Yearly Archives: 2017

Culture, Education, Family

Do You Believe in Magic?

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It’s all a matter of belief. We strive for truth, or, at least, we tell ourselves that truth is our highest aspiration. But truth among people is the subject of much argument, if not battle. Our beliefs tell our internal selves what is “true” and what is “false.” Likewise, we have internal judgments about who is trustworthy and who is not. Over thousands of years we have created deep belief structures that “work,” in a sense, to organize societies and to increase, however fitfully, general prosperity and defensive strength. Religion is often a significant basis for progress, but has just as often been a limiter, even to this day.

Prudence suggests that the Judeo-Christian ethical platform has been, ultimately, the most successful of historic belief structures, yet it is assaulted daily as “unscientific” since it accepts “truths” that cannot be proven or tested in a laboratory. When are unshakable beliefs imparted? How is it that some kids prefer gang membership while others become Eagle Scouts? Do we think it happens from a conversation with a 5-year old? From Sesame Street? Pre-school?

Speak to a pre-school teacher and she can describe the wide range of attitudes among 3-year olds, some quite destructive. Where did they form those personalities? Well, at home, obviously, but when? At age two and a half? Age two… or earlier? Somehow very young kids are “empatterned” such that anti-social actions, even pathological actions, are the automatic reactions to stimuli. When are those patterns implanted?

Our suspicion is that the process commences in the womb. Ask an expectant mother about the reactions of her pre-born baby and she can describe how her moods and feelings coincide with movements. When she is stressed and when she is calm and happy there are noticeable differences in the baby’s kicks and turns. Do we think the baby is completely inured to its environment until the moment of birth?

Imagine a baby in the last couple of months of gestation in a home where revenge is the common reaction of the parents – and others – to every slight or act of disrespect. Every source of irritation between husband and wife yields a reaction that the offended party must “get even” with, or get the better of, the offending party. The baby, innocently, will mature with a comfortable reaction toward opposition or disrespect that virtually requires that he or she obtain revenge against the offender. It is what he or she “believes.”

What a different path of human interaction that child will be on; what a different interpretation of what love and hate may be. Think about the “differently socialized” children you’ve known. By the time they enter kindergarten such children are already “marked” for special handling. By the time they are teenagers, some of these revenge-comfortable kids are gang members, either organized or in a company of local “bullies.”

Now, place these boys in a position to enthrall girls who grew up without rational father figures, never knowing how a man should treat a woman, respect her and care for her, along with their children. Such an, in effect, fatherless girl would perceive the feral sexual attentions of just as possibly fatherless boys, as true compassion. Now there are two ill-socialized children having their own children, who gestate and begin post-natal life amidst discord, resentment, poverty and, almost inevitably, vengefulness.

Is urban destruction like Ferguson, Missouri or Baltimore, Maryland at all surprising amidst populations that our own social policies have generated in far less than ideal pre-natal and post-natal family conditions? By foregoing social mores related to marriage and family and child-rearing, have we commenced a process of social disintegration? Most likely. Given this, where do we expect our dishonest politics to lead us?

Because individual power and status is the most vital of purposes for elected “representatives,” the misfortunes and dysfunctions of populations have become sources of political, personal, power. We could not have tolerated, and funded beyond reason, via hundreds of overlapping social-service agencies, social dysfunction for literal decades, unless those expenses served the purposes of Congress and others made powerful thereby. It is not possible to consider our history since the 1960’s and conclude that the trillions of dollars expended on basically failed welfare theories, resulted in failure and explosive government expansion, accidentally!

We are destroying the most successful form of social organization the world has seen, insofar as its basis is individual opportunity, freedom and growth without tyranny. Worse, we have brought ourselves to a political point where we are arguing and fighting about how FAST the Judeo-Christian heritage may be dissolved.

We are maintaining the propagation of new citizens who will not have the opportunity to grow in personal character and integrity. They will not enjoy two-parent, loving nuclear families, nor the reinforcing institutions of church and morality-based education.

We are racing not to the Brave New World, but the Craven.

Culture, Sex

Patterns of Gender

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Johns Hopkins University has done what thousands of other institutions have heretofore been too cowed to do: apply some science to the extraordinary explosion of homosexuality and lesbianism and all of the mental discords that derive from those beliefs. Make no mistake, to thwart instinctive sexuality calls for very strong beliefs that “fit” mentally with the practices of homosexuality. Belief, not truth, is the power center of human activity. Truth is a philosophical concept. Some people are inspired and raised to believe portions of truth that seem to be “normal” for the preservation and survival of human groups. Others appear to have acquired beliefs that are opposed to those truths, but the strength of those beliefs are just as motivating.

Where do non-normal beliefs originate? If, as the Johns Hopkins study affirms, there are no physiological causes for homosexuality, then how is it that some people grow up believing that they are not attracted to the opposite sex? Because their brains are built differently? No… there is no evidence of that in terms of sexuality. People who are “gay” are never going to consider that they are brain-damaged or developmentally deficient, nor should they. We have all too many people whose brains are imperfectly developed, populating our many programs and special schools and “homes” where they are protected.

Yet many Down Syndrome people have normal sexual attractions. Gays are not claiming that their brains or their genes are malformed. But, they do believe that homosexuality is a normal state of humanity, itself, and therefore just as worthy of encouragement as heterosexuality. This view has gained political and legal status yet offers no empirical evidence of its validity. This is a new area of coded law: based entirely on individual claims of one’s feelings and one’s patterns of actions. That is, we have laws sanctioning discrimination against people because of what they believe regardless of evidence, except their personal declarations. Extraordinary.

There also occur the decisions of “gays” to live “straight” from time to time during which they have fewer rights than when declaring themselves “gay.” This is hard to square with constitutional protections and freedoms. Still the question: where did their extra-normal beliefs come from?

Only an opinion, but it seems possible that the patterning of babies’ consciousness begins before birth. That is, conflicts, stresses, roles of “father” and “mother,” “male” and “female,” create feeling-ideas or “comfort-patterns” that provide a matrix for future experiences, feelings, fears and pleasures. A girl born into a “home” where the interactions between the father and the mother made female roles and responsibilities very negative and uncomfortable, could – COULD – in the presence of other stresses of growing up and learning to conflict or cooperate with others, find an innate “comfort” in acting not like a woman, but like a man. Inevitably this expresses in sexuality.

Are her genes different? Obviously not, but her beliefs are as “real” as anyone’s. She feels “right” as other than a female person. There is an incongruity inherent in her personality and she is more comfortable at the core of her belief-being acting more like a male and avoiding the stresses – pains – of feminine roles.
The mirror of femininity avoidance will be just as “true” in masculinity avoidance, not because such men are genetically or cranially malformed but because their belief structures are fitting the patterns implanted as early as before birth. Our new codified protection of and promotion of homosexuality has served to not only normalize aberrant sexuality, but to attract mildly patterned people to the growing new “club” of alternate sexual pleasures. Combined, female and male “anti-“ patterning produces anti-motherhood and anti-fatherhood belief-models. One cannot imagine a more profound division of the social fabric of a nation.

Aggressive, anti-male feminism serves to accelerate and exacerbate these patterns as more and more anti-masculine mothers gestate and bear children, and dominate educational institutions. Being masculine is no longer attractive to many boys; partnering with a male, especially a non-masculine male, is no longer attractive to many women.

Translating contrary sexual activity into political power produces an environment like that we are experiencing now, one where every traditional institution of our culture is under question, if not assault. Legalists and psychiatrists find ways to rationalize all of it as if what is unnatural is suddenly natural, and as if what has been taboo for centuries is suddenly legal. Even holding on to the beliefs of centuries is now illegal and condemned.

One need only contemplate the destruction of the livelihoods of simple bakers in Seattle to get a glimpse of the dangers of the erroneous path we are on.

Economics, Education, Politics 2017, Responsibility, Transportation

A Home on the Beach

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As the popular sport of denigrating Christianity has flourished, the new religion of “climate change” has gained thousands of new acolytes. Of course, “climate change” is science as opposed to faith-based mumbo-jumbo. You religious nuts have to come in to the 21st Century. Maybe. Hold the door, please.

Climate change is one of the few constants in the life of the earth. Ice ages, warming periods, volcanoes, comets, tides, gravity, planetary magnetic fields – these things have been present quite variably for billions of years. Well, yeah, but… but pollution, man… pollution has been present for like, since the atom bomb, man. What about that, dude?

Valid point, but pollution, too, has come and gone many times. We are considering only pollution that affects things WE have experienced. We, in our hubris, see this brief period since Biblical times or, more pointedly, since Columbus, say, as what is normal and the only way the world should be forever. Maybe, but an impossibility with or without the befouling presence of humans, especially white ones; they are the worst.

Earth changes in ways and for reasons we cannot affect, effect or fully understand. We may have some ephemeral effects right now, but they get taken care of through cyclical processes fairly well, although not perfectly, God knows… except for jet aircraft and a handful of other egregious assaults on the biosphere that we can fix if we develop a mind to. Surface weather cleans up a lot of our sloppiness, and we are technologically obviating some of our worst ideas. Economics helps.

Self-driving cars are a good example. Again, hubris and greed are driving current approaches, but we’ll get it right without too many deaths, one hopes. Once a standard is set requiring cars to “talk” to each other, real progress will be made. The problem with “autonomous” vehicles is autonomy: attempting to have every car have all the abilities to detect, control or react to every variable in traffic, pedestrians and weather – and weird roads. Can’t be done. However, if every car knew what every other vehicle within, say 100 yards were doing – direction, speed, acceleration – then traffic could automatically adjust itself so that it would never have to stop, including at intersections! Add a few sensors at intersections, on-ramps and the like, and “self-driving” cars will begin to resolve one of the worst pollution generators on the planet: personal, independent, ready-at-a-whim, expensive, heavy, inefficient cars.

And save lives. Imagine commuting without driving your own car. An electric “AV” (autonomous vehicle) or “SDC” picks you up along with 3 others going to the same concentrated economic zone, all independently arranged with phone apps. You work on your laptop, play cards, text or eat breakfast perfectly safely. Your SDC moves steadily forward cutting commuting time by a third or a half, then drops each “ride-pooler” at his or her work and goes off for the rest of the day to do some other tasks, including plugging itself in for an hour or so. At the prescribed times it picks up its riders (who may or may not be the same 4 based on workday schedules) and takes them home. Highways are less congested, traffic flow is uninterrupted (thanks to MDV’s [manually driven vehicles] also communicating with vehicles within that 100 yards), and billions of gallons of gas are left unburned. Cool.

Plus, thousands of acres of parking lots are made superfluous and may be “de-paved” and otherwise made better use of. Public transportation, that perennial, government, unionized cesspool of constant losses and shortfalls, will finally be in a form that works and a lot of crappy trains, trolleys and buses can be eliminated. SDC’s can go where people need to go when they need to go there, resulting in actual use. A lot of people will simply stop owning personal cars that sit idle 93% of the time.

As for jet travel, that’s different. Still, large fractions of it can be obviated with superior “ground” transport systems. Monorail transports in busy corridors, even up to 1,000 miles, can eliminate thousands of short-haul jet flights. Jets, after all, dump their exhaust at 35,000 feet, beyond where normal weather will help remove it. Surface transit at 300 miles an hour, or close to it, will compete effectively on trips up to 3 hours or so – possible up to 1000 miles. Trips from 150 to 500 miles would be a breeze, and more comfortable… and electric. Clean.

Elon Musk’s batteries are going to help, but we’ll have to resolve our UN-scientific fears of nuclear power to finally clean up our planet. It’ll happen… has to. Neither solar nor wind can carry the load in the next couple of generations and we seem to want to clean things up right now – nuclear.

At the same time, maybe we can devise solar-powered robot vessels to clean up our preposterous gyre of garbage in the pacific. Container-ship companies can pay for them. We have to become serious about not despoiling our home. Clean air, clean land, clean water – all valid and viable goals. Climate change will slowly correct to the only extent that it can. What does that mean?

To whatever, unquantifiable degree that human activity has caused a change in Earth’s average temperature, it has taken a long time. This is not to discount variations in solar output, sunspot cycles, variations and weakening of the magnetic field and so forth, but let those go. We may have an impact, no matter how arrogant we sound in saying so. Still, it’s fairly small and slow to make a difference. There isn’t any treaty or legislation that is going to make a rapid reversal. Decades, generations.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start as soon as possible… and we have. But, increasingly, the choice that true believers offer is stark destruction of our ecology and mass starvations and all they imply; OR, VOLUNTARY population reduction. The possibility that Humanity might resolve pollution by dint of invention and technology or even good motives, is never proffered. According to the Church of Inevitable Death, mankind will either kill itself out of stupidity and greed or thanks to enlightened leadership from government members of the new religion.

I’ll take door number 3, Winky.

Climate acolytes are currently very upset about “…the four inches of sea-level rise that has already happened!” Well that’s serious, especially if you’ve been living within two inches of the mean sea level in 1940. It’s also extremely difficult to determine with any precision. But if the seas have risen a couple of inches, their worry and over-concern has to ignore the 400 FEET of sea-level change since the beginning of the reversal of the last ice age. Of course, there was a lot more ice available for melting in the good old days, so small global changes could cause massive meltwater volumes. We’re relatively safe from those kinds of effects, today.
A large part of our ostensible sea-level problem is our own damn fault, since we do enjoy living right on the waters’ edges. I expect we’ll deduce how to avoid drowning slowly, most of us, anyway.

If the entire atmosphere could be liquefied it would be about 33 feet deep, or 393.7 inches. Well great… so what? Well, in fact, CO-2 comprises about .0397% of the total. Let’s see what this means:
1% of 393.7 inches is just 3.937 inches – out of 33 feet. But, CO-2 is less than 4/10ths of that percent, or slightly deeper than 1.57 inches. Around the year 1800 (pre-industry), we’re told, CO-2 was only 3/10ths of a percent of the total, or what would have been 1.18 inches. Now we are told, it is the added .39 inches of the 33-foot total that has caused nearly every problem we face today, hot or cold, wet or dry, cloudy or sunny.

It is a big deal because people literally breath out CO-2, as do our cars and trucks and planes and things. Better, it’s a trace gas that we can BLAME on humans! We can TAX it and buy votes with it and be superior about it. Ohh, Heaven!

Worse, it is swamping tiny atolls in the Solomon Islands and the handfuls of people who like living there (who wouldn’t?) need some of everyone’s money to compensate their moving costs. At least, that’s the trumpeted theory. Still, it fits with the trends of the past 100 centuries or so, which ought to be comforting. Our anxiety derives from changes that have affected things we know from the past couple of hundred years… things that, in our arrogant view, should have remained static once we decided we liked them.

Right? Of course, right!
Since so many factors we have nothing to do with have maintained the direction of change, we are now adopting an amazing attitude that it is within our politics, economics and powers, that we can steer change in a different direction. This is far more remarkable than divinity, but a lot of people have bought it.

Race

National Conversation

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The divisions between parties and people appear wider now than at few other times in our nation’s history.  Well, what about the Civil War, you are screaming, those divisions cost us so much blood and treasure and hatred?  Surely nothing compares to that!  Besides, that was about SLAVERY, you privileged white hater, and nothing could ever compare to that… so there.

Well, I am duly chagrined for suggesting otherwise, and soundly disreputed for any other opinions or ideas I might ever deign to utter.  Or type.  Of course, it is not I who equates every movement to undercut Judeo-Christian morality and more, with the struggle for “racial equality.”  There are fools and worse, allied with those with hate-filled desires to rip apart America and her premises, who not only are able to deny that Jews have been treated even worse than so-called African-Americans, and that the “Holocaust” never happened, but who are tickled to prosecute the piece-meal holocaust that’s happening now.

Where so-called Christians supposedly caused all prior offenses against human rights, the new holocaust(s) are the work of so-called Muslims and their fellow-travelers who, while decrying beheadings and the like, and any other desecration of civilized life, actually wish the so-called Muslims success in the tearing down of Israel and, better, the United States.  After all, there are still people able to make decent lives in “the West” who don’t embrace so-called trans-genderism, and that is equivalent to all oppressions that have gone before!

Why, there are those who aren’t fully on board with the new homosexualities, anti-sexualities, a-sexualities and parentless child-rearing.  Imagine.  Their oppressions are every bit as oppressive as the inhumanity of slavery.  We’re all down for the struggle, my brothers.

Blacks have a solid point.  Whites of many shades historically dominated blacks with greater technologies, and enslaved them.  That’s historic fact.  But it’s not the only historic fact, a truth that many modern blacks are unable to consider.  It is also true that the United States is the only society where people with brown, black and somewhat-black skin coloration, some of whom are actually related to black people who were slaves, are able to disrupt the daily lives and economics of millions of their fellow citizens on the basis of slavery having been a rotten thing for our ancestors to have done to their ancestors, some of them.

It is the only nation where currently angry blacks are mad at currently confused whites about rotten slavery that is no longer practiced, lo these 160 years.

Blacks do not agitate against slavery in England despite it having been the English who introduced the slave trade to the colonies, except for the French slaves in the Carribbean, and the Portuguese and Spanish slaves also brought to – and taken from – the new world.

There is virtually no mention of American blacks’ hatred for blacks in Africa who practiced slavery, themselves, as part of the spoils of conquest, and who sold people into the holds of slave ships and who have taken more advantage – murderously so – of other blacks to this very day.  The struggle stops at the water’s edge.

Only the United States deserves this wrath and militant demands for reparations.  Modern people who practice slavery in other parts of the world are of no concern to modern so-called African-Americans who build careers out of hating modern whites… in the United States.

Interestingly, “African-Americans” who come to “America” on their own tend to integrate and succeed economically without much concern about the rottenness of slavery two centuries removed.  Non-Blacks from Africa may not call themselves African-American however.

So, we have a conundrum.  The United States has undertaken to right the wrongs of history more than any other nation or society – a thousand times more.  The United States has fought to make opportunities available to every race and class more than any other nation or society, and paid mightily of its treasure to ease the plights of the poor, homeless and hungry – a thousand times more than any nation in history.  Yet, black-on-white hatred is increasing… here.

There are reasons for this, and facts, I’m sure.  Thousands and thousands of facts, and reasons, and motivations and political gains, about which I have many opinions.  But there will be no “national conversation” on race relations until someone or lots of someones can answer the question: why is this agitation occurring HERE, and nowhere else?

Uncategorized

The Most Powerful Organ

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The most powerful organ in the body is not the heart, or the liver, or even the descending bowel!  Athletes might think the greatest power is in the “glutes” or the femoris and adductors.  In obese America even the stomach is way behind the greatest organ.

The organ we’re describing is the source of the greatest hatreds in the world.  It moves armies and populations to hatred and dehumanization of outside groups, so that they might be bombed and killed without conscience.  It is so powerful that it can change the meanings of words to the degree that murder is no longer murder and crimes are now “rights.”

The most powerful organ is the MOUTH!  I know, right?

The most comforting words of love and compassion can issue from a mouth connected to one’s heart – a phenomenally useful combination.  These can lead to love between friends… and even between strangers.  They can lead to procreation and great parenting, recognition of strengths in others and acknowledgement of heroism.  They can educate in great principles and improve one’s society, culture and public good.

The mouth is fairly close to the brain.  This doesn’t always mean there’s a connection, however.  A mouth can spew corrosive vitriol directly at people we love, even to the point of destruction of marriages, families, companies and governments.  Mouths sometimes, well… run off at the mouth, so to speak.  Friends of the mouth’s host will then ask, “What on Earth were you thinking?”

Nothing, probably.  Recently, for example, that great philosopher, Madonna Louise Ciccone, proclaimed for as large an audience as she could find, that she had thought about blowing up the White House (based, apparently, on its legal resident).  One would hope that her mouth had spewed with no forethought, but she claims there was some.  She should know, no?

World-famous deep thinker, Stephen Colbert, said on broadcast TV that the mouth of the president of the United States was good only for holding the penis of the president of the Russian Federation.  That was scripted, evidently, and probably practiced, but it still is not evidence of a connection between the Colbert’s mouth and his brain… hmmnn, unless, Lordy, maybe it is!

I wonder if that is where the term, “Full of (euphemism for turd)”  came from?

Social media provide ways to “speak” by typing, and those who enjoy the process seem to act as though typing out text makes one an “author” or some sort of “journalist” and not a “speaker.”  Verbal crap that people – most people – would never say face to face, might be magically insulated by virtue of social-medium “publication.”  This is proof that there is often no more brain-connection to peoples’ hands than to their mouths.

This is true for Presidents and paupers, liberals and conservatives.  One need only be able to discern unfounded – or unbounded – hatred in texted speech, as opposed to reasoned criticism, to gauge the connection of brains to much of modern “speech.”

 

 

 

Culture, Governance, Trump

RIGHT PRINCIPLES and DISCERNMENT

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It doesn’t appear that the background belief that the “world” will be beautiful and peaceful if we just all learn to get along with everyone, is valid.  Even in the microcosm, arguing about “partisanship” and worrying ourselves about the lack of “bi-partisanship” fails to illuminate the real basis for disagreement: right principles.

Many of us have principles that we are, if not governed by, at least motivated by.  We used to call them our “conscience.”  We sort-of always know when what we are doing is “right” or “wrong.” Let’s hope.  Still, modern science and technology, and modern anti-religion trends, have brought us to a time of phenomenal toys and enjoyments simultaneous with a culture of drug use and abuse, and hyper-sexuality.  In the face of these multiple assaults on our “principles,” we have clung only to a couple of erstwhile “truths”:

  • The worst sin is “intolerance;” and,
  • Passing judgements is bad.

The automatic corollary, it appears, is that every culture is equally valid and we should not act as though our own were any better.  Nor, it seems, should we make too much of our exceptional comforts, cleanliness and safety, because it’s not “fair” that we have them and so many others don’t.  This leads to so-called “immigrant advocates” who are not advocating for “immigrants,” but for illegal entrants, and to college campuses hosting wild demonstrations fundamentally against the sovereignty and even the Constitution, of the United States.

Is there someone to blame for this?  How did so many citizens of this relatively free, universally educated country, replete with community colleges, colleges, universities, on-line courses and free public libraries in nearly every town and city, come to hate it?  How did a nation so successful and liberal with its anti-poverty and unemployment programs, peppered with Christian churches of many denominations, arrive at a public governance that is virtually at the point of persecuting Christians FOR THEIR BELIEFS?

How did a nation founded on the very highest principles, led by George Washington, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, come to despise these leaders because of their economics and practices common to the day?  How has so much ignorance and lack of discernment come to motivate large fractions of our citizens to discard every founding principal in favor of socialism, communism and hedonism?

Why are we spending Trillions of dollars on education when the product of that investment is antithetical to our culture, heritage and survival?  How did this, all, happen?

What does it matter, except that we understand how, so as to not continue practices that brought us to this point?  This premise will generate a lot of discussion, some quite heated, but few actual solutions.  Everyone not consumed by the new liberalism and anti-Americanism, will decry education, lack of religious instruction, rewarding mediocrity and even failure, excessive welfare, stupid politicians, high taxes and sugary beverages.  Oh, and drugs… definitely drugs, both bad and good, including too many analgesic pain killers for minor ailments.  All of the above.

But, so what?  Is there some piece of legislation that will “turn things around?”  Maybe it’s a result of too many immigrants or, at the very least, too many illegal entrants!  That must be it.  Just stop immigration for a while and get rid of these Hispanic gangs – and drugs!  Get rid of the drugs!  That’s the ticket.  Maybe we should be deporting these criminal aliens faster… and keep them out.  And the death penalty; bring back the death penalty and make people truly pay for their most heinous crimes.  We’ve got to get judges to stop being soft on criminals.

It’s also not right that so much wealth is concentrated in Wall Street banks and brokerages, and that there is so much collusion between them and federal agencies and politicians.  Look at how they move back and forth between Treasury and Goldman-Sachs.

Do we think we simple Americans are going to fix all of these things?  By voting?  For whom?  Is there one person we might elect who will carry all of our valid concerns forward and “fix” things?  William Jennings Bryan thought he was one such, and things were a Hell of a lot simpler in 1896 and on, until the first World War.

Donald Trump surely believes he is one such, too, as do a majority of States.  The unprecedented opposition to him shows the depth of socialist statism that he wants to confound and undo.  Believe him or not, we should all wish (and pray) for his success.  The sovereignty of the individual, ostensibly (and once) protected by our majestic Constitution, is OUR freedom and YOUR liberty, the two not synonymous.

If you do not understand the distinction, perhaps we can start fixing “things” by learning what it is.

Culture, Immigration

POLITICAL WRONGNESS

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Political correctness is suddenly exposing itself to be political wrongness, although one must wonder how many acts of Islamic terrorism must occur to finally reach the tipping point.  Those who prefer to see only groups, rather than individuals, in matters of political power, are unable to see THE group that threatens western civilization when Islam is the motivating inspiration for wanton murder.  Strange, that.

The same who perceive groups as being either Oppressors or Oppressed, tend, irrationally, to declare Islamists as Oppressed and not to be misunderstood or judged too quickly.  Indeed, they seem to enjoy contortion for apology’s sake lest “all” Muslims be judged as Oppressors and not just the brutal savages who committed the most recent murders.  And for them the SECOND reaction is to enumerate the unemployment  statistics in the savages’ most recent neighborhood of residence.

The FIRST is to overcome their personal disappointment that the murders were not committed by a white, Anglo-Saxon Christian.  After all, they reason, WE don’t give a (euphemism for turd) for the words of our own religious background, surely it can’t be that there are people in the world of 2017 who still do?  No, honestly!

What most don’t realize is that we are still fighting the philosophies of Hitler, and that the Second World War is lingering on.  The NAZIs expended great effort, money and propaganda to inflame the Arabs in the Middle East, particularly in Egypt and in the Levant, succeeding beyond their wildest imagination.  While Arabs had little use for non-Muslim Hitler, they loved the idea of killing infidels and racial (Islamic) purity, readily translated into blaming Jews for virtually everything they didn’t like.  The Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, were “radicalized” through hatred, intentionally, by the Germans starting in the mid 1930’s, and they’ve never looked forward.

Anti-semitism and the whole made-up “Palestinian” oppression/occupation, were part and parcel of the NAZI plan to keep the southern front active and problematic for the English, in particular, during the War.  And that whirlwind of hatred has only gained strength since.  What a wonderful heritage.  We freely welcome people who have been taught since grade school that Jews mix human (Muslim) blood into their matzos, and expect to turn them into tolerant “Westerners,” or, more stupidly, to expect them to negotiate with us infidels for lasting peace in Israel and Palestine.  John Kerry is convinced of this outlook.

Still, like it or not, there are just two – only two – paths for current events to follow: One is to gradually subsume Western philosophies and become Muslim-dominated theocracies in the grand tradition of Iran; Two is to make a practical, life-affirming decision to disallow Muslim infiltration of Western democracies.  This would include gently or forcibly expatriating Muslims who actively disavow our laws and government (and Constitution) and who preach Jihad in their mosques.

Of course the “civil rights” of every CITIZEN who is harmed or inconvenienced by this new policy will be a concern, and the wailing will precede those actions, continue through them and persist for years afterward.  Suits will be brought but terrorist acts will dwindle to nearly nothing.  Law books will decry the act that made Islamist exclusion the law of the land: “A religious test!” they’ll say.  “Unconstitutional!” they’ll scream.  And so it will appear.

Constitutions, bodies of law and related jurisprudence are brought forth among peoples for but a handful of purposes: 1) Common defense against outsiders; 2) Civil protections of private property; 3) Common, social protections of the individual right to happiness.  There is no way to construe the Constitution as an instrument of the destruction – quickly or slowly – of our own nation and of the protections of our people secured by it.  To argue otherwise is to espouse treason, in fact.  What is the logic?

The World will keep spinning if the United States becomes virtually Muslim-free over, say 10 years, and Muslim-majority nations will continue on their own destinies when slightly more majority.  It is not required by either logic or the Constitution that any number of enemies of the people or of the nationhood of the United States, must be allowed residence here.  The alternative to such clarity is to argue for the acceptable number of enemies so invited.  Prudence dictates that there is no acceptable number.

It is time for Muslims and Muslim nations to be discomfited in this war.  If “the West” and this nation most especially cannot grasp the reality of the enemy within and without, then there is no point in its -or our own –  survival.  And, if such is the case, then perhaps another path, THREE, is available: We could allow Islam and Shar’ia law to triumph, while hoping that believers in all that Islamic mumbo-jumbo jihadists have been spouting, and the words of the Quran, itself, are not taken all that seriously.  Surely they won’t ban bacon.

 

Culture, Education

GRADUATED CHANGE

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Prudence attended graduation at a well-known college in Boston’s Fenway section recently.  This particular school graduates no chemists, engineers, lawyers or business majors; no biologists, entomologists or astronomers; no materials scientists or agronomists or hydrologists, and no oceanographers.

Their purview is social work, and a healthy dose of “education.”  That is, education B.S. degree-recipients who, I think, they hope will teach the next generation along the lines of ultra-liberals who have been taking over education aggressively for the past 75 years. Fortunately, they sometimes fail and a graduate escapes with her (mostly hers and wannabes, there) internal philosophy intact, her understanding of reality clear, and her intense desire to educate young kids, rather than indoctrinate them, ready to run.  One such is Prudence’s only reason for attending.

Prudence’s eyes were opened, however, to the existence of this and other nests of socialist vipers, who churn out radical “change agents,” as were frequently referenced in the interminable speeches and last-second directives that made not a single reference to God, although the very last instructress managed to say, “… let the Divine …” which was amorphous enough to get through.  That tiny reference was among the last dozen words of last-second directions to the posse of Bachelors and Masters ready to change America.

The otherwise clear, May, day began with breakfast – free food, so to speak, catered in to the College’s Brookline facility.  Being observant was revelationary.  The professors are constantly professing, we noticed.  Tattoos, for example, profess attachment to the odd fascinations running rampant through society where women, sometimes grossly obese versions, have acres of “body art.”  It’s a statement of inclusion… or a test.  After all, if our campus is one of welcoming and inclusion and non-discrimination for students, then it must be for their instructors, too.  See how it works?

There seemed to be a single statement being uttered by a large fraction of both staff and graduates: There is no weirdness on OUR campus – all are welcome.  Prudence has no argument with the “welcom(ing)” part.  In other words, if you are as different and as unusual as you can make yourself, come, attend our college – we’re just as unusual as you!

Every speech underscored the same concepts of challenging the status quo; the difficulty is, today, that the status quo, having grown fairly weird itself, requires ever more strangeness from those who wish to challenge it.  This might explain, in part, the number of strange appearances of students, but it is unnerving to apply the same measure to staff and professors… at least it was to Prudence.

Sexuality is key to both protest and education, it seems.  Prudence needn’t describe sexual appearances and apparent expressions as most are indescribable and likely wide of the target.  But, unusual male-female iterations are more commonplace on college campuses than elsewhere in the world.  Perhaps it’s simply because these are the age groups where “youthful” experimentation is most likely.  Shouldn’t some adults guide these wandering – and wondering – children toward the most appropriate paths of action and belief?

Aren’t we intending to create new adults of our culture and social fabric?  Or is it our purpose to indulge every strange, interruptive feeling and treat it as if it were as valid as reality?  Reality is so restrictive: two genders… huh.  Are we kidding?  I mean, honestly!

Are there any lines a culture shouldn’t cross?  It’s not a trick question.  We used to decry drug use and numerous other forms of debasement.  Why?  Because it makes for a stronger, more nurturing society.

We used to require people to make their own way, no welfare and all the rest.  It inadvertently made for stronger people and children.  Problem free?  Of course not.  Too many fell through the “cracks,” as it were.  Some level of social support was required for simple fairness TO CHILDREN, and civil kindness to the helpless.

We used to require universal education that reinforced moral lessons, some Biblical, without damaging ANYONE, reinforcing shame for bad actions and strengthening the consciences of individuals… and their basic honesty.  These were good, strengthening-of-society kinds of structures.  Phenomenally, we have succumbed not to foreign powers but to our own cleverness, talking ourselves out of our heritage, our very culture, and of shame, itself.

We are so smart.

Murder, for example, now has shades of evil, some not so bad as to require equivalent sanction.  Indeed, abortion-at-will, deemed “murder” by half of the nation, has amorphous codified status and taxation support!  Suicide by drug overdose is a form of murder by drug-pusher, but we, the wealthiest, most sophisticated culture on earth, with more police forces per hectare than any other, has failed steadily for 60 years to clamp down firmly on drug commerce.

Now we are in a race to legalize ever purer and stronger pot despite its risks (there aren’t any, according to pot users) and to arm first responders with Narcan.  We’re smarter than we even realized.

The largest “industry” in the United States is welfare of a thousand titles.  Statists have found that the philosophies of the most rock-ribbed, self-made American stalwarts can be purchased with enough dependency, as recent “conservative” outcries against threats to Medicare makes clear.

The higher education “industry” is nothing if not opportunistic.  With TRILLIONS of dollars flowing from the Federal and state levels, colleges have justified turning out an army of social workers to soak them up.  Here and there people in need are truly helped, but the lion’s share of those dollars goes to the army of concerned, compassionate care-workers and, especially, to the army of administrators who make sure they are not wasting any money.

Somewhere, and here and there, are schools, churches and other institutions that respect and promote the concepts of self-reliance, absolute personal responsibility, honor and sublime integrity.  They must struggle against an onslaught of socialist control of budgets and information.  Is the ultimate success of the ultimate anti-God philosophy certain to overwhelm what made the U. S. great?

That future depends upon the ignorance of a majority of Americans.  How smart did you say we are?

 

Culture, Economics, Governance

When Robots are Rights

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We must, as thinking, contemplative beings at least somewhat concerned about the future, consider the implications of robotics and so-called artificial intelligence: machines that learn. It’s all a matter of large-enough databases and rapid-enough retrieval. So what? you might ask.

Civilization came to be built as it is through an economic reality that forces individual humans to strive for improvement – both personal and financial. That is, at one level or another, life has been tough for most of us, causing each to become stronger in order to be able to adjust one’s surroundings to greater comfort or safety… or both.

In the past century or so we have managed to elevate enough of ourselves to support elaborate industries designed only to entertain us due to growing levels of “leisure” time. That is, modern life for a large fraction of humankind (but not all, certainly) permits complete creation of safe and comfortable living conditions (standards) with about 40 hours of “labor” of very specialized kinds per week, or about 25% of available time.

In fact not even 25% is needed, as many forms of labor provide for weeks of non-work time each year in addition to “holidays,” storm-days, “personal” days, sick days and, increasingly, family and maternity “leave” periods. Politicians and other panderers – advocates and socialists of various stripes – are constant in their demands for more time off for ostensibly “civilized” and crucial purposes. Employers are, after all, mere thieves of workers time and comfort and must not be allowed to earn a profit from their labor, if such dis-allowance is at all possible.

In any case and by whatever fraction of productive employees’ time, businesses must find ways to produce the millions of products and services that they and others need or want in order to create and maintain the kind of safe, comfortable living conditions each desires. And those products must be profitable enough to justify all the investment, risk, work and education that goes in to producing them, delivering them and warranting their quality and usefulness, AND to permit sufficient taxation of both profits and of labor itself, to pay for all of the “public” works and subsidies that politicians think we need – including those that we truly do.

Together we, many of us, understand the multiple contracts and assumptions and personal costs that are enabling lives we like; and we understand, largely, the changes we must each choose to make to have “better” lives and proportions of leisure time. Robots are changing the “contracts” we have made between individuals, companies, governments and ourselves – and we are largely unprepared for the future that they are creating.

Right now the contracts of the economy depend upon parties who have striven to be part of the economy and who have striven to be “good” and “useful” people – most of us, anyway. What each has attained-to is the basis on which each of us judges the other as a qualified member of our society and culture, evaluates him or her as to qualities of charity, kindness and “fairness,” or lacks thereof, and on what his or her productive value is determined.

It is very important to us whether the person we are considering is one who “pulls his or her weight” or, barring genuine disability, “coasts on the work of others.” Is he or she “pulling the wagon” or just “riding?” Like it or not, every one of us needs to grasp these values for the current system to “work.” We understand and agree to abide by the hundreds and thousands of “contracts” that cause society, products, services, profit and pay to function with a net gain of living standards over time for the largest number of our fellow society members.

Are you with me so far?

Here and there, and in growing numbers, people who are employers, which is to say, producers in our economy (“job-creation” being simply a result of profitable productivity), are squeezed by governments – including their legal systems – through taxation and liabilities of increasing types. Customers demand redress and compensation from producers’ profits if anything goes wrong with a product, its delivery or its use, almost regardless of “fault.” Governments need more and more revenue to perform vital deeds and to buy votes from constituents.

To compensate for growing assaults on profits producers must steadily become more productive without raising costs… and this means reducing labor costs – employee costs. Given myriad labor laws protecting workers, insuring them, insuring their families and paying them at certain rates, producers are turning toward automating as many procedures as possible: ie. robots.

Robots don’t have to look like manufactured humanoids. They can be as unassuming as ATM machines and self-check-out lanes at Home Depot and a thousand other retailers. “Robots” can dispense prescriptions, take orders at fast-food restaurants and, soon, custom-tailor suits with nary a sales-clerk or store-manager needed. What do YOU do? What function are you compensated for? Maybe you build houses.

Robots make it possible to factory-manufacture modular homes that come with wiring, piping and alarm and computer circuits already in place. They’re delivered by truck and bolted together on site. Altogether there can be barely 20% as much labor needed to produce a single-family home. For modular multi-family buildings, there is even less per housing unit. What will all the tradesmen be doing?

Or, the counter workers, potato-fryers, and on, and on, and on… what will they be doing? Retailing is disappearing before our eyes, along with its jobs and buildings, janitors and re-decorators, security guards and on, and on, and on. There are very, very few jobs that are not threatened, except, temporarily, robot-maker.

Will this happen overnight? Not yet, but overnight began about 30 years ago and is accelerating as rapidly today, tomorrow and next week, as computing power and miniaturization permit. So what are the political and human consequences of the robotic devouring of what we now call “jobs?”

First, people who now control productive enterprises, from small to large, will be controlling larger and larger fractions of production generally, whether of precision-engineered parts or of sandwiches, and with fewer and fewer employees. This will concentrate productive surplus – which is to say: profits – and wealth as well, in those same hands or corporations. How, under the U. S. Constitution, will this wealth be “shared” among the soon-to-be jobless citizens? (“Soon” being in 20 years?)

Shall we raise taxes much, much higher? Should laws be passed that require producers to share remaining jobs among 4, 5 or 6 individuals (however inefficient that will be)? What happens to the essential right of private property? Will all hiring and profits become the purview of the least-efficient institutions on the planet: federal bureaucracies?

And how will individuals prove their worth? Not only to their friends, wives and children… but to themselves? If lots of humans don’t need to be very smart to survive, will more than the owners of production and the builders and programmers of robots, bother to become so? What happens to politics, then?

The stratification we have acquiesced to so far – stratification in which those elected deem themselves superior and entitled to office, ideas they have “sold” to relatively ignorant constituents – will become stricter and more calcified, virtually unassailable by the welfare-supported masses of citizens. Those will be they who never vote against wealth-sharing and at ever greater sharing rates. How will democracy or a republic or religiosity survive?

Just as large fractions of us, now, can’t find our ways without “GPS,” or feed ourselves without welfare, what will we become when there is no need to strive… and dependence upon robots approaches totality? What will civilization be? Constant leisure? A complete absence of sacrifice? SHALL WE ALL BECOME ENTERTAINERS? Shouldn’t we be thinking about these things?

Do you think of them? Fear them?

Immigration

TOLERANCE, LOGICALLY

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There is definitely a logic to modern immigration non-policies and protests. One could be justified in his or her puzzlement as to why criminals might be valued above the law abiding, even by “official” agencies of domestic law-enforcement. Some logic is shouted from the streets, some we’ll have to impute, but there is a logical platform underpinning apparent disconnectedness of immigrant “advocates.”

There would be MORE logic if every advocate were a non-citizen. Being allowed to gain new comforts and benefits that are not available in one’s own country is, logically, something to strive for. Like everyone else – every single member of the human race – people who sneak into a better country or economy are CAPITALISTS! That is, each will gain as much as possible for as little effort as possible. Once gained, the “possessions” one has are reason, of themselves, to defend one’s ownership thereof. That is, “possession” is 99/100ths of the “law” (of possession). Are we going in circles, here?

Well, yes. But there is a certain logic for the possessing individuals. What about “Sanctuary” logic? Heated protesters and their elected officials make a case for “fear avoidance.” That is, people who have snuck into the United States are, in theory, subject to legal sanctions for having broken Federal laws, and they “fear” being found and found-out. Their friends and families, legal residents and non-legal, and the self-recognized and self-created “agencies” that earn their livings working to connect non-legal residents to various welfare benefits, ESL classes and, unfortunately, contrived documentation – like drivers licenses – are on the front lines demanding “justice” for their fellow humans, laws be damned.

Municipal officials claim that these “fearful” non-legal residents won’t report crimes they have knowledge of if they are so fearful of being found-out and forced to go home to their own country. Nothing is said about reporting crimes of other non-legal residents who will likely escape prosecution simply because of their illegal status! MOST countries are NOT as pleasant to live in as is the U. S. Numbers of less-nicely-living people exceed 3 BILLION. How many are entitled to the largesse and safety of the United States? Logically, I mean.

Well, immigrant activists say, there shouldn’t be artificial borders; the World belongs to all of us. There may be logic behind that statement, but there are some sort of borders that come under the definition of human rights, aren’t there? Are strangers, or aliens, entitled to other individuals’ personal property? Even non-legal residents would object to a family of unknown, unrelated strangers moving into their homes and taking their income, wealth, food and personal space. That sounds logical.

There is a perverse sort of logic, not stated but accepted in practice, that stealing from the United States nation isn’t really stealing, like, from another person… I mean, honestly. There are a lot of U. S. citizens that believe the same foul thing! Still, illegal entrants are stealing forms of wealth that belong to U. S. citizens, and these include, in most cases, direct food, education, medical, housing and others kinds of costly aid that our new “residents” have not earned, paid-for, or deserve in any way except emotionally.

A new logic then is brought to bear: refugee status… and asylum. The U. S. since the end of WW-II has codified processes for EM-igrants: forced to leave their homes because of war. These are they who emigrate for essentially non-elective reasons; émigrés from Cambodia and Viet-Nam are excellent examples. The United States, responsible for much of the immediate destruction of Viet-Nam, Laos and Cambodia, helped tens of thousands of émigrés from Southeast Asia come to the U. S. and resettle in somewhat concentrated neighborhoods, mostly in cities or proximate suburbs.

What happened? Within a year or two our new residents had positive impacts on their local economies. Apartment sharers would combine for one car so that the adults could get to work; extended female family-members watched children for one another. Kids learned English without bi-lingual crutches and within a decade we had a host of “new Americans” whose cultural communities and religious philosophies were NOT purposefully antithetical to our Constitution and our Judeo-Christian legal system. One need look only at their children and grandchildren as they give valedictory and salutatory speeches.

There were both logical and charitable reasons to encourage and accept Southeast Asian immigrants. There is only an emotional justification for accepting large numbers of Muslim refugees. We want to believe that the wonderfulness of U. S. society will cause all degrees of Muslims to become more secular, less fundamental about Islam and to live like their new neighbors. For a nation premised on religious “freedom,” depending upon a softening of religious fervor seems oxymoronic – if not moronic.

Islam teaches dominance over, or death for, infidels. The prime infidels are Jews and Christians. I can see a problem. CAIR describes Islam and the Quran as mostly faith, sweetness and light. They bend over to reference Abraham, David, Jesus and Mary as if we are all brothers in belief and tradition. But history teaches otherwise.

Most, I mean in the order of a billion and more Muslims, will never take up arms against their neighbors, behead a nun in Africa or a reporter in Pakistan. Most don’t spend their days in hatred. On the other hand, they won’t fight too hard against their real faith-brothers who do. Islam, by credo, intends to replace all other belief structures because God commands it; Mohammed said so. “Religious freedom” is anathema to the Quran as are all forms of secular governance and lifestyles. And Muslims mean to carry out the dictates of the Quran.
Well, I can respect their adherence to their faith – I’m an American. Live and let live. But, I’m also conservative. I believe in the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus Christ and the lessons of personal responsibility that the Bible, and our Declaration of Independence and Constitution embody. What ye sow, so shall ye reap… so MUST ye reap.

Christianity has undergone significant reformation not because of what the New Testament says, but because of abuses by the Catholic Church, politically, financially, powerfully. Little by little, sometimes ‘bigly,’ the Church has shifted while the basis of Christianity has not. Yet, make no mistake, Western civilization is dependent upon the success and survival… and integrity, of the Catholic Church. Fortunately, its self-destructiveness seems to be lessening.

“America” became what it did because of Mosaic and Christic principles. It also has failed in many areas because of human failing to follow those and our own laws. In the past hundred years, or so, we have found ways to talk ourselves OUT OF our Judeo-Christian principles by cleverly playing our own words against them… against ourselves. Legalized abortion is a clear example; separation of church and state is another.

We’ve given up our right to exercise judgment, and become afraid to exercise or even honor Christianity. Muslims have never relinquished Islam – every jot and tittle of it. In our amorphous philosophies we invite Muslims to live among us as if they, too, will become amorphous in their philosophies, yet, in our legalistic anti-Christian wasteland, we can’t even TALK about threats to our culture and heritage. The only sin left is intolerance.

So we tolerate, tolerate, tolerate until we’ve become able to argue for automatic citizenship for illegal entrants. Breaking laws and standing, publicly – even by elected officials – against their enforcement, is celebrated. A majority of states elected a president who battles to restore the rule of law and our Constitution, whose wife has the courage to say a prayer in public, and thousands protest in the streets. God save us.