Tag Archives: hatred

Culture, Economics, Education, Family, Religion, Representation, Responsibility

IMAGINING RESCUE

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WILLING TO BE RESCUED?

Prudence has noted in the past that 2020 seemed to be the year that the globalist, anti-American far left determined that it could overthrow the American system.  The manufactured “pandemic” surrounding COVID-19 and resulting destruction of civil liberties, social structure and logic following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, seemed to be making the long-planned destruction of America possible.  The primary tool to make such a profound change in the direction of history, is managed hatred.

The largest hatreds over the millennia are spiritual, if not identifiably religious.  This is sad, in many ways, but also understandable given the nature of non-compromise at the heart of most organized religions.  The power lies in belief.  Shared belief is the strongest human force.  Rare are they who can listen to alternative beliefs and subsequently change their own.  Beliefs direct the actions of individuals, even to the point of destroying those with opposing beliefs.  When added to “mob” coherence, shared beliefs account for more deaths than any other social circumstance.

To a great degree, religions are – or began as – tribal belief systems, and in the earliest periods they had few alternative ideas to resist.  This fact makes the interesting similarities among early origin stories and beliefs about gods and an afterlife, even more remarkable.  However, fairly small differences between belief systems can spark enormous conflict, like that between Protestants and Catholics or between Sunni and Shia sects of Islam.  The religious differences translate readily into political and military differences, but at their core, they tend to be conflicts between which humans are in charge of the “religions,” not the deep principles underlying the beliefs.

Sadly, some belief systems are based in hatred, such that no form of compromise will permit even suspicious co-existence: the premise of one system being the elimination of the other system.  If success appears to find the “destroyer” system, that system prepares to take on the next system it opposes.  We can see this pattern with Marxism/Communism.  Its basic opposition to private property is enabled by its fundamental opposition to religion of any form.  However, one of the most hateful systems appears to be Islam, the premise of which is that the entire world must become Muslim; there is no workable form of co-respect or co-existence with other religions.  We have become a world governed by competing hatreds.

In a Prudent view, that is not the way any God of humanity would have wanted mankind to develop.

Regardless of the scale of the groups toward whom hate is directed, the act of hating is still a very personal one.  Pressures to convince large groups to direct their hatred at certain targets – politically in purpose and effect – can be successful only if lots of individuals are personally convinced of the “legitimacy” of that hatred.  It’s not the same as “following orders” issued by authoritative leaders.  And it’s not the same as “hating” those who are simply different from oneself – different sounding, looking, acting – which is closer to fear rather than actual hate.  It is fairly easy to learn to stop fearing others, to gain understanding of those differences, to eventually become neutral toward the different and, perhaps, friendly.  Soon, we’re marrying one another and blending our differences in beautiful children who will be less fearful than we used to be.

But to become hateful of particular others is a commitment with oneself.  It’s hard to casually hate, but relatively easier if one can be convinced to do so, whereupon he or she becomes more comfortable in hatred if he or she convinces him- or her-self that hatred is part of a belief system to which he or she is committed.  Soon, the haters are not being led to it, but are pushing for increased purity of hatred, often punishing or rejecting those leaders who seek compromise.  Hatred is an awful way to guide or lead people.  But, it’s cheap and effective.

America was once described as a melting pot.  Ostensibly, people from all places could “become” Americans.  Without offering multiple forms of welfare and help – including taxpayer-financed attorneys – in multiple languages and multi-lingual public education, people came only because freedom was offered.  Everyone learned English and agreed to live within our legal system, one of the most honest… not perfect, but fairly evenly applied under the Constitution.  “Melting pot” was not the most accurate description: “salad bowl” is probably better.  America invited the best of the world to join us.  Despite our mistakes, particularly with slavery, we learned to respect everyone who was willing to make and pay his or her own way.  Things have changed.  American “representation” has, in the past 30 years or so, become the politics of competing hatreds.  From the Clintonian “politics of personal destruction,” we have devolved to the “politics of social and familial disintegration.”

There is a certain ease of slipping into hatred, for most humans, not all.  Hating some one else or millions of someones else, requires justification.  If a person can find justification for hatred, no matter how flimsy, additional scraps of justification will stick to that hate like double-sided carpet-tape, bonding it just as tightly to one’s beliefs – perhaps to one’s soul.  Add in the power of group (mob) psychology and soon a novice hater is leading the charge.  Somewhere or somewhen along the spectrum from distrust to embedded hatred, every individual must decide to continue in that direction or to take another.  Every person, regardless of justifications, is responsible for his or her actions – including hatred.

Every person can choose from evil, which hatred certainly is, whether political or something else.  Every one of us can make that choice.  In spite of decades of public indoctrination, our ability to choose to be responsible still exists.  We are Americans, still able to lead, including ourselves.

Crime, Culture, Education, Elections, Politics 2022

THE PAINTING CALLED LIFE

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Listen to the Artist

Politics is more than pointing out the lies of others, Prudence indicates.  So too is how people and societies organize themselves and their governing structures and technology.  Even more, so too is religion and ideologies of various kinds: much, much more than pointing out the lies of others.  There are larger pictures to take in and analyze and critique.  After all, do artists lie?  Are they, then, no longer artists?

Life is art… or at least the creation of an artist – an artist who tries to teach his/her subjects how to expand and beautify the painting in which they reside, on ever better canvas and frame, and in brighter, truer colors.  Life is the basis of the greatest artist’s greatest work.  Eventually life takes us to the edge of the canvas and what we call death results, but death is not the basis or the subject or the purpose of the painting.  Death dealt for selfish, craven reasons before the edge of the canvas is reached, destroys not only a bit of life but the integrity of the painting.  It’s source and perpetrator must be expunged, cleansed from the art that is life, for it/he/she has no place here.

Details of the art of life can be studied and understood a little better, and a little better, and a little better, still.  Important to the beauty of the multi-billion points of life that comprise the fulgent artwork of life on Earth, is freedom to act in concert with the artist’s intent.  Were there no options, no imagination, no whimsy, no beautiful choices, then the painting would be dull in color and harmony, smaller and devoid of love, the one color that is always the hardest to mix or apply, and the most vivid.

Holding the whole creation together is the love of life.  Here and there, created in love but, somehow, twisted to love death, itself, bits of life, humans, develop the love of death and the “art” of dealing death.  They claim to abhor terrible, brutal, violent death, yet do nothing within public policy to put a stop to it.  On the other hand, the same people use public policy to accelerate hidden, “life-saving” death, like abortion and vaccination.  That’s where the art of death exists, first from euphemism and then, only in unseen places, by terrible, brutal violent death.  In either case, the very presence of death-lovers amidst the beautiful artwork of life causes the artist’s paint to bead up, unable to blend or enrich the near-perfect painting alluded to; it leaves blank, colorless blemishes.

Freedom, or the absence of freedom, is like that: devoid of color, particularly vibrant colors of creativity, joy and charity.  Humans are designed for and have evolved to flourish in an environment of freedom – we’re “tuned” to what we consider to be beautiful and harmonious – and there are “rules” for being free.  Without the rules, which are not limitations, in application, but better described as guidance, humans can easily slip into license and corruption, both mental and physical.  Where this tendency has begun to concentrate we can see that the inherent beauty of human evolution has been dulled, and created still more areas where the artist’s paint has beaded up, failing to mix and blend and enrich the entire picture.  We have names for these “rule-breakings.”

The first name describes corruption of the heart; we call it hatred.  It has many manifestations, but all of them must be taught, it turns out.  Every cultural tradition seems to include an identification of the “first hater,” which is the same as saying the “first liar.”  Lying to other humans is an act of hatred: hatred of the inherent beauty of another human.  It declares that the hater who is doing the lying has no respect for the value and integrity of another person… or even of a country full of other persons.  Hatred is very easy to spread around when haters don’t even realize they are hating others, and when they may not even realize they’re telling lies!

So, the simplest form of heart-corruption is lying, but it’s not always a matter of lying to others: humans can be led to lie to themselves.  That’s an environment wherein there is neither much debate nor alternatives based in pure truth.  A small initial lie, like “this drug will make you happier,” can lead an inherently beautiful human to tell him- or her-self that he or she is not worthy of the beauty that others still enjoy.  Nothing good flows from that belief.  Even worse, rather than trying to convince such “lost” people of their inherent beauty, political forces try to make reinforcement of the new self-lie much easier.  It’s called respecting “civil rights” but it is an ugly perversion of the beauty of human life.  It also seems to be contagious, tending to infect younger and younger, beautiful humans.

At some point, societies develop a means of “enforcing” the rules of freedom so that the greater “good:” the maximum number of humans being able to survive, grow, create and have successful families and children, is assured.  Except for those whose freedom is stripped from them for varying degrees of failing to follow the rules of freedom, the enforcement paradigm works fairly well until a fresh lie is introduced: enforcement “hurts” too many people.  The political/police enforcers are quickly led to still another form of hatred-lie: “hurting so many of our fellow humans is not who we are as a people” and that ending a lot of enforcements is the “right” thing to do.

Now the artist’s beautiful painting becomes even more dull and hard to look at by humans who are still mostly beautiful… and hard to understand, as well.

Soon, because political power and re-election trumps everything, confused humans are led to hate those who refer to rules of freedom as being anti-freedom: the worst of all sins.  The defense of “freedom” for those who are already in the business of lying, readily morphs into the defense of licentiousness, at which point every person or institution who defends adherence to the “rules” for freedom, is identified as an enemy of “freedom” or of “democracy,” neither of which is defined.  The evil intent of anyone opposed to them, however, must be virulently opposed.

We can Prudently see, now, that hatred is more than the first name of rule-breaking: it’s the only name of rule-breaking.  It manifests as lying, and therein lies the complexity of hatred: the myriad kinds and styles of lies that are told to us and by us.  The struggles between truth and lies describe most of human history.  Prudence thinks humans have become LESS truthful over the centuries that have led us to today.  Certainly this is true for the United States.  Can we keep excusing lies from various groups, agencies and institutions simply because the liars believe what they are saying?

The great painting called “Life” is still beautiful, but becoming less so at a frightening rate.  The single metric of suicides teaches us that increasing numbers of humans no longer perceive any beauty in living.  The great lie of abortion has blazed the trail… no – blazed the 8-lane expressway toward death as a “solution” to the problems of life.  Great, ugly swaths of the painting have beaded-up, unblended colors that look muddy rather than vivid, because of abortion.  Will truth ever overwhelm the hopelessness of abortion?

Nearly as much of a blemish on the painting called “Life” are the compound lies of transgenderism.  Here, the merchants of Death convince very young people to commit “suicide of the self,” even as they convince their parents that those same merchants are “educators,” preparing their children to be successful citizens of the United States of America.  Each child was born to be a certain person, a certain soul, and to conquer the challenges for that person, male or female.  Instead they are coached to either become sex objects at grade-school ages, or to “kill” their selves by undoing their sexual being with a grand pretense that it is possible to believe two diametric ideas simultaneously.  It is a means to living a lie, also destroying reproductive viability.  As it has spread through education in many states and countries, the painting has become duller, with sharp edges between vibrancy and death and dullness.

The elements of vibrant, vivid paint, including the color of love and not of death or hatred, still exist, and there are yet a few million of the artist’s apprentices still active and available.  We who are given the opportunity to co-create our painting – which represents a lot of faith on the part of the artist – often lose sight of the harmony and natural beauty that we have taken for granted.  For a hundred reasons we insist on trying to blend ugly, dull colors, believing that our odd intentions will render a better beauty than that created for us by the artist.  Yet our ugly paints keep beading up and leaving growing patches of ugly dullness amidst the original beauty.

Still, we push on, insisting that we know better than the artist of our life painting.  As the blemishes expand, those stuck in the ugliness try to blame the co-creators of beauty for the contrast, as though reducing the overall quantity of beauty and harmony would make everyone feel accepted and grant equity to all.  To their dismay, however, the rules of freedom don’t allow for it and, to the purveyors-of-ugliness’ horror, those are the rules of beauty, as well.

Culture, Economics, Education, Governance, Politics 2020, Race, Terrorism

BLACK AND WHITE AND RED ALL OVER

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Prudence won’t be watching any Red Sox games in 2020, not because it’s a truncated parody of sport and exemplary of governmental malfeasance and economic ignorance, and not even because the whole team organization besmirched itself by “winning” the World Series by cheating in 2018.  Besides, who the Hell is even playing this year?

No American should watch because of that stomach-turning, obscene “BLACK LIVES MATTER” banner draped above the “Green Monster.”  Please don’t misunderstand: it is perfectly Prudent to appreciate that black lives certainly matter, just as much, in fact as white, tan, beige, medium brown and swarthy skin-toned people’s lives matter – we are equal in the eyes of God.  If that is too scary, consider that we are equal under the law in this country and that anyone who takes away that equality has committed a crime and the law says he or she will be sanctioned appropriately.  To our shame this doesn’t always work equally.

Instead of a banner supporting the “BLACK LIVES MATTER” movement and political efforts, the Red Sox might as well have a banner that says, “TEAR DOWN THE UNITED STATES.”  Not many people would put up with that crap, yet that is exactly what Black Lives Matter stands for and is fighting for.  They are Communists.  They hate the United States and everything about it; they hate White people and everything white people have ever done back into history immemorial.  Well that should attract a big audience, John Henry, you idiot.

Black Lives Matter also hates Christianity.  Quite a lot of Red Sox fans and customers actually ARE Christians, so that’s another brightly illuminated marketing ploy, John.  If you put a flashing l.e.d.-lit sign rivaling the “Citgo” sign above the sky-boxes that says, “SATAN CELEBRATED HERE,” you can surely get a lot of Christians to pay outrageous prices to watch your millionaires play ball with the other guy’s millionaires.  What a country.

Maybe the Red Sox organization agrees with the purposes of Black Lives Matter.  For wealthy people these owners don’t seem to be as bright as their prominence would lead one to think.  Most business owners would carefully evaluate any signage, ad messaging, inadvertent imaging – everything.  Just look at how quickly social media slugs will turn on a business and attempt to damage it for any racial slight or perceived hetero-normal bias.  No intelligent business would spend $3,000 or more for a banner that supports the destruction of the nation that made them rich, would it?  Surely not.  They would make sure of what that banner’s message is.  That would be Prudent, at least.

Lots of private homes display the same signage: “BLACK LIVES MATTER.”  They’re very proud of that sign because it shows the less-sensitive population: racists, every one, for sure, that the resident of that house is more loving, sensitive, non-racist and deserving of honor than everyone else who is not awakened to the tragedy of racism in America.  Wow!  That’s a lot to convey in just 3 words.

Actually, these “woke” self-praising superiors are conveying an entirely different message.  They either have no idea what in Hell they are aligning themselves with, at best, or they do know and agree with “BLM” crap, at worst.  For shame either way.

If every ostensible Black Lives Matter “supporter” gave enough of a damn to know what he or she is supporting, then minds might change, one hopes.  The BLM “Manifesto” is as dishonest as the original Communist Manifesto and contains a host of non-truths and deceptions.  Communism, like socialism in lesser forms, cannot be honest about its intentions because it plans to replace human nature and all spiritual values, leaving BLM’s promises doomed to fail without total top-down control by a small group.  It has never been otherwise in every attempt at socialism or Communism.

Still, the BLM Manifesto is nothing if not comprehensive.  It reads like the step by step annihilation of the Constitution that it is and, therefore, of freedom and our entire heritage and founding.  Indeed, the Manifesto’s first section, item D., specifically calls for creation of a 3-year assembly for the express purpose of replacing the U. S. Constitution.  What is worse, if you think about it, is item E., where they demand creation of a committee of “experts” who will control and administer the entire U. S. economy.  More than one of our neighbors proclaims “Black Lives Matter” along with a bunch of other “woke” platitudes.  They seem like nice people and it seems Prudent to assume they haven’t the faintest idea of what they are promoting.  Odd, as they seem intelligent, too.

There are lots of ways to align oneself with the concept of the sanctity of life no matter the color or creed.  Despite our racialist governments and welfare programs, our society, operated ideally, pays no attention to color – everyone is equal under the law.

BLM intends a government very similar to the soviet, Leninist model, with a few exceptions, one of which is power sharing with anyone who wanders across the ostensible borders.  The danger of open borders is that people can escape as easily as others might enter, and that will weaken the power of the central committee of the wokest, so those who swallow that part of the manifesto should be prepared for temporary border closures until the “revolution” is completed and every vestige of white supremacy and racism has been removed from the United States.  Prudence’ readers are well aware that racism cannot be expunged by government and “white supremacy” is simply hatred of white civilization, a condition of shifting definition.

BLM is about creating a black-peoples’ dominated international Communist structure.  To effect it they have recognized and leveraged the failures of American education and the tendency of a people too comfortable, to feel guilty about their comfort in the presence of poverty.  They’ve watched as political America transferred many $trillions through federalized welfare to support restive, non-working blacks in inner-city ghettos.  The failure of these decades-long efforts created a willing army of resentment–filled “protesters” ready to explode upon ignition of the right fuse.

Why are Whites bending the knee before Black Lives Matter?  What are we collectively guilty of?  What have any of us done to deserve the collective hatred of, well… anyone?  Did Andrew Jackson own slaves?  Why, yes he did.  Is there anyone alive today who is actually affected by that fact?  Perhaps if one is determined to hate and to spread hate, he or she is “affected,” but that is a choice made to cause reaction today, which cannot change anything Jackson did, believed or smelled like.  But, that hatred can create division today.  The real question is why are whites falling for it?  Have we “decided” that we have no rights?  No culture of value?  No progress or civilizing improvements, inventions or developments to be proud of?  Progress achieved with the phenomenal contributions of blacks and every other race?  Nothing to take credit for?

What’s the matter with us? Four assholes in Minneapolis murder a black suspect and western civilization is called into question?  Can no one tell the truth anymore?  Can no one call out Antifa or BLM terrorists when they operate inside the United States?  If those terrorists steal the artifice of white-on-black oppression does that turn crime into protest, murder into justice, destruction into positive change?  Does it magically make hatred a basis for something good?

Does anyone besides rabid, committed communists see the destruction of our unique Constitutional system as the path to a “better” future for mankind?

Wake up, America! … all of you!

Culture, Politics 2020, Race, Responsibility, Terrorism

FIELDS OF HONOR

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Forever in a field they wave…  In rows and columns true;
Each soldier’s memory proudly etched – Loyalty, dressed Red, White and Blue.
Deeds of Honor recognized… Of times not long ago;
Field of Flags wave proudly.
History written in hearts aglow…  Offer silent reverence, quiet prayer;
Noble servants rightly praised… On through time pass forever grateful.
Remembered with Flags unfurled and raised.   By Mike Sousa, North Andover

In a summer marred by urban insurrections and variously excessive and unconstitutional, official pandemic fears and dicta, community service clubs, pillars of society, all, “Zoom” notwithstanding, continue their often unheralded works raising money to give away, along with countless hours of volunteer time.  So it is with chapters of the Exchange Clubs of America who “Exchange our Service today to build stronger communities and a better Nation tomorrow.”  This concept would be moribund if Exchange (and Rotary, Kiwanis and others) did not believe in the likelihood of stronger communities and a better Nation tomorrow.  In fact, service clubs’ heartfelt faith in America’s striving for a more perfect Union – and Unity – is so directly opposite, and in opposition to the sea of hatreds that some stoke for anti-American ideologies, that the distinctions are quite sharp in the Summer of 2020.

Exchange in the lower Merrimack River Valley of northeastern Massachusetts is one of those chapters: the Exchange Club of Lawrence and the Andovers, sponsored in 1947 by the Exchange Club of Lowell, Mass., 8 miles up the river, just a few months after the Exchange Club of Haverhill was chartered, 8 miles down the river from Lawrence.  Many Clubs were formed or grew significantly right after World War Two, as Americans returned from battles in terrible places and conditions to recognize how great the promise and premise of the United States of America truly were then and, Exchange members believe, still are today.  Americanism is one of the 4 pillars of Service that define Exchange Clubs of America.

Following the September 11th attacks in 2001, a flag company, at the urging of Exchange members in Sandy, Utah, created the first “Healing Field” of nearly 3,000 flags for those killed in the 9-11 attacks.  The idea became a National Exchange project and over the past 20 years has been a focus for 9-11 and for other events that cry out for attention and memory across the country, promoted by various Exchange Clubs and by many other organizations. 

Despite Covid-19 shutdowns and restrictions, the Town of North Andover, where Exchange did its first local “Field of Honor” in 2019, encouraged us to do a Field in 2020, as well, although without a closing, crowd-attracting ceremony on the Common where 500 flags were displayed.  Local access TV created a video of the many parts of the ceremony that we would have done, and created a You-Tube video for anyone to watch:

The value of the Field of Honor is not mere patriotism, as essential as patriotism certainly is, it is a set of focused remembrances.  Whether “In Memory Of” or “In Honor Of,” the person(s) to whom a flag is dedicated is an important part of who the flag sponsor is, now, today.  The first time our Club installed a “Field of Honor,” we were not ready for the importance  to our “customers” of this simple act of stating – printing out for all to see – the name and “heroic” worth  of their relatives, antecedent or descendant, or even of great, somewhat sacrificial friends, even acquaintances.  In every case, the honoree associated with each flag is important to the flag sponsor and the fact that he or she or they remember  or take note of the honoree and are in some way affirmed  in their own lives by the excellence, value  or sacrifice of the honoree.  It is intensely important that their own lives are acknowledged through the best connections that comprise them.  It’s spiritual.

Every flag is about love and many about the deepest love: respect.  Each tells a story about the sponsor and about the honoree, living or passed.  The Field of Honor is merely a focus for manifested love and remembrance, but oh, so crucial – something the club was not prepared for the first time we installed a Field in 2019.  Even more, we were not prepared for the importance of reading, saying, the dedications out loud.  Spiritual.

For the Town of North Andover and for Andover and Lawrence as well, the Field created a statement of normalcy against a backdrop of Marxist anti-American hatred in the spring and Summer of 2020.  There it was okay to be patriotic, okay to recognize goodness and honor and duty.  There were so many outpourings of gratitude to the Club  when the gratitude belonged to the flag sponsors… at least as the Club members saw it.  Yet there they were, steadily, thanking us  for erecting the Field.  Humbling, spiritual.

For those who don’t share the views of rioters and insurrectionists, the Field is a comfort.  It’s presence is an affirmation of America, of the Constitution, of what we hold dear in our families, and of what we hold dear in our faiths.  The American flag, itself, is simple, by itself… no more complex than any other national flag, and we display it and hundreds of others very simply.  A cheap PVC pipe is the flag-pole, slid over a short piece of steel rebar we try to pound vertically, we hope, into the soil.  Tie-wraps hold the flag in place through holes we drill through the pipe, and a cheap golden bulb is stretched – coaxed – over the top.  The flag is a printed one of decent quality, metal grommets and sewn edging.  We tell sponsors that it will last eleven months and two weeks.

But for patriots the flag is a history, a heritage, a dream and a promise.  Those who dedicate one to an Honoree of their choice, feel all of these aspects of this amazing symbol and yet more – things they can’t put into words.  As we install them, straighten them, put dedication tags on them, and straighten them again, we feel those things, too.  Together, we not only feel that history and heritage, and hear those dreams and promises, we make them, anew.

At the beginning of our You Tube video our senior member, a virtual pillar of these communities – his children following his example – recites a somewhat famous, somewhat poetic statement entitled, “I Am The Flag,” by Howard Schnauber:

I am the flag of the United States of America.

My name is Old Glory.
I fly atop the world’s tallest buildings.
I stand watch in America’s halls of justice.
I fly majestically over institutions of learning.
I stand guard with power in the world.
Look up and see me.

I stand for peace, honor, truth and justice.
I stand for freedom. I am confident.
I am arrogant. I am proud.
When I am flown with my fellow banners,
My head is a little higher,
My colors a little truer.
I bow to no one!
I am recognized all over the world.
I am worshipped – I am saluted.
I am loved – I am revered.
I am respected – I am feared.

I have fought in every battle of every war for more than 200 years.
I was flown at Valley Forge, Gettysburg, Shiloh and Appamatox.
I was there at San Juan Hill, the trenches of France, in the Argonne Forest, Anzio, Rome and the beaches of Normandy.
Guam, Okinawa, Korea, KheSan and Saigon, Vietnam know me.
I was there. I led my troops.
I was dirty, battle-worn and tired,
but my soldiers cheered me and I was proud.

I have been burned, torn and trampled on the streets of countries
I have helped set free. It does not hurt for I am invincible.
I have been soiled upon, burned, torn and trampled in the streets of my country.
And when it’s done by those whom I’ve served in battle – it hurts.
But I shall overcome – for I am strong.
I have slipped the bonds of earth and
stood watch over the uncharted frontiers of space from my vantage point on the moon.
I have born silent witness to all of America’s finest hours.
But my finest hours are yet to come.
When I am torn into strips and used as bandages for my wounded comrades on the battle field,
when I am flown at half mast to honor my soldiers,
or when I lie in the trembling arms of a grieving parent at the grave of their fallen son or daughter,

I am proud.
I am the flag of the United States of America.

Al Torrisi is a natural leader and a forceful speaker at any time.  Yet his voice has a stronger, more commanding timbre (good for the 50-year owner of a large lumber company) than at other times when he recites these words.  Years of patriotism, loyalty and love of country spill forth as he speaks, infecting and affecting his listeners.  Truth is the most spiritual statement of all.  It is the truth of America and of every flag sponsor and honoree, and of the Field, itself.

As this is written the Exchange Club of Needham, Mass. has experienced vandalism of its Field of Honor with some 30 flags being burned.  The empty, sinking feeling a fellow Exchangite and field of Honor afficianado feels is hard to articulate.  Clearly the membrane of civilization is thin and easily sundered for those who cannot judge the presence of hatred for their own country that such an act exposes.  For shame.

Culture, Economics, Education, Politics 2020, Representation, Responsibility, Taxation

BACK TO THE FUTURE

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It seems Prudent to pray.  Humans have an urge to worship, whether unto a deity of the personal perception of each supplicant, or to a set of deities connected to important natural phenomena like trees, rains, sunlight, moonlight, stars, winds, lightning, high and low temperatures… and more. 

If not truly worshipped, natural aspects of locales are generally respected with some attribution of supernatural importance, power or influence.  Caves, mountains, bodies of water, great forests and vital rivers are considered more than just natural by populations on whose lives they have life-giving or life-threatening influence.  Whether the Holy Spirit or the Great Spirit of native tribes, life’s continuous foibles, phenomena, fertility, feelings, fears and finality cause humans in every kind of society to come to terms with what can’t be controlled through forms of spirituality or religious faith.

What does it mean to all of those who claim to have no attachment to any church, religion or spiritual belief structure?  There are many and the number grows as government schools and liberal-leftist guided private schools divest themselves of morality and other quasi-biblical philosophies.  Only “science” can satisfy agnostics and atheists, those so declared tell anyone who’ll listen.  Religions are “mumbo-jumbo.”  So certain of their cold, scientific facts are many atheists, that they feel compelled to prevent any expression of religion or faith or spirituality.  The Prudent observer might think that they protest too much.  Their innate need to worship something is simply satisfied in a different way.

An argument can be made that Socialism is the secular faith, as it were.  Those who believe in this “ism,” must take its tenets on faith, since there is no empirical evidence that Socialism has worked anywhere.  Yet they work tirelessly to impose socialism so that individuality and human nature are replaced with the collectivist ethos, and innate capitalism is replaced with Utopian premises of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”  A lot of faith is required to believe such ideas in the face of utter failure in every example.

Inevitably, Socialism devolves into tyranny.  In place of “guided honesty” of free individuals, Socialism is required to impose rules for correct behavior, and they inevitably become very granular.  The logical concerns we have about the American administrative state are genuine fears about a Socialist bureaucracy that is charged with imposing a statist conformity on large populations.  Although a modern socialist state might refrain from police-state status, today’s technology empowers social engineers to gather voluminous data that help identify non-conforming citizens, whose lack of adherence to rules threatens, or are perceived to threaten, the health and safety of the group/collective for whom the state exists and is dedicated.

Power, ultimately, and before very long, concentrates in the hands of the higher echelons of bureaucracies.

Also logically, politics within socialist systems can’t be allowed to offer significant opposition to the functioning bureaucracy.  There is a certain necessity to promoting, educating about, proving and re-proving a high level of infallibility of the state.  The benign nature of the system that all benefit from and must support, has no room for serious opposition to its own quality.  Calling socialist leadership into question is simply anathema to the established rules of conformity.  Freedom and socialism are essentially antithetical.  There is no need for freedom when “everybody” already benefits from the state.

The reactions to freedom and independent sovereignty can be seen in the United States today.  Wherever the premises of socialism/atheism are challenged by Christians, in particular, the socialist response is most often anger: the public face of hatred.  If any question of this set of observations remains, just consider the nature of angry reaction to Trump and to any of his supporters.  Hatred.

For every form of governance and social cohesion, there is a beginning and some sort of end-game.  Given the ubiquitous factor of human nature, which is fundamentally, personally, independent and capitalistic, in the sense of retaining the products of one’s labor – the whole “private property” thing – the founding of the United States did the best job yet in history, to craft a Constitution and the original institutions that, in the hands of both faithful and honest officials, judges and democratically elected representatives, might survive the tyrannical tendencies it was designed to oppose.

From the beginning, the desires of some for power over others, for self aggrandizement and for monopoly economic advantage, have been trying to erode the bases of liberty.  As the philosophies of tyranny also matured, the description of socialism as the utopian supplantation of capitalism, and thereby of individual freedom, caught the interest of those who already hated the chaos of freedom as much as they distrusted the unity of thought that resulted from religious faith.  Any system of human organization that did not need the guidance of the state, was/is to be discredited and destroyed.  And so it has gone since at least the (second) Civil War.  Never let a crisis go to waste.

The blind faith in socialism is not so dissimilar to religious faith: life-changing belief in something that can’t be seen, and acceptance of various scriptures.  On the other hand, but in the same way, erstwhile conservatives show blind faith in unregulated capitalism, as if human nature were fulfilled by monopoly, government-protected wealth concentration, and as if the super-rich billionaire class were going to become benign rich uncles to us, all.  There is foolishness aplenty to go around… the world.

Rather than thinking with our human-nature selfishness, a little statesmanship is the better prescription.  We need, first, to recognize that these, again, are the times that try men’s souls.  At the founding of the independence struggle, those who signed the Declaration of Independence were placing their support for what was a civil war, not truly a revolution, out in the public eye, making themselves primary targets for the British military fighting to hold the American part of the British Kingdom tightly to England.  It took phenomenal courage, as they pledged their “… lives, fortunes and sacred honor.”

Where is sacred honor, today, as we face the United States’ greatest enemy: the failure of belief in the American Dream?  Where are the statesmen and women who will risk everything to restore America’s path?  There is no question that stepping back from the brink of tyranny – from the brink of unfathomable debt – will be quite unpleasant, uncomfortable, unpredictable and will require a continuity of leadership we have not seen since Lincoln and Washington.  It will not be possible for Americans to work 30 and 35-hour weeks, take multiple vacations each year, and waste as much income on frivolous, games, goodies or fattening foods.  Everyone will have to sacrifice.

Especially governments.

The federal budget must be rendered $1 Trillion smaller.  Sounds easy when the number is so even and simply stated.  A trillion… a thousand billion dollars.  In none of our lifetimes have we seen a congress cut – as in spend less money this year than was spent last fiscal year – ANY federal office or program, without spending much more elsewhere.

Local governments would have to assume the absolutely essential social services, and forego multiple other demands… demands like raises, fancy equipment, landscaping that isn’t done voluntarily, new school buildings and numerous non-essential municipal jobs.  States will find cutting even more difficult, since all those unionized state employees are the same people whose families donate to and work for campaigns.  Plus, there’s all that graft on enormous public works.  No more $750,000 state university presidents in those days, either.

None of these politically unlikely changes will happen, of course, until a far greater hurdle is crossed: making everyone, both parties, and everyone else, public and private, believe that eliminating debt-based government is more important than all of everyone’s private concerns.  More than during any war-time mobilization, Americans will have to agree to the importance of national sacrifice… to the importance of living within our means, Constitutionally, and with added sacrifice to pay off all of our loans.

There is no other path to financial freedom and strength.  Every dollar of debt is a loss of independence; every dollar in taxes is a loss of freedom.  Can we strike the correct balance going forward?  – the balance between independence, freedom and responsibility?  – the balance envisioned in our founding that relied upon morality and personal responsibility?

Or shall we succumb to the blandishments of socialist, identity politics, and hollow promises of greater freedom through national controls?  Shall we continue down a path that promises the slow loss of all we hold dear in America… slow, until one day we lose everything that’s left, abruptly, cataclysmically, destructively, unrecoverably?  We hope we know when that will be, but we don’t.  We hope we can pull back from the brink before all is lost, based on some arcane calculations that, literally, no one knows how to make.

Will the path to sanity commence before the next election?  Not bloody likely.  What about after the next election?  Well, not until all the other spending promises are fulfilled, and by then it will be mid-term elections and there’s no way in Hell those congressional giants are going to bear the brunt of mismanagement long before THEY were first elected.

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.

Culture

Weathering the Worst

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Uncategorized

Thought Leaders and other followers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Culture

The Religious Question

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Everyone seems to question religious doctrine these days… “everyone” meaning a large majority of Christians in Europe and the United States and Canada.  We think we have become “too smart” to believe that stuff.  That smartness is like an infection, similar to socialism, where our science, technology and ubiquitous governors (bureaucrats) are creating a much nicer world than “God” supposedly ever did.  The internet, gaming and pornography are meeting most of our needs; WalMart, Kohls and fast-food restaurants handle the rest.

And the rigors of marriage are so last Millennium – let the bureaucrats raise the kids.  I, mean, with pre-kindergarten, pre-school, K–12 and perpetual college, who really needs parents anymore?  The love-making part is OK, but even that’s becoming a big hassle; and courtship… forget it.  Hooking up and living together is fun but look at all the divorces.  No, that model doesn’t really work for us anymore.  If that’s the religious model, then let’s pass.  And it’s so expensive!  How much more pleasant driving around is.  Besides, my low-emissions hybrid helps to save the planet.

Oddly enough, Muslims are more serious about religion today than almost ever.  And the most serious expression of their most-serious religion is the destruction of Christianity – and of Christians, themselves, of course.  It’s as if we were in a race with terrorists to prove the unimportance of Christianity, except we’re not winning.  Muslims still want to kill us or convert us.  Jews are just as bad as Christians, in their book, so they are more than happy to kill them, too.  Jews are certainly willing to give up religious seriousness, along with Christians, so why do the Muslims care so much?  It’s a worthy question.

As Muslim terrorism has accelerated over the past 50 years there has been a parallel, mostly anti-Christian movement gaining steam in “the West:” atheism.   And this isn’t some “live and let live” form of God-less non-religion.  No.  It has become virulent… same infection, different strain.  Atheist don’t expend a lot of effort opposing Judaism, Buddhism or Hinduism – mostly they target Christianity.  Christmas makes atheists apoplectic, similar to its effect on Muslims.  Why on Earth do self-proclaimed non-believers – we’re talking scarlet-lettered “A” atheists, here, not agnostics or, presumably, not ignorant fools, but serious opponents of Christianity and its slightest mention… why the Hell do they care?

The broad network of atheists concentrate on the awful record of human organizations that operate in the name of doctrines other humans wrote stories about, derived dogma from, and implemented with motivations of personal and institutional power, as well as motivations of financial security.  There are thousands of years of policies and incidents – crimes, in fact – that belie the ostensible teachings of EVERY religious tradition.  Just collating and describing every human error will always yield plenty of material.  Indeed, an entire movement could be, has been, created out of the effort.  But that story is not complete, is it?

Nowhere in the vast network of atheist websites and their aggregation of terrible acts, is there a long list of extraordinary acts of charity by other humans deeply motivated by the overarching story of Christian sacrifice.

If your intention is to catalogue human failings, you will forever be busy.  You may also become blinded to phenomenal beauty, sacrifice, love and greatness.  However, rendering judgments about the existence of “God” based solely upon the much-edited and selected stories in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, or upon the evolving catechisms of churches, will always be somewhat erroneous.

There are but two places to stand in the debate about the truth of God’s existence: He exists or He doesn’t.  The rest of arguments on either side are inevitably biased for each advocate’s personal advantage, comfort, satisfaction or smug superiority.  Barring personal experience with God, Himself, all of our words are opinion, more or less informed.  Hearsay, we might conclude.  And, in Prudence’ view, too fraught with mysteries that may be balanced only with faith.  This in no way denigrates faith.  Faith is the best glue religion provides to cause populations to share codes of morals and conduct.

Prudence tells us that God would not launch our long climb into perfection with a list of mysteries.  It doesn’t make sense that He would hold us to standards we cannot understand – there must be a logical structure to God’s Law, logic that humans can grasp and apply to our social organization.  Further, it seems reasonable to assume, following God’s Law must be good for people and for Life, itself, and, still further, and logically, for God, himself who never, by definition, acts outside of his own “Law,” since He is that Law.

So, for those of us who stand on the side of God’s reality, admittedly thanks to a measure of faith, there must be a value to God for the creation and existence of humans with the free will to choose between His law and earthly evil.  That is, there must be a BENEFIT to God to go to the trouble of creating humans.

Hinduism provides some insight to the logic of God’s existence, through the laws of Karma.  There is a near-universal understanding of what Christianity states as: “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” which is to say: “…so MUST ye reap.”  Karma is more complex than that, of course, because of its connection to re-embodiment of the soul.  Western Christianity does its best to suppress the possibility of being truly “born again,” but even the Bible includes references to it.  In one view, the New Testament provides the opportunity to return, through karma, to resume self-perfection, arriving after being “judged and found wanting,” agreeing to accept the rigors of a life that will provide the opportunities to “balance” what is “wanting” – karma.  Only by cleaning up all of our negative acts in whatever lifetime, can we achieve acceptance into “heaven,” if that is our goal.  Whether we call it Nirvana or Heaven, or some other, mankind generally believes in rewards in an afterlife for good living in this life.  Is there a logic to this?

There is if God also benefits.  What if – just consider – that God’s Law that tells mankind to “go forth and multiply,” applies equally to Him.  He is the Law, by definition, so of course it does.  In other words, individual perfection is logical if God is ENHANCED by humans’ choices to adhere to His Law and not succumb to the comforts of evil.  In other, other words, God becomes happier when his “children” do right.

Oh, that’s impossible, you might say.  God is all there is.  But, then, who are we to limit Him… if we are standing on His side, after all?  After all, you get to keep only what you give away!  In those other words, it is only the ACTION of charity – or of following the Law – that stays with your soul.  The other side of that is that an evil action must be balanced in order for your soul to progress into “Heaven.”  It’s very logical.

And, it’s not a mystery.  There is a value and purpose to being “good” and not “evil.”  Part of the value is that society and civilization, itself, holds together through the application of shared morals.  Society functioning, strengthening families and children, educating them and protecting them, is a value.  Only in strong societies do people have the opportunities to worship and, one hopes, to learn greater aspects of the Law.  No mystery there.

Atheists perform an important function.  They continuously expose our flaws, particularly  human failures in the guise of religion.  And well they should.  They may be blind to some things, but they’re searchlight-clear on crucial others.  If they can recognize, as Karma describes, that life is a series of tests and that earth is the testing place, then they might accept that belief in God is a test and that disbelief is also a test.  It really doesn’t serve anyone to attempt to determine whether others are passing or “failing” a test, only whether we, ourselves are passing.  If belief in God generates hatred and death, it is reasonable to think that a test is being failed.  Likewise, if disbelief generates hatred or worse, that is also evidence of a failure to pass.

Every event, whether we deem it good or bad, is an opportunity to choose good or evil.  One can stand in judgment of God if he or she wishes, and say that this or that earthquake, flood or disease is an indictment of God, but what is the value of that except to sow hatred?  If God were to place us all in nurseries so that we would be perpetually comfy and fed, free of disease – free of choices, in effect, what value would humans have?  There would be no growth, no strength, no ability to make ourselves more perfect.

If there were no standards to meet or tests to pass, life would be useless; there’d be no horizon, no mountains to climb, no wonder to fulfill by finding out.  No, you non-believers, that there are tests is not proof there is no God but, rather, that there is.

It is our response to the test that we can take with us, not our comfort.  Still, you should keep on holding up your mirror, reflecting back at us our flaws and errors in God’s name.  The original question, though, remains.  Why do opposing religions, best exemplified by Muslims in opposition to every other belief structure including atheism, become so hateful toward others?  What do they care?  I think the only care great enough is that their chosen enemies may be right.

Education, Race

Damned Conservatives

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Alas poor education, we once were free.  For those of us… you, who are angry with “conservatives” and who agree that conservatives are (choose all that apply): 1) racist;   2) homophobic; 3) Islamophobic; 4) “Trans”-phobic; 5) anti-women; 6) anti-science;    7) climate change deniers; and 8) fascists.  Excuse me, I forgot, 9) Christian fanatics.

Conservatives who support or, worse, don’t mind Donald Trump, are also stupid.  Did we pretty-much cover it?  Let’s not forget the Russians – don’t mean to slight anyone.

The United States was premised on the concept of individual sovereignty and liberty.  This isn’t taught anymore, but it’s true.  If you perceive or believe that we are “free” only when our entire group is free, then you are, to a degree, believing that the very basis for the exceptional founding of our nation, is no longer valid.  That’s quite sad.

The U. S. was not founded to be a unionized social-service mega-agency.  That we have become so is far from a testament to our benign compassion for the poor; not at all.  Rather, it is a massive subversion of liberty by the left.

“What?”  You exclaim, “Should we just let these poor, oppressed people starve?  If that’s what conservatism is, leave me out!”

No, conservatives would have taught those starving people to feed and otherwise take care of themselves.  Those same would then move forward in life without the artificial welfare of any government.  That seems, to the racist, homophobic, anti-women Neanderthals that liberals hate so deeply, like the ultimate compassionate action, and is, in fact, the very basis of free-enterprise capitalism.  There is wide misunderstanding about these principles.

The most easily grasped distinction between liberalism (in modern definition), or leftism, and conservatism (in modern definition), is responsibility – personal responsibility.  That is, modern liberals perceive everyone only as a member of a “demographic.”  Everyone only has identity due to matching characteristics of a named (must be known by a name) group.

Easiest to understand in this odd universe is a group known variously as “people of color,” “African-Americans,” “blacks,” or the current liberally-correct description.  People with brown skin are of a hundred origins and genealogies.  By definition they do not comprise a “group” or a tribe or even a nationality.  Why on earth would rational people look at people with brown skin as if they were somehow all connected or similar?  The answer reveals the heart of modern leftism.

The only rational purpose for grouping individuals who share a trait or appearance… even a little, is because those who consider them so might gain political power.  This rationalization has also infected members of the artificially constructed group, who join with liberals in maintaining the belief in the existence of a group that exists only politically and not in fact.  Great anger, hatred and historical distortion stems from this artificial group perception.  By automatic reflection, or reaction, every action of unkindness or perceived “hatred,” practiced by anyone not “in” the artificial group, becomes a failing of everyone in the “outgroup,” so long as its members share some identifiable characteristic – like a different skin color.  Suddenly, politically, hatred of the outgroup has flowered, and “white privilege” is the result.

Such hatred requires nurturing and nutrition.  Once embarked on the road to political power, people who know how to profit from hatred can’t seem ever to reverse course.  The joys of political office are too enticing; the lack of true responsibility too comforting, the outlandish emoluments too rewarding.  Today, hatreds are the MOST COMMON political motivations; statesmanship is nearly invisible.

For some “hatred” is simple cynicism.  These are they for whom “public service” is mere aggrandizement, and to Hell with society so long as they get as much out of our pockets as they can.  For the next level of public cynics, power is their profit, and they are satisfied to gain power for themselves, and to Hell with the rest of us.  The consequences of their powers are of little concern to them – indeed they generally absolve themselves of requirements to adhere to laws they codify.  Mixed into the second group are some of those who learn how to employ baser, defined hatreds in order to gain and retain their cynical powers.  Now it’s not simple lies and thievery, it is society-threatening.

And here we are.  Conservatives will point out that the left, constantly riding the “racist” bull, are using black hatred for white supremacists to enhance leftist political power, when it is the left that actually hates blacks by cynically trapping and consigning them to an artificial welfare life.  Blacks, themselves, hate what has happened to them, as they should, but careful education has taught them that it is conservatives who have done this to them.  And on the cycle of hatred goes, while fattened liberals live in mansions, sometimes not even in the districts they “represent.”

There are conservative haters, some of whom actually “hate” black or brown people.  Those are a very tiny minority.  Careful education and media manipulation teaches blacks that these few represent all conservatives.  This is easily refuted, but that is never taught. If one simply sets aside personal concerns temporarily and contemplates the question: “What element of society is primarily responsible for social and governmental failure?”

The likely answer will be “conservatives” or, at the very least, “Republicans,” the two far from synonymous.  At that point, the thoughtful and caring citizen has to wonder if that is a) possible; and b) how he or she came to think so.

Real conservatives, here defined as constitutionalists and others who believe in free enterprise and personal responsibility, are not haters… of anyone.  Mostly they, we, are disappointed that people of color aren’t doing better, on average, particularly with so much evidence of people variously brown in skin color, becoming champions of every field and discipline.  Clearly, or so it seems to us, there is no genetic reason for social failure.  It is based on beliefs, including carefully nurtured hatreds.

The actions that stem from hatred have no claim on forgiveness – from anyone.  The same is true for white-skinned people only more so, since they have no minority status to overcome along the way to happiness.  We have a left-induced tendency to forgive the hatreds of blacks, while trumpeting and often imputing those of whites.  Both destroy society and are to be condemned.  They are not to be exploited, God forbid.  But they are, to our shame… Black and White.