Culture, Education, Immigration, Race, Responsibility

SURVIVAL

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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

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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

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“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.

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Free Repress

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I had a short sit-down with a most charming and intelligent lady recently – very Prudent in my judgment.  We agreed on nearly everything concerning her professional expertise and shared each other’s reminiscences from too many decades.  At a couple of points she had alluded to being “very liberal” without it influencing our discussions, while describing how her work improved individual  performance for business leaders and managers.  At that Prudence suggested that she probably is not as liberal as she thinks.  We never did get into either of our social views, but before parting it became very clear that conservative news sources could never be trusted while “liberal” ones always could.

In the end I opined that I wasn’t sure that President Obama was a natural born American, that his released birth certificate was forged in some way and that he was the only person in his administration who ever claimed he was born in Kenya, and I cited a statement on a “book jacket.”  She was able to name everyone related to or near the president in any way as scurrilous in the light of “more than 30 indictments,” for Heaven’s sake.  I suggested that they weren’t connected to Russian involvement with Trump and she listed a couple where people had been working for Turkey (Flynn) who later lied about meeting a Russian, and Paul Manafort, of course.

I was wrong about the “book jacket” reference: the claim was made by Obama’s literary agency in a booklet it used to promote books to large buyers, but Obama, himself, never challenged it until a couple months after declaring himself in the running for the Democrat nomination.  The literary agent lady claimed it was her personal mistake and that Obama himself had never told her personally that he was born in Kenya.  She probably derived the “belief” in his place of birth from the information in the Harvard Law School yearbook that listed the very same Barack Hussein Obama as having come from Kenya.  The very same Obama hadn’t challenged that, either, after having certainly seen it, he being the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review, after all.  So there is some validity to Prudence’ having formed a belief about his Kenyan origins.  Harvard, of course, “corrected” the yearbook entry after the controversy became news in 2007.  Lots of mistakes connected to one little-known individual’s demographics.

The idea of Obama’s grandmother, in Kenya, having been present at his birth, there, however, is not substantiated.  One of Obama’s half-brothers, among others, tried to float a fraudulent claim about a Kenyan birth certificate, which muddied the waters even more.

To the lady’s credit, despite rattling off every “Trump” negative possible in a very brief couple of sentences, there are many questions about Trump’s associates, himself, and even about his relatives – but it seems Prudent to await some sort of proof of the many embellishments certain media layer on to every indictment that has emitted from the Mueller operations.

Prudence would indicate that most of those who voted for Donald Trump don’t like him, particularly.  (See http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2017/11/29/trumpism-is-a-ghost/)  Many obviously do, imputing to him the persona of “one of the guys” even though he doesn’t drink or smoke.  They like the way he says what he thinks, even without the politically correct filtering.  Those who don’t “like” him also appreciate his willingness to throw out his opinions and willingness to call people out for their bad acts, lies and falsities of various sorts.  It doesn’t help that he is reckless in many of his statements to the point of stating his own falsities, but in most cases it doesn’t sound like “lies,” in the sense of malicious mendacity.  Opinions vary.  Still, a majority of states wanted the degree of change Trump would bring, regardless of his “baggage.”  Prudence agrees.

It is obvious, Prudence would indicate, that the creation of Fox News dramatically altered the “news” business, perhaps on a par with the creation of CNN.  The challenge to the amorphous leftism of, first, broadcast networks and then cable networks, caused those outlets to sharpen their stances and to attack “right wing news.”  With so few right-leaning networks, right-leaning politicians have naturally hewn closer to Fox and a handful of independent “blog,” YouTube and “Podcast” sources for “alternative” news and opinion… and confirmation.

CNN and others turned to spend more and more time and content in sharply partisan “reporting.”  The news business is now not just corrupt, it is failing its vital role, guaranteed to it in the First Amendment.  Government types are delighted to be allied with the “press.”  It removes all that “truthiness” pressure.

However, the slippery immersion into partisan defense by most media, is not only destructive of our separation of powers, but an abject disregard… a besmirching of the role of a free press – not “free” to pander but free to be honest, something journalists in many countries die for.  Of all the ills America suffers today, the loss of an honest, free press may be the worst.  For shame, and shame upon the magnates and business titans who own various outlets of partisan claptrap.  Who is watching the watchers?

The biggest watchers, today, are the largest cyber-media monsters: Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others.  In the span of fifteen years, virtually everyone who utilizes the internet for communication or information, has adapted to obtaining both through one of these companies.  It is the most rapid transformation of human interaction… and most rapid concentration of power – power over human knowledge – in all of history.  Only now is the danger and threat of this concentration being recognized.

-Google, in particular, is succeeding at convincing schools to forego books and other paper media for everything from studies, assignments, homework and testing.  Kids who spend excessive hours on screens for games, Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and Snapchat, have been shepherded onto screens for even more hours per day!  Worse, they are being taught from the youngest possible ages that truth may be found on a Google screen.  Except that, now we learn that Google has a very specific view of what truths are find-able on those very screens.  Can democracy survive this evil filtering of facts?

Indeed, not even Constitutional republicanism can withstand it.  Have we the necessary vision and courage to reverse this extra-constitutional threat?

Culture, Economics, Education, Family, Representation

The Fibers of failure

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Things just aren’t the same, anymore… have you noticed?  On the other hand, it’s not Prudent to say they ever were – the same I mean.  Strong societies like the United States, remain strong because some things are the same, in fact; to protect ourselves, our grandchildren and their grandchildren, the strong fibers in our culture must be defended and inculcated in our children as well as in ourselves.  There are too many who should understand their presence and purpose but appear ignorant of them.

One such fiber is our Constitution.  Conservatives revere it; leftists unceasingly circumvent it.  Since its adoption the Constitution has held strong, but has no effect on national direction when governance simply steps into the shadows and ignores it.  Most of that determined ignorance includes big tax-funded payoffs to politically significant segments of the citizenry, cementing the synthesis, into the new thesis  that the Constitutional limitation on this or that governing act actually could be interpreted in a different (socialistic) way.  Later there is always the new antithesis  that, couched in terms of “equal protection under the law” and “non-discrimination,” must, “constitutionally” be applied to still more segments until there’s a permanent acceptance of that much socialism by the very conservatives who believe they are defending the Constitution!  It’s a strong, inelastic fiber that’s been stretched, nevertheless, over the past 150 years.

Conservatives believe that pulling back from the severe strains on the Constitutional fiber, is the only long-term solution to the survival of the American idea.

Religion, churches (church-communities) and religious education form a fiber that is perceived as “quaint” by the leftist elements on the East and West coasts and urban pockets in between.  Anti-religion is strong on college campuses, as it is in public grade and high schools.  Being at least agnostic, if not atheistic, is worn as a badge of intellectual status, certainly since the 1960’s;  those still attending are being taught that the Bible and the words of Jesus somehow fit socialism.  In response, churches are failing to define the difference between worldly comforts and holy purposes of life.  Government, under a Constitutional guarantee of non-interference in and by religion itself, has proven feckless and works harder to divest itself of moral responsibility at every level.  This “fiber” is threadbare and undependable.

Family cohesiveness is the core strength of any society.  In no culture has the strength and identity of mores and traditions been separated from widespread, if not complete, adherence to the family “pattern,” until the degradation of “Western,” culture, now entering its seventh decade.  It is quickly becoming America’s greatest weakness and we have repeatedly elected representatives who facilitate it with misguided welfare programs.  Without succeeding generations of “America”-acculturated citizens, there will be no “nation” and worse, there will be no one to defend it.  Electronics and computerized health-care are not substitutes for strong, morally straight families, for only they form the “fiber” of freedom and self-government enabled through the Constitution.

Public education is the second greatest acculturation mechanism and process we have.  By default public schools and teachers are charged with the responsibility to educate succeeding members of our society and culture: new “Americans,” in truth.  Since the 1970’s, certainly, teachers and their unions have cemented themselves into codified bailiwicks where they can teach almost anything without fear of being fired, while rewarding those elected “representatives” who protect their “bailiwicks,” with solid political support.  Unthinking – or lightly thinking – citizens vote for said “representatives” and vote further to “support” public education with tax increases and overrides to prove their great morality in defense of an American tradition.  Meanwhile, “teachers” are increasingly producing less-literate graduates who distrust, if not hate, the United States and the true traditions of sacrifice, thrift, personal responsibility and Judeo-Christianity, while embracing socialism, of all things the most antithetical to American success and strength.  As a culture we are failing miserably to make the fabric of our nation stronger, and we grin as we reward those who facilitate our internal weakness.  This “fiber” is now almost invisible, maintained mostly in private, church-connected schools, and not all of those.

Finance and wealth creation have been, and should be, strong fibers in the fabric of industrialized societies, of which the United States is one, like it or not.  Both are tightly connected to honesty in our legal structures, honesty in our contracts, honesty in our “money,” fair debt creation and destruction, and private property.  In short, the economics of the Bible, both old and new testaments, like it or not.  Proto-socialists rail against “unfair” wealth “distribution.”  They are simultaneously right and wrong.  Wealth is not “distributable,” per se, and “fairness” is irrelevant, but the accumulation and possession of “wealth,” is certainly uneven, leading to strong feelings of envy and raw hatred of the “greedy.”  These feelings are political minefields and rich fodder for politicians whose beliefs are fundamentally anti-American… or anti-family: same thing.  But back to “money”:

  • Financially, the federal government is a failure, unable to maintain its own household within a budget and even to create an honest budget through anything close to honest legislation.  Because the Congress can, and the U. S. is in a global position to enable it, the federal government borrows more than it can (ever) repay, every fiscal year.  Despite these well-known facts of financial incompetence, American voters continue to elect “representatives” who believe – and require by legislation – that more and more of every American’s personal financial security should depend upon or be in the hands of, the federal government.  This “fiber” is a misconstrual of the “strings” that federal intrusion always includes – strings that could strangle us.
  • Debt is a tool of growth, investment, liquidity, defense, achievement, construction, infrastructure, public health and more, much more.  Yet it is also a weapon, threatening and weakening whole nations, indeed, every nation.  Instead of leading the world economically, proving the superiority of free enterprise and freedom itself, the United States has succumbed to banking globalism and to the blandishments of socialism, under which “investments” are made in daily necessities for large fractions of our population.  Economically there is no “R.O.I” – return on investment – where debt is incurred in the furthering of dependency.  The U. S. carries a “current” debt liability that is approaching annual G.D.P.  Our productivity cannot generate sufficient surplus to even “service” that debt (pay the interest on it) without borrowing other debt to do so, given the nature of our entitlement budget and bloated pension commitments.  Weapon-wise, debt allows international banking to FORCE the U. S. to borrow to meet its commitments for interest payments.  Every dollar of debt is a dollar of weakness, not strength; of obligation, not freedom.  Our “representatives” are doing this type of budgeting “for” us since it’s too complicated for us to understand.
  • Money is real.  That is, “money” has intrinsic value: gold, silver, platinum or other “hard” currencies, or the notes that stand for a set value of real money so long as those notes may be traded for real money on demand.  We don’t have “money” any longer, although we have currency that we are still willing to work for, sell for, buy with and “save up” for those rainy days.  Written on the notes in our pockets are official dictates that this or that piece of paper shall be accepted as “legal tender” in all transactions, public or private.  Someone famous and/or important has his or her name printed nearby affirming the quality of the banknotes we hold.  They are no longer U. S. Notes, they are Federal Reserve Notes, a private bank with a public name.  Instead of having the U. S. Mint simply print U. S. Notes when we need more liquidity in the economy, we incur a debt to the Federal Reserve bank, and others, including foreign countries – debts we have no hope of repaying in principal, while our obligation to “service” those debts is unending.  The government prints U. S. Bonds, however, which are accepted as good instruments for the loans their purchasers are making to the United States.  The question, is, therefore, if the bonds are good, why not skip the growing interest cost and just print our own money?  Hmmmnnnhh.
  • So, our money is not honest.  It is, instead, merely confidence notes that we and most of the world, accept.  Federal Reserve Notes may be exchanged at any so-called bank only for other Federal Reserve Notes… not for gold or silver or anything of intrinsic value except, if inclined, for modern pennies, the content of which cost more than 1 cent.  Melting them down for the intrinsic metal value is a crime, of course.  More and more we exchange our “cash” for magnetic bubbles on a hard drive, trusting the federally regulated “bank” to protect the record so that we may access it at gasoline pumps, hardware stores and websites that will trade books and electronic gizmos for a share of those magnetic records.  We are now a couple of layers of separation from real-value-money and yet fully confident that “our” money is both safe and safely “ours.”
  • Our entire economy is based on, and priced on, debts and interest.  Think about it.  Our rush to “cashless” commerce carries a very high price, whether one makes use of credit cards or not.  First, the merchant/ restaurateur who accepts your card, must pay the transfer or remitting agent a fee for that privilege – a fee based on a percentage of the transaction amount, including taxes.  This may be 1.5%, 2%, 3% and occasionally more depending on total flow of “credit” transactions for that single location or for the total transactions for a chain of locations.  Many card-holders use “Rewards” cards to obtain fractional cash-back or “miles” or other goodies marketed as though free, simply as a thank-you for using the card.  In reality those “rewards” raise the fees to the vendor/merchant for the privilege of accepting the card.  Those costs are recouped entirely from the cost of goods sold – there is no free lunch.  Later, the card-holder receives a bill from the “credit-card company” (bank) for all the stupid latte’s, Big Macs and smoothies he or she has enjoyed during the month preceding.  Smart card-holders pay that bill in total the minute they receive it, but a large and growing percentage do not, allowing some of the balance to carry over to the next billing cycle, incurring upwards of 20% or more interest!  Some even pay only the minimum suggested to keep the collection process at bay – this figure leads to maximization of the total interest the cardholder will eventually pay to the bank that has, in effect, loaned  him or her enough money to buy lunch… or gas… or movie tickets… or even subway rides.  As above, so below, when it comes to debt-consciousness.  In effect then, our entire retail economy and large segments of wholesale purchases carries a “vig” of 2% or more on average; that is, 2%, say, on about $6 Trillion in retail sales and 25% or more than that in wholesale/raw-materials sales.  The interest cost on costs of goods, is approaching $200 Billion.  Where does that money go, one wonders? We’re all paying for it.

The once-strong thread of thrift and sacrifice has disappeared, leaving all of us – and our supposedly “rich” nation, indebted for life, our children’s lives, their children’s lives and the lives of further generations than they.  What an inheritance.

Suffice to say that our nation is adrift.  One political party/movement: liberal, progressive, socialist, Democrat, is prostrating itself before the twin altars of unrestricted abortion and legalizing drugs and other crimes, and the altar of outsiders: non-citizens unwilling to provide for themselves or to follow our most basic national laws.  The other is tripping over its shoelaces trying to remain relevant to media that share the liberal, progressive, socialist, Democrat viewpoints – and philosophies – while trying to overcome 60 years of feckless education (also liberal, progressive, socialist, Democrat-leaning) that has separated 3 generations of Americans from their history, heritage and founding majesty.

Politicizing, even codifying, every feeling and hatred, has not rendered ours a happier or more cohesive society.  Indeed, it is not even “fairer.”  Politics that channels hatreds requires the aggravation of envy and jealousy; it requires the accentuation of differences between groups rather than between individuals.  So-called “identity politics” leads to identifying each group’s enemies and resisting, if not attacking them.  Civility as a tool for nation-building is not simply unemployed, it is mocked.

When differences between individuals is dealt with – usually in small, civil steps – what usually develops is an understanding of how much more similar  they/we are, than different.  Individuals don’t usually hurl epithets at unrelated, unconnected individuals, it takes a mob mentality to do so, and then it is done in order to or because of some perceived membership in a mob-hated group.  Civility, and civilization itself, takes work, commonality, leadership, both individual and social.  A Constitutional Republic like the United States is based on individual, not group responsibility; it is based on self-control and individual responsibility, not group control or group responsibility.  Keep this distinction in mind.  One need not be Christian to appreciate that the New Testament was a covenant with individuals and not with tribes or peoples.  Ours is a “Christian” nation in that our Constitution enables individual success and failure, and individual responsibility to one’s community, family and self for the consequences of one’s actions… and, perhaps, to God.

Culture

Here We Are

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It is just a few days until Christmas and I’m driving with great Prudence, yet still able to observe the full moon in its apparently circular beauty, yellow-orange and huge.  Flying across its face are dark gray clouds.  There still being some waning daylight, the clouds seem darker than they really are, making the moon’s reflected light seem friendlier than ever, and it made us think about it all.

Some astronomers are faithful to some view of God or an Intelligence behind the design of the “Universe” of which we are aware.  Some are faithful only to mathematics and physical laws… of which we are aware.  All, however, are evidently in agreement about matters of life on earth, and our so-far unique circumstances that allow for the benign environment life has enjoyed for millions of years.  And, it has a lot to do with the Moon.

Along with earth’s distance from the right sort of star, it is blessed with a “satellite” moon that is large enough (about ¼ of earth’s diameter) and massive enough (about 2% of earth’s, gigantic among known “moons”) to not only generate significant tides but to form, in effect, a binary planet system.  By some manner, the formation of the Moon caused a tilt to earth’s axis resulting in seasons as we whirl about the Sun each year.  Our friendly moon also has protected us from objects too numerous to count that hit her instead of earth.

Earth also was formed from the right kind of rocky, metal-laden bits and pieces – the remains of stars that died billions of years ago – such that our core is a molten mix of iron and several radioactive elements that both maintain heat and convection and which happily generate a strong magnetic field that, fortunately, protects us from the worst of our right-sort-of-star’s radiation, allowing mutation to occur not so frequently that already living things could not take advantage of them over generations of evolution.  All in all, cool.

Amidst all of this rare good fortune – so rare in conjunction that its calculation of probability needs more zeroes to the right of its decimal point than this page could hold – somehow evolution produced humans who became abruptly smarter a couple hundred thousand years ago, including the ability to worship, the only truly exclusive ability amongst all the higher orders of fauna.

True agnostics, among whom all honest scientists should reside, are able to consider the possibility  that there is Intelligent Design given the quantity of evidence for it; atheists, on the other hand, are committed to denial in the face of evidence, mainly out of fear that there might be a “God,” so-called, and they seriously don’t want that to be true.  Skeptics, though, want to argue every tiny point about “Intelligent Design” or any other name for God, since they can’t see it, touch it, taste it or hear it, and lacking tangible proof prefer to remain on the sidelines, watching the game.  Besides, if there were such an all-powerful Being, wouldn’t He make Himself known?

The answer to that question is, of course, yes, He would… and here we are.

Humans tend to assume that if there is something to be learned that we can learn it – something to be known, we can know it.  On Earth we know a great deal but very little beyond.  Without experience to fill out our observations, we remain quite ignorant and reduced to speculation, which we are very good at.  Currently the hot speculation is about “life” on other planets in other solar systems in “our” galaxy and, naturally, in others.  Telescopes of various kinds reveal that most stars have planets and we can observe basic parameters of some of them.  Automatically we can speculate, estimate by orders of magnitude, that there are billions and billions of planets… surely some are enough like Earth to have sentient life, both more advanced and less advanced than we are.

Is it reasonable that “God” or the “Intelligent Designer” of the universe has devoted some care and attention to them, also?  Do they have souls?  Can they go to “Heaven” when they die?  In the 1950’s Prudence’ close, close friend read a science-fiction story about humans – probably Americans – who had abandoned their original starship mission in an attempt to arrive at an inhabited planet while “Jesus” was still there, just missing him more than once.  The title and author escape us but it may have been Heinlein, Poul Anderson or some other science fiction artist of the period.  The concept is a natural extension of our speculations, though, is it not?

The facts and phenomenal good fortune of our existence on Earth have granted us the ability – perhaps the right – to believe and to worship, to discover mathematics and to learn to speculate outside of our individual spheres of subsistence and procreation.  At the center of the “Are we alone?” question, lies “Are you there God, it’s us, humans?”

Still, it is interesting that humans are wired to worship, and that “religious” traditions around the world share many concepts and traditional accounts of the origins of everything and of the sources of knowledge of all sorts: from outside of Earth, always “up.”

Unfortunately, learned humans tend to create comfortable pathways along which to speculate – form theories.  Many of these same consider religious beliefs – religious explanations for the origin and operation of “things” – to be mythical and therefore unreal.  After all, those ancient peoples had no science, no rational means of discovery, so the speculation goes, and therefore everything they believed was baseless.  Maybe.

Now and then something is dug up that belies a lot of speculations and the learned humans file it away in the basement of a university school of misunderstandings so as to not threaten their speculations.  Speculators like to be in control.  Consequently, they prefer the most complicated explanations they can conceive of – explanations that require incalculably tiny probabilities of sequences of “natural” events – to explain everything.

One could speculate that these rationalist humans are simply worshiping the wrong truth.

Culture, Economics, Education, Governance, Politics 2018

MATTHEW’S Wolves

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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.

Governance, Immigration, Politics 2018, Race, Representation

Mid-Term Elections and the Anti-Thesis

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The “elections” of 2018, slowly completing as Thanksgiving approaches, are a foggy mirror held up to a nation and an electorate that cannot see clearly what America is, nor what America’s future should be. Here and there a partisan inadvertently rubs a spot clear and the real purposes of his or her struggle are revealed.

One such is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Although somewhat loose with veracity, she is probably no more dishonest than the majority of congress-people, or politicians of any sort. Probably – at least according to accepted norms of mendacity and political advancement, today. On the other hand, as her proudly cleared spot on the foggy glass reveals, she is deeply socialist, possessed of a twisted Elizabeth-Warren-like view of free enterprise and private property… not to mention of the role of a Constitutional Republican government. So, aside from the inherent untruths of socialism, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is every bit as honest as the majority of congress-people or politicians of any sort.

Mrs. Warren, on the other hand, is more dishonest than the average political miscreant. She believes some of the same nonsense as more pure socialists do, but she hasn’t the rough courage of Ocasio-Cortez, for example, to oppose those who don’t and who do great damage to our nation by playing footsie with rotted monopolists for whom free-enterprise is merely a slogan. Ocasio-Cortez has a loosely-grasped mission greater than her self-aggrandizement, a prospect that’s foreign to Elizabeth Warren.

Then there’s Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, a serial philanderer who purports to represent the interests of his state. Unlike simpler thieves who simply sell their votes for personal enrichment but who may be trusted in most human relationships, like in their families, Menendez besmirches every human quality. One suspects that Ocasio-Cortez has no use for people like Menendez, and, possibly, little use for Warren, either. Warren, on the other hand, hasn’t and won’t criticize Menendez because he may be helpful, someday – to Warren, not to America.

Maxine Waters is a special case, not just because she is African American, which makes telling the truth about her… “racist,” but because her abuse of the concept of hypocrisy is so blatant as to be egregious. Her voting base, almost 50% Hispanic and 25% African-American, doesn’t seem to mind her multi-millionaire status and inability to find a nice enough residence within her District. She “fights” for them and plays “California Hold-em” with all race cards.

Waters’ second husband, former NFL player, Sid Williams, had $350,000 worth of stock in a supposedly minority-sensitive bank called OneUnited. With a history of sketchy deals under the leadership of an equally sketchy president with a blemished record, let’s say, OneUnited was going to fail, destroying what was left of Sid Williams’ stock value, already cut in half when the 2008 banking crisis blind-sided the Bush administration. Waters, through Treasury secretary Henry Paulson, arranged a meeting with top Treasury officials that she later claimed was to support all minority community banks. OneUnited Bank, however, was the only bank at the meeting. Ultimately, OneUnited received $12 Million in TARP funds, which is to say, the taxpayers bailed out OneUnited and Sid Williams. Waters’ grandson, her “chief of staff” at the time, was reprimanded for engineering the meeting specifically for OneUnited’s benefit. Waters knew nothing about that.

Once described as the most corrupt congress-person, Waters is now a darling of the left for her constant condemnation of President Trump. Unlike Republicans, who quickly encourage exposed unethical or corrupt office-holders to resign, Democrats rally around the worst of their lot and fight to keep them in office.

An argument could be made about the candidacy of Judge Roy Moore of Alabama, but as more and more was revealed or, at least charged, Republicans withdrew support. The more that is known about Bob Menendez, Bill or Hillary Clinton, the harder the left fights to defend them. Just saying.

All in all, the Democrats gained 38 seats in the House, apparently restoring 78-year old Nancy Pelosi to the Speakership. She’ll be 3rd in line to become president if something incapacitates both Trump and Pence. Barely able to string together 2 sentences in a row, the Grand Nancy raised large amounts of cash for house candidates across the country. She and her flock of new majoritarians will run the House and its committees from a solid base of hatred: hatred for Trump, hatred for the exposure of the deep State, hatred for any reduction in regulations, hatred for conservatives, conservative judges and for the reality of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s terminal frailty. Of course, if they can hobble or impeach the president sufficiently, they may sidestep the consequences of that last concern – medical science has produced so many miracles.

For this crew of hate-filled heroes there has never been a more hopeful era in factional governance than the current one of virtually permanent, extra-Constitutional and free-wheeling “special counsel (prosecutor)-ism.” According to one of the foulest White House denizens in Prudence’ lifetime, Rahm Emmanuel, politicians should “…never let a good crisis go to waste.” If the reader will take note, nowadays EVERYTHING is a crisis. It’s why we are teetering on national bankruptcy, beholden to a cabal of international banks.

The greatest crisis of all is the lack of a socialist majority, but that is being addressed by importing large fractions of Central America, creating what is arguably an actual crisis, but, as you take note, it is the one crisis that is not a crisis at all – for us, anyway – except that it is a “humanitarian crisis” that only the rainbow-flagged warriors of the United States can “solve.” It’s how they’ll vote, you see.

Underlying everything on the left is hatred for White America, Whites in general, White Donald Trump, White explorers from Europe 500 years ago, White business owners, White baseball players and White Tom Brady. White ideas of a meritocracy, derived clearly from the Old and New Testaments and Judeo-Christian philosophy, is also hated. In obeisance to “Social Justice” socialism, there must be sufficient numbers of non-whites running, essentially, everything or else whatever enterprise it may be is cast as part of “White Oppression.”

The Bible was written, fundamentally, by non-Whites, with its strongest traditions maintained in Africa. None of that matters, of course, because Santa Claus is portrayed as, OMG, WHITE.
To be honest about history, which is to say, be honest about everything, whites are no more guilty of injustice than any other “race” of people. Part of Whites’ problem is that much more of “their” history is documented and, since the fulfillment of Christianity, White’s have celebrated all the ways they might be sinners. Then they invented printing and spread their history across the “white” civilized world. Along the way White’s invented democracy, banking, economics and various kinds of engines that multiplied production of food and other things.
Slowly, imperfectly, “White” civilization developed the philosophies, sanctions and shaming that molded a more honest social structure. Written laws that bound both governors and governed, concepts of personal responsibility and of the freedoms to be so were finally distilled into the Constitution of the United States, the essence of the lessons of the New Testament. “As ye sow so shall ye reap.”

Immediately, the threat to tyranny that was born in the Constitution garnered enemies… enemies roughly aligned with and derived from the original sin of dialectic rationalization, so neatly allegorized in the story of the serpent.

God, having provided everything “Adam and Eve” needed for life and comfort, had admonished them to not eat of the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” that for some reason He had planted in the midst of the Garden of Eden. That knowledge was the province only of God and His warning was that should they eat of it they would surely die.

The serpent, however, for some never-stated value to himself, told Eve that “Ye shall not surely die.” Thesis (word of God): “Lest thou die.” Antithesis (anti-word of God): “… not surely die.” Thesis – Antithesis – the tool of Hegelian dialectic materialism. Adam and Eve were not killed on the spot, they were banished from the “Garden:” God’s benevolence and Eternal Life. Thereafter they would toil mightily for the needs of life, suffer in childbirth, and be forced to choose between good and evil… a new “Thesis.” Soon there were tests of that thesis, choices to be made for short-term, Earthly gains, in exchange for allowing some “antithesis” to gain a foothold in defining evil as not all that evil. Then that thesis would be immediately challenged with a new antithesis, and on it goes. Abortion is not murder; murder is not always bad; marriage is neither sacred nor limited to a man and a woman; individuals are not responsible for the consequences of their decisions.

Now, it’s “racism.” And whiteness. Hatred, normally frowned upon as somehow sinful, is now a good thing in defense of non-whiteness and in opposition to individuality… in opposition to the Constitution; Socialism: the original anti-thesis and still champion. To the best of mankind’s ability, the American Constitution is the Thesis. Our new Congress, both houses, and the deep state in all of its permutations and polluted judgeships, comprise the anti-Thesis.

It is comforting to think that good and evil may be located under party banners; in fact they can, all of them, both of them. There are neither purity nor perfection. Sometimes evil appears to concentrate in one faction, identified with concentrations of socialism. Here we are.

The defense of freedom is unending; the requirement to dis-empower the anti-Thesis is paramount to that mission.

Culture, Economics, Governance, Representation, Taxation

Innocence, Debauchery, and the American Dream

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America suffers in the 21st century not from a loss of innocence, but from a loss of discrimination… a loss of judgment. Mankind has never lacked for debauchery nor for ways to debauch nearly every civilized function, from work, construction and development to education, medicine, churches and religion. Everything “we” have discovered or invented, we seem to have figured out how to besmirch and cheapen… like government.

Government, at least since Saul fell on his sword and bequeathed kingship to David, however inadvertently, has been occasionally a good invention, often completely inimical to human growth and perfection. Okay, okay, humans are perfected only in the rarest of circumstances, but, still, government is mostly inimical. In the long sweep of history, despite themselves, governments have brought a semblance of order, enabled scientific advances, established widespread education – some of it good – and provided measures of safety and peace within which individuals can seek happiness, or perfection, or both.
The last we call constitutional republicanism which stands out among the dozens of forms of tyranny still in use. Nevertheless, despite its promise, this form of self-governance has not been immune to the diabolical inventiveness of the forces of debauchery, of which there is space enough to discuss only a few.

Money is big in the debauchery field, as it is in the politician field, making it frequently difficult to discern between them. There never is enough money in the politician field, particularly where it intersects with socialist whims. Money, money, money means taxes, taxes, taxes and from time to time the working people object to taxation and politicians, who have the clarity of vision denied to workers, can perceive – if not create – hordes of dependents for whom that tax money is so sorely needed. That some dependents are billionaires is of little importance in the grand scheme of dependency. You’ve got your troubles, I’ve got mine.

So if taxation can’t be trusted to produce money fast enough, it becomes increasingly crucial that ways to expand the income of government be devised and, politicians having been elected and installed for their unique efficiencies, recognize that there is no point to re-inventing the wheel, as it were, in the matters of government income, so turn to the financial successes of debauchery for new ideas. Humans have left no stone unturned in the search for ways to cheat others out of their hard-earned money and one of the neatest tricks is the infamous “Ponzi Scheme.” It is easily explained:

A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud where clients are promised
a large profit at little to no risk. Companies that engage in a Ponzi
scheme focus all of their energy into attracting new clients to make
investments. This new income is used to pay original investors their
returns, marked as a profit from a legitimate transaction. Ponzi
schemes rely on a constant flow of new investments to continue to
provide returns to older investors. When this flow runs out,
the… scheme… falls… apart. [From “Investopedia”]

When the government, itself – who convicted Ponzi for fraud in 1920 – follows Ponzi’s formula, it takes a longer view and fewer dollars from each “investor,” and calls it “Social Security.” No slouches in the debauchery of public trust, politicians are able to compel workers to “invest” by force of police power, and then restrict the “returns” to only so many dollars per month and only after leaving the “investment” fallow for decades. That way the originators of the fraud will have passed on before the scope of the trick is figured out by the “investors.” “Invested” funds are then used to get future “investors” to vote for future perpetrators.

Prudence would suggest that “investors” should contemplate the consequences of having personally (actually) invested 15% of their pay over their entire working career. Upon retirement they would have had a huge financial asset and they wouldn’t be dependent on government to dribble back their own money! Of course, empowering citizens to live WITHOUT government is as anti-socialist as it could be and virtually never allowed even lip-service.

We need to give politicians the power to make life, health and death decisions for us.

Social Security really took off after World War II, as payrolls grew and pay rates along with them. The river of money was “re-invested” in all sorts of vital, crucial, crisis-averting expenditures that any sane and humane investor would endorse… had he or she known of them. After 1968 especially, the number of non-citizens who arrived on our shores seeking the “American Dream” exploded, and the means to support their “disabled, disadvantaged” selves derived from the “lockbox” of Social Security cash. Naturally, thanks to Ted Kennedy’s (the lyin’ of the Senate) legislation (Hart-Cellar Act), the colors and origins of immigrants are more important than the needs of the United States, and their relatives became more important than immigrants who can actually contribute to the strength of the nation. Many had/have no marketable skills or are “disabled” and “qualify” for SSDI or SSI support derived from – you guessed it – the “investments” of those canny worker-investors who are so proud of their own district’s Representative and state’s two Senators… oh, yes.

Unexpectedly, the Social “Security” lockbox tends to empty more quickly than promised. More money is needed! What to do? What to do without “raising taxes,” of course? There must be a form of debauchery… uhmm, we mean, outright mendacity and fraud… well, not that, of course, but some kind of “wool” that can be pulled over enough people’s eyes… naw, that’s just an old political joke, ha – ha – ha. There must be a form of courageous legislative governance that can find “new” revenue to meet the nation’s vital, crucial, crisis-averting expenditures. Aha! Loans!

Fortunately, globalist bankers had finally convinced Congress to approve the creation of a means to provide constant DEBT to the federal government. Now, if you’re one of those worker-investors we were talking about, you’re asking yourself: “Who in Hell would want a supply of debt?” (And you’d be right, but it’s a different topic.) “Everyone wants to get OUT of debt,” you’d say to yourself, being right a second time, “and anyone trying to get more debt should have his head examined!” (Or, his ledgers… again, right!)

Growing governments while controlling countries is a long-term plan. The international socialists have been at it for a long, long time. The “income” tax was instituted by amendment in 1913. This provided a large enough river of funds to enable the government to “help” itself and more and more people. Interestingly and, it certainly must be coincidentally, the Federal Reserve Act – a 20-year project of the largest banks – was passed at the end of… well, ha!… 1913! Both long-term efforts needed a global statist like Woodrow Wilson to be president in order to come to fruition.

The only way to quietly undermine the nationalism and freedom of the United States was to plant the seeds of debt and a private bank that controls the nation’s money supply is the best tool to do so. The “Fed,” as it’s called, makes economic policy as it sees fit. The “governors” don’t take advice from elected representatives, most of whom are happy to not be responsible for too awfully much. Whenever the Chairman of the Federal Reserve testifies in Congress it’s to tell Congress how things are going to be and not to ask the people’s representatives how things should be. The “Fed” is about as “federal” as Federal Express.

So what about how a central bank can control a nation’s economy? Why would any Congress vote for that? Well for the first 20 years or so the new “Fed” was practicing frog boiling, and the financial waters were just pleasantly warm… until the crash of 1929 and the attempts by, first, Hoover, and then by Roosevelt, to force an end to DE-flation and unemployment by running deficits and pushing the private economy to adapt to federal pressure. The federal government could borrow in the face of the human problems that bad economics had wrought.

Adopting the programs initiated by Hoover, FDR managed to keep the U. S., and much of the world, in depression until the Second World War broke out. Prior to the emergency legislation passed during the “Banking Holiday” of 1933, the 12 “Fed” Districts made policy on their own, enabling some to do severe damage in parts of the country while recovery was stumbling forward in others. Naturally, the preferred answers to the crisis were always based in more central control, essentially the story and the outcome of the “Great Depression.”

Until the Federal Reserve was created the U.S., like most industrial nations, was on “the gold standard.” United States Dollars represented a number of grains of 90% pure gold. That is, an ounce of “.9 fine” gold “cost” $20.67 and had since 1900. Never failing to take advantage of a crisis, 1930’s era leftists – FDR and the “brain trust” – used the banking and international gold crises to obtain emergency legislation making private ownership of gold coins, metal or bullion illegal! That is, everyone had to turn in his or her gold in exchange for $35.00 worth of U. S. “dollars” (actually, Federal reserve notes) that were now backed by so many grains of silver or by 60% as many grains of gold than prior to the seizure. It was pretty slick.

The federal government had acquired tons of gold for, in effect, next to nothing, but gold was now valued at $35 an ounce of .9 fine purity. Suddenly the government had a lot of money to spend in its attempts to correct the severe deflation and unemployment afflicting the U. S. and other industrialized nations. Most of it helped but did not solve the fundamental problems in the economy; it took a big war to do that.

We have got to give the federal government total control over our life, health and death decisions.

Where there is a name for schemes like Social Security (“Ponzi”), there isn’t a moniker for what happened to America between the two world wars, except, perhaps, “Progressivism,” not to be confused with “Progress.”

In a Constitutional Republic, “Progress” is measured first by how large a fraction of the population DOESN’T DEPEND ON GOVERNMENT for basic needs like housing, food, clothing, employment and health care. It’s also measured by the quality of citizenship, the honesty of jurisprudence, of police agencies and individuals, the clarity and even-handed enforceability of laws, the honesty of education and the level of cultural agreement by and amongst the vast majority of its citizenry.

The worst chicanery of all is the structure of the federal budget, which is barely a budget at all since it is about 75% “entitlements.” Congress has NEVER cut the budget, has never cut an “entitlement,” has never gotten rid of an “executive” department, has never paid down the national debt, at least in the past 60-odd years, has not failed to borrow from our great-great grandchildren for a like period, and has never audited the “Federal” Reserve. That’s because it’s.., well…, too busy. They are so busy on our behalf of course, and so tired from “fighting” for the middle class and “working” families who are non-working families to a significant degree, fighting to “improve education” and “leveling playing fields,” that there is barely enough time to begin to explain why what rational people think should be done simply can’t be done, unless they write a check for the campaign.

Mostly, they are too busy raising money for re-election, which is the number-one mission after a couple of years in office, and helping their real constituency: the congressmen and women and senators who sit nearby, because THEY can help in the fight for re-election more than any other group in the country.

We elect them, you and I, because their counterparts in the other party – pick one – are such scurrilous bastards and bitches that we have to keep “our” representative or senator in there so that we can continue the fight to “take back our country.” And a check for the campaign is not only vital, right at the moment you tear open your mailer, but may be multiplied up to FIVE times if your check is received by midnight 4 or 5 days hence.

Save yourself and the “campaign” even more, maximizing the value of your support, by using a (bank) interest-bearing credit-card to make your nation-saving donation!

Leftists are loathe to argue principles but they love to set the terms of public discussion. To effect that control they have to change the meaning of words… like “democracy,” for example. Where ”democracy” once meant a system of civic governance where the majority ruled – right or wrong – it now means “when Democrats rule… right or wrong.” So, when non-Democrats are in power, having been elected by a majority of votes, they are “threatening democracy.”

The United States is not organized as a “democracy.” It is a Constitutional Republic with democratically elected representatives and, interestingly, democratically elected executives, part of an extraordinarily well-designed system of dividing powers and constituencies to which each must answer. But power is vested in representatives of the citizenry who, the original theory is, are knowledgeable, honest and willing to sacrifice for their fellow citizens. That last is where the system breaks down. There no longer is any sacrifice! Right under our noses “our” representatives have turned the tables on us and we didn’t smell the odor!

Being an elected official, legislator or appointed officer in any of our states’ governments, the federal government, certainly, most cities and in virtually every public school system on up through state colleges and universities, is a very sweet deal – far more lucrative and secure than any “private” sector position, and with better benefits, more holidays and many “perks.” The “public servants” in today’s equation are you and me: taxpayers… and we don’t get free healthcare when WE retire.

“Representing” ignorant taxpayers is the best job many reps and senators will ever have: high pay, big benefits and almost no responsibility beyond re-election. Americans, themselves, should have it so good.

And, finally, for this chapter, the biggest scheme of all: that “debt” we looked at earlier. A “ponzi” scheme would seem a bad enough swindle for elected representatives to foist upon their “constituents,” but the worst is far, far greater, and so slick that Republicans are regularly denigrated for attempting to slow it – not STOP it, slow it – by just a few billions from time to time. Somehow, Democrats tell us, not going further and further into debt to pay the INTEREST-only on earlier debt, is tantamount to treason and threatens to “ruin the credit rating of the United States of America!” God save the Queen!

If you are seeking a way to judge the veracity, competence, integrity, legitimacy or sensibleness of ANY federal Congress-person, just consider the CURRENT national debt. You do know that it’s closing in on $21 TRILLION dollars, yes?

You do realize that it threatens our very economic existence? That it represents how far beyond our national means we have lived for the past 60 years? That it exemplifies the utter inability of our elected representatives (so far) to manage the budget for which they ARE responsible… and for which job they have earnestly sought our votes?

Do you recognize that unlike wars and other existential threats, since the “Great Society” kicked in, in 1968, every social discomfort has been labeled a “crisis,” confirmed by rigged congressional testimony, making raising the so-called “debt ceiling” every year an act of “courage” and of patriotism. Those 21 Trillion dollars are the proof that socialism will destroy our freedom. It is taking a long time because of the exceptional work ethics of Americans, but our economic destruction is a safe prediction, given that the history of the last 6 decades of representative government in our (ostensible) 2-party system is one of utter economic debauchery.

But then, there’s always Broward County.

Economics, Education, Family, Governance, Politics 2018, Sex

The Potters of Socialism

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During a recent conversation, Prudence opined on the new trends of “body art” and unusual piercings, increasingly involving the bodies of young women. It has something to do with both feminism and socialism, Prudence suggests, and this view has caused demands for substantial clarification. Indeed. This line of reasoning could lead to a unified theory of wrong directions and unnecessary complexity.

Life is a test… a series of tests: momentary, hourly, daily, situationally – from birth to death. Humans, LIKE ALL LIVING THINGS, become stronger, more honest, more independent, by facing tests and “passing” them. What is the greatest dis-honesty, therefore?

It is denial of the test. It is humans’ penchant for convincing themselves that they might avoid the testing (which is the spiritual aspect of life) coupled with the denial of spirituality, itself. These fundamentals lead to lifetimes of failure, unfulfillment and even to widening circles of tragedy for other humans, particularly people the unfulfilled try to “love.” On the other hand, those tragedies are also tests that may be passed, leading to strength and growth.

Stated more simply, the worst lie is that which one tells to him or herself. We are in an odd time where such lies are celebrated, promulgated, codified and made, legally, into community-wide lies that form the new bases for anti-discrimination criminality. The hot one is trans-genderism. We call it an “ism” because it derives from belief and not from reality. Under it males tell themselves that they are females, in the preponderance of instances, and females tell themselves that they are males. It is the penultimate denial of human testing there could be.

It isn’t the absolute worst, any longer, because here and there are humans who tell themselves that they are not human, and who seek “rights” as this or that animal… often a dog: humans like dogs.

But, declaring oneself to not be what one is requires holding two conflicting ideas at once, ultimately leading, for most, to mental breakdown. This is not to say that some are not “happy” to be living outwardly as the opposite gender, but they are the minority. Still, they deserve their own happiness and other humans should not disrupt it. But the truth is that gender cannot be changed, only masked. Individuals who are emotionally secure may be happier adopting the mask. It is their mask, and by its artifice the individual attempts to avoid or deny the testing that his or her gender would otherwise face.

So, some would ask, what’s wrong with that? Lots of people avoid tests. We have an entire welfare system that purports to “help” them do so. And this shows the intersection of socialism as a construct of lies and the increasing lies of sexuality that some fight for as forms of “progress.” Both are means of test-avoidance, test denial, and both tend to leave the denier weaker spiritually.

What has this to do with tattoos and piercings? Both are forms of masks, are they not? Even homosexuality is a mask. It doesn’t mean individuals are not “happy” living as not being tested as a man or as not being tested as a woman, but it does mean they have made a choice to not face tests of emotion and feelings of one sort, and the growth their passing would provide. Because of anti-discrimination rules, declaring oneself homosexual means avoiding tests as either one’s gender or as one’s new identity.

In the 1950’s and 1960’s a big form of masking was hair. Girls would shave their heads or apply odd colors to their hair, for example, daring others to react to the change. In that way, at least temporarily, they could step out of the role of “woman” and be tested on the most ephemeral aspects of being rather than facing the tests of female growth and honesty. Boys at the same time would grow their hair to great lengths or shagginess, altering their “aura” as it were, too. Any troubles that came their way over rebellious hairstyling were deemed preferable to those that were associated with maturing in the role of “man.” Test denial. It’s what socialism promises to whole populations, inherently including a denial of spirituality.

In the midst of the “sexual revolution” last century, society, institutions and families fairly consistently encouraged the reality of acceptance of one’s role as man or woman. Most youngsters “grew out of” their odd experiments. Not all, though. By the mid-seventies several large trends were underway:

1. Welfare was federalized and entrenched under the “Great Society.”
2. Feminism was aggressively undoing traditional roles and family structures.
3. Leftist media were celebrating their successful castration of the Vietnam War
and all efforts against Communism that it represented.
4. Leftist media were celebrating the destruction of Richard Nixon, a flawed
conservative at best, over relatively minor crimes.
5. Attacks against organized religion were becoming normalized even as churches
themselves were corroding innocence within their ranks.
6. The Federal Reserve was prosecuting economic policies without regard to
elections or even office holders like presidents in the exercise of new powers
elected representatives could not grasp or counter.
7. Homosexuality was exploding in Western societies.
8. Black families were disintegrating with the help of federalized welfare.
9. Faith in the American idea was fading as quickly as American History curricula.

America is reaping the corrupt crops, now, from mutated seeds sown for fifty years. Youth are in favor of socialism, politicians are proud of it while other politicians flail about in their quest for proper rebuttals to socialist mendacity. Just like homosexuality and its ragged cousin, transgenderism, socialism requires believers to hold, and defend, two diametrically conflicting ideas at once.

Socialism intends two conflicting outcomes: 1) People will become better humans by virtue of changes in their physical surroundings and LACK OF RESPONSIBILITY; 2) If people fail to become higher-quality people thanks to socialism, socialists-in-charge will happily control them until they do.

Prudence’s correspondent had recently visited the waiting room of a plastic surgery and facial reconstruction practice and was struck by the number of quite young people, mostly females, who were there for recuperative follow-ups for various procedures. This, too, is a trend: Young people are having one or multiple procedures done to, they, hope, cause fulfillment of a physical image that is more pleasing, more acceptable, more attractive to society. That is to say, they are living out a dream of comparison to others rather than living on purpose.

Just like body arts or fanatical workouts, plastic surgery provides a mask that the wearer believes is more ”beautiful” than the innate self; this work, often painful, is endured in lieu of making ones inner, true self more attractive or charitable or loving. It is a personal dose of socialism whereby the physical or worldly appearance forms its own replacement spirituality and belief structure. There is no surprise that such shallow, literal children are unable to discern the corrosiveness of socialism. It is no wonder that socialists, and most progressives, are not nearly as happy as conservatives whose belief structures are based in spirituality that leads them to accept and pass tests in reality.

Changing ones physique or physiognomy to fulfill the expectations of society is a means of sidestepping true tests in life. Like the long hairs of the ‘60’s, others will deal with the mask rather than the real person and, it is hoped, the tests associated with the original person will never need passing. Growth is avoided.

Perhaps the most anti-spiritual, test-denial of all is abortion. Despite playing a role in conception of new human life, women have been convinced that the tests of motherhood may be avoided and that they will be more happy and fulfilled as a result. Indeed, not only have they the right to avoid those tests, but all of society, through government theft of others’ earnings, ought to support that avoidance. Perhaps there is less stress temporarily, but little happiness obtains.

Instead of accepting the tests of womanhood and motherhood and the concurrent civilizing of more animalistic males, females are encouraged to exist untested and to a degree, unfulfilled and incomplete. Obviously many of these women will see a logic to socialism and to government “nannyism” throughout their lives. Who needs men in that future? Socialism destroys humanity and abject feminism is socialism’s handmaid. How bleak.

The constant undermining and outright attacking of Christianity feeds socialism’s ascension to acceptability. Not the old testament, but the new, defines man’s relationship to God as personal and an individual responsibility – not as one of God’s chosen people, but as God’s chosen person, responsible to him or her self and to God to take the energy of life provided, and to multiply it by learning and following the rules laid out in dozens of religious traditions.

There is no room for the spiritual in socialism. Socialism is based on groups and denies individual greatness. The infection of education by socialism is obvious in the moves to eliminate valedictorians and salutatorians, or to have multiples of each. Another is to avoid “F’s” or other negative marking, to give everyone a trophy, to (claim to) not keep score in youth sports. One can also observe the same rot supplanting historical knowledge resulting in America’s being no more exceptional than literally every other nation. Rampant egalitarianism provides another patine of legitimacy: no one can earn more, be more worthy, honorable or valuable than the rest. Apparently, only government officials are permitted to be smarter than others, or more morally pure.

Ultimately, Socialism is the avoidance of human tests and, essentially, the avoidance of personal growth. Humans become stronger by overcoming adversity – everything from discomfort, to hunger, to tyranny and lack of freedom. We call the triumph over adversity, “freedom,” not the avoidance of it.

Avoiding adversity is a form of self-subjugation, leaving the subject/practitioner in a jail of his or her own making: less and less likely to ever overcome adverse circumstances. Dependence is the only result. Dependents are the most malleable of clays for the potters of socialism who are more than willing to offer ever more complete avoidance of tests, gaining perpetual power for themselves. Perhaps this little essay is testing the reader, right now.