Culture, Economics, Governance, Health Care

FOR THE HEALTH OF IT

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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.

Economics

A Degree of Economics

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Everything so new and fresh

Prudence has successfully resisted the temptation to counter the many ignorant statements uttered by the impressively ignorant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of late an elected representative in the U. S. House of Representatives.  She has a college degree… in economics.

One recent evening she purported to explain – obviously only to those more ignorant than herself – what “capitalism” is.  In the process she confused it with “free-market economy,” and then jumped to explaining how one might have a “mixed” economy where the “state” doesn’t own the means of production but “workers’ cooperatives” do.  Neither the origins of the means of production that workers’ cooperatives will “own,” nor the means of managing their cooperative labor, were revealed during her explanation.

To the likes of Ms. Cortez the Marxist concept of capitalism is not a solution to the human condition, but the cause of suffering and injustice.  Unfortunately, modern capitalists are proving many of Marx’s theories.  Thanks to the vapid connivance of ostensibly democratically elected governments (crony-capitalism), international banks virtually direct public policy and national economic decision-making.  Most “workers” – wage-earners, are relatively comfortable and not about to revolt against anonymous masters, but not all.  The obscene concentrations of economic and productive power run the risk of collapsing the edifices of international capitalism.  There’s plenty for social justice warriors to despise.

On the other hand… socialism cannot destroy debt – only productive surplus does and can do that.  It is not possible, at least human nature will not allow, a financially complex society to grow without practical amounts of debt.  Not to be pejorative, “debt” is merely paying for a product or “good” over time.  No, that sounds too simple.  “Debt” is only true and practical when a financing agent has judged a borrower likely to pay back the loaned cash with interest, oftentimes with the financier holding a chattel interest in the good for which it has loaned the purchase price, because of two factors: 1) The financed “good,” or product or house or car or medical procedure has sufficient desirability, utility or comfort value for the borrower as to make its value or worth obvious (and its potential loss undesirable enough) and valued by the borrower; and 2) The borrower or beneficiary of the good’s utility or comfort is, by test of available income over time, able to make periodic payments on a timely, contracted (promised) basis.

In the ideal case, then, debt is simply a tool that is “rented,” as it were, the value of which is clear enough to cause timely, interest-bearing, repayment.  The manufacturer of the good (debt properly employed should always, as in every single time, be employed to facilitate the transfer of a “hard, or manufactured, good” and not a temporary expense) obtains immediate payment, enabling additional future manufacture, while the customer of the good obtains the use and facility of the good immediately upon need when it may be too costly to afford a single cash exchange for it.

Much is misunderstood about “productive surplus.”  It’s “margin,” which is to say, revenue that exceeds the cost of manufacture.  “Oh, well, that’s profit for a capitalist,” some will say, “and you shouldn’t “overcharge” poorer customers or else you should share it with your exploited workers.”  But margin isn’t simply “profit,” and the “exploited” workers are paid according to their productive capacity and value to the production of the goods the manufacturer makes and sells.  Margin provides “working capital;” what does it actually do?

Working capital means cash in the bank, and it serves to improve efficiency within the manufacturer’s operations by enabling investment in better manufacturing equipment, often by being committed to pay off equipment acquisition debt, which shifts that portion of margin to cost-of-goods but which can reduce the costs elsewhere with more productive equipment (which is also a good result for the people who make that new equipment).  Working capital enables the company to train its workers to higher skill levels and greater productivity, yielding higher pay.  It also enables the company to hire more employees as production increases and, let’s hope, quality and sales also increase.

Productive surplus destroys debt; it’s the only engine that can.  In the presence of productive surplus, debt is a useful and valuable tool for growth and for improving overall living standards.  But what happens to “profits?”

Profits belong to shareholders, who are, in fact, the owners of the company.  Socialists feel as though no one person or small group should “own” a means of production, but that it should automatically “belong to” or be controlled by, the workers, to whom all the profits should be distributed.  History, the bane of socialists’ existence, teaches that humans are good at some things, bad at others, and one of those “others” is collective decision-making or, the corollary, collective self-leadership, an oxymoron that socialists insist on believing in.  Let’s start at the beginning.

A person has an idea for a widget/product/thingy that other people will want to have because it makes, ummm… it makes baking cakes, breads and muffins easier and more efficient with fewer bad results.  The person has no factory but he (let’s say it’s a he) learned in trade school (paid for from taxes that derive from profits) how to work with metal as well as how to apply himself to a problem and how to concentrate and to research the things he doesn’t know.  First he figures that being able to have a baking oven that has even, steady heat would lead to uniformly baked goods, so he tries various kinds of pipes and shapes and pressures to provide even gas flames that won’t make hot spots within the oven.  Aha!  He gets it and finds a way to generate even heat, cobbles together a metal stove and burns his first cake to a crisp, as the whole oven became a hot-spot.  Hmmmnn.

Our inventor/entrepreneur realizes he must regulate the heat to achieve one temperature and hold it there within very narrow limits…   The process goes on for weeks and months, absorbing every spare hour and weekend until he has a metal box of a specific shape with special gas burners, elaborate temperature sensors and controls, insulation and directions for installation, use and cleaning.  But he has just the one.  If he sells it for more than it costs to make he’ll have a brief profit but it takes so long for him to make just one that he’ll go hungry before he can get the next pulse of “profits” from selling the second one, assuming that he quits his 9 to 5 job and works on the oven business full time.

He has some savings that he has been slowly accumulating to provide for his family if something happened to him, and he’s been careful to leave them intact.  His idea is good and he’s proven that it’s the best oven design potentially on the market.  How to get it there?  He needs capital, of which he has only a little.  He and his wife decide to take the risk, pledging their savings and their house(!) to secure a loan that will allow for several key things needed for producing 10 ovens per week, and selling them, at a margin that will allow for repaying the loan with interest (which employs people at the bank), insuring against the risks and liabilities manufacturers face, making payroll (and benefits!) for the 5 people they must hire to make and market the ovens (including payroll for himself, the owner/inventor, and to invest in an inventory of parts and gizmos needed to assemble ovens such that orders for ovens can be filled promptly.  And, oh, yes, they have to lease some suitable – or nearly suitable – space for manufacturing and testing, on which there is a large deposit.  Everything is at stake.

With much struggle and worried nights things get done.  The first 10 ovens are produced, tested and packaged for shipping.  The sales “department” of one former kitchenware sales rep, has secured an order for 4 of them, one of which is to a small mom-and-pop bakery not far away.  The owner/inventor goes to their small shop, attached to their house, to oversee installation by the plumber/gas-fitter, and personally teaches the operation to the new owners, who took a risk of buying an expensive new oven based on its description and manufacturer’s test results.  They agree to let the inventor/capitalist advertise their success with it – for a fee.  It performs as advertised and they start to do more business thanks to the creative new pastries their new oven bakes to perfection (damn those wood-fired stone ovens).

Well, the advertising kicks in and the sales department manages to sell the rest of the first ten and the next ten and things start humming at the “Great Perfection Oven Company.”  Soon, a major catalog sales company makes an offer to carry the oven at a discount to them which, if they can prepay for a certain number and sell at least 10 a month, the harried owner/inventor agrees to provide, even though he’ll make less margin per oven.  The advantage is that with that new revenue he can afford two more production employees and more leased space and increased advertising.  And on it goes…

Within a couple of years he and his wife celebrate the pay-off of the first loan that had put their house and savings at risk.  The business has grown to employ 40 employees and a large commercial bakery has approached them with a request for a production-size version of the “Perfection Oven” with its now-patented gas burners (patenting cost over $30,000) and the inventor/owner commences to design just such an oven which will require more manufacturing equipment and changes to one of their production lines… and so on.

Ms. Ocasio-Socialist, do you think he doesn’t “own” this business?  He and his wife are the only share-holders.  Do you know what else “margin” dollars must do?  They have to provide long-term benefits like pension contributions to trusted, valued employees: the ones who help the company succeed and be profitable.  They have to create a reserve fund in case other threats to the company materialize, cutting into profits, challenging its patents, creating knock-offs and look-alike ovens that sap Perfection Oven sales and margins, as well as changes in tax laws or state-mandated benefits, paid leave laws and new health-care coverages… not to mention changes in OSHA and EPA regulations that could hamper production or require costly new changes to production facilities, unionization, higher fuel costs for delivery of both raw materials and finished goods (ovens).  Lots of future risks that must be insured against, sometimes with simple cash reserves.  THEN there are profits.

Ms. Cortez, do you, with your costly economics degree, understand any of this?

Governance, Representation, Responsibility, Trump

votes to whiplashes

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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.

Economics, Education, Family, Race

The Bad Old Days

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It is an interesting “fad,” we might call it, to portray every event in history from the viewpoint of the most “woke” or radical perspectives fostered and pandered-to by today’s politicians.  It doesn’t seem to be helpful in terms of increasing knowledge or of increasing understanding of the past.  But it has, in the span of 20 years or so, become commonplace.  Every example of this new ignorance  need not be brought before the bar of reason for the student of history to still be able to ask, “why?”

If we accept the premise that schools are the imparters of truth, then it follows that they should be the bastions of truth, as well.  Interesting word, ‘bastion.’  It means a projection from a defensive wall that affords more effective firing angles against attackers, and it also means “bulwark.”  A bulwark is a person, or a thing, that is the immovable defense of the fort or castle.  In the battle of ideas, persons in the school or education business, are obligated  by their office in society – the official role to which they are committed and for which they are well-compensated – to be the bulwarks against UN-truth and lies.

In that regard, their best success derives from having taught students to both find truth and to recognize it when it appears… or disappears.

Parents consign their children to schools in order for them to learn truths and to learn about truth.  Human beings entrusted with imparting truth to children of any age, are sorely tested to not convey opinions or beliefs they hold that cannot be demonstrated to be true.  One might think – and parents might hope – that a mechanism exists to remove teachers who cannot help but taint truth with their opinions.  That the opposite mechanism exists should give us pause.  Short of severe debauchery or criminal acts, it is nearly impossible to pry a teacher loose from his or her tenured security.  What are they teaching?

Let’s look at a simple event that has caused news stories in recent years;  the landing of the “pilgrims” in Massachusetts Bay, ostensibly at what we know as Plymouth, named for Plymouth, England.  To get to Plymouth the so-called Pilgrims had to endure privations and tribulations that we, today, in our land of too much food and electricity, cannot conceive of.  We lose our cool when another car blocks us or cuts in front of us.  Imagine uprooting your family and leaving the place of your birth and generations of customs and history, to sign on to a corporate adventure to the “New World,” about which little is known.  Your first ship proves unseaworthy and you limp back to port until another can be obtained and hired to your purposes.

You are unable to carry with you more than a small trunk’s worth of tools and possessions.  On your little ship there are no bathrooms, no showers, salted fish and beef to eat, no fresh vegetables, no toothpaste or toilet paper.  Privacy is virtually non-existent, you know nothing of germs or disease except that the latter is common.  Childbirth is among the deadliest of burdens for women.  For years you have planned and hoped for a better life upon reaching the distant unknown shore, and after the final two months at sea you are deposited on the shore, far off from your intended destination, now forced to fend for yourselves from the ground up, in fact, building shelters, foraging for wildlife and wild fruits or berries to try to store enough food for the imminent winter which will be much harsher than what you have been used to, particularly since your delay in leaving England left you in the New World in October, rather than in May or June. 

Among your beliefs is deep religious faith in God, bolstered by frequent prayer, but He isn’t cushioning any blows or revealing hidden stores of healthy food.  Many of you die in that first winter, yet faith and incredible work see you through.  Eventually relations with natives, whom you believe to be “savages,” keep you from dying out altogether and your duties as profitable fur trappers can commence.

Accidentally, in total ignorance, you have brought germs that infect the native people, germs against which they have no defense.   You have brought another disease, economics, including concepts of private property, fences and stockades, and guns and swords of steel to defend them.  You believe that God has blessed you with a new land over which you have every right to take dominion.  History records the clash of beliefs and its outcome.

To this Prudent observer, descended from those Pilgrims and others who followed soon after, the story of immense courage and faith, regardless of what we may, today, think of that faith, is a bit heroic.  Courage in the face of danger is one of humankind’s abiding virtues and is worthy of honor and emulation, but what is more frequently discussed, even abetted by public entities, is the awfulness of the Pilgrims and all of their virtues and beliefs, since it turned out badly for the natives.   The thanks offered prayerfully to God, for the salvation of the tiny colony, must now be denigrated because of those germs and the new ideas the colonists held dear.

The strength of the underdog fighter who wins against all odds, must be hated because, we have since learned, he once flipped the bird to another driver and… it was a woman!  There will never be a good reason to train the way he did, or learn the tactics that he used to win, not ever will there be a reason to mention his name or take his picture.  Everything must be expunged.

And so education has purged itself of the role of Christianity in the creation and final founding of the United States.  Since many teachers and professors, now, are so sure that belief in the Bible’s teachings is superstition, they cannot bring themselves to learn how it is woven into the fabric of America, and certainly not to teach about it.  Is it all just economics?  That was Marx’s view; we certainly must teach about that.  So, is the “new” narrative about where America came from the same as “truth?”  It would seem Prudent to judge that it is a half-truth at best.  Does that fulfill the essential requirement that educational institutions… and functions… be the defenders and imparters of truth?  If not, what are they?  What are they being paid to do, if not impart truth?

Christopher Columbus was nothing if not unusually brave.  It took unusual courage to set sail beyond the sight of land, not knowing how far it was to reach another shore.  It was a struggle for him to obtain not one, but 3 crews to follow him on his undefined journey.  When he landed he was thousands of miles from where he thought he must be.  His mission was financed by the newly victorious, fused monarchies of Ferdinand and Isabella, who defeated the Moors just one day before granting Columbus the support he needed.

They needed gold, which the “indies” reportedly had, and some other valuables Columbus’ crewmates and soldiers might come across.  No one on earth had knowledge of germs, viruses or infections.  No one.  The Spaniards were simple thieves who believed non-Europeans, non-Catholic non-Europeans most particularly, were “savages.”  In other words, Spaniards, like French, British, Italian, Dutch and other explorers… Portuguese, were brought up to believe that because of their relative enlightenment, manufactures, printing, marriage, courts, police, and religion, they were superior to savages wherever they found them.  The Spaniards were fulfilling the charge of their King and Queen, whose authority came from God.  There was no better work they could do.  Not so simple, perhaps.

Today Columbus is vilified, as if current hot feelings might improve Columbus’ own attitudes, causing him and all of his crewmates who had just risked their lives on their mission to the “Indies,” to renounce every belief they held and their faith, and to switch to social services for the savages they had found, perhaps teaching them how to forge iron and smelt bronze, and to build better huts and grow more crops.  The next expedition could teach them to read the Bible and raise their children.

Many teachers seem consumed by the estimates of decimation brought about by European diseases thanks to Columbus’ discovering the new world.  Rather than recognize the essential sacrifice and bravery of mariners of Columbus’ day, along with the unintended consequences of the intercontinental movement of peoples, educators convinced of the evil intent of all white-skinned peoples, pummel their students with the evils initiated by white Europeans.  Increasingly liberal teachers twist the views of their students such that whites begin to hate themselves and question not only bad actions of the past, but even ideas and philosophies generated by people whose skin is not brown.

This immediately translates into hatred of America and the ideas that created it; it also validates hatreds the racialist hate-mongers are encouraging non-stop in black communities.  Neither trend is healthy for our nation, our future progress or our steady destruction of disease and poverty.  It’s stupid, essentially.  Shame on us.

This same poisoned outlook has been seized upon by socialists now to fuel their never-ending struggle to destroy individual freedom, a goal that may only be achieved by destroying America.  They must destroy Christianity, too, since many white people believe in it.

Can the descendants of slave owners atone not only for the sins of their ancestors but for the sins of their ancestors’ ancestors’ ancestors?  No, never.  The actions of the past still remain no matter what is done, now.  Can the descendants of slaves (which are virtually all of us depending on how many ancestries we include) receive some kind of justice for the sufferings of their ancestors?  No, the suffering will have still happened.  Is that suffering the reason some brown-skinned people are economically behind the curve today?  Or educationally?  No.

Up until the “Great Society,” which federalized welfare has purchased the votes of blacks for generations, the suffering of slaves had created a great strengthening of their descendants.  “We shall overcome” had genuine meaning and blacks were overcoming and gaining economic power faster than their white “oppressors.”  But when hate became a tax-funded industry, black progress not only slowed, but reversed.  And still they excel… in virtually every field, yet more also fail, convinced by their hate-filled leaders that life is unfair because of (pick all that apply) whites, Christians, police, schools, businesses, Republicans, slavery, Columbus, NASA, Trump.  What a waste, however enrichening it is for some.

Education, Family, Sex

WHY A RAINBOW?

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Carlisle, Massachusetts

In many cities, towns, villages and hamlets, churches and synagogues display some form of rainbow flags.  If the congregation and pastor is really “woke,” the top color stripe is black; otherwise ‘red and orange, green and blue, shining yellow, purple, too…’ is enough to advertise how welcoming that church and congregation is to, well, any one.  It is a friendly intention, throwing wide the arms of, umm… it’s not clear, Christianity(?)… to the world. 

Among Christianity’s strengths is its history of reformation.  The best known is the protestant reformation of Martin Luther.  His 95 Theses exposed the sloppiness and politicization of the Catholic Church, it’s corruption and ties to wealthy bankers and corrupt royal families.  There followed a reformation of Christianity, but not of the Catholic Church, particularly.  The world forced “the Church” to adapt, but it always appeared to follow, not lead.  Despite its self-proclaimed heritage direct from Simon Peter, Holy Mother Church retained its worldly flaws and intrigues, descending into sexuality most foul, ruining thousands of lives and families.  It appears incapable of reforming itself.

Rampant homosexuality and pedophilia has caused a reformation never intended, where droves of the faithful washed their hands and feet of the Church, losing trust in the priesthood.  The written and spoken liturgy and the artful back-story Catholics have recited and agreed with for centuries is still the same, but the trust is different.  Despite its self-immolation of recent decades, the Catholic Church is still a pillar of Western civilization – worth our defending.  One hopes the Church will come clean and preach the truth; its power to do and to guide good, is still immense.  It is incapable of defending Christianity, itself, just now, especially in the face of Islam and other anti-Christian forces arrayed against it.  Catholic parishes don’t need to fly the rainbow banner.

“Protestantism” reforms itself by subdividing.  Each new sect, even each new congregation within some sects, keys in on certain tenets of the Bible as the best lessons to learn for how to live a “Christian” life, raise your children and increase charity in the world.  To the degree that each is honestly led, each has a divine function to fulfill.  Everyone is not at the same point in their evolution – evolution of the soul, that is – and each will find the teacher whose teaching he or she is ready to receive.  Each should also be ready to move upwards when it is time for a more profound teacher along the path toward truth.

Lately, however, Protestants are racing to not be the exception in the Rainbow Revolution.  Every church has one: Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, United Churches of Christ, liberal Baptists, even a handful of reform Synagogues.  Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists appear immune to the blandishments of Rainbows, as are Quakers.  The latter three are not caught up with filling the pews for no reason or for any reason.

If the Rainbow symbol were created to bring more people into adherence to Divine Law, it would be a wonderful, actual, reformation.  Church “Reform” ought to improve human distillation of the Word insofar as we have tried to learn and understand it.  If a widespread movement serves, instead, to DEform churches and their ability to spread the Word, then Christians ought to question it, starting with ministers, preachers, priests, rabbis, bishops and deacons. That’s not happening… not that a Prudent observer can detect.

What do interested people believe that banner says?

The first and primary message, beyond all claims of “inclusivity” or unity with those discriminated against racially, is that same-sex activities are equally valid to those of heterosexuals.  Every other meaning of the other 5, 6 or 7 colors, occasionally adding white, is simply claiming identity with every use and delight in the ‘rainbow,’ particularly for children.  If unicorns are made happy by rainbows then so are we, so to speak.  The rainbow flag, originally a symbol of racial inclusiveness, from the late fifties and sixties, is a clever appropriation of thoughtless human sympathies for the unhappy.

Consequently, the banner has become ubiquitous during “Pride” month, which is not ever a celebration of the Word of God, nor does it reflect prayerful meditation on the innate beauty of God’s creation of humankind.  It is a collective demand… against heterosexuality, since true gays and lesbians will never enjoy it or the incredible joy of motherhood and fatherhood and of the nurturing of offspring; and against God and anyone who claims to speak for Him.  The demand translates, both for other humans and for ecclesiastics, that non-heterosexuals deserve both attention and respect based on their different sexuality, unusual emotions and desires, and discordant habits.  Imagine: a group of humans who are not happy with their emotional make-up, so much so that they will flaunt their intention and practice of breaking… no, denigrating, religious dogma and, to the faithful, the Holy Word of God. 

In the chance of there being a God, sneering at His Law and rules for righteousness is a very arrogant move, a Prudent observer might think.  Unfortunately, economics being what they are, churches have been tempering their messages for decades, hoping to fill the pews with charitable attendees.  That is a path along which it is virtually impossible to reverse direction.  Accepting the rainbow flag as a church’s statement of acceptance is to ignore the shift that has occurred in the legal status of the self-proclaimed “LGBTQ” “community.”

One might Prudently inquire of a member of a rainbow-endowed church… or even of a clergy-person, just what he or she means to say with the flag.  Without a doubt the answer would include something about “anti-discrimination” or “inclusiveness” and “all are God’s children,’ and the like.  None would suggest that they displayed the flag with the message that 1) Christians must forsake scripture so that non-heterosexuals won’t feel challenged in their pleasures or beliefs; and 2) By extension, all laws and customs that follow the inherent message of Judeo-Christian scripture regarding same-sex relations and sex activities, must be set aside by law, no matter the damage to our society or civilization.  No, no, no.  “We love everyone,” they might say.

Yet, somehow, their love does not seem to extend to everyone’s beliefs in equal measure.  That is, they have no banners celebrating the strictures and scriptures of the Word of God that underlies the very existence of their church, physically and spiritually.  Adding the rainbow banner to the physical existence of their church would indicate that what the followers of that banner believe is not only equal to the beliefs that built and maintain the church, physically and congregationally, but, to some degree, greater than those of the founders of that church.  “Oh, no,” comes the distressed reply, “we are simply saying they are welcome no matter what they believe right now.  The magic of Christianity will infuse their hearts and cause them to renounce their forbidden practices and join more fully with our beliefs!”  Okaaaay.

That last is a Prudent speculation but doesn’t actually work out in fact.  In fact, the presence of the rainbow flag acknowledges that non-heterosexuals are consistently demanding full “equality” with religious heterosexuals, including full marriage equality, as one example.  Resignedly, most “rainbowed” churches advertise their willingness to perform, and therefore endorse, same-sex “marriages.”  This is a public replacement of parts of scripture that undergirded the creation of their churchly existences.  At this point, parishioners and clerics alike are advertising their desire to accept emotions felt by non-heterosexuals as equal  or even superior  to their previously revered scriptures, teachings and beliefs.  Extraordinary.  By erecting the rainbow banner, all of these have foresworn their existence as churches, in favor of a new existence as social or fraternal clubs, of whose continued existence the countdown to disappearance has begun.  For shame.

Much the same is happening in secular circles, and in government.  Secular society is being forced, jump by jump, to accept a new basis of family, of children and of life’s purposes.  Government, much like churches seeking contributions in their collection plates, is racing to get in front of this heritage-replacing movement so that it might consider itself still the leader of society (in the persons of craven politicians).  Consequently we have commenced to codify the self-declared feelings of non-heterosexuals such that public education and personal privacy have been transformed in the space of two decades, to the point where individuals may be punished by severe professional and economic loss for failing to treat self-declared feelings, even self-declared sexual identities  as the equal of reality.  This is a dangerous weapon aimed at rationality, heretofore the glue of our cooperative society.

Creating laws that grant or reveal new civil rights that can change on an individual basis at individual whim, is extremely sketchy.  Punishing people for failing to respond according to some shifting, individually prescribed way, to the individual declarations of unproveable personal feelings, marks the descent into anarchy, and the end of reason, as well as the end of social cohesiveness: the tyranny of a tiny minority over the vast majority, backed by police powers.  May God save us from folly.

Obama

Red Rover, Red Rover…

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The wisdom of Barack Obama is finally coming into focus.  Conservatives had a field day pointing out ignorant and inaccurate things Mr. Obama has a habit of saying: “57 states,” Austrians speaking “Austrian,” Hawaii being “in Asia.”  Barry Soetero, ne’ Obama, has demonstrated rather loose connections to hard facts, but those are not where his ‘wisdom’ lives.

Perhaps his first wise move was marrying Michelle Robinson, by far the smarter of that couple.  It is Prudent to assume that Michelle’s advisements to her husband overrode and were superior to many of his own ideas, including with whom to surround himself.  We suspect that this included having Joe Biden serve as his Vice-President.  Biden would never upstage her husband and would serve to make him seem normal to suspicious Whites.  Barry’s wife was/is far more popular than he was… or is.

Barack’s life is mainly a closed book, the details of which are purposely obscured; Michelle’s is far better understood in comparison.  Mr. Obama is unable to even prove his birthplace after spending literal millions to stop constitutional demands for that proof.  Prudence suspects that there will eventually emerge proof of non-U. S. birth for this enigmatic man, the legal implications of which are fascinating.  Back to the wisdom part.

Obama’s wisdom is political, and little else.  He’s not an historian or an economist, certainly no military expert and he can’t throw a baseball, but he understands propaganda and manipulation, both short and long term.  Prudently, he has destroyed the Clintons as part of his oft-stated intention to “fundamentally transform” the United States. First, he defeated Hillary head-to-head, but made her Secretary of State where she could bear the brunt of the wild and wishful foreign policies he was planning.

In that role, Obama allowed stories to exfiltrate that it was Mrs. Clinton who pushed for the destruction of Libya, for example, which hardened feelings against her in some quarters, essentially ruining any residual veracity she may have had.  He allowed her – possibly helped her – to profit from “pay-to-play” schemes involving the Clinton Foundation, essentially buying her loyalty.  Additionally, he permitted by acquiescence, her use of an illegal eMail system, forcing her into a legal corner almost guaranteed to ruin her candidacy for president.  Trump, in reaction to the dangers she finally appeared to represent to ‘normal’ Americans, was the electoral result.  But liberal-socialists need not have worried, the groundwork had been well-laid in the waning months of Obama’s administration to hog-tie the new president, and take over the opposition, once the Democratic Party.

To make certain that the Clintons would be destroyed, Obama’s friends, Jim Comey, Peter Strzok, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch… and others, added as thick a patine of sleazy dealings and advantageous treatment for Mrs. Clinton as could be applied, assuring her electoral failure.  That was job one.

Job two is destroying compromise between the two parties while guiding Democrats so far leftward that there is no suitable descriptive name for them any longer.  In a political blink of an eye, Democrats have swarmed to challenge Trump with what appear to be outrageous propositions (in the eyes of conservatives and other ‘normal’ citizens) not least of which is the invasion across the southern border.

Trump, never more than imperfect, somewhat glaringly so in certain arenas, was elected as much a ‘not-Clinton’ as a recognized expert in foreign affairs, economics, military power or diplomacy.  He has surprised many by persevering through a mugging of a thousand cuts, and shows some decent instincts, but has yet to comfort the skeptical.  Despite good approval polling, Trump is made more vulnerable by the nature of the multiple representatives of socialist idiocy arrayed against him.

The Democrat candidate he will face is not yet in the race, is our Prudent opinion.

One recalls the burst of excitement during the few days that it seemed possible that Oprah Winfrey might get into the presidential race.  Finally, supporters thought, a “non politician” we can get behind.  They already loved her and Prudence suspects that there were virtually no criticisms of her that would have stuck.  She isn’t going to run for president.

Back to Barack Hussein Obama’s political long march to transform America.  He and his backers have prepared the ground and ‘fertilized’ it well.  All he needs, now, is to plant the right flower.  And he will.  It is impossible for him and for his fellow travelers to recede into the background.  Their struggle to overturn freedom is a daily one.  The master they serve never sleeps and never relents.  Trump is going to face Michelle Obama, who will announce with Oprah at her side and a fawning press at her feet.

Hillary Clinton was a minor quiz; this Constitutional Republic is about to be sorely tested.

Culture, Education, Governance, Representation

NO CHEEKS TO TURN

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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

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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.

Culture, Economics, Education, Immigration, Race, Representation

GHETTO, LIVING

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“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”  – Ronald Reagan.


    Into his simple statement, Ronald Reagan distilled the greatest threat and the greatest strength of America: the ideas of it.  We could forget them.  We could become so enamored of the false idols of socialism that we finally fail completely to pass along the meaning and significance of America.  The Prudent observer already recognizes that a large fraction of U. S. citizens are far down that path.

What makes this possible?  Obviously, education is worth examining; so is immigration; so, too, is ghetto-ization.  Let’s look at the last.  Ghettos form somewhat naturally, primarily for ethnic reasons, which is to say, cultural reasons.  They form economically, as well, but where the only shared “norm” is poverty… or substantial wealth.

Religious ghettos are well recorded and well-storied in history.  Most were either harmless or threatening to a power-structure.  Some were left in peace, most eventually destroyed for their “other-ness,” and the implied threat that represented.

Most ghettos engender resentment, or cohere because of it.  Shared resentment is a political tinderbox, to which outside intrusion, however legitimate, can provide the explosive spark.  In and of itself, ghetto-ization is deconstructive of the greater society, corrosive and segregationist.  There is no good reason to encourage the growth or even the existence of ghettos – of any sort, at least not in a democratic, free-enterprise republic.

In its perpetual confusion, religious sectarianism both creates and attempts to integrate, ghettos.  Part of Judeo-Christian teaching is to “…come apart and be a separate and chosen people.”  It is not dissimilar to many other faiths.  The direction seeks purity of body, mind and soul.  When the rest of the “world” is deemed impure and immoral, “sickly” in a sense, quarantine appears wise, and temporarily it is.  Enlightened sects both separate themselves and purposely integrate themselves, hoping to attract some – if not all – of the impure and immoral to adopt their ways of belief and of life.

Mere enlightenment can easily evolve into messianism, causing religious groups to send missionaries out to dissimilar, and therefore, “heathen” lands who are living in sin for no other reason than ignorance of the one, true path.

But ghettos, religious, ethnic, economic, tend to inhibit understanding – understanding which is essential to cultural/social survival based on shared mores and standards, habits and language.  Those “inside” tend to mostly talk to one another, share distrusts of outsiders with one another, hear only opinions from one another and, eventually, for some, reinforce one another’s hatreds for outsiders.

Hatred is unhealthy, especially so for relatively “open” societies, where there is freedom of movement, speech and expression… and where there are politicians.  Hatred spawns a rotten sort of political power… a sort that is happy to ply ghetto hatreds with pandering postulates, even to the point of social revolution.  That is, every form of “establishment” power is besmirched and derogated until the cravings of those seeking votes are but a shade away from the hatreds of the marginalized.

It would seem unwise to spur the creations of more ghettos, and unwise to feed the ones that exist such that they need not integrate and come to better understandings.

In effect, the United States has permitted, encouraged and protected the formation of new ghettos, both through civil tolerance of the rights of homeless people to remain drugged while living animally on appropriated public lands, and by importing enclaves of aliens whose cultures and belief structures are not only unlike our own, but antithetical to our own.  The great “melting pot” of quickly assimilating immigrants is a quaint notion.  Immigrants today come, in part, to show Americans how inferior our mores are to their “superior” ones, from which they have fled to our shores.  This is unhealthy.

At the same time our social welfare industry strengthens and feeds the original, “black” ghettos, feeding their politically powerful support to those in government who feed the welfare industry.  More recent ghettos based on Central and South American attitudes and language(s) actually compete for the support from the welfare industry that was largely delivered to blacks 50 years ago.  The United States literally fights to grow those ghettos in contravention of our own laws.  This is doubly unhealthy since it cements a disregard for law amongst our fastest growing minorities, many of whom reside here illegally.  Very unhealthy.

Very few within the ghettos described share understandings of our Constitution or of our common law and standards.  For these growing sub-cultures, there is no need to forget our heritage: they come or are born without it and there is no requirement to adopt it in order to enjoy our land and protections, legally and honestly or not.

For the rest of us, upon whom the survival of the ideas of America rests, many of our youth are ignorant of, have forgotten or have been instructed away from those ideas.  One generation is all it will take to lose everything.

Education, Governance, Responsibility

ULTIMATE and PERPETUAL

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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?