Monthly Archives: May 2020

Culture, Economics, Education, Family, Race, Responsibility

LOVE OF WISDOM

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It is our obligation to understand what things mean.

Life is a philosophy, as is death, one could surmise.  Another philosophical thread might be spun from the question of whether death and life are opposite one another.  The observer of, say, a live frog and a dead one can readily note the obvious differences, most specifically that the live one is capable of independent action while the one considered dead, obviously is not… but, are the two states opposite one another?  Given that death is the natural end of the limited period called life, it ought not be seen as the opposite of life.

Let’s jump up a level in our contemplations.  Philosophy implies belief and wouldn’t exist without it.  Truth being immutable and untethered to belief, the death of, say a frog, leaving a dead, stiff carcass, is subject to only one belief: the formerly live frog has ceased the stage we call “life” and now exists in a state we call “death.”  There isn’t any room for conflicting descriptions of the change of condition or, for the rational, conflicting meanings  of the change, as well.  Humans, however, are immersed in a sea of philosophies and, in the presence of a large smattering of scientific knowledge, our philosophies are concentrated upon – if not entirely concerned with – life and death… of humans.  We believe humans are unique for whatever reasons and philosophy enables our explaining those beliefs.

One might distill that fact into simpler terms: philosophies are based on how  to create life,  how  to live and on how  to die.  Too simple?  Let’s consider a few.  The most widely known are religious, the fire that has forged most of our beliefs:  marriage, rearing of offspring, educating them and launching them into marriage, conducting our personal lives, dealing with crime and anger and unfairness and injustice, meeting our obligations to others, and being honest and honorable and fulfilling our duties… and how to worship our creator and perhaps other gods.  Every religious belief structure includes dietary and sexual laws, ways to punish and ways to exact revenge, as it were… or avoid it.  Structures of belief.

There are philosophers who explain the meanings of our beliefs, of our lives, our emotions and our hatreds.  They try to explain why religions are complete or incomplete, why life has meaning or it doesn’t; they rationalize failure, success, happiness and depression, loneliness, gregariousness, hygiene and filth.  Philosophers have, and will again, endeavor to explain industry, work, laziness and entertainment… even complete nihilism and the need for suicide.  In a way, they are all explanations or understandings (opinions) about creating, living and ending life… of humans, mainly.

Humans build things.  There’s a philosophy about this need to construct more than is necessary for basic shelter and safety.  Humans invent ways to grow more than enough food – then we eat it all.  There are philosophers trying to explain why we eat more than we need, even if it hurts us.  The same is true about alcohol, drugs, tobacco, coffee and chocolate.  Why are these things so important to humans?  How is it that we can abuse one another and even children?  People try to think about and reason about, explain and understand these odd behaviors.  What do they mean?

Much of religious thought / philosophy is about the end of life and the existence or absence of a soul living in the spiritual self of every human.  The majority of humans alive today believe to some degree that there are rewards or punishments awaiting them after death.  It feels Prudent to consider those possibilities.  If we live a rotten life do we, should we, “get into” heaven the same as the most charitable and saintly people we know?  Do non-religious people have a last minute choice to win or possibly earn a ticket to heavenly realms?  How good a life must one live to be acceptable to get even a decent room in the many mansions of heaven?

Do we have to leave earth, or just life, to get to heaven?  What if you aren’t good enough to take up residence in heaven?  Do you remain stuck on earth somehow?  Or are you wiped from creation, every record and memory, any act of love or anger toward others that you created while alive – just ‘poof’?  Gone?  The people who run heaven wash their hands of you?  Maybe you are parked in a halfway village – or a one-third way or one-quarter way – until there is either a lull in new applications or one of the staff in heaven thinks you can be rehabilitated.  These are philosophical questions because each is laden with meaning.  For some.

It is possible to drift through, or fight through life without ever thinking of what your actions mean.  Philosophically this seems like a sad outcome for years of living, and implies a certain sociopathy: complete disregard for others, something that has to be learned; no one is born that way.  Some people, unfortunately, learn a rare but real philosophy of hatred or disregard for others, even in their families.  These are they who have a high likelihood of incarceration and other interactions with government agencies.  Those interactions, whether with social workers, foster care or special schools, fulfill the philosophies of others.

That is, a large fraction of society believe in government as a better source of decision-making than any family unit or parent.  We can see a constant push from these types to remove children from parental influence at ever earlier ages.  It reflects the philosophies of socialism which are also anti-religious.  At the same time, there are smaller societies where communal child-raising has worked beautifully for centuries, only thanks to a culture supported by shared philosophies toward rights, wrongs and the stages of life.  These beliefs are too rare in complex industrialized “societies” like ours.  Here and there small “communes,” often religion-based, attempt to maintain cleaner and simpler cultures and child-raising is shared somewhat.

This can practically, and honestly, be done in the United States in only small, restrictive communities, because ever growing fractions of our “multicultural” nation do their best to be as different from our actual heritage and mores as possible.  Parents relinquish control of their children for more than brief periods at great risk.  Their teachers, counselors and coaches are increasingly likely to believe very different things about what children should believe , learn, memorize or think of the world, than what their parents believe.  Those whose philosophy includes greater trust in government(s) than in individuals will tend to separate children intellectually – philosophically – from their parents.  These are the ones whose guiding philosophy is that we cannot enjoy a true society until we all accept the “common good” ideals of socialism, and reject all the old ideas and ideals, including that pesky freedom we try to enjoy and pass on to our kids.  Religions are an impediment for this type… unless the beliefs they espouse are destructive of the awful principles that formed the United States.

Try to find out the philosophies of your children’s teachers.  If they don’t believe what you believe, why let them screw up your kids?  Because the government says to?

There are a lot of money-related philosophies, too.  Some of these – most of them, actually, are destructive of the lives of ordinary people: the kind that go to work and try to provide for their families and save for retirement.  Most of the people who form the backbone of free-enterprise capitalism don’t have money philosophies.  Money is simply a tool for negotiating life… which could be a philosophy, but isn’t worth the time.  For the ultra-capitalists, worldwide bankers, central bankers, money isn’t money, it’s their lower-than-secular God.  They worship the stuff.

Money is not the “root of all evil,” it is the love of money that has that effect.  Those international, ultra-wealthy, celebrity and relatively hidden titans of finance, are among the most evil, amoral humans on the planet.  The small-business entrepreneur who winds up wealthy is the example to emulate; the financial wizard who earns through speculation and trading and who controls multiple fortunes internationally, is not.  While both may cause envy, you will have to forego your moral bases and patriotism to emulate the latter.  Prudence is skeptical of entrepreneurs who become extremely wealthy because they are smart, but then decide that they are also wise.  These same then try to sway governments or major institutions to follow the wealthy person’s philosophy on how life should be lived.  The wisdom of history and heritage, they often deal with as impediments to the “better” or more efficient ways of life, education and freedom from which the oligarch is far removed and insulated by wealth.

There are philosophies of money and wealth that derive from the love of money.  They are perceived as entitled control of others, and are divorced from the beautiful chaos of freedom.

Philosophies about human differences are key to civilization.  Rarely do philosophies derived from ignorance of “others” include automatic trust or love.  A philosophy of tolerance will erode natural distrust and lead to acceptance and then love and trust.  One’s philosophy must include belief in a path toward acceptance – the alternative is mental barriers that devolve into hatred.  Either philosophy must be taught to offspring.

Can we make laws that require belief in eventual acceptance?  No, not successfully.  But we can, by trusting citizens self-governed by largely shared philosophies, create a legal structure where acceptance is possible.  Our Constitution is the best example of this structure.  “e pluribus unum” is the clearest statement of the philosophy of acceptance: “from many, one (people or nation).”  Recent failings of American constitutionalism have resulted from the intrusion of alternative philosophies  into the fabric of liberty and responsibility, and from the denial of other philosophies, primarily religious.

We must remain vigilant.

Each of us will pass on, but not, Prudence’ philosophy says, like the stiff and lifeless frog.  We have an obligation – one we accepted – to leave this plane of existence having lived, loved and served for the benefit of others and thus for the benefit of ourselves.  A wise and Prudent soul once observed that “…you get to keep only what you give away.”  Only our acts, loves, angers, hatreds go on with us to be judged.  That’s a Prudent philosophy.  The United States of America provides unmatched opportunities to live in ways of which we might be proud.

Culture, Economics, Family, Governance, Health Care, Politics 2020, Representation, Responsibility

So, is the cat dead?

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Even when the Governor escapes he won't know if he's dead or alive...

Every cloud has a silver lining, we tell ourselves.  We believe, or hope at least, that no matter how grim conditions may be, we will emerge from them to a new level of happiness, love or accomplishment.  We know – or believe – enough to sacrifice today and in this lifetime, to receive the rewards of a better life before we die… or afterwards.

So it must be with this God-forsaken imposition of leftist tyranny that politicians are blaming on “the coronavirus.”   Most of us have quickly, aggressively, agreed to forego our “unalienable rights” to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Most of us have agreed to be frightened by the dire descriptions of what is happening to a fast-shifting number or percentage of COVID-19-infected fellow citizens and to denizens of foreign countries.  In the span of 3 weeks or so Americans watched China (until the news was clamped down) Italy and Iran erupt with thousands of deaths from COVID-19.  Suddenly in early March, politicians and medical bureaucrats who days earlier had been telling Americans that they would not be very much impacted by the new coronavirus, were grimly commanding us to stay at home, stop intermingling with others, stop working or playing, and to obey, obey, obey in order to “flatten curves” and “save lives.”

It might have.  There really is no way to precisely state whether the curves “flattened” because of the lockdown.  It’s possible that the course of the infection rate (which is still not fully known) would have been about the same if people were given good advice and masks and told to stay out of work if exposed or symptomatic.  Unfortunately, locking down a whole city or state is something the true government types have dreamt of: stopping people from enjoying life unfairly, and enforcing the stoppage with police powers.  Oh! My! Gawd!  “I never realized how good this would truly feel,” hundreds of mayors and governors (may) have been overheard to say.  “My Poli-Sci professor tried to tell us but who could have imagined the glow?”

There are several collateral injuries that result from any brutal attack and the requisite stern defenses governments must mount on our behalf.  Businesses close down, for one, but, when you think about it, most of those were unfairly profitable, especially for the owners.  Lots of people lose their jobs, for another, but, when you think about it, a lot of them are church-goers and even Christians, so the damage isn’t as bad as it could have been.  If we put a stop to church-going altogether, no one will feel unfairly repressed.  There are more reports of domestic violence, but that’s a problem of degree, only.  Child abuse is also up, according to agencies that watch those things, but those kids were going to be abused at some point, anyway.  Let’s get the federal government to send out checks to everybody and they’ll all put up with the house-arrest that is so obviously necessary.

Still, we can’t let people stew over conditions for long periods.  We’ll have to add new policies and closures here and there to keep lock-down opponents off-balance.  We are saving lives, after all.

There are several silver linings, though, despite the multi-trillion-dollar costs (so far) and building conflict with Red China.  For one big thing, the utter inability for state governments in “progressive” states to do the right thing for even a large fraction of their populations, has been made glaringly clear.  Their citizens, tenuously holding the power of voting idiots out of office, should take note: big opportunity ahead.

The purposes of those at the federal level, both elected and appointed, come in two sets: elected and deep-state.  Elected officials have two goals: re-election and avoiding responsibility.  Deep state denizens have only one: staying in power.  Everything else is subordinate.  This should help explain why change can be excruciatingly slow or, about as often, way off-target… not off any target, just off our, citizens’  target.  Whatever politicians do is hitting, first, their personal targets as they become wealthy in office.

Power and re-election are drivers for state pols, too.  The most common end of legislative service is retirement at age.  Citizen-legislator is a mythical being from a long-ago time; today we have the inside-government “us” and the lesser, civilian “them.”  In any case, once a sweeping declaration of change is made, it must be defended and justified as the very best, life-saving decision that could have been made due to forces over which the deciding politician had no control.  Then, when the consequences appear to be going sideways, the same politician will defend and reinforce the underlying, out-of-control circumstances that forced the original decision.

In effect, then, regarding current political fears, it is Prudent to describe the problem as one of politicians building a box from which they cannot escape.  With haphazard statistics peppering them during January, February and into March, everyone in a decision-making position – president on down – was afraid to not shut things down.  “We must flatten the curve,” said the medical experts, “for if we don’t our hospitals will be overwhelmed and people will needlessly die… die…die.”  OMG!  The possibilities of politicians being blamed for something – being forced to take responsibility for something, anything – were growing to be a real crisis.

As each day passed and unfortunately ill-suited supply chains drew unending accusations, the future looked bleak.  Hot spots seemed to be simply precursors of what was waiting around the corner for every city and state.  Stormy skies for the Republic were forecast, minute by minute, to finally fall on our heads the day after tomorrow.  Things were worse than we thought and getting worse than that.

Quickly, private enterprise shifted manufacturing and supply chains to fill the gaps in equipment and personal protective equipment.  Hospital ships were deployed; ventilators found, refitted or newly manufactured.  Less than 3 weeks later there were too many ventilators and the emergency hospitals and ships were largely unused.  We’re told those successes are all due to stay-at-home orders and strictures on groups as small as, well, one.

The work of the healthcare “system” was and is remarkable as it dealt with an infectious disease not fully understood.  But understanding has developed quickly, as have testings that seek current infections, and past infections, more interestingly.  The folly of many policies and mandates intended to slow the infection rate, is becoming stark.

All incidents are anecdotes until they are added up.  People, especially blame-shedding politicians, can adhere to the “science” of mathematics while ducking responsibility simply by adding up certain incidents and not others.  Every “covid” death was not a covid death; every shutdown business was not about to cause increased infection if not shut down.  School-age children were neither at risk nor a risk for others.  Even public transportation turned out to not be a major source of cross-infections.

Still, shutdowns were not relaxed and even enhanced to varying degrees.  Governors and mayors were just beginning to flex their dictatorial muscles when pesky statistics began to intrude into the shutdown model.  Two things were never going to happen as a result: 1) Those elected executives would change their shutdown tactics to accommodate new facts; or, 2) Those same would admit they had been wrong about some of their policies.

In some states shutdown rules became ever stricter despite evidence they need never have been strict at all.  Besieged governors and even judges, appear to have reacted arbitrarily and personally to citizens demanding that the shutdowns be lifted, including arrests, lifting of licenses, incarceration and harassment.  Essentially none of those instances involved any provable health risk… not even suspected  health risk, the ostensible basis for the “rules.”  Americans should be alert to and instructed by these and hundreds of other examples: Our nation is no longer a nation of laws, but a serfdom of rules.  Rather than “We the people” ratifying shared moral codes of rights and wrongs, set in law, there are now, literally, tens of thousands of rules for what we sovereign citizens are allowed to do.  The solemn advisories that cause small and large “g” governors to promulgate their new rules do not come from US, but from unelected “experts” who self-declare their predictive expertise and carry impressive resume’s.

Some are, perhaps, experts in a field of study, even epidemiology, even in studies of contagions and how they spread in past, somewhat similar environments.  Our newest adversary, coronavirus-19, is not the same as earlier epidemics, it was not spread around the world in the same way, it has not mutated the same way, it has different symptoms, different impacts on different demographics, different gestation periods and different sensitivities to drugs and anti-viral chemicals.  But, they knew exactly what to do before all the statistics were collected and studies were underway.  Presumably these “scientists” would be poised to alter their predictions upon receipt of new facts and observations.  Oddly, however, in direct contravention of scientific method, they have tended to “double down” (a popular gambling term) on their first predictions, making ever more draconian recommendations DESPITE new data.  It is at this point that medical science became medical politics, or ideology.  Like true ideologues they had staked out their beliefs, not their science, and those positions would be defended… economies and lives be damned.

Dr. Fauci appears to be in this class of dictators.  In the span of a few days he switched from reassuring the public that the new coronavirus was not a major concern for Americans, to advising that the economy be shut down, gatherings prohibited and healthy citizens be confined.  Only he can tell us if any science was behind his first views of COVID-19; only he can tell us if any science is behind his current views.  Anyone, however, can tell that there is no science or even judgment behind his praise of W.H.O. director, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a politician willing to cooperate with or promote some very sketchy other politicians in matters of public health – including those tied to the Chinese Communist Party.  Ol’ Tedros’ communist-inspired lying can be thanked for many thousands of deaths in the U. S. and around the world.

Culture, Economics, Education, Governance, Health Care, Politics 2020

The Prices of Freedom

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We're surely safe, now....

Our recent – and continuing – experiment with executive, unconstitutional tyranny in the name of public health, ought to wake up a nation that has been doing a poor job of conveying America’s exceptionalism and founding ideas.  At least two generations have matriculated with limited and essentially non-philosophical education about our own country’s history.  The unique responsibility that is part of and the foundation of  United States citizenship is barely mentioned, if not derogated, in government-monopoly “public” schools.

Being shut-down, locked-down, and pushed-around by a variety of state governments brings to mind the importance of our Constitution and our individual sovereignty as U.S. citizens – sovereignty that does NOT extend to non-citizens.  We are exceptional precisely because our form of government, and the IDEAS that define it are an exception to commonplace tyrannies that defined governance prior to the American Revolution.  Our nation is not an outgrowth of ethnicity or tribal history, but of a rare, exceptional set of ideas and philosophies.  One of these is that citizens are sovereign  and the federal government is formed by their consent, limited  by the Constitution that We the people created, ratified and (should) hold sacred.  If we only understood it!

It is hard to explain to Obama types who perceive the Constitution as flawed since it doesn’t list all the free stuff the federal government is obligated to give to people.  Those are they who bristle at the description, “free stuff.”  People will be paying taxes out the wazzoo for all the federal gifties, they note.

Still, as any veteran can tell us, there is a price to pay for freedom; we just don’t contemplate what that statement actually means.  A young-to-middlin’ man whom Prudence has known for his entire life, has grown to be a good observer of political fallacy, and he pointed out a good one regarding coronavirus tyranny: our freedom… our sovereign independence is not a gift from any government.  It is God-given, or, if you can’t stomach those concepts, it is a birthright if born under the Constitution, and precious.  Yet we wiil happily share it(!) with anyone who wishes to become a U. S. citizen.  That’s a gift that isn’t even offered anywhere else in the world, except somewhat in Canada and a couple other former dominions.

Freedom belongs  to the individual; it is personal, private property.  Unless we hurt others by committing crimes, no one can CONSTITUTIONALLY take our freedoms away.  Free citizens installed the constitution to limit the powers that the federal government THAT WE CREATED, could exercise on OUR behalf.  WE delineated the limits to government, not the government – not the congress – not any president except in the rare instances when the survival of the nation was threatened, war was declared by our supposed representatives, or when internal uprising threatened the nation.  Nowhere in its clarity and brevity is there a power granted by the people to restrict our inalienable rights in the event of  really bad influenza.  These bedrock concepts may sound quaint, but THEY ARE THE FUNDAMENTS of the United States of America.

So, since freedom of movement, assembly, religion, the redress of grievances, of speech and from unreasonable search and seizure belong to US, along with freedom from excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishments, from being forced to quarter soldiers in our homes unless provided by law in times of war, from frivolous criminal charges except by a grand jury, from deprivation of life, liberty or property except by due process of law, and from having our property taken for public use without just compensation, they are OUR PROPERTY.  We also have the right to a speedy trial, and to confront witnesses against us and to have the assistance of counsel.  We may demand a trial by jury.  The enumeration of rights (protected by the Constitution) shall not be taken to mean that other rights not enumerated are not still retained by the people.  Do you grasp the enormity of those words and others in the Constitution?  WE are the top of the heap: NOT THE GOVERNMENT.

The Fifth Amendment enumerates our right to JUST COMPENSATION when our properties are TAKEN from us.  Where does this leave our small-g governors when they attempt to force us to stay home, to stop working, to stop going out without a face-mask, to stop assembling with whom we please, or to stop earning our lawful livings?  How can we be restricted from buying any lawful product from any lawful seller thereof?  Our RIGHTS are our PROPERTIES… inalienable except in the most dire circumstances.  Over the years courts and even the Supreme Court have established that there must exist some overarching PUBLIC PURPOSE for ANY restriction of citizens’ rights.

There are 1,000 definitions of “public purpose” for every 100 instances of the exercise of police power.  Since the government, AND THEREFORE THE POLICE, exists to serve and protect US, our property , our rights, our citizenship, in fact our sovereignty, public gatherings, riots, parades and demonstrations and other incidents that block commerce and free access to public works like streets and sidewalks which WE PAID FOR AND OWN, legally and only appropriately, may be restricted to serve a public purpose (that purpose being the defense of good order so that private rights and properties may be legally enjoyed), including commercial properties.  Public safety in terms of free and safe flow of traffic and commerce, is also a public purpose.

So where is the government when the “public purpose” umbrella has evaporated in the presence of new information, scientific and otherwise?  It is in the increasingly comfortable position of tyrant, decreeing and attempting to enforce restrictions on the sovereign rights of citizens for NO GOOD PUBLIC PURPOSE.  And here is where we are regarding restrictions on movement, assembly, commerce, travel and personal hygiene in the guise of imaginary “Law” that says no one may exit his or her domicile without wearing a face covering.  We need not get in to keeping 6 feet away from other people.  These restrictions on rights actually form an offer to take with just compensation, our personal properties: things we own without restriction.

So WE THE PEOPLE should issue letters of conditional acceptance to our governors and Mayors and selectmen and Aldermen and police officials if necessary, stating our CHARGE for the loss of freedoms and rights.  That is, “just compensation” is not a price set by government who desires to take these properties for NO compensation; no, it is a price that seems “just” to each of us based on our own free judgment of the importance and therefore value of specific ones of our rights.  It seems Prudent that wearing a silly mask that has neither medical nor public value, should cost $80.00 per day, no terms: payable upon receipt.  Restriction to one’s home is worth at least $336 per day, unless one has school-age children, which adds $121.77 per child.  Staying 6 feet away from others is worth $2.25 per foot, per hour times the number of people so distanced.  The federal magicians have already tried to pay us for our inherent right to work.  Freedom of Religion is worth a lot more than these tiny sums.

It’s a whole lot less costly than days in court with juries, which cases the state and municipalities will lose.