Yearly Archives: 2017

Culture, Economics, Governance

Is ‘drug’ the past tense?

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We seem to not be serious about – truly intent on solving – the growing drug threat in the United States.  “We” refers to our governing and policing institutions… and to all of us, one supposes.  While there are many subsets, and many individuals, of local, state and national agencies who are deeply committed to the fight, overall, our national policies have effectively allowed the trade to grow and corrupt many levels of law enforcement and justice.  While doing so, this “business” has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, destroyed families and spawned immeasurable volumes of criminal activity that has damaged many other thousands, if not millions of people.

Today our publicized problems center on “opioids” both “natural” and pharmaceutical.  A market developed by criminal drug-dealers has proven too attractive to ignore for multi-billion-dollar corporations, corrupting them and their medically licensed facilitators, daily prescribing their FDA-approved wonder drugs at clinics, hospitals and back rooms, nationwide.  Soft-headed federal welfare and subsidized medicine programs help irresponsible patients “pay” for their prescribed addictives.  One statistic tells us that it’s long past when our national battle tactics ought to have changed dramatically:  over 60,000 dead from opiate overdoses in one year.

Unfortunately, opioids represent simply and tragically just an aspect of the modern American drug culture.  It’s a culture that begins with candies, ice cream and juice-boxes rewarding good, or at least not too embarrassing, behavior, by 18- to 84-month-old infants, continuing unabated through aspirin, Tylenol, Advil, “arthritis formula,” Cold-Eze, Thera-Flu, Nyquil, Dayquil, 5-Hour energy, cigars, cigarettes, chewing tobacco, nicotine “Vaping,” Claritin, dextromethorphan, Robitussin, Afrin, Aleve, Excedrin, Motrin, and hundreds of other variations of over-the-counter feel-better concoctions for aches and pains,  “colds” and headaches, plus the dozens of prescription pain alleviators, allergy relievers, cold-symptom removers, cough syrups, tablets and inhalers… and we didn’t even get to actual pain “killers,” a most suitable name.

Every TV program advises consumers to question their doctors as to which sort of blood-thinner is best, what kind of goop will kill fungus, how to resolve breathing problems and 44 ways to get better sleep through chemistry… or better sex.  Once all of these conditions have been restored to desirability, it is crucial to eat, swallow or drink something to improve regularity and then avoid and cure hemorrhoids.  It’s a never-ending battle to achieve perfect health – or a perfect simulation of it.

Eventually we pay attention to ads for diabetes medications… other than juice-boxes, of course.

Doctors, in 2013, wrote narcotic prescriptions at a rate 272% of the 1991 rate.  That is, 207 MILLION prescriptions!  For 300 Million people?!  Gross opiate production had increased from 3,520 kilograms (7700 pounds) in 1993 to an astronomical 70,000 kilograms (155,000 pounds!) in 2007, which MORE THAN DOUBLED just 6 years later, to 150,000 kilograms!  What the Hell has our government done to protect the nation in this period?  Why, they’ve forced a “cutback” to only 108,000 kilograms!  Whoop.

Where did all this pain come from?  How did humans ever evolve without Dr. Feelgood?

Today we give pills not only when we feel sick… because we ARE sick, we give them when we just feel, well, not right.  We give boys hormone treatments when they say they want to be girls; we give related treatments to girls who feel like boys and even perform bilateral mastectomies on teenagers who don’t want to admit to being girls.  Boys are mutilated by removal of genitals.  What has “medicine” become?  It seems similar to Nazi experimentation, except that people in favor of the mutilations – chemical and otherwise – are the ones accusing realists of being the Nazis.

Is it just profit?  Much like the alcohol business, fortunes are not made in painkillers and other stuff from people who nurse a bottle of Scotch for 3 months.  Big money comes from people who consume a couple of bottles/packages/ounces a week or more – Scotch or Advil, Oxycontin or Aleve, marijuana or Lunesta.  Amidst all this we try to draw lines that cannot be crossed – like Bingo at the Parish Hall but no permitting of casinos, no, no, no.

We hate cocaine, for example, and we really hate crack cocaine, so no legalization for that stuff, no, no, no.  And heroin!  Oh… my… God, heroin?  No, no, no – a thousand times NO!  BUT(!)… if some powerful pharmaceutical manufacturer – powerful because of political contributions and constant lobbying – wants to distribute a few hundred Million capsules of SYNTHETIC heroin, then the mind/nerve altering effects can be described in wonderfully pharmaceutical terms and the distribution system liberally supplied – FDA approved, Medicaid-financed.

In an earlier career I worked with a Vietnam vet, a Marine, who had received shrapnel in one arm.  It was badly scarred and made possible the receipt of a check every month for his “disability.”  Every 3 months or so he had to go to Boston, to the V.A. hospital, and get tested for the level of feeling that was returning to his arm… or not.  Meanwhile he practiced not reacting to pins in the flesh of that arm.  Then, when he’d get tested, he could look stone-faced and continue his claim that he had no feeling in the arm, and the checks would continue.

Humans are very capable of lying to the point of severe discomfort, to get what they want.  Do we think proto-addicts wouldn’t lie to keep receiving pain-killers?  Even if all they were doing was selling each month’s supply?  Is the medical establishment that performs hundreds of thousands of abortions each year, unable to withhold excessive quantities of opioids?

They certainly can’t refrain from prescribing.  Two-thirds of patient visits result in a prescription… meaning upwards of THREE BILLION prescriptions for 300 Million people!  That’s 10 each.  We’ve all experienced the kindly scrip-recommendation from even the most caring physician (or nurse-practitioner).  It’s no surprise; most medico’s receive constant “education” from the pharmaceutical complex and there exists an inherent desire by them to provide advice that patients will experience benefits from, and that often means a drug of some sort.

Unfortunately, there are about ONE MILLION adverse drug reactions every year, yielding some 100,000 DEATHS – the fourth largest cause of death in the U. S.  We might consider that fentanyl-laced heroin or synthetic opiods also produce “adverse drug reactions.”  The differences can be distilled to two: the INTENT of the seller/provider, and the legal status of all concerned.  Both are interested in two things: making the customer feel better… and repeat business.

It’s all part of a national, societal culture of control of biology for human comfort.  Whatever we don’t like about nature… there is a drug – a chemical – to “fix” it.  “Addiction” is pejorative only because of the lesser qualities of the illegal providers.

Today states are racing to legalize marijuana, all 122 current strains of it because it will provide (choose a favorite): tax revenue for underfunded state budgets; ability to control quality and safety; stiff competition to illegal drug dealers, hopefully to stop illegal drug trade; funding for drug-treatment programs; reduced dependency on “bad” drugs; votes for those most supportive of legalization.  Another, really important provision is eliminating Timmy’s criminal record for possession and, one other: freeing up the justice system to concentrate on serious crimes.  After all, if “they” are going to get the stuff anyway, we might as well go along with it and raise some revenue to boot.  Who are we to interfere?

There are no adults… we’re a nation of juveniles.  And the drug “culture” is us, this most pampered generation.  If you weren’t sure of where you stood on socialized medicine, be mindful that such a system will cement the drug culture even more firmly in place.  Whoop.

Culture

The Religious Question

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Everyone seems to question religious doctrine these days… “everyone” meaning a large majority of Christians in Europe and the United States and Canada.  We think we have become “too smart” to believe that stuff.  That smartness is like an infection, similar to socialism, where our science, technology and ubiquitous governors (bureaucrats) are creating a much nicer world than “God” supposedly ever did.  The internet, gaming and pornography are meeting most of our needs; WalMart, Kohls and fast-food restaurants handle the rest.

And the rigors of marriage are so last Millennium – let the bureaucrats raise the kids.  I, mean, with pre-kindergarten, pre-school, K–12 and perpetual college, who really needs parents anymore?  The love-making part is OK, but even that’s becoming a big hassle; and courtship… forget it.  Hooking up and living together is fun but look at all the divorces.  No, that model doesn’t really work for us anymore.  If that’s the religious model, then let’s pass.  And it’s so expensive!  How much more pleasant driving around is.  Besides, my low-emissions hybrid helps to save the planet.

Oddly enough, Muslims are more serious about religion today than almost ever.  And the most serious expression of their most-serious religion is the destruction of Christianity – and of Christians, themselves, of course.  It’s as if we were in a race with terrorists to prove the unimportance of Christianity, except we’re not winning.  Muslims still want to kill us or convert us.  Jews are just as bad as Christians, in their book, so they are more than happy to kill them, too.  Jews are certainly willing to give up religious seriousness, along with Christians, so why do the Muslims care so much?  It’s a worthy question.

As Muslim terrorism has accelerated over the past 50 years there has been a parallel, mostly anti-Christian movement gaining steam in “the West:” atheism.   And this isn’t some “live and let live” form of God-less non-religion.  No.  It has become virulent… same infection, different strain.  Atheist don’t expend a lot of effort opposing Judaism, Buddhism or Hinduism – mostly they target Christianity.  Christmas makes atheists apoplectic, similar to its effect on Muslims.  Why on Earth do self-proclaimed non-believers – we’re talking scarlet-lettered “A” atheists, here, not agnostics or, presumably, not ignorant fools, but serious opponents of Christianity and its slightest mention… why the Hell do they care?

The broad network of atheists concentrate on the awful record of human organizations that operate in the name of doctrines other humans wrote stories about, derived dogma from, and implemented with motivations of personal and institutional power, as well as motivations of financial security.  There are thousands of years of policies and incidents – crimes, in fact – that belie the ostensible teachings of EVERY religious tradition.  Just collating and describing every human error will always yield plenty of material.  Indeed, an entire movement could be, has been, created out of the effort.  But that story is not complete, is it?

Nowhere in the vast network of atheist websites and their aggregation of terrible acts, is there a long list of extraordinary acts of charity by other humans deeply motivated by the overarching story of Christian sacrifice.

If your intention is to catalogue human failings, you will forever be busy.  You may also become blinded to phenomenal beauty, sacrifice, love and greatness.  However, rendering judgments about the existence of “God” based solely upon the much-edited and selected stories in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, or upon the evolving catechisms of churches, will always be somewhat erroneous.

There are but two places to stand in the debate about the truth of God’s existence: He exists or He doesn’t.  The rest of arguments on either side are inevitably biased for each advocate’s personal advantage, comfort, satisfaction or smug superiority.  Barring personal experience with God, Himself, all of our words are opinion, more or less informed.  Hearsay, we might conclude.  And, in Prudence’ view, too fraught with mysteries that may be balanced only with faith.  This in no way denigrates faith.  Faith is the best glue religion provides to cause populations to share codes of morals and conduct.

Prudence tells us that God would not launch our long climb into perfection with a list of mysteries.  It doesn’t make sense that He would hold us to standards we cannot understand – there must be a logical structure to God’s Law, logic that humans can grasp and apply to our social organization.  Further, it seems reasonable to assume, following God’s Law must be good for people and for Life, itself, and, still further, and logically, for God, himself who never, by definition, acts outside of his own “Law,” since He is that Law.

So, for those of us who stand on the side of God’s reality, admittedly thanks to a measure of faith, there must be a value to God for the creation and existence of humans with the free will to choose between His law and earthly evil.  That is, there must be a BENEFIT to God to go to the trouble of creating humans.

Hinduism provides some insight to the logic of God’s existence, through the laws of Karma.  There is a near-universal understanding of what Christianity states as: “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” which is to say: “…so MUST ye reap.”  Karma is more complex than that, of course, because of its connection to re-embodiment of the soul.  Western Christianity does its best to suppress the possibility of being truly “born again,” but even the Bible includes references to it.  In one view, the New Testament provides the opportunity to return, through karma, to resume self-perfection, arriving after being “judged and found wanting,” agreeing to accept the rigors of a life that will provide the opportunities to “balance” what is “wanting” – karma.  Only by cleaning up all of our negative acts in whatever lifetime, can we achieve acceptance into “heaven,” if that is our goal.  Whether we call it Nirvana or Heaven, or some other, mankind generally believes in rewards in an afterlife for good living in this life.  Is there a logic to this?

There is if God also benefits.  What if – just consider – that God’s Law that tells mankind to “go forth and multiply,” applies equally to Him.  He is the Law, by definition, so of course it does.  In other words, individual perfection is logical if God is ENHANCED by humans’ choices to adhere to His Law and not succumb to the comforts of evil.  In other, other words, God becomes happier when his “children” do right.

Oh, that’s impossible, you might say.  God is all there is.  But, then, who are we to limit Him… if we are standing on His side, after all?  After all, you get to keep only what you give away!  In those other words, it is only the ACTION of charity – or of following the Law – that stays with your soul.  The other side of that is that an evil action must be balanced in order for your soul to progress into “Heaven.”  It’s very logical.

And, it’s not a mystery.  There is a value and purpose to being “good” and not “evil.”  Part of the value is that society and civilization, itself, holds together through the application of shared morals.  Society functioning, strengthening families and children, educating them and protecting them, is a value.  Only in strong societies do people have the opportunities to worship and, one hopes, to learn greater aspects of the Law.  No mystery there.

Atheists perform an important function.  They continuously expose our flaws, particularly  human failures in the guise of religion.  And well they should.  They may be blind to some things, but they’re searchlight-clear on crucial others.  If they can recognize, as Karma describes, that life is a series of tests and that earth is the testing place, then they might accept that belief in God is a test and that disbelief is also a test.  It really doesn’t serve anyone to attempt to determine whether others are passing or “failing” a test, only whether we, ourselves are passing.  If belief in God generates hatred and death, it is reasonable to think that a test is being failed.  Likewise, if disbelief generates hatred or worse, that is also evidence of a failure to pass.

Every event, whether we deem it good or bad, is an opportunity to choose good or evil.  One can stand in judgment of God if he or she wishes, and say that this or that earthquake, flood or disease is an indictment of God, but what is the value of that except to sow hatred?  If God were to place us all in nurseries so that we would be perpetually comfy and fed, free of disease – free of choices, in effect, what value would humans have?  There would be no growth, no strength, no ability to make ourselves more perfect.

If there were no standards to meet or tests to pass, life would be useless; there’d be no horizon, no mountains to climb, no wonder to fulfill by finding out.  No, you non-believers, that there are tests is not proof there is no God but, rather, that there is.

It is our response to the test that we can take with us, not our comfort.  Still, you should keep on holding up your mirror, reflecting back at us our flaws and errors in God’s name.  The original question, though, remains.  Why do opposing religions, best exemplified by Muslims in opposition to every other belief structure including atheism, become so hateful toward others?  What do they care?  I think the only care great enough is that their chosen enemies may be right.

Culture, Education

Little Things Mean a Lot

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When Rudy Giuliani became mayor of New York in December of 1994, having been a prosecutor, he instituted a policing philosophy that gave importance to “the little things.”  These were little things like broken windows, littering, vandalism, petty thefts, truancy and the like.  He’d seen the cumulative degradation that took place in neighborhoods’ and even individuals’ characters, when small deviations from decency went un-chastised and uncorrected.  The next offense, public or private, singular or neighborhood, would be just a bit worse, and on and on, until the new normal became neighborhoods where good people put themselves in “jail” for safety, while feral criminals held sway “in the streets.”

Sanctioning and anticipating the little things produced a big reduction in “big” things.  The city became cleaner as well as safer.  “Stop and frisk” appeared to prevent crimes in the highest-crime areas and more people invested in the city… as in living in the city.  Between the mid-nineties and 2006 the population of Manhattan, alone, increased by some 40,000.  People react to high levels of caring in their neighborhood.  It’s a lesson that applies to groups as small as two.

In many smaller cities and towns it’s not uncommon to see signs or bumper-stickers that admonish the reader to “Think globally – Act locally.”  Oddly, these same places are where little acts of uncaring are common, while commensurate acts of “caring” are made public.  Consider this example:  A woman – and often, sadly, it is a woman  – will finish offloading groceries into her car and then carefully leave the carriage in the open parking space next to hers, or propped on the curb of the island in front of her and other’s cars, rather than pushing it 20 or 30 steps to the cart corral provided.  Sometimes they look around to see if anyone is watching, but most often not.

The cart corral became a fixture in store parking lots decades ago when store owners gave up their hopes that customers would return the cart to the store whose owner had provided it for their convenience.  At the same time jobs were created for some fellow to go out into the lot to retrieve the loaned carts that customers were too offended to return.

“Well, hey,” you might be thinking, “people are busy and the carts let us buy more stuff in one trip.  It’s a small cost for the store to pay for the increased business.”  Except it’s not a small cost, and uncaring individuals may impose costs on fellow shoppers quite easily with their failure to return the favor of the loan of that cart, particularly when it rolls into a parked car or is hit accidentally when a harried driver thinks he or she can pull into an open space where the cart was carefully parked out of laziness, earlier.

And, let’s not overlook the cost every shopper pays to have others “pick up” after them.

But let’s compound the costs by recognizing what happens when a woman with children pulls the same stunt.  I know, I know… she can’t leave her children alone or apart from herself for more than 3 seconds.  She puts the kids in their car-seats and buckles them in, offloads her groceries and is suddenly incapable of locking her car and placing the loaned cart in the corral, seconds away and in view of her vehicle and its precious cargo.  So, she, in effect, discards the valuable cart the store owner loaned to her, and blithely teaches tomorrow’s leaders that convenience trumps courtesy – that the implied contract she made with the store when she accepted the convenient use of the cart does not have to be lived-up-to!  She will wonder how, at age 13 or so, those grown-up munchkins think the world revolves for their edification – including their parents.

Small disturbances yield larger and larger ripples of dismay and, one might recognize, degeneracy.  “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”  That quote comes from the 17th century, but refers to Proverbs 13:24, “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.”  Every aware and loving parent grasps the need to make the sanction of bad behavior as close to immediate as possible.  The positive lesson will be learned and remembered.  It is valuable to discomfort yourself a little and return the cart.

There is no sanction as immediate as shame.  Yet, we’ve decided, educationally, to remove shame as a human guidance system, as it may impact a child’s “self esteem,” the strengthening of which has become paramount… to society’s detriment.  The main vector for building self-esteem is to eliminate shame, which means to eliminate rights and wrongs according to absolute social agreements, be they from shared – or similar – religious philosophy or strict legal constructs.  Relative good and bad, determined by temporary, largely uninformed or misinformed feelings – which is to say popular beliefs, often shifting with political demands and broadcast unfairnesses or, perhaps hatreds derived from both, leaves individuals free to feel and act as they think best, based on popular opinions that spread like wildfire, unfiltered.

The result is a sort of sovereignty without responsibility, where laws may be declared “bad” or “wrong” and no longer binding in this or that case.  This form of freedom shrinks, automatically, as rule upon rule upon rule must be imposed to “protect” the new personal rights devised at the speeds of change exemplified by schools of fish or flocks of birds.

Littering is another example.  Each instance is a small thing.  “What will this matter?” the offender thinks, “Look at the trash in the street… mine makes no difference.”  Ah, but it does.  Cigarette butt by gum wrapper by coffee cup, the action of tossing one’s inconvenient trash out of the car window or, simply, on the ground, creates a sort of callous over the fine membrane of community fellowship.  Someone who is practiced at trashing his own town or neighborhood is more likely to disregard the laws and mores of where he or she lives, unless it is convenient to follow them.  Many times such people live in a carefully protected and cared-for home, sometimes fenced and gated, making the point that he or she cares about him- or her-self, but not a whit about others.  Society breaks down when such are the inhabitants.

Sometimes the litterer lives amidst trash, caring not about him- or her-self or about anyone else – including children, in those environments.  Their minds may be just as trashy.  Underlying such surface depravity is a hatred for country, community and self, often projected outward as hatred for others.  Such members literally impose costs on their neighbors, yet it costs nothing to respect oneself, one’s family and children and one’s place of residence.  Discarding one’s trash in a proper receptacle is practically free, as is cleaning up one’s attitude.

Soon, because a messy living condition breeds hopelessness and resentment, there are numbers of weak-minded people who may be led into hate campaigns against their own country or neighbors.  Society’s future and its ability to create happier lives is inversely proportional to the extent of self-inflicted hopelessness.

The two greatest institutions of hopefulness: churches and schools, have been transformed in a generation or two, into irrelevance through socialist philosophizing and, now, virulent atheism.  No longer are religious pillars of right and wrong respected; no longer do government schools reinforce right and wrong – it’s all situational ethics, and we’re paying the price.

Maybe we’re too smart to be bound by religious mumbo jumbo, conscience or shame.  Is it really possible – or likely – that a majority of Americans will pull together to clean up their streets, parks, government and politics, while believing that America deserves to be swept away because it’s not perfect?  And whose perfection would that be?

 

Immigration, Responsibility

Let me in, Wheeeouu!

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The city and courts of San Francisco have made ever so much clearer how mentally dispossessed they are, of any semblance of America, and Americanism, and of Decency.  And, of Justice, Prudence dictates.

Jose Ines Garcia Zarate is not – was not – an immigrant.  Señor Garcia Zarate is and was an illegal entrant into the nation and into political subdivisions of the United States of America.  To be an immigrant, or to immigrate into a new country implies legality of action.  It implies that said immigrant has a valid place to be in his or her new country, that he or she intends to “settle” therein and, therefore, to live there legally, perhaps to gain citizenship.  It is for the furtherance and fulfillment of such implications that a nation would institute immigration laws; and it would be to prevent the obverse of the aforementioned implications that those same laws would be enforced.

Nations have a clear, hitherto well-understood obligation to define and enforce the laws that define their borders whether on land or water or, as is now the case, at airports.  Indeed, such enforcement is the first and most fundamental contract of citizenship – even of legal residence – that obligates any nation… else its nation-hood is false.

Amazingly, there have developed numerous pockets of citizens, some of them elected by their peers to represent the highest qualities of citizenship, thereby qualifying them to hold office in various levels of government, all of whom disbelieve these obligations of nation-hood.  Each of those elected has sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America, meaning ONLY of the United States of America.  They may swear to uphold the constitution of one of the United States, but that cannot, by law, presume to deny the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution.

The existence of the nation known as the United States of America, whose laws are defined by the Constitution, carries the clear obligation to establish and enforce laws governing both borders and immigration, citizenship and residency, incarceration and deportation.  There is no LEGAL space in those constructs where officials of any State or subdivision thereof, having been sworn to office, can elect to not be bound by the laws of the United States, feelings notwithstanding.

Any individual citizen or legal resident who were to take it upon himself or herself to knowingly fail to follow the laws of any town, city, county, State or of the United States nation, becomes a criminal upon such failing; further, the status of being sworn to office can in no way change the criminality of failing to live by or uphold any of the laws of the land… at any level.  Any municipal or State official who not only knowingly but publicly fails to follow or uphold the laws he or she SWORE to uphold upon assuming office, is a damned liar, not to mention an unethical pig whose word is less than slop.

Worse, it could be said, such an official is traitorous.  He or she could be said, given the conditions outlined above, to be consorting with and harboring, known federal criminals, wanted on one or more charges.  These actions betray an extraordinary mental twist, one that ought to deny that official his or her office, federal, state or local.

In fact and logic there is NO official obligation to either provide for or protect any illegal entrant, beyond basic humane treatment during the process of returning said illegal entrant to his or her point of origin as may best be determined.  Collectively, this nation has no more obligation than that, as well.

Illegal entrants, by virtue of presence, alone, have no Constitutional protections, which is to say, no “Bill of Rights” under the Constitution of the United States.  No crime committed by an illegal entrant deserves free public defense in court, nor does it deserve any form of “plea” bargain or appeal of verdict.  Illegal entrants are not entitled to jury trial, “Miranda” rights or specific protections from search of their persons or property.  Technically, they may be charged and held without benefit of a Grand Jury indictment.  They have no Constitutional protection against double-jeopardy, nor any specific right to free speech, assembly or redress of grievances.  They are not citizens or even legal residents.

That Constitutional rights are afforded illegal entrants is a failure of enforcement of the very Constitution in which those rights are enumerated.  It is a failure to uphold the rights of citizens.   To treat so-called “illegals” like citizens is, itself, a crime.  Such confusion of our governing obligations is a reflection of the ascendancy of emotion to a level above that of law – law that lately is applied more strictly to citizens than to illegal entrants.  It appears to have infected judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys and is corrosive to the rule of law and to the Fourteenth Amendment among others.

Some political subdivisions want to allow illegal entrants to vote, a right won by the blood of hundreds of thousands of American citizens.  There being absolutely NO legal basis for Constitutional protection of illegal-entrant non-citizens, one must dig very deep to find a justification for doing so, along with the affording of comforts like welfare, medical care and public education.  Is there an agenda, political or economic, that is furthered or fulfilled by harboring illegal entrants?  While such does nothing to change the illegality of failures at federal, state and local levels, especially by sworn officials, the discovery of said agenda might provide a reason to understand the public willingness to break laws on behalf of illegal entrants.

We are told by otherwise rational officials, including congressmen and women and senators, that illegal entrants pay taxes.  For this we should be grateful, we are told, because the ILLEGAL contributions illegal-entrant laborers make toward Social Security (on stolen or fabricated identities), will benefit our retirees.  No mention is made of the crimes involved, especially when illegal entrants collect Social Security payments on stolen Social Security numbers.

We are assured by sworn officials that many illegal entrants entered our nation illegally for very “good” reasons, such as “to work” and to “make a better life” for themselves or their families.  No mention is made of the livelihoods that are stolen or devalued of United States citizens, the only people to whom said sworn officials have any obligation under law, whatsoever.

We are told that law-breaking officials are in favor of deporting illegal entrants who are charged with “serious” crimes, for which stance they seek public approval.  However, this hollow pronouncement overlooks or obscures the arrogation by such officials of a role to determine on their own judgment, without benefit of law or process, which crimes are serious and which are to be ignored.  There is no amount of tax to be collected that justifies the insertion of personal opinion by ANY official as to which crimes committed by ANYONE, much less an illegal – therefore known-criminal – alien, deserve adjudication and which do not.

Indeed, the arrogation of this role, inserted between criminal and civil codes and those charged under law with their enforcement, is itself a crime, made worse by its belying of officials’ sworn statement to uphold “the laws.”

These same have told us that the fears of illegal entrants concerning deportation do, or may, prevent the solving of crimes known to them, since they will fail to speak to police officers given those “fears.”  This is presented as some sort of justification for their (officials’) criminal distortion of enforcement actions by the insertion of their personal judgments as noted above.  This argument is specious and obfuscatory, since illegal entrants OUGHT to be fearful of deportation.

And so, we come back to the matter of Kate Steinle’s illicit death.  A California jury, ostensibly ignorant of immigration issues surrounding señor Garcia Zarate, agreed on the crime of possession of a firearm by a felon.  The lies contained in Garcia Zarate’s initial statements did not sway their rejection of even an involuntary manslaughter charge.  They may have been strictly – very strictly – correct in the particular, and peculiar, circumstances of Miss Steinle’s death, but the shooting was a crime resulting from crimes committed by elected officials in San Francisco.  The killing of Steinle was not “an accident.”

Ultimately, the arguments of the open-borders enthusiasts are summed up as follows: You’ve been stupid about immigration for decades so you can’t stop being stupid, now – it’s not fair.

Culture, Economics, Governance, Responsibility

“Trumpism” is a ghost

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Much is made, of late, about “white privilege” and “racism” and about some sort of racial “hatreds” that must exist, all bumper-stickered into the term, “fascism.”  By denigrating everyone who is not negroid in appearance, the loose forces that aim to destroy the ideas of America and this nation/society/culture, itself, cause many to question everything about our heritage.  The attacker always has the advantage until a true counterattack can be mounted.

What the “antifa” is fighting is not hatred or even racism, it’s anger – anger to which “whites” have no evident right – anger about the loss of the actual, historic, fundamental and incompletely codified American Dream: that all kinds of people can live and thrive together, sovereign in their God-given rights and responsible to themselves and others for the consequences of their own actions.  That’s the “Dream.”

The dream isn’t home ownership, or multiple cars or too much to eat… and, it isn’t universal welfare (slavery) either.  It’s freedom, a dream that is a nightmare for government types and other tyrants.  It’s a nightmare for one-worlders and financial globalists whose ultimate wish is to control production and every producer/worker through taxation and sufficient consumerism to keep them quiet.

All that individuals need to do to become “an American,” is to adopt the culture of freedom and responsibility, and to respect our laws.  It is the world’s winning-est formula despite all the flaws it is growing out of.  The Dream is worth saving and preserving against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

There’s a common saying, that if you wait for all the lights to turn green before you back out of your own driveway, you’ll never get anywhere.  It is infinitely more advantageous to everyone else, along with YOU, the driver of your life, if you will take responsibility for guiding your vehicle through the myriad traffic jams and delays on your way to YOUR OWN personal goal – your pursuit of happiness.  Waiting for a government-type to provide both your goals and means is to adopt a new slavery that is attempting to trap every one of us in its web of when and how to live.  God forbid.

Do you think the death-panels of socialized medicine are a form of freedom?

The anger that has been rather hidden through the fourth civil war and its consequences since the early 70’s, began to surface for certain during the Obama years.  Perhaps a tiny fraction were angry because he was black (by choice, not genetics), but most cared not about his “blackness” but about his “pinkishness.”  A virtual communist, Mr. Obama led us away from the true Dream as rapidly as he could, a goal that deserved the anger of those who still choose to be free.

Enter Mr. Trump.  Sometimes the best expression of wisdom for a political leader is to recognize where the people are headed and run to get in front of the movement.  America was, and is, uneasy.  We like to “tolerate” exceptions to Protestant ethics and traditions; we DON’T like to have them forced upon us and, worse, protected by new laws that coerce us to adopt new ways of life.  We are angry about having to fight century-old battles again, when there is no possibility of victory – at least, no victory that is good for the country.  We are angry about being accused of being born guilty of other people’s sins.

Trump isn’t president because he’s the great leader a majority of Americans admire – far from it, as polls indicate.  He is president because he speaks his mind and is not afraid of causing silly offenses.  He favors what a majority favor; he points out duplicity that a majority can see; he stands up for what a majority will stand up for.  Mrs. Clinton represented things a majority fears in government, and a direction a majority do not want to follow.  It’s pretty simple; writing a book was not needed.

There is no “Trumpism.”  The existence of the Trump administration does not represent a new political force focused on Trump, himself, nor will his family be slobbered over like Kennedy’s, sufficient to propel relatives or offspring into other offices.  But the ideas, beliefs, loves and fears behind him will bring others into office.  That’s not “Trumpism,” it’s Americanism.

Culture

Strangers in a Strange Land

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The United States is in a strange place, and rather suddenly it seems. Prudence instructs that our disenchantments are the result of a fourth “civil war” and no less. Our first was the “American Revolution” in which we effectively seceded from England. Indeed, the fact that we so eloquently justified our right to do so left those states that seceded from the Union in the second Civil War, convinced of their right to do the same when they judged that their government had become tyrannical, too.

Our third civil war followed World War One and the foolish financing that led to the second president Roosevelt. His “New Deal” changed the nature of U. S. citizens’ relationship to government and he expanded that socialist framework to a global vision for every nation and people in a platform he called the “Four Freedoms.” Along with the freedoms of speech and worship he proclaimed freedoms from “want” and from “fear.” It was heady stuff for an administration whose policies had failed to cure a decade of depression, by January of 1941. Roosevelt was justifying a new world order and a global “United Nations” that would somehow enforce the American-inspired four freedoms. The United States was “neutral” in the face of the “gathering storm” in Europe and F. D. R. wanted us to straighten things out for everyone by changing that stance.

And there’s nothing like a good war to strengthen one’s industries – if one is lucky enough to not risk being bombed to rubble. The U. S. that emerged from World War Two was a vastly different place, sporting a new consciousness about its essential, police-like and perpetually meddlesome role on the planet. What Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini desired by starting WW II, the United States achieved by winning it: global dominance. And it’s expensive.

Like Vietnam, our next war may be lost at home. Despite our winning every significant battle and thousands of small ones, Americans were told we were suffering embarrassing defeats and doing little else but burning children with napalm. The narrative of the war was not one of incredible victories by the toughest of soldiers, but was controlled by America-lasters who wanted us out of it, and they got their wish. Which is not to gloss over the fact that, Vietnam was the dirtiest war we’ve ever fought and possible the most corrupt. The flow of heroin, primarily, increased phenomenally, facilitated by our own military operations and the CIA. It meshed perfectly with our fourth civil war, watched, voted for and barely resisted through the sixties, the consequences of which are now eroding our innate strength as a nation and as a culture.

It took 100 years for our first civil war to manifest in people’s hearts; 84 years to manifest a second, the Civil War; about 70 years for the socialist civil war to start; and only 25 years for the fourth: sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. It has been fifty years since then. Fifty years of gaseous economics, destruction of religion, derelict government and near severance from our own history – thank you, educators. Is there a fifth civil war coming? Where there will be another upsetting of social order? Will we become stronger? More licentious? Purer of heart and strong in character? Will we clean up marriage and families? Strongly encourage two-parent families having seen the failure of core social groups with single or government-parent families?

Or will we slide farther and farther away from what America means, into a drug-addled globalism where “America” was but a chapter of diversion from global tyranny? Or, maybe we’ll clean up pornography… ehh, probably not. We’ll tax it.

Culture, Politics 2017

The Erosion of Reason

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My neighbor and I took a break from cleaning up after some big winds and began discussing, somehow, the removal of statues “celebrating” people who “fought for slavery,” a process he seemed to be in favor of. My neighbor is a truly fine person, doing an excellent job of raising his children, including the wisdom of involving them with a church, actually the same building I grew up in, but which is caught up in a new popularization of biblical lessons that is inherently “liberal” in the modern American sense.

In any case, the message from today’s pulpit supports the end of slavery, and supports being nice to everyone, which last doesn’t jibe with my understanding of the Bible, but feels good and seems harmless. It is apparently deeply sympathetic to the current effort to remove statues of Confederate war heroes, for which there is a certain, odd logic.

Unfortunately, in Prudence’ view, the current agitation about these historic relics has less to do about “slavery” and more to do with current anti-Americanism, if not Communism, or “anti-culturalism” in the worst ways. This is an unfortunate usurpation of God’s lawful right to guide human beings.

The failure of American politics is outpictured in the wave of “offense” that stems from everything and anything the founders of the American engine believed in, whether good or bad. The tiniest drop of currently-defined “badness” taints the entire kettle, all the way back to Columbus and probably further. We can never lose sight of the fact that when Ooog fashioned the first flint scraping tool he smelled pretty bad and ate meat and cared not a whit about global warming.

A church… not “a” church, I would say, but THE church in Alexandria where George Washington worshipped, and where Robert E. Lee did as well, has “decided” to remove the plaques referencing both men’s attendance since they are mounted next to the altar and very visible. Eventually they’ll find a “suitably prominent” alternate location for them. This is being done in reaction… reaction, to the current wave of rabid offense-taking. Anything remotely connected to slavery – and some connections are pretty tenuous – apparently deserves a new round of hatred by Millennials, primarily, who have learned politicians and other public personages are so obsequious and weak-kneed as to trip over themselves while attempting to disapprove of the latest discovery of “offense” even more than the muddle-headed mobs have claimed to do.

This isn’t really “liberalism” although liberals appear to support the movement for a couple of reasons: 1) It fits with their overall desire to manipulate society toward a “new” world that may be defined by social theories and not by history; and, 2) Conservatives and Constitutionalists don’t like it.

What is the end-game for anti-cultural, anti-history agitation? Of equal interest: who finances “antifa” and other anti-American groups? Well, George Soros, for many. Soros, a former Jew who helped the Nazis and denied his Jewishness to save himself, provides copious financial support to a dozen “anti-facist” “protest” or “resistance” groups. Indeed, with his money, such groups recruit AND PAY discontented and mostly unemployed young men and women to protest for $15 an hour. What foul rot.

We cannot stifle this man or his anti-Americanism, for our own Constitution prevents government intervention. Or, perhaps it doesn’t. Perhaps Soros, that warm and loving backer of so many liberal and Democrat causes and candidates, should be seen as an enemy combatant, fomenting revolution, terrorism and riots. We have ways to engineer change in the United States, and his are not part of them. Unfortunately the embedded fascists… er, liberals, at all levels of federal bureaucracy have remained uninterested in exposing his influence and danger: he’s simply a Democrat “donor.”

Sometimes in order to grow and truly progress an individual must acknowledge and expose a personal flaw or endangerment; or a family must expose a criminal or addicted or predatory son, daughter, cousin or uncle, in order to “come clean,” as it were and begin dealing with the “infection” and to heal from it. And, sometimes, a nation must renounce, denounce and expunge a rotting threat like slavery and secession, racism, the Ku Klux Klan and the like, communism and its traitors after World War II, and, I observe, the incestuous poison of anti-Constitutionalism, anti-Americanism and anti-Heritage enemies, both home-grown and loosely invited in. For it is they who find only fault in our system and who ignore, if not hate, the majesty of the American idea – like Soros.

Drawn to this newly muscular anti-Americanism/anti-culturalism, which is to say, anti-Christian-ism (or aggressive atheism for many), are modern surrealist movements, like homosexuality, trans-genderism, socialism, and various flavors of anti-capitalist racialisms. These are they who have grown up without Western or Indo-European philosophical understanding, reaching adulthood with no capacity for self-control or economic responsibility. Every form of mental or pleasurable distraction comprises their waking hours. The business of making or keeping America strong is the worry of others; the excitement of joining mobs who revel in America’s problems is the concern of Soros’ type of minions.

Amidst this, our fourth civil war, churches and other institutions (like SCHOOLS) get caught up in pleasing the loudest, angriest movements – especially those undercutting fundamental social strengths. Some churches fear irrelevance and now display the “rainbow” welcome signs and banners. Despite the warmth and caring Christians try to convey with the new messaging, they have, in my view, fallen prey to leftist surreality.

The message of the Bible is not to “tolerate” everything; it also is not to kill those whose actions are intolerable. But Christians are instructed to live and act in certain ways. Compassion is not tolerance and vice-versa. Christians are encouraged to tell the Story and to teach the Word, and the Word doesn’t encourage acceptance of unusual acts and lifestyles while it does encourage the strengths and habits that make for strong families and societies that can create more Christians. The Word itself serves the world well – every flaw and interpretation that humans inject into Biblical lessons, and the political organizations that grow from them, should logically not be allowed to impugn the Word.

The rainbow philosophy is antithetical. Many churches have succumbed to it in some sort of conjunction with purely political forces for whom every vote is equivalent regardless of motivation. For churches, it seems to me, every motivation is not equivalent and “Christian” clergy have an obligation to make that clear: it’s not a political rainbow – it’s a clear white light.

Ultimately, the forces who have won the battle of the rainbow-welcomes across society and our legislatures, are intent on dissolving the hold of Christianity and the Judeo-Christian ethic that underpins “Western” culture. The dissolution of the family and a separation from history are their most powerful tools. They rely on ignorance as they replace age-old truths with newly minted unrealities, some of which have actually generated laws governing the majority. It’s weird and worth resisting.

Economics, Governance

A Few Words on Capitalism – Part 2

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Free-enterprise productive surplus is the antithesis… no, the ANTIDOTE, to tyranny. That is, if it shares across all populations. Capitalism without reason is merely a new tyranny; capitalism wisely checked against excessive accumulation of productive power, is the greatest elevator of the human condition yet devised. To do such wise checking, however, wise governors are required.

The foundation of the American experiment has been that of a democratic REPUBLIC wherein representatives of numbers of citizens and of the several states (House and Senate, respectively) ought to be those most trusted by the citizenry to REPRESENT their interests, among which are national security; defense and sanctity of borders, coasts and harbors; honest and unbiased court officers; equal application of the laws – civil and criminal; honest and careful expenditure of tax and other revenues; fair and honest taxation such that all citizens share a portion of the cost of government, courts and defense; domestic safety (“tranquility”) and sound money. All of these reasons for creating government are at varying levels of failure.

Unlike capitalism, itself, governments quickly devolve into somewhat self-serving entities, enriching those who work in government at the expense of citizen-tax-payers, generally rewarding and celebrating degrees of failure. Capitalism quickly roots out failure and assigns its productive capital to enterprise that is more likely to succeed (in terms of generating profit) and as a result, be able to destroy debt. If only government could do the same.

One of the overarching themes of the Federalist papers was avoidance of the concentration of power. Legislative power was to be granted democratically, and kept separate from Executive power and from Judicial power. Judicial power, itself, was to be carefully delineated and separate: “independent of” either Executive or Legislative power. The executive was designed to be subordinate to the Legislative, although with unique powers and authorities, and democratically selected by voters in the several states wholly separately from election of the Legislative representatives.

Another Federalist theme – caveat – is that governments cannot be trusted to reform themselves, leaving that burden to an educated CITIZENRY, by ballot, presumably, but also, as clearly stated in the Declaration of Independence, by the inherent right to throw off government whose failures render it tyrannical, and replace it with one better suited to the general welfare of the citizens FROM WHOM IT DERIVES ITS POWERS.

So citizens, educated about the Constitution and all founding documents, are, like capitalist CUSTOMERS, important to the success of both government and capitalism. Capitalist customers seeking to purchase a new, larger flat-screen TV will seek information and reviews, compare specifications and read the guarantees before looking for the best price offered by a half-dozen sources.

If only we would exercise our roles as citizens holding ultimate power over our governors, with the same diligence. Indeed, we know more about our next auto purchase than we do about our next medical procedure, and more about the auto dealer than about the hospital, clinic or medical group that will provide it. Now we think entrusting a government that fails to operate EVEN ITSELF honestly and fairly, with ultimate decisions over our health and life-span, will somehow make sense, albeit in an alternate universe.

It is high time we stop denigrating our innate capitalist sense and teach our children to apply it to every aspect of life in the United States – not least of which is which governor or government we should “buy.” Capitalism, as a means of analysis and judgment, holds the key to not only wise use of resources, but also to the wise recruitment of competent managers and governors of our largest enterprise of all.

That government has become nearly an opponent of free-enterprise and the fundamental right to private property and the fruits of one’s labors, is demonstrated by the existence of rapidly growing current deficits approaching $20 Trillion. That debt has accumulated, supposedly, by our “representatives,” on our behalf. So has the dramatic loss of value of our “dollar,” now a mere instrument of confidence. For shame. Capitalists arise!

Economics, Governance, Representation, Responsibility

A Few Words on Capitalism – Part 1

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Every one of us is a “capitalist.” This, in the sense that we all strive to obtain as much safety, comfort, material goods and security for old age, as we possibly can for the least amount of effort necessary. It doesn’t matter for whom we vote. Many of us simply want to be free TO acquire what we need; others wish to be free OF the need to acquire. In both philosophies we are attempting to gain with minimum effort.
But that’s not the whole story, is it?

Every person is motivated to act differently. We all have our own “profits” that cause us to expend MORE than minimal effort necessary to take care of ourselves and our family. Some are motivated to gain as much as possible in terms of material goods and “wealth.” Some want to be charitable and will work more than necessary so as to give to others. Some are motivated by artistic expression, drama, music or writing. Some by the gaining of power over others, one way or the other. Many profits.

The invention of money both simplified and complicated capitalism. For some, in twisted ways, the accumulation of money, itself, became their “profit.” Such people are able to “buy” the necessities for which others strive, but they are also consumed by numbers and the quantities of money they represent. They have different fears and joys than “regular” people. Unfortunately, they come to realize that they can also “buy” power – influencing government-types to protect their accumulated wealth.

Government types come from those for whom “profit” means power over others, over “public policy” and over taxation and, unfortunately, over “public” budgeting. Tapping into the “profits” of others, familial, financial and charitable, provides the most ways to acquire at minimal effort for those so motivated. They concentrate in governments. Almost inevitably and partly because much of their effort is arcane, they come to believe in their own mental superiority over “regular” people whose concerns are familial, local and unobtrusive.

Meanwhile, capitalism, which in the U. S., OUGHT TO MEAN the right to own private property, and by extension, the right to own the fruits of one’s labors, carries on, inherent in every person. It is human nature.
Some aspects of human nature can, if unchecked by society and hence by government, cause damage and destruction to that society. Many control-worthy human aspects are checked by “agreement.” That is, members of society “agree” that murder, rape, theft, fraud and other forms of false witness, greed, sloth and envy, are to be controlled through various codified sanctions. Lately the list has grown to include littering of various degrees, like pollution, and, in an extraordinary reversal, discrimination against sexual oddities, a change that has led to “intolerance” becoming a worse social transgression than some actual crimes. Western societies must now “tolerate,” if not celebrate, anti-capitalist “lifestyles” that include essentially welfare careers. These things actually threaten the social order and every other right protected by the Constitution, our fundamental social agreement.

A tremendous strength in American capitalism has been the high integrity of our contracts, both with one another and with our governments. This phenomenon makes modern trade possible as well as the millions of debt contracts that describe modern economics. But today, we ignorantly embrace a new form of socialism based on twisted concepts of “social justice,” which intends, fundamentally, to cause guilt-ridden government types to alter the underlying concepts of private property, and to discard natural human capitalism. This need not be an inevitable slide toward the only economic future possible.

It is a slide the basis of which is ignorance, willful and otherwise. It is a slide that attempts, as all socialist plans inevitably do, to replace human nature with a government-directed one. While there may exist the technical possibility of directing every person’s life and economic decisions, governance based thereon cannot prevail. It devolves into tyranny or revolution, perhaps to a new tyranny or, once in a great, great while, into a new form of governance based on self-discipline and personal sovereignty, one in which the governed grant their governors limited powers, and where the tyranny of the majority is carefully sanctioned and where tyranny of the minority is unheard of.

Inherent in a government based on individual freedom and personal responsibility are the concepts of private property and ownership of the fruits of one’s labor: essential free-enterprise.

Capitalism gets fully mucked up when it is politicized, which is to say when limited governments attempt to create economic “fairness.” It seems that no “free” economic and democratic system can refrain from favoring certain industries in return for maintaining power for those who are already “in” government. Much of the favoring is done to “make things fair” or to “level the playing field,” but almost without exception, the net effects are to limit competition for those industries and to limit competition for those in power. These are tendencies that a wise and educated citizenry would create institutions in society and government to carefully limit, if not make impossible. In our growing ignorance we are failing at this essential part of citizenship.

A great strength of capitalism is that it doesn’t reward failure… it replaces it with something that can succeed, success measured in profitability and ability to destroy debt. In this is a lesson for all with eyes to see and ears to hear. Among our people, however, those who get the message are now considered hateful while those who refuse to see or hear are empowered, or re-elected. Ours is fast becoming a system hobbled by the removal of the pillars of individual freedom and personal responsibility. We are rewarding failure.

Immediately this statement will be attacked with charges of cruelty, but this stems from ignorance, which is to say, it’s a charge leveled by those who, for whatever personal profit, IGNORE the distinction between those who are capable and willfully refusing to take responsibility for themselves, and those who are incapable and needful of charity and public support.

The greatest value of capitalist profitability is the creation of surplus – productive surplus – of which a portion may be used to care for those who cannot care for themselves. The greatest flaw in capitalism’s opponents is their creation of and acceptance of a thousand reasons why individuals may be grouped among those who cannot care for themselves. They unfortunately become codified and form a malevolent inhibitor of success. And here we are.

Economics, Education, Race

Government by Unreality

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We are truly vexed in this, our great, open, rich, cruel, loving and generous country with our $20 Trillion debt, by social and civic problems of our own making. Whole industries are comprised of complaining and hating perceived groups of people unfairly imposing problems and then unfairly benefiting from them. Not much money seems to flow toward the loving business, but various dolled-up hatreds are profitable.

Some hatreds are aimed at Republicans, for no specific reason other than party affiliation; some are aimed at Democrats for the same reason. Both of those groups seem to have the same goals of expanding welfare, growing government and raising the debt ceiling. Neither is trying to seriously fight the LGBTQW revolution, although one side obtains money by claiming the other side hates LGBTQW “victims.” But aside from a lot of posturing, little honest change is proposed by either party, whether in power or out, although there’s plenty of the opposite.

When erstwhile Republicans and various independents and conservative-leaning parents elected a hard-to-fathom or mollify President Trump who thought he had the balls to actually change SOMETHING, leftists and others wedded to the status-quo ante began raising gobs of cash from fellow travelers and bird-brains who actually do hate HIM. Most of the money comes from people who hate haters. Those same hate bigots – people who pre-judge their neighbors as somehow flawed, just as much. In fact, they are able to spot bigots from quite a distance, especially if they are wearing one of those stupid red hats… or deign to vote for Republicans.

There has been some change, but nothing so dramatic as to let Constitutionalists relax.

In our hubris, we, Americans, a large minority of us at any rate, are convinced that normal laws of economics and well-established human nature no longer apply to us. Through our elected representatives we have become convinced that we can borrow a richer life, today, from our great grandchildren to whom and for which we’ll never answer.

We also believe that our enjoyment of freedom and wealth is somewhat automatic and somehow deserved. We are so happy with it and it’s easy accessibility, and being suspicious of our governors and bosses, we’re determined to share it with anyone those governors and bosses don’t like – just to get even. Why should we be so selfish as to keep America to ourselves? This misunderstanding leads us to fight against any standards or limits, like anachronistic borders, that those cruel governors want to maintain.

Freedom is some sort of gift, leftists say, provided to us by government, the source of all that’s good. If you aren’t as free as you’d like, more government will fix it. They don’t want to be limited by those Christian haters, especially the ones actually in churches… you know the ones, in their black suits and robes who read the “Bahh-bull,” for Heaven’s sake. The basis of Western civilization has no connection to today’s disconnected leftists. “Thanks, God,” they say, “thy system was far from perfect so we’ll take it from here. Call me, we’ll do a funeral.”

It’s the perfect statement of non-responsibility, which is the leftist, group-identity outlook. Whatever group we can burden you with is the reason things have gone the way they have for you – even if we don’t really know how things have gone for you. If you’re black (the best group ever invented, thank you, Lord, for giving them different skin; it helps a lot) then all sorts of causes for your victimized life can be proclaimed. Don’t y’all worry about finding justice in this White-privileged world, we are here to help the helpless. Take this check and be sure to put yourselves in POWER on election day.

To live a political existence on the basis of resentment of White people, is to, eventually, be subsumed by hatred. Evidence of this effect is everywhere poor, or “disadvantaged” blacks and other minorities are concentrated: ghettos. Surrounded by others who feel cheated out of their fair shares, and further surrounded by more richly “advantaged” Whites, ghetto residents become hateful, regardless of EBT cards, free health care and food subsidies. Welfare becomes merely a down-payment on justice.

It should be obvious, had education done its job, that government cannot create or impose justice on a social system; but, it can adjudicate injustice. In other words, if laws are made clearly and succinctly, the failure of some one or of several some-ones to treat another person or group of several persons fairly under the law, then government can ascertain appropriate charges for failing to act legally toward another or toward others, and prosecute illegal actors for their failing and impose penalty or restitution to those so treated.

What government should never do is create crimes out of feelings, or stretch clear laws into fuzziness about things people feel are unfair. This includes creating laws to cover self-declared conditions for which there is no empirical, quantifiable proof. Unfortunately, this includes special laws concerning homosexuality, sexual indecision or confusion, and mis-named trans-genderism. It should also not provide special legal strictures based on race. Rather, law is intended for, and only fair if applied to, sanctioning individuals or legal constructs like corporations when those persons/entities act outside of clear laws that are applicable to everyone of the members of society. We as a people or nation, create immense structures of unfairness and unreality when we attempt to legislate based on feelings and political unhappiness.

This old observer suggests that mankind’s worst circumstances result from acceptance of – even codification of – unreal, baseless claims and beliefs. For some this is religion, and many examples of severe warfare between religious groups or sects, can be cited. For shame. But there are other incredible murderers, like Hitler, for whom occult religious stories justified warfare on a global scale. Coupled with hatred of a group for unreal reasons, it formed an upheaval from which we still suffer, almost 80 years later. Unreality made “real.”

Communism is much the same. Not so much riven by group hate, Communists hate individuality and freedom. It is more economic than philosophical, and even more deadly than hatred. Power, of course is the currency of socialism of all stripes. For Communists there are only two groups: the official Party and, economically, everyone else. Resistance to being part of the nationwide serfdom into which Communism inevitably devolves, yields starvation or the gulag. Venezuela is an obvious current example of Communism’s “promise.”

Communism is based on unreality although its effects are brutally real. It believes in a different human nature than what is in fact reality. We are on this same path in the United States, evidenced not the least by our world-threatening debt.

Yet on we stumble, electing and re-electing people who don’t like America or the ideas that created it because the people who crafted it were white or owned slaves in a slave-owning society, or picked their nose in public. They are blind to the fact that these were the men who built a ladder to get us out of slavery and a thousand other unfairnesses. And so we are locked into hatred and failure and inability to govern while anguishing over millionaires taking the knee at football games, another example of trying to “govern” based on unreality.

Unreality as the basis for action is the same as dishonesty, well-stated by Mark Twain: “It’s not what you don’t know that’s the problem; it’s what you do know that just ain’t so.”