Yearly Archives: 2017

Education, Guns, Right?, Politics 2017

It Won’t Stay in ‘Vegas

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The atrocious murdering took barely ten minutes. It is very likely that not one person who was killed or wounded one Sunday afternoon in Las Vegas, knew the man we are told was their killer. Ostensibly Stephen Paddock had been accumulating weapons for “years.” He sent his “girlfriend” back to her native Phillipines two weeks ahead of the carnage he was planning, and then wired her money. He may have been trying to set up a shooting a week or more earlier but couldn’t obtain the rooms he needed for his desired perch. So, it’s possible that all of the weapons, volumes of ammunition and loaded clips, and other preparations were solely the work of one secretive, virtually unknown man. Maybe.

The current profile of Paddock indicates that he wanted to shoot at country music fans. On the other hand, he was a Democrat. Does that paint him with a group identity that explains anything? He owned guns – like 50 to 80 million other Americans. That makes him part of the American “gun culture.” It hasn’t been reported whether he owns a power drill or handsaw, or possibly a router, like 50 million other Americans, so it’s not clear whether Paddock was part of the “power tool” culture. However, he must, must, be placed in a hated group and “gun owners” will do perfectly.

One reporter has already been fired for stating that country music fans were likely “Republican gun-toters” who deserved no sympathy. She made the mistake of stating how rabid leftists feel, and that’s a political no-no.

Legal gun owners woke up Monday, October 2nd to find that they were all potential murderers, kept from shooting up public gatherings, nightclubs, elementary schools and churches only by the thinnest of membranes between sanity and insanity. Who knew? Paddock had prepared his “blind” to be relatively immune from armed response. Most of these kinds of attacks place the shooter(s) at the scene where, in good likelihood, armed targets could have shot back.

What liberals never consider, and gun owners fail to proclaim, is that every year in the united States, more than 800,000 times (not every instance makes the papers), a private gun owner stops a crime or a criminal, usually with NO shots fired. In many instances, a non gun-owner overpowers an armed criminal and wrests a weapon from his hands and subdues him. Eight hundred thousand (some estimates are well over a million) are a lot of incidents. Essentially, open America could not maintain a civil society without private gun ownership. Oh, the horror.

The alternative is a police state. Thoughtful people should realize that they do not really want to live in a nation that will confiscate private property that is deemed undesireable by the government! Some think that that same government will somehow add to “freedom” by limiting it… so long as the limits are placed on the “group” they don’t like. Those same accuse President Trump of being “Hitler,” when the exact opposite is the case. Those who want the government to have more power to regulate this or that disapproved group, are playing the game that Germans played as Jews and Slavic peoples were systematically rounded up, stolen-from and finally eliminated in camps. Oh, the ignorance.

It should be clearer, by now, that individual freedom is the most precious of jewels, yet faced with freedom’s challenges, leftists are quick to trade it away for shifting quantities of safety and even for convenience. For shame. While a crude freedom, the ability to self-defend is excruciatingly fundamental to individual freedom. Yet the first reaction of socialists and communists of every stripe (stay mindful of the fact that Hitler, that old ultra-left socialist, disarmed Germans, too) is to limit this fundamental freedom.

In the United States, with supposedly universal public education, the most costly in the world, the lessons of history and the majesty of the ideas of America, ought to be fully appreciated. But, on balance, it appears that the rest of the world appreciates our exceptional promise of individual freedom, far better than we do, ourselves.

Freedom is a tremendous threat to socialist, controller types: those who naturally gravitate toward governments everywhere, especially bureaucrats who, never neutral, impose increasing structure and regulation on populations. By establishing itself merely as well as was done in 1776, the idea that created “America” out of disparate colonies has forever drawn enemies and subversion, and lately, outright attacks.

None of that speaks directly to Stephen Paddock’s craziness, but to the distinctly divided reactions to it. The “Left” immediately wants to restrict everyone’s rights to, theoretically, prevent future murders, mass and otherwise; the “Right” wants to enforce existing laws and employ better methods to inhibit crazy people and proto-criminals from obtaining or using weapons, including strict sanctions on less-murderous misuse of weapons. We can’t make the wild actions of one deranged screwball into a pattern that justifies attacking our rights.

What we can do is share information to identify unusual purchasing and collection patterns that might identify individuals who are potential threats. But we must guard our Fourth Amendment rights. The visceral urge to control people in order that they’ll be “safe,” cannot be allowed to subvert our privacy and personal sovereignty. Paddock was a monster and he’s now dead. Let’s not destroy our freedom because of him. Far, far more people are killed by handguns involved in gang and drug activities, almost every month.

We don’t count the innocents aborted by the tens of thousands.

Education, Politics 2017, Race

Antifa, Socialism and the Garden of Eden

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Americans, citizens at least, owe it to ourselves… indeed we are OBLIGATED… to obtain the truth about “antifa” and other culture-threatening, community-threatening militaristic “organizations.” Our media and other institutions are failing miserably to challenge their premises or their statements of justification for breaking laws and heads at will. The place to start is the money. It was costly to bus the “Anti-KKK” protestors into Charlottesville. There were 3 or 4 big buses that dropped off the “antifa” group and then left the downtown straight away. Witnesses state that whites with “KKK” Tee-Shirts(!) arrived on those same buses.

I don’t think I know anyone in the KKK, never saw a march of the KKK, never heard a KKK speech. But it’s clear that actual and former members have done their best to hide any association with the truly white-supremacist organization. This begs the question: Who the Hell would want to wear a “KKK” T-shirt? The only advantages to doing so would be 1) to avoid having your own team bonk you during a fight, and 2) to show up clearly in videos and on TV. It is no more likely that one would arrange for such T-shirts to be printed on the morning of a “Unite the Right” rally, than that he or she would obtain the PERMIT for the rally on that same morning.

There was something rotten in Charlottesville. The self-named “antifa” so-called “protesters,” are literally paid to create conflict. Evidence indicates that some of the “right-wing” rally-ers were also part of the paid actors sent to Charlottesville. Why? Who, really, is served by conflicts that rub old, old racial hatreds raw? What is the true intent and what is the inadvertent intent of these cynical displays?

The United States was formed as it was formed. The intense courage of isolated settlers is unimaginable to soft Americans today. The people who chose to come here were who they were. They were raised in a different time and culture and they grew up to believe what they believed. And, here’s a news flash: Not a single one of them came here out of hatred, or with the intention of making “Indians,” who they believed were pagan savages, sick. Not one. And they were all quite religious – Christians of their time, motivated by the need to atone for sins and to sacrifice for others and for the future. That’s why the “invasion” took root and survived. We can go back further and recognize that Christoforo Colombo had no intention of hurting people and was impressively courageous as well. He, and his crew, and his Spanish sponsors, and his home city and the rest of Europe believed what they believed. They had no benefit of the past 520 years of experience.

What profit is there to “hate” them now? Why isn’t Spain hated MORE than the United States? Why isn’t England hated for slavery? The real target of conflict is to decouple the ideas of America from the future. It’s not new.

The first and most effective way to confuse a population that believes it’s “free” and even “sovereign,” is to dis-educate its children. That is, purposely don’t teach them their nation’s history, both “good” and “bad.” Just teach about how bad things were done by “heroes.” Then skip over the courageous and pioneering steps taken in face of extraordinary odds. Concentrate on movie stars, sports figures, and popular opponents of the basic structures and institutions of their culture and heritage.

Fundamental to dis-education in the United States is ignorance of, or ignoring of, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Added ignorance of the Articles of Confederation and the Northwest Ordinance will also be valuable in separating citizens from ageless philosophies and truths that underlie our exceptional nation. The trouble with all of these ideas so documented is that they tell us that we are free NOT because of being subjects of a governor or government, but because of our CREATOR. That is the greatest threat to secular power structures.

The allegorical story of the Garden of Eden reveals the conflict in the most basic terms. Adam and Eve are created and blessed with everything they need for a bountiful life – the “thesis.” The metaphorical serpent provides an “anti-thesis” regarding the denial to Adam and Eve of the “fruits” of the “Tree of Knowledge.” Whereas God warned that “eating” of that particular tree’s fruits would cause them to “die,” the “Serpent” tells Eve that she and Adam could be as wise as God and that surely, they would not actually die.

Eve and Adam eat of the forbidden fruit, realize forbidden knowledge and God promises them great travails in life and bans them from His bountiful Garden of life. The “synthesis” is in place, slightly toward the secular and away from the original “thesis,” theos – God. They weren’t killed, but for ever after, Life will be the Death of them. This is how Socialism/Secularism spreads its sticky ideas. The thesis is always closest to our Creator’s original premise; the antithesis is always a little farther away from that and toward totally human control of life and history. This brings us to ever-larger segments of populations dependent upon human government, and less and less responsible for the consequences of their actions, or “sins.” Now we are politically agitated over publicly financed abortion as some sort of Constitutional right.

“Antifa” is but the tip of yet another antithetical spear, serving totally secular, financially dictatorial masters who wish to separate mankind from concepts of freedom and individual sovereignty. Not everyone is willing to be so separated, and they are the distinct targets of antithesis. Anything that teaches youth about the thesis, and about lessons learned in defense of the thesis, must be torn down or covered with tarpaulins.

Health Care

How Many Nurses Can Fit…?

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We had a disturbing survey call the other night, all about nurses and how many patients each nurse should be caring for at one time. The Massachusetts Nurses Association has obtained enough signatures to place a ballot question for the November, 2018 election.

The gist of the question is whether the Commonwealth of Massachusetts shall create or expand an agency that monitors nursing staffing levels in order to enforce certain ratios of nurses to patients. The mechanism of enforcement would be $25,000 fines for each instance of “failing” to maintain nursing levels that are satisfactory to nurses(!).

Arguments in favor run the gamut of every negative consequence of inadequate nursing levels. Further strictures in the proposed law demand that nurse staffing levels be brought into conformity with the nurse-association-prescribed nurse-patients ratios without reducing other staffing levels as for maintenance or food-service departments. This, naturally, would increase hospital costs per patient-hour and of health care generally. Still, the over-arching deep concern for everything patient-related causes the M. N. A. to forge ahead despite the cost implications.

Some of the nurses’ arguments are valid. Patient outcomes are better with adequate nursing attentiveness. Sometimes this means simple numbers of nurses, but not always. Poor outcomes often result from poor administration or administrative requirements – requirements that sheer numbers won’t correct.

This is essentially a pro-union effort at the ballot box, sponsored by about 25% of nurses, hoping to increase the numbers of nurses (and union dues-paying members), but it threatens exactly what they hope to “improve.” First, if it passes and hospitals are forced to add nurses, the average pay is going to decline. This is not hard to understand. The only alternative to that likely outcome is the threat of nurses’ strikes for higher pay, and this is, like all union initiatives, the fundamental bargain – read: threat.

Neither care quality nor care cost will come in to alignment with patient desires until patients, themselves, return to the position of customer. Customers do some research on what they are going to buy. They are able to check out Consumer Reports, for example, where experts have done the research for them. They can visit different sources for the same products and services before choosing one to buy from.

In truth, people know more about their next car or flat-screen television than they do about their next medical procedure, the likely providers involved or even about their own doctor(!), never mind the amount of nursing attention they might receive. Maybe if patients – or a trusted advisor – knew enough about health providers and institutions to make rational judgments about which provides the best balance of nursing care, cost and outcomes, cost would come down, nurses would not be overworked and patients would be best served.

Asking the government and its politicians to make and enforce more rules about how to make patients well (ostensibly) is not an answer or even a good question. Restore the concept of “customer” to potential patients, in place of “entitled victim.”

As for nurses, the last thing we need is for skilled professionals to be relegated to average “service-unit” status for bargaining purposes, leaving neither room for excellence nor sanctions for failure.

Uncategorized

Conservational Conservatism

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Real conservatives are also conservationists.  Liberals, of course, will scoff at this, but Prudence tells us that this is a logical relationship.  The nature of true conservancy can illuminate the right thinking of true conservatives.

Those who fight for conservation of nature have drawn political lines mainly along economic – often anti-economic – lines.  The in-group of conservationists tends to view all those who are not as rabid about conservation as they as somewhat backward, perhaps rapacious exploiters who care about only profit… even if it will “destroy” our home planet.  Planetary destruction is a tall order, but humans have been quite industrious about modifying our environments, plural, although the greatest, planet-wide climatological changes have occurred with no human input whatsoever.  Still, our increasing need for energy has changed the lower atmosphere, at least, making humans ever more suspect.

As defined by conservationists, conservatives are all greedy, overweight and driven by profits; very conservative people, however, see such people as enemies of honest capitalism similar to their being enemies of conservation.  Real conservatives are not in favor of unregulated, monopoly capitalism, like that which results from close connections to politicians and their overreaching governance.

Real conservatism is not reactionary, but it does desire to conserve good philosophies and, with them, the best of ethics for organizing and governing our society.  This also means conserving the best of our culture, not plural.  It is, viewed without hate, not all bad.

Some conservationists would sacrifice human civilization to preserve a pristine habitat for every other form of life, or at least, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants wouldn’t be missed, especially if snail-darters would then thrive.  Once enthralled by being smarter and more sensitive than everyone else, rabid conservationists tend to ally with others who are equally so convinced.  Political power follows.  Now, the very overreaching government that makes so-called capitalism an enemy of vast majorities, is seen as the one force needed to assure adherence to their beliefs – whether conservationist, abortionist or racist (anti-white).

True conservatives can discern which of these causes should be opposed and which are worth working with.  We oppose abortion-on-demand and racism of all colors.  We believe in non-wastefulness, non-pollution, and clean environments.  We tend to be religious and we do NOT seek for the government(s) to enforce our beliefs, but to protect them.  We oppose globalized, monopolistic crony-capitalism since it tends toward organized theft of both wealth and sovereignty.  We trust individuals to perfect themselves, yet we insist on firm application of laws and sanctions for wrongdoing… for everyone.

Conservatives believe in balance and in courtesy toward all.  We tend to accept others as good or, at least, right-motivated until proven wrong.  To true conservatives, what someone feels is not nearly as important as what one DOES.  That is, anyone who is willing to ACT like an American, including respect for our laws and for other people, is welcome to live in America.  It’s fairly simple.  Respect for other people includes respect for their environment – everyone’s environment, while enabling economic opportunity and private property rights that make it possible for individuals to be FREE to the greatest degree possible… FROM GOVERNMENT.

The most passionate conservationists are well-advised to be conservatives, as well, and to recognize human nature as individual and not monolithic.  Conservationists seem to have fallen into encouragement of a police state that will enforce conservation as they see it; conservation that pits its desired ends AGAINST people, requiring, therefore, government to force compliance with conservationists’ corner on a part of science.  This ignores other parts of science, particularly that of human nature, yielding a somewhat fascist liberalism that has rendered America a rich-appearing debtor, barely able to afford conservation or even self-defense.

The success of the American experiment will be recognized in the shrinkage of government, not its growth, and in its honesty of education, not its bias.

Culture, Race, Terrorism

Racial Fascism

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There is an extraordinary dichotomy playing out amidst a mix of misunderstandings, hatreds and pure ignorance across the United States.  It is fueled by the ignorance and connivance of a predatory press as well as the instantaneous sharing of ignorance and hate over the internet.  It is instructive to diagnose how America became so stupid as to threaten its own existence with so much energy.  There are people and institutions worthy of being blamed for their role in the descent to our current condition.

The highest profile is held by president Trump, of course.  He has drawn fire, as it were, from several stripes of Democrats and other leftists of varied antagonisms, toward himself, individually, and toward the United States collectively… and comprehensively.  America- haters love the current circumstance.  Trump is ultra-sensitive to criticism and literally hurts himself to get even.  It is sad that that kind of give-and-take hurts his agenda – which Prudence indicates the nation needs to see enacted.

In his defense, Trump has been attacked with largely meaningless, deliberately misconstrued charges, along with the handful of real criticisms.  The whole process started out making lots of supporters angry, but now the attacks have devolved into calls for impeachment on amorphous, hate-based charges.  These are dangerous to the president and to the country, but the hatred – not political opposition, but hatred – actively encourages more virulent enemies like George Soros and his forces – like Antifa and Black Lives Matter.  They think they’re winning.  What they are winning is ill-defined.

The conflict in Charlottesville, Virginia is widely – and wildly – misunderstood, even after weeks of angst and anguish.  We are supposed to believe that it’s about the offensiveness of statues, as though the history represented by those statues were about to repeat itself with chains and slave auctions, given the pudding-like mentality of white people.  The lessons of history are best to be learned, Prudence instructs, not buried.

But there are certain elements of anti-white fervor who must have fresh targets on a regular basis.  A pudding-like press and equally useless politicians latch on to that pious hatred and feed the demands for removal of “symbols of slavery” as if removing the statue of military genius and anti-slavery southerner, Robert E. Lee, would place a strong brick in the wall against slavery’s breaking out again!  Where are the adults?  Where was education?

The new jack-booted thugs, “Antifa,” really care not a whit about Robert E. Lee, or Stonewall Jackson or even Jefferson Davis.  They are paid, literally, to break heads.  Screaming about anti-fascism while executing fascism better than anyone since 1945 may fire up the pudding-heads in the left-wing media – print and broadcast – but it doesn’t make anything “Antifa” says or does true or honest.  “Black Lives Matter” is nearly as debauched.  They, too, have seized upon a flaming hot button that delivers money and power into their hands – police killings of blacks, some of whom are innocent and whose badged killers deserve jail time.  The deaths of thousands of other blacks in inner cities, mostly drug and gang-related, has no commensurate value.  Making themselves enemies of local police is not helpful, but, sadly, rational to “BLM.”  What is the end-game?

One would think that there might be different judgments directed toward people who are paid to hate, as many of the “Antifa” are – paid, that is, by George Soros-connected “organizations.”  Soros, when not cooperating with real Nazi’s during WW II, has made his disdain for the American experiment quite clear.  He hates the ideas of America.  He hates individual sovereignty.  He pays his thugs not to defend ANY of the purported causes they shout about, but to generate discord.  Even in Charlottesville, slowly being revealed as “staged” in large part, the result that was sought by Soros and other enemies of freedom, has manifested:  widespread belief that many Whites are racists with KKK and, illogically, Neo-Nazi beliefs.

This media-touted “meme” of widespread racism is the ideal “lever” by which anti-freedomists  can and have manipulated public policy (such as removing statues – not out of understanding but out of fear) to change the culture of a nation.  Combined with left-dominated public education that is sympathetic to everything being “wrong” with America, purpose-driven forces opposed to our sovereignty, nationality and freedom are dividing us from our heritage, our history and our future as a free people.

Photos show that fighters for both sides in Charlottsville arrived on the same buses.

 

 

Education

American University

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Every few weeks, when there is a slight lull in 24-7 news crises, someone will describe how terrible the student-loan burden is for stressed-out graduates.  This is then followed by some pandering politician decrying the unfairness of higher education’s being available only to those who could qualify for loans and, therefore, with E-quality being more valuable than quality itself, college should be “free.”

This is an odd declaration for a federal representative who is overseeing budgets that are trillions of dollars out of balance.  Fortunately, we have an army of migrant workers and illegal entrants who help us harvest cash from the money trees that flower perpetually in a secret orchard between Washington D. C. and Wall Street, New York City.  No one responsible for spending the money on our behalf – we, the citizens of this great bankrupt country – can imagine denying free stuff to ostensible college entrants, regardless of ability.  How fortunate that we have full-time, well-compensated spenders working to expend as rapidly as possible.

In any case, the topic of student loans can be easily turned into a big, emotional shibboleth that, obviously, only a bankrupt, spendthrift government can solve.  First, President Obama, as part of the so-called “Affordable Care Act,” essentially placed all student loan business under the aegis of the federal government, applying the “profit” from those loans toward attempting to finance Obamacare.  Soon, of course, politicians were screaming about “profiting” from poor students who just want to improve their opportunities for higher wages through diploma ownership.  Oh, the horror.

On the other hand, many families impoverish themselves to pay for college and post-graduate programs.  They’re not cheap.  The cost of college has increased more than twice as fast as the Consumer Price Index, since 1980.  Another way to look at it is in comparison to car prices.  In 1980 a 3-series BMW was around $21,000 or so, and it was pretty nice.  Today a 325i is about twice the cost of the most comparable model from 1980.  And, it’s still pretty nice.

The thing is, the 2015 version is a far superior car to the 1980 model.  Almost no part of it has not been modified for the better; its performance is better, safety is way better, as are comfort and expected life of components.  The electronics are a phenomenon all their own.  Remarkably, compared to inflationary price pressures, today’s BMW is LESS expensive than the 1980 – and it’s far, far better.

College/University education, on the other hand, is turning out a poorer product, on average, for about THREE times the cost of 1980 tuitions.  That is, college costs have gone up half-again what other big-ticket items have.  What can possibly cause this?   There are only so many instructional hours in a semester.  Are the professors smarter?  Working longer hours?  Taking on more classes each week?  Are highly-compensated administrators covering more functions for their rapidly growing incomes?

It seems that the opposite is true in all of these question-categories.  In the 35 years that automobile manufacturers have continuously become MORE efficient at higher quality to stay competitive… to keep attracting buyer dollars, education has become LESS efficient, more philosophically (politically) biased, less likely to teach American History, less likely to study the Great Books, Greek history and philosophy, English literature… and a bunch of other culture-strengthening stuff.  There are a lot of lawyers, though.

College students, however, thanks to the fatuous generosity of federal grants and loans, are able to pay more and more and still more for those still-coveted diplomas.  Like the uber-capitalists they try to hate, colleges have raised their prices in virtually direct relation to the amount of tuition moneys available.

The growing number of high-school grads going on to college has increased steadily as tuition dollars became more available; at the same time, the net quality of entering students has gone down.  While this speaks to the reduced net quality turned out by, largely, public high schools, it speaks more loudly about the cynicism of colleges and universities: if you got the money, honey, we’ll happily take it while nearly half of you drop out the first year.  Your time, indebtedness and mental health are of no concern for us.  Can your parents, grandparents, rich uncle or well-to-do siblings co-sign for you?  Yes?  Well then come right in and we’ll call you a college student.

Even worse, larger institutions are perfectly happy to create 4-year degree programs in “soft” studies that have very little chance of generating significant incomes.  It’s not that the education isn’t real, it is the reality that it is very, very hard to sell the related skills.  For the college, however, those very significant tuition payments help to finance more costly areas of study and research… not to mention the multi-hundred-thousand dollar salaries of, say, law professors at Harvard – at least the Native American ones.

There is a simple, universally beneficial answer, and it is absolutely NOT federal-taxpayer-free college, Ms. Senator Warren.  The answer is for colleges to co-sign for every student loan!

What?  You say.  Make colleges actually responsible for student success?  What if the student spends his time partying?  Is the college responsible for that, too?

Well, what if they were?  How would the college experience change if the college actually cared whether students were studying or goofing off?  If the college could only come out ahead if the students it admitted ALSO came out ahead, who would they admit?  Would they let Freshmen enter if they had no scholastic history that indicates the ability to learn, study and succeed?  Would they then offer realistic remedial programs AT THE STUDENT’S EXPENSE (as low cost as possible) that would have to be mastered before the rest of their college time could be financed with an institution’s co-signature?

Imagine the real cost of college dropping as schools, themselves, realize that huge student loans are a shared risk.  Maybe the financial wizards who have rewarded one another while money has been free-flowing will become enough sharper as to provide genuine education for far less dough… maybe even scheduling classes so that degrees can be earned in 3 years instead of 4.  Hmmnnn.  These are ideas that make you go, “hmmmnnn.”

 

Culture, Education, Politics 2017, Trump

An American Prescription

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We are at a crossroad in history.  One might say that we are always at a crossroad, but from time to time there is a confluence of forces that literally force decisions on nations and people that will significantly change their paths – and the paths of other nations – into the future.  And here we are.  What are the forces that have come, or are coming together to force big change, none of which is good?

First is militant Islam.  Islam and everyone else have been in conflict since Muhammad was marrying a 9-year-old.  Without parsing every conflicting and convenient verse of the Q’uran, the message of Islam is that everyone must be Muslim, one way or the other – the “other” being force.  This has become twisted, especially since the influence of Nazism, into honoring those who kill themselves to defeat the “enemies of Allah.”  This includes even children and grandchildren.  Muslim political leaders arrange for pensions to be paid to the parents of suicidal “heroes,” often from monies received from the United States(!), as tribute for their “martyrdom.”

There is no possibility of negotiation or compromise with people who believe such things, except that Westerners – Christians in particular – relinquish part of their own beliefs and sense of abhorrence.

The history of relations with strictly Muslim countries is one of slow, steady loss for their opponents, which is to say, us.  The question is whether we have lost enough to be at a point of unrecoverability.  The second condition that forms this point of historic crossroad is nuclear proliferation.

For the only nation to actually kill a few hundred thousand people (both quickly and slowly) with nuclear ordnance, the United States has been just about the worst player in the field of preventing the spread of nukes.  The recent “agreement” with Iranian mullahs, negotiated by the great statesman, John Forbes Kerry, at the behest of international genius, Barack Hussein Obama (the only person who really knows, who ever stated that he, B. H. Obama, was born in Kenya) was a colossal retreat on every front the mullahs thought of, and then an even larger retreat on some fronts they hadn’t thought of but which were conveniently placed before them by the aforementioned duet of American foreign relations braniacs.  The result is the acceleration of Iran’s terrorism operations, deeper involvement in Syria’s civil war, alliance with Russia and, just to add some fun to the world’s troubles, guaranteed development of nuclear-tipped ICBMs.  A legacy of accomplishment.

The rush by North Korea to also field nuclear ICBMs is not a coincidence to the Iranian effort, they are joined at the rectum, passing their crap between them – another legacy of accomplishment for American anti-proliferationists, going back decades.

And so we have two key forces: militant Islam and nuclear weapons.  What’s the third?

The third force is China.  Whether the 21st will be a Chinese century is the immediate result of choosing wrongly which way to turn at the crossroad we are facing.  China has its problems, including potentially severe economic ones, but it does not hesitate to expand its military influence in dramatic ways, including creating islands that it now claims are its territory because it has placed military installations on them.  And, China is the best thief in the world in terms of intellectual property, keeping itself abreast of nearly every U. S. military innovation by stealing every secret we haven’t had the courtesy to hand to them.

China perceives itself as the natural next world hegemon, and simply waits as the U. S. self-destructs in the face of militant Islam and the internal forces we have arrayed against ourselves.

We, ourselves, the nation of the United States of America, representing the decline and fall of Western, Judeo-Christian civilization, comprise the multi-faceted FOURTH force.  It will not please liberals and their lefty, anti-freedom, anti-capitalism friends to hear the prescription for keeping America on top in the global pecking order.

America is destroying itself and its ability to lead the world.  There are many symptoms of this self-destruction, but we do not heed their warnings.  Here are some examples:

  • $20 Trillion in current debt and a hundred $Trillion or so in impossible obligations;
  • 40+% of budgets committed to welfare;
  • Dysfunctional education that has effectively separated Americans from their own history;
  • Dissolution of the social order, distrust of civil authority, fomented racial tensions and breakdown of urban cores;
  • Secularization and separation from, even embarrassment towards Christian religious faith and morals;
  • Rampant drug assault on young people with inconsistent actions to prevent their entry and production;
  • Legalization of a hundred strains of potent marijuana on the premise of tax revenue and official lies about “medical” and “recreational” marijuana;
  • Pollution of electronic media with unbridled pornography and destructive, dishonest “entertainment” contributing to the breakdown of moral institutional influence;
  • Legalized and subsidized abortion;
  • Nearly complete reversal of the role and place of the U. S. Constitution and the ideas of America;
  • Dissolution of marriage, the meaning of marriage and the basic responsibilities of family commitment and child-rearing.

We could talk for hours about all the cultural declines we can see all around us, so many of which weaken our people in terms of mental and physical toughness in the face of potential hardships we will inevitably face.  Science notwithstanding, Americans in great numbers believe there will never be another depression, or even severe inflation; they believe that the weather they like can be guaranteed politically, believe it or not; they believe they can matriculate with barely a glimpse of history, study of founding documents and philosophies, or of the reasons behind major events; they believe there are pills that will a) make them smart, 2)keep them fit with rock-hard abs, 3) make them attractive to beautiful partners, 4) change their birth gender.  These are they who think that criminal illegal entrants strengthen the economy and the nation, that drugs can be legalized to the benefit of government without damaging users, that single-payer health-care will improve quality and lower costs without fascist death panels.  Talk about Dreamers.

What is/are the prescription(s)?  There isn’t room or time to list the hundreds needed, but Prudence indicates that these 4 will make the fastest, surest differences:

  1. Facilitate church-run schools.
  2. Qualification of voters prior to elections.
  3. Charterization – non-union – of public schools.
  4. Nationalizing the Federal Reserve.

America is worth saving; the world depends upon it.  Perhaps the worst thing we could do is pursue removal of a legally elected president no matter how much you may hate him.

Trump

Romancing the Swamp

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It is difficult for a thoughtful observer to write about President Trump.  He is at once the most misunderstood man to become president, and at the same time the most mentally undisciplined.  Or so he appears.  He is, of course, accused of so many other negative traits that it is difficult to discuss him and his righteous plans for his term in office.  This means that the first question to answer is how such a brash, uncouth person became president, and the answer to that is barely understood or even heard by the “chattering classes” who inhabit 24-hour news programming, for those are they to whom “ordinary” Americans appear primitive and barely cognizant of the world in which they live.

Trump won because of the breakdown of political parties and of political function.  That is, ordinary, work-a-day citizens perceived – accurately – that neither party could be trusted to do “the right things.”  This perception had been building for decades, back, roughly to the assassination of J.F.K., the tumult of the 60’s, the assassinations of King and R.F.K., and the destructive, hate-filled failures of Vietnam.  Since then the manners and principles of American success have receded as socialism and division shifted the future to one less promising… and less spiritually meaningful.

An unfortunate (for most) result has been a remarkable shift of financial power to both old and new oligarchies, while the hallowed middle-class has shrunk in real terms of its share of total economic power and control.  This alone yields a potent reason for the “great American shift” to continue… and sets limits to that course.  Even the United States can run out of money – the one unsolved fear of socialism.  Trump, imperfectly, represented the only alternative to this shift.

Social de-evolution also reared up in the ‘60s and has accelerated for 50 years: drugs, marriage dissolution, homosexuality in the Catholic Church (What? You’re blaming gays for their problems?  Well, media has been all too careful to euphemize feral homosexuality into “pederasty.”), dilution of public education with social issues, and revival of racialism and division.  There are, now, but two unforgivable sins: so-called racism and intolerance.

The history of America is not all bad nor were the men and women, black, white or “red,” who built its history one action, one child, one thought, one plan, one love and one hate at a time.  Neither is its history all good, nor were the men and women, black, white, or “red,” who built its history one action, one child, one thought, one plan, one love and one hate at a time.  They were human.  But, because of the magic of freedom and personal sovereignty embedded in our Constitution, Americans, good and bad, could take responsibility for, and accept the consequences of, their actions.  It worked, even through the Civil War years and all that led up to them, and thereafter through World War I and the Depression and through World War II and during the initial containment of communism around the world.  That is, it worked until the 1960’s.

It worked because Americans could vote bums out of office when their lies became too large to hide; when their peccadilloes became too blatant; when their thieving aggrandizement became too obvious.  It worked because Americans, good and bad, maintained a rough agreement – conscience if you will – that held to a shared model of right and wrong, good and evil, honesty and mendacity.  Those days are largely behind us.

Prudence shows that honesty fades faster and faster as people fight harder and harder to ignore truth, reality and history.  Mind-altering drugs do this and represent this; the new phenomenon of gender pretense does this and represents this; the utter disconnect of political words and deeds does this and represents this.  Enter Donald Trump – the candidate farthest from the political swamp Americans could choose.

The hatred now condoned against Trump and anyone who voted for him, is so unbalanced that Trump supporters, black, white or “red,” are suddenly the largest out-group since the civil war.  And ever-wilder expressions of hatred and opposition to the first president in 4 generations who promises to unravel the swamp of lies and soft state fascism (sometimes not so soft), actually strengthens his support, however invisible it is to pollsters.  There is no desire to be vilified and mocked for wanting to clean out the nests of vipers that is the federal behemoth – congress included.

Working Americans have watched as the promise of education wilts under political correctness; they watch as the promise of the Bill of Rights has become so foreign to voters that they would not vote for it today; they watch as the promise of sound money and thrift is stolen in broad daylight by a “Federal Reserve” that is neither federal or a reserve; they watch as the Department of Justice blatantly declares that it will not prosecute civil right violations by other than whites; they watch as the Clinton Crime Family pockets tens of millions even as they help weaken the nation internationally; they watch as their erstwhile servant government dictates with whom they must shower and pee; they watch as police power protects incompetent officers who ought to be in jail, while it forces honest bakers out of business, hounded by hate-mongers, and then fines the bakers; they watch as illegal entrants swarm across our borders and then as our own governments coddle them, subsidize them, grant them rights due only citizens, and forgive them even their murderous, drug-dealing trespasses; and they watch in secret delight as the squirming, wailing salamanders of self-aggrandizement display phony horror at uncouth statements the president makes – not untrue, but uncouth.

Yet Hillary and others as mendacious as she still scratch their heads and wonder how Trump could possibly get elected.  How stupid do they think the majority is?

 

 

 

Education, Race

Damned Conservatives

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Alas poor education, we once were free.  For those of us… you, who are angry with “conservatives” and who agree that conservatives are (choose all that apply): 1) racist;   2) homophobic; 3) Islamophobic; 4) “Trans”-phobic; 5) anti-women; 6) anti-science;    7) climate change deniers; and 8) fascists.  Excuse me, I forgot, 9) Christian fanatics.

Conservatives who support or, worse, don’t mind Donald Trump, are also stupid.  Did we pretty-much cover it?  Let’s not forget the Russians – don’t mean to slight anyone.

The United States was premised on the concept of individual sovereignty and liberty.  This isn’t taught anymore, but it’s true.  If you perceive or believe that we are “free” only when our entire group is free, then you are, to a degree, believing that the very basis for the exceptional founding of our nation, is no longer valid.  That’s quite sad.

The U. S. was not founded to be a unionized social-service mega-agency.  That we have become so is far from a testament to our benign compassion for the poor; not at all.  Rather, it is a massive subversion of liberty by the left.

“What?”  You exclaim, “Should we just let these poor, oppressed people starve?  If that’s what conservatism is, leave me out!”

No, conservatives would have taught those starving people to feed and otherwise take care of themselves.  Those same would then move forward in life without the artificial welfare of any government.  That seems, to the racist, homophobic, anti-women Neanderthals that liberals hate so deeply, like the ultimate compassionate action, and is, in fact, the very basis of free-enterprise capitalism.  There is wide misunderstanding about these principles.

The most easily grasped distinction between liberalism (in modern definition), or leftism, and conservatism (in modern definition), is responsibility – personal responsibility.  That is, modern liberals perceive everyone only as a member of a “demographic.”  Everyone only has identity due to matching characteristics of a named (must be known by a name) group.

Easiest to understand in this odd universe is a group known variously as “people of color,” “African-Americans,” “blacks,” or the current liberally-correct description.  People with brown skin are of a hundred origins and genealogies.  By definition they do not comprise a “group” or a tribe or even a nationality.  Why on earth would rational people look at people with brown skin as if they were somehow all connected or similar?  The answer reveals the heart of modern leftism.

The only rational purpose for grouping individuals who share a trait or appearance… even a little, is because those who consider them so might gain political power.  This rationalization has also infected members of the artificially constructed group, who join with liberals in maintaining the belief in the existence of a group that exists only politically and not in fact.  Great anger, hatred and historical distortion stems from this artificial group perception.  By automatic reflection, or reaction, every action of unkindness or perceived “hatred,” practiced by anyone not “in” the artificial group, becomes a failing of everyone in the “outgroup,” so long as its members share some identifiable characteristic – like a different skin color.  Suddenly, politically, hatred of the outgroup has flowered, and “white privilege” is the result.

Such hatred requires nurturing and nutrition.  Once embarked on the road to political power, people who know how to profit from hatred can’t seem ever to reverse course.  The joys of political office are too enticing; the lack of true responsibility too comforting, the outlandish emoluments too rewarding.  Today, hatreds are the MOST COMMON political motivations; statesmanship is nearly invisible.

For some “hatred” is simple cynicism.  These are they for whom “public service” is mere aggrandizement, and to Hell with society so long as they get as much out of our pockets as they can.  For the next level of public cynics, power is their profit, and they are satisfied to gain power for themselves, and to Hell with the rest of us.  The consequences of their powers are of little concern to them – indeed they generally absolve themselves of requirements to adhere to laws they codify.  Mixed into the second group are some of those who learn how to employ baser, defined hatreds in order to gain and retain their cynical powers.  Now it’s not simple lies and thievery, it is society-threatening.

And here we are.  Conservatives will point out that the left, constantly riding the “racist” bull, are using black hatred for white supremacists to enhance leftist political power, when it is the left that actually hates blacks by cynically trapping and consigning them to an artificial welfare life.  Blacks, themselves, hate what has happened to them, as they should, but careful education has taught them that it is conservatives who have done this to them.  And on the cycle of hatred goes, while fattened liberals live in mansions, sometimes not even in the districts they “represent.”

There are conservative haters, some of whom actually “hate” black or brown people.  Those are a very tiny minority.  Careful education and media manipulation teaches blacks that these few represent all conservatives.  This is easily refuted, but that is never taught. If one simply sets aside personal concerns temporarily and contemplates the question: “What element of society is primarily responsible for social and governmental failure?”

The likely answer will be “conservatives” or, at the very least, “Republicans,” the two far from synonymous.  At that point, the thoughtful and caring citizen has to wonder if that is a) possible; and b) how he or she came to think so.

Real conservatives, here defined as constitutionalists and others who believe in free enterprise and personal responsibility, are not haters… of anyone.  Mostly they, we, are disappointed that people of color aren’t doing better, on average, particularly with so much evidence of people variously brown in skin color, becoming champions of every field and discipline.  Clearly, or so it seems to us, there is no genetic reason for social failure.  It is based on beliefs, including carefully nurtured hatreds.

The actions that stem from hatred have no claim on forgiveness – from anyone.  The same is true for white-skinned people only more so, since they have no minority status to overcome along the way to happiness.  We have a left-induced tendency to forgive the hatreds of blacks, while trumpeting and often imputing those of whites.  Both destroy society and are to be condemned.  They are not to be exploited, God forbid.  But they are, to our shame… Black and White.

Culture, Governance, Politics 2017, Responsibility, Trump

The New Tyranny

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Everyone decided to chide President Trump for privately describing New Hampshire as a “drug-infested den.” Oh, the horror! Why, there are genuinely nice people living in New Hampshire; how could he say such a derogatory thing about them?

Well, he didn’t, of course, and the release of the content of that conversation was a crime, but who cares if discomfiting Trump is the possible result. Let’s use our brains, now, and realize that the point Trump made was that even in New Hampshire, for more than 200 years the veritable definition of good, clean living, based on religious morals and flinty work ethic, the corruption of drugs had penetrated every town and city, and was destroying the heritage of “New-Hampshire-ness” with little to stop it.

It is no wonder that closing the southern border is taken so seriously by Trump and many others. The worst flow of drugs into our nation – and into New Hampshire – begins in Mexico and points further south. Making it harder to get drugs into the country is a good thing. I’m pretty sure of that, but why?

First, let’s stipulate that human beings are remarkable products of evolution and more. The “more” is best described as a foundation of religiously sourced and codified morals. Whether you choose to accept any religious “truths” or are an affirmed atheist, it is clear that the hundreds of religious histories and traditions on Earth have brought us to a fairly honest and moral civilization, capable of correcting and perfecting itself. One of our greatest mores is that we call “freedom.”

We may think freedom is inherent, but it really is intensely fragile, is it not? Historically, since the organization of city-states, freedom has been merely forms of servitude, some quite oppressive. In fact, the age of kingdoms, kings and subjects, or warlords and serf-protectees, was marked by various forms of tyranny. Granted, some was less benign than others, and the basis of great folk-tales. Robin of Locksley and his Merry Men describes the battle for freedom from oppressive taxation and government incompetence – I didn’t invent that irony.

Anyway, back to drugs. None of our heroes in the perpetual fight for freedom, is also described as drug-addled. Indeed, much effort today is described as helping addicts to achieve freedom FROM drugs. So, it seems logical, a free people, ever jealous of their freedom from tyranny, must, by definition, be drug-free as well. Keeping drugs out of America is the logical path to follow IF, and only IF, a leader of Americans is attempting to keep them free. Now we need to look at the headlong rush by various governments within America to actually PROFIT from the cultivation and sale of drugs to their free citizens.

A large element of states’ argument FOR drug legalization, is that it costs too much to enforce laws against marijuana and, besides, isn’t the use of drugs an exercise of the very freedoms governments are supposed to protect? Well, no, not at all, but we seem to have talked ourselves into this twist of “freedom.”

Free people are also responsible for the defense of freedom. This is called citizenship. That is, as we grant powers to an organizing and defensive government, limited by a Constitution that we the people approved of, we also assume an obligation to ourselves, our children and all of future history, to defend those freedoms that government was constituted to PROTECT. That is, by all logic, we are FREE to be FREE, but not free to enslave ourselves, as we do in the grip of drugs.

Oh, come on, you say, pot is no worse than alcohol! Well, perhaps not, that’s arguable, what with alcohol being metabolize-able and being only ingestible and not smoke-able. Too-heavy ingestion of alcohol will kill liver and other cells and disrupt neural communications for some time, until naturally removed from the body. The same could be said about marijuana, except that the danger is directly to the lungs, about 20 times that of tobacco cigarettes. The body does expel a lot of the elements of marijuana smoke, but does a poor job of removing THC, tetra-hydra-cannabinol. THC has the friendly quality of being easily absorbed into fat cells.

Fat cells are found all over the body but one of the greatest concentrations is the brain. This is good because fat cells are hardy and relatively long-lived, but it’s also a liability when exposed to certain toxins like… well, THC. THC tends to store in fat cells – not only brain cells – which is why it’s a risk for lactating mothers to smoke pot, but it is a “freedom,” right? Back to brain cells.

THC stores in brain cells and surreptitiously clogs up the intricate, microscopically tiny connections that enable complex thoughts and memory. “Maybe for real pot-heads, but not me,” you say, “I hold down a job and have no problems smoking pot for relaxation on weekends and once in a while other times. No problem at all… did I say that already?”

From the standpoint of defending freedom, however, the softening and dulling of voters’ intellects is perfect ground for planting illogical political distinctions, thereby guiding voting patterns in the direction most beneficial for those in power. Faced with a population clamoring for “freedom” from pot-related criminal records, all the Sheriff of Nottingham had to do was come out in favor of legalizing pot and his hold on POWER would have been unshakable. Populist “Robin Hoods” could dash themselves against that rock to no avail. Look around us – it’s what we have, now.

Even better than political strength, our state budgets are overspent and there are “revenue short-falls.” Actually, there are “spending long-rises,” but the important thing is that potheads will buy the stuff and pay the taxes so that we, your most-benevolent governors can take care of the children. You wouldn’t deny us that heartfelt mission, would you? You right-wing fascist bastard? After all, taxes on tobacco have declined dangerously and we have so many vital needs that only government can take care of – you see that don’t you?

And we bought into this. We accepted, first, that medical marijuana was medical. That’s a good one. You could get it at CVS if that were true, but, if they’ll buy that they’ll buy anything. They’ll even accept that the pay of legislators is somehow related to the incomes of corporate giants. Let’s test that by voting ourselves 60% raises and see what happens…

This in no way belies the fact that there are medical values to some marijuana components. There are medical values to lots of plants and thank God we have discovered those we have. It doesn’t mean that addling our intellects is a goal of a free people, does it? And so we argue about how high the taxes should be now that legalization has been voted-for, with the murder by a pot-stupefied driver with a medical marijuana prescription, of a State Trooper, a mere hiccup in the process. Pot is so benign, in fact, we should recommend it to heroin addicts to help them get off of the “real” drugs.

It has been a big, long-term sale, and we bought it.

Maybe if Trump simply tried a few tokes he could stop hassling druggies, damned right-wing fascist bastard.

Voting for pot legalization is a lot like voting for socialism, the other lie of non-responsibility. “Hey, man, it’s like, a free country, man, and health care is a right, not a privilege, man.” And not a responsibility? Next you’ll be telling us that you’re entitled to your freedoms and the government better make sure you keep ‘em, man. If it doesn’t then you’re voting for whoever is in favor of legalizing pot everywhere. Did you know that George Washington made rope out of hemp?