All posts by Prudence Leadbetter

Culture, Governance, Race

Po Boys and Indians

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At Book Club the other night we discussed a disturbing, true story from the 1920’s about the only partly resolved multiple murders of Osage Indians and the origins of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.(1)  Following the final forced relocation of the Osage to what looked like useless land in northeast Oklahoma.  Beneath that land, it was soon learned, lay a gigantic pool of oil and the Osage owned all rights to it.

Subsequently whites were declared to be “Guardians” of Osage “rich redmen” ostensibly assuring that they handled the contracts and ownership of their great wealth properly.  Instead, most took financial advantage and many, probably dozens, took part in both slow and quick murders of Osage families such that control of the oil and the leases would wind up in white hands.  The FBI finally got to investigate a handful of the murders and to convict a couple of conspirators and murderers, whereupon victory was declared.  In fact murders had occurred prior to those the FBI investigated, and continued past that time.  Sordid, and disturbing; dozens of Osage Indians were murdered but, in the views even of lawmen of the time, “they were only Indians.”

Prudence has always required that Nazi Germany be soundly condemned for treating a class of citizens and neighbors as something less than human and needful of extermination.  One wonders how so many Germans could have followed Hitler, accepted the “Final Solution” or actively ignored it, even as trainloads of Jews passed by and as gas-chambers and ovens processed them nearby.  Lo and behold, hundreds of Americans coexisted with, if not participated in, systematic murder of the Osage, even whole families, for no more than financial gain.  The membrane between Judeo-Christian ethics and societal murder schemes, is very thin.

So, the whole chapter might be buried in our national memories as something that we have moved beyond and would never, in our enlightened state, today, be repeated.  A bit more reflection is in order.

Following King Phillip’s War, or the French and Indian War, American colonists clarified their perception of the new continent as theirs for the taking, lacking only a few courageous men and women to push the frontier further and further and a little further.  The sometimes peaceful “Indians” who already lived on it were deemed uncivilized or even savage, and therefore lesser beings, a perception proven over and over as “Indian” land, waters and hunting grounds were “settled” by colonists, French, Spanish and English (as well as Germans and others), and the occupants lashed out in the only ways they knew, killing and brutalizing many “whites”.  It became easy to kill those indigenous “savages” since they were lesser and God clearly had provided “America” for the colonists.

Natives couldn’t seem to handle their liquor, either.  Frontiersmen quickly learned that “Indians” could be weakened and controlled with alcohol.  The fact that “firewater” was a problem for Indians was reinforcement for the idea that they were lesser humans and their problems were due to their own flaws – get rid of them.  Some Osage had those weaknesses, at least some did, and despite their remarkable assimilation, were perceived as not quite worth a white person and flawed, as shown by their ignorance of white people’s connivance and thievery.  Thank God we have moved beyond such arrogance and prejudice. Not.

One need look only at the last 55 years(!) of federalized welfare policy and effect to see that the “Osage” of that period are simply mainly inner-city blacks, today, but also Hispanics.  Their flaws, in our liberal sympathies, are evidenced by poverty and worthy of welfare programs too numerous to count.  Instead of stealing their oil we steal their opportunities by trapping them in failed ghettos and failed schools, failed health-care and failed economics, partly because of political advantage, but partly, Prudence dictates, because of a never-admitted belief that the inner-city demographic is not as capable of success as “normal” people.  This attitude is “proven” by the statistics of gang warfare and high murder rates.

Now professional sympathizers and the employees of the welfare industry will scream that I am racist because I think that poor “folks” are guilty of being poor when it is really my racist attitude that keeps them stuck in welfare.  The opposite is true.  There is a large bloc of people who earn elections and financial power off the backs of welfare recipients… but it isn’t comprised of conservatives.  Prudence suggests that a clear-minded examination of the last 55 years of inner-city problems and failures reveals that those awful conditions could never be sustained, maintained and profited from unless it fulfilled some over-arching purpose.  And, if not an articulated purpose, at the very least, an over-arching belief!

Fifty-five years is a long time, even for an all-intrusive government with unrestricted debt-creation power, to accidentally allow millions of its citizens to live in failed circumstances while trillions of dollars in entitlements are sent to them or spent on them.

While “Indians” have a flawed relationship with alcohol, for inner-city populations it is drugs.  Fortunately, in someone’s decades-old view, drugs also provide a source of income for blacks and Hispanics and they do, after all, mostly kill one-another, gang members, somewhat bad neighbors.  Just make ‘em vote correctly and leave the suburbs alone and, in fact, the rest of us can leave them to their miserable daily existences.  It’s a de-facto policy that has worked for over 50 years!  Who’s the cynic… or the racist?

Unionized social work and current public policies are certainly not the solution.  Dominant philosophy holds that these people are unable to break out of poverty because “government” – right-wingers, primarily, won’t provide “the resources” to make it happen.  Failing schools, by the way, also unionized public services, use the same logic. Rapid growth in expenditure-per-pupil have failed to reverse declines in educational achievement; more “resources” will fix the problem.  Worse, now that pharmaceutical companies and sales companies have expanded addiction into the suburbs, the dependable drug trade that has kept blacks and others from being too restive in the inner cities is causing wider concern about drugs and the whole corrupting profit-structure may collapse leaving ghetto-dwellers in a tough spot.  Only a racist would want that to happen.

President Trump has begun a decades-overdue process of review and undoing of welfare programs that have failed continuously.  What will make that actually “stick,” if any of it may be accomplished against the welfare bureaucracy and politics, is a change in philosophy, attitudes and beliefs, starting with belief in black abilities as equal to those of any whites.  Maybe this is the last generation that treats inner-city residents like children or, worse, like “Indians.”

(1) “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI”
by David Grann

Governance, Representation, Trump

Land of the Free

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The current turmoil in our “American Community” is constantly laid at the feet of Mr. Trump.  He, of course, can’t avoid making his own contribution to our dis-ease… it is how he got himself elected.  But, we appear to be living out the future long forecasted: that we will destroy ourselves from within, and not be conquered from without.  Trump is a symptom of the poor health of our self-government experiment, not the cause.

A list of “major” components of modern American life will, topic by topic, immediately bring to the reader’s mind his or her own ideas – opinions – and perhaps knowledge of what is out of balance, if not dangerously wrong in each arena.  See if you agree that the following are the “major” components:

1   K – 12 public education                    2   Higher education

3   Religious institutions                         4   Religious faith

5   Law enforcement                                 6   Courts and judges

7   Race relations                                         8   Legislatures & representation

9   Energy                                                         10 Bureaucracy

11 Politics and campaigns                     12 Banks and money

13 Families and children                        14 Small business

15 Big business                                            16 Globalization

17 Taxation and licensing                      18 Illegal entrants

19 Welfare                                                     20 Drug abuse

21 Health care                                             22 Health insurance

23 Transportation                                     24 Pollution and waste

25 Global climate                                      26 Internet

27 Television, communications        28 Morality

29 Constitution and law                       30 Sexuality

31 Nationalism and patriotism         32 Civil rights

33 Culture                                                    34 Language

35 Science and ethics                           36 Computers and Artificial                                                                                                   Intelligence

Prudence indicates that everything “major” in terms of the molding, functioning and survival of society can be found among and within these topics.  This is not to say that “animal rights” and pesticides are not important, as are diet, obesity and vegetarianism.  But with some thought every advocate of almost anything can find his or her prime concern under one of these umbrellas… I think.

The unfortunate reality is that we, all of us, almost automatically, today, turn to our federal government, that thousand-headed Hydra, to take dominion over all of these topics or problems.  Simultaneously we turn to lawyers and litigation to restore balance when we feel unfairly treated by… well, anything and anyone.  “Freedom and Responsibility” have been replaced by “Comfort and Litigation.”  Responsibility for one’s freedom is a lot of work.

What, now, shall we do?  Your mind has recalled something about almost all of the listed topics, mostly problems and how you’d “fix” them if you ran the zoo.  There aren’t enough electrons to paint an LED screen with the “solutions.”  We are in debt to our great-grandchildren, each of us having benefited in some degree from that theft, no matter how succinctly that theft may be apportioned to other groups.  We got here by being human and we can get out of the morass by human means, too.

It is a mistake to believe that some perfect candidate for whichever office, is going to correct ANY part of ANY of the topical problem areas following his or her election.  It happens occasionally, advertently and inadvertently, but we have humanly caused to develop several systems of elective and appointive governance that are most effective in enriching those so elected and appointed, and least effective at solving true problems or injustices.

The operating logic of the Constitution is that representatives of the people would be the least corruptible locus of federal power.  They would be just like the farmers and tradesmen they left behind: suspicious of executive authority (like that from which the “Revolutionary War” had lately freed them) and responsible not only for designing and compromising on the legislation they wanted to have signed by the President, but also for holding the Executive departments in check, with ultimate oversight of their actions.

However, to further check the possible coalitions of emotion or temporary economic conditions, the Founders also included the Senate which members were selected by the several states’ own legislatures to, ostensibly, represent the states’ interests as sovereign states that had relinquished a measured amount of that sovereignty to enable the common defense of them, all.  Legislation that got “through” the House of the people’s Representatives, must, Constitutionally, ALSO be passed by the Senate with its own interests addressed, specifically those of their respective states.  Legislation had to please a lot of people to finally get to the President’s desk.

Of course, Senators have their own ideas and it is and was from the beginning, rare that a bill originating in either chamber will survive negotiations in the other without important changes.  As a result, two committees are formed, in effect: one from the House and one from the Senate, who sit together as a “conference” committee.  Their task is to iron out the differences between the two versions of the legislation.  If they can, with lots of back and forth with their respective chambers’ leadership, then the compromise “bill” is re-voted by each chamber (dual passage not guaranteed) and, if passed by both, finally sent to the President.

The theory at work was that the “people” would hold a check on their representatives; the Senators would hold a check on the passions of the people’s representatives; the House, and the Senate, sometimes together, would hold a check on a President and his administration.  Should work, right?

One of the greatest concerns of the writers of the Constitution and of the Federalist Papers, was the possibility of “faction.”  Faction is best translated as “Party,” political party.  What part have we, each of us, played in the virtual destruction of our constitutional republic?  How much of our decision-making at election times derives from anger towards or fear of, candidates from the wrong “party.”  Why has this become the marker for political “involvement?”  What has hatred got to do with self-governance?  With America?

How did we become subjects of the government “we” formed?  How did “we” allow the Departments of War, State, Treasury and Navy, plus an Attorney General, become a consuming, barely recognizable monster of 200, 400, 500 or more Departments and Agencies, Offices and Committees who govern us through regulation, fine, penalty, taxation and threats?  How did the nation that took on the world’s greatest empire at the time, turn into a population that can’t be trusted by the government it formed to choose what it eats, drives, takes for vitamins or thinks about faith or life, itself?  We are not trusted, even, to think about freedom.

 

 

Education, Guns, Right?

Poisoning America’s wells

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Students are on the march.  They have taken aim, so to speak, with a blunt political weapon, egged on by liberal, which is to say, leftist educators and a leftist press.  Interestingly, these kids’ targets are placed before them specifically for them to “shoot” (their protests) at: the National Rifle Association, conservatives, Republicans, right-leaning news outlets, writers and columnists, anyone who defends the Constitution and, of course, Donald Trump.  Left out of the group of targets are incompetent law-enforcement officers, organizations and bureaucrats who prefer to not enforce laws that already restrict guns and owners.  Left out are liberal policies of “mainstreaming” the mentally ill and the lawyers and psychiatrists who will bring Hell-fire upon anyone who presumes to restrict any psychopath who has demonstrated the will to kill or injure and who has stated a desire to do so, even when the intended target so referenced is a school.

And so they march.  Their weapons are their youth (so excessively revered in modern society), crafty signs and posters, memorable slogans and non-stop publicity through like-minded broadcasters and publishers.  What do these school-age pawns believe will be accomplished?

Well, they want “more gun control laws.”  After all, if (name the psychopath) could not have obtained his (99% ‘his’) “assault rifle,” those dead students would not be dead today.  It’s as plain as the noses on our faces.  There is a raw, unattainable truth to their simple demand.  Unfortunately, that truth cannot be realized without rewriting the Constitution (of which most people under, say, 40, know very little), and the institution of police tactics intended to confiscate virtually every gun held by legal and, one would then hope, illegal  gun-possessors in the country.  There would then need to be imposed truly draconian restrictions upon every port of entry and airport to prevent the entry of firearms into the country.  Maybe we could start with the illegal gun possessors without shredding the Constitution.

Ain’t gonna happen.

For those on the leftist spectrum, the dis-arming of the civilian population is an essential step toward creation of a more perfect nation.  For Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin and Stalin, and every current far-leftist, disarmament appears vital to their ability to maintain control of the lesser civilians who are harnessed to support their governments.  Now, being harnessed to support a domineering government is something Americans understand more than our founding fathers ever could have feared, but no dictator has ever encouraged private gun ownership.  This might be instructive, were we possessed of eyes to see, ears to hear and sufficient historical knowledge to appreciate.

Our agitated students have not been so blessed, and happily accept some hours out of school and bright publicity on weekends as they perform the blathering their leftist mentors could never do.

Let’s suppose, children, that AR-15’s and other scary-looking rifles were banned tomorrow and quickly confiscated by the New American Gestapo.  How much “safer” would you be, in your gun-free zones?  Suppose some pathological idiot wanted to solve some twisted problem he feels the victim of, by shooting some kids at his school.  He would be reduced to bringing 2 or 3 semi-automatic handguns and some extra clips – relatively easy to hide – and secreting them in strategic places where he could get to them on the fateful day.

The dark day comes, on his sick calendar, and he grabs a handgun and starts shooting.  Does the fact that he’s not employing a rifle make a damned bit of difference?  Wouldn’t you be praying for someone to shoot him?  Would you be comforted by the confiscation of millions of citizens’ lawful firearms, some of whom would have resisted, being killed or criminalized and incarcerated on your behalf?  After a few minutes of open season on students will you feel better when the police finally kill or arrest the wielder of a handgun rather than the wielder of a scary-looking “assault” rifle?

If the rifles were painted red and the handguns painted blue, would the absence of red guns make the recipients of blue guns’ bullets less dead?

To you the obvious response is to ban those kinds of guns, too. You are being raised as fools.  Your excited demonstrations make clear your incomprehension of the exceptional origins of this nation and of the freedoms you enjoy.  I hope you become more broadly educated after the public schools are done with you.

Trump

Jerry Wescott’s thoughtful thoughts on Trump

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[RESPONDING TO “(WORD)HOLE REDUX” from Jacksonville, Florida]

Shortly after news of his foul comments surfaced, Trump tweeted, “It is my duty to protect the lives and safety of all Americans. We must build a Great Wall, think Merit and end Lottery & Chain. USA!” Now, I have no problem with a president finding it his duty to protect us – of course it’s his duty, he’s the top cop, and the enforcement of the law is a tough job, one that requires a firm hand. I do not agree with the idea of a physical wall though. I realize that Israel has a wall, but so did East Germany and China. Those walls have been destroyed or compromised, and they cannot function to keep people from crossing. They represent old technology and in this world, they cannot be as effective as an electronic one. Trump is good at building walls, both physical and financial ones, but his walls are only as good as the technology that monitors them. Better mice defeat once-better mousetraps though, and as technology improves, the physical obstruction of a wall across our southern border becomes less and less useful until it becomes useless altogether as all the prepositions are applied to make it so. Drugs and illegal aliens will still come into the country, but by other means.

“Think Merit,” he says. If “merit” is a term only applied to foreigners, then I agree. They should be properly examined, and they should be willing to become good, productive, law-abiding citizens of our country, and they should do so in the right way, with all the documentation in order, and all the pertinent research on their personal history complete. But what if we turn the merit-seeking microscope around and examine Donald Trump. The rest of America and the world know his (every) thoughts – even the crude and thoughtless thoughts.  He puts (them) all out there on Twitter without shame. Every so often, I see the worth of what he says, but I rarely see the value in the way he says it. One of my favorite quotes from the Proverbs of Solomon is, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.” If Trump acknowledged this concept, I might call him a statesman. If he honored the Creator’s determination of nations, or God’s love for each human being, I would consider him worthy of leading our meritocratic government. I see little merit in him, and his willingness to use profanity to describe global political and social situations in which the rest of mankind exists, repulses me. His careless and childish practice of name-calling not only dishonors the despised places and their leaders, and humiliates the millions of unfortunate people living in them, but the mud slung splashes back on Donald, his office, and his own people!

Okay – I believe I know what I’ve led you to think. You have me down as a bleeding heart who wants everyone to trample our borders. No, I don’t. It is not lost on me that God has created our nation as well as those which have been spat upon by the bully who has become president. He claims that we must “end Lottery & Chain.” I understand the problem. I don’t think we should simply end it, just modify it in a sensible and responsible fashion. We should have handled the repeal of Obamacare more intelligently as well. Sometimes it seems like he needs to smash things just so he can erect a new tower in the history books with his name on it. Never mind that – I know I can be too down on Trump sometimes. The point is, he needs to be more thoughtful about what he says. He needs to be way more careful about how he says it. A thug threatening you with a knife will not get the respect he craves, only fear. Respect has to be earned, and, as I see it, all he has earned is money. The fear he has generated, and the foolishness with which he presents himself, and us by proxy, has turned a global community with problems into a pending disaster. Believe it or not, I can cope with that because I expect that all of this is setting the stage for the end of the age. I’m gonna’ get un-engaged from this outrage.

Sorry – didn’t mean to rap. I don’t even like rap. I consider it to be rather … end-times stuff. It’s a destructive force that tends to tear society into subcultures and fragment any remaining sense of community that we might still have as a nation. Yes, I believe in a rapture of the saints and a seven-year tribulation period when the Antichrist arises to global power and wherein the nations of the world are judged. So the Donald is age-appropriate, after all.

Culture

Weathering the Worst

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So it’s snowing today – might get two feet.  The wind is blowing from the northeast and everyone is upset that it’s less than a week since the last windy snowstorm.  Even worse, lots of us lost power last week, and that is the worst affront possible to our connected, screen-addled selves.  I mean, no TV?  What the heck?  No INTERNET?  What the    _ _ck??  Worse than all of that… if that’s possible, this terrible weather is all – our – fault!

We live in a remarkable political environment.  We’re in deep debt, welfare costs are too high, drugs are killing more people than ever, President Trump just fired Rex Tillerson and the White House seems to be in chaos, illegal entrants are being released after committing crimes so the “Feds” can’t deport them and a college education costs more than $50,000 a year, if you can believe that.  Besides, North Korea and Iran have nuclear weapons and missiles and China is building sand islands with military airstrips.  Let’s not even mention Venezuela and the Dakota Access Pipeline.  What are we supposed to do?

None of that stuff is worth a hole in the snow… well, except the snow, which is all – our – fault!  Wait until this summer, when there may be some hot days, 94 degrees, even.  Those will all be our fault, too.  This winter is the first time in the history of history that there has been more snow than municipal budgets allowed for… except for the past 40 years’ budgets or so.  Actually it’s not the first winter there has been 3 snowstorms in one month, either, but when I was a kid and everyone thought the world was cooling a little, they weren’t my… our… fault, although I had to shovel the stuff.

There isn’t a single problem, of terrorism, opiates, debt, taxes, wars, trade, education, politics, Constitutionalism or school shootings, that is as serious or as threatening as global warming.  If you had paid attention you’d have learned that all of the problems, unhappiness, dysfunction, trans-genderism, murder and genital herpes is CAUSED by global warming!  Where have you been?  Wait!  What’s that?  OMG!

Global warming is so ummmnh… so, ahhh… so 2010; I knew that.  All of those problems are caused by Climate Change… not global warming.  Meh! What’s the matter with me?  But, it’s still our fault and something we should be proud to recognize and proud to alter our lives over and pay taxes to put a STOP to.  It’s the best damned invention of the early 21st Century, for Heaven’s sake.  For the first time since the discovery of salt it’s possible to control the lives of EVERYONE on Earth, while we all sacrifice with a smile.  It’s better than religion ever was and church services are every minute of every day.

There are even sacraments.  Ten years ago a Prius was sufficient, but now it’s vegetarianism, and not just any vegetables, either.  If they’ve been touched by Monsanto or harvested by Con-Agra or Cargill or distributed by Nestle’, don’t eat them!  No siree.  You want only foods grown by real people who don’t make a lot of money or vote Republican, and who use good fresh shit to make them flourish.  If you eat meat you are taking food from the mouths of baby polar bears… or baby wolves, you ungrateful civilizer, you.  And all you people who earn a living raising animals and speaking harshly to them can just switch to carving souvenirs from windfall wood – memorials to places people once lived.

And if you can’t plug your car in and drive with no emissions, don’t come crying to us at the World Preservation at Every Cost Foundation.  We won’t have any hatred left for you: it’s all applied to the damned power plant operators who are making Climate Change worse for polar bears.  The next rally is being crowd-sourced on our freshly-charged dumb-phones, made in candle-lit factories.  You’re on your own for hatred, pal.

Man… oops, sorry, I mean two-foot.  Two-foot, I wish I believed it all – hate would be so much simpler, less distinctive.  I do believe in global climate change, though, since science shows us that it’s been going on since before history and even earlier than that.  In a way it’s somewhat reassuring that the forces that have shaped the earth are still with us.

The climate we really liked for Earth is a mix of good and bad times blended into that perfect day in, um, some state or country that has no bad storms or droughts, some time before Ronald Reagan became president.  We want to keep Earth right like that, that day… probably a 24th or 25th of April, and if it takes not driving to work or Disney World to achieve it, it’s a small price to pay.

And don’t worry about having nothing to do.  Get a pot prescription.  Text me.  We’ll do hunch.

Education, Family, Guns, Right?

Eau to be gun free

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“School Shootings” are among those events that tear people apart and, roughly, along the widening “liberal-conservative” divide.  Certainly adults in both frames of belief have children, send them to school, love them dearly and do what they possibly can to keep them “safe.”  How is it that they can’t agree on how to do so?  Again, both types of parents love their kids.

The same divide produces separation on “rights” of a thousand kinds, on the role of governments in individuals’ lives, on the role of education, itself – particularly so-called “public” education, and even on the role of parents, themselves!  Into these widely divergent sets of opinions let’s inject the subject of guns and of the Second Amendment.  After all, many fear that the greatest threat to children’s well-being is of being shot inside their gun-free schools.  A wide divergence, indeed.

Along with other divisions between the two generic groups there seems to be one along military lines.  There are a thousand nuances, but in general conservatives are more in favor of military training, discipline, duty, honor and bravery, than are liberals.  Liberals are more in favor of government in its own right, more inclined to favor extremely personal “rights” to be codified, protected and even enforced by government, and to that degree, liberals also favor police in their roles of enforcing “civil rights,” a somewhat malleable term.

Conservatives also honor police but rather more for their quasi-military structure, honor and daily bravery.  At the same time conservatives see police as potentially threatening to constitutional rights, even twistable by “government” to control populations rather than to protect them.  Many questions arose as part of the Valentine’s Day school shooting in Parkland, Florida: questions of policing, of guns, of safety, of parenting, of news… and of government.

Quite distinctly, liberals believe that one or another form of “gun control” will make school shootings and other crimes where guns are employed, impossible.  This is not unlike liberal beliefs about governmental programs like public housing projects, in which residents of such projects will become more responsible toward themselves and others by virtue of having a decent place to live.  The same could be said of liberal attitudes toward most welfare programs.  In a generic sense, liberals believe that government in its great wisdom and goodness will make better citizens – better humans – than develop naturally or, incredibly in their view, by the hand of God.

Conservatives tend, generally, to see guns as protective devices in at least as great a degree as they might be offensive.  Almost automatically conservatives respect and honor the Second Amendment and the civil right of gun bearing.  Where liberals think that guns are the problem, conservatives think that criminals are the problem; where liberals fear guns, increasingly as they appear “scary;” conservatives respect their power and uses.  Where liberals are frightened of and purposefully ignorant of guns, conservatives see mechanisms that may be learned, understood and mastered with a set of skills.  The demands for “solutions” to school shootings following the Parkland “snafu,” exist in two separate universes.

Liberals want government to modify humans by legislating limits on their rights and actions: ban certain guns (scary ones), raise age limits for gun ownership and more.  Conservatives want a form of the “Guardian” program1 where sovereign individuals accept the training, risk and responsibility to protect themselves and others by arming themselves – including in school environments – and being willing to confront bad people using guns, and other weapons, offensively.

Liberals, including most teachers these days, fear guns, themselves.  They see the gun as inseparable from the person wielding it.  That is, the gun: metal, machining, grip, trigger, sights, barrel, caliber and bullets it holds – is as evil as the criminal prepared to use it against innocents.  No way can a liberal accept having that evil object anywhere near a school.  “Guns in classrooms?  That only puts us and our students in greater danger!”

Conservatives tend to be quieter about guns.  They don’t fear them but they do feel that it’s necessary to learn about them, get trained to use them1, get trained to deal with active threats, and, in general, they feel that concealed carry by a trained individual is a wise, sensible response to armed threats.  In other words, they believe in deterrence rather than response.

Response is a problem in every shooting incident.  Effectively, the only good response to an armed, crazed potential murderer is an armed challenger who is prepared to fire in the moment.  Schools could be turned into vaults with armored doors, metal detectors, and even Kevlar backpacks, but waiting for the potential murderer to arrive to a gun-free zone like a school and responding by hiding, simply means that it might be a tad more difficult for the killer to kill, but not at all impossible.  A couple of minutes are all it takes, whether firing an AR-15 or a 9 MM pistol, to kill a dozen or two defenseless kids and nearly helpless teachers.  In 3 to 5 minutes armed police could be on site, but those minutes are all that are needed to complete a tragedy as we too recently witnessed.

If first responders then fail to act in the most defensive, responsive way possible, then the number of dead will be greater.  There is no alternative… in the moment.

In order for gun bans to make a difference in actual school safety, there will have to be an enforced confiscation.  With millions of guns in private hands this presents the likelihood of resistance to such an action.  Will police then shoot at citizens who have never committed a crime with a gun except to own it?  Can such an ex-post-facto offense legally be imposed?  Can the right to bear arms be subsumed by popular emotion and civic policing?  It would seem that both eventualities are impossible.  But the demand for them fits the essential liberal opinion of guns, gun-owners and the Second Amendment.  All three are equal, and evil.

Liberals hate guns and, given their automatic equivocation of guns and owners, they often sound as though they hate their owners, too.  This fits with liberals’ disrespect of any who fear government more than guns.  Most of the “statistics” that gun haters cite are untrue, as are most crime statistics, themselves. Gun advocates are just as ready with inflated statistics of their own.  We have reached a point in the national debate over guns and rights and of wrongs and rights, when gun haters owe it to themselves and to the nation… and to schools and children, to grasp some realities about private gun ownership and their positive impacts on crime and social order.

The vast, vast majority of gun owners are not criminals.  There are more than 70 Million gun owners and more than 210 Million guns.  Among the 210 Million about 6 Million people own half of them.  Many gun owners have one, two or three, a rifle and a couple of sidearms.  A large subset of gun owners are active hunters and they may own 5 to 10 weapons: a shotgun or two, three to five rifles and two or three handguns.  Millions of guns are old, collectible, rarely even handled, much less used for anything.  A significant number are antiques.

But Americans own a lot of guns… gun ownership is part of America, part of our founding and heritage, written into our constitution and a legal, civilian right, like other civil rights, in fact.  Part of the chasm between beliefs is an urge and effort to, in effect, “un-do” America.  Our Judeo-Christian fundament and all the laws and traditions that flow from it, are, today, offensive to this group.  The definition of words and terms that describe the ideas and nature of “America,” are being changed daily.  There is a large and apparently growing segment of the United States that desires to “fundamentally change” America.  Those are they for whom “sovereign citizenry” is an affront, believing that a benevolent, socialist government is the only locus of trust in our society, never a sovereign individual.

Guns and self-defense are part of U. S. citizenship.  The more stupidly we deal, socially, with this fact the more times defenseless people will be victimized.  If we follow the concept of banning certain guns, now, upwards of 200 “types” of firearms, the net improvement to the safety of defenseless groups, most specifically and almost most defenseless, schoolchildren, will be approximately zero.  In a weird way the next school shooting is almost looked-forward-to by some rabid segments of leftists, for it will help ratchet up the demand for greater restrictions on the ability to own as well as buy or, likely, even manufacture certain types of guns.  The intended eventuality is a gun-free America.

That is to say, a non-American America, their ultimate goal.

Extreme defenders of the Second Amendment exclaim numerous statistics that are just as extremely “debunked” by anti-gunners.  Reviewing numerous studies over the past two decades one can learn that there are many, many thousands of instances of crime prevention thanks to civilian, legal gun possession.  There are probably not a million a year or two million – that is unknowable since most events are not newsworthy or even part of police reports.  But, there are thousands.  Even the Clinton administration, in studies2 opposing guns, found upwards of “1.5 million” yearly armed self-defense incidents.  Even “simple” female self-defenses against sexual assaults number over 100,000 events per year.

Let’s consider that there are, say, 400 thousand such events of various kinds.  That’s in the order of 1,100 events per day –a significant quantity.  A certain fraction of those would have resulted in physical assaults and murders… perhaps what, 1 in 20?  5% of crimes?  Are those lives not also of value?  Is it the position of anti-gun advocates that people have an obligation to remain defenseless, accepting rapes, beatings or worse while police are either on their way or, more likely, totally unaware of the event?

Is not self-defense of oneself and family the most fundamental of civil rights?  Can that be truly equated with the utter failure of law-enforcement in the matter of the Parkland massacre?  Or of the Fort Hood shooting?  Or even of Columbine where the weirdness of perpetrators was well-known in advance?

Anti-gun advocates need to recognize that there could barely be a civil society in the U. S. WITHOUT private gun ownership, guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

1http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2016/05/30/the-guardian-program/  1http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2016/03/26/shooting-back/

2 Gun Control Fact-Sheet 2004 / From Gun Owners Foundation, 8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102 Springfield, VA 22151

 

Economics, Governance, Representation

Strange Times, Unbridgeable Gulfs

1 Comment

These are unusual times in Washington, DC, and in the whole country.  The popular press and the Democrat party, which is to say, on one side, there are many voices trying to convince the unconvinced that President Trump is surely guilty of terrible acts involving Russian operators who “colluded” with the Trump campaign to put the electoral kibosh on the Hillary Clinton campaign.  “Collude” means “conspire” generally and we know that Trump is guilty of that and much more because there is, after all, an investigation  ongoing and going and going and “they” wouldn’t be investigating a PRESIDENT, for Heaven’s sake, if he were not guilty of something.

The investigation is under the aegis, which means an obscuring cloak, like a sheep- or goat-skin, of a person named as “Special Counsel” by someone high up in the Department of Justice, usually the Attorney General of the United States.  There have been damned few of these.  Democrats and the Press can think of only one other, when asked: Archibald Cox, who was the first “Special Prosecutor” (same thing as a special counsel if there actually is a crime to investigate) of the so-called “Watergate Scandal” and whose removal as such by President Nixon caused the resignations of then Attorney General, Elliott Richardson and of his Deputy, William Ruckelshaus over their refusals to fire Cox.  Robert Bork, then Solicitor General, automatically became acting Attorney General and it was he who carried out the Presidents LEGAL order to remove Cox.

For Bork his legal exercise of authority, both his and the president’s, partly sealed his fate when he was nominated for the Supreme Court in the Summer of 1987 by President Reagan.  Bork had become an enemy of Democrat justice and there are no resentments, there is no umbrage greater or longer-lasting than that of a liberal.  Bork fired Cox.  Even though Nixon’s brutal ending of the Cox investigations was a time of great Democratic rejoicing – Nixon having sealed his disgrace by that action, what could be more joyous – Bork was the one who provided the means and that was never, ever forgotten.  Ted Kennedy, so-called Lion of the Senate, drunken murderer, he, prepared the most outrageous attacks and vilifications to sink Bork before he could even grasp what in Hell was being done to him.  It had taken 14 years but justice was finally served… against Bork.

This is an example of one of the forces that mould and shape history: hatred.  It is hatred of non-liberals, non-socialists, and it stems from the abiding leftist desire… need… to change humans.  Human nature, designed, conservatives tend to believe, by God, is an affront to leftists who believe, essentially, that left-leaning humans can create not just a better world than God could and did, but even better humans than His.  Heady stuff, and the fuel of giant resentments, perhaps explaining why liberals are always angry about something and why they are convinced in their hearts that people who disagree with them are in need of regulation and re-education, which require more government and LESS freedom.  Freedom, itself, is resented by leftists, socialists, liberals, Democrats.  Hence, anyone who defends freedom and less government, is an automatic enemy of the left.  With so many enemies all around, it is no surprise that liberals aren’t  happy very often.

Because liberals and other leftists are so convinced of their mission to separate people from human nature, they never accept a loss when they do, in fact, lose.  What they do is immediately calculate how to win a slightly different fight on the exact same principle  that they just lost.  First they’ll need to devise a venue upon which the original battle can be recreated, whereupon some modified tactics might bring a victory that was simply not accomplished the first, second or third time.  Of course, once the liberal victory is achieved, the result may never, ever be challenged since it is clearly on the correct path of history.  None of that reactionary constitutionalism, freedom, independence or individual sovereignty and personal responsibility can be allowed to “weaken” the strength of the liberal welfare state.

After all, the reason socialism hasn’t worked before is because earlier practitioners were not as smart as the current crop.  Actually what has always happened was that socialists ran out of money, and not their own.  Today’s stripe of leftist, controlling types, have grown up in a world where virtually unbridled debt is somehow “normal.”  Maybe we… they, can now afford to give up freedom for the opportunity to be coddled by socialists NOT because we won’t run out of money – that train, with its overpaid unionized crew, left the station long ago.  No, it’s because we won’t run out of debt!  So far, at least, the cliff’s edge is still out of sight.  So long as there is unlimited borrowing from the future, there’s no crying need for wisdom, intelligence, historical reference or basic economics.

It’s sad to think that there are capable people who have made whole careers out of bringing us to this point.

How can we conduct rational discussions of public policy with a group that thinks non-liberal people are less than human and living in a past that they, liberals, hate.  Not that liberals want to discuss policy with virtual Neanderthals who cling to guns and religion – what could they possibly add? – but there is a case to be made that what liberals would discuss is how to get conservatives to give up American traditions and historical truths… silly things like mother-father families and working for a living.  It is a nearly unbridgeable gulf.

If individuals whose daily life is barely affected by these issues can’t discuss them, how can we expect congress-people to work out conflicts over the same ideas when their entire beings are consumed by re-election?  Prudence tells us that there are honest liberals, as we know several just in the Merrimack Valley.  And it seems still worthwhile to change their minds, bit by bit.

Uncategorized

Thought Leaders and other followers

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The evolution of politics in the U. S. is only a symptom of the collective consciousness of our people, as reactions to the much-anticipated “Nunes Memo” makes stark.  So-called “thought leaders,” who, in earlier times, might have been recognized as “leaders” by any definition worthy of follow-ship, are now best identified by a mix of shrillness and hypocrisy, the latter readily ignored by erstwhile and very temporary “followers.”

Any Gen-X’er or Millennial who stumbles across this scree is advised to watch “Saving Private Ryan” or “Apollo 13,” where he or she might get a glimpse of real adversity, dignity and bravery.  Shouting at people with whom you suddenly disagree doesn’t begin even to cast a shadow in the sunlight of true grit.  Who are the “thought leaders” of these most recent generations?  Barack Obama, may be one, although none of his great thoughts come to mind; just as much so is Colin Kaepernick, just as hard to comprehend.  And looming over Hollywood there is always Barbra Streisand.  For both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama Saul Alinsky was a thought leader, as he was for a generation of radicals.  Thought leaders, all.

Universities – in the “West,” at least – no longer place much emphasis on historical thought leaders, nor much on history, itself, sadly.  It is as though their role in preserving and increasing knowledge of western civilization is no longer worth the price of admission, which is trending toward the upper half of a hundred thousand bucks a year.  For those kinds of dollars one’s sons and daughters deserve safe spaces where never is heard a discouraging word.  Real debate requires grief counseling – parents have paid enough to get some.

George Soros might be a thought leader.  He certainly has enough followers, including those he pays minimum wage to riot on call.  But, there’s the nagging question, what does he THINK?  And, the gloomy corollary, what could his followers be thinking?

Soros thinks, in part, that a system of governance in which individuals are sovereign – like that outlined by the U. S. Constitution – must not be tolerated on this planet, he being a rabid socialist.  We also know that when Nazis were actively collecting and killing Jews like himself, that renouncing his faith, family, heritage and neighbors was not too high a price to pay to preserve his own life and comfort when all one need do was cooperate with Hitler’s Fascists, perhaps helping them steal Jews’ property.  No regrets, he says, and one might suppose his followers think the same way, as do partners, colleagues, compatriots and comrades who either have or hope to benefit from Soros’ wealth, whether an influential Democrat or a $15-an-hour “antifa” thug.  We need not probe too deeply into the erstwhile meaning of “antifa,” but Soros has bought, at least, a place in the thought-leader coven.

Many other political and government types see themselves as thought leaders.  They do their damnedest to lead the news whenever possible, but there they must compete with supposed journalists  who are vying for their own places in the thought-leader cabal.  Dismayingly, thanks to Twitter, Facebook, You-Tube and the like, many of both groups do lead thousands of people’s thoughts, even if only for a few hours… or minutes.  It’s heady stuff, nevertheless.

Mr. Trump has long thought he could lead some thoughts and a good slogan and article of clothing can do that, as evidenced by Madonna, for one example, and “KISS” for another.  Still, he does lead a lot of thinking in that everyone seems to think about him, whether skeptical, neutral, favorable or downright hateful.  People are in various tizzies since Trump decided to run, never mind since being elected, including great thinkers like Nancy Pelosi and Joy Behar of NBC.  Prudence isn’t sure whether great connivance is the same as great thinking.  Maybe.

One can recall when Billy Graham and a handful of other faith leaders were also thought leaders, in that large numbers of people attuned their beliefs to theirs.  In the “old” days, one might say, Cardinals in the Catholic Church were in that same role, in the sense that the Pope was a thought leader for the faithful.  Prudence indicates that their role has diminished significantly, largely from self-inflicted, festering wounds.  Western civilization overall has an abiding stake in the success and purity  of the Roman Catholic Church.  No matter one’s own path of faith, that purity is worthy of prayer.  Indeed, the purity  of EVERY Christian path is worthy of prayer, but each of those will have to find the strength to ignore popular culture and the attractions of money.  Few have.  Still, it is only in folly that we attempt, societally, to disavow the thought leadership of our Judeo-Christian heritage and history, since it underlies our laws, our origins, our forms of economics and capitalism and our sacrificial sense of justice.  There is no single thought pattern  stronger or more pervasive than what is described in the Bible, much as we wish there were no rights or wrongs or, for their matter, conscience.

Regardless of our half-baked feelings and weird higher education “leaders,” every society with endurance requires an abiding, overarching thought or belief in its mission… or purpose… or, failing those, right to survive.  “Balkanization” became a verb for good reason.  It names and describes how and why a nation held together by force will fracture along racial, tribal, religious and cultural lines, whereupon old hatreds, temporarily shrouded, again by force, will spill out into murderous, brutal conflict.

That is a fate to which the United States is not immune… not on the path we are following now.

Why?  What do we think about that?  Do we even hold congruent opinions, or beliefs about our direction?  Our future?  Karl Marx was and lately, is, a thought-leader, who later in life had to forego many of his twisted economic thoughts, since he had not factored in freedom, economic and otherwise.  We might consider that devotees of Marxism, like Trotsky, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-Dung, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and, also of late, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, were also thought-leaders, but their thoughts have destroyed not only dozens of economies but tens of millions of their citizens.  That isn’t easy to conceive of or even feel badly about – if you’d ever heard of the events – but one can imagine a gymnasium, let’s say with 100 people in it: it’s only 10 rows with 10 people in each row.  One might even know all 100 of them.

But to appreciate these historic thought-leaders we’d have to imagine, say, 250 such gymnasiums just in Massachusetts and with a little help from one’s phone, realize that that is only 25,000 souls.  Hmmmnnn… Various kinds of Communist and National Socialist thinking have eliminated over 100,000,000 people – friends, neighbors, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters and more.  That’s at least 4,000 Massachusetts-es worth of gyms.  Is that enough murders to care about?  They make Hitler, alone, a very junior partner.  Does Marxism lead your thoughts?  How in Hell has communism gained favor among American youth?  For whom is this change a measure of success?

Somebody… some thought-leader, so called.  It makes one a little happy to be at this end of his life and a little sorry for today’s youngsters who will mature in an America where the thoughts of knuckleheads will be “leading.”

Governance, Immigration, Responsibility, Trump

(Word)holes, Redux

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Many people worthy of trust and respect are seriously upset about the president’s crudeness.  He reportedly asked why “we” should allow people from various so-called “shithole” countries to immigrate to the United States?  For all of its crudeness, offensiveness and vulgarity, it is a very good question – one we should not be afraid to ask.

Well, the circumstance of the comment and the comment itself are both fairly straightforward, even simple.  But the inherent permutations and nuances are profound, sad, and instructive. This requires some parsing and mapping of the “splatter” that has emanated from the splat of a single word into the miasma of politics, hate, government, and the “American Dream… not to mention social media and hate.  Didn’t I already mention “hate?”  We shouldn’t overlook hate as a driver in modern… umm, modern ahhh, well… modern everything: media, news, broadcasting, ‘friend’ships, dialogue, religion, holidays, commerce, advertising, movies, philosophy and casual rumination.  Facebook, too.  Sad.

So, first observation is that every person who has talked about, proclaimed about or even thought about the description of many countries as “shitholes,” could in a few minutes, list a dozen or two dozen countries that fit the description!  Let’s change the term to “backward countries” and each could list three dozen.  What does it mean to make the identification?

It means, generally, that those countries have truly crappy politics.  Our politics are pretty crappy, too, granted, but, as Churchill observed, democracy is the worst form of government ever tried… except for all the others.  Corollary to that gem is this: The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

Even those who could construct a list of “backward” countries probably cannot describe what is “wrong” with their politics – the system of leaders, laws and lies that govern their populations.  Typically, under the blanket of crappy politics, the economics of these countries are also pretty crappy… sorry, “backward.”  The result is extreme stratification, poor education, low skill levels, limited industrialization and little imagination.  Simultaneously, the BELIEFS of their citizens are likely to be very different from those of the majority of ours.

Changing beliefs is the primal tool for the weakening and subjugation of peoples.

One might reply that “America is the melting pot” and go on to predict that “we” will “make” those unfortunate immigrants “better” and therefore more like ourselves.  Seems like hubris.  This attitude sounds magnanimous and sympathetic but it was never true.  If there is an American myth, that’s it.  We have functioned fairly well as a “salad bowl,” but never as a melting pot.  Americans of every origin and kind learned to live and thrive together, yet they were never forced to change who they were, beyond learning and following our constitution and laws.  But there were very distinct differences about when America “worked” and how things are, now, when so many consider our country and institutions to be “broken.”  The key is a grand misunderstanding of what is “The American Dream.”

The real and enduring “American Dream” can be stated only thus: That all kinds of people can come together in FREEDOM, respective of one another, respective of law and reason, free to follow God as each sees fit, and responsible to themselves and others for the consequences of their actions.  This sentence summarizes the U. S. Constitution’s connection to individuals.  Not connection to groups, cliques, whether religious, emotional or political, but to individuals, much the way that Jesus described individual responsibility to the laws of God.  “America” represents the boundless opportunity offered to every individual to perfect him or her self: the pursuit of happiness.  And no less, or more.

This is not how many view the “American Dream” or “America,” itself, today.  Socialist thought perceives control of individuals as the high point of governance, the exact opposite of the teachings of Christ or of the values and purpose behind the founding of the United States.  To accomplish complete control – and different kinds of socialists have tried many ways to do so – it is essential to place people into groups, or “identities” for whom certain laws will apply, whether to control that group or apply to another group or to all others(!) in order to control THEM.  There is no clearer example than brown-skinned people as an over-group, and African-Americans, as the driving sub-group, and descendants of slaves, the most exalted of the “drivers.”  Barring descent from slaves, having marched in Selma or having stood near Martin Luther King, Jr., suffices.

As with the growth of federal welfare programs, the epithet of “racist” has become almost standard within the belief structure of many black or brown-skinned residents of the U. S.  The charge of “racist” works to control the “other group” of essentially all “Whites,” including modifying their language and actions.  This has yielded political power to the modern kind of socialists: American liberals.  This, in part, explains the immediate descent to charges of racism emanating from one participant of the immigration meeting during which the president spoke so crudely.  But, it doesn’t make it true.

Welfare, itself, is a gigantic difference, since the 1960’s, from when earlier waves of immigrants reached our shores.  Those from Ireland, for example, came to take care of themselves and their families, as did Italians, Poles, Portugese, Norwegians, Swedes, Finns and Germans, Russians, Albanians, Greeks, Turks, Syrians, Lebanese and Egyptians and many others.  Did they come perfectly?  No.  We didn’t send ships or planes to bring them here more quickly, either.  They were strong and self-selected to endure the sacrifice of leaving everything behind to start anew.  This is no longer so.

Immigrants in recent decades have been encouraged and assisted for purposes of “diversity,” the opposite of e pluribus unum.  Immigrants , today, receive fundamental – and generously comforting – public support, benefits, even cash, yet are not required to meet ANY tests applied to earlier generations.  They need not learn English, they need not become citizens (refugees, asylees) they need not assimilate.  Indeed, they need not even follow laws, often being released for offenses that citizens pay dearly for committing.  One might observe that their beliefs are not those of the “American Dream,” but of taking advantage of our official guilts and sympathies… or of selling drugs, or worse.

We are stretching our capacities to accommodate immigrants, including illegal entrants, even to the point of breaking our own laws, local and federal, to make them comfortable.  Yes, we are an “immigrant” nation, by past definition – most assuredly not by the current one.  I am glad someone with authority and sensibility is asking, “Why should we welcome immigrants from the (backward) countries of the world?”  What we have been doing of late is certainly not in the national interest, which is the primary business of a president, one hopes, although it may fulfill the interests of political partisans and of those who wish America to not exist as we know it.  Ask that question again, Mr. President, louder.

A second observation instructs that the president cannot, ever, trust in the confidence or even honesty of anyone from Congress or the “press” and damned few from the executive branch.  Trump failed to take note of the many lessons of the past year and more, when he posed the question everyone in the room, except Mr. Durbin possibly, a mendacious Democrat of proven, documented unreliability, was thinking and should be thinking: Why should we welcome immigrants who are unlikely to contribute to our economy or standards of living, and whose beliefs are antithetical to the fundaments of the U. S. Constitution or of the “American Dream.”

The ridiculous process of “hating” the president (and others) for so many things of which most of us are also guilty, and so readily accusing him of racism, transphobia, Islamophobia or a dozen other awful constructs, is corrosive and intensely destructive of our “unum” for which millions have bled and died, sacrificed and struggled.  If we are seeking perfection in or from our elected leaders we are fools.  They need, like John Kennedy, only to be pure enough to set a course that is pro-American.  The conversations never disclosed, that the Kennedys had then, or that brother Ted ever had, or by ANY other president, would curl our earlobes.  The profanity and privately voiced prejudices of EVERY president, have been, until recently, kept out of the news because their disclosure would have been so destructively irresponsible.  What we didn’t know didn’t hurt us; had we known all of it we’d have been damaged and history made far different.

News outlets of every kind hope to make history by ripping away confidentiality, no matter the damage.  Their hatreds justify the damage… for shame.  Do we think – do I think – that Trump will become perfect in order to avoid that damage?  Hardly.  When I pray about him it is to cause some intercession that will abridge the worst of his impulsive communication.  It is not that he will disappear, leaving leadership to others.  I have no love for him, but no hatred.  I grasp his attitudes, and even share some, not, I hope, the worst of them.  But then, I try to live on purpose and not in comparison, as does he, I suspect.

The Lord works in mysterious ways.  For all of his flaws I believe Trump is on stage exactly when needed by this country.  I want him to succeed where his direction and intention is right and best – or at least better – than where we were heading prior, God willing.

 

 

Culture

Resolution Revolution

4 Comments

The start of a New Year may be a more significant spiritual event than any on liturgical calendars.  As a genus, Humans are compelled to count days, organize seasons and lunar cycles, divide days into candle-time, observe celestial cycles and even build gigantic stone thingy-s associated with all of those times.  Longest day, shortest day, equal days, feast days – they all become so very important.  But, the most important of all… the one day that every one of us cares about, regardless of nationality, is the day, indeed the hour, minute and SECOND that we change the number we have rather arbitrarily assigned to the year-time division: New Years.

Every one of us that is aware of the change in annual numbering is equally compelled to make promises to ourselves – sometimes publicly – as to how we will comport ourselves in better ways in the “new” year.  It’s a time for new personal and, in effect, spiritual beginnings.  We collectively, but privately, intend to be “better” people… replace bad habits with good ones, go on a diet, give more to charity, maybe go to church more often, tell our significant others, more often, that we love them.  Now, then, to whom are we speaking when we tell ourselves these promises?

Obviously we are attempting to communicate to a “self” that exists somewhere deeper? higher? than our cerebral cortex.  Short-term memory is notorious for being… well, short.  Our need at New Years is to imprint some new pattern of behavior – belief, really – on very long-term memory, and to do so quickly.

Belief is the key, and beliefs are spiritual, fundamentally.  Does all of our consciousness exist in neurons, ganglia and synapses?  Religions teach us, “No,” and even a little meditation can expose that our beliefs are held in a different level of mentality, and that maybe there is a spiritual component to the reflective human.  However it works, it is unlikely that a smoker, for example, will relinquish his or her hold on the habit until he or she believes that he or she is a non-smoker who is simply entangled with tobacco.  At that point dis-entanglement can begin; it won’t until then.

Or a druggie or a drinker, for other examples, must cement the belief in him- or her-self as a non-addict before commencing a true path toward cleansing that self of the entanglement with drugs of some kind.  The same is true of any habit or practice that the resolute resolver can identify as needing change.  The best news is that we need not wait for New Years’ morning to get started.  There are lots of cycles that we attend to that form perfectly good times to start becoming better humans.

In Eastern traditions there exists a concept called “The Cosmic Clock.”  It’s connected to other concepts related to the “Law” of “Karma:” As ye sow so shall (must) ye reap.  There are many ways of stating this idea.  “What goes around, comes around,” is one.  Even westerners understand it.  The Cosmic Clock starts the cycles of your life when you are born – that’s YOUR true “New Year.”  In line with the concept of being tested in each lifetime, aiming toward self-perfection, you and the people around you start a series of tests upon your birth.  Every year on your birthday you commence a new cycle of both testing and accomplishment, and by the end of that year you are obligated to place your accomplishments – your harvest: what you have “reaped” – on the spiritual altar of your “higher” self… the one you are trying to communicate with through New Years’ resolutions!  These cycles come in groupings of 12: 12 hours, 12 months, 12 years.

It is in your thirteenth year that your own, personal karma begins to cycle into your life.  That is the age of spiritual responsibility, as it were.  Many cultures and spiritual paths recognize this timing with celebrations – or events, at least – marking the end of the first 12 years’ milestone, like a bar-mitzvah.  In every year there will be 12 beginnings we call months; every day there are two beginnings – of 12-hour cycles; every 12 years of our lives there are major beginnings.  Sometimes the kinds of tests this life will include come to 12-hour, 12-month and 12-year “peaks,” together, so to speak, and even comfortable Westerners can detect a point at which testing is severe, a point when “everything goes wrong” at once.

“Every cloud has a silver lining,” is a platitude that then applies.  The lowest point is when there is the greatest opportunity for good, or improvement, or, we might say, Victory over that test.  Karma instructs that the tests you failed to pass the first time (in this life or a previous one) will be presented again, providing the opportunity for personal victory.  Trying to imprint a “resolution” is a response to the spiritual need to prepare yourself for tests your “higher” self knows are coming, and to remove weaknesses that will interfere with your victories.  You might refer to the post of Christmas Eve for another aspect of this: http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2017/12/24/the-religious-question/

So, New Years is a big party, presumably a celebration of all we accomplished in the spiritual year just ending.  But, it is also commencement of a year/cycle in preparation for which we are resolved to “be better.”  Pretty cool, thank goodness.