Category Archives: Governance

Economics, Education, Governance, Immigration, Responsibility

The Eve of Destruction

Leave a comment


It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get. – Confucius

History has shown that political power gained through the marshaling of hate is usually hard to maintain, and always destructive – never constructive.  The only path toward maintaining hate-based power is to identify a very large set of enemies whom hate-leaders can paint as hate-worthy, and more: threats to the peace and prosperity of the “oppressed” in-group said leaders wish to control.  It is Prudent to recognize the “hate-ees” in order to defend against the hat-ers.

Despite being consistently accused by the leftist hate leaders, of employing hate themselves, most of the hated are best described as traditionalists.  Let’s consider how the process has developed.  One large group that is cast as hateful are those of us who believe strictly in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution it spawned.  By nearly direct implication that group is nearly congruent with Christian, or Judeo-Christian belief structures.  In other words, Biblical morality is at least professed by most of those who also believe in the founding principles of the United States.  It’s no surprise, but tangent to our point.

Since Roe v. Wade the power of litigation and crafty parsing of words and phrases whose usage has obviously changed since the Federalist Papers were written – a special aspect of redefining words and meanings to control the argument – has well-served those who don’t believe in the moral structure and personal responsibility imposed by “free will,” also called “individual sovereignty.”  Socialism fills their wants, not a constitutional republic.  Unfortunately the defense of tradition now has two, new, giant weapons arrayed against it: 1) Social media; and, 2) Ignorance.

Social media allow for near-instant sharing, or spreading, of ideas… not to be confused with truth, reality and intelligence.  It spreads the last three, too, but those are not dangerous to honest people.  But ideas – “memes” in the current parlance – can be shared very quickly without filters of contemplation, research or understanding, a perfect condition for hatreds.  One person offended can rapidly become thousands and tens of thousands: a political force for the elected dishonest to take advantage of.  Social media and the handiness of cell-phones and their video cameras do great and instant damage to public discourse and the once great “free press.”  Further, it has provided for the concentration of information into the hands and biases of fewer than 100 people, of whom traditionalists – conservatives – are both suspicious and skeptical.  No system of individual liberty can stand for long without the free flow, and publication, of ideas.  An algorithm here, an algorithm there, and pretty soon we’re talking about real mind control.  The thought-police are standing by.  What will happen when governors are elected (thereby) who agree with defining conservative ideas and tradition, itself, as hate speech?

Ignorance is mostly of history and of the lessons of history, although ignorance of, say, climate science is also a large part of how socialism has gained fresh currency among young people in the United States, of all places.  We the people, who shucked off monarchy to establish freedom as a founding principle, are the last people on earth who should find socialism attractive; socialism is the same as monarchy, except that the party is the monarch, of which the chairman is the King.  What do children growing up in the United States have to do with socialism?  Ignorance: the only soil  in which socialism can grow.

Socialists, inherent enemies of individualism, not only purvey ignorance of history, they live on it like parasites.  They play a long game, beginning with dominance of education – their barely employable graduates are the result, and they all seem to prefer socialism over free enterprise and private property.  Bereft of ways to earn enough to live like people on TV… or down the street, they find it easy to blame traditionalists for their ill fortunes and to demand recompense for attempting to follow fortunate people’s rules.  “Forgive my debt,” they say, and leading (following) politicians proclaim that ‘meme’ from the rooftops.  If, as tradition and (un)common sense dictate, one disagrees with that demand, one is transformed into a hater and, probably, a racist… whatever “racist” even means, any longer.

Sexual traditionalists are also accused of bigotry, hatred, homophobia and theocracy.  Simply declaring support for “traditional” marriage can cause boycotts of one’s business and disavowal by political leaders and even by municipal governments, such that one’s business may not locate a branch within a jurisdiction because of “hate speech” by the owner.  The facts and truths associated with said “hate speech” have no bearing, as is often the case with marshaled hatreds.  It is not the truth that stirs crowds and gangs – hatred motivates in the vacuum of ignorance.  By increasing ignorance, certain people fertilize the soil where hatred grows.

All in all, the Prudent observer can conclude that those on the left end of the political spectrum are more involved than are rightists, with hate and accusations of hate.  Inevitably, of late, attempts to engage leftists in substantive discussions of (pick one) immigration, education, health care, energy, climate, gender, religion, any of the Bill of Rights, trade, economics, the Constitution, America, Mexico, South America, colonialism, Democrats, Republicans, Trump, Obama, housing or farming, and a few other topics, results in accusations of (pick one) White Supremacy, Nazism, Fascism, racism, homophobia, misogyny, Islamophobia, or hatred.

Those on the right, it appears, tend to laugh at much of the above, or shake their heads and lament the poor state of education that enables other Americans to believe the things professed.  Conservatives and “traditionalists” are always on the defensive; leftist haters are always the attackers, and have the advantage.  To what end?

And, finally, will traditionalists, defenders of the Constitution, propriety and reason, manage to hold back leftist destruction?  Will we return to secure borders, for example?  Will reality regain sway on college campuses?  Will the federal budget ever be cut?  Will “public” education be made to include appropriate American history content, reading of books, basic math and writing skills, possibly cursive writing (so that older documents may be read), and the Constitution?  Will the subject and science of gender return to reality?  Will honor, duty, commitment and personal responsibility return to primacy in interpersonal relationships?  Will the administrative, largely hidden and secretive state apparatus be made more open and honest?  Will the three branches of the federal government return to their Constitutional bounds and purviews?  Will honesty be restored as the operating public and private philosophy?  Will e pluribus unum regain its primacy as the true “American Dream?

Culture, Economics, Governance, Health Care

FOR THE HEALTH OF IT

Leave a comment
A patients view of the doctors, just before going into surgery.

Few topics or “matters” matter as much or generate as much discussion and political malfeasance as health care, and not really “care,” but coverage.  Coverage is where the “easy” money is.  “Coverage” is like a giant public works construction project: easy to skim from.  It’s virtually impossible to get any graft – or campaign contributions – from individual medical procedures, but insurance conglomerates and hospital corporations and the pharmaceutical industry are deep wells for craven politicians.  Consequently, those same politicians are willing to expose the federal budget and debt creation to the medical “field” to the benefit of all, and even of patients sometimes.

Money, money, money.  About one-sixth of the U. S. economy is tied to “health care,” but a much smaller fraction is tied to CARE, itself.  These are huge industries with gigantic advertising, promotion and bribery budgets.  The ever-pure United States calls those filthy bribes  campaign contributions… or, they might be “donations” to colleges and universities for research and production of new doctors who, coincidentally, will be fully committed to pharmaceuticals, chemotherapies, surgery and maintenance for life – or death.  It’s all expensive.

Cancer is one of the cash cows of medicine: the big shibboleth in human caring and willingness to help others.  People fear it, and rightly so.  Breast cancer is a powerful subset, and so is pediatric cancer.  We love kids and care about their health more than for any older group.  Kids are helpless and pathetic; humans feel these things and sacrifice to raise them from complete dependency, to minimal independence, to experimental independence, to sports and education and personality development and, one day, separation into adult-hood.  We hate any interruption to these things and sacrifice to facilitate the stages of normal childhood.  Cancer is a Hell of an interrupter and we want to pay to stop it.  And we do.

Billions of dollars have been raised by the American Cancer Society, for example, and they claim a 79% rate of actual cancer expenditures: mostly for research, but a large amount is for “soft” expenses that help those who are in treatment and their families, and other non-care, non-research uses.  A big pile goes to run the Society, of course.  To its credit, A.C.S. does a lot of good along the paths it sees fit, and it’s much more efficient than the federal government, a low bar.  Sadly, despite its widespread use of children to raise its millions (Relay for Life, anyone?), only a small percentage of ACS dollars are employed to solve pediatric cancers.

In one case Prudence knows well, a 6-year-old girl survived neuroblastoma after much chemo, operations, stem-cell harvests and replacements only to fight through it again 4 years later, with more of many of the same poisons that forced the cancer to retreat the first time.  Five years later, more chemotherapy to force a third retreat.  “A miracle,” her family declared.  3 years later osteosarcoma attacked her right tibia, part of which was removed with cadaver bone up to the knee.  More chemo – same crap as earlier times, same poison to push the cancer back.  College and Masters degrees completed, 6 years later the fifth attack and fifth battle with cancer, now in the thoracic cavity pressing on the lung.  The bone cancer was a not rare reaction to earlier treatments; the chest problem a recurrence of the bone cancer, by genus.  Same poisons prescribed and administered, except she was unable to tolerate any more of it.  Twenty years of treatment, constant news about this and that breakthrough therapy, DNA, customized immunology, yada, yada, yada… same attempts to kill the cancer a little faster than the patient.

When the young woman with the lengthy, miraculous, cancer survival history heard what kind of poisons they were planning to pump directly into her bloodstream, she naturally pointed out that it was the same crap she’d received the last time!  Was there nothing better?  Newer?  Apparently not.  Bring us your sick children and we will poison them for you in the hope that the cancer cells will die first and we can hold your child back from the brink of death.

Medical students arrive at medical school with science knowledge
–at least biology, maybe chemistry – ready to be taught some skills, mostly about using and understanding the data produced by wonderful diagnostic electronics, and about the latest in pharmacological weapons to counteract natural biological weaknesses, failures, breakdowns, related pains and mental/emotional discords and incongruities.  There is a lot to learn.  If surgery is the interest, there is a lot of practice.  Students develop likes and dislikes that lead them to one specialty or another, or, for many, general health and well-being such as “family” doctors ought to know.   Some of these general practitioners are really “internists” who understand “internal medicine” as distinct from “external medicine,” one supposes.

In any case, new doctors are taught according to fairly rigid protocols and traditions by people whose adherence to standards is well known… and respected.  Indeed, it is only by proving one’s own adherence to those standards that a doctor will be licensed or safe when sued.  “Recognized” standards, “current” protocols, “best” practices – those are the only defense a doctor has.  Where is the profit for leaving medical orthodoxy?

Does this mean that “doctors” or “big pharma” are blocking the introduction of miracle cures that an obscure researcher somewhere has developed because traditional medicine would not?  Well, “yes,” and “no.”  I think, or at least hope fervently, that the answer is “yes” although there is no intent to do so; and that the answer is “no” because there is no intent to do so.  But, the inhibition of new ideas is almost inevitable.  Thankfully it is not impossible and progress does get made, inventions are developed and made marketable – and trustworthy – and new drugs are eventually approved.  So, what’s the problem?

The problem is that the new drugs are rarely giant steps – sometimes they are, but not  often.  This is because most research is built on previous success and lines of inquiry and wide departure from the reservation is not very likely – it doesn’t get funded.  Pharmaceutical manufacturers are looking for sure things.  Often the greatest advances are side-effects of drugs, new and old, that coincidentally prove beneficial elsewhere.  More power to them.

Similar effects produce medical technology like, for popular example, knee replacements and hip replacements.  Now very reliable and long-lasting, such replacements are commonplace, almost to the exclusion of alternatives.  Could the damage and erosion of joints be prevented?  In most cases.  Are there nutritional preventions that are still regarded as anecdotes, not science?  Absolutely.  Do you suppose that part of every knee replacement is dedicated to learning how to prevent knee replacements?  Well, no.

Americans, and most residents of highly developed countries, eat themselves to death, drink and drug themselves to death, smoke themselves to death, fertilize and pesticide ourselves to death, and so on.  For all of our health clubs, gyms and YMCA’s, Americans tend, on average, to not take very good care of the bodies we are born with and, now that parts can be replaced by our remarkable “repair, replace and maintain” medicine, there seem to be fewer reasons to worry about the consequences of ice cream, sodas and cheese-burgers and lack of basic exercise regimens.  We are told 8 times every half-hour by our flat-screens that we need never suffer from aches, pains, discomforts, anxieties or depressions.  There are pills for each of these maladies.  In fact, there are separate analgesics for shoulder pains, neck pains, knee and foot pains, back pains, headaches, migraines and insufficient sleep.  People who have allowed apnea to intrude on their ability to sleep can get a C-Pap device to counteract it.  What’s to worry?

What do all of these OTC chemicals do to us?  Some of the long-term effects are known, not the least of which is liver damage, but it’s slow, virtually unnoticeable, until it isn’t – kind of like moderate smoking.

Sugar and alcohol also have cumulative effects, if not simple diabetes, then an acidification of body chemistry that weakens the immune response to invaders.  Too much gluten, perhaps?  The American diet is awash in wheat and wheat proteins, right down to canned tunafish (only one brand is clean).  Tunafish?  And lots of other products: vinegar, puddings, many candies, gravies, prepared foods of all kinds include wheat starch, “hydrolyzed vegetable protein” and on and on.  Many people know they are allergic to gluten, far more do not… know, that is.  Skin problems, digestive problems, immune problems and, of course, weight problems, stem in large part from too much wheat in our diets.  The body tends to become allergic in the presence of too much of the same thing – often the food you like the best, as well.  But, that’s no problem!  There are multiple crèmes and pills to fight off the effects of our odd diets, so many, in fact, that they must be profitable enough to purchase TV advertising nationwide.  Do you ever wonder if every prescription for these somewhat dangerous drugs includes a small amount of money to fund prevention of gluten intolerances?  Nahh.  Bread, cake, doughnuts, fried clams, stuffing, ice cream, mayonnaise, salad dressings, sub-rolls, pita, crackers and… and… whatever, are too tasty to forego and, besides, “they” have things for that.

When Dwight Eisenhower left the presidency he warned America about the encroaching power of the “military-industrial complex.”  Rightly so, although that sloppy circle of funding and influence has managed to keep the country fairly safe in an uncontrollable world.  One can almost hear the words of a true outsider warning us against the “medical-industrial complex,” although almost no one would listen.  On the edge of Boston and Brookline there is a street called Longwood Avenue where hospitals have grown into connected proximity.  It’s starting to look like Las Vegas.

The insertion of politics into health care really got moving with the “Great Society” in the mid 1960’s.  It hasn’t been all good despite the public intentions of the socialists who caused the Great Society to be codified.  Today federal funds feed into the insatiable maw of modern medicine, and to help it along, every Congress adds new mandates for care and coverage.  Combined with the primacy of welfare (federalized at the same time) the general interface with patients has trended to impersonal, if not de-personalized, care.  The vision for health care is still greater impersonality, robotics and, again, health orthodoxy that satisfies… umm, well, the federal government, and “averages.”

No one is going to stop the money.  If we have to borrow from our 5th descendent generation, by God, we’ll do it!  No one who needs a new hip, rich or poor, will be denied one!  What?  Do we want to have a society where there is one level of care for the wealthy and another for the poor?  With enough agitation and politics anything that needs a licensed medico to accomplish will be funded.  Trans-gender mutilations?  Where’s the checkbook?  Prudence would advise that there is not enough money, or desks for nameless bureaucrats to sit behind, to provide all the repairs and drugs that are known, to every person who thinks he or she needs them.  Maybe robots will provide more even-handed care and cost less than humans.  Not so far.

Governance, Representation, Responsibility, Trump

votes to whiplashes

Leave a comment

It is not generally Prudent to try to discern historical meaning from quite current events, although the Mueller persecution of the Presidency has been extant long enough to make even some historical judgments without presuming too much.  That Robert Mueller is a career creature of the federal law-enforcement bureaucracy, goes with saying.  Ronald Reagan first appointed him an acting and then actual U. S. Attorney for Massachusetts;  George Bush the elder appointed him and so did Clinton, Bush the younger and even Obama, several positions needing Senate confirmation, including Director of the FBI, a job he held for 11 years.

Mueller is a decorated Viet-Nam veteran and recipient of the Purple Heart, but all of his various public services have not been so honorable.  While in Boston as an Assistant U. S. Attorney in the mid ‘80’s and again when in charge of the FBI in the 2000’s, for example, Mueller ignored, in fact fought, an opportunity to right a criminal wrong perpetrated by the FBI itself in the 1960’s, that left 4 men in prison for a murder they did not commit.  That miscarriage eventually cost taxpayers tens of $Millions in payments to the innocent men’s families.  Mueller’s loyalty was not, then, to the law, but to protecting crooked FBI agents and the FBI itself, from having that rotten, criminal scandal exposed.

Armed with such evidence people should be better prepared to ascribe value to the “work” Mueller has ostensibly done since his appointment as “Special Counsel” in charge of investigating NOT collusion with Russia, particularly, but investigating all related matters, a barn door wide enough to protect the entire Department of Justice.  That Mueller hates Trump is easily discerned, that he was not in charge of his own investigation wasn’t clear until he tried to testify to two Congressional committees.

Mueller, as honorable as he may have been before he got into the DOJ, got his special-counsel appointment based on two different persona:  Robert Mueller, registered Republican, former FBI Director, decorated Vet, well liked in establishment circles, and Robert Mueller deep insider, defender of the “craft” and its practitioners, manipulable loyalist whose titular presence allowed for a hyperpartisan army of Democrat… no, Clinton sycophants… who would attempt the coup Clinton couldn’t pull off.

When Mueller attempted his committee “testimony” in July, it became clear that he had only cursory understanding of the “Mueller” Report and probably didn’t write much, if any, of it.  The grand circumnavigation of Russian collusion, initiated by a hoax, perpetuated by fraudsters with badges for more than 2 years, exposed that the ostensible “head” of the crucial probe was, himself, a hoax, clearly in place for reasons other than guiding a detailed investigation into possibly impeachable crimes.  The great “apolitician” was there for hateful politics.  One of his reputations was damaged.

Trump is an imperfect man – imperfect human.  One need not delve into scripture to grasp that everyone over the age of, maybe, 8 or 9, is imperfect.  Newborns and infants and toddlers, one might call perfect; they are not yet responsible for their actions and reactions.  Still, somewhere around age minus 3 months, parents, especially mothers, but others as well, begin to impart their own views of humanity, love, relationship, truth, justice and revenge, to their gestating innocent. 

The wonderful Michael Johnson song, “There is a Breeze,” includes this prescient phrase:
There Is A Breeze, Michael Johnson, 1973

“You have got to be taught before it’s too late, Before you are six, or seven or eight, To hate all the people your relatives hate…”

… even if the people they hate are themselves.

Mueller seems to hate Trump, and the people he served as Special Counsel all hate him, too.  It isn’t Prudent to construct a governing philosophy based on hate, but those who hate Trump are committed to carefully teaching everyone, everywhere, to hate him.  So far they have failed, but not for lack of trying.

Trump contains and exhibits many good qualities, woven among his flaws, as do we all.  Those who await a perfect person to become President of these United States will die waiting.  They seem obsessed with proving that anyone who gains power under a different philosophy than theirs, must be proven flawed – their flaws magnified to frightening proportions as proof that he, or she, is unfit to have elector-granted power.  Well, then, it becomes clear that everyone who voted for the flawed victor is also flawed and not worth conversation, let alone compromise.  It is a corrosive, dangerous path to tread.

Mueller is caught up in this, diverted from retirement by his loyalty to the deep state: the cadres of smarter-than-average functionaries and true-believers who know that the self-perpetuating structure of control and confiscation that largely subsumes individual sovereignty and electoral “choice,” is by far the rightest possible way to govern, as far removed from religion and independence as possible.  It is like a sickness, an infection, except that the patient believes himself more well than the caregivers who feed and clothe him – and her.

Eventually the “deep” state, having consumed all the wealth obtained while hiding, will have to convert votes to whiplashes as those fabled “sovereign citizens” recognize the horrible hoax of the administrative state and refuse to support it in the style for which it is designed, and the socialism within rears up and stands astride America publicly.  There are hints of this from the socialist left, here in 2019, and the great Robert Mueller has assisted to the best of his ability, following the instructions from the other swells to whom he is most loyal.  Republican, shmepublican… thanks a lot, Mr. Mueller.

Culture, Education, Governance, Representation

NO CHEEKS TO TURN

Leave a comment

Public discourse has never been as corrupt as can be heard and read everywhere in 2019.  To arrive at this nadir required leadership and neither “side” in recent elections is innocent; both deserve their own condemnations… or praises, as each self-proclaims.

We have arrived at a contest of hatreds, a contest that appears more virulently joined by one of two sides.  That side is the ‘attacker.’  The other side is, by definition, the ‘defender,’ insofar as it is not attempting to tear down traditional social norms, but to hold to them.  The attackers are motivated, they claim, by hatred of every flaw in the history of America, and they couch their attacks inside nebulous desires to “perfect” her, if not the whole world.

Defenders are automatically defined as reactionary clingers to everything that is “wrong” with America, and therefore somewhat lesser beings than those who have the discernment to see what needs correction.  There is no compromise.  Defenders cannot stomach facilitating the attackers’ attempts to “fundamentally transform” the United States.  Attackers become increasingly hateful of those who cannot recognize how correct the attackers surely are.

The nature of adversaries can be better understood by examining their allies, and allies of the ‘attackers’ are illustrative.  First let’s stipulate that those whose struggle is comprised of attacking the history, heritage and motives of America, are on the “left” side of the political spectrum, such that they are allied with forces of socialism and communism, even if many claim to believe in ‘democracy.’  This position allies America’s ‘attackers’ with fascism and fascists for whom strict alignment of corporate power with social policy is preferable to free markets and sovereign citizens – preferable to ‘freedom,’ itself.

Google, Facebook, Amazon and other cyber-platforms, and many billionaires in other industries are happy to comply with this trend as it helps cement them into positions atop our and the world’s economies; This places them largely atop our ostensibly constitutionally ‘limited’ government, and the marriage between economic and political power is one that fascists constantly propose.  Only such an elite form of benign governance can possibly make everything “fair” and safe from “hate speech.”

Interestingly, virtually every ‘attacker’ is strongly in favor of abortion on demand, many agreeing with abortion up to the moment of birth.  This is a form of hatred: of motherhood, of fatherhood, even of God, that is as destructive to the rightness and righteousness of America’s right to exist, as any other social / political action.  Part of the danger on the attacker side is that its combatants seem to demand perfection of their targets, whereupon not finding it, they are justified in almost any action to tear them down.  Widespread abortion would come under the heading of society’s Imperfection as it destroys its own future, it would seem to Prudent observers.

Indeed, the disintegration and, here and there, re-segregation of society as it tries to comply with ‘attackers’ new rules of correctness and non-offensiveness, are evidence of society’s lack of perfection on Earth, spurring still more radical adjustments of every habit and norm until “perfection” is attained.  Oddly, “perfection” appears to mimic the communist mythos, something with which the ‘attacker’ side is allied.

There are numerous examples of spirituality being part of the motivation of attackers as well as of defenders.  In this minefield it is critical to choose one’s allies cautiously, and the ‘attackers’ are “allied” with both militant atheism and militant Islam, a pairing of qualities that requires the energetic holding of two antithetical beliefs at one time.  Militant atheists, no longer content to not believe amidst a tolerant, largely Christian society, now have shifted to denying belief to those same tolerant, albeit, rather weak Christians.  Christian displays or symbols must be removed, apparently, since, to these anti-Christian militants, they interfere with the eventual perfection of the world.

Their other friends, the militant Islamists, want the destruction of Christianity because it is an imperfection in the soon-to-be purely Islamic world.  Atheists and Islamists are comfortable in the big tent of ‘attackers’ of imperfection on Earth, although once either team’s vision of perfection is attained, their alliance may fray.

So, let’s take stock: the ‘attacker’ side in our current national and societal conflicts is happy with the hatreds embodied (disembodied) in abortion – which is very anti-Christian, happy with hatreds of atheist anti-Christians and happy with Islamic anti-Christians.  There is a spiritual aspect to all of this that the ‘attackers’ barely recognize in their zeal to perfect society.  How can Christians be a threat to all three factions of attackers?

Christians are the one tolerant group in the battle, but, like their attackers, they barely recognize that the destruction of America is the destruction of Christianity.  Indeed, in an utterly foolish misunderstanding of their own spiritual strengths and obligations, Christians fail to defend their own sacred office(s) while they contort themselves to prove their tolerance… to the point of suicide… America right behind them.  There is not enough wealth – or comfort – in the world to counter the anti-Christians, nor should there be.

Is there any prospect of ANY government or official organ reversing these multiple trends toward destruction of social cohesiveness?  It appears unlikely in a political environment where those who deny their gender have gained exceptional political influence, including transformation of educational standards and cultures.  Amidst a current rush toward socialist perfection on Earth, the prospect of rational defense of heritage and liberty seems remote, as well.  To whom can we turn?  No one.  It is a misplaced hope that we will find any “leader” who will “clean up” society or neutralize our attackers.

Education, Governance, Responsibility

FREE, PRESS

Leave a comment

Without an active, frequently reinforced grasp of American history, current and recent events appear to be unique, and justification for implanting new policies for the guidance and “transformation” of the United States.  This is a dangerous circumstance, readily corrected by wise, educated and honest media.  Sadly, we no longer are served by wise, educated and honest journalists, or by equally qualified managers and owners of “the press.”  If we were, political bull-crap would be challenged without fail by members of the 4th estate who recognize lies about government and about history, on the spot!

Instead we see complete capitulation to partisan politics and, worse, ownership of the largest media conglomerates by multi-billionaires whose own partisanship distorts their news as much as their editorials, and whose financial power is used extra-constitutionally to direct public policy against legal activities they don’t approve of.  This is no longer capitalism in a constitutional republic, it is fascism outside of and regardless of, elected representation, on which our society depends.

Financial institutions and even specific retailers have joined in to set “public” policy with regards to guns, for glaring example.  Banks, although tightly “regulated” and subject to hundreds of laws and rules, have begun to deny legal services to businesses they disapprove of: firearm manufacturers, gun ranges, ammunition manufacturers, firearm retailers, large and small.  They are responding by either changing their businesses or offerings, if retailers, or moving or, for smaller retailers, giving up their small business.  Those on the left (exclusively) cheer this as “woke” capitalism.  To Hell with democracy, or even with representation, when something is “evil,” “the people” must act.  It is all too simple.

Some of the neo-fascists believe that guns are “racist” because so many blacks are killed by “gun violence,” occasionally when a white person is wielding the weapon.  The more than 90% of black shootings performed by black weapon wielders do not count.  Some wise and educated journalist could immediately question their view on many grounds, not least of which the fact that many gun laws on the books today were part of “Jim Crow” laws aimed at keeping blacks from owning guns.

The 35 Million black babies vacuumed from their mothers’ wombs do not constitute a racist action: that statistic is living proof (odd phrase, that) that blacks are enjoying their full array of “civil rights.”  No one whose Constitutional protections guarantee his or her RIGHT to question such dubious views, seems available to actually raise the question.

Lately – mostly since the democrat-socialists regained a majority in the House of “Representatives” – there are put forth daily radical ideas for subverting democracy, if not ignoring it altogether.  The greatest of these is nearly 3 years old, now: the subversion of Donald Trump and others who helped him gain the presidency.  Once the Electoral votes were tallied in his favor the heavy machinery of a virtual coup d’etat was rolled into place.  Democracy be damned.

This has yielded the hottest complaint against the constitution: it’s time to replace the Electoral College with “the popular vote.”  A number of states have accepted simple subversion of the U. S. Constitution by resolving to unseat their own Electors who are committed to a candidate who did not win the imaginary “popular vote.”  And it is imaginary since the presidential election is not a “national” election: it is 50 state elections held on the same day.  Choosing Electors who are empowered to cast votes for President is a function of EACH STATE’S VOTERS.  How callous can elected officials be to declare in advance that they – not their voters – will determine if their votes will actually count on election day.  That’s an odd mind-set for people who won election in the United States of America.  Let’s hope cases are making their way to the Supreme Court to put this unconstitutional plan out of our misery.

Interestingly, however, not a single “journalist” questions these weird declarations and resolutions.  No one has been smart enough to point out to reckless and/or ignorant state election officials that theirs are state elections, not national ones.  The United States does not hold a national election at any level.

Another proof of the idiocy of these efforts can be found in the execution of congressional elections that are held on the same day as the election of Electors in each state.  States run their own elections for federal representatives, for example, according to the congressional districts into which the states have divided themselves.  Each district’s voters make their choices and the winner takes the seat.  Using the precise “logic” of the Electoral subverting states, if the number of one party’s voters in one group of districts – or even a single district – were greater than all of the votes cast for a different party’s candidate in the other districts, every winner in the lower-count districts would have to relinquish his or her seat to the candidate of the opposing party.  Only that undemocratic shift would fulfill the “principle” of the statewide “popular” vote.  “Hey,” the winners’ supporters might justifiably say, “we voted for the guy who won IN OUR DISTRICT.  We don’t care how many votes the gal in the other district received.  This is our district and OUR VOTES COUNT!”

Is there not a single champion of a free press intelligent enough to point out the obvious fallacy of the “national” popular vote?  Were they all so poorly educated and left to graduate with only the merest ability to think for themselves, that none can question partisan stupidity?  How is it that district results are less sacred – or more sacred – than states’ results?  Don’t the votes that elected the winning slate of Electors count, also?  When did any state, or any district, for that matter, gain authority to discard legitimate votes?

The essential nature of a free and skeptical press is enshrined in the first Amendment.  The founders could not conceive of a craven, dishonest and partisan press as the single source of information for a majority of voters; nor could they imagine the alternative sources being simultaneously converted to corporate censors in favor of a single party.

Our Republic is hanging by a thread, my friends.

Education, Governance, Responsibility

ULTIMATE and PERPETUAL

Leave a comment

America’s accelerating trend toward denial of reality – and of codified law – is and should be worrisome.  Unfortunately, large segments of the polity see no reason to worry because the gulf of unreality has yielded political power, or comfort, and promises more.  Confronted with claims of actual, or imminent, damage linked to the rush toward unreality, those who find the unreality comforting are compelled toward hatred of the claimants, even to the point of attacking them.  One should wonder whether the trend alluded to is comprised of innocent reaction to “reactionary” opposition to “progress,” or is it the fruit of evil, aggressively transformative attack.  Why would the latter be so?

The prime question, of course, is who benefits from the disunity of the United States and following that, the discrediting and dissembling of the ideas of America?  The unimaginative can readily suggest that “the RUSSIANS” or “the CHINESE,” or “IRANIANS,”  would want to destroy us, but those peoples actually like us well enough, and respect and love us enough to come to the United States for a better life.  There are relatively small subsets of both Russia and China that definitely DO work toward our failure, but not because of their, or our, nationalities.  The forces who would revel in our spiritual  destruction are, themselves, spiritually motivated, unrecognizably in some instances, even in their own mirrors.

America is a spiritual invention.  Prudence would cause us to not call it a religious invention, given the many ways religions have so distorted the inherent purity of spirituality.  The waves of peoples who sacrificed to come to the “New World” to begin America, did so with strong spiritual underpinnings… essentially Judeo-Christian.  Were they perfect?  Clearly not, as we look back and judge them from today’s sensitivities, but at their times they were doing their level best as they strove to make a better civilization than the corrupted ones they left behind.  And religious freedom was – and is – crucial to the new form of self-government that evolved from their sacrifices, and repeatedly since.

We should wonder why Judeo-Christianity is the prime target of attack in the U. S. over the past 60 to 70 years.  As the basis of our laws and social order – conscience, if you will – its destruction is the most rapid way to destroy “America” and all of its quaint ideas of individual sovereignty and responsibility, private property, charity and sacrifice.  Who would want to do that?

If we concentrate on the enemies of America – or of our Constitution – as competitors for oil, or food, or land or military power… or competitors for limited budget resources who disagree on how to make life “better” for all of us, we will miss the point, tragically and historically.  Our misdirected concerns expose our failure to comprehend American exceptionalism.  It exposes, as well, the danger of relinquishing public education – and much of our administrative ‘state,’ and even parts of our law-enforcement and judiciary – to people who agree with our enemies.

“America” does not, and cannot, run or survive on its own.  President Reagan observed that we are only, ever, one generation away from losing it altogether.  This powerful country?  With this military?  With our wealth?  All these McDonalds?  One generation?  Surely not. 

Let’s open our eyes.

America can survive only so long as its citizens believe in it… simple.  We have to believe in our Constitution, in our founding, in personal liberty as well as personal responsibility, and in what we term, “Judeo-Christian” tradition.  Unfortunately, as more and more people are attracted to dis-belief in God, they are encouraged to disbelieve in the United States.  No one outside of the United States is going to carry the burden of believing in the ideas that sustain it for us.  It is our test of citizenship and no one’s else.

“We the People of the United States, (they were people with quite similar moral compasses, if not religious upbringings) in Order to form a more perfect Union, (consider the capitalized words to this point: We, People, United, States, Order, Union) establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, (sic) promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain (wonderful choice, there) and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”  These words cannot be improved upon.

The intent of Americans, then, was incontrovertibly NOT to create a more powerful central government… or to create a new monarchy… certainly not to establish a theocracy or an aristocracy of inherited baronies and dukedoms.  It wasn’t even to create a more powerful military.  Americans wanted to live and let-live; develop their nation and prosper without wars.  Wars have always vexed the “New Jerusalem,” some completely from outside, some as would tear us asunder, but all that was desired for the first 8 generations or so was a “return to normalcy” after each conflict was over.

For a like period “we” had no interest in dominating other peoples or re-shaping their societies and governments for them.  But almost from the start, and more specifically following the second Civil War (“The” Civil War), forces – or A force – has arrayed itself against the ideas  of America, against the dream of e pluribus unum.  Why?  Who would care how we live or govern ourselves?  And even if “they” didn’t like how we chose to do things in our own country, what would prompt “them” to infiltrate us and attempt to tear us apart?  Something, apparently.

Is it not apparent that “they” are not simply envious churls?  Looked at from a position of Prudence, the impetus to destroy the first nation founded on anti-tyranny seems spiritual, not material.  Indeed, the two competing philosophies, or faiths, dare we say, if one is represented by the ideas of America, would be essentially Judeo-Christianity and socialism-communism.  Which, from a broad perspective, still begs the question: why bother to destroy America?  Socialism has proceeded on its destructive path quite well despite the presence of the United States.

In a way we are engaged in the ultimate, and perpetual, struggle between darkness and light, good and evil.  Our enemy can survive only by weakening the strong, sapping our strength.  It behooves us to acknowledge that we have the seeds of “goodness” and the strength of Light, and that it is high time we reinforced and nurtured those things, and defended them against all enemies, foreign and domestic, rooting out the latter. 

What might that defense entail?

Culture, Education, Immigration, Race, Responsibility

SURVIVAL

Leave a comment
Define: Individual…

The ability to “conduct” politics is critical to the survival of democratic republics, most specifically, to the survival of this one, into which we have been most fortunate to be born or naturalized.  Prudence teaches that, as Benjamin Franklin wisely observed following the Constitutional Convention, we have “…a republic (only) if you (we) can keep it.”  What is required for a citizenry to “keep” its republic?

First, obviously, is citizenship, itself… a fascinating quality, uniquely so for the United States of America, and the most valuable quality for the nation’s education system to impart.  Before joining a political party, our citizens should all be members of the “U.S. of A. party,” in effect.  That is, we all should share the principles of “America.”  How is that accomplished?

First and foremost, we must agree on the meanings of words and, simultaneously, on the meaning of laws, starting with our bases of right and wrong.  Just suggesting such a radical idea will generate heated argument, if not violence in certain venues, today.  Here in 2019, just 220 years since the Constitution was ratified, Americans no longer agree on very basic word definitions, starting with “nation.”

Those who now want to defend the borders of their “nation” are called “nationalists,” a term so pejorative as to be synonymous with Nazism.  Clearly the use of the word “nation” is close to the word “national” and the NAZIs were “National” socialists, meaning that they were transformed from socialists into right-wingers bent on either lynching a brown person or gassing some Jews.  I mean, “Duuuhhh.”  It is the same as owning slaves to be a foul “nationalist.”  It’s just like, ummm… Republicans.

So, principled conversations have become both tedious and more difficult.  Another bad word is “abortion” or, even more prejudicial: “infanticide,” or, “life,” itself.  Abortion is the epitome of goodness and deep caring about civil rights, in today’s lexicon, when it used to mean the premature and usually violent ending of the miracle of life in the womb.  So clearly it can neither be worried about or discussed, since it is settled civil rights “law.”  People with the temerity to question the beauty of abortion or who might suggest that the effects of rampant, profit-making abortion could be somehow bad for the “nation” or for our social communities, can be attacked physically, spat upon, kicked, thrown down to the ground and even worse.  No one will make much of a stink.

Governments have even created safe zones around abortion mills (sorry), “clinics,” so that those preparing to accept the sacrament of ending their child’s life, will not, themselves, be made uncomfortable.  I mean, “gosh,” after all.

States are finding their voice regarding abortion, passing various restrictions on when it is legal to kill unborn children.  One is based on whether a heartbeat has reached detectability, which is somewhere around 6 weeks after conception.  Others use a “principle” called “viability,” which is when modern technology can enable the fetus to survive outside the womb, generally successfully, while the, now, baby completes gestation and is able to mature with normal maternal care at home.  Viability seems to be around 24 weeks after conception, or two-thirds of a normal pregnancy “term.”

Opponents of these concerns, and these are among the most strident of advocates America has ever heard, pooh-pooh all of these calculations about life, and insist that death is somehow better and better serves everyone involved, but to do so they have to change the definition of “life, unborn, baby and offspring.”  Those words are relatively meaningless if the confused or weak-minded “mother” doesn’t “want” the child, baby, offspring.

Consequently craven politicians make what they think are legal laws based on the feelings of the weak-minded or weak-hearted proto-mothers.  The ramifications are grievously complex.  In the case of a new mother who takes her baby home from the birthing center but, for some reason, loses control under the new stresses of motherhood and kills the new child: she has committed a crime and will be arrested.  But, in the case of a new mother whose child survives abortion, which happens when abortion is performed late-term by a “doctor” who hasn’t practiced snipping the baby’s spinal cord before complete delivery, for example, she has no responsibility to the baby who, despite his or her automatic citizenship, may be allowed to starve to death on a table someplace near where it was delivered and NO ONE has any criminal liability.

Prudence wonders if those tables have a special, descriptive name, like every other piece of “medical” equipment. 

At one time, doctors swore to “first, do no harm.”  Indeed, they became doctors and joined an industry the mission of which used to be helping people overcome… oh, injuries, diseases, old age and other life-threatening conditions.  Unfortunately, politicians are unable to allow big economic functions to carry on successfully, and this politicization of medicine is reducing the money that can be made doing all the things we thought doctors were sworn to do.  The big money is in abortion, now.  Politicians are urging each other to send more money into the abortion industry, and then fight off every attempt to limit abortions, while placing restrictions on top of restrictions for the life-saving arena of doctor-activities.

Doctors, of course, worked their fingers to the bone, so to speak, to become doctors, and figure that the rewards should be commensurate – they’re not stupid, obviously.  Consequently, many are learning and practicing how to help the almost-born overcome LIFE.  Life is now a disease that doctors can cure.  What did you think you knew?

Fascism and Fascist are two words we can’t seem to agree upon the meanings of.  Those who are acting exactly like, umm… well, fascists, seem to believe that they are courageously fighting fascism.  This disconnect interferes with useful discussion and, unfortunately, interferes with sworn “peace officers” actually defending public order when faced with “Antifa” chaos, lest they “enflame” the situations.  When government policy is senseless, the sensible are left speechless.

Some Americans – and other residents – are unable to accept the meaning of “immigrant.”  While it is true that native-Americans (which is a meaningless term, itself; indigenous peoples got here before Europeans did, but there was no “America” then, making the term, “aborigines” the only accurate one) were able to roam around as far as their war-making prowess enabled, they had no concept of “immigration,” today a distinct and legal condition.  They understood “invaders” though, by whatever words they described unwelcome “others” who threatened their lands and way of life.  They understood ethics better than many “others” do even now, and the concept of “theft.”

“Others” stole their lands and lives and very ways of life, often by creating treaties that aborigines agreed to, but which were quickly abrogated by their “other” treaty-creators.  Those sensitive to honesty, today, are painfully aware of the lies told against aboriginal peoples.  Lying is the distillation of not agreeing on word meanings, and it can threaten everything a people holds dear.  Back to “immigrant.”

We no longer live in a society where people can just slide onto one another’s land or appropriate their means of living.  The concept of private property is the basis of economics and social order, itself.  The need to strive to obtain the means to survive, protect and shelter oneself and one’s family, also provides the opportunity to be charitable toward others – often to sacrifice for others.  In order to “emigrate” to another country, a person must accommodate the legal strictures of his or her intended new home country and, in some cases, the strictures of his or her present country.  It is part and parcel of adopting a new “citizenship” which carries with it significant legal sanctions and benefits.  It is not a simple condition of location.

So, an “immigrant” must have a status defined in law, else he or she is simply a law-breaker… which is to say, a criminal.  The legal adjudication of that criminal’s status is a matter for the illegally adopted country to perform.  Otherwise, that person is not an “immigrant” at all, but a thief.

These are but a few examples of words the definition of which – specifically the disagreement over those definitions – threatens the existence of the United States and some other nations, as well.  Words have meaning, tied to the meaning of “truth.”

One other example is the word, “racism.”  Racism is a social concept that is based on an undefinable term, thus yielding a meaninglessness that enables the epithet, “racism” to be used with little connection to any of the circumstances that inspire its use.  Racism, epithetically, infers some group membership, of those so accused.  That is, the accused must be prejudiced against another group, presumably based on surface, observable traits.

Usually this refers to “white” people who are accused of a variety of wrong feelings, or thoughts, toward, usually, brown-skinned people.  Now, brown skin covers a broad swath of human beings who cannot by any measure be considered racially singular.  Anthropologists have tried dozens of ways to “define” races and every classification system immediately is challenged by freshly observed biological distinctions that must be shoe-horned into the supposed standard classifications.  In short, there certainly are biological “races” but it is nearly impossible to identify them, so “racism” is reduced to mere political advantage, today.

This is not to say that terrible actions haven’t been taken against people – of all shades of skin color – by countries, states, counties, towns, mobs and, in truth, individuals.  But, except for individuals , official, legalistic discrimination and worse bad actions have ceased in the United States.  Why has “racialism” increased?  Why have the accusations of “racist” and “racism” become more commonplace?  Politics – not logic, not biology, not science, not group connection – politics, through which racialist grouping by the most superficial of distinctions, can produce a sort of “groupthink” that yields “group-voting.”  For shame.

Our Constitution embodies the greatest spirit of individualism  ever made nationally  foundational in human history.  Individuals are required to be responsible to themselves and to others, a radical idea.  It marked the intentional, codified rejection of serfdom… the rejection of monarchy… the rejection of tyrannical control of others, altogether.  In other words, individuals  are sovereign under the Constitution.  As a result, the government was formed by communities of individuals, each of whom relinquished limited amounts of that sovereignty so that all may benefit.  The government was formed to serve its sovereign citizens, and not the other way around.

Now, we see our democratic, individual political powers being defined by false connection to arbitrarily defined groups.  Nothing more threatens our national cohesion and our nationally protected individual liberties.  Group membership yields group responsibility, the fundamental destruction of individuality and individual responsibility.  It is antithetical to our Constitution.  Billions call it socialism.

Culture, Family, Responsibility

Real Heroes

Leave a comment

Following the news over the past, well… 30 years…, no, 38 years, yields an overarching sense of unease, at least, or sadness.  On the other hand, there is a lot that was and is good about the period, although the risks to the nation have, in fact, increased.

Recently we attended an award ceremony honoring police officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians.  Lots of plaques were handed over, many political citations delivered, photographs taken and hands shaken.  Great descriptions were spoken by proud chiefs of departments, of the events, both heroic and heart-warming, that spurred the recognitions and the great banquet we all attended.  America is rather special in the world of celebratory and honorary plaques.  Not simply sports trophies, including individual trophies, but plaques and awards for individual excellence in every field, including abundant charitable acts and volunteerism, are presented / awarded in the millions every year in North America.

Such was the focus of the banquet noted above.  As in every year, individuals and small teams of police, firefighters and EMT’s, responding to emergencies large and small, performed extremely well, usually saving lives or injury, restoring safety or comforting those affected.  We have come to expect such excellence and we’re happy to recognize it publicly.  Private companies proudly provide financial support so that hundreds both within and without the departments represented, can join in recognizing the “heroes amongst us.”

Where do they come from, these men and women of excellence?  Meritocracy: a tradition of testing and performing to standards that should at least make excellence likely, if not guarantee it.   High, even sacrificial performance, does not derive from social egalitarianism; it derives from individuality and the beliefs of the individual.  It derives from an inner sense of sacrifice for others… even others one does not know.

If such true servants were assigned their duties, proscribed by rules and threats of loss, the acts of heroism would be much rarer, the acts of charity unknown.  The innate belief in a purpose for life that is transcendent, spiritual, if you will, is required to act selflessly.  Humans, inherently capitalist as they are, will not risk comfort or safety without some reward, spiritual or otherwise.  Where the spiritual aspect is destroyed, only personal wealth, money, sex, or other worldly riches suffice.

The men and women honored earlier this year received no financial reward.  I can’t state any evidence of greater safety for any of them.  They didn’t get raises, although their dinners were free to them.  The sponsors presented plaques of recognition; various state senators and representatives provided citations from their respective legislative chambers, and mayors and town managers chimed in, too.  But, no wealth.

The honorees consider that they were “just doing their jobs,” and that no awards were needed.  Yet they could have each “done their jobs” with less effort, less risk, less imagination or innovation.  Each might have done the minimum necessary to pass the standard tests, to attend required training, or even to take that training very seriously.  But they didn’t.  Each seems to carry in himself or herself, a sense of duty to something greater than one’s self gain.  Each seems to excel when he or she might do something lesser.

Their communities do the right thing to provide recognition, be it a plaque, a certificate or simply deserved thanks.  Prudence says it’s a shame more citizens don’t take part.

Culture, Economics, Education, Family, Immigration, Race, Responsibility, Trump

Party of Hate

Leave a comment
“Doctors” learn this procedure from one another to become “good” at it.

The battle over a “border wall” on the southern, Mexican border is a symptom of larger and more significant hatreds motivating a large minority of American residents.  One hopes, and prays, that those same will step back and reconsider their desire to feed such ugly motivations.  Led by Democrat leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer, Barack Obama and now, Andrew Cuomo, and many others, these new political haters appear to share several common traits:

  • They hate the Constitution as it was designed and written.  The intent of the founders cannot be accepted, in their views, because some of them owned slaves, a grievous custom, without question, but totally irrelevant to the ideas and philosophies they espoused.  In fact, the designers and compilers of the American ideas were ALL opposed to slavery and did their best to help it phase out of American life.  Read Frederick Douglass; he understood.
  • They are deeply ignorant of American and of European history, and of the Bible, itself.  The underpinnings of American culture are ignored by them, even reviled.
  • The institutions of government are trusted by them more than any individual’s motivation, and the seeming ability to legislate or regulate – doesn’t much matter – people to act as their fellow thinkers wish, is so tantalizing as to distort the presence or even the perception of liberty.
  • They view America’s existence as an affront to all non-white, non-European people, and therefore not deserving of defense, even of its borders, and that the history of America should be erased from people’s minds and certainly from educational systems so that America’s evilness and corruption can never again interfere with universal sharing of all wealth or with individual freedoms to play, fornicate and indulge as Gaia intended, under the careful watch of the Smarter Ones.  They’ll identify themselves.

So, politics is not the actions of a free people to choose their leaders and governing philosophies; it is the benign control of wages, prices and production so that everyone is EQUAL, with brownish people being more equal than white people.  Skills-based education will no longer be required for most students, so long as there are enough very smart people who should be compensated for making everyone else comfortable.

The quaint chaos of individuality and “freedom” can be avoided.

The majesty of American citizenship is unique in the world.  There is no system like ours.  Anyone… anyone, anyone who can honestly swear to uphold the Constitution, obey civic law, pay his or her bills and act responsibly, can become an American – an actual, living, breathing, American.  One wishes those born here were held to the same standards, but still, it’s impossible to sign up for a French residency and ever, ever become, well, French.  The same is true for Japan, China, Japan, Korea, or India or virtually any ethnically defined  country.  You might get to live in other countries legally, but you’ll never become one of them.  America, including Canada, is different.  America is defined by the ideas that formed her, and by geography.  That’s it.  No matter how hard racists of every shade attempt to say America is defined by white skin, it has never been so.

This is not to say there haven’t been some terrible ideas held by “Whites.”  There are terrible ideas held by every race.  The tendencies to gain power or wealth or women by whatever means can be devised, legality and justice be damned, is pretty much universal.  The religious / ethical belief structures that lead us to contain those desires, to channel them for greater goods, to construct families that produce good adults from the children they are responsible for… those we are tearing down by every means possible, even through new laws that give status to the most twisted perversions and hatreds.

Hatred of America is readily evidenced by laws – LAWS – that permit partial-birth “abortion” and even infanticide for the most temporal purposes, even convenience.  Since Roe v. Wade was given Supreme Court justification, we have killed-off 61 million Americans while importing 30 million non-Americans to “pay for our Social Security.”  The trouble with Americans is they might become infected with individuality, Constitutionalism, responsibility and freedom!  So, we destroy those who might make America stronger and import, illegally, those more likely to be dependent upon the whims and pleasures of the Smarter Ones, made widely known by their widely parroted self-declarations.

Trump, for all his flaws and imperfections, is trying, almost alone, to restore the mighty engines of freedom.  If we are waiting for perfect, flawless  leaders to arrive before we follow them away from rot and debauchery, we’ll wait forever while the last great hope of mankind is pissed away.

Culture, Economics, Education, Governance, Politics 2018

MATTHEW’S Wolves

Leave a comment

Much is made of “division” in the United States.  “Left” and “Right” are “far apart” on the “issues.”  Congress is “hopelessly” divided, “races” are divided, the “middle class” is being destroyed.  What is going on?

How has the America of World War II, of Eisenhower and J. F.K., Moon landings and even of 9-11, turned into a multi-cultural, deeply indebted nation that seems no longer to have common purpose or even common vision?  The only nation launched on the distillation of ideas, philosophies and experiences about FREEDOM – freedom for individuals – has entered into an era of division, disagreement and hatred for opposing opinions and for those holding them.  How did we get here?  Why haven’t we arrived somewhere else… someplace where our better natures, better educations, better communications and greater technical opportunities would make us more unified, stronger, more capable and even more equally prosperous – free-er, one might have hoped?

There have to have been forces, perhaps “efforts” applied to divert the hope of generations, indeed to divert the “hope” of the “free” world– the dream of the not-free world – into a path of division and hatreds, a path of ultimate destruction and dissolution. What “forces?”  It should be no surprise that the strongest forces applied against America’s future come from inside our borders.  As always,there are and have been competitors, opponents and enemies from outside.  How we have dealt and deal with all of them,comes from inside.

Have there been “outside” forces in our favor?  One might count France among those, without whose assistance the bloody divorce from England’s monarchy would have failed in 1783.  In an odd, sad way, The French revolution also instructed our fledgling nation as to the excesses to avoid in search of ephemeral purity.  In a sense we owe much to both France and to England for the philosophical bases of America.  Their joint challenges of World War I caused “America” to repay our debts, most specifically to France when General Pershing”s chief administrative aide, Colonel Charles Stanton, declared to France, and to the World in a sense, “Lafayette, we are here.”  And America, having won the great internal battle for its soul in the 1860’s, had clearly grown to national adulthood,ready to play its part in establishing order and correcting injustice.

Although the influences of socialism had begun inserting themselves after the Civil War, it was our new international position during the first world war that enabled statist, Woodrow Wilson, to attempt to replace America’s national independence with a new global partnership, the League of Nations, including, he hoped, conforming our independence to that new order… such is the overarching dream of the strongest “outside” forces against American independence and survival.

To begin the process of bringing America down from its skyrocketing growth and influence, required financial brakes.  The first Federal Reserve tryout resulted in the Great Depression and the installation of a social engineering president,FDR, and the great socialist program, Social Security.  And, it began the new education of Americans, whose economic fears subsumed the promises of freedom and the duties of responsibility and even the lessons of the Bible.  Dependence upon government taxing authority could be suddenly, slyly defined as the new INDEPENDENCE: a remarkable accomplishment over the span of just 11 years.  These were inside forces, infinitely more powerful than the outside forces that encouraged and encourages them still.

World War II briefly delayed the socialist wave, even as communists embedded in the federal government prepared Americans for wholehearted embrace of the United Nations as the well-fertilized seedling of a “new world order.”  Deeply flawed Joe McCarthy flared brightly as he exposed a number of communists in and near the State and Defense Departments… so did Congressman, Richard Nixon.  In the 1960’s society and government were transformed.  Government by the Great Society and the 3 assassinations; society by drugs, sex and rock-and-roll, but I repeat myself.  Mixed among these social assaults upon morality were the retirements of the great educators – educators who taught more in high school than students learn in college it seems, today.  Education became liberal and within the decade, socialist. 

The Vietnam war, controlled in large part by the U. N., destroyed the nation’s trust in the rightness and righteousness of government.  We were killing soldiers stupidly, without a goal or plan for victory.  The hope of the world was dimmed, its trustworthiness diminished.  Despite winning virtually every battle in Vietnam, The U. S. conceded defeat and crawled home ashamed.  A process of military stalemate, begun in Korea, multiplied in Vietnam, has persisted to the current time, fulfilling the socialist lie that no nation is any better than any other, no culture is exceptional, no social structure is superior. September 11, 2001 came and… well, went, its lessons unlearned and turned against ourselves.

Government can no longer do enough.  A president who believed the Constitution is fatally flawed with its “negative rights,” was elected and re-elected.  Inside forces.  Generations, now, believe that a Constitution without socialism is not worth defending and they don’t even see the dichotomy.  Inside forces.

Now education is likely the most potent inside force that pushes and molds our supposedly self-governing citizens.  Given the remarkable resources developed inside the United States, one might think that the education of American citizens would be wholly according to our own heritage and culture, yet we are turning out American youth who’ve been taught that every other culture on Earth is equal to or better than our own, and that our heritage and history is so flawed as to be indefensible.  No history-changing, indeed, history-improving ideas about freedom and self-governance and governmental constraints, can be allowed credence any longer because actions taken by the respective thinkers 250 , 300 and 500 years ago, are disapproved-of in the 21st century.

One is stressed to imagine a greater waste of time or greater loss of opportunity.  Instead of leading today’s students – inheritors of the exceptionalism of America’s founding – to grasp and then build upon, improve upon, the phenomenal break with history that our Constitution represented and represents, its lessons are rejected in favor, unbelievably, of socialism,and denigrated in preference for division and hatred.  Is this accidental?  Is the inexorably leftward, anti-constitutional drift of U. S. education all happenstance?  Is it reasonable for a purposeful society to maintain some control over the imparting of culture to its youth?  Or shall the freedoms we enjoy be defended only in terms of their allowance for the undermining of the foundations of that society?

Inside forces.  Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing.