The Bad Old Days

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHY A RAINBOW?

Carlisle, Massachusetts

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do interested people believe that banner says?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Red Rover, Red Rover…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NO CHEEKS TO TURN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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