Category Archives: Family

Education, Family, Sex

WHY A RAINBOW?

Leave a comment
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.

Culture, Family, Responsibility

Real Heroes

Leave a comment

Following the news over the past, well… 30 years…, no, 38 years, yields an overarching sense of unease, at least, or sadness.  On the other hand, there is a lot that was and is good about the period, although the risks to the nation have, in fact, increased.

Recently we attended an award ceremony honoring police officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians.  Lots of plaques were handed over, many political citations delivered, photographs taken and hands shaken.  Great descriptions were spoken by proud chiefs of departments, of the events, both heroic and heart-warming, that spurred the recognitions and the great banquet we all attended.  America is rather special in the world of celebratory and honorary plaques.  Not simply sports trophies, including individual trophies, but plaques and awards for individual excellence in every field, including abundant charitable acts and volunteerism, are presented / awarded in the millions every year in North America.

Such was the focus of the banquet noted above.  As in every year, individuals and small teams of police, firefighters and EMT’s, responding to emergencies large and small, performed extremely well, usually saving lives or injury, restoring safety or comforting those affected.  We have come to expect such excellence and we’re happy to recognize it publicly.  Private companies proudly provide financial support so that hundreds both within and without the departments represented, can join in recognizing the “heroes amongst us.”

Where do they come from, these men and women of excellence?  Meritocracy: a tradition of testing and performing to standards that should at least make excellence likely, if not guarantee it.   High, even sacrificial performance, does not derive from social egalitarianism; it derives from individuality and the beliefs of the individual.  It derives from an inner sense of sacrifice for others… even others one does not know.

If such true servants were assigned their duties, proscribed by rules and threats of loss, the acts of heroism would be much rarer, the acts of charity unknown.  The innate belief in a purpose for life that is transcendent, spiritual, if you will, is required to act selflessly.  Humans, inherently capitalist as they are, will not risk comfort or safety without some reward, spiritual or otherwise.  Where the spiritual aspect is destroyed, only personal wealth, money, sex, or other worldly riches suffice.

The men and women honored earlier this year received no financial reward.  I can’t state any evidence of greater safety for any of them.  They didn’t get raises, although their dinners were free to them.  The sponsors presented plaques of recognition; various state senators and representatives provided citations from their respective legislative chambers, and mayors and town managers chimed in, too.  But, no wealth.

The honorees consider that they were “just doing their jobs,” and that no awards were needed.  Yet they could have each “done their jobs” with less effort, less risk, less imagination or innovation.  Each might have done the minimum necessary to pass the standard tests, to attend required training, or even to take that training very seriously.  But they didn’t.  Each seems to carry in himself or herself, a sense of duty to something greater than one’s self gain.  Each seems to excel when he or she might do something lesser.

Their communities do the right thing to provide recognition, be it a plaque, a certificate or simply deserved thanks.  Prudence says it’s a shame more citizens don’t take part.

Culture, Economics, Education, Family, Immigration, Race, Responsibility, Trump

Party of Hate

Leave a comment
“Doctors” learn this procedure from one another to become “good” at it.

The battle over a “border wall” on the southern, Mexican border is a symptom of larger and more significant hatreds motivating a large minority of American residents.  One hopes, and prays, that those same will step back and reconsider their desire to feed such ugly motivations.  Led by Democrat leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer, Barack Obama and now, Andrew Cuomo, and many others, these new political haters appear to share several common traits:

  • They hate the Constitution as it was designed and written.  The intent of the founders cannot be accepted, in their views, because some of them owned slaves, a grievous custom, without question, but totally irrelevant to the ideas and philosophies they espoused.  In fact, the designers and compilers of the American ideas were ALL opposed to slavery and did their best to help it phase out of American life.  Read Frederick Douglass; he understood.
  • They are deeply ignorant of American and of European history, and of the Bible, itself.  The underpinnings of American culture are ignored by them, even reviled.
  • The institutions of government are trusted by them more than any individual’s motivation, and the seeming ability to legislate or regulate – doesn’t much matter – people to act as their fellow thinkers wish, is so tantalizing as to distort the presence or even the perception of liberty.
  • They view America’s existence as an affront to all non-white, non-European people, and therefore not deserving of defense, even of its borders, and that the history of America should be erased from people’s minds and certainly from educational systems so that America’s evilness and corruption can never again interfere with universal sharing of all wealth or with individual freedoms to play, fornicate and indulge as Gaia intended, under the careful watch of the Smarter Ones.  They’ll identify themselves.

So, politics is not the actions of a free people to choose their leaders and governing philosophies; it is the benign control of wages, prices and production so that everyone is EQUAL, with brownish people being more equal than white people.  Skills-based education will no longer be required for most students, so long as there are enough very smart people who should be compensated for making everyone else comfortable.

The quaint chaos of individuality and “freedom” can be avoided.

The majesty of American citizenship is unique in the world.  There is no system like ours.  Anyone… anyone, anyone who can honestly swear to uphold the Constitution, obey civic law, pay his or her bills and act responsibly, can become an American – an actual, living, breathing, American.  One wishes those born here were held to the same standards, but still, it’s impossible to sign up for a French residency and ever, ever become, well, French.  The same is true for Japan, China, Japan, Korea, or India or virtually any ethnically defined  country.  You might get to live in other countries legally, but you’ll never become one of them.  America, including Canada, is different.  America is defined by the ideas that formed her, and by geography.  That’s it.  No matter how hard racists of every shade attempt to say America is defined by white skin, it has never been so.

This is not to say there haven’t been some terrible ideas held by “Whites.”  There are terrible ideas held by every race.  The tendencies to gain power or wealth or women by whatever means can be devised, legality and justice be damned, is pretty much universal.  The religious / ethical belief structures that lead us to contain those desires, to channel them for greater goods, to construct families that produce good adults from the children they are responsible for… those we are tearing down by every means possible, even through new laws that give status to the most twisted perversions and hatreds.

Hatred of America is readily evidenced by laws – LAWS – that permit partial-birth “abortion” and even infanticide for the most temporal purposes, even convenience.  Since Roe v. Wade was given Supreme Court justification, we have killed-off 61 million Americans while importing 30 million non-Americans to “pay for our Social Security.”  The trouble with Americans is they might become infected with individuality, Constitutionalism, responsibility and freedom!  So, we destroy those who might make America stronger and import, illegally, those more likely to be dependent upon the whims and pleasures of the Smarter Ones, made widely known by their widely parroted self-declarations.

Trump, for all his flaws and imperfections, is trying, almost alone, to restore the mighty engines of freedom.  If we are waiting for perfect, flawless  leaders to arrive before we follow them away from rot and debauchery, we’ll wait forever while the last great hope of mankind is pissed away.

Culture, Economics, Education, Family, Representation

The Fibers of failure

Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Potters of Socialism

Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Culture, Economics, Education, Family, Governance, Politics 2018

As Ye Sow…

Leave a comment

The alligators are circling and the Democrats are circling at the same time. The former are circling the Trump administration and the presidency, itself; the latter are circling the cesspool drain of socialism. Both the alligators of the “deep,” or now referenced, “steady” state, and the Democrats/neo-Socialists use the same set of tactics: Fascism.

“Oh, no,” you might say, “Fascism is a tool of the far-right and of White supremacists (whoever they are), and the left tries to fight them off!” Well.

You, the alligators and the Democrat left are confused. Fascism is a tool of the left. You have been taught the opposite, but a simple reading of history instructs us that we need to properly define Left and Right, perhaps starting with a change of terms. The left has changed the meaning of words repeatedly, but again, let’s use the right terms for Left and Right. “Liberal,” after all, described the colonists who fought against the British crown – which was “right” and which “left?”

Let’s consider that one trend in history, indeed the most common trend by far, is toward tyrannical control of people and economies. The alternative, individual liberty and actual democracy, is rarer, and, in combination with republicanism, more so. These two large trends can, roughly, describe almost every organized nation, today, and even the United Nations organization. Here’s where the permanence of word definitions becomes crucial. For our discussion Prudence suggests that “Liberty” be the direction of one trend, the rarer one, and “Tyranny… no, too pejorative a term… Control” be the direction of the more common trend throughout history. Societies and nations are on either a path toward greater individual liberty or toward greater centralized control.

On the liberty path we mark events like the invention of democracy, attributed to the Greeks; the Roman Senate, Christianity – which is not to say the Catholic or any other church unequivocally – the Renaissance, the Magna Carta, the English parliament, the Reformation of Martin Luther, the U. S. Constitution, Bill of Rights and other key amendments, the Civil War, World War II and the breakup of the Soviet Union. An incomplete list, certainly, but milestones nonetheless.

The story of control has always been marked by stronger over weaker people, conquest, kings, caesars and czars. As economic freedom and rights to private property took hold, the rise of socialism, always lurking but strengthened by unchecked economic inequality, became widespread enough in the 1800’s to create the dominant political forces of the 1900’s, including fascism and its ugly brother, communism. The new colossus, America, was not and is not immune from their blandishments.

We cannot examine our current status and our future, without recognizing the organizing morals of religion, and the educational value of churches. For “western” civilization the chief organizing moral structure has been, first, Judaism and the Old Testament, and then Christianity and the New Testament. The result of the long sweep of the Old Testament was to usher in the New and the examples and teachings of Jesus, the Christ. It is not one path, it is two, the second of which proclaims an individual relationship with God, and individual responsibility, as well. No longer was the story of God’s chosen people told about groups, but about individuals. No longer was the possibility of ascension into Heaven reserved for a handful of prophets, but it was made the business of every person. It was no longer an arcane secret, but instead the path was described and illustrated by Jesus, himself: “Greater things than I have done you shall do because I go unto the Father.”

Okay, enough of that. Let’s at least agree that Jesus’ teaching was that every individual was responsible for his or her own salvation or refusal of salvation. The doors of heaven were open to every person not committed to or consumed by evil… and each of us is responsible for the path he or she chooses – not so different from the Old Testament lessons, but personalized. It is the fundament of the Constitution and the concept of liberty, itself, and at no time divorced from responsibility: “As ye sow, so shall (must) ye reap.”

We can’t sow lies and expect honesty and truth to spring forth, for example.
Does this background inform the present? Prudence suggests that it does. Which actors are motivated by the desire to control individuals and their economic circumstances? Are they not “Democrat Socialists?” How do they propose to exert control?
The methods and tools are a very long list, but here are the most obvious ways:

Universal health care, or “single payer” or “Medicare for all.”

Comprehensive gun control.

Lower education standards for American history.

Nationalized Welfare.

Aggravated racial tensions.

Paid “antifa” thugs.

Those should be enough to show the direction that the left is taking, none of which is strengthening for the United States.

At first it is hard to understand why Democrats of today would be so fired up about the short list of 6 tactics, above. It is because they are socialists and socialism is about control and little else. You can see from the lowered education tactic that socialism’s resistance to the American experiment in individual sovereignty is not new, and if it must take 3 or 5 or a hundred generations, liberty’s ugly plans must be thwarted. The only defense against socialism is an alert, educated, self-disciplined citizenry… one that shares basic moral codes.

We can’t deny that Judeo-Christianity has informed our entire legal code and common-law bases for organizing this amazingly successful (western) civilization. We need not delve into matters of faith to recognize the practicality and reinforcing values of our legal traditions. It is informative that lately all things Christian are derogated and mocked, attacked, in fact. At the same time government and education institutions remove themselves from moral guidance or enforcement and even punish expressions of Christian values.

In the streets and in current politics, resistance to laws and their enforcement – and to their enforcers – is rampant, and deadly. These are socialists and fascists who are tearing down our legal and moral codes. Socialism lives on rules that society needs our wonderful governors to enforce (fulfilling the control instinct) since non-elite people cannot be expected to do almost anything correctly without them. This includes raising of children, imbuing them with morals, teaching them how to strive and excel, instructing them on proper relationships with and respect for the opposite sex, economic responsibility for oneself and one’s family, preparing them for independence and enlightening them with patriotism. These are all responsibilities of a benign, socialist government, after all.

When the Founders assembled the Constitution from the greatest civil organizing philosophies of freedom, they initiated a unique challenge to the prevailing organizing principles of tyranny, monarchy and theocracy. No other nation had attempted the creation of a government based on the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. In the process, and following a bitter fight against arguably the most powerful empire in the world at that time, the “American Dream” was born. It is little understood today, but is defined by “E pluribus unum.” America – the United States – would be a nation where all kinds and origins of people can form a nation, live and work together under a regime of personal responsibility and shared morality, self-discipline and individual civic sovereignty. Remarkable, and the diametric opposite of socialist diffusion of responsibility – and morality.

Socialism is by origin and intent a system without spirituality. Every one of its tenets presumes that human-devised, rules-based micro-management will yield a better society than religious or faith-based moral structures have or ever will. Socialism, by definition, is antithetical to Constitutional republicanism, and this fact illustrates why socialists have been pressing socialist “solutions” to civic and economic problems in the U. S. since the post-Civil War era, an effort that gained strength with each World War, the Depression and the “Civil Rights” movements. The skids were greased by Lyndon Johnson, Ted Kennedy and “Watergate.”

Now we are faced with one of our two major political parties celebrating resistance to laws and to law enforcement, even as it cries for more regulation from a massive, unmanageable government. What sort of political future… what sort of governing future do its members foresee? Are they anticipating a society with better cohesiveness, or lower crime rates, perhaps? By what mechanisms shall order be assured after dozens, if not hundreds of crimes are deemed un-prosecutable? Even now attorneys general are fighting federal authorities in many jurisdictions; many candidates for those offices are campaigning on their willingness to overlook criminal prosecutions they don’t like. How, indeed, will order be ensured?

Disorder is far from the socialist model… control is its bedrock. These same who agitate and cry for legal disorder, swoon for ultra-left socialist candidates and for ‘antifa,’ itself. It is the grand disorder of freedom that they hate… the majesty of it left in the hands of a moral, independent people. We are socialism’s enemy and socialism is ours, if we have the mind to understand and the heart to defend, our Constitution.

We cannot sow socialism and expect freedom and individual liberty to spring forth.

Education, Family, Guns, Right?

Eau to be gun free

Leave a comment

“School Shootings” are among those events that tear people apart and, roughly, along the widening “liberal-conservative” divide.  Certainly adults in both frames of belief have children, send them to school, love them dearly and do what they possibly can to keep them “safe.”  How is it that they can’t agree on how to do so?  Again, both types of parents love their kids.

The same divide produces separation on “rights” of a thousand kinds, on the role of governments in individuals’ lives, on the role of education, itself – particularly so-called “public” education, and even on the role of parents, themselves!  Into these widely divergent sets of opinions let’s inject the subject of guns and of the Second Amendment.  After all, many fear that the greatest threat to children’s well-being is of being shot inside their gun-free schools.  A wide divergence, indeed.

Along with other divisions between the two generic groups there seems to be one along military lines.  There are a thousand nuances, but in general conservatives are more in favor of military training, discipline, duty, honor and bravery, than are liberals.  Liberals are more in favor of government in its own right, more inclined to favor extremely personal “rights” to be codified, protected and even enforced by government, and to that degree, liberals also favor police in their roles of enforcing “civil rights,” a somewhat malleable term.

Conservatives also honor police but rather more for their quasi-military structure, honor and daily bravery.  At the same time conservatives see police as potentially threatening to constitutional rights, even twistable by “government” to control populations rather than to protect them.  Many questions arose as part of the Valentine’s Day school shooting in Parkland, Florida: questions of policing, of guns, of safety, of parenting, of news… and of government.

Quite distinctly, liberals believe that one or another form of “gun control” will make school shootings and other crimes where guns are employed, impossible.  This is not unlike liberal beliefs about governmental programs like public housing projects, in which residents of such projects will become more responsible toward themselves and others by virtue of having a decent place to live.  The same could be said of liberal attitudes toward most welfare programs.  In a generic sense, liberals believe that government in its great wisdom and goodness will make better citizens – better humans – than develop naturally or, incredibly in their view, by the hand of God.

Conservatives tend, generally, to see guns as protective devices in at least as great a degree as they might be offensive.  Almost automatically conservatives respect and honor the Second Amendment and the civil right of gun bearing.  Where liberals think that guns are the problem, conservatives think that criminals are the problem; where liberals fear guns, increasingly as they appear “scary;” conservatives respect their power and uses.  Where liberals are frightened of and purposefully ignorant of guns, conservatives see mechanisms that may be learned, understood and mastered with a set of skills.  The demands for “solutions” to school shootings following the Parkland “snafu,” exist in two separate universes.

Liberals want government to modify humans by legislating limits on their rights and actions: ban certain guns (scary ones), raise age limits for gun ownership and more.  Conservatives want a form of the “Guardian” program1 where sovereign individuals accept the training, risk and responsibility to protect themselves and others by arming themselves – including in school environments – and being willing to confront bad people using guns, and other weapons, offensively.

Liberals, including most teachers these days, fear guns, themselves.  They see the gun as inseparable from the person wielding it.  That is, the gun: metal, machining, grip, trigger, sights, barrel, caliber and bullets it holds – is as evil as the criminal prepared to use it against innocents.  No way can a liberal accept having that evil object anywhere near a school.  “Guns in classrooms?  That only puts us and our students in greater danger!”

Conservatives tend to be quieter about guns.  They don’t fear them but they do feel that it’s necessary to learn about them, get trained to use them1, get trained to deal with active threats, and, in general, they feel that concealed carry by a trained individual is a wise, sensible response to armed threats.  In other words, they believe in deterrence rather than response.

Response is a problem in every shooting incident.  Effectively, the only good response to an armed, crazed potential murderer is an armed challenger who is prepared to fire in the moment.  Schools could be turned into vaults with armored doors, metal detectors, and even Kevlar backpacks, but waiting for the potential murderer to arrive to a gun-free zone like a school and responding by hiding, simply means that it might be a tad more difficult for the killer to kill, but not at all impossible.  A couple of minutes are all it takes, whether firing an AR-15 or a 9 MM pistol, to kill a dozen or two defenseless kids and nearly helpless teachers.  In 3 to 5 minutes armed police could be on site, but those minutes are all that are needed to complete a tragedy as we too recently witnessed.

If first responders then fail to act in the most defensive, responsive way possible, then the number of dead will be greater.  There is no alternative… in the moment.

In order for gun bans to make a difference in actual school safety, there will have to be an enforced confiscation.  With millions of guns in private hands this presents the likelihood of resistance to such an action.  Will police then shoot at citizens who have never committed a crime with a gun except to own it?  Can such an ex-post-facto offense legally be imposed?  Can the right to bear arms be subsumed by popular emotion and civic policing?  It would seem that both eventualities are impossible.  But the demand for them fits the essential liberal opinion of guns, gun-owners and the Second Amendment.  All three are equal, and evil.

Liberals hate guns and, given their automatic equivocation of guns and owners, they often sound as though they hate their owners, too.  This fits with liberals’ disrespect of any who fear government more than guns.  Most of the “statistics” that gun haters cite are untrue, as are most crime statistics, themselves. Gun advocates are just as ready with inflated statistics of their own.  We have reached a point in the national debate over guns and rights and of wrongs and rights, when gun haters owe it to themselves and to the nation… and to schools and children, to grasp some realities about private gun ownership and their positive impacts on crime and social order.

The vast, vast majority of gun owners are not criminals.  There are more than 70 Million gun owners and more than 210 Million guns.  Among the 210 Million about 6 Million people own half of them.  Many gun owners have one, two or three, a rifle and a couple of sidearms.  A large subset of gun owners are active hunters and they may own 5 to 10 weapons: a shotgun or two, three to five rifles and two or three handguns.  Millions of guns are old, collectible, rarely even handled, much less used for anything.  A significant number are antiques.

But Americans own a lot of guns… gun ownership is part of America, part of our founding and heritage, written into our constitution and a legal, civilian right, like other civil rights, in fact.  Part of the chasm between beliefs is an urge and effort to, in effect, “un-do” America.  Our Judeo-Christian fundament and all the laws and traditions that flow from it, are, today, offensive to this group.  The definition of words and terms that describe the ideas and nature of “America,” are being changed daily.  There is a large and apparently growing segment of the United States that desires to “fundamentally change” America.  Those are they for whom “sovereign citizenry” is an affront, believing that a benevolent, socialist government is the only locus of trust in our society, never a sovereign individual.

Guns and self-defense are part of U. S. citizenship.  The more stupidly we deal, socially, with this fact the more times defenseless people will be victimized.  If we follow the concept of banning certain guns, now, upwards of 200 “types” of firearms, the net improvement to the safety of defenseless groups, most specifically and almost most defenseless, schoolchildren, will be approximately zero.  In a weird way the next school shooting is almost looked-forward-to by some rabid segments of leftists, for it will help ratchet up the demand for greater restrictions on the ability to own as well as buy or, likely, even manufacture certain types of guns.  The intended eventuality is a gun-free America.

That is to say, a non-American America, their ultimate goal.

Extreme defenders of the Second Amendment exclaim numerous statistics that are just as extremely “debunked” by anti-gunners.  Reviewing numerous studies over the past two decades one can learn that there are many, many thousands of instances of crime prevention thanks to civilian, legal gun possession.  There are probably not a million a year or two million – that is unknowable since most events are not newsworthy or even part of police reports.  But, there are thousands.  Even the Clinton administration, in studies2 opposing guns, found upwards of “1.5 million” yearly armed self-defense incidents.  Even “simple” female self-defenses against sexual assaults number over 100,000 events per year.

Let’s consider that there are, say, 400 thousand such events of various kinds.  That’s in the order of 1,100 events per day –a significant quantity.  A certain fraction of those would have resulted in physical assaults and murders… perhaps what, 1 in 20?  5% of crimes?  Are those lives not also of value?  Is it the position of anti-gun advocates that people have an obligation to remain defenseless, accepting rapes, beatings or worse while police are either on their way or, more likely, totally unaware of the event?

Is not self-defense of oneself and family the most fundamental of civil rights?  Can that be truly equated with the utter failure of law-enforcement in the matter of the Parkland massacre?  Or of the Fort Hood shooting?  Or even of Columbine where the weirdness of perpetrators was well-known in advance?

Anti-gun advocates need to recognize that there could barely be a civil society in the U. S. WITHOUT private gun ownership, guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

1http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2016/05/30/the-guardian-program/  1http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2016/03/26/shooting-back/

2 Gun Control Fact-Sheet 2004 / From Gun Owners Foundation, 8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102 Springfield, VA 22151

 

Culture, Education, Family

Do You Believe in Magic?

Leave a comment

It’s all a matter of belief. We strive for truth, or, at least, we tell ourselves that truth is our highest aspiration. But truth among people is the subject of much argument, if not battle. Our beliefs tell our internal selves what is “true” and what is “false.” Likewise, we have internal judgments about who is trustworthy and who is not. Over thousands of years we have created deep belief structures that “work,” in a sense, to organize societies and to increase, however fitfully, general prosperity and defensive strength. Religion is often a significant basis for progress, but has just as often been a limiter, even to this day.

Prudence suggests that the Judeo-Christian ethical platform has been, ultimately, the most successful of historic belief structures, yet it is assaulted daily as “unscientific” since it accepts “truths” that cannot be proven or tested in a laboratory. When are unshakable beliefs imparted? How is it that some kids prefer gang membership while others become Eagle Scouts? Do we think it happens from a conversation with a 5-year old? From Sesame Street? Pre-school?

Speak to a pre-school teacher and she can describe the wide range of attitudes among 3-year olds, some quite destructive. Where did they form those personalities? Well, at home, obviously, but when? At age two and a half? Age two… or earlier? Somehow very young kids are “empatterned” such that anti-social actions, even pathological actions, are the automatic reactions to stimuli. When are those patterns implanted?

Our suspicion is that the process commences in the womb. Ask an expectant mother about the reactions of her pre-born baby and she can describe how her moods and feelings coincide with movements. When she is stressed and when she is calm and happy there are noticeable differences in the baby’s kicks and turns. Do we think the baby is completely inured to its environment until the moment of birth?

Imagine a baby in the last couple of months of gestation in a home where revenge is the common reaction of the parents – and others – to every slight or act of disrespect. Every source of irritation between husband and wife yields a reaction that the offended party must “get even” with, or get the better of, the offending party. The baby, innocently, will mature with a comfortable reaction toward opposition or disrespect that virtually requires that he or she obtain revenge against the offender. It is what he or she “believes.”

What a different path of human interaction that child will be on; what a different interpretation of what love and hate may be. Think about the “differently socialized” children you’ve known. By the time they enter kindergarten such children are already “marked” for special handling. By the time they are teenagers, some of these revenge-comfortable kids are gang members, either organized or in a company of local “bullies.”

Now, place these boys in a position to enthrall girls who grew up without rational father figures, never knowing how a man should treat a woman, respect her and care for her, along with their children. Such an, in effect, fatherless girl would perceive the feral sexual attentions of just as possibly fatherless boys, as true compassion. Now there are two ill-socialized children having their own children, who gestate and begin post-natal life amidst discord, resentment, poverty and, almost inevitably, vengefulness.

Is urban destruction like Ferguson, Missouri or Baltimore, Maryland at all surprising amidst populations that our own social policies have generated in far less than ideal pre-natal and post-natal family conditions? By foregoing social mores related to marriage and family and child-rearing, have we commenced a process of social disintegration? Most likely. Given this, where do we expect our dishonest politics to lead us?

Because individual power and status is the most vital of purposes for elected “representatives,” the misfortunes and dysfunctions of populations have become sources of political, personal, power. We could not have tolerated, and funded beyond reason, via hundreds of overlapping social-service agencies, social dysfunction for literal decades, unless those expenses served the purposes of Congress and others made powerful thereby. It is not possible to consider our history since the 1960’s and conclude that the trillions of dollars expended on basically failed welfare theories, resulted in failure and explosive government expansion, accidentally!

We are destroying the most successful form of social organization the world has seen, insofar as its basis is individual opportunity, freedom and growth without tyranny. Worse, we have brought ourselves to a political point where we are arguing and fighting about how FAST the Judeo-Christian heritage may be dissolved.

We are maintaining the propagation of new citizens who will not have the opportunity to grow in personal character and integrity. They will not enjoy two-parent, loving nuclear families, nor the reinforcing institutions of church and morality-based education.

We are racing not to the Brave New World, but the Craven.

Family

All we need is Pot

Leave a comment

Brain Food
Brain Food
One of the least productive efforts a thinking society could engender is the legalization of marijuana. Now that we have failed, miserably, to control the entry of drugs into the United States – not because we can’t control them, but because we have not the collective will to do so – pot-heads are using that failure as a reason to legalize.
Then there is the old saw, “Alcohol is even worse, so give us our dope.”
Liberals and other statists can’t wait to, quote, “regulate it,” unquote, and tax it… ohhh, my gawwd… tax revenue. Ohhhh. Wow.
Dopers and those who will profit from their pot habits, point to traffic accidents tied to booze and say that those statistics “prove” that pot is less harmful, so let’s party, man. To them it’s also proof that we long-ago relinquished our societal right to limit anything people want to do for pleasure. Besides, since those who most want to restrict pot don’t use it themselves they have no right to limit those who do.
Clearly if your skin is not brown you have no right to pass judgment on a brown-skinned law-breaker; if you’ve never raped a girl you can’t understand or condemn a rapist; if you didn’t grow up poor you can’t criticize rioters.
So I can’t criticize pot users, but a few facts are still pertinent. I was going to say timely, but the irony would be lost… eventually.
Like any psychoactive substance, marijuana messes up mental function. It has its own set of effects, but its common effects are well-known and the subject of much humor. Today it’s politically incorrect to joke about alcohol problems and drunkenness. Marijuana’s effects, on the other hand, are still funny, still mocked, still mimicked… and we laugh.
As marijuana gains popular legitimacy through various forms of disingenuous ballot initiatives (you know “medical marijuana” is a giant lie; if it were “medical” it’d be sold at CVS) prompted by looming profits and the intense desire of pot-heads to gain permission as it were to do something “wrong” and slightly stupid, politicians – social leaders, they – are finding ways to gain votes by helping to destroy the social fabric. The fact that we appear to have “lost” the war on drugs is proof only that we have never truly fought it, not that widespread drug use is “inevitable.”
Despite what you may have heard, pot use does often lead to use of stronger drugs. Pot that will soon be “recreational,” or, better, “de-creational” is 10 times stronger than what the great leaders of the ‘60’s messed around with. And the euphoria of toking comes from interaction with the same pleasure receptors as do cocaine and opioids, which we still, sort-of, think are bad.
That child development is severely messed up by pot use – as is their future success and mental balance – should lead us to make it harder to get the stuff. Not so according to great pot-conflicted, or pot-afflicted, political “leaders.”
Pot, I believe, has a lot to do, pre-natally, with the rapid increase in ADHD and autism-spectrum disorders. Not to worry, we have renamed amphetamines to help some of those, and other drugs may come along to counteract other drug downsides – like Narcan.
It’s all depravity but repackaged to be rational because alcohol is bad for some people. To the degree that some drinkers become alcoholics, so do pot smokers become addicted and / or strongly habituated, suffering withdrawal reactions when cut off from it. What a victory for society. You think the Constitution protects license as much as liberty? Is there a line you won’t cross in that descent? Why not this one?

Prudence Leadbetter

Family

Mothers and Fathers, oh, my!

Leave a comment

American society (and civilization) is dissembling, which we like to blame on religious flaws, drugs, video games and e-mail, but it’s due as well to modern feminism – the kind that hates motherhood, fatherhood, marriage and the unique civilizing roles of the females of our species.

This in no way is an attempt to justify keeping women “down,” or to relegate them to male-defined positions in society. Quite the opposite.

Humans are animals – mammals – which means there are sperm-bearers and egg-bearers, and the egg-bearers conceive internally, gestate internally, give birth to live offspring, and suckle them with mammary glands until able to eat gathered or prepared foods. The sperm-bearers have it all too easy in this process, since their commitment to the physical acts of procreation is over in a matter of minutes, depending on what is required to gain the egg-bearer’s acceptance, following which they are not physically tied to the rest of the biological imperatives to which egg-bearers most definitely are. As animals, then, the sperm-bearers are “free” to impregnate other egg-bearers, and many do or try to. This process works for musk-oxen and cattle.

For male humans there are other, overarching obligations than just providing sperm, although popular culture has succeeded in convincing many to ignore them. Crappy politics has a role here, too.

Like it or not, human beings are more than animals. We are sentient – at least most are – which requires very large brains and crania, which means that our gestations are lengthy, rendering females weak and vulnerable for a period of time, during which caring males are obligated to protect them and their newborns, who, themselves, are weak and vulnerable for years after birth, requiring fathers to protect and care for both mother and child until maturity and independence are attained by the child.

There are stresses within these relationships that threaten continuity (success) for the father’s sperm, as it were, and, equally, for the mother’s egg. As societies became civilization, formal rules developed to maintain fathers’ commitments to mothers and to children.

Today we’re too smart for these concepts. Feminism first taught us that women don’t need men except for fun, when permitted. “Progressives” immediately latched on to this new voting bloc and determined that a well-funded governmental, unemotional, non-judgmental, morally neutral, quasi-paternal socialist structure of “free” support for single mothers, could be sold as somehow creating equality for women, and therefore part of the “American Dream.” This perverse outlook invaded and took over education, essentially, as the most effective way to marginalize boys, boyhood and manliness in the name of “equality.” That the breaking of the most critical bonds of civilization was also a result of this weird, new “feminism,” matters not at all to those who have won a great political victory.

There are wise, somewhat reviled mothers, who recognize the importance, indeed, essence of mother- and father-hood. These are they who can see the plain truth of family disintegration virtually at the hands of our own government. They can see that single-motherhood creates the greatest likelihood for poverty and for the development of failed men and, literally, subjugated women! Why does this happen?

It is a result of both boys and girls growing up without fathers, which, most unfortunately, often means almost without mothers, too. Boyhood without proper fathering means a population of feral males who have no concept of how a man should treat a woman, no concept of commitment, compromise or responsibility, no understanding of sacrifice for one’s family, including actively working to provide the best possible environment for one’s children. Consequently, any girls who will succumb to their feral blandishments, will soon be “known” by one (or more) of them, and often impregnated thereby, only to produce children who are likely to fail (or be jailed) in modern society, or an abortion – a statement of complete social failure.

For the fatherless girls’ part, they grow up never experiencing how a man is supposed to treat a woman, or experiencing marital commitment of a man (and woman), or understanding chastity and retention of a woman’s sexual favors / powers as part of the bonding with a husband and father for protection of her progeny.
These girls, tragically, accept feral sexuality as real emotional attachment. Soon their lives are on a downward path that government agencies can never, ever, ever, fix. Their barely wanted children will experience the hatred of other, feral boyfriends and, with predictable likelihood, painful abuse and death. We claim, as all-caring citizens of the world, that child abuse is wrong and should be more illegal than it now is, but we expend more love on abused animals than on abused children.

Our response? More government quasi-responsibility for our erstwhile “happiness,” and less personal responsibility for our actions. What folly.