents went through the home yelling “ATF!” – something that the Muellers didn’t even understand! – they emptied shelves and boxes filled with Christmas ornaments and magazines. After an hour, they told the couple they were searching for illegal weapons and showed them their search warrant. Unable to find what they sought, they departed as swiftly as they had come. A stunned Mueller told the newspaper, “For the first thirty seconds I thought they were burglars and I was going to die. If they could do this to us, they could do this to anybody.” Patty Mueller added, “Was this something like Waco?” However, this story did “make the papers” and it was discovered that a police informer had told the ATF “that the Mueller home contained a large cache of machine guns and illegal weapons were being distributed there.” Of course, the “informer” had made up the story with the result that the ATF had come close to killing an innocent family. The local head of that agency said he would “apologize” to the couple but there was no word about damages or concern for adhering to the law that, according to Mr. Hynes of the ATF, “. . . motivates our agents to protect the law-abiding citizens of this Nation against those who choose to live by another standard.” Francis did admit that there are many ATF cases in which dangerous criminals are involved but that the most distinctive thing about the above cases “. . .is that they were carried out against the very ‘law-abiding’ citizens the ATF claims to have a mission to protect, and they are citizens who have no experience of law enforcement at any level precisely because they are law-abiding . . . in not a single one of the cases recounted here was there any reason to believe that this was the kind of suspect the ATF or other federal agents had to face. Not a single one of them had any record of violence and lawbreaking, and the crimes they were alleged to have committed were not even violent offenses. Police officers investigating a murder suspect do not make use of these tactics unless they have a strong reason to believe the suspect is ready and willing to shoot them on sight” Francis calls this strategy, “’anarcho-tyranny,’ a distinctively new form of government in which the government is either unable or unwilling to apprehend and punish criminals, so it therefore criminalizes the innocent and cracks down on them. I never heard of an ATF raid on an urban gang, although the stockpiling of weapons by such gangs is commonly known. Gangs might shoot back, you see, so it’s much safer to go after the Katonas, the Lamplughs and the Muellers. And if you’re wrong, and the bums you consulted as ‘informants’ turn out to have lied to get money or cop a plea, you can always apologize. And if you don’t apologize, you can always have Mr. Hynes or some other vassal of the federal leviathan write a letter and intone about your mission to protect the law-abiding.” Francis admits that: “. . . the evolution of a police state may not be the intention of either the agencies involved or of the political leaders who ignore and at least tacitly condone what is certainly a repeated and may be a regular pattern of federal law enforcement behavior (see January 6th 2021) . . . . . .but that evolution is nonetheless real, and the brutality of the ATF and its sister agencies is only one part of it. Other elements in the construction of the coming police state include the demonization of privately owned firearms and their owners, the enactment of gun control legislation in the Brady Act, the outlawing of sales of semiautomatic weapons in 1994, and an increasing push for the outright prohibition of handguns; the attempts to enact "counterterrorism" legislation plainly directed against citizens' militias and domestic right-wing radicalism; the use by the FBI and ATF of intrusive surveillance and investigative techniques against militias and similar groups in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995; the use of entrapment by these agencies to engineer violations of federal law on the part of the groups they are spying on (see Ruby Ridge!); the media-concocted hysteria about "church-burnings" last summer, which resulted in a new federal law making the arson of any church for any reason a federal offense; efforts to expand federal police powers, place more police officers on the street through federal legislation, and augment the powers and resources of the FBI (including wiretapping authority); more demands for the revival and further escalation of the "drug war" of the 1980's by Republicans like Bob Dole and William Bennett; and the whole trend toward the nationalization of law enforcement in the name of a "war on crime." Furthermore, according to Francis, “The fear and hatred of crime and criminals by the right and the fear and hatred of the right by the left serve to enlist both sides of the conventional political spectrum in promoting the new police state. The avoidance of publicity about the abuses of the federal police agencies tends, over time, to normalize such behavior in the minds of citizens, to legitimize it, and to render it a routine part of government functions.” Now, admittedly, we have seen the current “government” in Washington rise up against “the police” as can be seen in the madness put into effect after the death of a black thug from an overdose of fentanyl! But in these cases, the same war against ordinary citizens continued. The armed federal agencies disappeared leaving ordinary citizens in the hands of thugs and terrorists while their local police were either removed by the local government or overcome by hordes of well-armed agents of the left. In other words, the “anarchy” we supposedly suffered from 2020 through 2021 was as orchestrated as the raids on American citizens described by Mr. Francis! This was a case in which the ATF, the FBI and all the rest continued their criminal activities but behind the scenes thus preventing their anti-social activities from being “outed” by those few remaining outlets of real news. As well, the excuse of a “war on drugs” immediately goes by the boards as we witness our Southern border being removed to the point at which even our fairly useless efforts to keep these poisons out of the country are totally nullified with the blessings of Washington! Mr. Francis concludes his article thusly: The emerging police state, then, for all its swagger about the "war on drugs" and keeping us safe from "those who choose to live by another standard," (see previous paragraph) has nothing to do with maintaining order and punishing real criminals but everything to do with the systematic repression of those Middle Americans who express disenchantment with the new order and who organize or represent points of resistance to it. It may be too early as yet for the secret police forces and paramilitary units of the regime to eradicate organized Middle American resistance carte blanche, but what those forces already are doing and have done to uncounted innocent victims suggests that they are only just warming up to their “final solution.”
When reading and/or studying the Bible, I am always looking for
themes, trends, or patterns that I can use to better understand God and
His character. When I find such a pattern, I am then able to read
familiar Bible stories but with a fresh pair of glasses on, and I look
for ways that support or differ from the pattern. In this entry’s passage, I spot both the support of one pattern, and a deviation from another. For most of Jesus’ miracles, the level of faith that is present is a
factor in whether the miracle is a success – either from the one wanting
to be healed or from those who brought the disabled person. At least
two of the gospels even go so far as to imply that Jesus’ miracles were
limited by the faith present. (i.e. Matthew 13:58 / Mark 6:5.) However, in this passage, there is no mention of the woman’s faith,
of the crowd’s faith, or even of the synagogue leader’s faith. Faith is
not the focal point here. I’m guessing there was a desire from the woman
to be healed, but perhaps after 18 years of being disabled, she had
learned how to adapt her life. There isn’t even a mention or implication here that the woman is
present because this is a setup – which could imply the faith of the
synagogue leaders. The way the synagogue leaders respond to Jesus’
healing the woman make me believe they really didn’t want Him there
healing or working miracles. So this deviation from the pattern that faith equals healing is
significant in my mind. This tells me that God can work in people’s
lives without the presence of faith. While I believe He wants to teach
us the importance of personal faith in Him, He also knows there are some
instances where it is better if He acts regardless of the faith
present. It appears as though this is one such instant. So why might this deviation be present? Perhaps it is because of the other pattern I see supported in this
story: The miracle (and following dialogue) resulted God getting the
glory. The passage clearly states that “she immediately stood up straight and praised God”. (Luke 13:13 GW) In many of Jesus’ miracles, it seems as though He really focused on
helping people in ways that would prompt them to give the credit for the
miracle to God. I also see a pattern present through the gospels that
Jesus never desired the focus or the spotlight to be placed on Him.
Though everything He did, He wanted the people to see and know what God
the Father was like; He wanted the praise to go to God not Himself. Knowing the woman would praise God for the healing and that God would
get the credit following the irritated response from the synagogue
leaders, Jesus performed the miracle without the mention of faith. This
deviation and pattern tell me that Jesus will work miracles in
your life and in mine in ways where God receives the glory. Giving God
the glory is Jesus’ primary objective with the miracles He performs. This post first appeared on ReflectiveBibleStudy.com What do you think? Do you agree/disagree? Leave your thoughts below.
Balancing work and family life in the modern world is challenging, but it can be managed with some thoughtful strategies: 1. Set Priorities: Clearly define your work and family goals. This helps you focus on what truly matters, so you can allocate your time and energy accordingly. 2. Time Management: Use tools like calendars or apps to schedule work tasks and family activities. Time blocking can help ensure both areas get the attention they deserve. 3. Establish Boundaries: Set clear boundaries between work and family. Avoid letting work encroach on family time, and vice versa. If possible, try not to bring work home or check emails during family time. 4. Delegate and Share Responsibilities: Both at work and home, share responsibilities where possible. Don’t hesitate to ask for help from colleagues or family members. 5. Flexible Work Arrangements: If possible, explore remote work, flexible hours, or job sharing. Many companies now offer flexible work options that can help you better balance your roles. 6. Quality Over Quantity: Focus on the quality of time spent with family rather than the amount. Engaging in meaningful activities or conversations can strengthen relationships even in limited time. 7. Take Breaks: Don’t overburden yourself with work. Take short breaks during the day, and make sure to have regular family vacations or time off to recharge. 8. Self-Care: Take time for yourself, whether through exercise, hobbies, or relaxation, to maintain a healthy mind and body. When you're well-rested and healthy, you can perform better in both roles. 9. Communication: Maintain open communication with your employer and family. Ensure both know about your commitments, and communicate any adjustments or needs for flexibility as they arise. 10. Set Realistic Expectations: Accept that you won’t always achieve a perfect balance. Some days, work might demand more attention, while on others, family will. Aim for balance over the long term, not every single day. By integrating these practices, you can create a healthier balance that accommodates both work demands and family life in a sustainable way.
The statistics in this article are at least 17 years old and given the ongoing forced “immigration” into the Western World by Third World (and especially Muslim) people, we can assume that the numbers shown here are much lower than they are today. How much lower, I don’t know, but given that the statistics prove what happens as the numbers increase it really doesn’t matter. It is more than correct to assume things have only gotten worse – much worse! And so, here is how Islam works to destroy anything that it does not control. To begin with, Islam is not a religion nor is it a cult. It is a complete system. Islam has religious, legal, political, economic and military components. The religious component is a beard for all the other components. Islamization occurs when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their so-called 'religious rights.' When politically correct and culturally diverse societies agree to 'the reasonable' Muslim demands for their 'religious rights,' they also get the other components under the table. Here's how it works (percentages source CIA: The World Fact Book (2007). As long as the Muslim population remains around 1% of any given country they will be regarded as a peace-loving minority and not as a threat to anyone. In fact, they may be featured in articles and films, stereotyped for their colorful uniqueness: United States – Muslim 1.0% Australia – Muslim 1.5% Canada – Muslim 1.9% China – Muslim 1%-2% Italy - Muslim 1.5% Norway – Muslim 1.8% At 2% and 3% they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs: Denmark – Muslim 2% Germany – Muslim 3.7% United Kingdom – Muslim 2.7% Spain – Muslim 4% Thailand – Muslim 4.6% From 5% on, Muslims exercise an inordinate influence in proportion relative to their percentage of the population. They will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food similar to the Jewish concept of kosher, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims and demanding that large food stores employ them. This will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature it on their shelves – along with threats for failure to comply. (This has already happened in the United States). France – Muslim 8% Philippines – Muslim 5% Sweden – Muslim 5% Switzerland – Muslim 4.3% The Netherlands – Muslim 5.5% Trinidad &Tobago – Muslim 5.8% At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islam is not to convert the entire world but to establish Sharia law over that world. When Muslims reach 10% of the population, they will increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions (Paris – car-burnings). Any non-Muslim action that offends Islam will result in uprisings and threats as happened in Amsterdam over Mohammed cartoons. Guyana – Muslim 10% India – Muslim 13.4% Israel – Muslim 16% Kenya – Muslim 10% Russia – Muslim 10-15% After reaching 20% expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings and the burning of synagogues and churches. Ethiopia – Muslim 32.8%At 40% you will find widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks and ongoing militia warfare:Bosnia – Muslim 40% Chad – Muslim 53.1% Lebanon – Muslim 59.7% From 60% you may expect unfettered persecution of non-believers and other religions, sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon and Jizya, a tax placed on infidels that must be paid for them to remain in the country involved. Albania – Muslim 70% Malaysia – Muslim 60.4% Qatar – Muslim 77.5% Sudan – Muslim 70% After 80% one may expect State run ethnic cleansing and genocide. Bangladesh – Muslim 83% Egypt – Muslim 90% Gaza – Muslim 98.7% Indonesia – Muslim 86.1% Iran – Muslim 98% Iraq – Muslim 97% Jordan – Muslim 92%Morocco – Muslim 98.7% Pakistan – Muslim 97% Palestine – Muslim 99% Syria – Muslim 90% Tajikistan – Muslim 90% Turkey – Muslim 99.8% United Arab Emirates – Muslim 96% If the nation involved is 100% Muslim, this is supposed to usher in the peace of ‘Dar-es-Salaam' – the Islamic House of Peace; that is, there is supposed to be peace because everyone is a Muslim: Afghanistan – Muslim 100% Saudi Arabia – Muslim 100% Somalia – Muslim 100% Yemen – Muslim 99.9% But this is not the case. For there is the ongoing “religious war” among the various “sects” or “branches” of Islam including: Sunnīsm, Shīʿīsm, Ibadism, Quranism, “Non-denominational” Muslims, Mahdavia, Ahmadiyya, the “Nation of Islam” and Sufism. Because Muslims are by both creed and nature “warlike,” despite a nation or area being 100% “Muslim,” the above groups will then wage war on each other. Indeed, their creed is found below regarding their philosophy of life: 'Before I was nine, I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world and all of us against the infidel.' Leon Uris, 'The Haj” It is good to remember that in many countries, such as France, Muslim populations are centered in ethnic ghettos; they do not assimilate into the community at large They don’t want to assimilate; they want to rule. But because they consolidate in geographic areas, they exercise more power than their numbers would indicate. This is especially true as they knowingly choose locations where they are able to dramatically affect local and regional governments. And yet, knowing what is happening, we continue to cater to these “invaders” (not immigrants!) dealing with them in a “politically correct” way so as not to “offend.” But if we do not learn to defend our own heritage, it will indeed become a “Muslim” world.
As Jesus was headed for Jerusalem, the gospel of Luke describes His
decision to travel through the region of Samaria. As they were
approaching a town, Jesus sends some messengers ahead to get things
ready for Him to stay there. However, since the Samaritans and Jews hated one another, Luke tells us that “the people there [in that town] would not welcome him, because he was set on going to Jerusalem.” (Luke 9:53 NCV) While I am not surprised that a city of Samaritans would not welcome a
Jew who was traveling to Jerusalem, I am amazed that this little bit of
prejudice against a certain group of people caused this entire city to
miss out on having the Messiah actually spend time with them. By this point in Jesus’ ministry, word would have spread about Him
being a great Teacher, an amazing Healer, and a miracle Worker who was
blessed by God. None of these things mattered to those living in this
Samaritan city – their hatred of Jews blinded them from seeing the truth
because it could not get past the reality that Jesus was a Jew headed
for Jerusalem. It is in their decision that we are able to discover a powerful truth: Everyone
living today is tempted to be biased and judgmental towards a certain
group of “other” people. We must push past the hatred and distrust
because perhaps those we are most hostile towards are the people we can
learn the most from. Our hostility might cause us to miss out on seeing
Jesus! This post first appeared on ReflectiveBibleStudy.com What do you think? Do you agree/disagree? Leave your thoughts below.
Several years ago, I purchased something I really didn’t want—a Kindle from Amazon. Books have always been a weakness of mine and I have assiduously collected them over the years adding and subtracting as my interests changed. In 2002 I began research in my previous field of interest, the American “Civil War.” It was then that I discovered the existence of “e-books” that can replace those books that I was not able to purchase in print—hence the Kindle. With this new world of books now available—all of which were much cheaper than the printed versions—I decided to try one of two. The first of these “finds” was a book entitled The Man Who Killed Kennedy by Roger Stone. As with many people my age, the assassination of John Kennedy is never without interest. And while the matter no longer holds the imagination of the general public as so many years have passed since that sunny November afternoon, there are still a great many Americans who take no comfort in the “official version” of the event. Also, with the rise of the internet and its access to uncensored (for now, at least!) information including the many posthumous revelations common to any historical figure and event, much of what people believed in 1963 about the legendary “Camelot” of the Kennedys has proved utterly false and, more to the point, deliberately so. A Dark and Disgusting Scenario Mr. Stone presents the scenario of a conspiracy to bring about Kennedy’s death led by then Vice-President Lyndon Baines Johnson whom, he claims (and rather proves!) was only a few months from being charged, tried and convicted on many serious felonies. Johnson’s only hope to avoid scandal, disgrace and prison was to wrest the presidency from Kennedy before John and brother Bobby threw him under the bus and a new VP chosen for the upcoming ‘64 campaign. Over the years, many different actors and agencies were considered as having taken part in the conspiracy. The most prominently named were the Mafia, the CIA, the FBI (along with the Secret Service) and even possibly some members of the military. People couldn’t seem to make up their mind just who was involved and to what extent, although the business of Kennedy’s missing brain seems to assure the involvement of the Secret Service who handled the body during its return from Dallas and delivery to Bethesda Naval Hospital. It was the Secret Service that had strong-armed Kennedy’s corpse out of Dallas before the local coroner could do a forensic study on what was, after all, a murder victim. At the time this effort was seen as a “rescue” from the far right Dallas authorities, but given all that happened afterward, it seems far more likely that the body had to be protected from an “unsupervised” examination by someone not in the Washington “loop.” Indeed, there no longer is a question about if there was a conspiracy but rather who was involved and how far up the chain of command did that conspiracy go! Removing the Last “Cherished Beliefs” With these speculations in mind and with a certain amount of curiosity, I began to read Mr. Stone’s book purchased simply because it was inexpensive and could be stored in a small device no larger than some cell phones. I am almost sorry now that I did. I admit to having matured a great deal (which seems odd for someone my age to say!) since I began my “Civil War” studies in 2002 and found that much of what I “knew” about “history” was altogether false. The nation I loved and the flag I revered were not what I believed them to be. Now, I was no Pollyanna! I understood that there are no knights on white steeds in “real life” so by the time I picked up Mr. Stone’s “book” I already considered myself free from most of the orthodox versions of American history and well acquainted with the actual facts. But before I was one chapter into Mr. Stone’s work, what little remained of my confident naiveté was gone—and from there it only got worse. By Chapter Ten I found that there were no heroes! Johnson was the worst—or so Mr. Stone claims—but he is only one of a very large crowd. Yes, the Mafia was involved but it appeared as if every politician (and not just in Washington)was a bedfellow of the mob! Nobody’s word was any good. There is more honor and decency in the Third Circle of Hell than in Washington! Often the mobsters were the most moral of those involved! They at least tried to keep their word when given, whereas the politicians, the spooks, the “G-men” et al would sell their mothers, wives and daughters to carry out the current “operation.” Even the military were untrustworthy! And if that was the case “then,” what in heaven’s name are things like now? Worse Than I Thought I knew—or thought I knew—“the worst” about the Kennedys; that Jack was an amoral sex addict, that as a Naval officer, he became involved with a beautiful Nazi spy and was saved from disgrace only by going into active service, that somebody else wrote his Pulitzer Prize book, that gag writers provided his glib “wit” while willing members of the press fed him lines to continue the illusion of a witty, handsome and talented man! But aside from possessing good looks, John Kennedy was none of these things! The Kennedys were not only immoral but they didn’t even have the grace and decency—as did the old Mafia bosses—to show some loyalty and gratitude towards those who helped them. In fact, the more one gave to the Kennedys, the worse one was treated! Ted Sorenson, the back-stage creator of the John Kennedy most people remember, was treated shamefully—and he was not the only one. The wife of one of Kennedy’s minions “serviced” JFK. Indeed, he was so enamored of her that he told confidants that he intended to divorce Jackie and marry her after he left office. In a sort of ghastly post-script, not too long after Jack’s death, the lady also died mysteriously, apparently one of many people who knew too far much about Jack Kennedy or November 22nd—or both. However, compared to Johnson, the Kennedys were almost respectable! In Mr. Stone’s book there is more murder (yes, LBJ was involved in far more than the Kennedy murder!), conspiracy, treason and interagency skullduggery than in the most corrupt days of the Byzantine Empire. No one was even reasonably honest! Even Richard Nixon knew and was involved with far too many Mafiosi and he knew (or wanted to know) too much about the Kennedy assassination for his own purposes – probably blackmail! – hence, Watergate! At least Nixon could take comfort in knowing that he left office still breathing! Testimony of One “Who Was There” There was one scenario personally attested to by Mr. Stone that seemed particularly grotesque to me. Stone at age 19, was “house-sitting” for his “boss” in Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP!), Herbert L. “Bart” Porter when one Jim McCord called. When Stone told McCord that Porter was not there, McCord said, “Ok, tell him Jim McCord called. Tell him I’m in the lockup, and tell him the jig is up.” Stone wrote, “…to this day, I am not certain about the import of McCord’s words. But even at nineteen years old, I knew the formal denials . . . that the Watergate break-in was not connected to the White House or the campaign were false.” Stone then goes on: “The CIA insured that secrets of Watergate and the JFK assassination would remain secrets. It was Nixon’s power struggle with the CIA and his efforts to pry loose their Kennedy assassination files that caused his downfall. Nixon was taken down by “double agents” who intentionally botched the break-in. . . .” This is the only commentary upon the second coup-de-etat, the removal from office of another “duly elected” president, in this case a Republican. Of course, neither Kennedy nor Nixon was worthy to hold that office but still, they wereelected at a time when voter fraud was much less prevalent (or obvious) than it is today. Bad Then, Worse Now? The real problem at least for me was the overwhelming incestuous nature of the corruption. It would seem that everybody was involved! There were no “good guys” and “bad guys,” just those given “cover” by virtue of their placement; that is, the elected crooks vs. the appointed crooks and the acknowledged crooks. Worse, all these crooks knew that they were crooks and that the others around them were also crooks! What does that say about “changing DC” by electing new crooks or those who will either become crooks or be dropped by their political party to prevent anynon-crook from rising too far up (or more accurately down) the ladder of power in Washington. Mr. Stone did far more than to merely answer the question of “who killed JFK.” His revelations about a corrupt, venal and amoral government culture as it existed sixty years ago (!) only strengthens my views regarding the current“government” in DC. If it was rotten then, how much worse is it now and what hope is there that it can—or should—be saved? Post Scriptum: The election of Donald Trump, a man who was not part of the DC “swamp” (as he himself called it!) has revealed the breadth and depth of the corruption. As soon as Trump received the Republican nomination—something that that party did all in its power to prevent!—the agents of the Deep State’s administrative branch—the various Departments and especially the “intelligence” units began their efforts to first deny the election to Trump and when that didn't work, remove him from the office he had legitimately won. Nobody has to be told about the four years of political and judicial machinations that were used against Trump including a so-called “world-wide pandemic” designed to crash the American economy because it was seen as a Trump strong point. Of course we know that the “election” of 2020 was a massive fraud that denied Mr. Trump his overwhelming victory and put a senile pedophile into the Oval Office. For a little while there was some hope for a miracle that would wipe away this foul crime, but as the months drag by, it would seem that we have returned to “business as usual” in the Deep State. The question now must be, is there any hope for America? It is a question I fear that none but God can answer.
There’s a song in the film/play Finnian’s Rainbow explaining the consequences of “(W)hen the idle poor become the idle rich.” At this point, according to the lyricist, “. . .you’ll never know just who is who or which is which.” Much the same can be said of today’s villains of every size and stripe. It used to be fairly easy to determine the “good guys” and the “bad guys” back when I was a child – a long, long time ago! – for the culture was filled with markers that easily identified this phenomenon. For instance, that chronicler of the culture, Hollywood, before it became engaged in “realism,” and especially in their “westerns” identified who was who by the color of the character’s hats. Good guys wore white hats while the villains wore black. The rest of the cast usually wore nondescript toppers that identified them as often outside of the main moral thread if not the plot of the film involved. This mode of “ID” was ideal for black and white films, but it held over well enough when Technicolor entered the picture, so to speak. It is interesting to note that back in 1967 during former actor Ronald Reagan’s first run for the governorship of California, his Democrat rival, Pat Brown, tried to make a villain out of Reagan, saying such things to California school children as, “Did you know, an actor assassinated Lincoln?” But Brown was warned by his own people that Reagan had always “worn a white hat” in his movies (he only played a villain once and not very successfully!) and that it would be difficult to “recast” him in a black one. But today, many things have changed that have clearly affected our viewpoint regarding just “who is who and which is which.” For instance, when one sees headlines about the present “war” in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas, most Americans see an easily definable “white vs. black hat” scenario – but is that really the case? I tend to doubt it. Oh, Israel is believed to be America’s staunch ally and friend in the Middle East, but the dead and wounded sailors of the U.S.S. Liberty would have taken issue with that finding. According to (left leaning) Wikipedia: The USS Liberty incident was an attack on a United States Navy technical research (a/k/a spy) ship, USS Liberty by Israeli Air Force jet fighter aircraft and Israeli Navy motor torpedo boats on June 8, 1967 during the Six Day War. The combined air and sea attack killed 34 crew members (naval officers, seamen, two marines and one civilian NSA employee) wounded 171 crew members and severely damaged the ship. At the time, the ship was in international waters north of the Sinai Peninsula about 25-1/2 miles northwest of the Egyptian city of Arish. Despite claims that the ship was mistaken for an Egyptian vessel, eventually Israel “apologized” and paid millions of dollars (with interest) to the US in compensation for the dead and wounded and the damage sustained by the ship. Of course, most of that money – if not all! – probably originated in this country anyway, but at least we got some of it back! However, it later became known that President Lyndon Johnson was aware of the attack even as it was taking place and did nothing to stop it or, in the alternative, warn the Liberty of its danger, neither did he ever make known that our government was cognizant of the assault even before it happened. So, in the end you have all the entities involved in that act of war wearing black hats including our own government. Of course, Israel has been a stalking horse since World War I when the Balfour Declaration was made public. This political statement issued by the British Government in 1917 announced its support for “the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine” an area located within the then boundaries of the Ottoman Empire. As the Turks fought with the Germans in World War I they became “enemies” of Great Britain and therefore subject to whatever claims might be made upon their territory by the victors in that war. But the establishment of Israel in the oil rich Middle East was not uniformly embraced by many “important” people of the day. In fact, two highly public men – British Colonel T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) and American statesman James Forrestal – were very much against the idea of creating a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. Fortunately for the Jews and their fellow Zionists, however, both men just happened to die violently and mysteriously before their viewpoints could “muddy the waters” of public discourse. But black hats aren’t limited to the Middle East. At the present, an almost bankrupt United States is throwing money and material into a war in the Ukraine that is – frankly! – none of our business. Indeed, about the only connection between the US and the Ukraine is the Biden family’s political involvement in the former and criminal monetary shenanigans in the latter. And while Vladimir Putin may also wear a black hat, at least he is not claiming to be acting in the best interests of the people of America as are both Biden and Ukrainian President Zelensky! And then we have the various warring factions such as the Muslims and the Jews. Many of our ignorant (and frequently stupid) fellow countrymen have chosen sides. Jews and those “evangelical Christians” who still believe in the Old Testament promise to Abraham choose Israel while the rest of the left embrace the dear, kind, sweet, peaceful Muslims while unfortunately – and conveniently – forgetting videos showing Muslims setting fire to enemy captives held in cages as well as killing every Christian that these “peaceful people” have been able to seize! In other words, instead of white and black hats, we are in a scenario wherein all the hats are black while most Americans seeking a side worth supporting do not understand that there is, in fact, no such side! Of course, we must also remember that to back the Palestinians or even question acts done by Israel immediately invokes the indefensible and unforgivable crime of antisemitism! Now, of course, there is such a thing as antisemitism just as there is such a thing as bigotry against any group whether based upon religion or race or ethnic origins! But in the case of the Jews, to even look into issues that might – just might – produce embarrassing information detrimental to them as a group is now considered a “hate crime” and can lead, in some countries, to arrest, trial and, if convicted, incarceration. When truth itself becomes a criminal act because of what it reveals, this is no longer a matter of bigotry but of control and, therefore, tyranny. But this gross lack of “white hats” is found throughout society. In the name of “tolerance,” Blacks have been excused for any type and kind of behavior and any fault found with them by virtue of their acts is another “hate crime” fully as evil as antisemitism. Our entertainment industry has been dipped in the tar of overcompensation to the point at which one’s television experience would lead those unfamiliar with our culture to believe that we are 87% Black and 13% White. Only in the re-runs of our classic TV shows do you see a preponderance of Whites leading many to wonder how long it will be before such timeless treasures are removed from the programming. Meanwhile, commercials are even worse! And Whites, believing in tolerance even to their own extinction, find no fault in seeing themselves continue to disappear from their own culture to be replaced by minorities who no longer even pretend to practice America’s former – that is White – cultural values! In the beginning, shows like the Cosby Show, The Jeffersons, Good Times and other Black sitcoms retained ordinary American values; that is, the race of the characters were of less importance than the good social message the program provided. But that is going by the boards and we see today programs that illustrate Black “culture,” a "culture" that completely changes American society. Of course, as happens whenever a cultural icon is installed, those who followed the former culture embrace the new system and you have White kids with their pants around their knees, their hats on backwards and their morals and intellect at the level of da boyz in da hood! Remember, a culture can be lost long before population numbers indicate that the minority is now the majority and vice versa. And, of course, all of this again indicates that not only white hats are disappearing, but White people as well. Another area in which white hats are becoming invisible is our economic environment. There have always been black hats in commerce – and I don’t just mean the fellows robbing banks and passing bad checks! Crooked “businessmen” are nothing new, especially when they join forces with the next group spoken of in the paragraph below. Still, on the whole most American businessmen whatever their size, have been reasonably honest over the years. Whether that was because they wanted to be honest or because the laws were written in such a way as to permit them to appear so, I don’t know. But, of course, it is reasonable to believe that as the culture declines into “black-hatism,” American commerce will follow if not lead in that direction. It has something to do with the effect bad apples have on the rest of the barrel. And then we have the final area in which white hats should be expected to appear in great numbers. Why? Because these are the people who are supposed to protect the innocent citizen from those black hats that prey upon them. Here we’re talking about our various governments, their military and those systems of justice and other institutions designed to shield Americans from our enemies – foreign and domestic. If white hats are needed anywhere, they are needed here. But, alas, there appear to be fewer here than anywhere else in the culture and they are getting less every day – and that is proving disastrous to our freedoms and to our very survival! The ancient board game chess uses white and black figures in the game. As each side plays, pieces are taken until one side takes the King of the other. Now, no moral attributes are bestowed upon the sides though white does go first in every game. So, when the game is over, it doesn’t matter (except to the players, of course!) whether there are more white than black pieces left on the board or vice versa. The preponderance of the number of either color’s pieces usually determines the winner whether they be white or black and that’s fine – for chess! In the “hat” game, however, it very much matters whether we are left with more black hats than white or even if there are any white hats remaining. For what is being “played” here is the game of life and that concerns all of us.
Curiosity And Love Of Learning Posted on October 23, 2024 by john Dear Friends, It seems to me, the role of kindergarten and first grade should be to instill curiosity, and a love of learning in the children. If that’s done, the entire rest of their lives will be happier, healthier and more prosperous. Because a child that’s curious will be more intelligent, learn faster, and be able to apply that knowledge. A kid that loves to learn will know more than one who hates learning. More even than lazy geniuses. That additional knowledge gives perspective to opinions, depth to thoughts and nuance to perception. Don’t claim that some are too dumb. Ask an apparent moron what pitcher won the world series in 1978. It’s astonishing how much people know about trivia. While getting right to the ABCs is important, I think giving the students the tools to learn for the rest of their lives, is more important. Everyone’s curious. Whether or not they’re curious about math, sports, history, war, philosophy, science, religion, etc… is culturally dependent. People from incurious families, tend not to be curious, and then display lower IQ as a result. Because the brain is like a muscle. If it’s never used it becomes weak. Though, thought can be exercised to get a strong mind… or connived to get a big head. Curiosity is the incentive to use the brain. Since curiosity is culturally dependent, a culture of curiosity can be created. The earlier the better. Not only because its easier, but the sooner a kid becomes curious, the sooner that curiosity will of benefit them, and therefore, humanity. Moreover, there may be a Piagetian stage that we’re most open to becoming curious? That would be the time to strike. A love of learning is a treasure to those who have it. Like a goose that lays golden eggs. It produces treasure daily. Being a want that can be fulfilled at any time in any place. Even the supermarket has opportunities to learn. For those that want to. Moreover, knowledge is a treasure that can’t be taken away. Even at gunpoint. A love of learning isn’t like a dragon’s hoard though. It’s the love of a process. Almost Taoist. Those that love the process of learning then, amass a dragon’s hoard of treasure in the form of knowledge… not for the piles of wealth, but for the love of gaining it. That’s in fact how the richest people become the richest people. They don’t love the money… they love earning it. Like Elon Musk. Children taught to love learning then can only become rich in knowledge. I believe the brain is like any other muscle, the more its used the stronger it becomes, even as the less it’s used the weaker it becomes. I’ve seen teenagers unable to think their way out of an open door, upon being thrust into life and having to use their brain, becoming quite smart. Because they weren’t taught to be curious or to love learning. So their brains weren’t used for anything but getting laid. Then upon use, those weak minds became strong. Had they been inculcated with a culture of curiosity and a love of learning, and exercised those brains, imagine how much further ahead those kids would be? Setting in a chair half asleep isn’t mental exercise. It’s the opposite. It stultifies the brain. The student must be curious. Because curiosity is motivation to exercise the mind. I think IQ is a function of nature, nurture… and culture. I’ve heard of studies of identical twins raised in different cultures and their IQs can vary widely because of it. If we can inculcate a culture of curiosity those children exposed to it will be smarter. Smarter kids will have better lives. Their better lives will make the world better. A love of learning dovetails into a culture of curiosity to make strong minds. This is why I say, the first priority of any education should be to instill a culture of curiosity and love of learning, to facilitate strong minds. A nation of strong minded citizens with agency and freedom will create prosperity, peace and eliminate suffering, as a quotidian matter. Such a nation, as the US once was, would be the envy of oligarchies the world over. Curious kids should be everyone’s goal. Sincerely, John Pepin
The education process plays a crucial role in developing critical thinking skills. Critical thinking involves the ability to analyze information objectively, evaluate evidence, and make reasoned judgments. Here's how the education process fosters critical thinking:1. Inquiry-Based LearningEncourages students to ask questions, explore problems, and seek solutions. This process teaches students to think deeply about a subject, rather than simply memorizing facts.2. Problem-Solving TasksEngaging students in problem-solving activities (e.g., math problems, case studies) promotes logical reasoning, creativity, and the ability to approach problems from different perspectives.3. Debates and DiscussionsClass debates, group discussions, and Socratic seminars encourage students to articulate their views, challenge assumptions, and listen to different viewpoints. This helps students evaluate evidence critically and refine their arguments.4. Project-Based LearningBy working on projects, students engage in research, experimentation, and analysis. They are required to synthesize information from various sources and make informed decisions, which enhances critical thinking.5. Reflective WritingEssays, journals, and reflection papers allow students to critically analyze what they've learned, reflect on their own thought processes, and make connections between ideas. Writing helps solidify reasoning skills.6. Encouraging Open-Ended QuestionsTeachers who ask open-ended questions encourage students to think critically by considering multiple possibilities rather than focusing on a single, predefined answer.7. Evaluation of SourcesIn the age of information, teaching students how to assess the reliability of sources (whether for research or news) fosters critical thinking. This involves distinguishing between fact and opinion, understanding bias, and recognizing credible evidence.8. Interdisciplinary LearningIntegrating multiple subjects allows students to see problems from different perspectives and recognize connections across disciplines. This broadens their analytical thinking and problem-solving abilities.9. Encouraging Self-AssessmentCritical thinking is enhanced when students assess their own work, identify weaknesses, and strive for improvement. It encourages metacognition, or thinking about thinking.10. Real-World ApplicationsLinking education to real-world scenarios helps students critically analyze how theoretical knowledge applies in practical settings. This bridges the gap between abstract thinking and problem-solving in real life.By incorporating these elements into the education process, educators help students develop the ability to think critically, which is essential for decision-making, problem-solving, and lifelong learning.
Historical Truism: When the civil government fails to protect innocent citizens against violent criminals, eventually that situation results in the rise of “vigilantism.” This consequence is not unique to the United States but is a common condition wherever people who live in a supposedly “civilized state” governed by laws find themselves outside the protection of those laws. This reality is supremely important because the present culture in America and the West is massively deteriorating especially along racial lines. Even as we witness the precipitous rise of black on white crime, we also see massive efforts by politicians, law enforcement and the media to conceal what is now, in fact, a race war. Yet, despite efforts to blame any racial tensions on whites, the ubiquitous internet continues to inform those who wish to know the facts. Below is a report of one incident that took place in Milwaukee in 2011 illustrating the very different standards relative to criminal activity that clearly reveal that those standards are based upon race, both that of the criminal and of the victim. For there is no doubt that had this incident been an attack by whites on blacks, the story would not only have been prominently reported across the nation, but that the criminals would have been charged not with simple assault and robbery but federal hate crimes as well! But as the roles were reversed—black criminals and white victims—the response of the local “authorities” was very different not only in degree but in tone. In the end, most of the victims realized that the injuries they sustained and the possessions they lost were of no interest to the police who did not even want to hear an account of the crimes especially those containing particulars about the perpetrators. This fact was obvious to at least one victim: "About 20 of us stayed to give statements and make sure everyone was accounted for. The police wouldn't listen to us, they wouldn't take our names or statements. They told us to leave. It was completely infuriating…” One of the most thought-provoking—and frightening—aspects of the rampage involved was that it was not motivated by rage caused by some perceived “injustice.” It was, in fact, “pleasurable” for the perpetrators who obviously targeted whites knowing that the chances of any of them being caught—never mind brought to book—were virtually nil. This is the kind of behavior together with the common police response that eventually produces vigilantism as mentioned earlier. When the authorities refuse to “serve and protect,” the criminal element soon understands that a particular segment of the population is “fair game” for predation. Generally, not long after that, some people in that “particular segment” determine to protect themselves since they can expect no protection from the State. Fortunately, in this unprovoked and barbaric attack no one was very seriously injured, but next time, who knows? NOTE: Throughout the article below, my comments are in brackets and underlined, while comments of particular relevance in the article are italicized. The Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel Flynn calls looting, beatings in Riverwest barbaric—July 6, 2011 Shaina Perry remembers the punch to her face, blood streaming from a cut over her eye, her backpack with her asthma inhaler, debit card and cellphone stolen, and then the laughter. [Clearly, this was not a response to some perceived “racial injustice” it was just a “good old time” being had by the mob, a matter that must cause one to consider the character of those involved.] “They just said ‘Oh, white girl bleeds a lot,’” said Perry, 22, who was attacked at Kilbourn Reservoir Park over the Fourth of July weekend. Though Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn noted Tuesday that crime is colorblind [Is it really? Apparently, this mob went where it would find victims who were unprepared to fight back because they were law-abiding white people], he called the Sunday night looting of a convenience store near the park and beatings of a group of people who had gone to the park disturbing, outrageous and barbaric. Police would not go quite as far as others in connecting the events; Flynn said several youths “might” be involved in both. [The term “youths” is a code word in the media for blacks of pretty much any age.] “We’re not going to let any group of individuals terrorize or bully any of our neighborhoods,” Flynn said. [Really? It would seem that the circumstances proved otherwise—and the criminals knew it!] Perry was among several who were injured by a mob they said beat and robbed them and threw full beer bottles while making racial taunts. [Clearly proof that the victims were not simply chosen at random.] The injured people were white; the attackers were African-American, witnesses said. Some video of the BP station at E. North Ave. and N. Humboldt Blvd. shows the business being ransacked. A clerk at BP confirmed to the Journal Sentinel that he was busy waiting on customers when one or two people held the door open to let others rush in and steal snacks and candy. Not far away, 20 to 25 friends from Milwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood had gathered at the park shortly before midnight to watch some fireworks set off by a neighbor. In interviews with 11 people who said they were attacked and witnessed the attack, a larger group of youths [!] appeared in another section of the park around midnight and were joined by more young people [!] running up the park’s stairs. At some point the group of friends and the group of youths [!] intersected; those interviewed said the attack appeared to be unprovoked. [In keeping with claims made regarding racially motivated violence, there is nothing about these instances that can be traced to any provocation; the provocation here was the color of the victim’s skin! This fact is clearly understood in incidents of black on white crime but appears beyond the capacity of the police to recognize here—and elsewhere—or to be publicly stated as such.] "I saw people dancing and I figured they were just having a good time," [again, clear proof that these were not crimes of passion but deliberate racially motivated assaults which were seen as “good fun” by the perpetrators] said Riverwest resident Jessica Bublitz, 28. Minutes later Bublitz saw a male friend hit in the temple and fall down. Her fiancé told her to run to safety. James Zajackowski, 28, said things suddenly turned chaotic. "Within 30 seconds to a minute, bottles were flying and people started getting punched. I was in shock. I thought, 'Really? Is this really happening?' I was on the ground, people were trying to get into my pockets, I could feel their hands but I held on to my cellphone and my wallet," said Zajackowski, a census worker. Emily Mowrer, 27, was not hurt but saw her friends beaten and punched and full beer bottles thrown at them. Her boyfriend was punched. She saw Perry lying with blood on her face, not moving. She called 911 on her cellphone. "I saw some of my friends on the ground getting beat pretty severely. They got away with one of my friends' bikes. Some people had their wallets stolen," said Mowrer, who owns a house with her boyfriend in Riverwest. "It didn't seem like it was a mugging - it seemed like an attack. Like they weren't after anything - just violence." [This eyewitness account validates the above conclusion that the criminals here were not provoked and did not engage in their criminal behavior because of any mitigating passion based upon the need for revenge or any other such emotion usually blamed for black mob violence.] Andy Lange, 29, a social worker who has lived in Riverwest for 10 years, said one of his friends was hit in the head with a bottle and needed staples to close the wound. Lange said he was struck in the face and didn't even see who hit him. Perry needed three stitches to close a cut above her eye. She said she saw a friend getting kicked and when she walked up to ask what was happening, a man punched her in the face. "I heard laughing as they were beating everybody up. They were eating chips like it was a picnic," [see above comments] said Perry, a restaurant cashier. "All I remember is seeing bright lights (after the punch), then my backpack was gone and blood was spurting out of my head." A police spokeswoman on Monday said police received no reports of mobs of people committing crimes in the Riverwest area, only the reports of two armed robberies. At the Tuesday news conference, Flynn attempted to defuse reports that the mobs of youth [!] were running through the Riverwest neighborhood attacking citizens. However, he acknowledged that those responsible for the BP store looting and attacks at Kilbourn Reservoir Park had mob-like characteristics. [Had these been the Klan or the Aryan Nation, the police would not be talking about “mob-like characteristics.” They would have referred to the participants as “a mob”—or worse!] “Clearly we had mob-like behavior in the incidents involving the robberies at Reservoir Park as well as the ransacking of the BP station…Certainly we had elements of mob-like behavior [see above] that challenged us on June 3,” Flynn said. With an estimated 200,000 people watching the lakefront fireworks, which ended about 10:30 p.m. Sunday, there was heavy traffic in the area as people headed home and police were responding to fights. The BP was overrun shortly before midnight, and minutes later the attacks occurred in the park. Several people seen on the BP station surveillance video may have been involved in the park beatings, Flynn said. Two strong-arm robberies were investigated by police at the park, the first at 11:50 p.m. and the second, involving Perry, at 12:15 a.m. Three males - two 16-year-olds and one 18-year-old - were arrested in the first robbery. No arrests have been made in the attack on Perry. [And it is unlikely that any will be made unless one of the perpetrators is caught with a stolen item and even then, both pursuit and prosecution of the malefactors will be half-hearted at best.] Most of the 11 people who told the Journal Sentinel they were attacked or witnessed the attacks on their friends said that police did not take their complaints seriously. They each said police responded to the scene quickly and tended to the injured, but officers did not take statements from them and told them to leave the area. [Enough Americans watch TV crime shows to know that the police always take statements—so why not in this instance? The answer to that is sadly obvious—because they had no intention of following up on the incident and they did not wish any inconvenient “paperwork” in their records.] "You've got 20-plus people giving eyewitness accounts. I'm very surprised that they said it wasn't a mob," said Mowrer. [I’m not—nor should anyone else be!] Lange said he told an officer about the beatings but noticed the officer didn't write anything down or note his name. Bublitz tried to tell an officer that her three-speed bicycle had been stolen and that one of her friends was hurt but said the officer told her he was looking for evidence. [Again, police behavior clearly indicates that the less the police knew about the matter, the happier they were and that no efforts at all would be made to bring anyone from this mob to justice. About the only thing that pleased the cops was that nobody was killed. A corpse would have been highly embarrassing and demanded considerably more of a response from so-called “law-enforcement.”] Let us now go back to the statement of a victim-witness that began this narrative, to wit: "About 20 of us stayed to give statements and make sure everyone was accounted for. The police wouldn't listen to us, they wouldn't take our names or statements. They told us to leave. It was completely infuriating…" The really frightening aspect of this sad tale is the fact that the police were—and continue to be—so intimidated by the “race card” that they accept and ignore violent criminal acts rather than take a chance on upsetting the racial apple cart. As noted, the actual crimes against the victims including physical injuries and the loss of property were of no interest to the authorities not because the crimes were insignificant but because the criminals were black and the victims white! Had it been the other way around, these same crimes would have assumed epic proportions and the charges resulting would have been increased by various “hate crime” statutes and penalties even though the very concept of a “hate crime” is the antithesis of American jurisprudence! And so, what has this to do with the Ku Klux Klan one might ask? Even a brief history of that organization cannot be included here, but it is necessary to at least point out that the Klan had three incarnations, the first arose during (so-called) Reconstruction in response to attacks on innocent Southerners—white and black—by the federal occupation’s terrorist group, The Union League. This first manifestation of the Klan acted against the carpetbaggers, scalawags and contingents of easily influenced blacks used by them to harass, terrorize and murder Southern civilians. The most important fact in this Klan’s history is that the organization arose out of the refusal of the occupation government to protect innocent citizens from the depredations of the freedmen members of the Union League and their white leaders. As has happened not only during Reconstruction but in other places and at other times, where the civil state fails to protect the people, groups always arise from the people themselves to fulfill that need. Vigilantes have a bad reputation but often vigilantism has been a necessary response to the failure of the state to provide protection to a helpless citizenry. After Reconstruction, the need for the Klan as it was first conceived, ended—and so did the original Klan. But its success in limiting the power of the newly enfranchised freedman proved to be irresistible to many white Southerners because they feared the possibility of once again coming under the power of Northern whites and their tool, the Southern Negro. The Klan that then arose—twice!—is the organization with which we are familiar today. This Klan was, in fact, a very real terrorist group using intimidation and violence to subjugate blacks and anyone seen as being allied with them. However, it is also important to note that this new Klan was not limited to the South. Indeed, its largest chapters were found in the Middle West! This new venue mirrored the northward migration of large numbers of blacks as the manpower shortages occasioned by World War I forced Northern industries to seek workers to man their mills and factories. The power of this Klan reached its height in the early 20th Century and lasted until the rise of the “civil rights movement” at which time the federal government bypassed local and State agencies to prosecute Klan members under federal statutes. However, for some reason, most of these prosecutions were limited to the South! Eventually, with the loss of the protection of local politicians and judges, the Klan became greatly enfeebled. However, the power of its name remained though the once mighty “Klan” had become a pale shadow of its former might thoroughly infiltrated by federal agents. Indeed, it has been claimed that in any contemporary Klan gathering, the majority of attendees are either federal agents or their paid stooges. With the success of the “civil rights movement,” most Americans hoped for a new era of amicable race relations. But this hope was soon dashed by racial violence in the early 60s that saw riots and chaos in America’s inner cities. The violence was seen as a reaction to the assassination of Martin Luther King and anti-black violence supposedly occasioned by the efforts of blacks and their white allies to achieve racial equality and political power. Yet many whites found it odd that blacks would destroy their own neighborhoods to “protest” events that had already been condemned by the vast majority of white Americans and, at the time, some suggested more sinister motives were involved. In a supposed response to the situation, President Lyndon Johnson introduced his sweeping program of “reforms” that he called “The Great Society,” at the same time launching his “War on Poverty” as a means, it was claimed, of addressing racial inequality! Of course, “the poor” targeted by these reforms were almost always black, for though there were numerically more poor whites than blacks, the percentage of poor blacks vis a vis the total black population was far higher than the percentage of the poor among whites. Thus began decades of countless “social programs” and political nostrums intended to raise the living standard of poor “inner-city” blacks and bring them into the mainstream of America’s social and economic culture. Affirmative action replaced efforts to end racial discrimination by effectively substituting one target of discrimination with another. Ever larger and more comprehensive welfare programs were introduced into the inner-city black population. Liberal Democrat Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, seeing the results of these programs, wrote a book warning that the welfare state was destroying the black family and as a result, black culture. Indeed, far from ending the gap between poor blacks and the rest of America, these programs only made the divide deeper and more bitter, engendering an attitude among many blacks of both victimization and entitlement. And when politicians’ promises to this constituency were not forthcoming with sufficient speed and in sufficient amounts, this “culture within a culture” became more and more estranged, hostile—and dangerous. Many hoped that the election of a “black President”—Barack Hussein Obama—would bring forth a “post-racial” era but exactly the opposite proved to be the case. Obama openly admitted his hostility toward whites though his mother was in fact white. In his administration ever greater preferences were both demanded and promised while the second highest law enforcement agent in the land, Attorney General Eric Holder, a black, openly stated that blacks cannot violate the civil rights of whites and, in fact, that whites were not protected by federal civil rights statutes. Never has any person of such importance openly proclaimed that an entire segment of the population based upon race was not protected by American law! Even in the worst days of Jim Crow, no one was foolish enough to openly proclaim that the law did not apply equally to all Americans. It would be wrong to say that such a mindset was not in fact understood in many places, but it was certainly not openly stated as government policy at either the state or the federal level. Today, though black on white crime is raging while white on black crime is statistically miniscule, the supposed “great fear” expressed by liberal “racial-activist” groups such the NAACP and the Southern Poverty Law Center is the danger to black Americans from vicious white racists affiliated with “the Klan!” Every news story about the display of a Confederate battle flag produces charges that the Klan is on the march and moving to bring back Jim Crow and the rope! These outbreaks of feigned hysteria are given credence and additional power by academia, establishment “historians” and government agencies like the Parks Department all of which are in collusion to consign to oblivion the heritage and history of the South. No amount of reasoned rebuttal to contrived “history,” no facts however well sourced and no sources—even Union records and Northern historical figures—will suffice to end the demand that all things Confederate must be condemned and banished altogether or, if necessary, displayed only as are the symbols of such rogue regimes as Nazi Germany! And this crusade for cultural genocide is only getting worse by the day as physical vandalism—sanctioned by various local and state governments—is now openly committed despite existing laws. Recently, even a “Civil War” museum was forced to remove the flags of the Confederacy and, as a result, has been closed! We must remember that many of those attempting to obliterate Southern heritage couched their demands with the claim that these symbols only belonged in a museum! Apparently not! Now let us go back to the first paragraph in which I pointed out that vigilante groups arise when helpless citizens are no longer being protected by the civil government. For while the NAACP and the SPLC cry “Klan”—like the boy who cried “Wolf!”—the very same circumstances leading to vigilantism in the past are once again appearing in the present. White Americans see their God-given, constitutionally-protected rights under attack by government at virtually all levels at the insistence of blacks and their liberal white allies. Voter intimidation based upon race that would never have been permitted if attempted by whites against blacks, is tacitly (and even openly) ignored when the racial components are reversed. And while the main stream media continues to ignore incidents of gangs of young blacks—some mere children!—targeting whites, the truth of these matters is brought to the attention of most Americans through the ubiquitous internet—another reason why the government so dearly desires total control over that entity! Meanwhile, local, state and national law enforcement turn a blind eye—or so many whites believe—to minority crime especially committed against whites. In other words, the race baiters and their ilk are creating the same state of affairs that led to the rise of the original Klan! Thus, it may well be that while these groups are mendaciously crying “Klan! Klan!” to bolster their own power and censor Southern heritage, they may in fact, be “whistling up demons” and calling into existence the very malevolence that they have used as a straw man for so many years in their war of cultural genocide! What a tragedy it would be if to feed the ambition, greed and hatred of the race-baiters and poverty pimps, we should see the rise once again of an agent of racial violence that had previously been almost consigned to oblivion. Fairy tales educate a child to certain eternal truths. The tale of the boy who cried “Wolf!” is meant to warn the hearer about the fact that even real danger will be ignored if it is frequently declared where it does not exist. When the wolf finally did come, the child’s cries were dismissed and he paid the ultimate penalty for his foolish efforts to gain attention. Perhaps it is time for the race-baiters to recognize that the day may come when the cries of “Klan! Klan!” are no longer lies used to taint a movement unconnected with racial bigotry—but, rather, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
One of the strangest conclusions to all of the miracles and healings
that Jesus ever performed comes at the close of the healing by the pool
of Bethesda that John includes in his gospel. In this healing, Jesus
comes to a pool where sick people gathered, singles one person out who
had been there for a long time, heals him, then disappears into the
crowd before the healed man could thank Him. However, one of Jesus’ instructions for the man was to pick up his
sleeping mat, and that upset the religious leaders in the area. The main
reason was that the day this healing happened was the Sabbath, and it
was to be a day of rest – and carrying one’s mat was not resting. But with all this said, the last two verses of this event conclude this story in a strange way. John tells us, “After
this, Jesus found him in the temple complex and said to him, ‘See, you
are well. Do not sin anymore, so that something worse doesn’t happen to
you.’ The man went and reported to the Jews that it was Jesus who had
made him well.” (John 5:14-15 HCSB) After Jesus had healed him, this man goes and basically rats Jesus
out for being his Healer. This doesn’t make sense, but even more
confusing are Jesus’ final words to this man. “See, you are well. Do not sin anymore, so that something worse doesn’t happen to you.” (John 5:14b HCSB) Perhaps the man believed that disobeying the religious leaders was
sinning, and he felt he was obeying Jesus by communicating to the
leaders that Jesus healed him. Or perhaps Jesus’ message was meant as a
challenge for moving forward. We don’t know anything about this man before or after this event.
Implied in Jesus’ words is that the man was sick and/or disabled because
of a past sinful life. Jesus’ final message to him is to stay away from
that sinful life so that something even worse doesn’t happen to him. In this warning and challenge Jesus gave this man is a theme
we can all use in our own lives. While avoiding sin doesn’t stop bad
things from happening to us, avoiding sin does stop a good percentage of
bad things from happening. The principle Jesus is communicating is that
who we associate with will either bring us health or will bring us
harm. The quality of our friends determines the quality of our lives. This man was given a fresh start after 38 years of illness. He
had the choice whether to return to his old life, or start a new one.
Each of us doesn’t have to face 38 years of consequences in order to
choose to turn our lives around. This miracle teaches us that a new life
with Jesus can begin today. This post first appeared on ReflectiveBibleStudy.com What do you think? Do you agree/disagree? Leave your thoughts below.
In his poem, The Second Coming, Yeats presents the following unhappy worldview: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.” Well, certainly the last two lines have ably identified our current state of affairs. One need only look at Muslim jihadists and their Israeli counterparts, the war on whites waged by a large percentage of non-whites (and tacitly accepted by many whites themselves!) and the hate-filled anti-Christian agenda of the LGBT++ movement to find “passionate intensity!” On the other hand, even the best of those who supposedly stand for “traditional moral values” seem more concerned with avoiding the race card and other slights than in standing foursquare for those values they claim to champion. Their “lack of all conviction” is apparent in their apathy to the attacks of their enemies on those same values! But it isn’t just conviction that “the good guys” seem to lack. They are apparently none too bright either. While involved in a life-and-death struggle with their enemies, they seem oblivious to matters that should be obvious even to the most naïve and ~ not to put too fine a point on it ~ the witless. This is obvious every time there is a problem in the world. Almost immediately, there is a rush by decent folks to determine which of the combatants is “right,” and which “wrong.” The idea that this dichotomy may not actually exist—at least within the scope of Biblical morality—seems not to dawn on some people. There is this fundamental belief among them that somebody must be right and, if that is the case, then somebody must be wrong! But this concept of reality reminds me of an episode in author J. R. R. Tolkien’s mighty moral work, The Lord of the Rings which puts such simplistic conclusions to shame. While in the enemy’s land, Frodo and Sam (the two hobbit protagonists) are being hunted by soldiers of the Dark Lord known as orcs. Frustrated at their lack of success, these two evil minions give up and proceed to engage in an argument which is overheard by their quarry. The quarrel becomes ever more violent until finally, the smaller kills the larger by shooting him with his bow—and then runs off. Sam is encouraged at the obvious hate between their two mortal enemies and states that he wishes such an evil spirit should spread throughout Mordor, as it might result in the minions of the enemy killing each other off! But Frodo, who is both older and wiser, tells his companion that the hatred they saw was in fact “the spirit of Mordor!” However, had the two soldiers seen them, they would have put aside their dispute until they had killed their quarry. Apparently, this rather obvious conclusion seems all but impossible for many of our “good folks” to comprehend. Rather, they implicitly believe in that old political axiom, “The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend.” And while this is indeed a truism, it is so only under certain conditions and for limited periods of time. Indeed, one example of the fallacy of such a mindset can be found in relatively recent history: the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact made during the opening period of World War II which involved implacable enemies “joining forces” so that both could obtain a goal that would have been difficult to achieve without each removing the other from areas of interest. Once both had achieved their respective goals, they turned on each other and the “pact” was dissolved—and without benefit of diplomacy! The major problem arising from the inability to understand that both sides of any disagreement may be right—or wrong—is that ordinary Americans tend to want to be able to “champion” one side in any dispute. They believe that somebody has to be right—and therefore “good”—and somebody has to be wrong—and therefore “bad!” However, things are seldom that clear cut and a more realistic view is made considerably worse by a government—together with its complicit media—that makes sure we Americans are told about various situations only what they want us to know. When you add a lack of information to a poorly developed intellectual capacity and an even worse understanding of the nuances of global politics, you wind up with people applauding one side and denouncing the other when, if they knew the facts, they would realize that they either have their protagonists mixed up or, as is often the case, neither side is worthy of wholehearted support and support for either side is often the worst thing under the circumstances. In fact, often the situation extant exists because a third party—say, the government of the United States, together with certain international interests—have caused the whole brouhaha to begin with as a means of supporting their own particular agenda! A great deal of that manipulation is extant in the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian contretemps though we are told by our government organs that we should back the Ukrainians against the evil Russians. Yet, a further look into the matter shows that the disturbance in that country is neither spontaneous nor local in origin. Indeed, many of the “dissenters” in the Middle-East during the so-called “Arab Spring” were also outsiders and the overthrow of past rulers—as bad as they undoubtedly were—has led to a campaign of genocide against Middle Eastern Christians, something that the Americans who were cheering on what they saw as “democracy in action” neither intended nor expected—at least as we understood it at the time. As long as Americans remain naïve, ignorant and indolent with regard not just of the world but of our own government, we are going to be used and abused by those we foolishly believe we should trust and support. Sadly, there seems little hope that things will change as this situation has been going on for a hundred and fifty years and involved over that span of time Americans who were far better educated and knowledgeable than the present generations. About the only hope that I see in this matter is that our rulers believe that we have passed the point of no return and so they no longer bother to hide their infamy but openly proclaim our condition as subjects of the central government. That just might arouse some Americans, but, I fear, not enough. Far too many of us are wedded to the government teat and will fight to the death against those who threaten to take it away. We have chosen, as another great poet, John Milton proclaimed: "Bondage with ease over strenuous liberty."
And so the final blow falls; it is finished as God Himself once said of His great work of redemption, but, alas, we can now say it of the noblest experiment ever attempted by man – the United States of America. As in all things, we today witness only the end of a long train of evils leading to this final blow. It actually began in 1775 when the representatives of thirteen disparate colonies began a long and virtually impossible effort to throw off the yolk of their country of origin, the Empire of Great Britain. The history of those thirteen very diverse colonies made any such efforts immensely difficult. Often, they were more hostile toward each other than the “Mother Country” and such a situation does not bode well for an enterprise that, if unsuccessful, would find its leaders being hanged, drawn and quartered, the legally established punishment for high treason. These “colonies” rather stumbled into war through the actions of one of their number, Massachusetts, in its dealings with Britain and the Empire’s efforts to tax (and control) Massachusetts and all of the rest. By the time April of 1775 came along, it only took one unfortunate set of circumstances to launch what became a full-scale war though admittedly in a rather minute section of Britain’s total land holdings from Canada in the north to Florida in the south. But, as with a great many other immense happenings, the small size of its beginnings soon resulted in a war between thirteen small, weak, poor and disorganized collections of farmers, merchants, sailors and planters and the greatest Empire in the World. Even the most optimistic of these “colonists” could not have been sanguine about their prospects. And when you add to that, the fact that possibly a third of those involved sided with Britain, the matter became even more dismal in its prospects of success. But succeed it did – after eight long and painful years, years that saw the “original” Continental Congress attempt to hold the polyglot “nation” together. When it began it was soon determined that there had to be some order, some statement of facts and beliefs that gave structure to what was too diverse to be considered a single political entity, and so, on November 15th, 1777, that Congress finally brought into being what were called the Articles of Confederation. Now, remember, the first shots were fired in April of 1775 in Massachusetts at Lexington and Concord. The Battle of Bunker Hill was fought on June 17th, two months later. Virginia planter George Washington – chosen to lead the existing “army!” reached Cambridge and took charge of what was actually a militia milieu entrenched there on July 2nd, 1775, less than a month after that battle. Meanwhile, the Articles of Confederation didn’t come into being until November 15th, 1777, two years and eight months after the “war” began! Furthermore, they weren’t ratified until February 2nd, 1781! That means that the war was being fought and “Congress” was making decisions – when they did make decisions! – for six years before the Articles legally existed! Even so, once the Articles were ratified, they were soon found to be so badly flawed that the eventual victory of the colonial cause must be seen as more an act of God than any reasonably directed “national” effort! Let us now look at some of the failings of the Articles after they were ratified. Of course, as might be expected given that the Articles arose from thirteen political entities whose histories did not include deep and lasting cooperation – much less political union! – their guiding principle was the establishment and preservation of the independence and sovereignty of those States and to that end, they consciously established a weak central government (the Congress itself), affording to that Congress only those powers the former colonies recognized as belonging to the King and Parliament. But here we must also remember that the ongoing war was the direct result of how differently America and Britain saw those powers! Yet to facilitate fighting the war, there needed to be clearly written rules for a sort of “states’ league of friendship” at least, an arrangement that became known as the Perpetual Union. As the Congress waited for the document to be ratified, it observed the Articles in the conduct of its business, that is, directing the war effort (sort of!), conducting foreign diplomacy when it became useful and necessary and addressing territorial issues especially with regard to the Indians. Of course, little or none of this activity affected all the States at least at one time and as each State had the same power while each had different concerns and needs, and as each decision had to be unanimous it is easy to see why this body accomplished so little even when it was able to meet with enough members to form a quorum – something not always possible under the Articles! As the Articles were being used even when unratified, matters changed little when they were ratified. But as the “Confederation Congress” attempted to govern the continually growing and changing circumstances created by the war, its delegates soon discovered that the limitations placed upon them by the Articles (ratified or otherwise!) – such as in assembling delegates, raising funds and regulating commerce – rendered both the Articles and the Congress impotent to make any real and meaningful decisions. Indeed, the Congress was so ineffective during the war that had it not been for some private citizens and the King of France committing funds to the army, there would have been no need to worry about an American “government” because there would have been no “America” to govern! Thus, when the war was actually (miraculously!) won, nobody involved was unaware of the uselessness of the Articles to actually produce a working government and for a while, the individual colonies continued to scrape along trying to bring order out of a chaos that had been difficult even under the British Crown! Now with no “central power” to fix what was broken, pay what was owed and resolve what was unsound, the situation involving the newly “independent” colonies was grave indeed! Worse, the way of addressing such problems seemed to many “independent” colonists to just start another revolt as did happen with Shay’s Rebellion that took place in 1787 in – you guessed it! – Massachusetts! There was no central currency, gold was all that creditors would accept in payment of debt, people lost their farms and businesses because of the internal financial and political chaos while Europe waited to see how long it would take the thirteen little “countries” to destroy each other or be simply taken over by a European power, possibly even Britain itself as that nation still lurked to both the North (in Canada) and the South (in Florida) of the “newly independent” United States! Even George Washington, the great hero of the Revolution had some of his personal property seized in payment of debts for which he did not have the funds to repay. It was a bad time for the “newly freed” Americans and there was simply no apparent way out as things stood. And so, those same patriots who had launched the revolution, decided it was time to address the situation before it became terminal. Thus, it was determined to have a “convention” ostensibly to “fix” the Articles. Now, frankly, nobody believed that they could be fixed after eight years of evidence to the contrary! The sitting Congress had tried to “govern” under the Articles during that time and was spectacularly unsuccessful in doing so. Therefore, it came as no surprise to anyone attending the convention that a whole new government was being considered, a government that would give sufficient power to a central authority to allow all the States to work together as a nation. And, yes, it was put out that the convention was to “fix” the Articles, but for those who knew how the Articles worked during the Revolution, that statement could not have been taken seriously at face value! Of course, the problem was that while the Articles supposedly provided a “perpetual union,” that “union” was unworkable as each state, whatever its size, had the same power and all decisions had to be unanimous! Obviously, both of these strictures put an end to the usefulness of the Articles! What came out of the Constitutional convention was an exceedingly well thought out effort to manage all of the problems and the pitfalls arising from the existing “bodies politic” of the original colonies! The delegates could not go back and undo all the ill feeling and bad decisions that had been made by the various colonies during the period prior to the war, neither could they undo the mistakes and deliberate plots that manifested themselves during the war itself. Fortunately for these men, the man who took the position of directing the matter and who had suffered mightily from many of those mistakes and plots was able to rise above all that had happened in hopes of bringing forth a document that would give life to a “country” that was literally dying at birth, that is, His Excellency, George Washington who became President of the Convention. In the end, the Constitutional Convention did produce a most unusual document, one that addressed all of the problems at least of the day with sufficient ability to deal with problems yet to appear on the horizon. But with all that the Constitution had within its pages to deal with that which would appear over time, it was after all, a document, a piece of paper dependent upon the men who used (and often abused) it. However, we should not crucify those men who brought it into being and who, like George Washington, used it to initiate a government never before seen on God’s green earth! Why should we have expected perfection from a human document when a document given to us by God Himself – the Holy Bible! – is ignored or rejected? Do we blame God, or do we blame those who have rejected what God has given us? Certainly, had the Constitution been used in a spirit of prayer and obedience to the values the Founders advanced for the country, it might well have eventually failed, but it might have succeeded far longer than it actually did! For the eventual destructive nature of the so-called “federal government” became more and more obvious through the early years as the union that President George Washington prayed would be the first love and guiding duty of all Americans became a matter of sectional self-interest, political tyranny and economic corruption. Quickly – by historical standards anyway – the former free association of states based upon the desire to serve and promote the new Nation became a contest of power and money. One section, the South, properly reading the handwriting on the wall, tried to make use of the much-vaunted Constitution to withdraw from what had become political and economic slavery by using its constitutionally guaranteed right of secession. For it must be remembered that the United States had chosen to follow the British economic system of mercantilism, a system based upon trade and tariffs to fill the country’s coffers. Unfortunately, by the middle of the 19th Century, one section of the nation was providing the vast percentage of that nation’s income. Indeed, in 1860, the year before the so-called “Civil War,” the South, through tariffs, provided over 90% of the federal budget! And for this, the Constitution is blamed. Indeed, former Senator and the first—and only—President of the nation those States constitutionally created, Jefferson Davis, said many years after the bloodiest war ever fought by Americans, “It is a satisfaction to know that the calamities which have befallen the Southern States were the result of their credulous reliance on the power of the Constitution, that if it failed to protect their rights, it would at least suffice to prevent an attempt at coercion, if, in the last resort, they peacefully withdrew from the Union.” Still, one must wonder why Mr. Davis and the South should have held that opinion full well knowing that what was happening to that Section regarding the theft of its assets already violated the spirit and letter of that same Constitution! Once an agreement is broken in part, it is foolish to believe that it remains basically in effect in all its other parts! Lincoln’s war put the final nail in the coffin of the republic, replacing it with an empire of conquest and consolidation. The Southern people were fortunate. Unlike the American Indian, they were permitted to continue to live in a state of quasi-freedom. Many believe that they eventually achieved full freedom with the end of reconstruction, but actually all that happened is that every other American’s liberties were eroded away until there was little or no difference between the South after reconstruction and the rest of the nation without reconstruction. The only thing that grew stronger was the central government. And this is how it has continued. For a while, a sort of equilibrium remained because the nation retained its Christian moral heritage. But the communist/socialist philosophy of Marx’s American protégé, Abraham Lincoln, was not to be denied. Slowly, over the years, “progressives” like Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and others worked to grow the power of the central state to encompass ever wider areas within the lives of the People. Since the concept of states’ rights had been destroyed in the mis-named “civil war” and the states reduced to nothing more than bureaucratic entities within that government there simply was no way to curb its power. The major stumbling block to the creation of an all-powerful State was, as noted, America’s “Christian heritage.” This was well known and efforts to undermine the morality of the People began even before the end of the 19th Century. Educators and philosophers such as John Dewey brought their atheism and humanism into the American educational system with the understanding that America would never be free of Christian influence until it was destroyed in the young. In time, the judiciary moved not only to increase the power of government—and especially that of the judiciary—but to strike down Christian influences in the culture as well as in government. It was a deliberately slow process because the People were still feared – if not respected! – and politicians are generally more venal and self-serving than idealistic. But it does not take a brilliant scholar to realize that if such judicial rulings by the courts as abortion on demand and “gay marriage” had been attempted before 1950, the outcry from the American People would have quickly ended such unholy and perverted policies, Supreme Court or no Supreme Court! But little by little, America’s values were worn away and little by little, Americans themselves became as corrupt, venal and wicked as their rulers. Churches in the name of “social justice” embraced policies that directly contradicted the teachings of Christ and their own doctrines. What we see today was best expressed by British poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) who wrote, “Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, we first endure, then pity, then embrace.” The result of this “embrace” is that fewer and fewer Americans identify themselves as “Christians” which is nothing if not correct. Even many of those who continue to use that title believe and live in such a way as to make of their claim a blasphemous lie. Indeed, the only “religion” today that can boast of serious adherents is itself more bloody and blasphemous than many of the worst of humanism’s canons and the Crescent once more threatens to turn the world into one large bloody 12th century caliphate. Ah, where are King Richard of the Lion’s Heart and Prince Eugen today? Instead, we have a conglomeration of pathetic capons who fear offending the wicked more than they desire to protect the helpless good. In truth, we have the “leaders” we deserve. But the killing blow to “the great experiment” was not delivered by a communist-Muslim mulatto “gay” foreigner whose ineligibility for his office both in talent and credentials was well known—and ignored—neither was it the result of the machinations of an atheist Jew whose vast fortune is the product of destroying nations and betraying his own people to their exterminators nor of a Muslim prince who, four years before Barack Hussein Obama was foisted upon the nation confidently predicted that a Muslim would be in the White House—in four years. No, the killing blow came from none other than “We the People.” No longer able to resist corruption or maintain our morals because our once great Christian ethic had been replaced by the utilitarian creed of atheistic Secular Humanism, Americans have chosen what Milton once identified as “…bondage with ease rather than strenuous liberty.” Of course, what Americans don’t realize is that “bondage with ease” is impossible. As fewer and fewer of the productive struggle to bear the burden of more and more of the unproductive and alien invaders, and of the cost of the ruling class, the time must surely come—and soon—when that bondage will make ante-bellum slavery into a light and easy yoke. No, we cannot blame our enemies. God knows, they made their intentions very well known throughout the years from Lincoln to Obama. Sadly, we have proven that nothing of value lasts and that eventually, the greater is supplanted by the lesser. As of today, we no longer even have the shoulders of giants upon which to stand and survey our doom. Whenever one wishes to know just what is going on, pay less attention to the "debate" and more attention to those involved. Learn the agenda, strategy and desire of both “contestants” and you will understand what is going on no matter what "historical reasons" are presented as driving the issue. Great men – both good and bad – of the past have made known that a people are much easier to conquer once you remove their past! If you don't know where and from whom you came, it is infinitely easier to enslave you for you have no heroes or beliefs to support and defend! This whole "monument" and "flag" agenda has nothing to do with history. Anyone who judges the past by the present is either stupid, mentally ill or wicked and therefore deserves no "following." But take everything away and we are left with a blank slate upon which anything can be written without the means of determining whether it is false or true. God knows, George Orwell made that abundantly clear as did Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn! The mere fact that this can continue at a time when so much information is available regarding the facts in these matters merely demonstrates that because we have become a people without a past, we are now a people with no present and surely, if this is allowed to go on, no future! To quote the man with whom Almighty God blessed this nation at her inception, George Washington: "The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves." Through the efforts of Washington and those of like ilk, Americans became free but today we are perilously close to allowing ourselves to be enslaved – and there is no Washington to save us.
Southern history and its monuments are being attacked, we are told, because of the injustices done to blacks not only in America, but in the West. Black slavery that reached its heyday in the West in the 18th and 19th centuries, is put forth as the worst crime in the history of mankind and, of course, those responsible have been determined to be, well, white. This, of course, is rather odd. To begin with, the idea that white ship captains and their crews ran around the dark continent capturing little black boys and girls and their helpless and harmless elders in order to carry them in chains back to the New World is only slightly less accurate than a Jules Verne trip to Mars. To begin with, any such attempt would probably have resulted in a lot of empty ships—empty of officers and crew as well as slaves—and a great many well fed lions and crocodiles not to mention the odd Zulu or Masai warrior whose battle gear would now carry some new and different effects from watch chains and wedding rings to false teeth. No, the black slave trade was carried on in Africa by Africans! The white European and the American Yankee (no slave ships ever sailed from the South!) along with the Muslim Arab had merely to appear with the appropriate amount of gold or other material for barter to be assured that their ships and caravans would obtain the desired merchandise to carry homeward. Interestingly enough, by 1888 in the West, even Brazil—the last slave-holding nation in the New World—had ended slavery. Yet today black slavery continues in Africa and Asia. So the idea that only the (white) West, and in the West, only the States of the South bear any blame for black slavery brings us back again to the prolific Mr. Verne. But the real question is, why these days does any of this matter? History is filled with horror stories involving every culture and every time period. Why, in a brand new millennium are Americans seemingly transfixed over a war whose cause only peripherally involved slavery—and that only in the South? After all, the States of the South were not the only States who still had slaves by 1861. Abraham Lincoln once opined that the slaves of New Jersey would probably be emancipated around the year 1900! In order to understand, we need to know why in the second decade of the 21stcentury is everyone so fixated on America’s black slavery long since ended when actual black slavery is still extant in the world! To begin with, it is not so much the institution of slavery, but the race of the slave that matters. Originally, in the New World, slaves were white. The British had no desire to buy what they could conquer and enslave in their own part of the world – that is, the Irish, the Scots, the Welsh and whatever Christian group—Catholic or Protestant—that was out of power at the time! But white slaves did not long survive in the heat of the West Indies or the Southern colonies; Africans did. But in the North, the African did not flourish and other than profiting immensely from the slave trade itself, most whites in that section resented the presence of blacks in their midst. The virulently anti-black sentiments of those States that (supposedly) later went to war to free their “black brethren” is not altogether unknown. Several years ago, a black journalist, Francie Latour, wrote an article that can be found in the archives of the Boston Globe, New England’s Hidden History. No person who holds an opinion on this subject should fail to read it unless, of course, they prefer to remain ignorant in order to maintain their prejudices. When the African slave traffic began in earnest, two colonies—Virginia and North Carolina—petitioned King George to end it; he refused. Meanwhile, the Africans, far from dying off, flourished and their numbers multiplied to the point at which many white colonists became uneasy. This concern increased after the horrors perpetrated during the uprising that led to the creation of the first black nation in the New World—Haiti. However, relations between the races in the South was strongly influenced by the Christianity of the whites and such black converts as joined them. Though definitely hierarchical, with whites at the top, that relationship was far less inimical than that existing in the North where the State of New York became known as the “slave’s graveyard.” In the South, slaves were often allowed to practice a skill after they had done their work and most were permitted to keep what they earned from their labors. This often resulted in a slave buying his freedom and, in some cases, going on to own property and slaves of his own! Indeed, the largest slave-holder in South Carolina at the start of the War of Secession was a black man who had been a slave himself! He invented a very useful machine that brought him sufficient money to purchase his and his wife’s freedom. Interestingly enough, the money went to the slave, not to his master! Now, this is all very interesting and if people were serious about who was to blame for what, it would be common knowledge—but it isn’t. Why? Because most of those involved in this issue don’t care about history or the truth! Contrary to the belief of many decent, rational and intelligent folks that the present problem between the races arises from historical “slavery,” the simple fact is that slavery as it once existed is an excuse. It is a means by which certain agendas go forward. It is a convenient mask with which to hide a very different and far more modern agenda. All of the hoopla and ballyhoo about Confederate symbols and monuments and heroes is so much nonsense. While it is true that most black Americans after emancipation were not in the main stream of the culture, they did not find themselves without the benefits of America’s bounty. There were and are “black millionaires!” There were and are black professionals and leaders of commerce and certainly there were—and are—black politicians along with the ever-present rabble-rousers. Were there as many of these as whites? No! But that is to be expected as blacks represent only about 13% of the population! But the above black “success stories” were present even in the days of Jim Crow—an invention of a mostly Northern Supreme Court with the decision Plessy v. Ferguson! And while it is also true that there were many poor blacks, there were also many poor whites! As well, before the “civil rights movement,” black median income was rising and the black family was strong! It wasn’t until Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” (and a less aptly named crime against the American people cannot be imagined!) that the government stepped into the shoes of ol’ Massa and many blacks returned to the days of the plantation where they were cared for from womb to tomb without having to do anything but vote Democrat! The black family—and with it the black future—was destroyed and the black social structure started down the road leading to Birmingham, Ferguson and Detroit. But who is the “real black victim” in all of this? It is not the black sports star or entertainer. It isn’t even the black politician and still less, the black criminal—albeit sometimes there isn’t much difference between the two. The realblack victims are those who function very successfully within Western (a/k/a white) culture. Now sadly, there are—and will be—well-educated and intelligent blacks who, when the chips are down (as they are now!) will go with their race even to their own destruction and the destruction of the society that gave them their “blessings.” But those who realize that civilization at its best does not lie with either tribal barbarism – white or black! – or the mindless hive of the New World Order but with Western Civilization and its faith, Christianity, are more hated by their fellow blacks than the most virulent “racist” redneck. Why? Because such blacks are proof that their race is capable of so much if they reject any tendency toward lazy, infantile self-gratification and the communist utopianism that has brought many of them to their present plight. Sadly, when this “race war” reaches a climax of hatred and death—as inevitably it must—the greatest tragedy will be that those on both sides will recognize only race, the result of which will be that many will suffer and die who, under better circumstances, would have lived as noble companions. In the end, we will all be victims.
It is my belief that the last legitimate President of the United States of America was Ronald Wilson Reagan [1981-1989]. Not only was Reagan the last legitimate president, but the man constitutionally holding that office prior to Reagan is questionable simply because we cannot really affix a time before the current Deep State came into being or, rather, overwhelmed what remained of a quasi-legitimate federal government. The New World Order, root and origin of the Deep State, cannot be given a specific debut date either, unless you assign to that event in the United States at least, the date of the death of the then dying Founders’ Republic in 1861! Therefore, it is hard to say when the next to the last legitimate President took office and in consequence, who he was. Of course, the Republic died with the election of Abraham Lincoln who forswore his oath to protect and preserve the Constitution, but rather did all he could to destroy the concept of a limited federal government acting “with the consent of the governed.” In any event, if we look at the aspect of “party” – an essential understanding of how, why and where government is today – we find an interesting timeline. The first President, George Washington, was supported by no party. He was the choice of virtually all who had labored for the birth of, well not a new nation for that was not the result of the War for Independence, but rather, he was the leader of a Republic that had become a new nation consisting of the thirteen individual “nation-states” that had originally formed a “confederation” to better work together for both the common and the individual good of those “nation-states” and their citizens. Sadly, the confederation as it existed under the Articles of Confederation did not work and the positive results of “the Revolution” were starting to collapse under an inability of the thirteen colonies to function as a single nation. This was forestalled by the so-called Constitutional Convention, presided over by Washington that led to the creation of the United States of America via our founding document, the Constitution. As the American people were unsure of this new “government,” George Washington was chosen as its first President (an office that had never before existed!) to assure that said office would not deteriorate into a monarchy. Obviously, it didn’t. Yet, the concept of “party” began even under Washington and was so destructive to the Republic in his eyes that in his Farewell Address, the retiring President warned Americans of its consequences: The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. George Washington’s Farewell Address But it is fair to say that the true understanding of political parties begins with the second President, John Adams who took office under the “Federalist” party. Adams was a believer in a much tighter amalgamation of the those “nation-states” and looked to increasing the strength of the “federal government” as a means of achieving that end. Unfortunately, Adams was not Washington and tended to overreact to what he considered attacks on the new government as represented by himself as President. As a result, the next three Presidents, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe were elected under the Democratic-Republican party, a party that tended more to the “confederation” aspect of the nation giving more power to the states though this policy had almost destroyed the efforts of the American people to become independent when last practiced! The election process continued in this way until the seventh President, populist Andrew Jackson. Jackson was angered by what he considered to be the spurious “election” of the sixth chief executive, John Quincy Adams. He believed that the “party system” as it existed at the time was a means of keeping ordinary Americans pretty much out of the process of choosing their political leaders and so he formed the Democratic party in the belief that it would represent ordinary, middle-and-lower class Americans rather than the wealthy elites. That party kept Jackson’s definition into the 21stcentury though the original intent had long since been lost and even rejected! The ninth and tenth presidents, Harrison and Tyler were of the Whig party, a remnant of the earlier party deconstructed by Jackson. From Jackson to Lincoln, there were five Democrats (including Jackson) and four Whigs. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln ran on the old Whig – now Republican – party ticket. Running against Lincoln were two Democrats, the result of sectional differences that had developed over the years: Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge and Unionist Democrat Stephen A. Douglas; there was also a “Constitutional Union” candidate, John Bell, a matter that further muddied the political waters. This split in the Democratic party led to Lincoln’s victory even without votes from the states of the South because at that point in time, the Republican party was strictly a sectional political entity and did not even appear on Southern ballots! Now, the issue of party determined – and continues to determine – the leaders not only in the federal government but in all the State governments as well. The “public servant” who left his home to represent his State either locally or nationally for a period of service and then to return to “civilian life” had ceased to exist if, in fact, he had ever existed! The “citizen Statesman” – other than George Washington – was a myth and working for the government became a profession rather than a public duty. This greatly changed the understanding of that service and thus, made important whatever was needed to rise through the ranks in order to obtain political position! Men came into national leadershiponly through the party system and those who spent their life in the Capitol serving in Congress were the men who were chosen to serve in the Executive and Judicial branches of that same government. Few indeed were the “outsiders” who made their mark in that service, but when they did arrive, they often proved to be important indeed. After Jackson – probably the first “important outsider” – the next “outsider” (at least with regard to party politics) was Dwight David Eisenhower. Eisenhower’s power came, as did Jackson’s, from his military service but unlike Jackson who did serve in Congress, Eisenhower never held any elected office and was not seen as a “politician.” Indeed, so “neutral” was “Ike” that both political parties attempted to gain him as their own. In the end, the good General chose the Republicans. Yet despite not being a “politician” within the civilian understanding of that word, Eisenhower was very much a creature of the Deep State having been a “political” general while leading America’s forces in World War II and acting as both a military and political liaison between the American government and the Allies. Thus, when the time came for him to run for the highest office, he brought just as much political acumen to the campaign and the office as did any straight-out politician while personally being cloaked in the aura of a “nonpolitical” soldier. The Twentieth Century saw the full installation of the Deep State within, or rather as, the government of the United States. Political parties continued to give the appearance of a choice to the electorate, but in truth, it was nothing more than an appearance. Wilson had created the Federal Reserve, removing the financial power from the government – and hence the People – as well as further diminishing the People’s “power” through the institution of the income tax, a concept rejected out of hand by the Constitution and thus requiring that that document be, once again, “amended.” Of course, in 1861, Lincoln had perverted the Constitution into a document protecting not We the People, but the Deep State that operated behind the mask of the federal – now national – government. The only political thing accomplished in the post-bellum period by local and State elections was to groom those who would go on to rule from Washington. As the Deep State continued to gain control of all power in DC, the natural clashes between the two existing parties became more important and, as a result, more prominent. The political situation was, according to conservative columnist Patrick Buchanan, a matter of the parties being “two wings on the same bird of prey.” And while the “Rockefeller wing” of the GOP was publicly presented as “liberal”– as opposed to the “conservative wing” of that party – truth to tell, the “Rockefeller wing” was, in fact, the Republican party! True conservatives were seen as an unfortunate manifestation of the same type of embarrassment that the Democrats had with their own “Blue dog” conservatives once described as “Dixiecrats” before the Civil Rights movement made of any reference to “Dixie,” beyond the pale. As the election of 1976 neared, the Republicans, who held the White House through President “Tricky Dickie” Nixon found that the whole system was arrayed against that President, a situation made obvious by the media whose members hated Nixon almost to a man. Politically, this meant that Nixon had to go even in the judgment of his own party. First, Vice President Spiro Agnew was forced to resign predicated on a “crime” that left him open to impeachment. Whether Agnew was guilty or, more to the point whether he only did what everybody else in DC was doing at the time, mattered not at all. After that office became vacant, Nixon chose good natured, inoffensive and inept Gerald Ford to replace Agnew. Of course, this meant that when Nixon was forced to step down, Ford became America’s first “appointed” President! But Ford did promise that when the ’76 election came ‘round, he would not run from his position as President given how he had achieved that office. But the GOP had few concerns with regards their next candidate foralmost all those available were in fact “Deep State” nominees and thus acceptable on both sides of the aisle! Alas, however, the Party did not see or did not recognize the “elephant” in the room: two-term California Governor Ronald Wilson Reagan! Reagan was not a member of the Deep State; he wasn’t even a politician before he was asked to help in his native state against the leftist Democrats then in power! Rather, he was a decidedly outspoken anti-Communist who had defended Barry Goldwater in 1964 with a style that made him known as “the Great Communicator!” His well-known honesty and decency also made him the only Republican who had a chance of offsetting the party’s Nixon image with the American people. Perhaps party big-wigs did not think Reagan would run because of his age; he was 65 in 1976. The only newly elected President older than that was William Henry Harrison at age 68, but Harrison died early in his term. Democrat James Buchanan was also 65 at the time of his election, but few remembered the president before Lincoln for obvious reasons. However, it soon became widely known – and especially in the “Rockefeller wing” of the GOP – that Ronald Reagan had set his cap for the nomination! And while that terrified the Democrats, his own party was even more terrified lest the “amiable dunce” as he was often called by the “movers and shakers” of the Deep State, might take not just the nomination but the office! Thus, when the Republican Convention opened, it was revealed that good old Gerry Ford had rescinded his promise not to use his position to seek the nomination. Surprise, surprise! Eventually, the convention saw Reagan “defeated” using “establishment” (Deep State) tactics, with which we today are now all too familiar! Thus, when the convention ended, many ordinary Republicans who had attended were enraged that Reagan had been robbed of the nomination and made it plain that they would not support Ford! Understanding this situation, Reagan asked for an opportunity to address the gathering. His request was granted probably more in desperation than any desire to give him a platform. But the Great Communicator gave a most gracious speech asking that all be forgiven and forgotten and further begging the Faithful to work for a Republican victory. So awesome was this speech that one Ford delegate was heard to say, “I think we chose the wrong candidate!” The election of Jimmy Carter also gave the appearance of an “outsider” becoming President. But Carter, like Eisenhower, was very much part of the Deep State and, so his presidency did nothing to truly “change” the Washington establishment. But whatever his connection to that “establishment,” by the time 1980 rolled around, neither the nomination nor the presidency could be denied to Ronald Wilson Reagan. Yet, in the 1980 Republican Convention several things happened that presaged Reagan’s difficulties within that same “establishment.” First, he was forced to accept as his Vice President, George H. W. Bush, a very important and powerful member of the Deep State and, in fact, that entity’s choice to be president. Few know what forces were brought to bear on Reagan, but the ticket in the end was Reagan-Bush. Second, on the night he was chosen, national media guru Walter Cronkite made mention of a possible “dual-presidency” consisting of Reagan and Gerald Ford, presumably to prevent “the crazy Cowboy” from initiating a nuclear holocaust – the charge leveled by the Democrats and their media minions against Goldwater in 1964 that led directly to the landslide for LBJ in that election. Nothing came of this, of course, but it shows how the media was lining up on the issue of Ronald Reagan even before the election. During Reagan’s eight years in the White House, many things happened that illustrated how estranged the man was from his own party as well as the Washington establishment, a/k/a the Deep State. One of the first things was, I believe, an effort to end the uncomfortable nature of such an “outsider presidency” through the tried and true method of assassination. The general story of the attempt to “remove” Reagan – and subsequently install Bush in his place – is pretty well known. However, there are at least two matters that are not so well known. First, John Hinckley, presented as the “lone gunman” – a la Lee Harvey Oswald! – was the son of a wealthy family well known to the Bush clan. Indeed, the night before the assassination attempt, Hinckley’s father had dined with Bush’s son! Obviously, this did not become public knowledge for a long time. The second was the matter of the hospital chosen to succor a wounded Reagan had he survived the attack. I believe there can be little doubt that Bethesda was originally chosen to tend to the wounded (or dead) President. Bethesda had been the scene of the very questionable “suicide” of James Forrestal when that patriot resisted the Deep State and, as a result, was subsequently removed! It was also the venue in which the autopsy of assassinated President John F. Kennedy had been conducted and utilized to hide rather than reveal the nature of that murder. However, Reagan’s Secret Service bodyguard did not realize that he had been hit at the time of the shooting and directed the limousine back to the White House. By the time the agent learned otherwise, he had no choice but to go to George Washington hospital. Any attempt to reach Bethesda would have been a dead giveaway that the actual intention was a dead President. A further attempt to remove Reagan happened during the notorious “Iran-Contra” hearings. Reagan was told he would have to testify before Congress involving meetings with his staff that might – or might not – be related to the matter. He had no problem doing so but requested that he be permitted to bring his “journals” when he was questioned. The President kept journals of his meetings and realized that these were the only means by which he could provide accurate answers. But Reagan’s request was denied! Immediately, he understood that it was not information that was sought, but any error in his testimony that would permit the government to charge him with perjury and subsequently have him impeached. Thus, during the inquisition, Reagan repeatedly testified to questions on what he had said, to whom and when, that he “didn’t remember.” Of course, no sensible person could expect the President of the United States to have total recall of the huge numbers of meetings and conferences that made up his days in office! So, rather than “guess” and be caught in what would be presented as a lie, Reagan preferred to be called senile. That, by the way, is how the whole “senility” issue involving Ronald Reagan was originally claimed. By caring less about his “image” and more about the truth, Reagan proved too smart for the Deep State, that same Deep State that permitted Bill Clinton to actually lie under oath without consequence save the loss of his useless law license. As for Reagan’s two terms: he had very little support from his own party (sound familiar?) but he did have the votes of conservative Democrats like Phil Graham of Texas and the support of enough Americans to make their own representatives wary of openly opposing the man. When Bush ran for president after Reagan left office, his campaign began with criticism of the man who had never been anything but loyal and supportive of him. However, when Bush’s poll numbers crashed, he rethought his disdain for Ronald Wilson Reagan and was able to recoup sufficient popularity – Reagan popularity! – to win the Presidency. And finally, what about the last “outsider,” Donald J. Trump? Why don’t I believe that Trump was the last duly elected President rather than Ronald Reagan? Because Trump never was “President” as that office is understood by the Constitution! The Deep State was sure that Obama had sufficiently prepared the country for the final step into the New World Order through the presidency of fellow traitor Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, the GOP had rather lost control of its own functions and again found that a real outsider, Donald J. Trump, had gained sufficient popularity among party voters to become the nominee whatever the Party wanted. And while there were plenty of voter fraud operations available to prevent Trump’s election, the Deep State did not believe them necessary. They found out on election night how very wrong they were and, consequently vowed never again to be “caught short” as we saw in the election of 2020! But the agenda had gone so far that that Deep State leaders were not prepared to wait any longer for “the Great Reset” and the presidency of Donald J. Trump was crippled by the refusal of the rest of the government to support or even recognize his administration! In this treason, they were supported by the lapdog media and “Big Tech.” And as the next presidential election – 2020 – approached, knowing Trump’s continued popularity with We the People, the Deep State instituted criminal actions designed to hide what would become massive voter fraud and other operations to assure a Trump loss including year-long riots and a faux “pandemic! Of course, all that had happened since 2016 resulted in an openly and blatantly stolen “election” and the subsequent installation of the most illegitimate “President” and “administration” that had ever been put into office against the will of the People. But even during his “presidential term,” Trump was continually harassed with impeachments, the removal or forced resignations of men and women chosen to serve in his “administration,” a weaponized bureaucracy, illegitimate court and justice systems and a hostile Congress on both sides of the aisle. And all of this was constantly pushed by the media day in and day out! Indeed, I find it amazing that Donald Trump was able to do what he was able to do! But, alas, we have seen in the short time since he was illegally “removed” from office, that the Deep State has been able to undo all that had been done in accordance with the will of the American People. And though many believe that 2024 will allow us to regain what was lost, it is my opinion that as things now stand, it has been lost beyond recall. If the results of the election of 2020 are not corrected and the guilty punished, America’s system of choosing leaders is as dead as Andrew Jackson. Post Scriptum: the minions of the Deep State have removed the monuments of famous Americans like Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and even “progressive” President Teddy Roosevelt. They have dug up the bodies of Confederate cavalry genius Nathan B. Forrest and his wife in the name of “racial justice” though Forrest supported freed blacks and was well loved by them! Sadly, I wait to see when these foul vandals with the “blessings” of the Deep State, disinter America’s last legitimate President, Ronald Wilson Reagan – and his wife Nancy – in their ongoing battle to “unwrite” history! Alas, we have come so far into the darkness of the Great Reset that what light remains indicates neither escape nor even the hope of escape, but a momentary lull prior to the black night of totalitarianism. George Orwell put it best in his description of that future, in his book 1984: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.
Absurdity Cloaked In Jargon Posted on October 22, 2024 by john Dear Friends, It seems to me, everything the progressive’s say makes perfect sense, until you think about it, then you realize, it’s absurdity cloaked in jargon. Progressives in every nation rely on spurious logic to manipulate us into self harm. Some examples are, “a just nation has a low disparity between the rich and poor,” “Misinformation must be controlled,” and the ever famous, “democracy is at stake!” Each statement sounds true enough as long as you don’t think about it. But then again, who does? We’re busy people and so a quip, true or not, has more power to convince than a well thought out argument. Which is one reason the left is so panicked about their inability to create memes. A joke that exposes their absurdity is their greatest peril. Because it alerts the victims. Slogans, tropes and spin are ways to manipulate us. They define absurdity cloaked in jargon. There’s nothing like a simple to remember slogan. A few words that create an emotional reaction are the ideal tool of manipulation. Because an angry person is not a thinking person. People who aren’t thinking are easy to control. Slogans set up tropes. Mind viruses that hold our thoughts fast. So we don’t engage in wrongthink. Then there’s spin. If we see something we shouldn’t, and shock causes us to have too much to think, the elite can manipulate our reaction with spin. That laptop with all the damning information on it? Well, that’s only Russian disinformation. Don’t take Ivermectin for heavens sake! It’s horse medicine! The fact the IPCC lied, and made up data, is only proof of the urgency of climate change! The best tools of manipulation are self proving, obvious and arcane. Self proving is another way of saying circular logic. Why should there be a small discrepancy between the rich and poor for a nation to be just? Because justice requires the discrepancy to be small. To be obvious is to be simple to understand. Misinformation must be bad, it’s in the damned name! One way to make a slogan appear clever is to use words with undefined meanings. Keep it arcane. So no one actually understands what you’re saying. Then they put the definitions they want to your words and voila… minds are changed, logic is abused, and the economy is wrecked. Absurdity cloaked in jargon then is circular, simple to understand and filled with mercurial definitions. The modern absurdities we’re expected to believe uncritically have these things in common. They’re arcane. Because the terms are never defined. They’re spurious, because they sound logical but are intended to deceive. Plus they oversimplify. Since without definition and intended to fool they must oversimplify. Else they lose their effectiveness. Five words stick in the mind while fifty never make it past the ear. Especially five words that are left to us to define as our emotions command. What really is democracy, misinformation, rich or poor? Depends who you ask. Making those terms arcane and spurious. Quips sound smart so we often believe them uncritically. Making absurdity cloaked in jargon a nearly impervious political tool of control. Except it has a weakness. Memes, or visual jokes, are kryptonite to the progressive’s absurdity cloaked in jargon. They illustrate the absurdity, in a few words, and are humorous so stick in the mind. Vaccinating the recipient from the mind virus of slogans, jargon and spin. Moreover, progressives don’t have a sophisticated sense of humor, being low on the orderly aspect of the big five. Wit is the result of connecting two disparate ideas in an unexpected fashion. Those with overly open minds have all ideas connected and so they don’t understand the shock of unexpected connection that makes jokes work. Which makes memes a single edged sword for populists. Like slogans used to be for elitists. Absurdity cloaked in jargon has been very a effective tool of manipulation… memes may be the kryptonite we need to defeat them. Sincerely, John Pepin
Americans who support beleaguered (former) President Donald Trump should give very careful consideration to the following historical utterances, old and new, and what they mean for us in America today: From Ulysses S. Grant's Report on Conditions in the South - 18 December 1865: “I am satisfied that the mass of thinking men of the South accept the present situation of affairs in good faith. The questions which have heretofore divided the sentiment of the people of the two sections— slavery and state's rights, or the right of a state to secede from the Union—they regard as having been settled forever by the highest tribunal—arms – that man can resort to. I was pleased to learn from the leading men whom I met that they not only accepted the decision arrived at as final but, now that the smoke of battle has cleared away and time has been given for reflection, that this decision has been a fortunate one for the whole country, they receiving like benefits from it with those who opposed them in the field and in council.” Thus wrote Ulysses S. Grant in 1865. But if Grant was, in fact, correct, then everything decent Christian people believe is a lie! For when Grant speaks of “the highest tribunal” being arms and that the South was proven wrong because their “arms” were insufficient to protect them against the “arms” of Grant and the rest of the Union military, we hear spoken aloud and without shame—albeit in different words—that old philosophy: “might makes right!” In more modern times, the late Justice Antonin Scalia said as much; that is, that the cause of the Confederacy—the constitutionally guaranteed secession of sovereign states from the old compact—was defeated and thereby rendered unconstitutional, not by law, but by force of arms! But consider what that actually means! If that is true, then Hitler was not wrong, but bested in war. Had he prevailed, his actions would have been legitimate. The Nazis were subject to trial and execution not because of their actions, but because they could not validate those actions by force of arms! Do we really believe that? Do we really agree with former ambassador John Bolton, when he said that the American government robbed, raped and killed Southern civilians during the Civil War without due process but it was the right thing to do? It is one thing to “accept the arbitrament of the sword” as did Robert E. Lee and other Southerners after the war—for by that concept they simply meant that they had been defeated and there was nothing to do but make the best of it. No other choice lay before them other than acceptance and continuing with their lives or, in the alternative, sullen resentment and ultimate oblivion. But, that is not the same thing as acknowledging that issues of law, divine or secular, had—or could be—be legitimately settled by military might. For, if force is the final arbiter, then there is no such thing as law! It is an illusion that can be swept away by whichever contending party wields the greatest force! And if that is so, then the Constitution was never the law of the land for true authority rested and continues to rest solely with that faction that has the most fire-power!
originally posted in Conversations at 8:58 am EDT (by mistake)Countries are not ethically required to dedicate resources to take care of migrants. What are examples of resources that a nation need not devote to migrant welfare? Providing housing or transportation to migrants en masse who have no commonality, such as race, religion, political affiliation, or other cohesive group. Affording special protections against transnational criminal organizations. Establishing educational resources for gainful employment to economically motivated non-citizens. These ethical issues are not on the scale of individual actors, but rather a government organization. As such, a nation’s duties are to enforce justice when within its power and prudent. It must create impartial laws that restrict significant, demonstrably harmful activities against its members (citizens) and against egregious unethical character in its communities. A country rightly devotes resources to restore justice by reparation (compensatory justice), penalty (retributive justice), forgiveness, or removal.Positive and Negative Duties To enforce justice, there is an important difference between positive and negative duties. Duties are obligations with a valence of benefit or harm. Negative duties are obligations torefrain or avoid (hence, negative) doing some harmful or coercive action, such as burgling my neighbor’s house. This is also called the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP). Positive duties are obligations to perform or enact (hence, positive) some action, such as fulfilling one’s promises or contractual agreements, or compensating for bodily harm or reimbursement to replace damaged property. Doing good is not always an obligation, but in the words of Jan Narveson, it is a matter of compassion rather than justice. This is so important to grasp independently of the plight of migrants, since it ensures that we are consistent in our principles across the board, so that we are not open to accusation of special pleading. This means that a wide variety of government activities are not matters of justice, even though they may benefit individuals and communities effectively. When must a nation, then, perform beneficial actions? It is only obligated when enforcing contracts or facilitating the restoration of parties after a violation. When making an agreement, it is a matter of justice to do what you have agreed to. When wrongs are committed, it is a matter of justice to come to the aid of the afflicted, to make things right. Without wrongdoing or contract, however, there’s no duty to benefit others. It is no violation of anybody's rights, merely to fail to do good that is within your power to do. We might owe migrants positive duties. Who has wronged the droves of migrants seeking a better land? What citizens are in breach of contract with migrants? Whenever the answer is none, then that's what we owe. Nothing. The government is under no ethical obligation to centrally plan ways so improve their welfare. What promises has our nation made, that the nation must fulfill? If the answer is empty, then our account balance owed is empty too. If we didn’t commit to doing it, then we can’t be compelled to do it.When To Take Care of Migrants This line of thinking is not insensitive or calloused. Recall that there is room for compassion. People can individually or collectively work toward altruistic ends. The Effective Altruism(EA) movement intends precisely this. With proper planning and collaboration, coalitions can be effective. Love for one’s neighbor is entirely laudable. But there are three caveats. First, a nation’s priorities for compassion are for their members. Citizens are taken into consideration because they hold some stake in the nation’s success as members. Non-citizens have personal interest in the nation’s success, but not as members. The nation need not secure the interests of non-citizens in the same manner. Moreover, you should be basic before you are extra. It is prudent to engage in compassion, which goes above the call of duty, after meeting one’s obligations first. Second caveat is that there are conditions for obligatory intervention. Have we already consented to provide care or aid, by means of a treaty, pact, or other international negotiations? Often the answer is no. The clear exception is with asylum seekers. Seekers need to meet certain conditions, such as establishing awell-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country …. (Convention and Protocol) We have an obligation as a nation that has adopted the 1951 Convention or 1967 Protocol. Different nations have obligation, ceteris paribus, under their respective laws that obligate them. But I argue we should not provide housing to those who exploit us with loopholes. Reciprocity is key. It is lacks reciprocity to enter illegally. This should be an escape clause. Our obligation as a nation has qualifications. The third caveat is that even when it is not obligatory, people know how to help each other when they know their needs personally. It is not always wise to provide support on a national-level, where person-to-person organic relationships would inject compassion. The immediate and long term needs of non-citizens are more effectively met by people who have local knowledge. The kind of understanding you get when you meet and know the person, not just address a number or react to a trendline.Conclusion We should not be planning resources centrally to help those who come in droves. It just simply isn’t a matter of justice, most of the time, to admit non-citizens to enter. The case is worse for those who have broken the law upon entry. And the case for central-planning is, on the contrary, better devoted elsewhere. It is a matter of priority: if there were an ethical basis for taking care of migrants at a governmental level (it doesn’t), it’s first priority is to care for its citizens.
Mass migration isn’t new.
If anthropologists are to be believed, in prehistoric times people found
their way to entire unpopulated continents by traversing a variety of natural land
bridges. Humans have been migrating out
of Africa into the rest of the world for at least 70,000 years. In fact, the societal frictions generated even by small bands
moving within highly local areas in the process of hunting and gathering
predate the beginnings of agriculture (which tied people more directly to
specific plots of land). As a
consequence, modern humans are faced with two sets of problems – one relatively
modern and one utterly ancient – when contemplating the darker side of being a
globally dominant species. The first set is the one that we address with our modern
brains, perhaps in part because our leaders (elected to power or elevated to it
by political natural selection) have at least somewhat greater intelligence
than average for the population. In the
United States, most possess advanced degrees, typically in the law. (For any given Congress, half of the House of
Representatives and two thirds of the Senate are populated by lawyers.) Thus it’s in the nature of politicians (at
least initially) to use reason, logical deduction, and a host of upper brain
functions to outline public policy on immigration. Underneath that modern brain, however, resides Homo sapiens’ more primitive brain. (A well-known clinical psychiatrist recently devoted
the first chapter of a bestselling book to observing that the same antidepressants
that work on humans also work on lobsters – and that our species diverged in evolution
at a time so long ago that trees didn’t yet exist.) Much our neurology is of an ancient design built
for hunting and gathering. As much as we’d
like to sit in some mahogany-paneled, marble-floored office in the capital of some
nation and to reduce our deciding of policies on immigration to a purely cerebral
exercise, one level lower in our brain structure, that’s not how we’re wired. Agriculture changed much of how we look at our own migratory
patterns. Yes, our lower brain functions
did make our pre-agricultural clans territorial – but not to any meaningfully greater
degree than you’d likely find in a pack of some other omnivorous mammals in
search of their next meal. The birth of farming, however, greatly upped the ante. Actively farming the land brought about an investment in it
that remained absent for as long as humans were scavenging for berries instead
of actively growing them. Two groups of
thirty to forty hunter-gatherers (the largest band that their lifestyle might
support) would occasionally travel to some boundary of their territories and simultaneously
stumble upon the same plant filled with edibles. Yes, there would be a territorial conflict,
but it would be more about the calories and nutrients hanging on the vine at
that particular moment than the factors that went into producing them – and which
if intentionally reinvested might produce food again the following year. As agriculture expanded, so did the value of the plant
(which itself might not be palatable) and the dirt in which it grew (which
invariably was inedible). People became
tied to their land since they had to irrigate the same plants in the summer as
they’d sewn in the spring and would harvest in autumn. Mobility went down and populations not only
grew thanks to surplus calories finally being available, but they also became
aware of their investment of labor into a specific parcel of ground. Also, with not every waking moment having to
be dedicated to finding the next thing to eat, these expanding populations could
afford to develop their own unique cultures. Thus, when people from some distant place came into what a
group perceived as “our land,” reactions varied depending on the degree to
which the same territorial lower brain function we share with crustaceans got
triggered. The response to that provocation
depended a great deal on whether the incursion was a few people (which in
modern terms, we’d say is “immigration”) or many people (which today we’d call
an “invasion”). Even to this day, we see
the world through this lens because the roughly 12,000 years since we began
farming is an eye blink on the timeline of evolutionary biology. The term “invasion” in particular is
heavily loaded emotionally. In the West, we’ve been doing a marginally respectable job
of dealing with population migration thanks to gifts bequeathed to us by the ancient
Greeks, the Jews and early Christians, and the Romans. Greek culture warned that a stranger might be
a visiting god in disguise. Jews
grappled with the notions of Isaac and Ishmael (and Jacob and Esau) being
brothers. Apostles Peter and Paul wrote
that Jews and Gentiles were both welcome at Christ’s table. And the Romans developed a concept of citizenship
that extended it to the peoples they had conquered. (The aforementioned Apostle Paul got out of
more than one legal scrape by saying, “Yes, I am a Jew, but I am also a Roman
citizen.”) Today it’s easy for all of us to agree, “We’d welcome this
Nobel Laureate’s coming to our country because of the positive impact he’ll
have.” A more difficult problem arises
when we get to the thornier issue of whose extended family members to let in –
or the degree to which their bringing their culture will imperil our own. We simply have not yet evolved the brain
structure that allows us to resolve a conundrum with no clear intellectual
solution. Thus we fall back on using the 600cc’s
of brain we share with Homo Habilis,
our ancestor who distanced himself from chimpanzees about two million years ago. When two logical arguments hit an impasse, the
extra 800cc’s of modern human gray matter goes out the window. Rhetoric becomes heated, illogical, and
emotional. Until we recognize our developments of technologies and social
structures have vastly outstripped our own evolution, our best hope may be to
look for examples (particularly the Greco-Judeo-Christian-Roman ones) of what historically
has worked.
“An argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest. Jesus, knowing their thoughts, took a little child and had him stand beside him. Then he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For it is the one who is least among you all who is the greatest.’” (Luke 9:46-48 NIV) As I sat down to write this weekend’s thought, this passage from Luke’s gospel stood out to me. Before this morning, I had not noticed an idea present in this familiar verse. Prior to this morning, when I read this passage, I saw a challenge in Jesus’ words for the disciples to be like the children. I would not be surprised if this truth is present elsewhere in the gospels, especially when Jesus welcomed children to spend time with Him. Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven belongs to children like these (Matthew 19:14; Mark 10:14; Luke 18:16) However, in the above passage, the blessing is not on the child Jesus had stand beside Him. Instead, the blessing is for the person who welcomes that child in Jesus’ name. Jesus says, “Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” At that time, society was much more hierarchical than it is now, and children were looked down on by most people. Jesus welcoming children was a cultural shock to those in the first century. The one who associated with children was also considered low on the society’s hierarchy. In this event, Jesus challenges His disciples to reverse their idea of greatness. Instead of looking to achieve greatness in the world’s eyes, seek to achieve greatness in God’s eyes. While the world associates greatness based on how close you are to someone who is also “great”, greatness in God’s eyes is found when we welcome those that society looks down on in Jesus’ name. Greatness in God’s eyes does not care about what the “world” thinks. While exceptions exist, a general rule is that if the world dislikes something, it is probably a lot closer to being something God values. Jesus’ challenge in this passage is a challenge to welcome others. God challenges us to welcome those the world has looked down. When we welcome those that society has rejected in Jesus’ name, Jesus is welcomed too. And when we welcome Jesus, we welcome the rest of the Godhead as well! "God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them." (1 John 4:16b NIV) 🙏 📖 ✝️ 👍
America’s first President, George Washington was subjected to fierce attacks and even threats of being forcibly removed from the President’s House and guillotined in the streets of Philadelphia when he failed to go to war with England in support of the French when those two European powers went to war. Washington rejected “foreign entanglements” and spoke often and strongly against such alliances and the desire to link America with any country as it was not in the best interests of the new nation. And so, despite ongoing conflicts that continued after the revolution itself was ended by the Treaty of Paris, Washington was able to keep the new nation out of war with Great Britain despite the threats and the calumny he had to endure during his second term. Washington’s war against the Iroquois confederation had been brought about when those native peoples had sided with the British in the earlier war. Yet, Washington wanted very much to reach an accord with the Indians whom he considered the victims of European/American conflicts in the New World. But a quick look at history indicates almost continual warfare involving the United States at home and abroad. Below is a chronological list of those wars – large and small – involving America either directly or indirectly from the American Revolutionary War down to the year 2011, detailing all constituent military campaigns. Dates indicate the years in which the United States was involved in that war. As noted, the Study ends in 2011. Americans should see this list of ongoing conflict and realize just how many times and for how long we have been at war of one kind or another. If, as a nation, we are in our last days, we might reflect on our own actions over time and how they contributed to our downfall. American Revolutionary War or American War of Independence April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783 Boston Campaign, 1775–1776 Invasion of Canada (1775) Canadian Theater, 1775–1776 New York and New Jersey campaign, New York and New Jersey Campaign, 1776–1777 Saratoga Campaign, 1777 Philadelphia Campaign, 1777–1778 Western theater of the American Revolutionary War Western Theater, 1775–1782 Northern theater of the American Revolutionary War after Saratoga, Northern Theater, 1778–1781 Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War Southern Theatre, 1775–1782 Kingdom of Great Britain Great Britain Loyalist (American Revolution) Loyalist Iroquois Cherokee - - - President of the Continental Congress, John Hancock, Henry Laurens, John Jay, Samuel Huntington (statesman)Huntington, Thomas McKean, John Hanson. Treaty of Paris (1783) Northwest Indian War or Little Turtle's War or Miami Campaign1785–1795 Western Confederacy - George Washington. Treaty of Greenville 1795 Quasi-War or Franco-American War Half-War1798–1800 First French Republic Act Further to Protect the Commerce of the United States, July 9, 1798 - John Adams. Convention of 1800 (Treaty of Mortefontaine) First Barbary War or Barbary Coast War or Tripolitan War1801–1805 Ottoman Empire of Tripoli History of Morocco The Alaouite Dynasty Sultanate of Morocco 1801 - Thomas Jefferson Treaty with Tripoli (1805)"Treaty of Peace and Amity" 1805 War of 1812 or Second War of Independence June 18, 1812 – March 23, 1815 Tecumseh's Rebellion, 1811–1813 St. Lawrence/Lake Champlain frontier Lake Champlain Campaign, 1812–1814 Niagara campaign Niagara Campaign, 1812–1814 Detroit frontier Detroit Campaign, 1812–1814 Chesapeake campaign Chesapeake Campaign, 1813–1814 Creek War, 1813–1814 Peoria War, 1813 Southern Campaign of the War of 1812 Southern Campaign, 1813–1815 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland United Kingdom British North America Shawnee Red Sticks Ojibway Chickamauga (tribe)Chickamauga Meskwaki Iroquois Miami tribe Miami Mingo Odawa people Odawa Kickapoo people Kickapoo Lenape Mascouten Potawatomi Sauk Wyandot people Wyandot United States declaration of war upon the United Kingdom (1812) An Act declaring war between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the dependencies thereof and the United States of America and their territories June 18, 1812 19-13 79-49 – James Madison Treaty of Ghent December 24, 1814 Second Barbary War or Algerian War1815 Bey of Algeria 1815 - James Madison 1816 First Seminole War1817 – 1818 Seminole Spanish Florida 1817 - James Monroe 1818Adams–Ones Treaty 1819 Enforcing 1808 slave trade ban; naval squadron sent to African waters to apprehend illegal slave traders slave traders (pirates) "Act in addition to the acts prohibiting the Slave Trade" 1819 - James Monroe1822 first African American settlement founded in Liberia,1823 US Navy stops anti-trafficking raids Arikara War1823 Arikara August 1823 - James Monroe 1823 Winnebago War or Le Fevre Indian War1827 Ho-Chunk 1827 - John Quincy Adams Treaty with the Winnebago August 1829 Black Hawk War or Black Hawk Campaign1832 British Band 1832 - Andrew Jackson Black Hawk Purchase September 21, 1832 First Sumatran Expedition February 6 – 9, 1832 Cheifdom of Quallah Battoo 1832 - - - Andrew Jackson February 9, 1832 Second Seminole War or Florida War1835 – 1842 Seminole 1835 - Andrew Jackson Martin Van Buren 1842 Texas Revolution or Texas War of Independence1836 Mexico An Act Authorizing the President to Accept the Service of Volunteers May 23, 1836 - Andrew Jackson Sabine Expedition 1836 Second Sumatran Expedition1838Cheifdom of Quallah Battoo 1838 - Martin Van Buren 1838 Mexican-American War or Mexican War or U.S.–Mexican War April 25, 1846 –February 2, 1848 Mexican-American War Conflict over the Nueces Strip Texas Campaign, 1846 Mexican-American War California campaign California Campaign, 1846–1847 Mexican-American War California campaign New Mexico and Arizona Campaign, 1846 Pacific Coast Campaign 1846 - 1848 Mosquito Fleet Mosquito Fleet Campaign, 1847 Mexican-American War Scott's Mexico City campaign Mexico City Campaign, 1847 Mexico May 13, 1846, 40-2 173-14 - James Polk Mexican Cession, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo February 2, 1848 Gadsden Purchase, April 25, 1854 Navajo Wars1861–1864 Navajo people Navajo 1846 - John Tyler, James Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln 1863 Cayuse War1847–1855 Cayuse 1847 - John Tyler, James Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore 1853 Pitt River Expedition April 28 - September 13, 1850 Tolowa Nomlaki Chimariko Wintun April 28, 1850 - Zachary Taylor September 13, 1850 Apache Wars Apache Ute tribe Ute Yavapai people Yavapai 1851 - Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses Grant, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley 1900 Bombardment of San Juan del Norte or Bombardment of Greytown July 13, 1854 Nicaragua - Franklin Pierce July 13, 1854 Third Seminole War or Billy Bowlegs War1855 - 1858Seminole 1855 - Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan 1858 Yakima War1855 - 1858Yakama 1855 - Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan 1858 Rogue River Wars1855 – 1856 Rogue River (tribe)Rogue River Indians 1855 - Franklin Pierce 1856 Puget Sound War1855–1856 Nisqually (tribe)Nisqually Muckleshoot Puyallup (tribe)Puyallup Klickitat (tribe)Klickitat 1855 - Franklin Pierce 1856 Second Opium War or Second Anglo-Chinese War or Second China War1856 - 1859 Qing Dynasty Qing Dynasty 1856 - James Buchanan Treaty of Tianjin June 18, 1858-1859 Paraguay Expedition1859 Paraguay 1859 – James Buchanan Paiute War or Paiute Indian War or Pyramid Lake War1860 Paiute Bannock (tribe) Bannock Shoshone 1860 - James Buchanan 1860 American Civil War or War Between the States April 12, 1861 – April 9, 1865, Union blockade, 1861–1865 Eastern Theater of the American Civil War Eastern Theater, 1861–1865 Western Theater of the American Civil War Western Theater, 1861–1865 Lower Seaboard Theater of the American Civil War Lower Seaboard Theater, 1861–1865 Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American Civil War Trans-Mississippi Theater, 1861–1865 Pacific Coast Theater of the American Civil War Pacific Coast Theater, 1863 Confederate States of America Confederate States of America April 12, 1861 - Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson April 9, 1865 Reconstruction era of the United States Reconstruction Amendments (a very different “war”) Dakota War or Sioux Uprising or Sioux Outbreak of 1862 Dakota Sioux 1862 - Abraham Lincoln Surrender at Camp Release September 26, 1862 Colorado War1863–1865 Cheyenne Arapaho 1863 - Abraham Lincoln 1865 Battles for Shimonoseki July 20, 1863 - September 6, 1864 Chōshū Domain 1863 - Abraham Lincoln 1864 Powder River Expedition or Connor Expedition1865 Sioux Cheyenne Arapaho 1865 - Abraham Lincoln 1865 Snake War1864 - 1868PaiuteBannock (tribe)Bannock Shoshone 1866 - Abraham Lincoln 1868 Comanche Campaign or Comanche War1867–1875 Cheyenne Arapaho Comanche Kiowa 1867 - Andrew Johnson, Ulysses Grant 1875 Red Cloud's War or Bozeman War or Powder River War1866 – 1868 Lakota people Lakota Cheyenne Arapaho 1866 - Andrew Johnson Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) Korean Expedition or Shinmiyangyo June 10 – 11, 1871 Joseon Dynasty June 10, 1871 - Ulysses Grant June 11, 1871Korean-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce Treaty of Amity and Commerce 1882 Modoc War or Modoc Campaign or Lava Beds War July 6, 1872 – June 4, 1873 Modoc July 6, 1872 - Ulysses Grant June 4, 1873 Red River War June 27, 1874 - June 1875 Cheyenne Arapaho Comanche Kiowa June 27, 1874 - Ulysses Grant June 1875 Black Hills War or Great Sioux War of 1876–77 or Little Big Horn Campaign1876 - 1877 Lakota people Lakota Northern Cheyenne Arapaho 1876 - Ulysses Grant 1877 Nez Perce War or Nez Perce Campaign1877 Nez Perce 1877 - Ulysses Grant 1877 Bannock War or Bannock Campaign1878Bannock (tribe)Bannock Shoshone 1878 - Rutherford B. Hayes 1878 Cheyenne War or Cheyenne Campaign1878–1879 Cheyenne 1878 - Rutherford B. Hayes 1879 Sheepeater Indian War1879 Shoshone 1879 - Rutherford B. Hayes 1879 White River War or Ute War or Ute Campaign1879 - 1880 Ute tribe Ute 1879 - Rutherford B. Hayes 1880 Pine Ridge Campaign or Ghost Dance War November 1890 – January 1891 Sioux 1890 - Benjamin Harrison 1891 Spanish-American War April 25 – August 12, 1898Cuban War of Independence Puerto Rican Campaign Pacific Campaign (Spanish-American War) Pacific Campaign Spain United States declaration of war upon Spain April 25, 1898, 42-35 310-6 – William McKinley Treaty of Paris (1898) Treaty of Paris (December 10, 1898) Philippine Insurrection or Philippine–American War or Philippine War of Independence June 2, 1899 – July 4, 1902, First Philippine Republic Katipunan Revolutionary forces Pulajanes 1899 - William McKinley Theodore Roosevelt July 4, 1902 Moro Rebellion1899–1913 Sultanate of Sulu Moro Moro people Moro May 24, 1900 - William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft 1913 Boxer Rebellion or The Boxer Uprising September 28 - August 15, 1900, Righteous Harmony Society Qing Empire September 28, 1900 - William McKinley China Relief Expedition, 1900 Boxer Protocol, September 7, 1901 History of Honduras #1899-1948 Occupations of Honduras Honduran revolutionaries March 23, 1903 - Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge April 21, 1925, History of Cuba in the early 20th century Occupation of Cuba Cuban revolt Platt Amendment 1906 - Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Treaty of Relations 1934 United States occupation of Nicaragua or Nicaraguan Campaign Constitutionalist Liberal Party (Nicaragua)Liberal rebels May 1910 – William Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt 1933 Mexican Revolution or Mexican Expedition or Pancho Villa Expedition April 21, 1914 - June 16, 1919, Mexico Yaqui people Yaqui Tampico Affair April 9, 1914 - Woodrow Wilson 1919 United States occupation of Haiti Occupation of Haiti or Hatian Campaign or Caco War Haiti Caco rebels July 28, 1915 - Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt August 1, 1934 1916 United States occupation of the Dominican Republic or Dominican Campaign, Dominican Republic 1916 - Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge 1924 World War I or First World War or Great War1917–1918European theatre of World War I European Theatre, 1917–1918 Western Front (World War I)Western Front Italian Campaign (World War I)Italian Campaign Asian and Pacific theatre of World War I Asian and Pacific Theatre, 1917–1918 Battle of the Atlantic (1914–1918)First Battle of the Atlantic, 1917–1918 German Empire Germany Austria–Hungary Austria-Hungary April 6, 1917December 7, 1917 82-674-0 373-50365-1 - Woodrow Wilson, Armistice with Germany November 11, 1918 Paris Peace Conference, 1919 Paris Peace Conference 1919 Treaty of Berlin (1921)Treaty of Berlin (August 25, 1921)Treaty of Trianon (in part) Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War Russian Civil War1918 – 1920 North Russia Campaign, 1918–1920 Siberian Intervention, 1918–1920 Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic Russia August 15, 1918 - Woodrow Wilson April 1, 1920 World War II or Second World War December 7, 1941 - September 2, 1945 Empire of Japan Nazi Germany Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)Fascist Italy Italian Social Republic Bulgaria Hungary Romania December 8, 1941 December 11, 1941 June 5, 1942 June 5, 1942 June 5, 1942 Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman V-J Day, Japanese Instrument of Surrender (September 2, 1945), Treaty of San Francisco (September 8, 1951)V-E Day, Unconditional German Surrender, (May 8, 1945), Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (September 12, 1990), Treaty of Vienna (1955)Treaty of Vienna with Austria (May 15, 1955)Treaty of Peace with Italy, 1947 Paris Peace Treaties, 1947 Paris Peace Treaty (February 10, 1947) Battle of the Atlantic (1939–1945) Second Battle of the Atlantic, 1941–1945 Pacific War, 1941–1945 Burma campaign New Guinea campaign Aleutian Islands campaign Guadalcanal campaign Solomon Islands campaign Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign Mariana and Palau Islands campaign Philippines Campaign (1944–45) Philippines Campaign Volcano and Ryukyu Islands campaign Borneo campaign Japan campaign Mediterranean, Middle East and African theatres of World War II, 1941–1943 Operation Torch Algeria-French Morocco Campaign Operation Shingle Anzio Campaign Egypt-Libya Campaign Allied invasion of Italy Naples-Foggia Campaign Gothic Line North Apennines Campaign Spring 1945 offensive in Italy Po Valley Campaign Rome-Arno Campaign Allied invasion of Sicily Campaign Operation Dragoon Southern France Campaign Tunisia Campaign Western Front (World War II)European Theatre, 1942–1945 Invasion of Normandy Normandy Campaign Operation Overlord Northern France Campaign Battle of the Siegfried Line Rhineland Campaign Ardennes-Alsace Campaign Central Europe Campaign Cold War 1947 - 1991 Democratic Army of Greece National Liberation Front (Macedonia) N.O.F. partisans Soviet Union Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Yugoslavia People's Republic of Bulgaria Bulgaria People's Republic of Albania Viet Minh Pathet Lao Khmer Issarak United Issarak Front People's Republic of China People's Republic of China North Korea North Korea North Vietnam North Vietnam Viet Cong Cuba Khmer Rouge Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola MPLA Angolan Armed Forces AAF Mozambique FSLN Democratic Republic of Afghanistan Grenada Panama Mutual Defense Assistance Act Battle Act Gulf of Tonkin Resolution Tonkin Resolution--United Nations Security Council Resolution 8484-. Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George Bush Hellenic Army victory Partition of Vietnam, Geneva Summit (1955) 1953Vietnamization, Paris Peace Accords 1973, Fall of Saigon 1975Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty December 2, 1954 Ceasefire Bay of Pigs Invasion Aftermath Rebels captured 1961Ceasefire Angolan Civil War Ceasefire 1989 Soviet troop withdrawal from Afghanistan May 15, 1988 - February 15, 1989, Ceasefire, Violeta Chamorro elected 1990 Operation Urgent Fury Aftermath Constitution restored Manuel Antonio Noriega captured January 3, 1990 Dissolution of the USSR, Malta Summit December 3, 1989 Chinese Civil War, 1946–1950 Greek Civil War, 1947–1949 First Indochina War or French Indochina War, 1950–1954 Korean War or Korean Conflict or The Forgotten War 1950–1953 Second Indochina War or Vietnam War or Vietnam Conflict, 1953–1975 Laotian Civil War Cambodian Civil War First Taiwan Strait Crisis, 1954–1955 Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, 1958 Congo Crisis, 1960–1966 United States occupation of the Dominican Republic Invasion of the Dominican Republic or Operation Power Pack, 1965–1966 Korean DMZ Conflict (1966-1969) Angolan Civil War, 1975–1976 Soviet War in Afghanistan or Soviet-Afghan War, 1979–1989 Contras Nicaraguan Civil War, 1981–1990 Invasion of Grenada or Operation Urgent Fury, 1983 Invasion of Panama or Operation Just Cause, 1989–1990 1958 Lebanon crisis or Operation Blue Bat July 15 - October 25, 1958, Lebanon Lebanese Rebels July 15, 1958, Dwight Eisenhower October 25, 1958 Lebanese Civil War or Multinational Force in Lebanon August 24, 1982 - February 7, 1984 Shia militia Druze miltia Syria UN Security Council Resolution 425 March 19, 1978S.J. Res. 159 September 29, 1983 54-46 253-156 United Nations Security Council Resolution 425425United Nations Security Council Resolution 426426 Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan 1984 Gulf of Sidra incident (1981)1981 Gulf of Sidra incident or First Gulf of Sidra Incident August 19, 1981, Libya 1981 Ronald Reagan 1981 Action in the Gulf of Sidra (1986)Action in the Gulf of Sidra or Operation Prairie Fire March 1986 Libya March 1986 Ronald Reagan 1986 Bombing of Libya or Operation El Dorado Canyon April 15, 1986, Libya April 15, 1986 Ronald Reagan 1986 Iran-Iraq War or Tanker War1987 - 1989 Iran 1987 Ronald Reagan 1989 Gulf of Sidra incident (1989)1989 Gulf of Sidra incident or Second Gulf of Sidra Incident January 4, 1989, Libya January 4, 1989 Ronald Reagan 1989 Gulf War or Persian Gulf War or Operation Desert Storm August 2, 1990 – February 28, 1991 Iraq UN Security Council Resolution 678, November 29, 1990Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 1991H.R.J. Res. 77 January 12, 1991 52-47 250-183 United Nations Security Council Resolution 678678 George H. W. Bush United Nations Security Council Resolution 689UNSCR 689, 1991 Iraqi no-fly zones Iraq 5 April 1991 United Nations Security Council Resolution 688688 George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton Iraq sanctions, Operation Provide Comfort, 1991–1996 Operation Southern Watch, 1992–2003 Cruise missile strikes on Iraq (June 1993) Cruise missile strikes on Iraq (1996) Operation Northern Watch, 1997–2003 Operation Desert Fox, 1998 Operation Southern Focus, 2002–2003 Somali Civil War or Operation Restore Hope1992 - 1994 Various Somali factions 1992 George H. W. Bush, George Bush, Bill Clinton 1994 Bosnian War or Operation Deny Flight April 12, 1993 - December 20, 1995, or Operation Deliberate Force August 30, 1995 - September 20, 1995 Republika Srpska 1992 - - United Nations Security Council Resolution 770770United Nations Security Council Resolution 776776United Nations Security Council Resolution 836836 Bill Clinton Reflagged as IFOR in 1995 Reflagged as SFOR in 1996 Completed in 2004 Operation Uphold Democracy Haiti September 19, 1994 Bill Clinton March 31, 1995, Reinstatement of Jean-Bertrand Aristide as President of Haiti Operation Infinite Reach Bombings of Afghanistan and Sudan or Operation Infinite Reach Al-Qaeda Harkat-ul-Mujahideen National Islamic Front August 20, 1998 Bill Clinton August 20, 1998 Kosovo War or Operation Allied Force or Operation Noble Anvil March 24 – June 10, 1999 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia 1999 United Nations Security Council Resolution 12441244 Bill Clinton, Military Technical Agreement 1999Reflagged as KFOR in 1999 in support of Operation Joint Guardian. Global War on Terrorism or War on Terror War in Afghanistan (2001–present) War in Afghanistan or Operation Enduring Freedom – Afghanistan Afghanistan Campaign, October 7, 2001 - ongoing Insurgency in the Philippines or Operation Enduring Freedom – Philippines, January 15, 2002 - ongoing War in Somalia or Operation Enduring Freedom – Horn of Africa, October 7, 2002 – ongoing Iraq War or Operation Iraqi Freedom or Iraq Campaign, March 20, 2003 – August 31, 2010 War in North-West Pakistan or Waziristan War, 2004 - ongoing Operation Enduring Freedom – Trans Sahara, February 6, 2007 - ongoing Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Taliban al-Qaeda Islamic Movement of Islamic Emirate of Waziristan Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia Piracy in Somalia Somali Pirates Piracy in Yemen Yemeni Pirates Ba'athist Iraq Baath Party Iraqi Insurgency Ba'athists Loyalists Islamic Army of Iraq Ansar al-Sunnah al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists S.J. Res. 23 September 14, 2001Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq H.J. Res. 114 October 16, 2002, 98-077-23 420-1296-133 United Nations Security Council Resolution 13681368United Nations Security Council Resolution 13781378George W. Bush, Barack Obama. Ongoing Second Liberian Civil War 2003 Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy Movement for Democracy in Liberia 2003 - - United Nations Security Council Resolution 14971497George W. Bush US Forces withdraw in 2003 after UNMIL is established 2004 Haitian rebellion2004 National Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Haiti 2004 - - United Nations Security Council Resolution 15291529United Nations Security Council Resolution 15421542 George W. Bush 2004 Libyan Civil War or Operation Odyssey Dawn March 19, 2011 - ongoing Libya United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 – United Nations Security Council Resolution 19731973 Barack Obama Ongoing
It is well known by conservatives and other thinking people that the aim of most “social justice” adherents is that perfect world in which everybody is treated equally and nobody has more (or less) than anybody else. This was the essential promise of communism—the establishment of the Workers’ Paradise—and this concept is the general thrust of the socialist ideal. Of course, this ideal has also been encrusted with a great many other concepts from the end of Western Civilization, the white race and Christianity to the belief that human desire is sufficient to produce genuine reality as seen in our current crises of gender and climate. But whatever the setting, it is generally acknowledged thatutopianism is a tenet of the Left! Not so! The Right has its own utopian vision, a vision that, frankly, is no more realistic than that of the Left. And that vision is made manifest with the ever-increasing cry on the Right that we must “look to the Constitution” in order to “re-establish the Republic of the Founders.” Really? Well educated conservatives and their ilk—just about the only folk who are truly “well educated’ these days!—believe that this “Founding Document” together with the Declaration of Independence and the Pledge of Allegiance are a sort of “magic talisman” that will whisk us back to a time of sanity and patriotism. But sadly, it would seem that the Right is no better at observing history than is the Left! Aside from the Declaration, a document that has no “legal” authority but is merely a statement intended to justify an actual rebellion in 1776, the other two national talismans are distinctly flawed. For instance, the Pledge was the construct of Francis Bellamy, a socialist, in the 1930s. And while it sounds “patriotic,” it certainly does not represent the mindset of the Founders. After all, a flag is a symbol not the thing itself and though it may be loved by those whose country it represents, the term “allegiance” is not applicable. Why? Because its meaning rests on the values and actions of that country—values and actions that may change to the point at which such loyalty and fidelity cannot be maintained by a truly moral—and especially Christian—people. Consider the difference between Christian Russia and the Soviet Union and you will better understand the matter. All – well at least most – of those involved were Russians, but their common ancestry did not affect the very different moral foundations of both States. Furthermore, the Pledge goes on to identify the “nation-state” as indivisible. There was, at one time, a good-sized segment of the people and States involved in the “united (lower case “u”) States” who rejected that concept and though they did not prevail, what happened before, during and after their attempt to “divide” proves that they were correct in making that attempt at that time and under those circumstances. And, finally, “with liberty and justice for all” has become nonsense today – albeit, at the time that sentiment might have been been both the belief – and the desire – of the American people and most of their government. Oh, and remember, the “under God” part was put in a lot later. Apparently socialist Bellamy, unlike the Founders, gave no consideration to the necessity of Divine succor. The Constitution, on the other hand, is a much more difficult issue. It must be remembered that it was born in an admittedly much required condition of deceit – for the old Articles of Confederation had failed miserably. They had failed to succor the colonies/states during the Revolution and afterward leaving many to believe that the blood, tears and treasure spent in eight years of warfare would end simply in a return to the pre-revolutionary status quo – or worse! The convention called at the time was presented as an attempt to cure the weaknesses in the Articles but that was simply impossible! No amount of “tinkering” with that document would produce a nation-state that was the desire of our Founders. And so, while some believed that this “convention” would address the Articles, there were those who never intended to do so, but rather to abandon them and establish a different set of governing rules that included a “federal” (or central) government able to act with power but without any hereditary titular head such as a King or an Emperor – for such was the nightmare of the former colonists! In other words, contrary to what many believe, the Constitution didn’t just serendipitously “happen!” It was planned from the beginning by most of those involved. Of course, the simple fact made obvious by the conditions of the colonies both during and immediately after the Revolution was that such a document was required for the nation to grow and, in its original state, the Constitution was a decent attempt at the formation of what Mr. Franklin called, “. . .a Republic, Madam, if you can keep it.” But, alas, we couldn't keep it, and a great deal of that failure was due to the men of those times whose “good intentions” caused far more harm than good! The Constitution was a document of compromise, the ruling belief of the President of the Convention, George Washington. Washington was a believer in the political concept of compromise as long, of course, as that compromise did not “compromise” any moral or ethical good. Washington was supposedly not a politician, but he was very gifted in his own way, able to make fierce opponents see the logic in “giving a little to get a little” and thus, without himself becoming involved in the various contretemps, he steered the Constitutional Convention to success, being the first to sign the document and declaring, when he became the nation’s first President, that it would always be his guide in all that he did in that office. But many rejected the Constitution including such founding greats as George Mason and Patrick Henry, both of whom saw it as a means of “consolidation” that would eventually destroy the liberties of both the States and the people. To begin with, that “jewel of the Constitution,” The Bill of Rights was not included in the original document but is identified as the first Ten Amendments! After the original document had been drafted, there were those who looked for enumerated protections for the People vis a vis the newly created “federal government” and, wonder of wonders, couldn’t find them! The upshot of that was, of course, the Bill of Rights. At the time of the Convention many believed such a statement to be unnecessary as the Constitution seemed very much defined in its actions, powers and responsibilities. But in the end, it was determined that if those ten amendments made people more comfortable, well, it didn’t cost anything and as the Constitution could be changed by the amendment process, it was proof to the unbelievers, that such a process did, indeed work. But the amendment process itself is problematic in that—as has been proved throughout the years—amendments can be revoked! They are not set in stone. Hence, the 18th Amendment (Prohibition) was revoked after proving to be as stupid as those who passed it must surely have known it was at the time! Therefore, if an Amendment can be revoked, what actually stands between the rights of the People contained in the Constitution and the nullification of those rights?Remember, the “Bill of Rights” is itself a matter of ten Amendments! Conservatives constantly site the First and Second Amendments as assuring their rights of speech, association, assembly and religion as well as the right to bear arms! The claim is that these “Constitutional Amendments” cannot be suppressed by the government, but if the Left gains possession of the central government and enough of the States, the Amendment revocation process is just as valid for any (or all) of the first Ten Amendments as it was for the 18th! But Amendments have also been used to nullify the original meaning of the Constitution itself. For instance, the 16thAmendment instituted an income tax, something rejected by the Founders knowing that the ability to tax provided great power to the government and so, they wanted that ability severely limited at the federal level. The 17th Amendment removed the States from the governing process and turned the nation, for all intents and purposes, from a republic to a democracy! Before that Amendment, the State governments appointed their senators from that State’s own government, thus providing equality of representation between larger and smaller States and another check on the power of the “central” government by those States! In other words, the Constitution is indeed a “living document” as many lawyers and jurists have claimed for years. Those who reject that belief and declare that it is a legal document saying what it says and no more—or less—fail to take into consideration that the desired language to provide a desired “right” can be inferred in such vague concepts as the right to “privacy” (Roe v. Wade) or, in the alternative, based upon the “general welfare” clause that has come to mean whatever the government wants it to mean. But if neither of these claims work sufficiently or, in the alternative, can be successfully challenged, one can always add an Amendment such as the newly revived, Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) whose purpose was to put abortion directly into the Constitution thus ending the reliance on the now abrogated Roe. Now, the Constitution doesn’t label what is not permissible for the government to do in every circumstance. To do that, the document would have been longer than Gibbons Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and it would have failed to mention everything anyway! So, it simply enumerated what was permitted; the Executive could do this; the Congress and the Courts could do that! But even that understanding was not sufficient to assure that certain rights, though unmentioned, were nevertheless acknowledged under the Constitution! Take, for instance, the right of secession. That right was not directly mentioned in the Constitution even though three States—Virginia, New York and Rhode Island—had put secession clauses into their ratification documents. As those documents were accepted by all the other signatories and as in any contract or compact, no signatory has more or fewer rights than any other signatory, secession was an understood right of any State upon the ratification of the Constitution! Indeed, the matter was so “settled” that twice the New England States convened to consider it. Eventually, they voted it down, but they voted and no threats came from President Madison—a Virginian!—that the States involved would incur bloody war by the rest of the Union in response to their actions. Even so, when South Carolina, and five other Southern States voted to leave the Union in 1861, President James Buchanan, a Southern Democrat, rejected secession and tasked his Attorney General, Jeremiah Black to search the Constitution and provide him with a means to stop secession and to force already seceded States back into the Union – constitutionally! Black, a brilliant and conscientious man, provided to the President, the following results of his efforts: 1. The president must not overstep the limits of his legal and just authority. 2. The operations of any military force must be purely defensive. 3. To send a military force into any State to act against the people would be to make war upon them. (See Article III Section 3, US Constitution’s definition of treason) 4. The laws put the Federal Government strictly on the defensive, and force can be used only to repel an assault on public property.[*] 5. In the event of the secession of any state, the president must execute the laws to the extent of the defensive means.[**] 6. The Constitution does not give Congress the right to make war against any State or to require the president to carry it on except when the State applies for assistance against her own people or to repel an invasion of a State by enemies from abroad, not to plunge them into civil war. [See the Whiskey Rebellion during Washington’s presidency.] 7. A declaration of war or hostilities by the Central Government against any State or states would absolve all the States from their Federal obligations. 8. The General Government may not engage in a war to punish the people for the political misdeeds of their State Governments or to force them to acknowledge the supremacy of the central Government. Some conquering others and holding them as “subjugated provinces” would destroy the theory upon which they were united. 9. The arming of any portion of the people against another save for “protecting the General Government in the exercise of its constitutional functions” would constitute an end of the Union. [*] The “attack” on Fort Sumter by the newly formed Confederate States of America does not fall under this proviso as Sumter had been abandoned by Federal Government before 1861 and the federal fort at that time was Fort Moultrie. Actually, civilian workers were at Sumter repairing that facility when they were assaulted by federal troops who then illegally occupied the fort. [**] The federal government could not respond militarily unless its territory was invaded by any or all of the seceded States involved. And as seen above, the assault on Fort Sumter does not meet that criteria.] In faith to his oath to “defend the Constitution,” Buchanan backed off. But his successor, Abraham Lincoln, fearing loss of the revenues from the South—that section paying well over three fourths of the federal budget! —did not. Lincoln simply declared secession “unconstitutional” and proceeded to initiate the bloodiest war in America’s history to date. Indeed, the most egregious blow to the legitimacy of the Constitution took place under Lincoln during the so-called “Civil War” and in the period following. That war and all that was done to the people of the eleven (former) States both during and after the war, for all intents and purposes destroyed that document as a defense against any tyranny by the national—no longer federal—government. Ergo, until conservative Americans realize that there are no longer any actual, sustainable and defensible “constitutional guarantees” against government tyranny other than the decision of that government not to push the issue, those on the Right who call for a “return to the Constitution” are as foolish as are those on the Left hoping to institute their particular socialist utopias.
Over
the years, I have found that exploring a topic often provides clarity
and solutions without needing to invent anything new. Through this
process, I believe I have discovered that Free Speech, when well
defined, either exists or it does not. Any “balance” requires
restrictions that eliminate the essence of Free Speech. Definitions Speech is any written or oral communication, including
images, text, audio, and film. Courts have expanded this definition
to include “actions that communicate,” adding a necessary albeit
subjective layer to the concept. Free Speech refers to any speech protected by the First
Amendment of the United States. While this applies specifically to
U.S. law, it helps clarify the term, stating that no law can abridge
the freedom of speech or press. Keep in mind that this refers to
laws regarding public speech, broadcasting etc. Speech in a private
place such as a workplace is not protected under this law. For
example, your employer may restrict your speech while on employer
time or in any private facility. Libel and Slander are types of speech that are
limited today. Slander refers to untrue speech that harms the
subject with claims of illegal behavior or impropriety, while libel
is similar but recorded in a persistent form. Technology blurs these
lines; for example, podcasts can be both auditory and transcribed.
In either case, if statements are proven false, they can lead to
legal liability for the speaker or author for the harm caused by the
act. Courts consider the speaker's intent when determining if libel
or slander has occurred, ruling that false statements or accusations
with the intent to harm constitutes a violation. Understanding these
limitations helps define the boundaries of Free Speech. Opinion conveys the speaker's thoughts about another
without false claims of impropriety or illegal behavior. For
instance, saying “Mr. Smith is a dirty dog … ” is an opinion,
while “Mr. Smith stole money from the treasury,” if untrue, is
slander. Thus, Free Speech includes:Public speech
Opinion – fact invariant
True or factual statements, regardless of harm
Media invariant expressions
Unintentionally untrue defamatory statements
Free Speech does not include:Untrue claims of impropriety intended to harm the subject
Threats of physical harm
Speech in a private place where the owner of a facility or
service may apply restrictions to speech in that place.
From a U.S. legal perspective, Free Speech is fairly clear and to
me, reasonable. So, who would want to curtail it beyond the
definitions as described? In 1733, Andrew Hamilton defended Peter Zenger in one of the
earliest American freedom
of the press cases. During his closing arguments, he stated,
“The craft and art of such men (men in power) is great, and who ...
can be ignorant of the specious pretenses that have often been made
use of by men in power to introduce arbitrary rule, and to destroy
the liberties of a free people?” He said what everyone knew, namely
that men in power have many protections from accountability and that
their choice tool for squashing dissent was to claim libel for
anything negative written about them. Tying people up in court and
imprisoning them would keep negative (even true) statements from
being shared. Given the rich legal history on Free Speech, how do we find
ourselves being shut down, canceled, and censored? Today’s “men
in power” recognize that our legal system protects Free Speech.
Therefore, their primary tool for suppression is the oblique or
indirect attack. Indirect Attacks may include:Threatening corporations that enable Free Speech to curtail
it outside legal protections (e.g., threatening liability suits for
statements made by social media platform participants).
Legal actions against individuals based on factors other than
their speech (known as lawfare).
Utilizing foreign powers to punish individuals outside Free
Speech jurisdictions (e.g., Julian Assange and WikiLeaks).
The key to curtailing Free Speech in a protective legal system is
to use indirect attacks against targets via supporting structures,
making it difficult or costly to express speech. Those in power
employ creative and effective methods to suppress dissent, gaining an
upper hand through technology and global influence. They have
effectively corralled us in ways that seemed impossible 50 years ago. Historically, Free Speech did not exist. Those in power have
maintained tight control over anything critical of the ruling class.
However, there are numerous examples of resistance against the
powerful, which may be able to guide us today. Consider Britain’s control over its colonies, many of which have
transitioned to self-rule. Since I am currently working in Kenya,
let’s examine their story. Britain colonized Kenya primarily to
access Uganda’s mineral resources. The settlers took control of
most agriculture by manipulating the society and displacing people
from their land. They imposed taxes that led to forced labor,
thereby suppressing “Free Will.” Initially, many tribes in Kenya passively accepted their
exploitation. However, around 1952, violence was employed to resist
the colonists. The fighting was brutal but ultimately effective in
pushing Britain to relinquish control to a pro-British segment of
Kenyan society. I have observed that those in power are driven by wealth,
influence, and their well-being. They will pursue whatever actions
are necessary to enhance these aspects of their lives. If
maintaining control becomes too costly in any of these areas, they
will abandon it. In Kenya, the decision to relinquish control was largely
financial. If controlling the people is ‘less expensive’ than
freeing them, control will be chosen. Ultimately, maintaining
control of Kenya was not financially prudent. Free Speech serves as a balancing mechanism through which the
common people counter the authority of those in power. There is no
balance to Free Speech; it is the balance to counter power. After this exercise, I am left with the burning question, “How
do we cause censorship, in any form, to be imprudent?”
In 2014 BT (Before Trump), author Glen Greenwald wrote a book entitled: No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the Surveillance State. According to Greenwald, on June 6th of that year, Janine Gibson, The Guardian US editor-in-chief, messaged Greenwald providing a link for him that he, Greenwald “had been waiting to see for days.” That leak revealed the fact that the NSA had been collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily and went on to reveal that a “Top Secret Court Order Requiring Verizon to Hand Over All Call Data Shows Scale of Domestic Surveillance Under Obama." Also provided was a link to the full FISA court order whose first three paragraphs told the entire story: The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecom providers, under a top secret court order issued in April. The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries. The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing. Mr. Greenwald pointed out that “. . . the impact of the article was instant and enormous; beyond anything I had anticipated. It was the lead story on every national news broadcast that night and dominated political and media discussions. I was inundated with interview requests from virtually every national TV outlet: CNN, MSNBC, NBC, the Today show, Good Morning America, and others. I spent many hours in Hong Kong talking to numerous sympathetic television interviewers—an unusual experience in my career as a political writer often at odds with the establishment press—who all treated the story as a major event and a real scandal.” He went on to say, “ . . .in response, the White House spokesman predictably defended the bulk collection program as ‘a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats.’ The Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, one of the most steadfast congressional supporters of the national security state generally and US surveillance specifically, invoked standard post-9/11 fearmongering by telling reporters that the program was necessary because ‘people want the homeland kept safe.’" But then, according to Greenwald, “almost nobody took the government's claims seriously.” Of course, since that time, we Americans have learned – or should have learned! – that there is nothing our Deep State cannot and will not do to take control over the lives of its supposed “citizens.” The NSA has just become one more “Ministry of (pick your poison!)” in our “government” whose only job is to bring Orwell’s 1984 from the pages of fiction into “real life” and, to be sure, it is doing a bang-up job as we can see from Mr. Greenwald’s expose. But, of course, that incredibly condemnatory story was released before Trump took office and may have been one reason why he was able to do so though I suspect had it never come to light, he would have been elected anyway. But after four years of killing the Trump presidency via “a death of a thousand political cuts” manipulated by the Deep State and its lackies in the media, Mr. Greenwald’s story is now old news and of little or no interest to most Americans who have been pushed via COVID and gender bathroom privileges into other areas of interest. Not only don’t we care that we are being continually spied on, manipulated, judicially persecuted and physically and morally neutralized, but our attention span regarding such tyrannies is reduced to the space of a three minute television commercial – if that! Meanwhile, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, month by month and, yes, even year by year, we learn what we have lost during each increment of time. A little here, a little there and soon the door closes (and locks) never to open again. Even the ongoing threat of nuclear war seems passe to our present citizenry and those – like the readers of this article! – who protest and demand action find more and more of ordinary Americans desirous that we should be made silent and no longer attempt to awaken them to our mutual danger. The whistleblower gets punished while the criminal he (or she) exposes isn’t even glanced upon by those whose reason for existence is to maintain and dispense what decent people understand as “justice.” Indeed, today in this country and this world, the very concept of justice is absent or, to be more precise, it has been mutilated and translated into that which it now is – injustice! Everyone knows the story of the frog placed in a pot of tepid (lukewarm) water. Slowly the water is heated, but so slowly that the frog is unaware of his danger. Eventually, the water become so warm that he has lost the strength necessary to jump out of the pot. But the temperature of the water continues to rise until he is literally boiled to death. Had the frog been dropped into fairly hot water, he would have instantly recognized his danger and jumped out of the death trap. But because the danger came slowly and incrementally so as not to raise his suspicions, by the time it was needful for him to escape, he no longer had either the will or the ability to do so. That, my friends is where most people in America are today; that is just a few degrees from death. Post Scriptum: For those who want to know which information sites are providing the Deep State with every bit of information it gets from those who subscribe to it despite promises that you data “will not be shared with anyone!” it is a very simple matter: if that site exists, it is sending the government everything it demands secretly and maybe even not so secretly. If that to which you subscribed is no more, then, perforce, it said “no” and was destroyed just as we will be destroyed when the Deep State is ready to move. Get up every day and enjoy what can be enjoyed, fight back when the opportunity – however small! – presents itself and “get right with Jesus,” because it won’t be too long before there will be no “tomorrows” as we have always known them.
We are asked to quote: “share your thoughts on balancing free
speech with the responsibilities of individuals, platforms, and governments.” In any country where every citizen is equal
before and equally under the rule of law [Section 15.(1); Canadian Charter],
there is little distinction between and among citizens and governors or
governments. It is true that we all have
different functions in a rule of law society.
But not many. To be precise, the
3 functions are truth, argument and judgement. Where any “government”; whether
civic, provincial or federal; ensures that its citizens become proficient in
the 7 liberal arts (1. Grammar, 2. Rhetoric, 3. Logic [Trivium], 4. Arithmetic,
5. Music, 6. Geometry and 7. Astronomy
[Quadrivium]), there is little need for ”balancing” government responsibility to
keep us safe from lies, and harms caused by lying, with the “rights” of liars to
freely express their lies or, alternatively (if they are not liars), their
truths. But when you remove or ignore a
7 liberal arts education, then no such “balancing” is possible. One is headed toward either chaos or tyranny
because it becomes impossible to distinguish lying from truth. You end up with psychopaths “leading” or
“fleecing” (often both) citizens who are little different from sheep, or wolves. In short, humans can’t be rational animals
without the 7 liberal arts. They are the
mental disciplines by which we become actually rational animals as distinct
from being potentially rational animals. ARISTOTLE: Spoken words are the symbols of mental
experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men
have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the
mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as
also are those things of which our experiences are the images. [On Interpretation; Book I, Ch. 1; 2nd
paragraph] Above, Aristotle asserts that all
human beings express their mental experiences with words. Also we all talk
about mental experiences obtained by means of images of things which are
requote THE SAME FOR ALL. These common human
experiences form the bases upon which British Common Law nations and their
derivative “Constitutional” governments have derived their functions and powers
according to the principle of “consent of the governed”. It is that “consent” which makes for either a
constitutional government or, in its absence, a tyranny. This is a short essay, so I have
chosen to demonstrate the “thinking” or mental experience of a government
tyrant of the Judicial Branch, named Paul Schabas, in the Jordan Peterson
application for Judicial Review of the decision of a complaints committee of
The College of Psychologists of Ontario.
The committee decided that Peterson required a remedial course in public
internet speaking, at his own expense, upon mostly unspecified terms and duration. Peterson and his legal team asked that the
decision be quashed and that several requirements of the Ontario Psychologist’s
Code of Conduct be decreed to be contrary to Section 2. (b). of the Canadian
Charter of Rights and Freedoms which allegedly “guarantees” Free Speech
(“Freedom of Expression”). When a
government official of the Judicial Branch, such as Paul Schabas, affirms the
violation of the freedom of expression (speech) of a Canadian citizen, he
simultaneously breaches that citizen’s right to a fair hearing by an
independent and impartial tribunal, contrary to Section 11. (d) of the same
Charter. Schabas did not provide Peterson a
“fair hearing”. He proved his bias by lying twice and arguing twice in his
written judgment. In logic, the entire
judgment is more of a sustained argument against Peterson’s application than an
impartial judgment. Schabas’ first lie is at paragraph
5. where he writes, “I have concluded that the application should be dismissed.
In my view … etc. That statement is a lie because 3
Judges and 18 lawyers respectively argued and reviewed Peterson’s application
for Judicial Review for one day in open Court! Those proceedings were then reviewed by 3
Judges before their written decision. Schabas
ought to have written that, upon review, he was dismissing Peterson’s requested Orders. One of those requested Orders, upon Judicial
Review, was that the Ontario Divisional Court decree that several parts of the Code
of Conduct of Ontario Psychologists be declared to be inconsistent with or
contrary to Sect. 2. (b) [Free Speech] of Canada’s Charter of Rights and
Freedoms. That sets up Justice Schabas’
second obvious lie, which was quote: SCHABAS: 44. Dr. Peterson does not challenge the
principles in the Code. Although he takes issue … That lie is proved by Peterson’s
requested Order of his application to have quote “the Preamble, PRINCIPLE 1 and
Ethical Standards I.1, I.2, I.3, I.5 and I.9 of the Canadian CODE of Ethics for
Psychologists” declared to be, quote “inconsistent with, and contrary to, s.
2(b) of The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (‘Charter’) and are of no
force and effect.” Thus Peterson clearly
challenged that Code’s Principles. Given
that the Psychologists cite respect for persons as an ethical principle
Peterson correctly challenged it given that the law is no respecter of persons. Common Law is common ethics! Finally, at paragraphs 58. and 68.
Schabas proves he is arguing the case rather than providing a fair “hearing”. At paragraph 58., he writes: Dr. Peterson
submits etc. (snip) … I DISAGREE. Again
at 68. Schabas writes: “Dr. Peterson’s counsel also submitted etc. (snip) … I
DO NOT AGREE. An impartial judge would write
that s/he is persuaded by the argument of a party who disagreed with Peterson’s
submissions. Instead he proved that he
was personally disagreeing/arguing “on the record” of a biased Judicial Review. To read the full judgment is to see that
Schabas is clearly attempting a “balancing” of Peterson’s “free speech” rights
vs. “the College’s statutory objectives”.
But he stepped into the scales!
Schabas ought to have been reported to the CJC for violating Peterson’s
legal right to a fair hearing.
In my view,
speech should be anything but free. Bad speech, false speech, belligerent
speech along with felicitous speech, informative speech, and inspiring speech should
all carry a price, sometimes paying out and sometimes cashing in, with a full
range of well-modulated possibilities in between. Viewing speech as some privileged
human activity that we must cordon off and protect from reprisals is one factor
contributing to its corruption. Speech is one of many ways a person transacts with
other people. People learn to use their power of speech best when those
transactions are allowed their natural consequences. Speech is consequential like
J. L. Austin taught in his seminal, How to Do Things with Words. Doing crime
with speech, things like theft, murder and injury should be punished with law.
But everything else, including creating hate, should be regulated with societal norms,
dirty looks, lost employment, and exclusion from certain fellowships. Like most things, the
quality of speech generally improves when governmental involvement is minimized
and people, through the pursuit of self-interest are allowed to discover that
truth tellers and honest brokers are of greater value than charlatans and grand
standers. The market has a way of rewarding those with well-conceived
self-interests while extinguishing those without. But what is this market and
what are its rules? The goal of every
society is to effectively project itself into the future. Just like life wills
its own survival and uses sexual reproduction as the means to project into the
future, so does society will its own continuity and projects itself into the future
through raising members that will maintain that society into the future. Sexual
reproduction faithfully replicates organisms with the added benefit of allowing
for variations on a theme. The exploratory evolutionary nature of this
biological process is enhanced many times when it leaves the tightly regulated
realm of nature where the basic elements of success revolve around food, sex,
territory, and predation, and move to the relatively formless realm of ideas
where most anything is possible. But not everything. Genes as units of
biological information have very few successful radiations that improve on what
is. Memes as units of cultural information have many more possibilities that
might work but here too, not everything we wish to be true culturally, actually
works to move a society effectively into the future. Broadly speaking, cultural strategies break
into two camps: liberals who wish to challenge accepted constraints and
conservatives who wish to preserve them. In the realm of sexuality, liberal
forces explore new ways of mating which almost by definition cannot improve on
nature’s tried and true method of mating males with females to produce
offspring. However, the production of cultural offspring requires less genetic
continuity and more memetic continuity, and so different strategies of cradle
robbing ensue. Brood parasites like the common cuckoo move their eggs to an
unsuspecting nest. They forage and fornicate freely while others invest in
child rearing for them. In the realm of human society biology plays less of a
role than cultural mimesis. Here, taking advantage of the long-term,
painstaking investments made by biological parents and then
converting those offspring to a different cultural project can be an extremely
successful strategy. Cultural projection is gained without the high price and narrow
margins of biological investments. Speech is the
essential human realm where memes supplant genes in importance. I am much more
defined by my beliefs and mores, my habits and values than by my genetic
makeup. Therefore, as a parent, I project my children into the future provided they carrying my
cherished beliefs, my language. This involves me in their education. Social
media, public education, institutions of higher education and even Artificial
Intelligence all compete with me to educate my children. ChatGPT communicates
implicit suppositions and value judgements in ways that elude detection and
complicate my ability to challenge them. The odds against my success in
conveying my ideas of the world when they contravene the basic assumptions that
pervade our thin cultural homogeneity are overwhelming. Such is my challenge
with free speech today. Our supposedly open society is both more intrusive and
monolithic. The barriers parents would erect against bad but attractive ideas
are less successful. Moreso, short term results like popularity and sexual
attention are more immediately available than the slow, long-term
results gained from teaching my children competencies and the virtues which
make for a happy adult family. We don’t gain from,
nor can we effectively control the spread of bad ideas. Especially since my bad
ideas may well be your good ideas. All we can do is allow this high stakes, and
heavily fraught cultural experimentation to play out to what we hope is best
results. It behooves wise parents to be on the right side of these
experimentations so that successful children are projected into the future.
Many institutions and associations which we once relied upon to help raise our
children have adopted the most extreme forms of the liberal approach which has
morphed into the call for autonomy at all costs. The responsibilities of
child-rearing are jettisoned along with the virtues that being a parent
requires. Here free speech is wrongly conceived as the ability to say whatever
I feel without living with the consequences. The advantage of reaching these
extremes is that the implausibility of their success is laid bare and their
eventual failure ensured. The goal is to be far away when the house collapses
or more optimistically to be ready to return when these institutions learn to
right themselves. In the meantime, we build better alternatives, where truth telling,
intelligent speech, trust, shared values, and time-tested ideas prove their
worth by the healthy, productive, attractive, and capable adults that emerge
from them. So long as people are free to parent as they see fit, then the
adherents of true speech, virtuous speech and prudent speech will triumph over
their impostors who will, along with their false and vicious institutions
extinguish themselves without any help from me.
“At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep. “At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’ “Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’ “‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’ “But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut. “Later the others also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’ “But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’ “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.” (Matthew 25:1-13 NIV) Of all the parables Jesus shared throughout the gospels, this parable stands out as being one of the most significant. In this parable, we discover a set of contrasting themes worth paying attention to. When looking at this parable, most people focus on the foolish virgins and that they didn’t pack extra oil. This detail is significant, because if at least one of the foolish virgins packed extra oil, then she would be indistinguishable from the wise group. From this introduction, the first big truth to take from this parable is planning ahead. This would be like planning for our future in this world in case Jesus’ return is delayed. While I’m sure most people would love for Jesus to return this afternoon, if not sooner, so far, Jesus’ return appears to be delayed. Wise individuals prepare for delays, whether or not delays happen, and plan accordingly. Next in this parable, all the virgins fell asleep. In this parable, both the wise and foolish virgins fell asleep. If you or I fall asleep, don’t stress about it. What matters most is what comes next. To conclude this parable, all ten virgins wake up; all ten lamps had gone out. The wise virgins take their extra oil and light their lamps, while the foolish virgins have no oil left. While planning is important, the second big truth is staying where God wants you to be. The wise virgins stay and are welcomed into the banquet. The foolish virgins leave their post and the door is closed. (This means that we should also plan for Jesus’ return immediately. The foolish virgins ran out of time and were left outside.) In this parable, we discover the value is being ready for Jesus’ immediate return, while also planning for the future if Jesus’ return is delayed beyond the end of our earthly lives. ✝️ 🙏 ✅ 👍
How can you tell if you're in an echo chamber? Not all echo chambers are easy to recognise, especially from within. Often, echo chambers form and persist in opposition to another. Take, for example, the red-pill community, which exists largely as a reaction to third-wave feminist ideologies (an echo chamber many are more familiar with). A person who blindly adheres to a stereotype might be in an echo chamber, but so is someone who restructures their entire life in a mission to disprove that stereotype. This is why many outspoken atheists are accused of practising another form of religion—not because questioning the existence of God is a form of religion, but because they pursue it with a kind of religious fervour, rather than with the open scepticism that seeks truth without the need to assert intellectual superiority over the "herd." Echo chambers are often centred on moralities, and they emerge when people try to fit ideas, especially those they disagree with, into a few familiar categories shaped by their own historical, socio-cultural, or religious background, and then rush to make moral judgments. For example, I come from India, where respecting one’s parents and elders is deeply rooted in religious teachings. If someone like me, raised with this value, were to witness a child from a Western country having a heated argument with their parents, it would be easy to label the child’s behaviour as “immoral” based on my cultural context. I might overlook the fact that this behaviour is shaped by the social context the child is part of. The West has inherited its own customs, beliefs, and values from its history and religions, including the idea that each person possesses inherent divinity and is equal in the eyes of God. This emphasis on the individual self can lead to a different kind of parent-child dynamic, which might explain what seems, from another cultural perspective, to be a lack of respect. Another important point that deserves mention here is that the attempt to classify ideas into one category or another (good/bad, right/wrong, rational/irrational) would require that people often try to catch others who, in their view, are teetering at the edge of a slippery slope. For example, each time I visit my ancestral town (a small hill town in Northern India), I notice changes—fewer trees, more houses and restaurants, more tourists, fewer ducks in the lake, litter on a lakeside that used to be pristine, and a shift toward profit-mindedness among locals who once offered strangers free peaches from their farms. These are the inevitable consequences of development. If I were to comment nostalgically, “How things have changed! Why did they cut down all the trees?” it could easily be interpreted as me prioritising environmental concerns over the well-being and progress of the local people. This conclusion, after all, provides an easy escape from the discomfort of holding two conflicting ideas in mind at once—on the one hand, the value of preserving natural beauty, and on the other, the necessity of development for the local community. Another way echo chambers become more entrenched is when people learn an individual’s opinion on one subject and then assume the person’s views on other topics as well. This occurs when the echo chamber is strong enough that various ideas are grouped together, leading to a groupthink-like situation where two people who agree on one issue feel nudged towards agreement on another without truly considering it, simply because they belong to the same “club.” This is often why many feminists are also pro-LGBTQ, and why vegetarians (who may be motivated by religious reasons) are seen as champions of climate activism. Of course, this is not to say that there is no connection between different topics, but only that different views, even on the same side of the debate, must be given space to flourish. Tolkien’s iconic quote from The Lord of the Rings comes to mind, but if you replace “ring” with “morality,” you capture the essence of every echo chamber's mentality: "One morality to rule them all, one morality to find them, one morality to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them." In the context of echo chambers, it would be impossible for me not to bring up Nietzsche's message in his book, Beyond Good and Evil. After three readings of the book—one was far from sufficient to grasp the full scope and complexity of his thought—I’ve come to believe that Nietzsche boldly attempted to convey something that many would shy away from. Not least because of the controversial nature of those ideas, but also because certain ideas are like brief flashes of insight, moments of clarity that often slip away when you try to put them into words. It’s no surprise then that Nietzsche’s views, and particularly his thoughts on morality, are frequently misunderstood by readers today. I recognize that I too might fall into this category, and there is no guarantee that my interpretation isn’t itself a misreading of his message. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to offer my perspective on what Nietzsche was trying to convey in this book, and why so many have misinterpreted his message. Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil contains several passages that are often misinterpreted as promoting moral relativism or nihilism. These passages can be read as rejecting conventional morality or suggesting that there are no objective moral truths, leading some to criticise Nietzsche for promoting a “might makes right” philosophy or moral anarchy. Nietzsche doesn’t claim that "anything goes" morally, or that being amoral is the highest morality, but rather that the conventional, herd-like morality (what he calls "slave morality") reflects weakness, fear, and a repression of vitality and creativity. Nietzsche doesn’t think we should simply abandon concepts of good and evil, but that we should transcend simplistic, dogmatic moral judgments. Rather than claiming that morality is a form of cowardice (a popular misreading), he claims that a lot of cowardice actually masquerades as morality. He calls for the need for intellectual courage and the willingness to venture into morally ambiguous or "dangerous" territory. Come to think of it, this kind of intellectual honesty is precisely what's required for genuine thought. When one ventures outside their echo chamber, there’s always the risk of accidentally stepping onto what might be seen as the beginning of a slippery slope toward immorality. But there is no default moral position where one can remain immobile, avoiding the fall entirely. The challenge—and the joy—lies in teetering on the edge without falling, while also not retreating to a safe distance. It’s not a space of moral ambiguity, because morality hasn’t entered the scene yet. It is the realm where one finally breaks free from the confines of the echo chamber and steps into the fertile ground of ideas—a place from which true moral understanding can eventually emerge. Here, one is free to explore and entertain ideas that, if taken to their extremes, could just as easily lead to immorality. This echoes the scene in Genesis when God forbade man from eating from the Tree of Knowledge yet allowed him access to it. Similarly, it recalls when Lakshmana drew the Lakshmana Rekha around Sita, urging her not to cross it for her own protection. In both cases, the choice to disobey was granted—even at the risk of sin or harm. Adam and Sita both ultimately disobeyed their instructions, but without the choice to stray, Adam would have remained harmless, and Sita unharmed. But in that scenario, good would have been an easy, default position to assume, rather than one achieved through conscious effort. “In all seriousness, the innocence of thinkers has something touching and respect-inspiring in it, which even nowadays permits them to wait upon consciousness with the request that it will give them HONEST answers: for example, whether it be "real" or not, and why it keeps the outer world so resolutely at a distance, and other questions of the same description. The belief in "immediate certainties" is a MORAL NAIVETE which does honour to us philosophers; but—we have now to cease being "MERELY moral" men!” - Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
The Narcissist And The Censor Posted on September 30, 2024 by john Dear Friends, It seems to me, censorship is to the state, as perfume is to a dead and rotting hog. It tries to cover a stench that can’t be covered. That’s why I suggest everyone read up on, and check out videos about narcissists… and how to deal with them. Because censorship is the ultimate expression of narcissism. The censor is fascinated by his or her own ideas, lacks empathy and is closed minded. Therefore, dealing with censors and those who are proponents of censorship, is just like dealing with a narcissist. The same tactics work on both. Since both use the same malevolent strategy to win… gaslighting, anger and the silent treatment. They expect their victim to be happy about knuckling under. Else the victim needs more oppression, to show them the error of their thinking. Narcissists believe they’re the most important person in any room. Arrogance and narcissism go together like poop and reek. That’s why they hate it when their stench is pointed out. Making it all the more important to go on and on about the odor in the room. If a narcissist can’t dominate you, they’ll flee. Moreover, once a narcissist is discovered, they move on to other people. Because strangers don’t know them and therefore are easy victims. That’s why the narcissist must have cover. Like a reek needs perfume. Lest they be discovered. Making a hurricane of anger their biggest friend. So the narcissist will insist that some things remain unspoken. Upon penalty of a fit of anger. Making censorship a critical weapon in the arsenal of the narcissist and narcissistic elite… a censor. Narcissists and censors are as predictable as rot and reek. They depend and rely on our courtesy. They have zero courtesy but demand we treat them with kit gloves. Else that legendary anger comes out. We are supposed to see the world from their Bacon’s cave, live in their Bacon’s marketplace and believe their Bacon’s theatrics. To have independent thought is proof of our lack of wisdom. The narcissist and the censor however, have no need to see the world from our Bacon’s cave, marketplace or theater. That would be a waste of time, since they’re so much smarter, wiser, and dog gone it, just better people then the rest of us. Which means, if we reflect the rudeness we’re given, the narcissist will freak out, then move on. Once they know, we know… they’re narcissists. The narcissist uses gaslighting to get their way. Which is another stench of censorship. Censorship comes in a myriad of reeks. Gaslighting, unreturned courtesy and demanding silence are but a few. Of the three though, gaslighting is their favorite. Denying that which we all know to be true, and should we deny their lie, that makes us rude. I think it elates them somehow. Nevertheless, both the Narcissistic husband or wife, as well as the narcissistic elite, require us to believe that which we all know to be untrue. How many still believe Covid came from a Pangolin, there’s no difference between a boy and girl, or that a NATO army surrounding Russia makes Russia the aggressor. In narcissistic regimes… thought laws, right think and right speech is mandatory. You don’t give in to a narcissist or a censor. It only empowers them. Caving never gets them off your back, it only allows them to dig their filthy toe nails in, further. Agree to a lie and you’ve empowered the censor to lie more, and more egregiously. Don’t challenge a gaslight and the light will get ever dimmer until you stumble in the dark. Moreover, don’t stay silent. Speak even with a hurricane wind of anger coming at you. That hurricane has a limit. Though it may not seem so at the time. Once the narcissist and narcissistic elite realize you’re not going to shut up. They’ll move on. Having been discovered. Most of all though, never return rudeness with courtesy. Practice reciprocal attribution. These tactics work against the narcissist and the censor. Since they’re cut from the same toilet rag. Sincerely, John Pepin
I've recently been enjoying classic American TV series from the '70s, like Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons. An episode from The Waltons (Season 6, Episode 21 – "The Revelation") made me reflect on something deeper. In this episode, John-boy proposes to his girlfriend Daisy, who initially accepts but later changes her mind. Both realise they have other commitments: John-boy, an author, declines a job offer in London for the marriage, while Daisy, a dancer, reconnects with the child she had abandoned. In the end, they part ways, and John-boy takes the job in London. This episode made me reflect on how love is portrayed in American films and TV. The storyline itself isn’t flawed, and The Waltons remains one of my favourite shows. However, it's clear that American media, widely consumed around the world, often promotes the idea that the truest form of love is one that endures despite personal or career ambitions being placed above marriage. This narrative seems to shape the views of people in cultures with different social, cultural, or religious understandings of love. While placing individual ambitions above family may not come naturally to everyone, it resonates with many—especially in my context—since Western media in my country is often seen as infallible, as if it alone holds the ultimate truth about what constitutes healthy, true love. I feel the need to root these reflections in my own experiences, ensuring they have a clear, personal origin, rather than being borrowed in a half-formed way from external sources. My maternal grandfather pursued higher education at Columbia University in the 1950s, specialising in mathematics and statistics. Unlike today, when more Indians have access to such opportunities, back then, very few had the luxury of dreaming on such a grand scale, let alone the resources to turn those dreams into reality. Only a small group of Indians, typically those who were exceptionally ambitious, intelligent, and hardworking, secured scholarships to cover tuition costs, and even then, their families often had to make significant sacrifices to support their living expenses in a country like the U.S. My grandfather was among that small, determined group. He returned to India, more specifically to a small city, turning down promising opportunities at some of the world’s best universities. He left behind colleagues and professors who had high hopes for someone of his calibre. With a PhD in hand, he chose to work as a professor at a modest university so he could be with his parents and wife, both of whom relied on him. Not long after, my mother was born, and she grew up and eventually had children of her own. I saw my grandparents every other day. While others saw my grandfather as strict, unyielding, and sceptical, I knew him to be kind, intelligent, gentle, though admittedly a bit short-tempered. I wasn’t particularly good at maths in school, preferring literature and history instead, so he often helped me with my schoolwork. I have vivid memories of Sunday mornings spent struggling over maths problems, with my grandfather growing more impatient by the minute and my grandmother by his side, scolding him for not letting me take a break to enjoy one of her homemade treats. Truth be told, I was terrified of maths and often struggled with the basics in 9th standard. Here was a man who had worked alongside some of the brightest minds in an Ivy League university, and he had given it all up to come home and teach me trigonometry. Oh what a disappointment I must have been to him! My grandfather fulfilled his family responsibilities with unwavering diligence and devotion. Not once did he complain that his wife, children, or parents had held him back from achieving greater things. I doubt the thought ever even crossed his mind—for him, this was simply how it was supposed to be. Yet, much of his research remained tucked away in a loft beneath the stairs, and on rare occasions, I would catch him poring over those papers with a distant, wistful expression. Like most grandfathers, he had plenty of stories to share, though his were somewhat unique—often centred on his college days, his friends in the U.S., and his travels. As the years went by, his eyesight began to fail, until he was almost completely blind. This, perhaps, was the cruellest twist of fate, as he loved reading. His personal library, which spanned not just scientific works but also great literature—both Indian and Western—was his pride and joy. After my mother passed away, I saw a change in my grandfather that I never thought possible. He had always seemed too stubborn to grow weaker, but in the wake of her loss, he did. He became more introspective, though he still bickered with my grandmother, but now he gave in more easily, and his eyes often glistened when we talked about the past. He enjoyed engaging in deep philosophical discussions, and as I grew older, I like to think I became a good companion for those conversations. A staunch atheist—a point of constant annoyance to my grandmother—he loved to debate matters of faith and religion with me. In what was a thrilling moment for me, he once shared that he had personally known Joseph Campbell, also a Columbia alumnus, before my grandfather’s time. I had first learnt about Campbell after watching The Power of Myth, and most fascinated by his insights, I had followed it up with his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. When I mentioned this to my grandfather, he sighed with a sense of strange relief, as if someone had finally grasped something profoundly important to him. In the last few years of his life, he grew reluctant to speak about his college days or his former colleagues. Occasionally, a hint of sadness would surface as he confessed that he no longer liked to think about that time, lamenting that his research had never amounted to much while his peers went on to make significant breakthroughs. In those moments, he became emotional, which was always followed by an apologetic air. Even then, half-blind but ever-determined, he would shuffle through the house, insisting on helping my grandmother lay the table, as if to make up for dwelling on the past. Love takes many forms, and one of them was reflected in my grandfather’s face. He sacrificed his personal ambitions, stepping away from a career at its peak—choices some might view as mistakes. But in choosing to be a better man, he returned to his family. That one decision to place his family above his career made him the steadfast father and husband he was, and the devoted grandfather I was fortunate to have. Now that I’ve lost my parents, I sometimes worry that my children will grow up without one set of grandparents to spoil them and teach them the truths of life in the gentle way only grandparents can. This fear stems from the richness I experienced growing up with my grandparents, knowing what it means to feel truly secure and grounded. I owe that sense of stability to those who put my well-being ahead of their own dreams, making sacrifices so that I could live in the comfort of their love.
Election Interference Under Color Of Law Posted on October 4, 2024 by john Dear Friends, It seems astonishing to me, that the expert managerial class and mockingbird media, fail to see the outright, open and notorious hypocrisy of Jack Smith filing election interference charges against Trump, as an October Surprise… to interfere with this election. Talk about self blindness, hypocrisy, or double standards. Maybe all of the above. He knows he has nothing to fear from Biden’s DOJ. They reek of political corruption like a hidden rotting mouse. Moreover, if his election interference works, he has nothing to fear. If it fails though, he might face consequences, for his openly engaging in election interference. Now that he has leprous skin in the game he’s all the more frantic that it works. Along with the rest of the corruptocrat crowd that runs the US today. Hypocrisy used to be the most discrediting thing anyone could be accused of, let alone prove in public. Like Jack Smith’s has with his antics. Public figures used to go to great lengths to hide even the hint of hypocrisy. That’s why Judges pretend to be so upright, doctors pretend to be so smart and politicians wear expensive cologne, to hide the stench that surrounds them. Today hypocrisy is everywhere and so has become normalized. We don’t think a thing of it when an elite flies a private jet to a global warming conference. Where they begrudge us heat for our homes. In fact, many chuckle at the open and notorious hypocrisy. Instead of being rightly outraged at it. Our leaders have discredited themselves with their hypocrisy, and if we had a smidgen of wisdom, we would laugh them out of power. The elite today utterly lack self awareness… being narcissists. They’re deficient in empathy, self important, are prone to fits of rage, entitled, only hang around with their “equals,” hate criticism, but love to criticize others. Doesn’t that sound like the ivory tower types? To them relationships are tools of power… not connections between human beings. What elite today eschews the opulence of power? Who chooses the interests of the nation over their own? Other than Trump. (Who’s lost millions maybe billions of dollars by stepping up). “Public service,” or more appropriately, Public Mastery, has never been more lucrative. Proven by the fact the most expensive neighborhoods in the US… are the suburbs of Washington DC. Beverly Hills is an open sewer compared to Spring Valley. Simple reversal proves the double standards of the elite better than any argument could. Moreover, where there are double standards, there are in fact, no standards. That’s when and where law is merely a tool of power, not of justice. Use reversal… What censor would tolerate him or herself being censored? Police want to videotape us in public, yet want to make it illegal for us to video them, in public? Why the open hypocrisy? Unless the police know they are engaging in crime. Bastiat’s Law writ large. What about perjury charges? The elite wanted Roger Stone to go to prison for the rest of his life for “perjury,” yet perjure themselves all the time, and it would be vindictive to hold them to the same standard. What if Obama’s house was raided early morning by the FBI? Would that be cool? That the elite are self blind, narcissistic hypocrites who see justice as did Thrasymachus… isn’t that astounding. Since that mindset is so self serving. What is astonishing, is the mockingbird media pretending they don’t see it, and our willingness to go along with the open corruption… like unconfirmed prosecutor Jack Smith’s rehashing of old charges, the Supreme Court has thrown out, to interfere with this election. The lack of outrage is because the hypocrisy has been so normalized we expect it. Plus, since Jack Smith has opened himself up to criminal charges, a just and rational AG is a threat… giving him a powerful incentive to make sure that doesn’t happen. As do all the corruptocrats in power. We’ve woken up to it though. That’s why Jack’s October surprise has fallen flat. Sincerely, John Pepin
“Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:4-5 NIV) “If Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.” (Romans 8:10-11 NIV) A few years ago, my daughter brought home a flower from school. The flower arrived home in a small plastic shell (the kind used in nurseries to make it easy to transplant) and was vibrant and healthy. We placed it right next to our kitchen window, which is the brightest spot in our house. I calculated that from our kitchen window, this flower would get approximately 2 hours of sun each day. A few weeks later, the flower had shriveled up and died. I suspect the flower needed a larger flower pot to grow in. I suspect it needed over 2 hours of sun each day. The flower also may have died because of some other reason. However, this flower serves as a powerful metaphor for our spiritual lives. As spiritual beings, we need over 2 hours of time with God each week. Only feeding our spiritual lives one day a week leads to spiritual starvation. Also, while it might sound crazy to some, we need over 2 hours each day connected to God for our spiritual lives to thrive. This does NOT mean we must spend 2 hours studying our Bibles each day, though we would definitely grow spiritually if we did. Instead, as the passage above states, we are to remain in Jesus in order to bear fruit. When we place our faith and trust in Jesus, the Holy Spirit grafts us into God’s family, giving our spiritual lives access to the only true Source of Life. Jesus invites us to live a 24/7 life with Him, whether we are awake or asleep, whether we are at home, in the car, or at work. Jesus wants to be with us through all the struggles of our lives, and He wants to give us spiritual strength to face the challenges each day holds. While church each weekend is very important, don’t let your spiritual lives starve by only focusing on Jesus one day a week. Only spending one day a week focusing on the Son leads to a shriveled up, dry, and dead spiritual life. God can resurrect our spiritual lives. However, for Him to do so, we must let Him graft us into the Source of life! 🙏 📖 ✝️ 👍
This book is divided into two volumes: the first on Plato and the second on Hegel and Marx. This is a momentous academic work far beyond anything I am capable of. With that in mind I describe my experience reading it with the greatest respect. Each volume builds a very reasonable and historically detailed analysis of the target and supporting thinkers (Plato, Hegel and Marx). It is very well thought out and reasonable, offering, for example, the most sympathetic account of Marx I have read, yet holding firm against his more dangerous and unsubstantiated claims. In sum, it is a highly detailed attack on historicism both in terms of “might makes right” and the disclaimer you’ll see on every stock broker agreement “past performance is no guarantee of future results.” What is the most interesting is the structure of each volume. While in many ways it makes sense to hold back the full opinion to the conclusion, it feels like Popper is hiding in his detailed and fair analysis of his targets long before putting forward his own proposition. The first striking example is that it is only towards the end of the first volume that he even puts forward what an open society even is. It almost feels like he is hoping that by proving his intellectual prowess in critique he might then be better able to get his point across. This feels a bit like trying to sneak a lower quality idea through after exhausting the reader’s intellectual firewall. Feminist texts are notorious for doing this by sharing with the reader horrific stories of exploitation before later ending on highly questionable statistics while you’re oozing with empathy. However, much like he gives great context to the thinkers he discusses, we must also bear in mind this book was written during WWII as a response to the rise of totalitarian regimes in Europe. In this context it makes complete sense as a rebuttal and natural reaction to fascism. It could be described as a work of anti fascism. Much like the first volume, the veil lifts on the second only towards the end with his proposition that “sane persons as a rule act more or less rationally”(1) and by describing recorded history as the history of power and politics and therefore not true history at all. The first premise runs counter to both the later developments in psychology by Freud and Jung regarding the unconscious and also Jonathan Haidt’s recent work indicating that we use rationality to justify our intuitions - the very claim that Popper holds the historicists guilty of. The second claim is, I think, reductionist by over-emphasizing the role of power in the history of civilizations, at the expense of other forces such as cultural values and competence. It looks like the book was written in the middle of a power struggle and Popper hopes for a better future by leveraging freedom of thought and rationality to socially engineer a better future for mankind. The danger with this rationalist approach, as Jordan Peterson has frequently pointed out, is that it can “saw off the branch it is sitting on.” It seems to me that history is a valuable teacher, not a dictator, despite scientific advances pointing towards a more deterministic view of life, as has been recently described from different angles by primatologist Robert Sapowlski and physicist Brian Greene. The past absolutely consstains rules and laws that can be extracted to predict future likelihoods in a scientific manner without locking us into "oracular" destiny. Like everything, it is a balance and this book feels like a (heavy!) counterweight to a time of great imbalance. While historicist dictators positioned as prophets endanger human lives with promises of salvation, so too do rationalists, untethered from the constraints of the past. Perhaps the most direct influence of The Open Society and Its Enemies is the creation of Open Society Foundations (OSFs) that seek to drive societal change via Political Action Committees (PACs), backed by billionaire George Soros. While the rational aims of democracy, pluralism, human rights and freedom sound wonderful, if the problems are misdiagnosed, the solutions implemented might have the opposite effect, as the saw cuts deeper and the branch beneath us begins to crack. With Popper over correcting so hard against historicism to fight fascism, he risks steering us off the road in the other direction. In Soros’s own words: “It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.”(2) (1) Volume Two, 193(2) https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-oct-04-oe-ehrenfeld4-story.html
In today's fast-paced business world, Salesforce AppExchange has emerged as a critical platform for enterprises seeking to expand their Salesforce features without the difficulties of customized development. AppExchange serves as a one-stop shop, providing over 5,000 ready-made apps and solutions that interface easily with Salesforce. This makes it easier for businesses to meet their specific goals, such as increasing customer relationship management and optimizing operational operations. Why AppExchange? AppExchange's key benefit is its ability to supply pre-vetted, secure solutions across industries, removing the need for enterprises to develop unique apps from the start. Companies can access tools for sales, service, marketing, finance, and other areas through a variety of options, including free and paid apps. Tailored to Every Industry One of AppExchange's key assets is its industry-specific salesforce solutions. AppExchange provides technologies targeted to the distinct difficulties of healthcare, finance, retail, and education. This enables businesses to swiftly apply proven, scalable solutions to specific pain spots, such as regulatory compliance, data management, or customer engagement. Scalability and Innovation For enterprises with expanding needs, AppExchange offers a scalable road to innovation. As businesses grow, they can simply add additional features using AppExchange apps, allowing them to remain agile and competitive. Furthermore, the platform offers third-party connectors, allowing businesses to combine all of their tools into a one seamless ecosystem. Maximizing business growth with minimal effort. Businesses that use Salesforce AppExchange can quickly improve their productivity while saving money and time on unique development. It enables businesses to use expertly created apps for things like as marketing automation, customer service, analytics, and much more. In conclusion, Salesforce AppExchange is more than simply a marketplace; it is a portal to digital transformation, providing businesses with a practical, efficient, and scalable solution to improve their Salesforce experience and drive growth. For a more in-depth look at AppExchange and its merits, see the blog Source - https://www.anavcloudsoftwares.com/blog/salesforce-appexchange/
There is no doubt that the written word has directed and influenced the affairs of men, especially in times of great events. In the year 1775, the colony of Massachusetts, one of the thirteen Atlantic coast colonies belonging to the Empire of Great Britain, found itself in open conflict with the “Mother Country.” In April of that year, the ongoing strife between the Massachusetts people often represented by the various local militias and British regulars sent to Boston in order to silence dissent in that fractious colony, finally initiated a much greater struggle that directly led to the calling of the Second Continental Congress. The first Congress had been called a year earlier to try to deal with the ongoing – and escalating – situation. By 1775, however, there was no longer a “question” of a possible war, but that war had, in fact, already broken out with the “shot heard round the world” at Lexington and Concord. This was further defined with an actual attack and resistance at Breed’s Hill overlooking the City of Boston. At the new Congress, a representative from Massachusetts – one John Adams –motioned to make of the various New England militias involved in the shooting war now going on in the Boston area, a “continental army” that would represent all thirteen colonies rather than just groups of volunteers who could stay or go at their own determination. Of course, one of Mr. Adam’s hopes was that in designating the existing – and already fighting – force as “Continentals,” he would bring into what was ostensibly a “Northern” fray, armed men from the rest of the colonies and especially the colonies of the South, Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia. Of course, the first colony in America was Virginia, founded even before the Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock! As well, Virginia was immensely rich and, moreover, had a very clear understanding of that situation! Furthermore, neither were Virginians hesitant about expressing their beliefs regarding their premiere standing among the other colonies! Most important, however, Virginia was also the gateway to the rest of the South in any revolt against the King and his Parliament. Now in the previous Congress, Virginia, as had the rest of the colonies, sent representatives, one of whom was a very wealthy planter, a man who was both physically and by reputation, impressive; that is, one George Washington. Washington at the time was forty three years old and his military reputation was the result of a long history of involvement with Virginia’s military excursions especially in the French and Indian War. Indeed, then youthful Colonel Washington was said to have begun that fracas owing to a misunderstanding between the troops he led and the French troops he had been sent to remove from the Ohio Valley. Washington had also served with British General Edward Braddock in a most unfortunate campaign against the French and their Indian allies that had ended with the slaughter of most of Braddock’s army as well as the Virginia militia sent with him in support. In this matter, the twenty-four year old Washington had acted brilliantly, saving what remained of Braddock’s army although Braddock himself had been killed in the ambush. Unable to obtain a commission with the British regular forces and contemptuously dismissed by them as a mere “colonial,” Washington had left the militia taking up the duties of a member of the planter aristocracy into which he had “almost” been born. (Washington’s antecedents did not grant him by birth a place among the most affluent and influential, but his reputation and eventual wealth along with becoming a Freemason did lead to his inclusion in the aristocratic upper echelon of that colony.) But whatever the man’s social standing, he remained fully aware of Virginia’s military needs! Indeed, knowing what was taking place in the Boston area, Washington had put Virginia on a military footing against the possibility of a British attack in that colony. In consequence, when Washington went as a delegate to the second Continental Congress, he wore his militia uniform as a statement that Virginia would support the Northern colonies in their struggle against what he himself had called British “tyranny.” Thus, when Mr. Adams stepped forth to resolve that a “Continental Army” be created out of those various militia already at war in Boston, he also resolved that “Colonel Washington of Virginia” be made Commander in Chief of that same army! This was a true historical “first” in that an army had been created having but one member, its Commander in Chief! Thus, for a very short time, the “Continental Army” had only one soldier – George Washington! The result of this move by Adams is itself “history,” but, needless to say, when Colonel – now General – George Washington went north to Cambridge to take charge of “his army,” there were huge questions such as whether the “Yankee” militias, used to local discipline and individual expressions of service, would even obey the commands of a Virginian and if Washington, who had never commanded anything larger than a regiment, could create and then command an army that was nothing more than a conglomerate of free thinking farmers, merchants and ordinary citizens! His Excellency’s* first real contest with the foe was really quite brilliant in that he managed to drive the British out of Boston in March of 1776 with little loss of life or property. (*The Congress diddled over any number of titles to be given to a man occupying a position never before created in the colonies and Washington was relieved when they stopped at “Your Excellency” as he feared they might go to even further exalted titles! He had the same problem when he became America’s first President!) Of course, this short lived success was the result of many of his men along with officers such as General Henry Knox who brought the great guns of Fort Ticonderoga back to Boston in winter along with those who managed to follow the untested Commander’s efforts sufficiently as to prevent the British from overwhelming the new “army” holding up outside of that City, an army virtually without powder or shot! But the rest of that year proved to be horrendous for both the Commander and his infant army, so much so that by December of 1776, the “revolution” was all but over. Twice, Washington found himself at a point in which he could make little or no difference to the existing situation. He could not fight his way out, but only escape, something he did rather well, all told. But retreat is not a winning strategy especially when one’s troops are starving, virtually naked and without weapons. No, George Washington needed another weapon and twice he was fortunate enough to have one given to him. The first instance was in the summer of the year when he realized that his “army” pretty much trapped in New York, needed a legitimate reason to fight! The now seemingly petty squabbles that had brought about the war in Massachusetts did not carry over into the other colonies and there were still far too many people in all the colonies who sought reconciliation with the King and a return to “normalcy.” Men don’t fight to achieve stalemates neither do they die over petty disputes. Washington knew this! Though both a farmer and a soldier, he was also a much deeper man who understood the motives that drive men to respond in times of crises. With that understanding, he pressed the Congress to declare the “united colonies,” or, rather, “The United States” independent of Great Britain, a thoroughly unique situation at that point in history! We find it hard to believe today that the very concept of independence of a former colony or colonies from the nation that had established those same colonies was unthinkable in that time, but it was! Washington, however, knew that independence was the only real motive that would bring colonists out to fight and he desperately needed the Congress to openly declare that condition itself to be the goal of the revolution. It is reported that so desperate was the General for the Congress to act that he had gone before them to repeat his demands. It was also reported that the President of the Congress had reminded its members that the British continued to inform them that as traitors they would be hanged if captured. It was Washington, it is said, who reminded them that mere hanging as a punishment would be a blessing but, rather, that the old medieval punishment of hanging, drawing and quartering would be the fate of any revolutionary leader, and especially himself, “the Sword of the Revolution,” if they were brought to England to suffer such an unspeakable death! But just when it appeared that the Congress could not – or would not – take this all important step and that Washington’s army would, like mist in the morning, dissolve, a man named Thomas Paine stepped forward virtually out of nowhere. Paine was born on January 29th, 1737 in Norfolk, England. The man had a great gift of language and, indeed, his writings were lofty enough to appeal to the elite and clear enough for the “common man” to understand and appreciate. The first of his “tracts” was entitled Commonsense Addressed to the Inhabitants of America (subsequently to be known merely as Commonsense) published in Philadelphia in 1776. In this 47 page pamphlet, Paine pleaded for Americans to renounce the politics of Europe and embark on something entirely different. True, it was in part a scathing polemic against the injustice of rule by any king – and not just George III – but Paine also made an equally eloquent argument that Americans had a unique opportunity to change the course of history by creating a new sort of government in which people were free and possessed the power to rule themselves. In a very real way, Paine’s rather simple but clear explanation of why the King could be replaced and America be an independent nation, made it possible for a confused and disorganized Congress to reach the conclusion demanded by Washington and create the Declaration of Independence, giving the Commander in Chief the means by which to rally his troops to continue the fray. Washington was so wedded to this concept that he widely distributed among his army, Paine’s tract and also had read aloud the Declaration he had received from Philadelphia. And so, the pen prevailed and Washington’s beleaguered army did not melt away, that’s true, but by December of 1776, it was very much weakened and again on the verge of “melting away” as enlistments ended with the New Year or, in the alternative, starving to death or dying of exposure when in the bitter winter of that year, most of his men were without clothing or food or shelter or arms. In the war, Paine served as volunteer aide-de-camp to Gen. Nathanael Greene. His great contribution at this time – also from his pen – were the sixteen “Crisis” papers issued between 1776 and 1783, each one signed Common Sense as a means of catching the interest of the many Americans who had devoured that original offering. “The American Crisis. Number I,” was published on December 19th, 1776, when Washington’s stricken army was on the verge of disintegration – again. The author’s pen so moved Washington that he ordered it read to all his troops in hopes of raising their spirits and to maintain any hope that the Revolution would continue. The tract’s opening is among the most stirring passages in the literature of that time: These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us — that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: It is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right not only to tax but “to bind us in all cases whatsoever,” and if being bound in that manner is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious, for so unlimited a power can belong only to God. “Crisis” combined with Washington’s victory in the battles of Trenton launched on Christmas night with its password of “Victory or Death” and quickly followed with the notable victory at Princeton inspired many soldiers, whose term of service would expire on January 1st, to reenlist thus allowing the struggle to continue rather than end in the defeat of American hopes. Would our Revolution have succeeded had Mr. Paine chosen some other vocation or had he died before his gift was made known in a troubled time? No one can say. It doesn’t really matter because what happened did happen! But we must never disregard that most dangerous and decisive weapon of any war, human language. Ask yourself, what do people remember of figures of the past? Today there is photography and earlier, images were rendered in paint, wood and stone, but almost all that we know of our past is ours by virtue of language. We know that Caesar crossed the Rubicon because it was written. We know that King Richard of the Lionsheart fought a crusade because it is written. We know the battle tactics of Sun Tzu because they are written! Language is essential for both history and civilization itself! And yet. . . and yet. . . language is a two-edged sword! It can be a weapon for good or, conversely, for evil. Language itself has no moral determinant. Language is “good” or “evil” as a direct result of the moral ethics of those who use it. Indeed, it is upon such “moral ethics” whether it is in word or deed that all depends. Today, alas, at least intelligent Americans understand that language has been perverted perhaps as never before in history – and as a result we now live in a time when all that our Nation’s blessed birth produced has been degraded into chaos and perverted into darkness. Our present condition has never been better defined than by the man who profited most, perhaps, from the words of Thomas Paine, General, later President, George Washington: “The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.”
Public Servants Posted on October 9, 2024 by john Dear Friends, It seems to me, the reason the term, “public servant” is no longer used, is because they are our masters, and masters chafe at being called a servant. Even for political appearances. That’s why a police officer becomes furious when told, “I pay your salary!” Because you don’t pay his salary, the money is taken from you at gun point. Try telling that to a mafia thug your paying protection money to. Its the exact same thing. Except one uses the power of the gun, by claiming the authority of a Constitution they despise, while as the other claims the power of the gun, in the face of the law. Public servants give orders and we obey. Moreover, they’re above their own laws and regulations. Since laws apply to the servants… not masters. That’s why calling a bureaucrats a public servant is a non sequitur. How can you tell a master from a servant? It was easy in the Victorian era in England. The servant served the master. The master didn’t serve the servant. If we apply that logic to today. We see that our bureaucrats, politicians and judges, serve themselves… not us. Moreover, we serve them as they see fit. Just like a Victorian Earl would order around a maid. They give the orders and we carry them out. Their every whim is manifested as law. Regardless of Constitutional restraint. Since they’re in a pinky swear to follow it… they don’t. Why should they? The elite are above the law. Examples abound of their getting away with actions that would put you or I behind bars for decades. Like, perjury, not paying taxes, buying prostitution, drunk driving, etc… Do you pay taxes willingly… or is the threat of armed agents showing up at your door, in a pre dawn raid, all the incentive you need? Do you sign off on the trillions in debt you and you’re kids are obligated to pay back? Heck, is your vote even fairly counted? These aren’t the qualities of someone who is a master. These are the attributes of servants. The servant has no say, is held to a higher standard, and is severely punished… to keep us in check. In many nations, that formerly claimed to be free, now simply posting your opinion on social media could get you imprisoned. In the US, make a joke that ridicules democrat voters as stupid, and the courts will send you to jail. The elite have eschewed Constitutional authority, for power which, “grows from the barrel of a gun.” Both the Cosa Nostra and the government use violence and the threat of violence to coerce us. The main difference is the Mafia only abuses those in their sphere of influence. “Civilians” are off limits. Meanwhile the government abuses everyone. No one’s safe. Like the old saying goes, “Whether or not you take an interest in politics, politics will take an interest in you.” If you don’t take out a loan from a loan shark, stay out of gambling debt, and don’t befriend criminals… you’ll probably never have to deal with organized crime. Buy property, earn money or educate your children though, and you’ll necessarily interact with a “public servant.” Which only goes to show… organized crime and government are cut from the same butt rag. But government demands we wash our face with it. Our public servants have become our public masters. Proven with their open hypocrisy. Even as bureaucrats lie under oath, like breathing, they exploit perjury traps as a legal weapon against the politically disfavored. Rendering hypocrisy into it’s most pure form. Government has become a tool of the elite to get their every whim met. Public servants are free to pass the most oppressive laws. Since those laws wont be applied to them. Only us. Any interaction with a “public servant” is fraught with peril. Masters are known for their surliness. Irk a public servant and you may get beat up by the cops then sent to prison. What’s the solution though? Less public servants. Limit government. Understand it can’t solve our problems. Stop saying, “there ought to be a law…” Then apply this mindset. Sincerely, John Pepin
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As Jesus finishes His counter-challenge to a group of Jewish leaders
who were upset about a miracle He performed on the Sabbath, Jesus shares
a powerful – and surprising – statement regarding belief, faith, and
judgment. While reading the whole counter-argument Jesus shares, some of those
present may have began to think that Jesus was allying Himself against
them. Some may have begun to think that Jesus would stand against them
when history ends and the Father returns. But Jesus closes by saying He
is not their accuser; their accuser will be someone they wouldn’t
expect. Jesus tells them, “But do not think I will accuse you
before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. If
you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But
since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe
what I say?” (John 5:45-47 NIV) The Jewish leaders had verbally placed their faith in Moses. However,
by doing so, they missed the point of Moses’ writings and they misled
themselves. In this counter-challenge, Jesus tells them that when time
ends, Moses will stand up and accuse them because he will tell them
plainly that he was pointing them to Someone else. Moses never claimed to be the Messiah for the people, and nothing in
his writings implied this role for him. The unbelief of these leaders in
what Moses wanted them to fully realize led to their rejection of the
Messiah that God ultimately sent. Unbelief is a slippery slope. When we start rationalizing
ourselves out of a belief, we can find ourselves rejecting other things
we believed as being true as well. Many of those who have left
Christianity began their journey when facing one or two challenging
ideas they could not reconcile in their minds. When left unchecked,
these doubts ultimately led to them losing all their faith. The way to combat unbelief and/or challenging beliefs that we don’t
fully understand is not by ignoring the issue. Instead, the way to face
these challenges is by studying the options. At this point in history, there are dozens of angles regarding any
belief or doctrine. Rarely is any belief or doctrine a yes and no
proposition anymore. Most have three, four, or even five other angles we
could take on the subject. While some people might want you to believe
the only choices you have are believing the way they do or rejecting
“the truth”, they are lying when presenting you with this approach. The way to push through unbelief and challenges are by replacing these things with something you can believe in. The Jewish leaders fell into a trap that we all can fall into.
Anytime we place our eternal lives in the hands of someone who isn’t
part of the Godhead, we are opening ourselves up for disappointment and
accusation. Only the most delusional people want others to follow them
when they themselves are not following anyone else. A mature leader is really a follower who helps others move
forward while pointing them ahead of themselves. This is how Jesus led,
and this is how He has called us to lead as well. A mature leader in the
spiritual areas of life will not challenge what you believe without
pointing you towards a bigger truth about God. True spiritual leaders
don’t cut down someone’s faith; they strengthen it by pointing to Jesus. This post first appeared on ReflectiveBibleStudy.com What do you think? Do you agree/disagree? Leave your thoughts below.
Dear KevinB. I want to apologize at the outset for the criticisms I am about to lay out. You have been civil even kind in your interactions with me. But, if we are committed to high level dialogue on this platform then the thorough critique of the substance of your argument which I am about to present, I think, is required. I hope it will be welcome. And serve the general purpose of this community which is to sharpen and hone our arguments, purge them of error and allow truth to be our guide. So, with red pen in hand, here we go. 1. I think Dr. Peterson versus the Ontario College of Psychologist is wrongly conceived as a fight over free speech. Surely, good Dr Peterson would agree that should a psychologist truly act with blatant malfeasance, even as her negligence was solely through speech that the doctor would support action to reprimand such a psychologist and if necessary, strip her of her license. Imagine a psychologist advocating, what she calls the heroic solution of suicide. She would encourage depressed and lost clients to end their lives as a last act of heroism reclaiming their autonomy in the last great act of self-extermination. Imagine said psychologist is popular and successful and a large percentage of her clientele commits suicide. Should not the College intervene? Now imagine further that this psychologist stops practicing and writes very popular books, makes television and internet appearances and speaks to large gatherings of people advocating her perverse form of heroism through suicide. Should the College not do what it can to make it clear to those susceptible to her siren call that she does not speak on behalf of the profession of psychology, and that nothing she says is grounded in the science and belief structure of what psychology holds true? Is she not rightly deemed a hazard to the public and a detriment to the profession of psychology just by her voice? Perhaps, she has the right to speak her mind and spread her beliefs but not as a psychologist. The College must have a right to eject members that violate the basic tenets of that fellowship and reprimand them if they feel they are approaching such a violation. The College is surely correct, and Dr. Peterson does not dispute the College’s right to demand of its practitioners to refrain from saying certain things to the public which are counter indicated by the profession. Therefore, the question is not whether the college can prohibit certain speech by its members. But what is that speech and whether Dr Peterson uttered such speech. I will show that Dr Peterson agrees to the College’s right to curtail his speech in the detailed analysis of his application for Judicial Review that follows. 2. Don’t get me wrong. I am with Dr Peterson in this fight against the Ontario College of Psychologists. I agree they have committed genuine overreach and are motivated by ideological revenge against a figure that is calling them out for practicing bad psychology. But it matters what this fight is about. I think this fight is properly understood to be about Dr Peterson’s unremitting attack against the ideological hijack of his profession by those who believe in progressive ideas which run counter to what Dr Peterson and many of us believe thwart a person’s best interests. Emblematic of those ruinous trends in psychology today is gender reassignment. Peterson is among the brave few willing to point out the hypocrisy and criminality of his own profession. And under the guise of statements deemed “unprofessional, demeaning and degrading” the College is attempting to neuter and rein in their most vociferous critic. Certainly, the sorts of barbs, and sleights that Dr Peterson has dispensed in his stinging, sometimes ironic criticism, if directed from the ideological left to the ideological right would hardly ruffle a feather among the speech vigilantes. 3. Now to the substance of your paper. Your invoking of Aristotle is both confused and beside the point. You claim, “humans can’t be rational animals without the 7 liberal arts.” And then name these key and definitive disciplines as including logic (your main point) but also geometry and astronomy along with four others. This claim, in my mind is far overstated and suffers from the needless narrowness and specificity by which you tie rationality to both Aristotle and things like astronomy and geometry. Are we to insist, with Aristotle that the planets are five in number and that they all, along with the sun circle the earth? Are we tied to truths of geometry long held and intuitive but sometimes wrong, nevertheless? Must we insist that two parallel lines will never intersect? That seemed like an unassailable truth, worthy of any number of Euclidean proofs and stood for two thousand years until Lobachevsky came along mid-nineteenth century and pointed out that lines of longitude which are indeed parallel at the equator, intersect at both the north and south pole. It turns out that everything Euclid said may be true if you take for granted that your surface is flat but a whole new set of truths are required by non-Euclidean geometry. This points out a very important hard-earned truth that gives lie to the ease and confidence with which you appeal to the old master Aristotle. Truths derive from certain presuppositions. And you cannot impose your presuppositions upon another under the claim of truth with a capital T. It is odd to hold fast to Aristotle as if we have learned nothing since. Are you not aware that science only properly started when we let go of Aristotle’s final causes? Saying that heavy things fall to the ground because that is what heavy things seek to do, does not leave room for Newton or gravity. (A claim can be made that Aristotelian telos has made a comeback with Modern Physics but that is a wrinkle that does not discount the shift between Enlightenment thinking and Classical thinking.) Is there no place for Hume and his skepticism, Kant and his critique of pure reason? Just Aristotle or bust? And with him lays the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you gods. What is a believer in the Bible to do with Aristotle’s contention that the world is eternal, never created and never ending? 4. You make some fancy razzle dazzle move, first quoting from Aristotle’s Interpretations, discussing signs and referents and mental states and a claim that this is true FOR ALL and then land with a half twist on the conclusion that Aristotle believed in British Common Law and Constitutional governments with the consent of the governed. With those nimble aerobatics you jump right over Aristotle’s Politics where he tells you what kind of government he thinks is best and democracy is at the bottom of the list. He prefers benevolent aristocratic rule over the rabble of the mob. Now this is nuanced stuff and requires careful study and context and ability to understand that Aristotle means something entirely different by Constitution than what the British understand as a constitution. I don’t claim to be able to capture Aristotle’s Politics in this paragraph, but I am sure that your association of Aristotle with British Common Law is very far from the mark, certainly if you erase the entire panoply of Enlightenment thinkers from the discussion which is what your essay recommended. 5. But your most egregious errors lie in your analysis of Justice Schabas’ decision. You claim to have caught him in a lie, actually two lies. The conflation of lying with poor judgement is a separate problem to which we will return. Your purported cross-examination of Schabas uncovers the lie as follows: First he claims that “I have concluded that the application should be dismissed.” But this is a lie, you claim because the case wasn’t dismissed; it was actually reviewed by 3 judges and 18 lawyers for one full day in open court! Then they were reviewed by 3 Judges before their written decision. It took me several passes over this section to even understand what you were driving at. First, I hope you understand that we are talking about the same three judges, Schabas, Blackhouse and Krawchenko at every stage of this process. But what I think you understood is that Schabas was disingenuous in claiming to dismiss the application when it was actually reviewed. I am strengthened by this understanding of lie #1 because you lay out what you think Schabas should have written, if he was telling the truth: “upon review, he was dismissing Peterson’s requested Orders.” Meaning, you think Peterson got his Judicial Review and Schabas tried to deny it by claiming to have dismissed the application as opposed to what he should have done which is attend to the Review process with an open and unbiased heart which played out in open court before him instead of what you call “stepping into the scales.” Assuming I have understood you correctly, and what this supposed lie is all about then it becomes clear that you have no idea what Judicial Review is. Judicial Review is the application to a court of law to overturn or intervene in a decision made by a statutory decision-making body like the Ontario College of Psychologists. It is the not the act of reviewing the arguments of someone in court. Peterson applied for Judicial Review and was turned down by Schabas and the Divisional Court because they thought the arguments Peterson mustered in his application were insufficient to merit the court’s intervention into the internal dealings of the College of Psychologists which is indeed a high bar to pass. This was exactly the question before Schabas and the other judges and it was indeed dismissed after their due consideration. 6. You took issue with Schabas disagreeing with Peterson’s reasons for why the court ought to intervene. You claim it was not his role to agree or disagree. In your words: “He proves he is arguing the case rather than providing a fair “hearing.” Here again, you completely misconstrue the question before the court and the entire judicial process at play. This is exactly what Schabas is being asked to rule on, whether or not he is persuaded by Peterson’s arguments that the process and substance of the Inquiries Complaints and Reports Committee (ICRC) decision was so lacking that the court must intervene. Schabas disagreed with the reasons and therefore turned down Peterson’s application. You can fault him for poor judgement but not for doing what he was asked to do. Schabas and his team looked over Peterson’s application, weighed his arguments over why the College acted unreasonably and decided the College acted with sufficient reasonableness and within its mandate such that the court saw no reason to intervene. That does not mean that the Court agrees or disagrees with the College’s decision, just that the court did not see sufficient dereliction of process on the part of the College to warrant its intervention. This is all about Schabas’ disagreement with Peterson’s arguments and to find fault in that is to misunderstand the entire process. 7. Then you outline what you claim is lie #2 which once again reflects a blatant inability to read and understand the proceedings in this case. Schabas delineates the question before the court: a. The issue in this case is whether the Panel’s decision to order Dr. Peterson to complete a SCERP was reasonable. Dr. Peterson raises two arguments which, he submits, make the decision unreasonable. Schabas goes on: There is no dispute that the standard of review is reasonableness, and that the principles set out in Doré and Vavilov must be applied in reviewing the Decision. (Paragraphs 28-29) b. Later Schabas clarifies that the issue is not the College’s ability to require a certain decorum of its members nor is it the Code itself: “Dr. Peterson does not challenge the principles in the Code. Although he takes issue with objections to his language on the ground that some of it, at least, was justified based on the facts, his response to the ICRC recognized that he has made errors in his public communication and that he has “already undertaken the remediation of [his] actions.” (Paragraph 44) c. KevinB claims this is a lie because in Peterson’s Application he does take issue with the code and wants certain sections ruled in violation of the Canadian Charter guaranteeing free speech. 8. What KevinB fails to recognize is that the Application contains two essential parts, the first is a wish list of Orders representing the absolute maximum claims that Peterson can wish for. This section purposely strains credulity and includes other farfetched claims which everyone understands is not the substance of the argument including a request by Peterson that in addition to being awarded the court costs he also be awarded additional indemnities – for the sake of justice. So, while Peterson is asking for everything under the sun, he also asks for the Code of Conduct to be struck down for what is the Canadian equivalent of being unconstitutional. The second section begins the Grounds for the Application and here Peterson sets forth his legal argument for Judicial Review. Nowhere in this section does Peterson claim it is wrong for the College to put limits on his speech as a psychologist. He only argues regarding the facts of the statements in question. He argues for instance that those statements have nothing to do with being a psychologist and were not uttered in his capacity as a psychologist. Implicit in those arguments is that had they been uttered as a psychologist or in the context of a therapeutic relationship they may well be in violation of the Code and rightly generate disciplinary action by the College. Peterson may wish that aspects of the Code of Conduct be struck down in the future and request that the court do so (understanding full well that it is very far from possibility) but nevertheless Peterson understands that the Code as it currently stands obligates him as an Ontario Psychologist. And therefore it is correct to say that Peterson does not challenge the principles of the code as part of his legal defense. 9. In fact, Peterson makes his recognition of the College and their powers explicit by issuing a clear Mea Culpa. Schabas obviously seizes on Peterson’s admission and correctly concludes that the question before the court is whether or not Peterson’s specific statements rise to the level of unprofessionalism such that the ICRC decision is considered reasonable. In all of Peterson’s legal arguments calling for Judicial Review he never questions the Code or the ability of the College to limit his speech as a psychologist in principle. Schabas is correct on this point too and cannot be described as lying. 10. The whole tone of calling a judge a liar, liar pants on fire, seems juvenile and again reflects a misappreciation of the legal process. Judges interpret the law and make necessarily subjective judgements about what is reasonable. About the amount of harm done the profession of psychology due to Dr Peterson’s “wild” behavior. About whether the punishment fits the crime. You can accuse them of being overly harsh, of pushing their own agendas, of misapplying a certain precedent but given the necessarily interpretive nature of all of this – lying seems very much besides the point. For fifty-one years certain kinds of abortions were considered a constitutional right but no longer. You can like the US Supreme Court’s new position or hate it, but the Pro-Choice judges are not made into liars when the decision was changed. I don’t like Schabas’ judgement either. It is clear how another judge more amenable to Peterson’s position could have struck the balance differently and rule in his favor. Both precedent and law could easily support awarding Peterson Judicial Review in this case. But the powers that be that decided that Schabas was the one to judge Peterson’s case is what really decided this case. The law is genuinely unclear in this case as it needs to be for a functional society. Our society is shaped by judgements such as this. Schabas is not fairly described by the author as a “government tyrant” because this is exactly how democracy works. The goal for people like us who think the balance in our society is off is through essay writing and persuasive argumentation to influence the thinking of people in the position to make important decisions and persuade them that muzzling a man like Peterson does no good for anyone. And if we can’t persuade them, to put other people like us in those positions of power. It is not for nothing that chapter 18 precedes chapter 19-20 in the book of Exodus. The selection of judges under the influence of Jethro precedes the giving of the Decalogue because in many ways WHO your judges are makes a very big difference in HOW those 10 Commandments will be applied. 11. My congratulations again to KevinB for engaging this critical question and bringing the details of the Peterson judgement to my attention and the attention of the Thinkspot community. My scrutiny of the process is only because of the alarm bells sounded by KevinB. However, I stand by my conclusions that many significant errors in understanding substantially flaw this paper. It reflects poorly on this community that such errors were allowed to stand and to the contrary this flawed paper regarded as the top prize winner in the recent competition. It makes me wonder about the standards of judgement employed by the committee and moreover makes me concerned about the level of discourse encouraged and rewarded by this community. It seems that virtue signaling and sounding Petersonian soundbites like calling judges tyrants scores points much more than substance and rigor. Yes, it seems like virtue signaling is very much at play in this community just like it is among the social justice warriors. The virtues are different. Here it is considered virtuous to resist tyranny even when people are just tilting at windmills. Still, the bluster is just as empty as Don Quixotes.
I enjoy a good disaster film. Movies such as San Andreas, Independence Day, Godzilla (in all its many manifestations!) and other such “block busters” are good fun on a rainy afternoon. This is especially true these days when the industry’s present “special effects” give great reality to situations that in earlier days were simply never attempted or if attempted, poorly achieved! Of course, while we watch the ongoing havoc in the film, we are naturally concentrating on the main characters. I remember two particular scenes in San Andreas, the earthquake taking place in a restaurant in a skyscraper and a tsunami entering San Francisco. Both show the deaths of many people in those two settings as well as the escape of some of the main characters from the mayhem! Of course, one focuses on the main characters, the others – the “extras” – are simply consigned to their part of the narrative, usually death in great numbers! Occasionally, however, there are characters one meets earlier in the film that are then reintroduced before they die. For instance, in one of the tsunami scenes we meet an elderly couple who had earlier met the main characters being crushed by the liner, Queen Elizabeth that has been flipped over on top them by the wave! But aside from those infrequent “other people of interest,” for which the audience is expected to display at least a few moments of interest and remorse, the rest of the “deceased” are nothing more than “background” and those who play them in the film are even called “extras” because they have no lines to speak other than the occasional scream or expletive. There is an old Indian belief that one’s conscience is a three sided figure whose points are sharp. When the conscience is “offended,” it spins – and because of those sharp points, it hurts! But if it spins often enough, the “points” wear down so that it hurts less and less as time goes on. I believe we can see this today, especially if we look back a generation or two. Things that would have aroused our horror and anger in, say, 1950, now seem not only commonplace and unremarkable but sometimes even possibly worthwhile in some bizarre way; that is, much of what is so very wrong in our culture is at present, not worthy to be remarked upon much less condemned. And as the death count rises from wars and crime and drugs and all the rest, those who perish appear to us as nothing more than extras in the film of life. British poet Alexander Pope once opined upon the results of exposure to wickedness and its resultant apathetic acceptance: “Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, we first endure, then pity, then embrace.” Another cause of our apparent inability to see the extent of our present human casualties is the fact that people no longer view reality directly – at least a good majority of the time. We have become spectators in and of our own world. Like movie and theater audiences, we sit and watch reality – or, often more precisely unreality – play out before us. Soon, the violence in films – violence we know to be fictional – influences those images that actually involve reality. The dead in seen documentaries are little different from the dead appearing in disaster movies when we are no more than spectators; that is, they do not move us even to pity, never mind concern and a desire to intervene on their behalf in order to bring them some semblance of justice. Indeed, we have come so far from reality that quite often when we ourselves become “extras” in the “film of life,” we are astonished at this turn of events! That’s not how it was supposed to happen after all, for we are the main characters in our particular “film!” But when it does happen that way, we rush to place the blame on those whom we believe should have protected us, often from our own stupidity! It is no wonder that the Deep State and the rest of the New World Order were able to use the threat of COVID to turn us into obedient – and stupid! – sheep! Another consequence of this “spectatorship of life” is the loss of our ability to respond quickly and with sufficient strength to situations that arise detrimental to the well-being of ourselves and our fellow man. This is further complicated by our failure to keep ourselves sufficiently informed to prevent the use by our rulers of fear as a means of ensuring our compliance with their often totally unreasonable, unrealistic and frequently dangerous mandates to situations many of which they themselves have created! After some great disaster occurs and many lives are lost, we learn that in most cases there were sufficient warnings to either prevent or address that disaster prior to its occurrence! How many books and films have dealt with historical “what might have beens” from the sinking of the Titanic to the attack on Pearl Harbor. People knew the risks and shortcomings. They were aware of those same “might come to pass” situations but they chose to ignore rather than respond in a timely fashion. One thing about both movies and reality is that the “extras” can never be revived and brought back to life. Death is as eternal in fiction as it is in reality. More importantly, we also usually learn that most of the casualties arising from these disasters were frequently the result of ineffective or intentionally dangerous responses by our “leaders” that have been put into place in the name of protecting the public! Indeed, we have recently learned that most if not all government “response” to the so-called “pandemic” of 2020 were specifically designed to do more damage to the population than was ever threatened by the “pandemic” itself! This was not a “response” to a public danger but an agenda, a strategy to bring about what is, in fact, now happening: genocide of the world’s “excess population” – that is, the world’s “extras.” Nowhere is this more obvious and more egregious than in what has been presented to the world as a means by which this mythic “pandemic” has been, will be and is being “overcome,” the creation of “vaccines” by a number of Big Pharma corporations acting in concert with the United Nations and the governments of the world together with the medical and public health establishments. These “medicines” have been “made available” to the public beginning in 2021 and ongoing to date. Indeed, they have not only been “made available” but in many governments and their agencies, they have been mandated even for those people who admittedly run little risk from the COVID virus itself – children, healthy adults and those who have already had the disease and (easily) recovered. On the other hand, the vaccinated “extras” who have either been severely injured or who have died – or will die in the foreseeable future – number in the millions! Some of the deaths that have resulted from this “campaign” have been doctors and scientists attempting to make the danger known to the public. Those who have not been killed outright (and, yes, that HAS happened!) have been censored and marginalized to the point at which none of their warnings are begin taken seriously except by those relative few who are intelligent enough to give no credence to the “sworn word” of their government and its minions in the establishment who continue to claim that these poisons are both “safe and effective!” The numbers are astronomical, even those admitted to by the various governments and this does not take into account the known fact that only a small percentage of the injured and dead have actually been counted! The interesting thing here is that the media – social and otherwise – have provided firsthand witness to this plague. We’ve seen people being struck down with horrible seizures and even with death itself everywhere from television broadcasts to athletic events and more mundane settings such as nail salons and restaurants! One would think that a pretty young chef dying during a broadcast of her cooking show would have caused outrage together with real (and understandable!) hysteria in the viewing public, but like those who died in San Andreas, her fate merely caused mild regret and even more mild interest. It wasn’t “real” though for the young woman, it was fatally real. It would seem that our present condition of spectators to our own extinction will make that much easier than might otherwise have been the case! On the other hand, the strategists who were banking upon our lack of response to an actual catastrophe because they were busily covering the facts of the matter failed to take into account something as mundane as the insurance industry and especially the life insurance industry! No society can ignore matters involving large amounts of money and when those companies began to report huge increases in the percentages of deaths among healthy people from ages 16 to 64 many in the world’s “viewing audience” began to take notice! A Dutch life insurance company, Aegon, reported that its 2021 payments skyrocketed an amazing 258% from its 2020 payments! Reuters reported via Yahoo Finance: “Dutch insurer Aegon, which does two-thirds of its business in the United States, said its claims in the Americas in the third quarter were $111 million, up from $31 million a year earlier. U.S. insurers MetLife and Prudential Financial also said life insurance claims rose. South Africa’s Old Mutual used up more of its pandemic provisions to pay claims and reinsurer Munich Re raised its 2021 estimate of COVID-19 life and health claims to 600 million euros from 400 million.” All insurance companies and not just life insurance providers are slowly coming to realize the truth about COVID vaccines despite the efforts of a murderous mainstream media and our complicit “governments” and “hi-tech” sector to cover up the accelerating death rate. The signals now emerging in the financial books of insurance companies can’t simply be ignored for these don’t involve the ordinary “viewing audience,” but a large part of our nation’s (and the world’s) economy. Financial companies are always interested in the “trends” of finance and that trend is monstrous! For far too long, far too many people have sat and watched history happening the way they watch sports or films. For some reason, they do not equate what’s happening with themselves personally or if they do, they cannot believe that they will suffer anything worse than financial and/or physical inconvenience. Very few members of the viewing audience put themselves in the place of the people dying in San Andreas or the "extras" dying in any other disaster film; they don’t say what used to be said back in the good old days, “There but for the Grace of God go I!” And believe me, that’s how our “government” wants it to stay! But let us pray (earnestly!) that our elite rulers finally have to say what it is claimed was said by Admiral Yamamoto after the attack on Pearl Harbor: “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” For, my friends, if we are not awakened from our present moral sleep, our next sleep will be eternal.
By its very nature, “Nature” is not static; Nature moves and mankind – like nature – also moves. When we as a species were hunter-gatherers, we migrated in search of food because we didn’t hibernate as do the bear and the toad. We “moved” from places of scarcity to places where we could survive. But things changed when humanity became practitioners of agriculture. No longer chained to the hunt, man could remain in one place and that great innovation changed everything. No longer limited to small groups, mankind was able to build civilizations and the cities necessary to house them. We went from “tribes” to “peoples” and this inevitably led to conflict. Even as men became more able to feed and succor themselves, they became less able to live in peace and harmony for there was always the danger posed by other groups of men. Ergo, a mindset developed that it was better to remove (or absorb) competing groups than to have problems later on. And so, as a species, larger and stronger groups absorbed (or destroyed) other groups that might become a danger by virtue of their size and proximity. This strategy also used the movements of peoples but this was neither migration nor immigration – but invasion! For man was still seeking “the necessities of life,” but now the movement undertaken for that process was initiated with the understanding that he would destroy or absorb other human groups located within his declared destination. History is replete with invasions by one human culture of other human cultures and though we are no longer hunter-gatherers or even isolated “civilizations,” we continue to use this same process to displace groups of people by using other groups of people as the weapon of choice. However, we no longer speak of “invasion” – though that is what is being waged – but of “immigration” for that term is not nearly so threatening to those being invaded. But in this new millennia this ancient “replacement strategy” has become much more devious. For those involved who are using it understand that “immigration/invasion” requires more than just large numbers of people being sent to replace the native population. It is also important that those “replacements” not be of the same “type” as those they are meant to replace. And so, when an area is targeted for cultural extermination – such as Europe and North America – as most of the people in these areas are white, those running the show don’t “invade” using groups of people who are themselves of European origin and thus also white (see Australia &etc.). For, though new people might be moved into the target area, those people would in time naturally unite with the remaining people of their own background and history and thus fail to be useful agents in the devolution of the targeted culture (a/k/a: Western Civilization). No, to destroy the stronghold of one race and its culture, one must use other, different races with their cultures; that is, people whose appearance, languages and customs make clear that they are “not one of us.” It doesn’t matter what racial culture is being destroyed, it only matters that to destroy that culture, one must use other cultures that do not naturally adopt and adapt to the culture under attack! And that is exactly what is underway in the West today, and not just in the United States! Our “leaders” are using large numbers of people who are being removed from their own cultures and forced into cultures unable – and often unwilling – to accept them. This results in ongoing cultural (and sometimes actual) warfare and when the government of the target country is using these “invaders” for its own purposes, it perforce refuses to protect its own citizens leaving them without legal recourse. This is not “migration!” This is not “immigration!” Neither is it a matter of “misjudgment” but, in fact, it is a war being waged upon the invaded people and their culture for the purpose of ultimate conquest! As well, neither is that conquest limited to the target population for the invaders themselves and their cultures are also in the cross-hairs as this is a battle to destroy civilization in all of its manifestations in order to bring about something else; that is, the promised New World Order designed to make all earlier cultures irrelevant. Now, once we understand the nature of this “migration,” this “modern movement of people,” It becomes obvious that attempting to focus on the matter as if it were lawful “immigration” such as has happened in the past, is patent nonsense! If we could (or be allowed to) see what is going on, nobody would think to look at this as mere human interaction. In fact, we should no more address “accommodating migrants” while “managing domestic concerns” or become fixated on “humanitarian issues” than these matters would have occurred to the Germans on D-Day! We must address only those matters that arise during a full-scale invasion by a foreign enemy – for that is what is happening! And as with any people under attack, we should be thinking about defense and response, not accommodation! Those manipulating this invasion want ordinary people to see only other ordinary people; they don’t want us to see the “unattached” military-aged men or the soldiers of the cartels or the criminals who have robbed, raped and murdered innocent Americans absent the constitutionally guaranteed protection of their own government. I as an American, don’t want to “accommodate” them; I want them gone together with those who arranged to bring them here in order to make war against us. For if they remain than the United States of America ceases to exist – and that is unacceptable! Therefore, to comply with this ongoing “invasion” by labeling it immigration(!) and considering how best to bring it about “humanely,” is to be complicit in the death of our once great nation. There’s a name for that. It’s called treason.
We live in a very wicked world. All the norms of decency and godliness are being driven from Western culture while cultures outside of the West are also decaying into such evil and violence as to make even the strongest people wonder if civilization itself will soon either cease to exist entirely or transform into a version of Orwell’s hell on earth. But while there is still time, most decent people look for those who can bring them hope when every road leads to ruin and to tell them what is true when falsehood has become the foundation of all communications. In other words, decent people seek what in the Days of the Bible were called prophets! Of course, bringing God's prophetic word to the people to whom it is sent has always been a costly business for those so chosen for this task and that will not change in these latter days. Indeed, the conclusion reached by the New Testament writers as they looked back over the Old Testament was that prophets have always been persecuted. Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount refers to this fact when He ends His final beatitude with the words, "In the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you." (Matthew 5:12). As well, Protomartyr, St. Stephen the deacon concluded his speech to the Jewish Sanhedrin with the challenge, "Was there ever a prophet your fathers did not persecute?" (Acts 7:52) This is the kind of reception all the prophets have had to face. And, again, looking into the future, Jesus indicated that there is not likely to be any change in the way prophets are received: "I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill, and others they will persecute" (Luke 11:49). None can answer or even understand the question 'What is a prophet?' until the questioner comes to terms with the inevitable persecution that is the fate of all faithful prophets. The Persecutions: Let us begin by looking into how the Prophets were persecuted. Why? Because in doing so, we begin to see how this particular “gameplan” continues into the present day for all who attempt to bring the Truth to mankind. Research into the numerous ways in which prophets were persecuted show that this divides into two responses. The first is the rejection of the men themselves and their message, and second, their persecution involves physical violence to their persons – even to death. For we have: · those who were persecuted through ridicule (2 Kings 2:23, Luke 22:64, Jeremiah 20:7); · those who were told to be silent (Amos 2:12, 7:13); by unpleasant looks (Jeremiah 1:8,17, 5:3); · those whose messages were reported to the authorities (Jeremiah 18:19, 37:13, Amos 7:10, Jeremiah 20:10); · those who were barred from attending God's house (Jeremiah 36:5); · And, finally, those who had their prophetic words, both spoken and written, rejected (Isaiah 30:10, Micah 2:6, Amos 7:12,16, Jeremiah 36:23). In the case of those who suffered physical violence to their persons, this violence took various forms: · They were placed in the stocks (Jeremiah 20:2). · They were kept in chains (Jeremiah 40:1). · They were slapped in the face (1 Kings 22:24). · They were imprisoned in cells, dungeons and cisterns (Jeremiah 37:15-16 & 38:6) in some cases fed only on bread and water (1 Kings 22:27). · They were threatened with death (1 Kings 19:1) and some were actually put to death (2 Chronicles 24:21, Jeremiah 26:20-23). There were also others killed whose names are not recorded. Jesus gives us reason to believe there were many unnamed servants of God who made that ultimate sacrifice (Luke 11:50-51). The Bible does not give extensive biographical details of the prophets we meet in its pages. In fact, we have little information about how they were persecuted or about how they lived and died. For example, with the exception of Amos and Jonah, Scripture says hardly anything about the personal circumstances of the minor prophets. The same is true of Isaiah and Ezekiel, though there is a little more to go on for the latter. It is the prophet Jeremiah that we know most about and it is from his experience that we can perhaps best discover how prophets were persecuted in his day. He goes so far as to refer to himself as 'a gentle lamb led to the slaughter' (Jeremiah 11:19), using the same words that Isaiah used to describe Yahweh's 'suffering servant' (Isaiah 53:7). There are a number of examples of non-writing prophets who were cruelly persecuted.Elijah was threatened by the wicked queen Jezebel after his confrontation with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, and ran for his life (1 Kings 19:1-4).Amos was insulted by the chief priest at the sanctuary in Bethel and told never to prophesy there again (Amos 7:10-15).Micah had the courage to contradict the prophetic announcement of four hundred false prophets (1 Kings 22: 5-6) when they declared that Ramoth, Gilead would be defeated by the combined forces of Kings Ahab and Jehoshaphat. He discerned that it was a lying spirit that was deluding these prophets – for this he was slapped in the face by Zedekiah and put in prison under the order of King Ahab (1 Kings 22:23-27).Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada the priest, was stoned to death for rebuking the people who turned aside to Asherah poles and idols, and for forsaking the Temple. This was an especially heinous crime, as Zechariah's father had helped King Joash and had been honored at his death for "the good he had done in Israel for God and his Temple" (2 Chron 24:16-22). As this persecuted prophet lay dying, he felt that King Joash had been particularly unkind and exclaimed "May the Lord see this and call you to account" (2 Chron 24:22).Hanani the seer reproved King Asa for relying on the king of Aram, instead of on the Lord, saying that from that time onward he would be at war. The king was so enraged that he put Hanani in prison (2 Chron 16:7-9).Uriah from Kiriath Jearim is described as "another man who prophesied in the name of the Lord, he prophesied the same things . . . as Jeremiah did" (Jeremiah 26:20-23). When King Jehoiakim heard what he said, he sought ways of putting Uriah to death. In fear for his life, the prophet escaped to Egypt. Thereupon the king dispatched a party of men to find and arrest him. When they brought him back to the king, he had Uriah struck down with a sword and his body thrown into the common burial place. New Testament Prophets Were Also Persecuted John the Baptist was referred to by Jesus as "a prophet and more than a prophet" (Matthew 11:9). He was persecuted, especially by King Herod. John the Baptist had the courage to publicly rebuke Herod for marrying Herodias, his brother Philip's wife. For this, Herod had John put in prison (Luke 3:19-20), where he lay bound (Matthew 14:3). On Herod's birthday the celebrations included a sensual dance performed by Herodias' daughter, Salome. When Herod was foolish enough to promise her anything, prompted by her mother, she asked for the head of John the Baptist. The king was distressed but felt he had to keep his promise and had John beheaded. Jesus Christ was greeted with the words of the crowd, "A great prophet has appeared among us" (Luke 7:16). The two disciples walking to Emmaus, bewildered by what had been happening, summed up their conclusions in the words, "He was a prophet powerful in word and deed before God and all the people" (Luke 24:19), and like all true prophets Jesus was persecuted. He was ridiculed, opposed in His teaching, had His miracles attributed to the devil, was handed over to the authorities and suffered at the hands of violent men. Finally, He was crucified and demonstrated (as men thought) by His death on the cross, to be a false Messiah. What Particular Difficulties Do Prophets Face? These problem areas may be divided up into (1) difficulties with other people, (2) difficulties in handling of God's word, and (3) difficulties with their own thoughts. (1) Difficulties with other people: Prophets have to face being despised by priests and other 'professionals', as Amos was by Amaziah (Amos 7:12-13) and Jeremiah by Pashur (Jeremiah 20: 1-2); being opposed by false prophets (Jeremiah 29:1-17); being rejected by familiar friends (Jeremiah 20:10) and by one's own family (Matthew 13:57). (2) Difficulties in handling God's prophetic word: Prophets must speak only what God has really given them to speak (Jeremiah 1:7); they must not water down God's word to make it more acceptable (Isaiah 30:10); they must uphold the authority of the scriptures (Jeremiah 17:19-27); and they must be prepared to bring the same message over and over again because of the lack of faith and the hard hearts of the people to whom they prophesy (Jeremiah 7:25, 29:19, 35:15). (3) Difficulties in their own thoughts. Prophets must (a) be patient and wait confidently for the fulfilment of God's prophetic word (James 5:10-11; Matthew 13:17); (b) they must allow critics to call them 'traitors' to their country or a particular viewpoint, trusting God to vindicate them (Jeremiah 37:11-14) and (c) they must accept the fact that they will be called 'troublemakers' (1 Kings 18:17) continuing to proclaim God's word even though it is a torment to the hearers as well as to the prophet (Rev 11:10). We must follow Paul's teaching to "bless those who persecute us" (Romans 12:14). We know that Christ is with us, for persecution is one of those things which cannot separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:35-39). We can be comforted by the assurance that persecution can only scatter the church, and not destroy it as was the case in the early church (Acts 8:1). But though persecution cannot destroy the Church or separate the Faithful from God, certainly in periods of great trial such as today, the Church can be scattered. Of course, we can be sure that all faithful prophets will have their reward in heaven, and will sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in God’s Kingdom (Luke 13:28). They will then know that Jesus was right when he said that the prophets who were persecuted were the truly 'blessed' people of God (Matthew 5:11-12). Help for Persecuted Prophets At times God's true prophets have lived in danger of their lives and God has raised up men and women to protect them.Obadiah who was in charge of King Ahab's palace was able to hide a hundred prophets in two caves and supply them with food and water every day (1 Kings 18:13).A wealthy woman in Shunem was able to build a 'prophet-flat' onto her house for Elisha's use whenever he was in that district (the original prophet's chamber!) (2 Kings 4:8-10).Ebedmelech. a black man, took a gang of men with him to pull Jeremiah out of the cistern in which he had been imprisoned (Jeremiah 38:7-13) and Ahikam son of Shaphan intervened to prevent Jeremiah being put to death. Of course, we have Jesus promise that everyone who assisted a prophet in need would receive the same reward as the prophet and that “even a cup of cold water would be rewarded” (Matthew 10:41-42). How Should Prophets React to Persecution? We must look beyond the Old Testament to discover how persecuted prophets ought to react to their persecutors. We must not copy Jeremiah as he asks God to bring down disaster on them and their families and calls down wrath upon them, praying "do not forgive their crimes, or blot out their sins from your sight" (Jeremiah 18:21-23). Rather, we are to "love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us" (Matthew 5:44), as Jesus has taught us. This is, of course, one of the main differences between the Old and the New Testaments! It was Jesus who said, "If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you also" (John 15:20), so today's prophets must expect the same treatment their predecessors have always received. The Lord himself confirms that this will be a continuing experience down to the present day, for "I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and others they will persecute" (Luke 11 :49), and these words still apply. And the Final Question: Why is this matter important today? What the prophets brought to the people – not just “God’s people” but all people – was the truth. No prophet lied. When Jesus is interrogated by Pilate, He states that all who love Truth, listen to Him. To this, Pilate asks a most sanguine question, that is, “What is Truth?” And, indeed, this is the question that all of us must ask these days as our whole world view is filled with lies. Truth is rejected and, as with the prophets of old, those who bring it to light will suffer persecution. Of course, today’s “prophets” do not necessarily speak directly to any Divine utterance or demand. Rather, they speak of that reality that is being so carefully hidden by the minions of evil whose war against the just, the good and the faithful has so poisoned our present world. So then, who are these prophets? 1- They are those who warn about the use of medicine to murder rather than to cure; 2- They are those who point out that “good intentions” never excuse lies and intrigues; 3- They are those who refuse to be intimidated by men whose worldly position gives them power to do harm to those who will not yield and obey; 4- They are those who continue to speak out when they are threatened with consequences that a mere decade ago would have been considered an impossible attack on our God-given liberties; 5- They are those who suffer lies and falsehoods and condemnation even by those with whom they are close because they will not remain silent in the face of wickedness; 6- They are men and women, young and old, who face the condemnation of all those people and institutions that they hold dear when they choose the narrow path of righteousness rather than the wide path of worldly approval and acclaim. Much has been written about those who fail to be the prophets whom God has placed among men to warn of the evils all about us. Poet J. R. Lowell writes: They are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak; They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think; They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three. The same view is held by J. H. Thom who wrote: “The real corrupters of society may be, not the corrupt, but those who have held back the righteous leaven, the salt that has lost its savor, the innocent who have not even the moral courage to show what they think of the effrontery of impurity – the serious, who yet timidly succumb before some loud-voiced scoffer – the heart trembling all over with religious sensibilities that yet suffers itself through false shame to be beaten down into outward and practical acquiescence by some rude and worldly nature.” In other words, many of those who should be today’s “prophets” are silenced, not by the fear of suffering and death to which the Biblical messengers were subject, but rather, good people today are afraid of being ridiculed and laughed at. We shun the reproach of those whose very actions make of them the very people we are to warn against and not only for the good of others, but for their own good! The prophets came to warn even the wicked that they should foreswear their evil deeds and return to God! Many did so as we can see when Jonah saved the people of Nineveh from the wrath of God by calling them to repentance. How many of the wicked of today would need only a warning from a good man to turn away from evil? We don’t know for the world has become so very evil! But even if there is no hope, we must continue to know God’s will and then make it known to our fellow man. That duty begins by learning all that we can of the evils that have come upon us in these (perhaps) Latter Days! For today all can see the consequences that obtain when good people choose to remain silent in the face of evil! Evil wins!
Digital Anything Posted on October 16, 2024 by john Dear Friends, It seems to me, one thing that’s being proved before our eyes, is that digital anything isn’t secure, robust or safe. Whenever anything is made digital it’s become less secure, in that it’s exposed to hackers getting at it, and making that data public. Less robust, since it can be changed at the push of a button. Plus, it’s less reliable, because we simply don’t know if anything digital is truthful anymore. The rational default should be… no, if it appears digitally, it’s probably a lie, and if the government says it, it’s definitely a lie. A road to Hell, always leads to Hell. That’s why we need to push back against the Hegelian manipulation that’ll be used to push digital currency. How can we expect digital currency to go different, than digital voting, banking or healthcare? We can’t. CBDCs will be a nightmare. Digital voting has been a total catastrophe. When the ballots were on paper, verifiable and hand counted, the results were in within an hour of the polls closing. Even as digital has ushered in an age where it can take days. Now that’s efficiency… or is it? With digital voting, the results are subject to change, depending on the whims of the hackers that find their way into the machines. Of course, with digital voting, there’s no need of voter ID… digital has made the whole thing a theater anyway. Electronic voting has taken political agency from citizens and placed it in the hands of the elite. As the elite did with freedom of speech, jury sentencing and contacting our representatives free through the mail. We can say that digital voting has alleviated us of the burden of blame. Since it makes us pawns. Social media is censored and politically correct ideas are promoted by digital magic. Rendering our ability to communicate subject to political intervention. To make sure we only talk about approved subjects in the approved manner. Else the elite claim we’re engaging in misinformation, disinformation, or maybe even malinformation. Call ’em what you will, they all mean, wrongthink. In promoting the power of the elite the digital age has been a demon send. It can make a lie appear to be reality. Digital technology has made surveillance, categorizing people and censoring, far more efficient. While it’s made communicating betwixt each other fraught with legal ramifications. Again, the introduction of digital technology to voting and communication has made them less secure, less safe and less reliable. If we go to a doctor… Our personal information is on the Dark Web, or soon will be, due to the incessant hacking done to digital servers. You don’t even have had to do business with a company for them to have all your personal information… dangling on an unsecured server. Just waiting to be plucked by a smart hacker and sold on the Dark web. Soon, it’ll be impossible to take out a loan because we won’t be able to identify ourselves… short of DNA, retinal scan or a fingerprint. Instead of facilitating commerce, the introduction of digital technology has introduced a myriad of security concerns. There’s no denying digital technology has unburdened us of the need to think though. Weakening our minds accordingly. As any muscle left flaccid long enough becomes weak. Instead of making information more credible, accessible and truthful, the digital revolution has made information more dangerous, unsecured, censored and manipulated. Given the history of digitizing things… can you imagine the utter catastrophe a digital currency would be? Combining the disaster of digital voting, with the censorship of social media, along with a total lack of personal security. The trifecta of prosperity liquidators. Then again, there are those who think, just because an action has always resulted in the same outcome… doesn’t mean it will, this time. Like jumping off a cliff… eventually, someone might sprout wings and fly. Wouldn’t that be great! Digital technology could make it appear to happen, as the bodies are hauled off. Maybe we should rethink the digital revolution? Sincerely, John Pepin
Appeasement – 1. the political strategy of pacifying a potential enemy in the hope of avoiding conflict—often by granting concessions. 2. an attempt to stop complaints or reduce difficulties by making concessions. Concession – 1. an act or an example of conceding, yielding, or compromising in some way, often grudgingly or unwillingly. Compromise – (n) 1. a settlement of a dispute in which two or more sides agree to accept less than they originally wanted. 2. something that somebody accepts because what was wanted is unattainable. (v) 1. to settle a dispute by agreeing to accept less than what was originally wanted. Ronald Reagan used to tell the story of the man trying to drain a swamp who finding himself surrounded by hungry alligators, starts throwing his fellow workers to the monsters to protect himself. But of course, in the end he will be eaten—just last of all! Reagan was illustrating the futility of appeasement which gains nothing for the user but a little time. Appeasement is often confused with compromise. This is easy if one is inherently honest. In a compromise, after each side gives a little in deliberations and both sides accept what is agreed upon as the final determination of the problem. But when one party considers any agreement as a step towardsa desired end rather than the solution of the problem, this “agreement” is, in reality, an act of “appeasement” by the other side. For far too long, conservatives have believed that each “compromise” we have reached with our liberal foes is the final answer to that particular problem—only to find out that in a day, or a week, or a year, the liberals are back demanding a more and greater “compromise” on an issue that conservatives had considered settled. Now, the first time this happens, no blame obtains to those who have been blindsided by the other group’s maneuvers. They were honest while their adversaries were not. However, the second—not to mention every time thereafter—that the same thing happens, the victims lose the right to call themselves ill-used. They—or in this case, we conservatives—cannot blame “the other side” when we knew—or should have known—that the concept of “compromise” existed on our part alone while our adversaries were determined to continue to work towards total victory albeit incrementally. Indeed, I am willing to state unequivocally, that the results of all of our side’s “negotiations” with liberals in the assault on, among other issues, Southern heritage represent not compromise—however much we may have fooled ourselves that such was the case—but appeasement. Therefore, to continue down that particular road has only one destination: the extermination of both the culture and the history of the South. Whatever we choose to call these “arrangements,” they are concessions on our part. To again paraphrase Ronald Reagan, if it looks like a duck, and it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck—whether or not you call it a swan. Given this situation, how should those who champion truth whether it be in history or in any other field, deal with our adversaries? Is there any hope of valid compromise or are we dealing with an unrelenting, uncompromising, intractable mindset that will settle for nothing less than total victory—that is, the extermination of the history and heritage of Western Civilization – and possibly a good deal more? Sadly, the answer to the above questions is, “no,” there is no hope and “yes” we are dealing with a mindset that will accept nothing less than the total extermination of the White race, Western Civilization and Christianity as embodied in American culture, history and heritage. Furthermore, no amount of manifest good-will or conciliatory gestures on our part will change a damned thing. The “offence” expressed by our adversaries for historical evils is itself either a matter of ignorance or intentional deceit. If we do not recognize this existing state of affairs, we are not simply woefully naïve, but stupid—even insane! Remember Einstein’s definition of that condition: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results! Furthermore, to continue down that same road guarantees our extermination both as a people and even individually. Having accepted the matter as it stands, what then is left for us to do? First, we must not “concede” or “compromise” without understanding that such “solutions” are nothing but appeasement, the only benefit of which—at least to us—is that it creates—or more properly used to create!—a momentary lull in the struggle. Secondly, we must make much better use of whatever time remains to us attempting to forestall total defeat even if we cannot achieve total victory. We must—I repeat must—understand that any and all “agreements” reached with our adversaries are incremental victories for them and total losses for our side. Most important, we must be prepared to use what little time remains to regroup and go on the offensive rather than congratulating ourselves that we have forestalled total defeat for the moment. At the very least we must understand that the other side will never compromise on its stated goals! You cannot reason with iniquity – there is no common ground! Therefore, we must develop strategies to use when the enemy’s assault is momentarily broken off because we know from experience that they are busy formulating their next plan of attack—and the whole thing starts again. Remember, it is easyto “get along” with our adversaries! all we have to do is surrender—and die!
We are mere weeks from the next – and possibly last – presidential election and I find myself getting more and more annoyed, aggravated and aggrieved with every passing day. For, as has been going on seemingly forever at this point are the endless (and I do mean endless!) requests for money that come with every e-mail and snail mail notice. Whether these are from local, state or federal candidates, whether the matter involves candidates running for high office or low, whether it even involves candidates for whom I am in a position to actually support or involves those running for office in areas in which I cannot vote (out of district and/or out of state), it matters not. For those I can’t support with my actual vote, the request is made on the basis of that candidate being (it is assumed!) of my party affiliation and therefore it is also assumed that I would want that candidate to be elected for that same reason. Obviously, if it is a candidate for whom I can vote, the matter needs no explanation. Usually, such requests immediately present to the targeted individual the amount of money collected by the candidate’s opponent and how much greater is that sum – and therefore how much more money – my money! – the petitioner needs in order to “pull even” much less “go ahead” of his or her opponent! Of course, all of this is framed within the context of the contention that absent the needful funds being supplied by the recipient of the request, the petitioner candidate hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of winning office! In other words, money and only money is the guarantor of victory! To that, I say, “NONSENSE!” or, in the alternative, if that is indeed the case, then God help us all! For at this point in time, I cannot imagine anyone with even a quarter (never mind a half) a brain believing that money can make any difference in any election! Both sides are abundantly clear in where they stand, what their agendas are, as well as their vision for the country and the future, and what they – at least as a party if not an individual – have already done to further that agenda. That alone should determine how people vote! It shouldn’t matter if anybody has better bumper stickers, lawn ornaments or paid advertisements. All of these “things” supposedly present information about the candidate and what he or she stands for. But let us be real here! We live in an information rich environment. Between television and the internet – never mind radio! – the only people who don’t know what’s going on are either dead or living off the grid. Now, that doesn’t mean that we/they know the truth, but we/they certainly do know a great deal of what has gone – and is presently going – on! And, thank God, there is sufficient “alternative media” out there if not to entirely overcome the mass media, then at least to put out enough factual information for those who care enough to seek it. In other words, if no candidate put out any advertisement or bumper sticker or yard sign or media commercial, people would still be very well informed as to who is who and what is what – the originalpurpose of political advertisements. And as we no longer have a system of candidates who would be acceptable to both sides simply because they are “good folks,” then we no longer have the presence of “middle of the road” office seekers encouraging cross party-line voting. It’s rather like a game of chess in which each side is sufficiently identified as to who they are and what they stand for. As their party labels do that already, there is no need for further commercials trying to attract voters! Of course, it is somewhat unfortunate that for one party at least, that situation is less so. With the Republicans, there is a far greater range of beliefs than exists among the Democrats! Now, in that sense, such advertisements may be beneficial to keep a Republican voter from putting into the position of candidate or into office someone who does not hold to his or her political and ideological values. But with the Democrats, that is not a problem and even in the case of a Republican voter, such advertisements matter only in the primaries, not in a general election where that choice has already been made! Therefore, once one arrives at a general election, the need to “inform the voters” of the candidates’ positions is patently ridiculous! If nobody said anything from the beginning of the election cycle to voting day, I doubt it would make one bit of difference! Thus, to constantly ask, request, nay, demand from me my small pittance to support what is already more than well understood is downright sinful as far as I’m concerned! Whether voters are intelligent and informed or mindless and programmed, they will vote according to their worldview; the politicians don’t need more money to achieve their aim. But, of course, money is always useful and today’s leaders believe strongly that our money is their money and therefore they use any number of enticements and offer any number of ways to make the transference of those funds from us to them! That we, the citizen/voter, are stupid enough to continue to finance what is a system designed for our destruction tends to prove that perhaps, just perhaps, they are right! Of course, there is always the possibility that there are still decent, honest, patriotic people out there who would govern wisely and well. But even so, they can be discovered if we have the character and perseverance to seek them out. Since we can no longer trust our “information networks,” and therefore the advertisements for which we are paying during an election cycle, it doesn’t cost anything – other than effort – to determine for ourselves the best candidates available. And so, I’ll keep my money, if you don’t mind (and even if you do!) and make my choice on election day. Now whether that choice will actually be counted is an unknown factor at this point in time. Indeed, if there were any way to guarantee a fair and free election, now that I would be willing to donate towards! That, and that only would get my money!
Wealthy Societies Posted on October 20, 2024 by john Dear Friends, It seems to me, what has always made wealthy societies, is access to resources made possible by trade. Especially those people with few local natural resources. Because places that import most things become industrial centers. Even in ancient times. Look at the pre-pottery Neolithic “city” of Sefer Tepe, a major hub of bead production. It could exist as a permanent community before agriculture. Trade, commerce and industry have always been, and always will be wealth creators. At the other extreme, we find that societies with an abundance, tend not to advance, have much industry or engage in trade. Why should they? They have all they need. It’s shortages that create the need to trade, and trade that brings in foreign resources and ideas, that lead to innovation. All of which lead to wealth. The existence of pre pottery neolithic permanent settlements have baffled archaeologists since their discovery. I maintain they were trading and industrial centers. Much ancient technology required tools that are stationary. It’s hard to imagine how a stone cup would be made without specialized tools. While a flint arrowhead or pestle are easily fabricated in the field, a stone cooking pot isn’t. Moreover, it’s easier to kill a few rabbits, and trade them for a stone cooking pot, than to spend the time to make one. A hunter gatherer existence is nearly perfect competition. Any advantage, no matter how small… is huge. That’s why places like Karahan Tepe existed. As prehistoric trading and fabrication centers for the local population. That fed itself, not by agriculture, but by trade. Japan was a backwater for thousands of years, until they came into contact with Western culture, and science. Which the Japanese people sifted through and quickly adopted what they saw as the best of it. Then exploded in wealth, commerce and science. Today Japan is at the leading edge of technology, science and innovation. Not because it’s blessed with natural resources, but because it became a trading and industrial powerhouse. Hong Kong grew into an economic giant despite it’s diminutive size, because all it had was commerce. No food, little water and a speck of land, it had to trade for everything, on the world market. What could it offer in trade… except the product of their labor? So the leaders allowed free enterprise to flourish and so did the economy. Until the CCP took over. Spain took literally tons of gold from the new world. Those riches made Spain the wealthiest nation on the planet. The Spaniards lived off that gold for a century. Once it was spent, they had no trade, commerce or innovation left. That had all gone away. Why learn a trade, why toil, and why farm… when there’s plenty of money? So people didn’t apply themselves, and when the money was used up, they became paupers. Rome was at one time the richest nation on Earth with the wealthiest capital. It became so rich, and that wealth made it so decadent, that it couldn’t field its own army. So it paid mercenaries to fight their wars. Until the mercenaries realized, why fight for the gold when we can just take it? So they did. Leading to the collapse of the Western Roman empire. If a people want to be wealthy, the path is not to take money and live in luxury, not to abet cronyism, or to regulate the economy to death… but to engage in trade with the world, import, export, innovate, industrialize, and allow free enterprise to work. Educate the kids to be entrepreneurs instead of worker bees. Use the military to keep trade routes open… not force the will of the local elites on the world, or as a tool of politically favored corporations. These things are only possible when the government is limited, free of corruption and transparent. That’s how economies are made wealthy. Those that try to regulate, tax, and spend a nation’s wealth on boondoggles, eventually find out, once you run out of other people’s money, to make them unable to earn more… ya’ll gonna get poor. Sincerely, John Pepin
