Tag Archives: sacrifice

Culture, Economics, Education, Governance, Politics 2022, Race, Religion, Representation

All Christmas Matters

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Boston Rescue Mission

As the Christ Mass approaches we tend to – are obligated to – place our most prized results of our year of labor and multiplication upon the altar, proving our willingness to sacrifice for God and thanks to God.  It’s metaphysical… in a non-computerized sort of way.  God, of course, doesn’t need our sacrifices, he needs the act of sacrificing.  He needs that expression of love, and so do we.

There’s a lot of charity flowing at this time of year, as you surely notice.  Charity is an act of selfless, as in “non-selfish” love; acts of love with no physical benefit in return.  Of course those and their organizations whose appeals we may answer as Christmas nears, do their best to thank all who gave of our supply of time or treasure, but acts of charity don’t require such recognition.  Thanking is certainly good manners, sometimes done to ensure future charity and, truth be known, most humans resent the lack of thanks, but it’s not a true factor in the equation of love or of its charitable expression.

We humans are beings defined, or measured, by economics.  We consistently judge the values of giving and receiving, thanks for a gift… or for charity.  It’s not always a healthy calculation, nor is it part of the love equation.  Or, of the charity equation.  Love, or charity, is an aetheric substance.  What we do here on Earth is a rather crude reflection of the pure, spiritual development that happens to and for our higher selves, our non-physical selves.  Except, we can’t manifest things to and for other humans without being in the physical plane, as it were.  If we are, someday, accepted into the plane where our soul is supposed to be, love is an automatic manifestation, not a choice.  Here, amidst a thousand distractions and evil opportunities, love and charity are a decision – sometimes a difficult one.  If you find it easy to express love for others and to sacrifice for others, count your blessings.

One of the tests we must pass is how to not slip through the diaphanous membrane between love and hate.  Hatred is often expressed towards ourselves, where it is most damaging.  It may be as simple as a mistake, even just dropping something, spilling something… stupid stuff.  Immediately we chastise ourselves in words we’d never apply to another, certainly never towards someone we love.  If our spouse or child experiences something irritating, an accident, a time-consuming error that makes him or her angry, your usual reaction is to sooth and help in resolving the problem.  Yet when we do something similar, ourselves, we immediately express self-hatred for our failing to do something smarter.  Prudence can’t explain why it works this way, but “the force,” God, the Universe, or Life, cannot deliver the best, most fortunate opportunities to you if you are immersed in hatred of yourself, OR, toward others.  It’s an equation: Love fits into it but hatred never does.  Love yourself – you are a product of love and of an investment by your mother and others of love.  You never deserve to be hated.

The greatest gift we can give, whether at Christmas or on any morning, is to review and refresh the love you are giving to yourself and others.  Even in mundane, economic interactions like sales, the advice always is to imagine that you love the stranger you would like to have a sales relationship with, before you pick up the phone or walk into an office.  It seems to make the interaction far more successful.  Prudence can testify to this effect.

How different might all interactions be if every human projected love toward his or her correspondents.  Unfortunately, our society and politics, even our elementary schools and teachers(!), spend much of their efforts at teaching children and grownups alike to hate others.  What a gross distortion of the life opportunities God gives us every year and day.

Children, most sadly, are taught not just hatred of their race or skin color, but hatred of their selves.  If born male, they are taught to forego the responsibilities of manhood and to pretend to be female; if born female, they are taught to forego the majesty of motherhood and to pretend to be male: two special forms of self-hatred.  Part of the self-hatred process involves separation from parents and other relatives who won’t “confirm” their new sexual outlook.  Learning to no longer trust one’s parents is a giant step toward hating them or, at least, hating their roles.

Children can be, and should be, taught to love themselves… not to hate themselves… or others.  Like Critical Gender Theory, Critical Race Theory is an agenda based on hatred. 

Questions of race and slavery generate peculiar ripples of hatred, essentially only in the United States.  Millions are caught up in them, especially politicians of various stripes, who have learned that constant aggravation of these questions can yield political influence.  Such influence is fruitful within a population of people who “enjoy” rubbing hatreds raw, including within themselves.  Foolishly, politicians have figured out that hatred can be not only powerful, but profitable.  Still, the strong feelings do not, and cannot, lead to solutions or transformation into positive feelings, outlooks and cooperation.

There are truths about slavery… and falsehoods.  There are truths about racism… and falsehoods.  Falsehoods seem to prevail, but truths about both subjects are immediately seized upon to draw false conclusions and false premises about what some true piece of history should force upon people of today.  Just the fact of slavery in the past has proven sufficient reason to never stop hating, as evidenced by the renewed, and listened-to demands for “reparations.”  Reparations justify hatred for white-skinned people: apparently whites owe an undying debt to blacks because of slavery.  Whites, it seems, are prone to guilt over having succeeded in mastering so many sciences and skills.  Not all skills, of course, but whites pioneered in many skills that not only have created comfortable standards of living and great wealth, but which have benefitted virtually all peoples on the planet.  Perfectly?  Absolutely not.

If we are waiting to stop feeling guilty until we are perfect, no less, we’ll wait forever.  That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t become better.  But, are the children guilty of the sins of their parents?  Only by choice and training; those who decidedly choose a better path than their ancestors, better ways to treat and interact with everyone else, skin color notwithstanding, should be respected and loved as anyone might be loved.  There’s no guilt appropriate.  Unfortunate and deceitful politics, however, casts all whites into the guilty column because some of their forbears owned slaves or mistreated blacks following slavery.  What is owed to whom, today?

One of whites’ imperfections is an expectation that money can replace sin – the monetization of guilt.  It is the fundament of perpetual welfare and the social welfare state.  Perhaps handing over money for no value will convert hatred for whites into love for whites.  That seems doubtful based on the “success” of the Great Society.  Otherwise, every welfare recipient would run into the street to hug any taxpayer who wanders by their less-than-ideal, welfare-provided home.  Nope.  Giving free stuff makes only the most temporary of friendships and quickly reverts to resentment.  The only “reparations” of any value or consequence to the quality of life for anyone, is teaching a person how to succeed in our culture, perhaps even helping that person to succeed for a limited time.  But locking that person into perpetual victim-hood and welfare-poverty is a system designed to destroy that persons humanity and worth, yet we persist at it, waiting for the miracle socialists promise.

For their part, far too many blacks believe that destroying the society and culture whites have succeeded in, is going to make their lives better and balance the cosmic scales, somehow.  That approach requires perpetual hatred and resentment – there is no love that is part of it.  One doesn’t steal, loot, destroy and burn the work of others out of love.  One doesn’t teach others to hate anyone, let alone a group, or to hate themselves… out of love.  This is why socialism is an abject, deceitful lie: it is premised on the belief of the inability of the individual to elevate him- or herself, improving skills and understandings and esteem while teaching him or her to love the good in everyone and to strive against the bad.  Under socialism, all trust is placed in others, mostly unknown.

Interestingly, America is full of blacks who have raised themselves up by working within the system and then transcending the system, leading the rest of us to better ourselves.  In almost every field, great, accomplished black-skinned Americans have excelled and led.  Why not emulate them instead of hating whites?  Crappy politics, that’s why.  Since the Clintons popped into the White House, hatred has become the overarching driver of political action: not freedom, not justice, not improvement of living standards, not wisdom in foreign policy, not budgeting on behalf of American citizens, not “America first.”  Despite constant accusations from the Democrat left, most of the hatred emanates from Democrats and their allies.  Yes, there are haters on both sides of the divide, but the distinction between left and right is gigantic, culminating in the Communist uprisings in 2020 and the Covid pandemic.  There weren’t “right-wingers” burning America in 2020. 

There weren’t right-wingers creating and pushing Covid across the planet, or creating and pushing ersatz vaccines into every body.  Those were the works of the left.  Why?

It wasn’t to increase individual freedom or to balance the budget; it wasn’t to prevent inflation of the monetary supply or to strengthen energy independence and the U. S. balance of payments with other countries; it wasn’t to solve our weak border enforcement, improve public safety, reduce the rate of drug overdoses and deaths or to strengthen the rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights in any way.  Why would a political movement take significant, even drastic steps that weaken the United States of America?

Well, aside from enrichening its adherents, it would be to, well… weaken the United States.

Love of country makes us stronger; hatred of it makes us weaker.  To govern and legislate in conformity with the warped ideas of the World Economic Forum and with the corrupted, communistic ideas of the United Nations, is to express hatred for the United States.  To promulgate policies, persecutions and punishments that divide Americans into two classes – favored and hated – is to DIS-unite the previously United States: hatred.

This is the time of this most important year, when love of others, of law, of nation, of selves and of God, should be foremost in all of our intentions, yet our politics has failed us, creating problems that our democratic republic can’t solve, while rewarding hatred as the means to power.  Let us pray as we see fit to return ourselves to a transcendent path, not the descendent path we’re on. 

Education, Family, Health Care

A BEAUTIFUL DASH

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2001

In Methuen, Massachusetts a young woman is trying to prepare for a very early death.  It’s not her fault; she’s done nothing wrong in her nearly 27 years.  Indeed, from the very first she has been a bright, delightful person, quick to learn, quick to love pretty much everybody.

Inside her genes, however, something is not the same as most people’s.  She can’t fight off dysfunctional cell growth.  Her first cancer arrived when she was about 6, it’s not completely certain when, but she had been complaining of “back pain” for months before her mom finally got her to a “pediatric gastroenterologist” whose connections at Tufts Floating Hospital for Children found and diagnosed neuroblastoma.  There can be no worse day for a mother, unless it’s the one approaching inexorably, almost exactly 20 years afterwards.

That’s a short dash, 27 years.  In between those dates were 5 big battles with cancer, excellence in school, swim team, graduation from High School, excellence in college that included trips to New Orleans to help repair Katrina-damaged homes, trips to England and Ireland, visit to Paris through the Chunnel, Graduation from Wheelock College, Masters degree through Merrimack College, friends’ weddings, even one she coordinated, a trip to Peru and Machu Picchu only to run headlong into the fifth cancer struggle, now stretching into the last.  Loving teaching, early childhood and special needs, was not enough.  There never will be the full-time teaching position of which she dreamed.

How does one prepare for death?  I don’t know.  My good friend, Tony Fusco, prepared for his when an undiagnosed tumor in his brain stem proved inoperable, impossible to biopsy and ultimately fatal.  I got to sit with him the last Sunday afternoon before he re-entered the hospital to try some other treatments multiple neurologists had only the faintest idea might help.  I’d brought some nice scotch thinking we might enjoy a sip together but his gag reflex was so impaired he dared to sip only water.  It was a good afternoon and I expected he’d be home again.

When the only option of a feeding tube was offered, Tony realized – decided – that it was a tube too far: no further treatments, thank you.  His world shrank to a room at a beautiful hospice facility that was always busy with visitors and family.  He had a huge heart; it took a couple of weeks for it to go to sleep.

Clearly he’d prepared for the end.  He was 71.  At his funeral I told him that I knew where to hide a flask for when I’d join him on a porch where he now lived, where we could enjoy a sip and analyze the world situation.  He was a year younger than me.

How does one prepare at age twenty-six and three-quarters? Without an abiding religious faith it is hard to imagine.  She believes in God, but hasn’t had a lot of religious education.  I try to explain, but it is uncomfortable, certainly it was a year ago when the lung cancer appeared.  It represented a third kind of cancer, and her tiny body could tolerate no chemotherapy.  They operated and radiated, but the treatment was still a variation of repair and destroy with the overarching hope that the cancerous cells might be killed before the patient, herself.  Her breathing hasn’t been very good – or comfortable – since then.  Within a couple of months lesions were found in multiple places: brain, bones, pancreas and more.  Now at Dana Farber, they’ve radiated as many places as possible and she’s been taking an oral chemo pill with side effects.  It tended to slow down the growth, but never stopped it and now isn’t slowing it much, either.

There’s only one door open to her… to a place where the weaknesses of her body will no longer be a problem – a place where her health will become perfect.  One needs a reason to hope in order to contemplate passing through that door, alone.  Observers might say that she has no choice so “…she just has to deal with it.”

What does that mean: deal with it?  If one has any trust in God it should be clear that trying to pass through when angry and bitter is probably not the right approach.  One school of thought is that when you pass you’ll find exactly what you believed you’d find.  If that is a fade-to-black scenario, and hopeless, then that is what it will appear to be.  I believe that there is an eventual judgment, an audit if you will, of how well your tests were passed – tests you knew were coming when you agreed to accept the lifetime just ending.  Your “you” or your soul, may or may not have aced everything.  The life just ended may or may not be the last one you need to make your ascension, but Redemption is the unfailing lesson of the Bible.  It doesn’t make sense that in the matter of life and death itself, that the opportunity to redeem oneself would be absent.

For the soul, the agreement to accept a new life that includes the needed tests, is the greatest act of love expressable.

Another path of spiritual guidance says that not only are we responsible for our un-passed tests, or “karma,” but also for our reason for being, our “dharma.”  Both are part of judgment.  The more aware we are while on this side of that door, the more likely we are to meet and exceed the reasons for this life.  Life is not a knife-edge: Hell on one side and the gift of Heaven on the other; it is a path made broad by our free will.  The choices we make have meaning.

When someone passes very young, there has been little time to make bad choices, which is to say, few sins have been committed.  At the same time, few opportunities have presented for passing tests.  Maybe a life that ends in youth is lived sacrificially so that those around you can pass their tests.  Living that life is your test: a unique expression of love.

From the limited, somewhat fuzzy understandings of a human lifetime, this is my most comforting perception of the young lady’s life: one of sacrifice.  Neither I nor anyone else on this side of the door is privy to the purposes of the lives of others, and barely able to grasp the meanings of our own.  Still, this observer has recorded no imperfections in our young patient’s life. 

Is she comforted thereby?  Does she perceive the success of her life?  Or does she feel she’s been punished or singled out for “bad luck?”  I try to tell her to not fall into those ideas, but to approach the door with an open heart and mind, accepting of the possibilities of immense love on the other side.

Something she has earned.

Economics, Family, Governance, Representation, Responsibility, Sex, Taxation

Hi, Jack!

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Federal Reserve Board of Governors - 1914. Every one fully aware of how to boil a frog.

The attack on western civilization by China, performed through the agency of the Wuhan coronavirus, has, finally, presented us with reasons to try to understand foreign policy, international trade, and, key to all, international banking.  To the United States, international banking means The Federal Reserve, which is neither federal nor a reserve.  It is time to remove international banking’s hands from the throats of sovereign individuals.

The existence of religion  since time immemorial is also a factor in our understandings of money, wealth and individual value – things that bankers have devised the financial system to control.  That’s an unpleasant concept: being controlled  by strangers for their own profit; being forced through economics to cede one’s future and that of his or her family to the service of financial manipulators and to perpetual indebtedness they have placed on our shoulders.  But, why religion?  Aren’t we talking about money here?  What has religion to do with my finances?

Religion, and most particularly Christianity, forms the basis of “western” beliefs and of our basic self-governance, as well as our economic beliefs and practices.  We share most of our basic beliefs, and it is Prudent to list them, however much you tend to quibble:

  • Honesty.  We value honesty in our dealings with one another and, if we are wise, in our “dealings” with ourselves.  Our contracts are enforceable; our word is our bond.
  • Independence.  We value our personal, “civil” rights, at least as we think we understand them.  That is, we have inherent value and we agree that everyone else does, too.  We believe we have the right to personal liberty that does not hurt others, and that we are “sovereign” and yield to government only as much of our rights and freedoms as we deem necessary for the safety, protection and happiness of all.
  • Responsibility.  Despite the constant corrosion of socialism we recognize that we are responsible for our actions and their consequences.  The concepts of personal responsibility have been stretched and twisted, but we still expect to pay our bills, clean up after ourselves, interact with basic civility, and keep our promises both verbal and written.
  • Sacrifice.  All sort of activities, choices and financial decisions are rooted in the belief in doing without some comfort or desire now, for a greater reward later.  For the faithful this extends to an afterlife that rewards “good” behavior and choices while on Earth; and for all of us it defines civility, and civilization and even education.  The very idea of earning  status, wealth or recognition is founded in recognition of sacrifice for later reward.  There would be no actual charity without a level of sacrifice.  Even investment for future growth and reward fits this model.
  • Health.  Virtually every religious belief structure includes a significant portion of its accumulated writings devoted to diet and food preparation or combining.  There is often an “apothecary” of useful plants and methods of animal sacrifice and religious feasting.  Their attendant cultures incorporate many of these rules and so do individuals and families.  We grow up believing in a certain amount of responsibility for the health of our bodies – some to the point of worshipping the body instead of the spiritual “powers” that gave the instruction way back when.
  • Self-defense.  Most religions view the corporal body as a mere vessel for the “soul” to use on Earth for the balancing of karma, for some, or for the fulfillment of one’s “divine plan” or other forms of good works, sacrifice and charity.  In most traditions, suicide is sinful and cowardly, showing an unwillingness to face the tests the supreme spiritual being, God, places before us.  Therefore it is inherent that the possessor of that body defend it and keep it safe.  Wasting its life is the wasting of spiritual energy that has been given – literally “gifted” – to it at conception, or at “quickening” or at birth, and renewed each morning.
  • Procreation and sex.  How to live and how to create life properly are the most vital instructions in most religions: essential fertility.  How to assure the proper upbringing and acculturation of every child, how to maintain parental responsibility until children’s age of maturity – a set date – are crucial components of how to extend belief in the God or gods issuing the instructions.  All of these are spiritual events more than they are social or simply cultural.  Strong societies and nurturing family or village environments are the result.  Breaking or flouting these rules for life yields some of the strongest sanctions in every belief structure.
  • Justice.  Every religious tradition that recognizes spiritual beings, God, gods or saints / ascended beings of some sort, is replete with how INjustice shall be dealt with or adjudicated, or, in so many, many words, how justice is to meted out to offenders of the laws laid down by God, gods, prophets and other spokespeople who have some form of direct communication with the supreme being.  In most cases these instructions (commandments) become codified law to be applied by those granted their position to specifically do so, be they “judges” or spiritual leaders.  In each of our hearts is the blueprint of what is just punishment or retribution for all sorts of infractions.

In view of our cultural / legal understandings and beliefs, it should be incumbent upon us to rise up and replace any system or group or institution that BY CHARTER steals from us daily, while it forces us to indentured servitude, which is to say, economic slavery.  Our inherent power of sovereignty should also undo the fiefdoms of any who continue or promote such servitude – most of whom we think we freely elected to begin with.

Well, fellow sovereign Americans, have you not noticed how little changes no matter who is elected or which party holds the most power?  Is it not a little disconcerting how people from “Wall Street” are always holding key budget power in every administration, as well as becoming Treasury Secretaries?  Aren’t you troubled a small, unsettling amount, by the fact that our “national debt” (which doesn’t begin to measure our national obligations) only grows, and now is in the realm of $26 Trillion – more than all the economic activity of the whole country in a year?

Please don’t throw up your hands and say there’s nothing you can do about it.  Don’t give a nickel to a politician unless he or she is willing to repeal the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.  “The what?” you say.  “What does the Federal Reserve have to do with all this moral stuff you listed earlier?”  Aside from unknown dietary habits, the Federal Reserve has  no morals, and has been stealing steadily, through good times and bad, from Americans and from the United States, since it began to operate its conspiracy in 1914.  How it abuses the procreation part is outpictured in its economic handiwork. 

“Conspiracy” could be a good word for their peculiar crimes: “Con” means together; “piracy” means piracy.  “Piracy Together” among the 12 private reserve banks.  You may think it is too complicated for your practical, day to day brain, and that is exactly why the Federal Reserve System is designed the way it is.  But it is designed to commit legal THEFT, and it affects every purchase, mortgage, car loan and candy bar or quart of milk you buy.  It threatens the integrity of the United States – its very independence – and each of our personal freedom and sovereignty.  If recent collusions between the federal government and the “Fed” over the coronavirus bailouts haven’t exposed the rot to you, you’re not paying attention.

Please, Prudence begs you to devote a bit of time to this video:

https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/century-enslavement-history-federal-reserve/

The Federal Reserve is a diabolical, century-long fraud upon the American people… including you, your parents, your children and their grandchildren, if we do nothing.  Vondir!

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, 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.

Economics, Education, Politics 2018, Representation, Responsibility

Earning a Vote

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People elected to office in the United States, from Senators and Representatives to state’s legislators, Governors and state-wide officers, Sheriffs, Judges, District Attorneys, Registers of Probate, Deeds and what-not, to cities’ councilors, Mayors, aldermen, local selectmen and various trustees of reservations, libraries, housing authorities and conservation commissions, all have an obligation, TO WHICH EACH SWORE ON HIS OR HER HONOR, BEFORE WITNESSES, to conduct him or herself and the business of the office at stake according to the law and in defense of various charters, bylaws, state and federal constitutions.

That is, each swore to be honest. Prudence recommends honesty as the best way to conduct the people’s business. Unfortunately, honesty, truthfulness are almost NEVER part of anyone’s campaign message, platform, literature or advertising, despite each knowing that he or she will happily SWEAR to be honest during the conduct of the office being striven for. Odd, that. In practice, all oaths to the opposite, many office-holders consider that honesty, in fact, extends only to the scrupulous fealty to the letter of the law: every jot and tittle and loophole thereof.

We do hear a lot about “working hard for you,” or “it’s time your group is treated more fairly,” or “my opponent, the incumbent (stated in a low voice) has not been honest with you,” or, if the case, “he doesn’t even pay his parking tickets!”

Because legislation – and regulation – is devised and designed by people who are hoping to find a way to gain personally from the “loopholes” they write into it… legally of course, voters rarely get much input to the process or the content of new laws. And, we are reassured from the rooftops as to the diligent efforts made on voters’ behalf, sometimes late into the night at great sacrifice, keeping their promises to “fight” for us and to “work hard for us” if entrusted with the office. After all, they swore an oath to uphold the law and the constitution, and there they are keeping every word of at least part of what was promised. And we re-elect them, sometimes for decades, as if we can’t imagine causing them to “lose” their jobs, for goodness sake!

Most gain considerable wealth while in office, and this is a very mysterious consequence of becoming a public servant. Some are paid from the public treasury quite handsomely, even exorbitantly, yet they continue to “sacrifice” in public service instead of accepting much more lucrative positions in the “private sector.” Just look at the millions paid to people like the presidents of nationwide banks, insurance companies, invest firms, Boeing, Amazon, Facebook and Exxon-Mobil. Yet still they toil on our behalf under terrible conditions and low pay, particularly in view of the tremendous responsibilities they carry for the rest of us. [See: http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2017/03/31/massachusetts-vaults-into-first-place/]

Congress members and Senators seem to fare the best of all – at least the crafty ones. Politics, unfortunately, seems to attract those who are always looking for an edge of some kind… not a scam, necessarily, but some special advantage, like signaling what’s in your hand to your Bridge partner. One notices that there are many laws that specifically exempt the “Royals” (those currently in Congress) from their terms or penalties. For decades, for example, members of the House and Senate could take advantage of what in the private sector is known as “insider trading.”

That is, by virtue of knowing what laws and attendant regulations were about to be imposed, the Royals could buy stocks about to go up as a result, and short stocks that were about to go down as a result. It’s “edgy,” one could say, and we can be comforted in our beliefs that none of them would ever share that information with a mere civilian, since they all are sworn to uphold the law: every jot and tittle and loophole thereof. Moreover, they are forced to be away from their families and pay for extra housing in or near Washington, and it’s not fair to demand so much additional sacrifice on top of that already entailed in their “jobs” in Congress.

In response to negative press, Congress crafted the “STOCK” act, that essentially made insider trading by legislative employees (over 28,000 of them) and by executive department employees, illegal. President Obama signed it into law with cameras blazing. Not only was the trading illegal, finally, but everyone affected would have searchable financial disclosure statements available on some website, a requirement that was not very popular. A few months later, with most members absent, the House and Senate rushed a bill through and the President signed it with little notice or announcement. This bill kept the thousands of disclosures under lock and key in a basement room in the Capitol, where virtually anyone could review them… individually, by correct name, and even copy them for 10 cents a page. But they couldn’t be “searched,” per se, and you had to get to the Capitol and to that room during limited hours, and provide the correct name of the disclosure-owner. Nothing illegal, but just a little edge over the competition – us.

The search for truth is a competition, if you hadn’t realized that before now, and in this competition relative to our public servants, we have very wily opponents. Think of that: opponents.

How nice would it be to hear an office-seeker say in his “stump” speech: “I promise only a few things, ladies and gentlemen… just a few.” He or she holds up the fingers of one hand. “First, when you ask me a question about any part of my public job – the one you pay me to do – I will answer truthfully and fully, unless there is a specific statute that prohibits me from doing so. I will then explain that statute to the best of my ability, or get back to you promptly with the explanation. If there is a way for you to obtain the information from another person or office I will tell you and, if you need it, I will help you get the information… not just an ‘answer,’ but the information you are entitled to.

“Secondly,” holding up his pointer finger, “I will tell you the truth about the budget and about expenditures. The money we spend and allocate is all taken from your wallets and I will show you at least enough respect as American citizens, to tell you the truth about what’s being done with it.”

“And, finally, point number 3. I will not vote for any legislation that contains provisions that are ‘snuck’ into the wording because those provisions could not have passed on their own merits. In other words, some legislation is brought forth with titles that indicate it is about one issue, while hiding legislation about unrelated issues. Those bills are at least partial lies and I will not vote for them. On the other hand, I will fight to stop this practice. To do so I need your vote on Tuesday.”

Prudence declares her support for any such candidate. Sadly, none has presented him or her-self for consideration. On the other hand, if one were looking for someone who has crafted an articulate message of hate for certain groups, individuals or for the United States, there are several from which to choose.

The underlying problem with elected and appointed malfeasance is that it undermines the ideas of America. And there is no one to our West who will come to our rescue when our citizens lose all trust in our “self” governance. There is no one else with a more “free” system or where citizens have sufficient sovereignty to perfect themselves, who will ride to our salvation and help as throw off tyranny. We, the United States of America, still somewhat free, still somewhat honest, still somewhat Christian, are the last best hope on Earth. If, in our libertine libertarianism we allow Constitutionalism to perish, or if we fail to reverse our educationally slipshod descent into sexual confusion and feelings education, the whole experiment is at risk.

Indeed, for an American elected official to abuse his or her office, particularly for illicit, if not illegal personal gain, is among the worst offenses against our nation. It is virtual treason against the electorate, and utterly inexcusable. Compromised judges and law-enforcement officers naturally follow the path of rot blazed by dishonest elected officials. Tightening and increasing the penalties for official corruption should be the fourth part of our “honesty is the only policy” candidate wished-for above. Let’s hope.

Culture, Economics, Governance

When Robots are Rights

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We must, as thinking, contemplative beings at least somewhat concerned about the future, consider the implications of robotics and so-called artificial intelligence: machines that learn. It’s all a matter of large-enough databases and rapid-enough retrieval. So what? you might ask.

Civilization came to be built as it is through an economic reality that forces individual humans to strive for improvement – both personal and financial. That is, at one level or another, life has been tough for most of us, causing each to become stronger in order to be able to adjust one’s surroundings to greater comfort or safety… or both.

In the past century or so we have managed to elevate enough of ourselves to support elaborate industries designed only to entertain us due to growing levels of “leisure” time. That is, modern life for a large fraction of humankind (but not all, certainly) permits complete creation of safe and comfortable living conditions (standards) with about 40 hours of “labor” of very specialized kinds per week, or about 25% of available time.

In fact not even 25% is needed, as many forms of labor provide for weeks of non-work time each year in addition to “holidays,” storm-days, “personal” days, sick days and, increasingly, family and maternity “leave” periods. Politicians and other panderers – advocates and socialists of various stripes – are constant in their demands for more time off for ostensibly “civilized” and crucial purposes. Employers are, after all, mere thieves of workers time and comfort and must not be allowed to earn a profit from their labor, if such dis-allowance is at all possible.

In any case and by whatever fraction of productive employees’ time, businesses must find ways to produce the millions of products and services that they and others need or want in order to create and maintain the kind of safe, comfortable living conditions each desires. And those products must be profitable enough to justify all the investment, risk, work and education that goes in to producing them, delivering them and warranting their quality and usefulness, AND to permit sufficient taxation of both profits and of labor itself, to pay for all of the “public” works and subsidies that politicians think we need – including those that we truly do.

Together we, many of us, understand the multiple contracts and assumptions and personal costs that are enabling lives we like; and we understand, largely, the changes we must each choose to make to have “better” lives and proportions of leisure time. Robots are changing the “contracts” we have made between individuals, companies, governments and ourselves – and we are largely unprepared for the future that they are creating.

Right now the contracts of the economy depend upon parties who have striven to be part of the economy and who have striven to be “good” and “useful” people – most of us, anyway. What each has attained-to is the basis on which each of us judges the other as a qualified member of our society and culture, evaluates him or her as to qualities of charity, kindness and “fairness,” or lacks thereof, and on what his or her productive value is determined.

It is very important to us whether the person we are considering is one who “pulls his or her weight” or, barring genuine disability, “coasts on the work of others.” Is he or she “pulling the wagon” or just “riding?” Like it or not, every one of us needs to grasp these values for the current system to “work.” We understand and agree to abide by the hundreds and thousands of “contracts” that cause society, products, services, profit and pay to function with a net gain of living standards over time for the largest number of our fellow society members.

Are you with me so far?

Here and there, and in growing numbers, people who are employers, which is to say, producers in our economy (“job-creation” being simply a result of profitable productivity), are squeezed by governments – including their legal systems – through taxation and liabilities of increasing types. Customers demand redress and compensation from producers’ profits if anything goes wrong with a product, its delivery or its use, almost regardless of “fault.” Governments need more and more revenue to perform vital deeds and to buy votes from constituents.

To compensate for growing assaults on profits producers must steadily become more productive without raising costs… and this means reducing labor costs – employee costs. Given myriad labor laws protecting workers, insuring them, insuring their families and paying them at certain rates, producers are turning toward automating as many procedures as possible: ie. robots.

Robots don’t have to look like manufactured humanoids. They can be as unassuming as ATM machines and self-check-out lanes at Home Depot and a thousand other retailers. “Robots” can dispense prescriptions, take orders at fast-food restaurants and, soon, custom-tailor suits with nary a sales-clerk or store-manager needed. What do YOU do? What function are you compensated for? Maybe you build houses.

Robots make it possible to factory-manufacture modular homes that come with wiring, piping and alarm and computer circuits already in place. They’re delivered by truck and bolted together on site. Altogether there can be barely 20% as much labor needed to produce a single-family home. For modular multi-family buildings, there is even less per housing unit. What will all the tradesmen be doing?

Or, the counter workers, potato-fryers, and on, and on, and on… what will they be doing? Retailing is disappearing before our eyes, along with its jobs and buildings, janitors and re-decorators, security guards and on, and on, and on. There are very, very few jobs that are not threatened, except, temporarily, robot-maker.

Will this happen overnight? Not yet, but overnight began about 30 years ago and is accelerating as rapidly today, tomorrow and next week, as computing power and miniaturization permit. So what are the political and human consequences of the robotic devouring of what we now call “jobs?”

First, people who now control productive enterprises, from small to large, will be controlling larger and larger fractions of production generally, whether of precision-engineered parts or of sandwiches, and with fewer and fewer employees. This will concentrate productive surplus – which is to say: profits – and wealth as well, in those same hands or corporations. How, under the U. S. Constitution, will this wealth be “shared” among the soon-to-be jobless citizens? (“Soon” being in 20 years?)

Shall we raise taxes much, much higher? Should laws be passed that require producers to share remaining jobs among 4, 5 or 6 individuals (however inefficient that will be)? What happens to the essential right of private property? Will all hiring and profits become the purview of the least-efficient institutions on the planet: federal bureaucracies?

And how will individuals prove their worth? Not only to their friends, wives and children… but to themselves? If lots of humans don’t need to be very smart to survive, will more than the owners of production and the builders and programmers of robots, bother to become so? What happens to politics, then?

The stratification we have acquiesced to so far – stratification in which those elected deem themselves superior and entitled to office, ideas they have “sold” to relatively ignorant constituents – will become stricter and more calcified, virtually unassailable by the welfare-supported masses of citizens. Those will be they who never vote against wealth-sharing and at ever greater sharing rates. How will democracy or a republic or religiosity survive?

Just as large fractions of us, now, can’t find our ways without “GPS,” or feed ourselves without welfare, what will we become when there is no need to strive… and dependence upon robots approaches totality? What will civilization be? Constant leisure? A complete absence of sacrifice? SHALL WE ALL BECOME ENTERTAINERS? Shouldn’t we be thinking about these things?

Do you think of them? Fear them?