Bill's Comments

Laugh of the day

2011-12-06T12:05:00.000-05:00

My McAfee anti-spam folder had the following item in it:

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Advent Meditation

2011-12-06T09:22:00.000-05:00

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in His hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
Our full homage to command.
--Liturgy of St James
--17th century French carol

The preceding lyrics from the Liturgy of St James and set to a French 17th century carol, offer a distinct contrast to our modern, secular preparations for Christmas. While the rest of the world in this Advent season frantically competes with “National Lampoon’s Christmas” to combat the earlier darkness and late morning light, and blasts the sounds of Christmas music, the lyrics of which have lost all meaning in their repetition, to drown out the voices in our heads that wonder what we are really doing, this gentle song says to stop, wonder, and feel the great blessing that was once and forever bestowed upon us and that we celebrate every year.

God gives us what we need, and as this song tells us, we do not need more things and more distraction. We need more wonder, more gratitude, more willingness to worship, to stop our insane pace and find the peace being offered.

The Great Fire--a play

2011-11-08T17:21:00.000-05:00

The Great Chicago Fire in a play---an extremely intense afternoon of drama, at the Lookingglass Theater in Chicago, IL.

The Great Fire lasted 36 hours, burned 2200 acres, displaced 100,000 families, and destroyed esentially everything south of Fullerton street. The conditions could be described as a perfect storm--drought-parched, solid wood, houses, sidewalks, streets, and a steady, high wind. The spark was in the O'Leary barn--supposedly due to a cow kicking over a lantern. The play that it inspired is a complex creation, both in the script and in the execution.

It's structure is the interwoven stories of six survivors. But the central figure is the personification of the fire, who constantly threads through the scenes, battles the people and destroys property. Apparently there were places that were supposed to be humorous during the play--I never saw them. From the start with the ominous sub-sonics on the sound system as The Fire staged the O'Leary incident with toy animals and people and a play barn, it was greater and lesser tension throughout, until the final scene when the rain came.

Technically this show was a tour-du-force. The sound design, the lighting design, and especially the set design, with falling walls, all added to the tension and foreboding. The representations of buildings with wood and paper models, and their symbolic destruction as they were taken down or cut down and let fall, gave a definite feeling of the losses that were incurred. The management of the performance was perfect by my observation. I detected no mis-cues or mis-operation of props.

The actors were all superb, some of them playing as many as three or four roles with varying characters and accents. But to me, Lindsay Noel Whiting as the Fire was far and away the star. She was dressed much like a young, 1870's girl, and wore her hair as two large braids adding to the effect. One might have thought she were only 12 or 13 at first glance, until one observed her bearing. She is a phenomenal acrobat, scaling the supports at unbelievable speed and hanging in poses most people could not accomplish. But what stands out is her ability to be malevolent. There was no doubt that as The Fire, she was evil. It is this malevolence, despite the surface childlike look, that kept the mood constantly tense.

This play is drama at its best, providing a complex view of life, and leaving one with much to think about. It cannot be called entertaining, it took effort to watch and keep track. However, it is definitely worth the time.

Sizzle: A different look at Global Warming

2011-11-08T16:13:00.000-05:00

Last Friday I attended a preview performance of "Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy," written by Sarah Gmitter and Jason Burkett. It was presented by The New Suit Theater Company at West Stage of the Raven Theater Complex in Chicago, IL (SW corner of N Clark and W Granville).

New Suit produces plays that explore complex issues and make them understandable. This play and production certainly met that goal. Additionally Jason Burkett's plays always have a subtext. In this case, it was that people need to quit listening only to what they themselves are saying and actually listen to other people. Also, they need to learn to restate their ideas if they are not being understood.

The play took its inspiration from a documentary on global warming created by Randy Olsen. The comedy aspects come from the imagined misadventures of Randy Olsen as he produced the film, and the exaggerated characters he works with and meets. The play affirms a belief in anthropogenic global warming, but not in the apocalyptic manner of Al Gore and other environmental doomsayers. Though I would be called a global warming denier, I would still recommend seeing the play because it does present the sides in a reasonably fair manner and does not approve of blocking out the other sides message.

The play used a cast of seven, with two of the cast doubling in speaking roles and all of the women in the cast at one time or another during the play doubling as walk-on airline hostesses. Andrew Nowak was an excellent harried, nervous, and confused Randy Olsen, and Jovan King was outstanding as his street-wise videographer. The two really worked well together. Michael Reyes as the larger-than-life egotistical and slightly bizarre producer was phenomenal. The remaining cast members provided excellent, well-acted support.

The venue at Raven Theater Complex is very well suited to the kind of play that Jason Burkett writes. It is a major improvement over the venue at which New Suit produced his previous play, "JedIraq: Megan's First War." It is easy to get to, and comforable, being on the ground level. The execution of the play was well managed. All the scene changes went smoothly and that is despite the use of the cast as stage hands and their need to do costume changes. The sets were minimal but completely fulfilled the necessary functions.

This was an extremely enjoyable evening of theater, making a serious issue both interesting and entertaining without trivializing it. "Sizzle" plays through November 14. I strongly recommend seeing it.

Eleven years and counting forever

2011-11-03T23:20:00.000-04:00

In Memoriam

Adam Trent Keezer

March 9, 1981 to November 4, 2000

Adam was the greatest

So long...farewell...good bye

After eleven years one lives with it, but never gets over it. He was truly a gentle giant, 6'5", 240 lbs, easy going, a great comedian, excellent musician, and a very creative writer. When a 19 years-old fills a church to overflowing at his funeral, you know he was a special person. To quote somebody else, "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased."

God save us from professional politicians

2011-11-02T22:41:00.000-04:00

The political news is filled with the rise of Herman Cain to lead Romney in several states by double digits. At the same time the pundits are in the tank for Romney and bombarding us with the weaknesses of Cain. Romney whom I see as a Republican version of John Kerry, a principleless person who will say whatever seems to be the right thing at the time, is touted as the one who can win with the independent voters. Note that there is no discussion of his principles or his programs (particularly RomneyCare). Just the bleat that he can win.

They have learned nothing in the last six years. The Republicans lost the Congress during Bush's term because they went for winning and betrayed every conservative principle, becoming Democrats-lite. They won the house back because they suddenly rediscovered their conservative principles with a lot of help from the TEA Party. Now they think they can with the presidency without those principles?

Obama won, not because he presented principles, but because the disgust with Bush and the Republicans was so overwhelming, the Democrats could have run anyone and won. But in a race defined by personality and not principle, Obama will beat Romney hands down, save that his record is now so bad many people are in the same attitude towards him that they were towards Bush.

But lets get back to the independent voter. To listen to the commentary, one would think and independent voter is some sort of fence-sitting Republicrat or Demlican. Nothing could be further from the truth, as the 2010 election showed. Independent voters are exactly that--independent. They vote based on what is important to them, not on party loyalty or ideology. In 2008 getting rid of incumbents was a primary goal of independents and they were quite successful. In 2010, getting rid of Democrats that passed ObamaCare was the primary goal, and boy was there a blood-bath in the House. This year, I expect a blood-bath in the Senate, but the House Republicans had best look to their votes. A number of freshmen appear to have succumbed to belt-way disease and may get a permanent cure, along with some more incumbents.

Independent voters tend to vote on principle, not party, or perhaps on desired result. They get it in their mind that some Congressman or Senator is the bad guy and they will work to get rid of him. They will jump party lines in primaries in order to either prevent the nomination of a notably bad candidate or to at least insure the least bad alternative if their preferred candidate fails to win in the Fall. Independents are not impressed by wishy-washy, half-elephant, half-ass, candidates. They are perfectly capable of making choices between two imperfect candidates.

As an independent, I am disgusted with the Republican party. I am conservative to the point of reactionary at times, but am willing to work with opposite viewpoints to make progress overall. What I see in the Republican party right now is a set of people in the background sucking all the juice out of the process, trying to create an inevitability in Romney because they think he can win, and in winning continue their gravy-train of business as usual in Washington. The most interesting candidates have problems, but would shake things up and in a good way. Among the ways would be the loss of the professional politician.

Before Dawkins, Hitchens, and their ilk.....

2011-10-18T17:08:00.000-04:00

....there was Homer W. Smith, fifty years before, in fact. In 1952 Homer W. Smith published his book, "Man and His Gods." The book is out of print, and is not available from the used-book dealers that Barnes and Noble associate with. Smith was a renal physiologist and was sufficiently notable that he was able to ask Albert Einstein to write a forward to the book.

The essence of the book is that all religion is oppressive and that pure intellect is the saving of humankind. He also tries to make the case that religions are simply warmed-over and co-opted versions of other religions, especially Christianity, towards which he has a particular animosity. He considers Christianity to be co-opted Mithraism. Like Dawkins and Hitchens, he cherry-picks the worst cases, in fact he goes in for sensationalism to such a degree that one could characterize the book as, Western religious history as told by The National Inquirer.

Unlike Dawkins and Hitchens, however, or any of the other Evangelical Atheists, he has actually read widely and deeply, including the historical Christian literature. He read with a jaundiced eye, but nonetheless, he covered a lot of detail and presented a highly detailed history from ancient Egypt to the turn of the twentieth century. He writes well, but I often became fatigued by the constant drumming of a point of view that considered all religious leaders to be con artists and in it for power and money, essentially hypocrites. He never fails to provide exquisite detail of the failings of religions, but never once presents any good. His discussion of the use of torture in the Middle Ages is the exemplar, with many pages listing of all the possible tortures that could be applied and the rules by which they were to be used. I also think his numbers of victims are exaggerated.

There are no credits given for the sources of his material until the final semi-autobiographical afterword called "About This Book." There he lists many of the authors and books he read over the years. Notable was that most of them were nineteenth and only early twentieth century. The latest I saw was 1932. This means that his interpretations were definitely out of date compared even to his years of publication. From the 1950's on, there has been a great revisiting of the relationship of religion to society over time. One of the casualties was an author that Smith seems to give much credit to and who appeared to have a great influence on Smith's thinking of the relation of religion to science--Draper. Draper's conflict scenario of science suppressed by religion has been very thoroughly discredited in recent times.

Homer Smith would not be considered as one of the "New Atheists," despite his obvious hostility to Christianity. He is too well-read, and not sufficiently rabid in his rhetoric. He does have the same filters operating on what he takes in and writes about. He, like almost all the intellectual atheists, places science and reason on a pedestal, failing to consider that the intellectual effort they exert to arive at their life positions via reason are beyond most people, nor do most people have the time or inclination to spend their energy on such efforts. They are ideologues for reason, failing to see that life is much messier than they know.

Heroes

2011-10-12T09:44:00.001-04:00

Wretchard (Richard Fernandez) in a post entitled " Only the Good Die Young " embedded a clip of the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill. Of all the men in recent history, he can arguably be considered responsible for saving the world through his leadership in WW II. (He died old, almost 90)

It strikes me that we won't see a Churchill or much of any other heroic type of leader anymore. We would have condemned him long before he became Prime Minister for his personality, his abrasiveness, his smoking, his appearance. We are obsessed with appearances now--and look what we elected as a leader--an incompetent classic narcissist. Anyone that shows competency is hounded by the press and pilloried in any way possible, even to the creation of lies. The Republicans have a whole group of competent people vying for the candidacy for President, but all of them except Romney, a pretty-boy, Obama-lite politician, are constantly subjected to insult, dismissal, and contempt.

We have no idea anymore of what a hero is, what he/she looks like, or what she/he acts like. We want perfection or nothing, being unable to prioritize our needs and desires in a leader, and as a consequence being unable to compromise effectively.

It is no wonder the barbarians are at the gates.

The Fourth Horseman

2011-10-11T05:59:00.002-04:00

The allusion in the title is to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, to which the four most widely known atheists, Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and Dennett have been compared, callling them the Four Horsemen of Atheism. I have discussed Dawkins and Hitchens here, and Harris, briefly, here. This post concerns Daniel Dennett.

Dennett's book, Breaking the Spell[1], is what places him with the other three atheists, but I don't think it is a fair characterization of his writing. Actually the whole allusion to the four horsemen is unfair to both Harris and Dennett, much like lumping Fundamentalism, Protestantism, and Roman Catholicism together and calling them Christian. In many ways the differences are just as great among the atheists as among the three types of Christianity.

Dennett is an atheist, but he doesn't rub one's nose in it like Dawkins or Hitchens, nor does he outright condemn belief in God as do the other three, nor does he attempt to destroy religious belief. As a philosopher, he is stepping back a bit and in effect saying, "Religion is a big deal in the lives of many if not most people, we should understand why." He is proposing that religion should be studied like any other natural phenomenon, such as reproduction or social structures, with a view to understanding both what is beneficial and what is detrimental to people. He is also aware that in the studying of it, it is possible that it might be broken, that a part of its efficacy is its mystery.

The concern over understanding how religion really works, is "the spell" that he is proposing to break. He spends the first chapter pointing out that from a biological perspective, religion does not make sense. He also points out that religions enjoy "traditional exemption from certain sorts of analysis and criticism." [ital in original] This exemption is the spell. The spell is also the feelings that religion inspires in some people. The danger in studying religion is that this spell will be broken. He spends most of the book making the case that the study is worth the risk. But then he is not a believer.

I am not a fan of Dennett, but neither am I a foe. I have disagreements in one of his areas of expertise, the mind, but I found much to respect in this book. If one gets around or ignores the rank egotism of his wanting to refer to the intellectual atheists as "brights" the book is generally respectful of religion and religious people. He tends to elevate evolution to the same quasi-religious plane that Dawkins does, but is less offensive about it and provides quite a bit more information along the way.

He also brings in some very different illustrations from nature than the usual ones. Being a philosopher of the mind, he is fascinated by natural events that reprogram the minds of animals. In Elbow Room, he discusses a wasp call sphix, that has a very complex behavior that it turns out is not at all thinking though it appears that way. In this book he describes an ant that is infected with a fluke that changes the ant's behavior so that the fluke will be eaten by a cow or sheep. Dennett draws upon a much broader base of knowledge than any of the other authors I have read among the atheists. It shows in that his arguments are much stronger, and at the same time more temperate, with little dependence on rhetoric.

This book has caused me to reassess my opinions of Dennett. It now behooves me to acquire his entire output and carefully read it. I don't expect to come to agreement with him, but he is important for me to understand and be able to discuss, since we have at least two common areas of interest, religion and the mind.

[1]Dennett, Daniel C., Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Viking Penguin, New York, (2006)

The Best Tribute to Steve Jobs I Have Read

2011-10-07T09:37:00.000-04:00

Being slow to catch up, I just came across this excellent piece by Paul Greenberg in Townhall. He not only accurately places Steve Jobs at the head of the pack, but also properly identifies the reasons he got there.

Read it.

God's Problem

2011-10-05T09:36:00.002-04:00

This is the title of a recent book[1] by Bart D. Ehrman, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. It is an thorough presentation of the problem of suffering in the world as discussed in the Bible. It is also a personal statement by Dr. Ehrman on why he is an agnostic. He became an agnostic in response to the argument from evil against the existence of God.

This book is a very readable and excellent guide to what the Bible says about suffering, and points out that the answers are contradictory. Along the way, Dr. Ehrman points out the illogic of people who thank God for saving them when they are among the few saved in a disaster, when many others died at the same time. The obvious question is, "Why didn't He save them also?" or "Why did He allow the disaster in the first place?"

I have discussed the problems of good and evil and theodicy in other posts, so won't repeat the discussion. My answer, rather than agnosticism or atheism, was to decide that God was not omnipotent. [My thirty years of agnosticism were due to logical, philosophical issues not the problem of evil.]

Dr. Ehrman's presentation of the problem of evil is excellent. I think his attempted resolution is a bit weak, but then many would say my resolution leads to a God that is not worth worshipping. (Actually, I can't say as I worship God so much as revere, respect, and listen to Him.)

For anyone concerned with the theodicy, this is an important book. It presents all the sides of the issue, and all of the answers that have been offered. I strongly recommend it.

[1] Bart D. Ehrman, God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer, HarperCollins, New York, 2008

The Cobra

2011-10-01T16:37:00.000-04:00

This is the title of Fredrick Forsyth's latest book, published last year. This time instead of international politics, warfare, or terrorism, he tackles the drug trade, specifically the cocaine trade. As always, he uses a story to tell us some unpleasant truths about the real world. What makes him a master at this is that the story is always primary and the message almost incidental. In telling about the world as it really is, or as he perceives it for you post-modernists out there, he illustrates some important truths that would be ignored otherwise.

Forsyth uses the President of the US as the means to start and end his story. The beginning sketch certainly resembles the current occupant of the White House, but I seriously doubt he has the fortitude to make the decisions that lead to the action in the book. His Chief of Staff has a certain similarity to Emmanual Rohm, in his personality.

The plot is one of the President providing the means, legal and financial, via declaring drug trafficking to be a form of terrorism and burying the funding in other budgets, to allow a no-holds-barred approach to stopping the cocaine trade. Entire our central character, The Cobra. The Cobra creates and executes a plan that brings the drug cartel and its clients into a destructive war with each other.

This is all under the covers until the war breaks out. It is here that Forsyth provides the unpleasant truths about our society and our politicians--when we see the actual carnage, we will do anything to make it go away, including letting the drug traffic continue.

In the Penquin Signet Edition (paperback) pp 375-379 have the punch line. Here is the one-line summary from p 378:

"Our great nation can kill up to a million abroad, but not one percent of that figure of its own gangsters without sustaining a fainting fit."

Unfortunately, from my perspective it is all too true. We get what we ask for.

Bishop Hanson and associates--Shut up and sit down

2011-09-29T21:09:00.001-04:00

The September, 2011, issue of The Lutheran had this item on p. 9:

Meeting with Obama
"Despite committing himself fully to resolving the debt-ceiling crisis that cominated summer headlines, President Brack Obama took time to meet with Christian leaders, including ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson. The leaders a statement called 'A Circle of Protection,' in which they articulated need for the president and Congress to avoid cutting programs that protect the poor both in the US and globally. The statement urged approaches that help share the sacrifices necessary to eliminate the nation's deficit."

First of all this is a violation of Matthew 22: 15-22

15 Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words.
16 They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said, “we know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are.
17 Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is is righ to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”
18 But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me?
19 Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius,
20 and he asked them, “Whose portrait is on this? And whose inscription?”
21 “Caesar’s,” they replied. Then he said to them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
22 When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.

In meeting with a politician, any politician, and promulgating policy, Bishop Hanson and cronies has rendered unto Caesar that which is God's. (See my earlier post on the discussion of this.)

The second evil they have committed is endorsing the use of force to support what is supposed to be voluntary charitable assistance. ALL money that the government takes in and disperses is obtained by the use of overt or implied force--pay taxes or go to jail. The ultimate enforcer is the gun in the hand of a government official. Helping the poor and down-trodden is virtuous only if it is voluntary. Coercion removes moral value. Apparently the "leadership" of the the Christian commmunities has finally succumbed to pragmatics, the end of poverty relief by the dole justifies the forceable collection of taxes.

It is no wonder the mainline Protestant faiths are losing membership--their leaders are morally bankrupt. Their politics dictates their theology rather than the other way around.

Faster than light?

2011-09-29T19:18:00.000-04:00

The big news in science is the publication by CERN that they may have measured neutrinos moving faster than the speed of light. Actually what they have measured is their arrival time as slightly sooner than expected, and it computes to moving faster than light.

Immediately everyone is in a twitter over the possibilities of time travel because Special Relativity formulas give negative time values when velocities are faster than the speed of light.

Hold it right there.

This is an instance of something I have discussed before, the equating of a model of reality with reality itself. Special relativity actually is a description of the world when it is measured by light particles, which move at a constant speed in a vacuum. Actually it does not forbid faster than light movement, it simply says we can't measure it with light particles. The new measurements are not based on light but neutrinos which have some very different properties from other particles.

Once all the whoopla dies down and the press goes away to another story they can exploit for the moment, the results will be recast in a number of different hypotheses which will be tested and retested. Out of it will come new descriptions of the world we live in. My guess is that the description of the dimensional structure of the universe will be modified, and possibly time will be treated not as a fourth dimension as it is now, but in some different way. Stay tuned.

Towards intellectual honesty

2011-09-04T17:44:00.000-04:00

We often relegate the role of ideas to an inferior position in dealing with the world. However, if one takes the time to look back at history, the philosophers have a profound effect on history, allbeit very delayed. Case in point, our current turmoil with "liberalism" comes ultimately from Rousseau, an 18th century philosopher.

One current error is that of attributing Michelle Bachman's ideas and policies to "dominionism". Before you accept this particular over-reaction of the Lame-Stream Media (OK, I don't trust them and don't believe anything they say) read this particular analysis.

Irene and the Tomb

2011-08-31T14:27:00.000-04:00

"Throughout Hurricane Irene, the Army kept guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier: a reminder that the phrase “duty, honor, country” really means something. "

Thanks to Political Mavens via Jewish World Review.

Ann Coulter

2011-08-26T11:52:00.000-04:00

I generally enjoy Ann Coulter, not for depth and intellectual accumen of her commentary, but for her excellent invective. Generally, if one wants to see insults at their best, she is a great examplar. However, today's column, "The flash mob method of scientific inquiry" as read in the Jewish World Review shows that she would be best off keeping her commentary to political matters.

Despite her desires otherwise, Intellegent Design is not a valid counter to the Theory of Evolution. That the theory of evolution has places where it is weak, is true. That is not the same as disproof. In trying to discuss a topic obviously outside her area of competence, she has lowered her standing in my eyes. Her bold pronouncement

In fact, however, it has not been advances in Christianity (which is pretty much settled), but in science that have completely discredited Darwin's theory of evolution.

This week, we will consider one small slice of the mountain of scientific evidence disproving this mystery religion from the Victorian age.

shows a tremendous ignorance of history of Christianity, the history of science, and the theory of evolution. She then presents a summary of Intellegent Design theory that is based on a major misuse of statistics and chemistry.

Ann, you suddenly lived down to the blond stereotype.

Equivalence

2011-08-25T10:13:00.000-04:00

Morally, embryonic stem cell research is the equivalent of the "experiments" the Nazis performed on concentration camp inmates.

The Horrible AHA

2011-08-23T09:04:00.000-04:00

This morning I suddenly had this horrible realization that the success of those who want embryonic stem-cell research accomplishes a most monsterous goal--the reduction of human beings to experimental animals.

Let's drop the poverty schtick

2011-08-12T10:23:00.001-04:00

Headline in the UK Daily Mail:

The middle class 'rioters' revealed: The millionaire's daughter, the aspiring musician and the organic chef all in the dock

The riots are not the result of poverty, but the result of failure to teach values, insist on ethical behavior, failure to respect property rights. They are the outcome from relativist ethics, and the liberal approach to life--life is a zero-sum game, therefore only redistribution is fair. This is simply another form of redistribution, with the same moral substrate. Create young people with no objective way to create a feeling of self-worth, and then add "if it feels good, do it" attitudes to their already lousy self-image, and destruction is guaranteed.

What is disgusting is the response of the non-leadership of government--more liberal ideology. Instead of force, rapidly and accurately applied, there is blather about reasoning with them. These are rabid animals when they are rioting, not human beings. They need to be quickly and forcebly restrained. Because they are biological humans, one doesn't simply shoot them, but water cannon would have been a lot smarter than the BS that got bandied about.

The US still at least believes in suppression of riots as fast as possible. However, we are teaching the same ideology in our schools and rapidly depriving our young people of the means to find work and meaning when we raise the minimum wage. It will be coming here in a few years if things don't change.

Blegging

2011-07-25T19:56:00.000-04:00

I now have a wonderful pacemaker/defibrillator and a cardiologist that said I had no restrictions. To celebrate, I am doing a 25 mile bike ride in Michigan with Team in Training in September to raise money for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Go to my web page for more information.

Help fight blood cancers, a mile at a time.

Please call a parent

2011-06-29T08:24:00.002-04:00

Now the Muslims are having a fit over a bearded Mickey Mouse, and the Lame-stream Media are giving them the attention they want. They rioted over the Mohammed cartoons, and got lots of time and space in the media. They promulgate fatwa after fatwa over perceived insults to Islam, Mohammed, or the Q'ran. They remind me of a two-year old having a temper tantrum, and the media remind me of a prissy old maid that thinks it knows kids but has never raised one.

Equivalent scenario: Kid holds its breath to get what it wants. Old maid gets all frantic, "He/she will pass out! Give them what they want!" Experienced parent: "Ignore her/him. He will either have to breath again or she will pass out, in which case she will start breathing again."

Another scenario: Kid says, "Give me what I want or I will hate you." Old maid gets all worried about not being liked. Experienced parent: "I don't care if you hate me."

Another scenario: Kid hits parent. Old maid, "That's not nice. Don't do that" Parent swats their butt, puts them in time-out, takes away dessert or a toy.

Muslims are nothing but grown-up two-year olds in the way they act. Stands to reason considering how they are raised with every whim satisfied if a male. Sure they have some really nasty toys to use or threaten to use. But we have bigger, better, nastier stuff, and when we aren't afraid to use it, do so quite effectively. Instead of talking everytime they try to damage or hurt us, we slap them back, things would change quickly. Despite the liberals dreams, Muslims will never like us, accept us, or cooperate with us except under necessity. Read Lee Harris, The Suicide of Reason, to understand why. The only thing they understand is determination and fanatacism as great or greater than their own.

To see how to deal with them verbally, go to Ann Barnhardt's blog and scroll down until you see the reproduction of the comment exchanges she has had with Muslims threatening her. They back down because she simply says that if they want a piece of her try to get it, that she is more than adequately defended--AND MEANS IT. This is the way to deal with such behavior. And when someone decides to try to harm us, don't wait around--respond--in force.

We used to be the meanest SOB in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Now we are the mouse, afraid to even squeak.

So when we realize that threats are just that and tell them to "deal with it," and when we respond to force with greater and more precise force, things will go much better. In other words become the parent to an out-of-control child.

Read and understand

2011-06-02T09:38:00.003-04:00

From Lee Harris, The Suicide of Reason, p. 245:

Those who created the basis of America's world power were also shrewdly realistic men--men who were often capable of playing the most cynical games in order to further the interest of their nation. Today, however, this great heritage of power has been taken up not by master sorcerers, but by those who can only be compared to the sorcerer's incompetent apprentice.

Harris explicitly identifies ALL the recent leaders of the US and Great Britain.

We are all wrong

2011-06-02T09:13:00.004-04:00

We are all wrong about the motives of our glorious President. Remember what he has said in the past and is doing now, and compare to this quote from Lee Harris, The Suicide of Reason:

After the failed Munich putsch, Hitler resolved never again to try to seize state power by force. Instead, the Nazis elected to follow a policy designed to make the Weimar system incapable of governing through normal political channnels. Just make the system unworkable; make parliament unable to handle crises; force the government to govern through emergency enabling acts; compel the head of state to assume more and more dictatorial powers--do all these things, before long a situation is created in which liberal politics is no longer an option. At this critical juncture, the people, in desperation, begin to seek an alternative to the clogged and deadlocked machinery of the parliamentary system.....

Had Hitler's aim been to gain power within the Weimar system, his approach would have been utterly irrational; but his aim was to destroy the system completely. [emphasis added, bk]

Argue the details all you want, the pattern is there.

Lee Harris

2011-05-31T15:01:00.002-04:00

My friend Dymphna at Gates of Vienna suggested I read The Next American Civil War by Lee Harris, in response to one of my recent posts. In the process of looking up the one book at Barnes and Nobel, I saw he had written two others of interest, Civilization and Its Enemies and The Suicide of Reason. I have finished the first and am close to completing The Next American Civil War.

This is the most original and brilliant modern thinker and philosopher I have read. In Civilization he applies a totally new way of looking at the way civilizations come about and how they are maintained. He also puts a totally different perspective on the terrorist acts of the Islamists. In The Next American Civil War he again provides a completely new way of looking at the rise of the United States and provides clear reasons as to why it is unique in the world, and how its functioning is unique.

The ideas are large in scope but the writing is very clear and logical. The books are not even weighty tomes, but are shorter than some novels. His writing style puts a lot of ideas into relatively few words. For anyone who cares about this country, where it is going, and what it faces from the rest of the world, these books provide plenty of material for new ideas. His views cannot be labeled with the usual labels of liberal, conservative, or libertarian. In fact, one cannot properly say he has presented views but rather analysis, excellent analysis.

I took time from my major projects to read these books and will also read The Suicide of Reason before I return to them. The time is well worth it. If nothing else, read Civilization and Its Enemies. If your mind is open to new ideas you will find them. If you want to keep your old, comfortable ways of thinking, its your choice but you will be the worse for it.

The End of Faith

2011-05-27T11:01:00.000-04:00

I have just finished Sam Harris' book, The End of Faith. It of course belongs with the other output from the so-called New Atheists, or as I term them, the Evangelical Atheists (EAs). However, much about the book is a marked departure from the usual polemics. Compared to Sam Harris, people such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, John Loftus, and Richard Carrier are more like rabid dogs, foaming at the mouth, and snapping at anything within reach. Harris has much to say, and though it may not all be accurate, he does it in a reasonable manner. One has the idea that he might actually be willing to discuss and reason with his opponents rather than subject them to some sort of ad hominum attack.

One of the more outstanding points in his book (and one that has apparently not set well with the other EAs) is that he is willing to consider that there may be something other than just materialism, that there may be things spiritual to consider. Another outstanding point and one he shares with Christopher Hitchens, is he is willing to tackle Islam as being what it is--a murderous political religion that is of necessity exactly that and not a "religion of peace." Harris' analysis is more thorough than that of Hitchens and certainly much more convincing.

There are places where his liberal political leanings show through, and to some degree I think they color his assessment of the role of religion in the US today. He does not really attack the Nazis, or the Communists (Stalin, Mao) with the same vigor and detail that he does Islam or the Inquisition. As a result the impression is much more skewed against religion, which is his objective.

A thorough analysis of his book will have to wait for another time. I will probably also include his ethics book with it when I do it.

Probably the most unusual part of reading this book was it was not painful, as was reading Dawkins, Hitchens, Loftus, and Carrier.

An Observation

2011-05-22T10:54:00.002-04:00

As part of my studies, I have been reading quite a few of the Evangelical Atheists, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, John Loftus, Richard Carrier, et al. One of the things that has impressed me the most, is that they constantly talk about logic and science vs. religion, and then use arguments whose logic is non-existent and draw conclusions as weak or weaker than those they accuse the Fundamentalists of having. [Note that they don't really attack mainline Christianity, but Fundamentalist Christianity and its reading the Bible at the literal face value of the words. They then claim they have attacked all of Christianity.]

They also are quite guilty of failing to properly read or interpret history. They continue to cite misquotes and misinterpretations of past conflicts to claim that they were science vs. religion when in actuality they were usually either political or cultural battles with science or religion as the excuse. The more history I read, the more ridiculous their interpretations appear.

As best as I can figure, when one is already on the side of atheism one will let all sorts of sloppiness pass as credible. That is the only way I can understand the lauds and praises of reviewers and the kind of sales they seem to have.

Obama announces Bin Laden is dead

2011-05-03T08:53:00.002-04:00

All of us want to believe it. For a different take see Ann Barnhardt. Actually, I think she is off-base here, unless a real raid on a compound was used to provide cover for a good propaganda ploy.

He most likely is dead regardless of scenario, or there would have been denials by now from Al Qaida. The problem with Ann's version, is that if there is any truth in it, our government is even more evil and crooked than we imagine. However, I did once post that it is always about politics.

A realization

2011-04-29T16:07:00.000-04:00

As part of my readings for "Skeptics and Believers" I am reading Christopher Hitchen's "God is not Great." This is much like Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion," a collection of all the horrors he can find executed in the name of religion being used as the single exemplars of religion and then condemning religion and the belief in God based on this extremely biased sample. What created the realization was the constant repetition of "Religion poisons everything."

I suddenly realized that both Hitchens and Dawkins are using exactly the same logic as the gun-grabbers. Gun-grabbers blame the gun not the person pulling the trigger for the damage or death caused by gun-fire. Hitchens and Dawkins blame the religion not the person using it to justify their horrific behavior. Religion is simply a formal or informal statement of beliefs that can be used to justify behavior, and depending on the person using it, the behavior can be either evil or beneficent. Unless, like the Quran, there are explicit directives to perform evil acts, religion and religious doctrine is of itself neither good nor bad. It is the uses to which HUMANS put it that create good or evil.

Of course, in addition to misplacing the blame for the evils done in the name of religion, both these atheists refuse to acknowledge that there is good coming to the world in the name of religion. Then the issue would not be so clear-cut.

A kindred soul

2011-04-28T13:30:00.000-04:00

I have been watching a DVD course from The Teaching Company, called "Skeptics and Believers." This is a historical study of the various versions and criticisms of Christianity since the Enlightenment. I also am doing all the readings that go with the lectures. We are currently on the early 19th century, and specifically Friedrich Schleiermacher. He is considered the founding of the Romantic school of theology, and has influence still today. In Claude Welch's book, "Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century", Vol 1, on p. 63, is this quote from Schleiermacher:

"...to create an eternal covenant between the living Christian faith and an independent and freely working science, a covenant by the terms of which science is not hindered and faith not excluded."

With the exception that I have no pretensions of creating something eternal, this is the most concise statement of my aims with my religious studies and writings that I have seen.

What I am doing is even in keeping with his ideas. He believed that religious ideas had to be restated with succeeding generations to keep their meaning. So I am working to restate them to have meaning for our times.

I've decided

2011-04-28T13:20:00.002-04:00

Until they published Obama's long form birth certificate, I was skeptical of birther claims and willing to let them have their say. Now that the long form has been published.... I have become a birther. The thing is a fake. This is a rerun of the Dan Rather letters controversy in the Bush years. Bloggers had the thing exposed in less than 12 hours.

I don't believe that Obama has a true Hawaiian birth certificate. The only question I have now, is why does it matter? I thought his mother was an American citizen, which should make him a citizen.

For those who ask, Yes, I do think it is possible to have that big a conspiracy to cover up his birth and for it to succeed long enough to get him elected, mainly because the MSM was a silent part of it to begin with. When it comes to Obama there will be no Robert Woodward and Jason Bradlee. First, the MSM loves him and hated Nixon, and second, Obama is every bit as vindictive as a Mafia Don. He has sufficient friends to be completely deniable.

In watching the course of the controversy, I have seen circumstantial evidence that people have been threatened to shut them up, and I have heard a number of disconnected stories that if true, indicate this has been going on for BO's entire life.

We certainly live in interesting times.

Atlas Shrugged, the movie

2011-04-25T14:30:00.002-04:00

I have not seen Atlas Shrugged, nor do I intend to. I have, however, read the book several times, each time finding something or understanding something that was not clear to me before. I am not an Objectivist, as Ayn Rand's followers like to term themselves. I do, however, think that I understand what has happened here better than most of the commentary I have read so far.

I have read conservative commentary that points out that successful movies need to have some art in them, not just ideology. I have seen conservative commentary that is basically gloating over its failure and deriding Ayn Rand's devotion to radical individualism as adolescent. It is clear that the commentor had little or no real understanding of her writing.

To me the surprise is more that they were even able to make a movie from the book. The book tells a story, the first requirement, but it does it so broadly and complexly, that to create the necessary simplifications for a movie guarantee distortion and even misrepresentation. As long as Ayn Rand was alive, she would not sign over movie rights without script control. Since this is something that Hollywood does not grant, it was a stalemate. Had Hollywood agreed, there might have been some chance at a decent movie since Ayn Rand made her living as a movie script writer for a number of years. My conclusion is that whoever in the Objectivist Society that had sign-off on the rights got rolled--big time. He/she was probably given lots of promises that were not honored.

Second, from the few tidbits of the plot I have read about, the writers had no understanding of the book at all. They simply approached it as a standard love-story/conquer-hardship story, with no understanding that it was the character of the protagonists that counted.

Example, the struggle is to build a high-speed railroad using Reardon Metal. I can pretty much be sure this is in reference to the John Galt Line. I can just see a writer seeing the issue over 100 mph speeds translating into high-speed railroad. No, the 100 mph was only because regulators wanted to restrict the speed, so Dagny thumbed her nose at them and said, "Restrict this." The actual railroad in the book was a standard freight railroad to replace the one regulated out of existence. To even bring high-speed railroading, a liberal crusade that is uneconomical, into the world of Atlas Shrugged is to show total ignorance of the basic priciples underlying Rand's beliefs.

There is a great misunderstanding about Rand's individualism. It does not tell anyone else what to do. It simply says that the individual should answer to themself first and only. If they then chose to help others or to work with others or submit to other's values, that is their choice. However, it says that other people have no right to coerce an individual to do something they believe is against their self-interest. The book has examples of what we could call charity on the individual level, but they are earned and selected charity that has meaning to the giver, not the blind,(or not-so-blind)random give-away of government.

One can speculate on what motivated the final creation of this film. I think Hollywood saw a ready, huge market of millions of viewers, since the book has been a steady seller for fifty years, and has a large and loyal fan-base. As for the Objectivists, I am totally at a loss. What has been accomplished is to damage the image and reputation of Rand's book and views by trivializing them. The apparent failure of the movie will actually be a blessing. It will prevent parts 2-n from being produced, and will quickly receed into obscurity, so that the quiet revolution can continue.

Afterword: I have always thought that The Fountainhead was a much better told story than Atlas Shrugged. The politics and ideas were presented in the behavior and situations of the characters, not as explicit lectures. Atlas Shrugged suffered from being more an ideological vehicle than a story to be told. The book does appeal primarily to adolescents and young adults, as it is written at that emotional level, where the world is still black and white, good and evil, not the shades of gray we deal with as adults. That is not to condemn it. Such an approach makes it clear what the values are to be chosen.

One commentor accused Rand of promoting free love. I'm not sure what he meant by the phrase, but in my understanding, it implies promiscuity, non-judgment as to the value of sex partners, and multiple, concurrent sexual relationships. If he meant that the partners were having sex outside of marriage, then that is not the same thing. Yes, the protagonists in Rand's book do have sex outside of marriage, but she tries to make it clear that there is a powerful interpersonal commitment based on common values before the sex is consumated. In effect, it is a non-formal form of marriage. This is probably one of the more difficult ideas to grasp, and probably is seen as being skipped by the adolescents reading the story.

To survive and succeed in society requires a healthy balance between one's love of oneself and one's willingness to cooperate with otheres and contribute to their well-being. In Rand's world this is an exchange, not a coerced transaction. With the constant squashing of individual excellence in the schools and society these days, the individualism of Atlas Shrugged is an important contribution to the development of healthy adults.

This movie, however, not so much.

A somewhat different take on the President

2011-04-25T14:22:00.002-04:00

A friend of mine sent this information to me in an email. Based on what I remember of what I have read of Charles Krauthammer, it rings true. Dr. K does not see the President quite the same as most of us conservative/libertarians. He ascribes to him more ability and intelligence than we generally do. Perhaps he is right, and what the rest of us focus on is the emotional immaturity of the President which would easily be confused with incompetence and lack of intelligence. Regardless, read and decide for yourself.

Dr. Charles Krauthammer Brief summary

Fast Facts
1. Born: March 13, 1950
2. Birthplace: New York City, New York
3. Raised in Montreal, Canada
4. Attended McGill University and Harvard Medical School
5. 1972 diving accident left him a paraplegic
6. Directed psychiatric research for the Carter administration
7. Began writing career in 1981 with The New Republic
8. Helped develop the "Reagan Doctrine" in the 80s
9. Appointed to Presidential Council on Bioethics in 2002

Dr. Krauthammer is on Fox News . He is an M.D. And a lawyer and is paralyzed from the neck down. A friend went to hear Charles Krauthammer. He listened with 25 others in a closed room. What he says here, is NOT 2nd-hand but 1st. The ramifications are staggering for us, our children and their children.
Last Monday was a profound evening, Dr. Charles Krauthammer spoke to the Center for the American Experiment.. He is a brilliant intellectual, seasoned & articulate. He is forthright and careful in his analysis, and never resorts to emotions or personal insults. He is NOT a fear monger nor an extremist in his comments and views . He is a fiscal conservative, and has received a Pulitzer Prize for writing. He is a frequent contributor to Fox News and writes weekly for the Washington Post.

The entire room was held spellbound during his talk. I have summarized his comments, as we are living in uncharted waters economically and internationally. Even 2 Dems at my table agreed with everything he said!

Summary of his comments:

1. Obama is an intellectual, charming individual. He is not to be underestimated. He is a cool customer who doesn't show his emotions. It's very hard to know what's behind the mask. The taking down of the Clinton dynasty was an amazing accomplishment. The Clintons still do not understand what hit them. Obama was in the perfect place at the perfect time.

2. Obama has political skills comparable to Reagan and Clinton ... He has a way of making you think he's on your side, agreeing with your position, while doing the opposite. Pay no attention to what he SAYS; rather,watch what he DOES!

3. Obama has a ruthless quest for power. He did not come to Washington to make something out of himself, but rather to change everything, including dismantling capitalism. He can't be straightforward on his ambitions, as the public would not go along. He has a heavy hand, and wants to level the playing field with income redistribution and punishment to the achievers of society. He would like to model the USA to Great Britain or Canada ..

4. His three main goals are to control ENERGY, PUBLIC EDUCATION, and NATIONAL HEALTHCARE by the Federal government. He doesn't care about the auto or financial services industries, but got them as an early bonus. The cap and trade will add costs to everything and stifle growth. Paying for FREE college education is his goal. Most scary is his healthcare program, because if you make it FREE and add 46,000,000 people to a Medicare-type single-payer system, the costs will go through the roof. The only way to control costs is with massive RATIONING of services, like in Canada ..

5. He has surrounded himself with mostly far-left academic types. No one around him has ever even run a candy store. But they are going to try and run the auto, financial, banking and other industries. This obviously can't work in the long run. Obama is not a socialist; rather he's a far-left secular progressive bent on nothing short of revolution. He ran as a moderate, but will govern from the hard left. Again, watch what he does, not what he says.

6. Obama doesn't really see himself as President of the United States , but more as a ruler over the world.. He sees himself above it all, trying to orchestrate & coordinate various countries and their agendas. He sees moral equivalency in all cultures. His apology tour in Germany and England was a prime example of how he sees America, as an imperialist nation that has been arrogant, rather than a great noble nation that has at times made errors. This is the first President ever who has chastised our allies and appeased our enemies!

7. He is now handing out goodies. He hopes that the bill (and pain) will not come due until after he is reelected in 2012. He would like to blame all problems on Bush from the past, and hopefully his successor in the future. He has a huge ego, and Dr. Krauthammer believes he is a narcissist.

8.. Republicans are in the wilderness for a while, but will emerge strong. Republicans are pining for another Reagan, but there will never be another like him. Krauthammer believes Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty & Bobby Jindahl (except for his terrible speech in February) are the future of the party. Newt Gingrich is brilliant, but has baggage. Sarah Palin is sincere and intelligent, but needs to really be seriously boning up on facts and info if she is to be a serious candidate in the future... We need to return to the party of lower taxes, smaller government, personal responsibility, strong national defense, and state's rights.

9. The current level of spending is irresponsible and outrageous. We are spending trillions that we don't have.. This could lead to hyperinflation, depression or worse. No country has ever spent themselves into prosperity. The media is giving Obama, Reid and Pelosi a pass because they love their agenda. But eventually the bill will come due and people will realize the huge bailouts didn't work, nor will the stimulus packages. These were trillion-dollar payoffs to Obama's allies, unions and the Congress to placate the left, so he can get support for #4 above.

10. The election was over in mid-September when Lehman brothers failed, fear and panic swept in,we had an unpopular President, and the war was grinding on indefinitely without a clear outcome. The people are in pain, and the mantra of change caused people to act emotionally. Any Dem. would have won this election; it was surprising it was as close as it was.

11. In 2012, if the unemployment rate is over 10%, Republicans will be swept back into power. If it's under 8%, the Dems continue to roll. If it's between 8-10%, it will be a dogfight. It will all be about the economy. I hope this gets you really thinking about what's happening in Washington and Congress. There is a left-wing revolution going on, according to Krauthammer, and he encourages us to keep the faith and join the loyal resistance. The work will be hard, but we're right on most issues and can reclaim our country, before it's far too late.

Birthers and other conspiritists

2011-04-23T21:23:00.002-04:00

Much has been written to discredit the birthers, those who don't believe Barack Obama is a natural born citizen, and much was written to discredit the Kennedy assassination conspiritorists,those who did not believe that John F. Kennedy was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald.

What keeps both issues alive is that the information is fragmentary and it is the nature of humans to want to create coherent narratives from information, regardless of how fragmentary. I don't believe that the Kennedy issue will ever die, because 1) Kennedy probably was not killed by Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone, and 2) the Warren Commission did its job extremely well. It confused the data and testimonies so thoroughly that it is impossible to learn the truth. It was never convened to learn the truth, but to obscure it. Motivation to squelch the truth in the Kennedy assassination was to avoid some extremely nasty political fallout, and to possibly prevent a withdrawal into national self-examination and controversy in a time of external threat. An act of both self-service and, in the minds of the perpetrators, an act of national service. "Earl, you have to cover our a****. It is a matter of national security."

The birther controversy has much the same flavor, though the motives and players are diffferent. Part of the problem with the birthers is that at first only what would be considered a lunatic fringe would suggest such a scenario. However, as time has gone on, I have read in various places, information, if true, that is circumstantially very damning. However, birthers don't know how to build a case and for the most part are so rabidly anti-Obama that they give away all the pieces of their case piece-meal, allowing them to be defeated one at a time, when the collective whole might be convincing.

The motives to suppress such information and make its expounders look foolish is powerful. First there is the question of ego, we will look like fools for supporting without question BO (the MSM). Second is the Constitutional mess that will follow if BO were not a natural-born citizen. If we say it is too messy to clean up and we will simply disallow anything he says or does from this point forward, we have abrogated part of the US Constitution without amendment. (Not that we aren't doing this already) If we find that BO is not a natural-born citizen, then he is not Constitutionally qualified to be the President of the US, and everything he has done in the name of the Presidency is null and void. In effect, we have operated as a country without a President for over two years.

Much as it might be a conservative wet-dream to see all of the laws enacted in the last two years and all the Presidential orders declared null and void, the chaos would be tremendous. It is fear of this consequence that the Supreme Court claims that the birth issue is political and not an issue for the Court. (Please explain to me why the qualifications of the President of the United States as spelled out explicitly in the Constitution are not a constitutional issue.)

In addition, political careers have been destroyed supporting the policies of this incompetent. To find out that they were destroyed supporting an imposter would be a major blow to many in the Democratic Party. In fact, it most likely would destroy the Democratic Party. They would become a laughing-stock and be seen as more unethical than most politicians.

The fear of the chaos that would follow has even conservative columnists denying problems with Obama's birth record and falling back on his incompetence as sufficient grounds to defeat him. Ideology and political correctness keeps the MSM from properly investigating any of this in adequate detail. Where are Bob Woodward and Jason Bradlee now? The press did a brilliant job of bringing down Richard Nixon, but won't even try to investigate Barack Obama, and they started with less cause.

We have become a nation of cowards and craven liars. Rather than face the truth, regardless of consequences, a value we once held high, we hide from it in every way. We have lost all sense of honor, not even those who claim to be honorable act in that way. They have become masters of spin, or simply, liars.

Just as there are conspiritists, those who claim there is a concerted effort to hide Barack Obama's true birth records, there is a conspiracy to maintain a particular narrative at all costs, avoiding any dissenting discussion. It makes one suspect they are indeed hiding something.

The beginnings of the true American Civil War

2011-04-23T19:45:00.003-04:00

The so-called Civil War was not a true civil war, it was a war between the states. Today, we are seeing the start of a true civil war, the revolt of the oppressed against those in power. The so-called trial of Terry Jones in Dearborn where the powers that be used the usual public safety issues to prevent Pastor Jones from exercising his free speech rights peacibly in a public location that happened to be outside a mosque, is a continuing salvo (Ruby Ridge and Waco were the first battles). Whether one agrees with Pastor Jones methods or not, he has the right to do what he does. Public safety is a coverup for the politically correct who don't want to be seen putting down a muslim-led riot that is, in the face of it, illegal. Therefore prevent the riot by stifling Pastor Jones.

Another soldier on the civilian side of the coming civil war is Ann Barnhardt. This is one dedicated lady, who is afraid of nothing. She dares the muslims to come and get her and publishes her address. She also points out she is well armed, a custom AR-15 with thirty-round magazine, a 12-guage semi-auto shotgun, and a 9 mm with a 30 round extended magazine. You may not agree with everything she says, but you damned well should respect her. As one of my friends has said, "A pretty lass with balls of brass."

It is always the extreme fringes that are the first to be seen, but over time others join for various reasons. We might consider the TEA party as another part of this. Civil wars are never fought by the majority of citizens. My guess is that the American Revolution was joined at most by a third of the members of the colonies, but the other two thirds either were uninvolved, afraid to do anything, or Tories. I suspect that a dedicated third of any population can control events. The elitist, blue-state types have no idea of what is coming, and in the final denouement will have the deer in the headlights look as they are either killed by muslims or forced into obscurity by the winning freedom fighters. For those who don't believe me, spend some time at Gates of Vienna. Find out what happens when muslims reach a certain percentage of the population. They understand concerted action by a minority. It is our task to prevent it from happening.

We are being warned.

See what we forget when we don't study history

2011-04-17T21:27:00.002-04:00

Gen. "Black Jack" Pershing had the right idea back in 1911 or 1912. He captured 12 Muslim terrorists and made one watch while the other 11 were shot with bullets dipped in pork fat and blood and then buried with the hog carcasses. The remaining terrorist was released to spread the word. The MORO insurrection ended because the terrorists believed that such treatment would render them unclean and thus unable to enter paradise. Pershing effectively out-terrorized the terrorists. If you're going to fight a war, fight to WIN. If America's enemies want to use our system against us (think TSA), then we should certainly be willing to use their system against them, politically correct wishful thinking be DAMNED.

Comment from Side Lines in American Digest.

Gödel, Escher, Bach….and ?

2011-04-04T18:28:00.001-04:00

The above named book is one that I had on my low priority reading list for a long time. I remember it made a big splash when it was published and, according to the cover of the 20th anniversary edition that I purchased at a closeout sale, it was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. Having read it, I am rather underwhelmed. The book is very witty and creatively written. But I have a hard time finding a strong purpose. It strikes me as a book that wannabe intellectuals would read and expect anyone that pretends to know anything to read. I found considerable weaknesses in the book from my background.

Dr. Hofstadter was attempting to intellectually bare his soul, so to speak, and as a result some of the incoherence cannot be avoided. I think he was attempting to show that thinking, as he understands it from his studies of Artificial Intelligence, is very tangled within itself and that one must step outside any one level of thinking to describe it. The problem he faces is that in human thinking one does that with the same processes that are being examined. This is where Gödel comes in with his proof that no system can prove its own self-consistency. Hofstadter spends much of the book trying to create a sort of intuitive understanding of this theorem using various computer languages that he creates and number theory systems. Along the way he attempts to illustrate the concepts with very entertaining and creative sketches between imaginary characters, Tortoise, Achilles, Crab, Sloth, himself, Alan Turing, and Charles Babbage. He is successful to a great degree, but I am left with a feeling at the end of , “So what?”

I think the real purpose is to present his ideas of Artificial Intelligence, where it is and where he thinks it is going. This is where I have the most disagreement with him. The greatest deficiency that I see in his discussion is that he apparently has little understanding of how human brains are constructed and operate, and seems to consider them simply larger rat brains. This is a problem I have with Daniel Dennett as well.

The most notable difference operationally between human and rat brains is that a rats experience seems to be distributed and averaged over the entire cortex, whereas human brains can access specific memories. The anatomical equivalent of the rat brain cortex is buried deep beneath the surface of a human brain as a structure called the archecortex and forms part of what is referred to as the limbic system. This portion of the human brain appears to behave similarly to the rat brain in that it responds in a general rather than specific way to events and stimuli.

One of my first objections is that intelligence is never defined, nor is an attempt made other than intelligence is what human brains have. There was a rather sardonic note that whatever computers are made to do that resembles functions of the human mind it is not accepted as intelligence. And perhaps that is quite accurate. Computers perform their computational tasks deterministically. One of the characteristics of human intelligence is that it does not appear to be deterministic.

One of the recurring themes throughout the book is one of hierarchies and levels of hierarchies. This seems to work sufficiently well for simple things, but when it comes to describing human thinking it becomes extremely strained with levels within levels. The massive interconnectedness of human brains, when treated hierarchically, becomes unwieldy. Hofstadter also seems to find it quite difficult to account for human thinking to think about itself. This is one of the apparent thrusts of Gödel’s theorem, that formal systems cannot describe themselves.

Hofstadter is trying to compare computers to minds and mind function to algorithms. I think he is doomed without a proper grounding. Brains and nerves are not binary in the same way computers are binary. The connectivity in a computer is sparse compared to the simplest of brains. Nerves fire on the basis of summation, up to a threshold, nothing happens, after the threshold only a single amplitude response occurs. More inputs than enough to trigger a response have no additional effect. The human brain is probably mathematically chaotic, and no AI machine would ever be allowed to be, nor do I think it can be constructed. It is in the non-algorithmic tasks that human brains excel, and I have grave doubts that any machine that is not essentially a human brain in structure can ever do the same.

One suggestion that I would make is to create an operational definition of intelligence—intelligence is what is measured by intelligence tests. To the degree that a computer program can pass an intelligence test, it is intelligent. That is the same standard we use for humans. Of course the one major discrepancy is that humans use the same skill sets in everyday tasks that a computer does not or else cannot do.

The other suggestion I would make is to approach it all from the standpoint of networks. Every nerve cell in the brain is connected to hundreds to thousands of other nerves, and to and from all areas. One can roughly delineate four major levels of the brain, the brainstem which is reflexive and determinate in nature, the midbrain, which has a degree of networking and integration of inputs and outputs, the limbic system, and the cortex. Each of these parts has a high degree of interconnectivity within its area, and also to higher and lower areas. Higher areas also can feed back to the lower ones, in some cases partially controlling responses, e.g. holding one’s breath, or holding back tears. (Or possibly overriding the response rather than directly inhibiting it.) My own observation of the way my brain works and misfires is that it would be best considered as a massive relational database, where most things were indexed hundreds or thousands of ways, and the ultimate unit of data is extremely small, e.g. smaller than a single letter in a word. I know from the way malapropisms and spoonerisms are created and the way I sometimes have momentary aphasia, that words are built up a letter at a time, and the letters may be built up in turn. It would appear hierarchical, but I think it actually happens in a massively parallel manner. Anyone who has dealt with neural networks has seen the phenomena occur even in simple networks. What appears to be hierarchical functioning is simply networks of networks, and the apparent distance down the hierarchy is actually the functional distance in the number of links required to reach or assemble the appropriate network. The implication of all this, and it is not new with me, is that intelligence is in the connectivity of the brain.

From my viewpoint, we will never truly create an intelligent mechanical device. We will, just as we do with robots, create computational equipment that can do certain skills much better than humans. We already do that, and we will continue to do so, creating more and more complex manipulations. From my own observations, part of human thinking depends absolutely on physical experience. Physical experience provides primary referents for many ideas. That kind of experience cannot be given to computers, and therefore they will not be able to do things that depend on such experience.

Unlike the science fiction writers of fifty years ago, I am not threatened by computers. Part of it is possibly the contempt of familiarity, since I make my living with them. But I think it is grounded in a full appreciation of the differences between computational machinery and programs and human brains. The differences are just too great.

Immoral Benevolence

2011-04-02T11:28:00.001-04:00

The following appeared in the Letters to the Editor in “The Lutheran” for April, 2011.

In “A better way” (March, page 49), the writer says Christians should “help the poor” but contends philanthropic groups are better at it than a government, which is “sinful” with waste. If, indeed, voluntary giving were all we needed to cure world hunger, the problem would be solved – but isn’t. A government can make the world a better place to live through development programs and working with charitable organizations to cure world hunger. We can do better than the “Peter Pan” philosophy that amounts to “I’ve got mine – you’ll get yours if I feel like it.”

The writer cares about world hunger. That is obvious. To that degree he/she may be called benevolent. However, in discussing the desired remedy, the writer commits errors of fact, and at least two moral errors.

An obvious area where hunger can be fought is in better crops and crop production. People seem to ignore the fact that better crops through genetic modifications are adamantly fought by various environmentalists, who often are the same people that will bewail the hunger of the poor of the earth.

This writer displays considerable ignorance about what is required for people to have enough food. Most death from famine today occurs not because of bad weather, but failures of third-world governments to provide for their people. We seem to forget all the cases where food was provided by voluntary organizations and was impounded by corrupt governments to give to their cronies or political allies. We forget all the aid that never reached its destination because countries were so undeveloped that there were no transportation routes. We never seem to get the lesson that the countries that suffer the most from natural disasters are those that have the most oppressive governments, and the least protections of individual rights. The writer fails to acknowledge that the regulations and red-tape of the governments of the free world get in the road of providing aid to others. After all, it has to be done by the “right” organizations in the “right” ways, so the “right” people can get credit.

Private foundations and philanthropic groups do provide development programs, when allowed. However, our government doesn’t just try to break down the barriers in other countries to those efforts, they try to horn in on them. The charitable organizations don’t need the government, but the government certainly needs the charitable organizations to get anything done. But it has to be done the government way. To see the effectiveness of government or government working “with” charitable organizations vs. charitable organizations simply doing their thing, look at the results of Katrina relief. It was not government’s shining hour and, despite the wishes of the writer above, is typical of government efforts. Bureaucracy does not and cannot exercise effective judgment, and the results show it.

The moral errors are far more problematic in the above letter. I have never understood how it is morally correct for the government to take money from people by coercion and then give it to beneficiaries as an act of charity. Despite all the rationalizations, all money that the government has is obtained by overt or covert coercion. Once taxes have been established, all people must pay them under penalty of law. If the money goes to programs that they don’t support, especially ones that run counter to their personal moral code (think abortion, fetal stem cell research) then the money has in effect been stolen or extorted from them. It has been taken and used for purposes of which they do not approve. By the same principle, money taken through taxation that is used to support charitable efforts with which someone does not agree, is money extorted.

The second moral error is directly related to the first. Only at a personal rather than governmental level. There is no morality in coercion. The main reason we discuss Free Will has to do with morality. One must be able to chose to be moral. Where is the morality when one is giving away other people’s wealth that was obtained by coercion? That one obtained it through a government does not sanitize it. That would make an armed robber moral because he/she took the money and gave some to a beggar.

The final error the writer makes is to accuse those who want private individuals to provide philanthropy of not truly being interested in doing so. It is a matter of public record that individuals that believe in personal giving donate far more than those who espouse government programs as a means of charity. People such as Bill Gates give millions a year, and liberal politicians that make great noises about the suffering of others give almost nothing personally. However, they are more than willing to spend tax dollars to do so. It is very tempting to consider that the writer is displaying the attitude that he/she would have when faced with a choice of voluntary giving. It is often easy to accuse others of what we don’t wish to acknowledge in ourselves.

Some things don't get better with time

2011-03-09T21:19:00.002-05:00

In Memoriam

Adam Trent Keezer

March 9, 1981 to November 4, 2000

Adam was the greatest

So long...farewell...good bye

Today he would have been 30.

Happy Birthday, wherever you are.

Too good not to repeat

2011-03-02T22:28:00.002-05:00

From NeoNeoCon:

Obama: clothes or no?
Here’s a great exchange about Obama, found in the comments section at RealClearPolitics:

From DCD+in+Indiana:

He’s impossible to find because he is an empty suit. We are, in a word, leaderless.

Reply from Dusty:

“empty suit”
Hmmm. And all this time I thought the Emperor had no clothes. I see quite the metaphysical dilemma.

reminds me of the definition of _null_.

Factualism

2011-02-27T15:29:00.003-05:00

I am currently starting to read "Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Hofstadter. In his forward to the 20th anniversary edition, he obsesses over the "sexism" in his use of the masculine pronoun as the generic pronoun for humankind. As he continued, I became irritated and at the same time flags went up to watch his reasoning. In his obsession it appeared that ideology overcame any sense of reason or allowance for usage.

On further reflection, it came to me that the PC concerns over the use of masculine pronouns for generic pronouns comes from an excessive insistence on reading everything literally/factually. In this regard it becomes related to both Fundamental Christianity and Evangelical Atheism, both of which rely on reading the words of the Bible exactly as the surface meaning indicates. I am coining a term for this "Factualism," defined as the insistence on reading any set of words as if the only meanings they are allowed to have are the surface definitions. This means that there can be no metaphorical or connotative meanings. In formal terms, only the denotative meanings are to be used.

Since the greatest part of human expression among people is connotative meaning, this is a good way to restrict communication and thinking, and impovrish our dialogs. It becomes a means to thought control a la "1984," where the denotative meanings become that which is defined by some central authority.

Assignment for the reader: how many other PC "rules" derive from factualism?

Oh for a President with guts

2011-02-26T15:26:00.002-05:00

Actually, a slightly lower part of the anatomy would be more accurate. However, he is lacking in both.

We are treated to the spectacle of an American for whom we claim diplomatic immunity being tried for murder in a Pakistani court for defending himself against armed thugs. We hear of four Americans being killed by Somali pirates, and we are yet to hear of the pirates being hanged or their boat being sunk. American Digest has a most interesting video of what the Russians do about pirates.

There was once a time when you messed with an American and the US stomped your butt. Now we turn tail and run. Dear Leader Obama didn't get the message when the US Navy SEALS saved a captain's life. Two more years is a long time to wait.

The best solution I have seen offered on immigration

2011-01-29T12:42:00.003-05:00

This was written by a mid-west business man. I am providing the link, but do not feel quotes would do it justice. It is not long, but it is complete and very clear.

Thanks to Pajamas Media for the link.

Want to get a liberal goat?

2011-01-29T12:10:00.002-05:00

Ask them what is the moral difference between Jared Loughlin's murdering 6 people and attempting to murder more, and abortion?

Some general thoughts concerning religion

2011-01-18T12:50:00.003-05:00

Religious Diversity
I have become somewhat interested in religious diversity through the writings of my friend, Kevin Kim. Kevin discusses that there seem to be two main views of religious pluralism or diversity, convergent and divergent. The convergent view says that all religions are ultimately expressing the same thing in different terms (Gross oversimplification but that is the essence) and the divergent view says that they are discussing different things. I tend to agree with the divergent view for the following reason(s).

The universe and our totality of experience is much richer than we can contemplate in its entirety. It is much like the blind men and the elephant, and each of us or each group of us focuses on a limited set of attributes. However, in the case of religion we have no way of knowing that the various belief systems are related at some core, a la the elephant. It is more likely that each religious tradition carves out its set of interests and creates boundaries that prevent its finding some core. As long as the participants believe it has answered the questions they wish answered, there is no motivation to look beyond those boundaries. As a consequence, I do not think it possible to find some common belief system among the various religious traditions. This is not to say they are in conflict. It is quite possible for them to coexist both socially and within the same individual. This is an area of further study for me, and I expect there will be modification of my views over time.

Bibilical Interpretation
There is a version of biblical interpretation that seems to want to approach the Bible as if every word is exactly, factually true, as written, in the 21st Century. This is the basis of Fundamentalism, and it is a dependency for Evangelical Atheism to have any say. It apparently motivates the author of a book our daughter loaned me called "The Year of Living Biblically." Even at my early stages of study, it is a ridiculous position to take. First of all, what version of the Bible is definitive, King James, New International, Revised Standard, New Revised Standard, The English Bible, The North American Standard, etc. I have worked with nine different translations, and found that for theologically difficult areas, there are nine different renderings of what is supposedly the same Greek text.

Not only that, if one looks a the field of textual criticism, one finds that it is impossible to determine the original text. We are looking at many generations of copies, and the oldest versions found are second to third century, over one hundred years after the originals were written. Textual critics have found hundreds of thousands of errors or changes in various copies. Some are as simple as misspellings, but some are rewritings to fit a particular theological stance. Then one can question which textual version did a particular translation use as its base. Interestingly enough, the King James version, which is often the basis for the biblical inerrantists, is currently considered to have a very unreliable version of the Greek as its basis, compared to what has been found over the last fifty to one hundred years.

If one is going to do interpretation of scripture in modern times, there is a complex process that has to be undertaken. First one has to determine what is historical vs. theological in the writing. Second, one must determine what the writings meant for the author and his/her audience. Then one must determine if that meaning can still hold today, especially in the light of modern scientific findings. Finally one can apply the scriptures to today's world.

There are very egregious violations of this program today, the most notable being the "Left Behind" series of books. Based on a direct application of the words of "The Book of Revelation" to modern society, it is a completed reinterpretation of that book which described the evils of the Roman Empire. 666, the "mark of the beast" is the sum of the numeric analogs of the letters of the alphabet used to write the name of Emperor Nero. This is not the first time, but is one of the more notable times this has been done. Another version of this was "The Late, Great Planet Earth."

I believe one of the problems that Christianity has today, is that it has not been brought up to date, but rather has been diluted with a false inclusiveness vs. a theological restructuring.

The Stifling of Religious Expression in the US
From the time I was in high school fifty years ago, to now, there has been a constant effort by some athests to suppress the expression of religion in the public forum. Lawsuits over prayer in school, creche scenes in public parks, the existence of crosses in public places all have been part of this effort. Where the Constitution says that Congress cannot make any law to force people to attend a certain church, or consider any church an "official" church, they have taken it to mean that there cannot be any expression, voluntary or otherwise, in public forums of religious belief. There have even been instances where, contrary to the second phrase of that amendment, that there can be no law burdening religion, religious groups were banned from having any meetings on public property though there was no connection of the religion to the property, yet all other organizations could use it.

On the other side, Fundamentalists have attempted to create in law some of their beliefs, such as the teaching of Intelligent Design as part of the science curriculum in high schools, or laws restricting what can be offered on motel television movie systems, or laws restricting life partnerships recognized by the state to only a man and a woman. [I have written on this before, and I have no problem with the state recognizing civil unions. The biggest part of the controversy is the attempt to redefine marriage, which has met with greater restrictions than would otherwise occur.] The most contentious effort is the one to completely ban abortion. Which is a simplistic approach to a very complex issue. Note that unlimited abortion is an equally simplistic approach to that issue, though that is the current law.

Between the Evangelical Atheists and the Fundamentalist Christians, all the air has been sucked out of the room with respect to religious discussion in public. I will do what I can to counter this. In effect, I will eventually produce a lot of words that will boil down to, "A pox on both your houses." The intolerance of both groups for any beliefs but theirs runs counter to all the aspirations for Freedom of Religion that this country was founded on.

Another F* bow

2011-01-18T12:23:00.002-05:00

So I am greeted on Drudge today with a picture of our President shaking hands with one of the top dictators of the world and once again bowing.

We will have to put Atilla the Hun in the Presidency to get any respect back in the world. Right now we wear a sign that says, "Doormat."

A good read

2010-12-07T09:23:00.002-05:00

This was sent to me by a friend. It does a better job of saying these things than I can.

Subject: I'm 63 and I am tired.

Robert Hall, former MA State Senator wrote this piece. Sounds like a candidate for US President

"I'm 63 and I'm Tired"
by Robert Hall

I'm 63. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day, I've worked hard since I was 18. Despite some health challenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven't called in sick in seven or eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there's no retirement in sight, and I'm tired. Very tired.

I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it.

I'm tired of being told that I have to pay more taxes to "keep people in their homes." Sure, if they lost their jobs or got sick, I'm willing to help. But if they bought McMansions at three times the price of our paid-off, $250,000 condo, on one-third of my salary, then let the left-wing Congress-critters who passed Fannie and Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act that created the bubble help them with their own money.

I'm tired of being told how bad America is by left-wing millionaires like Michael Moore, George Soros and Hollywood Entertainers who live in luxury because of the opportunities America offers. In thirty years, if they get their way, the United States will have the economy of Zimbabwe , the freedom of the press of China the crime and violence of Mexico , the tolerance for Christian people of Iran , and the freedom of speech of Venezuela .

I'm tired of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace," when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family "honor"; of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren't "believers"; of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for "adultery"; of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Al lah, because the Qur'an and Shari'a law tells them to.

I'm tired of being told that "race doesn't matter" in the post-racial world of Obama, when it's all that matters in affirmative action jobs, lower college admission and graduation standards for minorities (harming them the most), government contract set-asides, tolerance for the ghetto culture of violence and fatherless children that hurts minorities more than anyone, and in the appointment of U.S. Senators from Illinois.

I think it's very cool that we have a black president and that a black child is doing her homework at the desk where Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. I just wish the black president was Condi Rice, or someone who believes more in freedom and the individual and less arrogantly of an all-knowing government.

I'm tired of a news media that thinks Bush's fundraising and inaugural expenses were obscene, but thinks that Obama's, at triple the cost, were wonderful; that thinks Bush exercising daily was a waste of presidential time, but Obama exercising is a great example for the public to control weight and stress; that picked over every line of Bush's military records, but never demanded that Kerry release his; that slammed Palin, with two years as governor, for being too inexperienced for VP, but touted Obama with three years as senator as potentially the best president ever. Wonder why people are dropping their subscriptions or switching to Fox News? Get a clue. I didn't vote for Bush in 2000, but the media and Kerry drove me to his camp in 2004.

I'm tired of being told that out of "tolerance for other cultures" we must let Saudi Arabia use our oil money to fund mosques and mandrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in America , while no American group is allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia to teach love and tolerance.

I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate. My wife and I live in a two-bedroom apartment and carpool together five miles to our jobs. We also own a three-bedroom condo where our daughter and granddaughter live. Our carbon footprint is about 5% of Al Gore's, and if you're greener than Gore, you're green enough.

I'm tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses while they tried to fight it off? I don't think Gay people choose to be Gay, but I #@*# sure think druggies chose to take drugs. And I'm tired of harassment from cool people treating me like a freak when I tell them I never tried marijuana.

I'm tired of illegal aliens being called "undocumented workers," especially the ones who aren't working, but are living on welfare or crime. What's next? Calling drug dealers, "Undocumented Pharmacists"? And, no, I'm not against Hispanics. Most of them are Catholic, and it's been a few hundred years since Catholics wanted to kill me for my religion. I'm willing to fast track for citizenship any Hispanic person, who can speak English, doesn't have a criminal record and who is self-supporting without family on welfare, or who serves honorably for three years in our military.... Those are the citizens we need.

I'm tired of latte liberals and journalists, who would never wear the uniform of the Republic themselves, or let their entitlement-handicapped kids near a recruiting station, trashing our military. They and their kids can sit at home, never having to make split-second decisions under life and death circumstances, and bad mouth better people than themselves. Do bad things happen in war? You bet. Do our troops sometimes misbehave? Sure. Does this compare with the atrocities that were the policy of our enemies for the last fifty years and still are? Not even close. So here's the deal. I'll let myself be subjected to all the humiliation and abuse that was heaped on terrorists at Abu Ghraib or Gitmo, and the critics can let themselves be subject to captivity by the Muslims, who tortured and beheadedDaniel Pearl in Pakistan, or the Muslims who tortured and murdered Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins in Lebanon, or the Muslims who ran the blood-spattered Al Qaeda torture rooms our troops found in Iraq, or the Muslims who cut off the heads of schoolgirls in Indonesia, because the girls were Christian. Then we'll compare notes. British and American soldiers are the only troops in history that civilians came to for help and handouts, instead of hiding from in fear.

I'm tired of people telling me that their party has a corner on virtue and the other party has a corner on corruption. Read the papers; bums are bipartisan. And I'm tired of people telling me we need bipartisanship. I live in Illinois , where the " Illinois Combine" of Democrats has worked to loot the public for years. Not to mention the tax cheats in Obama's cabinet.

I'm tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of both parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught. I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor.

Speaking of poor, I'm tired of hearing people with air-conditioned homes, color TVs and two cars called poor. The majority of Americans didn't have that in 1970, but we didn't know we were "poor." The poverty pimps have to keep changing the definition of poor to keep the dollars flowing.

I'm real tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives and actions. I'm tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination or big-whatever for their problems.

Yes, I'm real tired. But I'm also glad to be 63. Because, mostly, I'm not going to have to see the world these people are making. I'm just sorry for my granddaughter.

Robert David Hall is a Marine Vietnam veteran who served five terms in the Massachusetts State Senate.

Airport security in a nutshell

2010-11-27T15:04:00.001-05:00

What do the Israeli airport security people do that American airport security do not do? They profile. They question some individuals for more than half an hour, open up all their luggage and spread the contents on the counter-- and they let others go through with scarcely a word. And it works.

Thomas Sowell in Townhall

High Speed Rail

2010-11-12T09:08:00.002-05:00

The governor-elect of Ohio has declared that the proposed high-speed rail is dead. The howls of anguish from the railfans and the environmentalists have already started. I am a railfan. I would very much like to have a rail alternative from Cincinnati to Cleveland.

HOWEVER, this route had many drawbacks, the first of which was that it was to be paid for with Federal Tax dollars. So either my taxes go up, or the deficit goes up which makes prices go up through inflation. There is no discussion of cutting something else to pay for it. (I have lots of suggestions there.) The second drawback is that with the Federal Government paying for it, the government, in the form of anonymous bureaucrats, will make the rules by which it operates. It would be another version of Amtrak which survives due to employee dedication despite oversight and regulation by the government. The third drawback is that it would not be truly high speed, because of the use of existing roadbeds in many parts. I do not consider 79 mph high speed. I can do that with my car.

Governor-elect Kasich has made one of the hard choices we elected him to make. It is not one I like personally, but it makes sense in the larger picture. Since the Federal government took over the passenger traffic in the US, there has been no valid working model for it. Passenger service was viable as long as there were enough passengers and there was mail and express service to subsidize the cost of the trains. Thanks to the interstate highway system, government subsidies to build and operate airports, and removal of mail contracts from the railroads, passenger service is a complete loser. Until we find a better way to do it, it does not make sense to build raillines that will not pay for themselves.

It's that day of the year

2010-11-04T09:54:00.004-04:00

In Memoriam

Adam Trent Keezer

March 9, 1981 to November 4, 2000

Adam was the greatest

So long...farewell...good bye

After ten years one lives with it, but never gets over it. He was truly a gentle giant, 6'5", 240 lbs, easy going, a great comedian, excellent musician, and a very creative writer. When a 19 years-old fills a church to overflowing at his funeral, you know he was a special person. To quote somebody else, "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased."

An object lesson

2010-11-03T09:04:00.003-04:00

I received the following as a comment to my biographic entry, "About me". I rejected it as a comment but would like to use it to point out somethings about discourse today that are quite troubling.

With your background, I'm concerned how you think you are qualified to criticize the work of Burton Mack, especially so negatively. I can't see any competency match for that at all.

gilhow

Two notes on comment policy, 1) Though anonymous according to Blogger, the person did sign their name, so they avoided having their comment go in the bit bucket for anonymity, and 2) as an attack on me rather than my post, it would normally go in the bit bucket, but I wish to use it as an object example.

Notice how this person focuses on my background as not qualifying me to criticize Burton Mack. In today's society, apparently if you don't have the right piece of paper with the right incantations and runes on it, you cannot practice some kinds of magic. Or less sarcastically, only people with the proper training can discuss certain areas. This is ridiculous on the face of it. I have seen PhD philosophers write bad philosophy, and amateurs write excellent, cogent arguments. The formal training simply teaches the vocabulary and who has written what. It does not guarantee actual expertise. This is akin to the closed, union shop mentality, and is a way of preventing challenges to the established "wisdom". Only those who have been indoctrinated may join the discussion.

Second, notice that it compounds the felony for me to criticize Burton Mack negatively. And just who will point out the weaknesses in his arguments, the true believers? If one publishes, one is inviting comment, positive or negative. When one has the intent of tearing down established Christianity then expect plenty of criticism.

This is a common technique in modern discourse, the use of the ad hominum attack rather than debating the argument. Note that there are at least two posts of mine on Burton Mack that this person could have commented on, pointing out the errors in my arguments that he/she sees. Instead, this person chose to take the shortcut by saying that since I am not "qualified" to discuss this, then I should not do so, and my statements should not be considered. From my point of view this person, by failing to engage my arguments or commentary directly has exhibited either intellectual laziness, cowardice, or incompetence, separately, in some combination, or all three.

Just to belabor the point, gilhow has no knowledge of what informal study I have undertaking over the years, nor has she/he paid any attention to the posts I have generated. The fourth generation of the Vanderbilts (the railroad people) did not have an official citation in marine biology. However, his collection of benthic organisms is considered one of the worlds greatest and has been used as a reference collection for decades. As the old adage says, "Never judge a book by its cover."

My take

2010-11-03T08:28:00.002-04:00

Now that the election is over, and we can all think about something else, I do have some thoughts on the results:

1. Combined with the results of two years ago and the possible results two years from now, the people do create term limits, even if imperfectly created by my standards. Republican incumbents fell two years ago, Democrat incumbents fell this time--including some very well-established ones, and there are more in the wings if the country doesn't change to suit the people, including the President.

2. Despite making it a popular election with the 17th Amendment, the Senate still changes more slowly than the House, as the Founding Fathers designed. There are still some fools in that institution by my reckoning, but they are what their voters wanted, including the ones that probably stole elections two years ago. After all, if the race hadn't been close to begin with there wouldn't have been the opportunity. The more determined won, whether legally or not.

3. This election may slow the Federal Government juggernaut, but it is not stopped by any means. As Charles Krauthammer said last night, the President can continue his agenda via regulation and look good on the surface with legislation.

4. The parallels to the pre-Civil War period still hold. With the inability of Congress to completely reverse ObamaCare and do anything about illegal immigration that are hurting the states, they will continue to fight in the courts. The issue now, just as it was then, is who is in control, the States or the Federal Government. Today the trigger issues are ObamaCare and illegal immigration, then it was slavery.

5. The Republicans will be called heartless, cruel, vicious, etc., when they actually start cutting the budget. It will be interesting to see how much spine they have this time. Conservative economics and politics is compassionate by nature but not in a touchy-feely way that is visible. Its compassion is in creating an environment where everyone has a chance not just the entitled. The removal of privilege is always resented by those who lose, regardless of how much it is appreciated by those who pay. Those who lose always have the ear of the press. We can feel sooo sorry for them.

[As a side note: Capitalism is always misrepresented by its opponents, and this is fed by the mislabeling of what is actually corporatism as capitalism. Today's corporations like regulation. It keeps them from having to really compete. A true capitalist hates it. Yes, unregulated markets are chaotic, but it is a milder chaos than the wild swings that occur due to regulation. Yes, people lose their jobs and companies fail, but overall, it is still less than the massive unemployment we see today. It is not just the burden of the labor required to comply with regulations, it is the stiffling of initiative that is the great evil of regulation and corporatism. Nobody pays attention to the statements that today's successful companies could not be started in today's regulatory environment. We are dooming our children to being served by flabby corporate failures rather than strong, dynamic competitive companies.]

6. My own prediction is the President will say all the right things, and do all the wrong ones. He will not change his direction, only his words, and only as long as he thinks we remember. He is convinced he knows what is best for us, regardless of the fact that he has never held a real job, doing real productive work in his life. While we were busy earning a living he was busy having his given to him. It makes for a very different perspective. [I know because I had mine handed to me for years. After I had to really work, I found out a lot about the world.]

7. Two years from now will be a bigger challenge for those of us who are conservative in outlook. Things will be just enough better that the urgency that drove this election will be gone. We have two years to do some effective work and, more importantly, some effective education.

In the meantime, I am grateful for what did happen, and somewhat regretful for what did not.

O'Rourke on Democrats

2010-10-27T09:39:00.001-04:00

Go and read. It is both funny and correct.

Choices

2010-10-13T08:40:00.002-04:00

I am currently working on a major project, analysing the arguments in a debate between Evangelical Atheists and Fundamental Christians. As part of my introductory paragraphs, I wrote this:

From my perspective there are basic choices that are made during life. The first, usually done completely unconsciously, is to choose whether the world is subjective or objective. Does it exist only as I perceive it or does it exist whether I perceive it or not? In our society belief in other than an objective world leads to insanity. However, a subjective world is a belief in some Eastern mystical religions. The second choice is to believe or not believe in God. Make no mistake, this is a choice about a fundamental belief. It is not possible to prove or disprove the existence of God, and all the supposed “proofs” and justifications are simply rationalizations after the fact. I include myself in that statement, having explicitly decided that the world is objective, and that God exists. All my support for the second decision comes from subjective concerns, and as such are not arguments for His existence.

Once these two choices are made, there is then another set of choices: what becomes the basis for one's world view, and what becomes the basis of one's moral code. If one is an atheist the world view usually devolves to Scientism and the moral code is then selected from the various secular behaviors. If one is a theist, in chosing one's world view, one must also decide what is the nature of God that one believes in, and what role current knowledge plays in one's world view. From this we get all the broad variety of cults, sects, and denominations that exist in the theistic world. The moral code follows from the theistic choices.

There are of course an uncountable number of choices made in one's life, but from my perspective, these are fundamental. All the others are details and decoration around the edges.

The Elephant in the room

2010-09-09T18:49:00.002-04:00

In all the furor over the proposed Florida burning of the Quran, and how intolerant it is, no one comments on the Muslim threats to violence in retaliation.

Let me see, burning a book....

Killing people......

Only an idiot would consider the two equivalent or the second an acceptable response to the first. There is a big difference between dying for ones religion and killing others for it. The equivalent response would be for Muslims to burn Bibles. Instead they burn US flags. So when will we wake up to the fact that Islam is a political system disguised as a religion?

The Tax Man Cometh

2010-08-25T08:33:00.002-04:00

Read this and be very worried. We had a revolution and won our independence from England over far less.

-----
Read these and indeed weep. A wrongful administration, one that hates this country needs to taken down at the knees. Some of us who had muddled through his 'healthcare bill' were aware of these and have been sounding A call to return to the foundations this country was established upon.

In just six months, on January 1, 2011, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect. They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves.

On January 1, 2011, here's what happens... (read it to the end, so you see
all three waves)...

First Wave:
Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief

In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors,
small business owners, and families.

These will all expire on January 1, 2011.

Personal income tax rates will rise.

The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the
rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed).

The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent.

All the rates in between will also rise.

Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has
the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates.

The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:
* The 10% bracket rises to an expanded 15%
* The 25% bracket rises to 28%
* The 28% bracket rises to 31%
* The 33% bracket rises to 36%
* The 35% bracket rises to 39.6%

Higher taxes on marriage and family.

The "marriage penalty" (narrower tax brackets for married couples) will return from the first dollar of income.

The child tax credit will be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child.

The standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level.

The dependent care and adoption tax credits will be cut.

The return of the Death Tax.

This year only, there is no death tax. (It's a quirk!) For those dying on or after January 1, 2011, there is a 55 percent top death tax rate on estates over $1 million. A person leaving behind two
homes, a business, a retirement account, could easily pass along a death tax bill to their loved ones.

Think of the farmers who don't make much money, but their land, which they purchased years ago with after-tax dollars, is now worth a lot of money. Their children will have to sell the farm, which may be their livelihood, just to pay the estate tax if they don't have the cash sitting around to pay the tax. Think about your own family's assets. Maybe your family owns real estate, or a business that doesn't make much
money, but the building and equipment are worth $1 million. Upon their death, you can inherit the $1 million business tax free, but if they own a home, stock, cash worth $500K on top of the $1 million business, then you will owe the government $275,000 cash! That's 55% of the value of the assets over $1 million! Do you have that kind of cash sitting around waiting to pay the estate tax?

Higher tax rates on savers and investors.

The capital gains tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 20 percent in 2011.

The dividends tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 39.6 percent in 2011.

These rates will rise another 3.8 percent in 2013.

Second Wave: Obamacare

There are over twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare. Several will first go into effect on January 1, 2011. They include:

The "Medicine Cabinet Tax"

Thanks to Obamacare, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).

The "Special Needs Kids Tax"

This provision of Obamacare imposes a cap on flexible spending accounts (FSAs) of $2500 (Currently, there is no federal government limit). There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States , and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education.

Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington , D.C. ( National Child Research Center ) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can not be used to pay for this type of special needs education.

The HSA (Health Savings Account) Withdrawal Tax Hike.

This provision of Obamacare increases the additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.

Third Wave:

The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and Employer Tax Hikes

When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2011, they'll be in for a nasty surprise-the AMT won't be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired. The major items include:

The AMT will ensnare over 28 million families, up from 4 million last year.

According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center , Congress' failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families-rising from 4 million last year to 28.5 million. These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level. The AMT was created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers.

Small business expensing will be slashed and 50% expensing will disappear.

Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly-deduct, or "depreciate") equipment purchases up to $250,000. This will be cut all the way down to $25,000. Larger businesses can currently expense half of their purchases of equipment. In January of 2011, all of it will have to be "depreciated."

Taxes will be raised on all types of businesses.

There are literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place. The biggest is the loss of the "research and experimentation tax credit," but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs.

Tax Benefits for Education and Teaching Reduced.

The deduction for tuition and fees will not be available.

Tax credits for education will be limited.

Teachers will no longer be able to deduct classroom expenses.

Coverdell Education Savings Accounts will be cut.

Employer-provided educational assistance is curtailed.

The student loan interest deduction will be disallowed for hundreds of
thousands of families.

Charitable Contributions from IRAs no longer allowed.

Under current law, a retired person with an IRA can contribute up to $100,000 per year directly to a charity from their IRA. This contribution also counts toward an annual "required minimum
distribution." This ability will no longer be there.

Read more here.

And worse yet?

Now, your insurance will be INCOME on your W2's!

One of the surprises we'll find come next year, is what follows - - a little "surprise" that 99% of us had no idea was included in the "new and improved" healthcare legislation . . . the dupes, er, dopes, who backed this administration will be astonished!

Starting in 2011, (next year folks), your W-2 tax form sent by your employer will be increased to show the value of whatever health insurance you are given by the company. It does not matter if that's a private concern or governmental body of some sort.

If you're retired? So what... your gross will go up by the amount of insurance you get. You will be required to pay taxes on a large sum of money that you have never seen. Take your tax form you just finished and see what $15,000 or $20,000 additional gross does to your tax debt. That's what you'll pay next year.

For many, it also puts you into a new higher bracket so it's even worse.

This is how the government is going to buy insurance for the15% that don't have insurance and it's only part of the tax increases.

Not believing this??? Here is a research of the summaries.....

On page 25 of 29: TITLE IX REVENUE PROVISIONS- SUBTITLE A: REVENUE OFFSET PROVISIONS-(sec. 9001, as modified by sec. 10901) Sec.9002 "requires employers to include in the W-2 form of each employee the aggregate cost of applicable employer sponsored group health coverage that is excludable from the employees gross income."

- Joan Pryde is the senior tax editor for the Kiplinger letters.
- Go to Kiplingers and read about 13 tax changes that could affect you. Number 3 is what is above.

Thanks to Dymphna at Gates of Vienna for sending this to me.

Pay attention

2010-08-23T19:01:00.002-04:00

OK, I usually keep this blog on a very proper tone. But today I am going to sound a bit more like Gerard.

Get your asses over to Gates of Vienna and read this article if nothing else. If you want the real skinny on what Islam is doing in this country and Europe, especially, then this is THE place to find out. They are considered one of the top anti-Jihad blogs in the World by this point.

Required Reading

2010-08-21T23:25:00.002-04:00

This essay by Victor Davis Hanson is definitely required reading.

Thanks again to the Pajamas Media email service for the link.

Take a look

2010-08-21T22:47:00.002-04:00

An eight minute You Tube on three important things to know about Islam. From my own independent reading, they are all true.

Thanks to the Maverick Philosopher for the link.

The Manchurian Candidate

2010-08-15T22:24:00.002-04:00

Early in President Obama's reign (word used with full deliberate choice) there was talk that he might be a socialist or other political Manchurian Candidate. It never had legs, so to speak, because his politics resembled Chicago's not ideologues. However, with his endorsement of the Ground Zero Mosque, and all his other behavior towards Muslims, I state that he is a closet Muslim, and an Islamic Manchurian Candidate. I base it on what he does, not what he says. If it walks like a duck....

After several years of ignoring these things.......

2010-08-03T22:31:00.002-04:00

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

....I could not resist this one. HP Lovecraft? Horrors!!!

Thanks to American Digest for the link.

An inadequate “Case Against Christianity”

2010-08-01T15:49:00.004-04:00

“The Case Against Christianity” by Michael Martin, (Temple Press, Philadelphia, 1991) is written by a capital “A” Atheist, one who evangelizes for atheism. Having been an atheist for thirty years prior to becoming a theist, I have no problem with someone publishing a book in support of atheism. However, I would have expected something better than this from a professor of philosophy. Despite the claims on the back of the cover, the scholarship is lacking to the point of appearing as intellectual cowardliness, the premises of the argument are set up to guarantee his “winning,” and he sets up a caricature of Christianity as being the whole or at least the majority of it. His technique could be described as episodes of particular specificity surrounded by large amounts of generality. I think the writing could be described as rhetorical not scholarly. He also depends on a lack of proof being taken as disproof of Christian positions, as he presents them. This of course is a logical fallacy, so is not explicitly presented but is implied throughout the book. It is exactly the kind of book, I in my atheistic days, untrained in philosophy and having only a smattering of scholarship in the area would have written. As such it does a disservice to all involved, Christians, atheists, and philosophers, trivializing centuries of debate.

This essay is quite long and can be read either at Bill's Big Stuff, or at Bill's Religious Archives.

You read it here first

2010-07-19T18:53:00.002-04:00

I have been reading an excellent history on the ten years preceding the Civil War and the war itself. The political and social issues of those days are frighteningly analogous to those of our current society. A number of issues could seemingly replace slavery as the cause celebre, but right now it is the issue of who is in charge of our lives, the government or ourselves and the resulting financial disaster.

It is entirely conceivable that the red states will eventually call a Constitutional convention or will call for succession leaving the blue states to their unsupportable policies. Should that occur it could indeed start a civil war, but I would not count on the survival of the blue states. The red states are who they are pillaging. When a government dominated by a political elite not answerable to the people continues to do as it pleases, the final answer may be revolution if the course does not change.

Be careful what you ask for

2010-07-19T18:37:00.002-04:00

For almost as long as I can remember there have been arguments against the electoral college, which gives the smaller states a more than proportional say in our national election for President. There is a reason for that. The Founding Fathers realized that straight majorities can be tyrannical, and they were right, as witness the passage of Obamacare.

Now we find out that Massachusetts is following the lead of five other states and determining that the votes of its electors must be cast for the candidate with the greatest popular vote, not the candidate the people of Massachusetts voted for, and certainly not the candidate the elector would consider the best candidate.

The reasons for the electoral college are now lost to most people because of the failure to properly teach history and civics. Students are no longer taught what the Constitution says and why. The reasons given for promoting this change are disingenuous at the least and most likely an outright lie.

Supporters of the change say that the current Electoral College system is confusing and causes candidates to focus unduly on a handful of battleground states.

The dynamics of pure majority rule mean that candidates will only focus on a few large, safe states, knowing that they will control the vote. What will happen is that we will become a permanently blue-state country, as the total votes of the red states will never equal those of the blue, whereas their total electoral votes would.

This is a profoundly fundamental change to our entire electoral process and needs to be stopped.

The hints of a coming police state

2010-07-19T18:23:00.002-04:00

This news item from ABC News is worrisome to chilling.

it wasn't his daredevil stunt that has the 25-year-old staff sergeant for the Maryland Air National Guard facing the possibility of 16 years in prison. For that, he was issued a speeding ticket. It was the video that Graber posted on YouTube one week later -- taken with his helmet camera -- of a plainclothes state trooper cutting him off and drawing a gun during the traffic stop near Baltimore.

In early April, state police officers raided Graber's parents' home in Abingdon, Md. They confiscated his camera, computers and external hard drives. Graber was indicted for allegedly violating state wiretap laws by recording the trooper without his consent. ...

Ford's lawyer, James Green, called videotaping "probably the most effective way to protect citizens against police officers who exaggerate or lie."

"Judges and juries want to believe law enforcement," he said. "They want to believe police officers and unless you have credible evidence to contradict police officers, it's often very difficult to get judges or juries to believe the word of a citizen over a police officer."

In Palm Beach County, Fla., Greenacres resident Peter Ballance, 63, who has Asperger's syndrome and has to record conversations to help his memory, settled a civil lawsuit for $100,000 last year. In August 2005, police officers tackled and arrested Ballance for refusing to turn off his tape recorder. ...

"Prosecution is only the most extreme end of a continuum of police and official intimidation and there's a lot of intimidation that goes on and has been going on short of prosecution," he said. "It's far more frequent for an officer to just say, 'You can't record or give me your camera or give me your cell phone and if you don't I'm going to arrest you. Very few people want to test the veracity of that threat and so comply. It's much more difficult to document, much more prevalent and equally improper."

When police resist being recorded in the execution of their duties, one can assume they are stepping over the line of permissible behavior. That this is becoming a pattern worthy of a major news item indicates that police abuse is on the rise.

There was a time when police were considered respected and honorable. With the difficulties of their jobs being made even worse by laws favoring criminals, not just the innocent, it is understandable, though not right, that they would attempt to compensate in other ways. A police state is the result of failure to provide respect for police and to properly administer justice.

Too good not to quote

2010-07-15T23:06:00.002-04:00

Richard Fernandez at his famous blog "Belmont Club" discusses the Obama chances in the fall and ends with this quote:

And this is the writing that was inscribed: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, and PHARSIN. This is the interpretation of the matter: MENE, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; TEKEL, you have been weighed on the scales and found wanting; PERES, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians

Dead on

2010-07-14T09:42:00.002-04:00

Versions of this are always going around, but this is the best one I have seen.

Paybacks are a bitch

2010-07-12T12:34:00.002-04:00

Obamacare, Cap and Trade, illegal immigration, deficit spending, terrorism, and castration of the space program are all part of the paybacks to the boomer generation and its parents. As they now face a future with rationed medical care, high taxes, reduced pensions and income, and the possibility of dying in a terrorist attack here in the US, they need to understand that this is what they asked for.

Though the roots of today's problems really started 160 years ago [a topic for another post], the major creation of them started about 80 years ago, when the country first bought into the pie-in-the-sky of FDR, and continued to believe the myths about his saving the country, long after historians and economists had debunked them. FDR created the illusion that the government could spend the country into recovery. Never mind that everytime the government meddled things got worse and they had to back off. The boomer parents remember FDR as saving the country.

After WW II, the boomer's parents remembered how hard life was during the depression and didn't want their kids to have to be deprived. Life did become easier during the fifties when they had the boomer generation, and between easier living, urbanization, and Dr. Spock, the boomers were raised with relatively little discipline, little necessity to work to survive, allowances and privilege. Additionally the parents paid little or no attention to what their children were being taught in school, trusting the schools to still be the same institutions that they attended. This last was only partly true, and under the surface, all the various forms of educational baloney were taking root.

The first payback was when the boomers became the children of the sixties, foul-mouthed, loud-mouthed, equating license with freedom. They actually believed the socialist crap they were handed in both high school and college. Mostly they thought whatever they wanted was to come to them, and that they should have the power to run things and destroy. The less obvious sixties children joined unions and believed that whatever they could get from their employers was deserved, under the belief in class warfare premises. They had not learned any economics in school. The ones that became managers simply thought the increased costs could be passed on, also ignoring economics and productivity.

The prolonged economic progress from the sixties to the end of the century hid the consequences of their actions from them. Regardless of warnings they could point to the Cassandras and say it's not happening.

By the time the boomer's kids were in school, the utopians had taken over social studies and were rapidly invading the science curriculum. The parents were taught how Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations was a failed dream, when in actuality, the Senate really had more sense. The parents were also taught that the UN was to be what the League of Nations could not become. So the lions, the lambs, the predators and prey, and the suckers to pay for it, all came together. The lions and the predators didn't have to chase their lunch, and got paid for it at the same time. Peace was presented, not as the result of winning wars, but as something that would avoid war. That peace at any price was to be the goal, and peace came to be defined as the absence of overt war, with no concerns for rights or justice.

At the same time multiculturalism reared its ugly head. Not the kind of multiculturalism that enjoys other people's clothing, songs, and activities, but the nasty, vicious, subversive kind that refuses to judge right from wrong, calling all cultures as equally valid. Along with it came political correctness--never say or do anything that might offend someone, unless it is the unfavored ones (Jews, Christians, Caucasian Males). Politics became the power wars of blocks, not the preferences of individual voters. Ideological dogma and cant replaced principle and platform.

By this point, it wasn't a matter of the parents trusting the schools, they simply didn't care as long as their child got into college. Grade inflation led to the the inanity of 14 Valedictorians in a class of 200. The only way that happens is when percentage grades are converted into letters. Where before it was possible to distinguish the best, next best and so forth, now all these poor little egos would be protected by having a meaningless distinction. Instead of being the top student, the best that could be gotten was in the top x%.

Even worse the content of those A's was meaningless. Political science was either non-existent or turned into ideological indoctrination. Science had become a celebration of diversity and the memorization of facts, not the requirement evaluate data and form conclusions, or to understand the principles by which things worked.

Politics for fifty years had nothing to do with what was best for the country, but with how much money could one state steal from the others. The grand champion of this just died last week, Robert Byrd. (I've ridden on one of his roads to nowhere, and seen an even more elaborate one under construction.) Along with the emphasis on getting with both hands was the idea that anything could be paid for by taxing the rich. This was a double failure in teaching in the schools, first because they were never taught that it requires riches to create the means to riches, and second because they had been taught that personal wealth was available cash, not invested money. With the failure to properly teach science, came the gullibility to accept any preposterous alarmist crap and believe it could be prevented by passing laws.

Just as they got whatever they wanted from their parents, so people thought they could get whatever they wanted from the government. Those in power loved it. Whether they delivered or not, they had the power.

So there you have it. We got what we asked for, whether we thought we were asking or not. It is a bit late to learn that there are no mulligans in life, everything is always for keeps. It is too late to do over, but not too late to undo, and do differently. Let's hope our attention span is long enough to get it done.

A most fascinating post

2010-07-07T19:59:00.001-04:00

In a very accurate and politically incorrect academic discussion with extensive commentary, a very new and interesting perspective on President Obama is created.

Not death committees......

2010-07-07T19:54:00.002-04:00

Pres. Obama has made a recess appointment of his Health Care "Czar." [It never fails to amaze me that in the US, the supposed Land of the Free, the President's henchmen are labeled with the term for the ultimate in arbitrary dictatorship. The truth outing despite itself?] Every article notes that he is considered and expert on the rationing of health care and admires the British system for its methods of rationing care.

....just one man acting as God.

For railfans and historians

2010-07-05T09:32:00.002-04:00

While on my excellent adventure to West Virginia, I purchased the book, Coal Trains: The History of Railroading and Coal in the United States, by Brian Solomon and Patrick Yough, Voyageur Press, 2009, (list price, $37.00). This is an excellent book for the railfan that knows some history, but needs more general background on some of the main themes in railroading. For those who have a tremendous wealth of knowledge, garnered over years of reading, this may provide a good organizing structure for that knowledge, especially for coal roads and the coal industry.

The focus is on how the railroads and coal were, and are, in a symbiotic relationship. In the late Nineteenth Century railroads often owned some of the mines they serviced. Mine ownership of railroads seems to be a Twentieth Century phenomenon. And if it weren't for the availability of coal, the tremendous growth of rail would never had occurred, not even oil could provide the convenience and concentrated energy of coal for producing steam.

The book is a class production. It is coffee-table format, with heavy glossy pages, and quite a few pictures. However, the book is not an excuse to publish pictures, there being plenty of well-written text to go with them. The only deficiency in my opinion was insufficient maps, especially in the Pennsyvania coal-fields. The interactions, overlapping and competition really need to be understood in the geography of the area. I would strongly recommend reading a good book devoted to the coal industry as a companion. It provides additional knowledge that, though not critical to understanding, can greatly enrich one's understanding.

I was also impressed with the book list in the back flap of the jacket. Voyageur Press appears to publish quite a lot of interesting titles.

Purifying the World

2010-07-05T09:20:00.002-04:00

"Purifying the World: What the New Radical Ideology Stands for" is the title of an article in the journal Orbis published by Foreign Policy Research Institute. The author, Ernest Sternberg, teaches at the University at Buffalo, Stte University of New York. In this article, Professor Sternberg presents a convincing picture that the apparently disparate leftist, liberal, environmentalist, climatist, jihadist, etc., are becoming enclosed under an implied to explicit ideological umbrella that has as its goal completely remaking the world into a totally different place where all of their fondest dreams come true.

What is most important about this paper is that Professor Sternberg shows that like all other ideologies of its type, it is leading to tyranny, not the supposed freedom that they claim they want. It is long, (26 pages) but not a difficult read. The only thing to watch out for as you read it is his summarizing the stance of the these ideologists from their viewpoint. It is not endorsement but an attempt to most accurately describe what their goals are.

Here is the link. Real life will provide the exam.

To bee (stung) or not to bee (stung)

2010-07-02T21:49:00.002-04:00

My friend Kevin Kim posted a note on his run-in with hornets while cutting the grass. It reminded me of an experience I had years ago with bumble bees.

Many years ago, about thirty-five, I moved into a garage apartment. It was a very nice one bedroom over a two-car garage. One side of the garage had a door and the other did not. I decided that the apartment would be much warmer in winter if both sides of the garage were closed, so I bought some wood with which to construct a closure.

I'm all ready to start construction when I notice a pile of old car mats in the middle of the floor. I start to poke it with a rake, and an ominous buzz comes forth. Watching it for a while, I see bumble bees flying in and out of the mess. I then decide I need to declare war.

Understand that I am afraid of bees, wasps, yellow jackets, hornets, and any other arthropod that stings or bites, yes, including spiders. So I plan a campaign. Having been an agricultural chemist in a previous life, I know that Diazonon is extremely deadly for bees. In fact that is a warning on the container. So I buy a can of Diazonon, a pump sprayer (the old flit-gun type) and prepare for attack.

I first attend to my armor. A large grocery sack with holes cut out that just match my glasses goes over my head. I wear a heavy winter coat, and work gloves. The rest was my work pants and steel-toed shoes. I advance on the nest, and start spraying. Bees start coming out and swarming at me. I am feeling pretty good that I am protected when one finds a hole smaller than a dime in the end of my gloves and nails me. That was the only wound I receive, but it was memorable. At the time I didn't care, but imagine what I must have looked like to the neighbors--with a paper bag over my head, gloves, and a heavy winter coat-in the middle of July.

I waited until near sunset, and looked in on my garage. There were a smattering of dead bees on the floor, and no buzzing when I poked the nest. I hauled the nest out onto the alley with a rake, fired up my blow torch, and set it on fire. It burned quite well, and when the cover burned off, I saw for myself that bumble bees do not make combs for storage, they make pots about a cubic inch or slightly more in capacity. The memory is still vivid.

The rest of the summer was uneventful and the next tenant had a well-winterized apartment to live in, as I moved out at the end of the summer. But a strong lesson remains: Nature is fierce and persistant. The bees were not intimidated by a monster thousands of times larger than themselves. They attacked without any thought of survival, and did score damage. If I were not protected I would have been driven off.

J'acuse

2010-06-30T17:54:00.002-04:00

I accuse Bishop Mark S. Hanson, Presiding Bishop of the ELCA and President of the World Lutheran Federation, of subverting his position as leader of the Lutheran Church to further his own political priorities.

In 2002 or 2003, he met with the Secretary of State Colin Powell. He obtained that meeting as the leader of the ELCA, not as Mark Hanson, ordinary citizen. In 2005, he and the Synod Bishops of the ELCA, signed a letter asking for removal of the tax rebates for the rich and applauding the continuation of the food stamp program. And now he has called for "'a full international and independent investigation' into the deaths of nine activists killed May 31 when Israeli military forces intercepted ships bringing aid to Gaza." (The Lutheran, July, 2010, p. 13) He continued calling for an end to the blockade and expressing concern over the proportionality of response by Israel, code words for Israel is not supposed to fight back.

On October 16, 2005, I posted the sermon I gave that day on Matthew 22:15-22, in which Jesus says "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and render unto God that which is God's." At that time I also pointed out that the converse was true, "Do not render unto Caesar that which is God's or render unto God that which is Caesar's."

Bishop Hanson's behavior is a violation of the first half of the converse statement. In making pronouncements on political situations as the leader of the Lutherans in the US and the World, he is pretending that he speaks for all of the Lutheran churches in supporting these positions. Or that the weight of the believers in God are behind these statements. Nothing could be further from the truth. One simply has to look at the results of the adoption of the homosexuality statement by the ELCA to see that it is not a homogeneous body. I can look at my own parish, which I consider representative, and find the entire range of political belief and expression.

I once tried to protest the Bishop's behavior to both the Bishop and as a letter to The Lutheran. I was ignored. Were Bishop Hanson to be other than the Presiding Bishop of the ELCA and President of the World Lutheran Federation, say a synod bishop or a parish pastor, he would have no audience other than his parishoners. That he should use the audience his position gives him for other than the spreading of the word of God is sacrilegious at the least. He has no right to speak for anyone other than himself. He was not elected to be a political but a religious leader. He is no better than the celebrities that think they have political knowledge and wisdom by virtue of their fame (or infamy).

Please be very sure that there is a great difference between Bishop Hanson's actions and those of the Pope when he said those who vote for or support abortion should not commune. The Pope was not making a political statement. He did not say repeal abortion. He simply emphasized what the Church was teaching all along, that abortion was a grave sin, and to support as a Roman Catholic was to support sin, and thereby become equally sinful. (Remember that Jesus taught that the thought was tantamount to the deed.)

Let me make it very clear. Though I currently consider myself a member of the ELCA, Bishop Hanson does not speak for me, nor do the inaccuracies on the Middle East in the Lutheran receive my acceptance. I have found that internal protest is ignored. Should I become sufficiently angered, I will dissociate myself from them.

Bill and Jim's most excellent adventure

2010-06-27T00:22:00.004-04:00

I have just returned from a trip to the past with my friend Jim. We went to the 100th anniversary celebration of steam railroading in West Virginia at Petersburg, WV, and then rode one of the top tourist trains in the country today.

We drove to our hotel on Thursday, and that evening watched a really excellent railroad movie, "The Emperor of the North" with Lee Marvin, Ernest Bourgnine, and Keith Carradine. Really excellent film; I highly recommend it. There are a few discrepancies from railroading reality to help the story line along, but they are minor. It truly captures the essence of railroading and especially railroading during the depression. Not only that, it has a very satisfying ending.

Getting to the festival was an adventure in itself, over winding, steep West Virginia roads, getting lost temporarily in a small WV town, and finally arriving in Petersburg. All part of the fun. Did we ask for directions? OF COURSE NOT. We're guys, we can figure it out eventually and did in short order. (Yes ladies, railroaders and hard-core rail fans are male chauvenist pigs. We actually hold doors for ladies, put them in cars, and still believe in chivalry. We also do it our way not yours. Oh, yeah, we leave the seat of the toilet up a lot.)

The steam festival at Petersburg was OK. We visited with our old acquaintances, John and Barney Gramlin who restored and run Flagg #75, an 0-4-0T switcher, rode in pre-1920's open windowed passenger cars behind 0-4-0T switcher #17 from the New Hope Valley RR, and saw the most beautifully preserved B & O F7 passenger diesel pull in the day trip passenger train. The only fly in the ointment was that CSX, true to their jerky reputation, refused to allow Western Maryland steam locomotive to travel 10 miles over their tracks to the festival. It really put a damper on things, because full-size locos like WM 734, a 2-8-0 Baldwin freight engine, are a major draw to these events. Note that CSX considers themselves one of the two main sponsors of the event.

HOWEVER, that turned out to be a blessing for Jim and me. We left the festival early in the afternoon, and started back. Jim's boss was there (Jim works for a railroad) and told us where the Western Maryland starts and ends. So off we go first to Cumberland, MD, where the train starts. There we found the station and got the schedule. Because the steam engine had not gone to the festival, it would pull the excursion train the next day. We then headed back towards Frostburg, MD. Now I had put us in a hotel in Frostburg because it was the closest known quality motel to the festival. As it turned out, Frostburg was the other end of the excursion train ride, so we had to find the station where there was also a turn table.

Here was another adventure. We didn't know where the station was in Frostburg, but we did know that it had to be at a low point in town, and possibly on a street with a name like Railroad Ave. You have to really understand railroading and railroad engineering to know why we were so certain it would be at a low point. So we drove back an forth over the various major roads in Frostburg. As a working hypothesis, railroad stations are often close to downtown, or easily accessible to it. I only know of one exception, Vincennes, IN, where the station is at the crossover diamond of the B & O and the C & E I. Oops, those are fallen flags. Now it would be the CSX (boo!) and the CSX (boo!)[corrected from original post. bk]. So we go through downtown twice and realize it is on the side of a hill. So we take a highway that goes downhill from downtown, and part way down, there is.... Depot Street! A quick right turn, some curves, and there it is...the station and the turntable. After parking and taking some pictures, we start out the other end of Depot Street, and find it goes straight up hill to the middle of downtown Frostburg. The road would have been better as a funicular than a road. San Francisco has nothing on this street.

Back at the motel, we research our two options for Saturday, 1) do the WM and go home or 2) drive to Cass, WV, and do the logging train and go home. The realities of getting to Cass from where we were eliminated that as an option. So we chose to go ride the Western Maryland from Cumberland to Frostburg and back and then go home. After dinner we then watched an excellent video Jim had purchased at the festival on steam railroading in China. They still use steam engines in regular freight and passenger service in 2009. However, HEADS UP. They are converting to diesel and electric, and there will be many 2-8-2 engines in good running order available in the next few years, and they are standard gauge. If your fantasy is to own a working, real, steam engine, it could come true.

So today, Jim and I packed up and headed for Cumberland. Of course, we got up at 7, got dressed, ate breakfast, and were in Cumberland by 9:20. The train didn't get to the station until 11. That is how hard-core railfans are. They would rather sit in a station than in a motel. We wandered around the station, took some pictures, looked into the kiddie gift shop (more about that later), listened to some BS from a guy that talked a walk he didn't do, and finally the train came around the bend into the station.

At this point I am back to standing on the platform in Vincennes, watching the switcher go by. The WM 734 is a big, powerful freight engine that hauled coal from of MD and WV mines. It is at least 15 feet tall and 80 feet long. Because it was for power instead of speed, the drivers were small, about 48 inches in diameter. But the sound of the whistle, the sound of the cylinder steam, and the smell of coal smoke are all intoxicating. What is really sad is the ignorance of most of the passengers about the potential dangers. They cross in front of the engine, they stand too close to the edge of the platform, they generally do not realize the hazards of a real, running railroad. In fact, the engine had to stop well short of the platform, and wait until everybody finally got the message from the loud speakers to stand back. The most egregious occurance was some old man that apparently deliberately sauntered across the track after everyone else had gone and the engine was almost at the platform. He was acting stupidly, but if there were an accident, guess who would sue? And in today's legal climate probably win.

When the cars were positioned at the platform, we all loaded. Jim and I took a seat in a chair car, but shortly after the trip started went forward to the open-air portion of one of the cars. There we experienced the sound of a properly- and hard-working steam engine, the sight of it as we went around curves, the smell of the smoke, and the cinders that fell on our head, arms and shoulders if we leaned out. At one point we passed through a 914 foot long tunnel and had smoke right down in the car. The trip lasted an hour and went though some spectacular scenery in the Appalachians.

When we arrived in Frostburg, the engine was cut off the train, advanced to the turn-table, and reversed. It was placed on the run-around track after which it ran down past the end fo the train, then backed up to the train and coupled for the return trip. In the meantime we were able to take pictures of all this and then get lunch. The return trip was just as spectacular, though Jim and I opted to stay in the coach this time. Once we arrived at the station in Cumberland again, the Western Maryland gift shop was open. This was what I expected in a gift shop. The other one had almost nothing but Thomas the Tank Engine stuff and kiddie things. This one had railroading books, and adult clothing for the WM.

At the festival I acted like a GERF (Glassy-Eyed Rail Fan). I bought two hats with B&O and Pennsylvania RR insignia, two painted steel plates with the two insignia, and five hat pins, for B&O, Pennsy, Union Pacific, Santa Fe, and Norfolk Southern. My five favorite railroads. At the adult gift shop I bought a serious history and pictures of the symbiotic relationship of railroads and coal over the last 150 years.

One of the many things that trouble me about the upbringing of modern children, is that they are not taught what railroads really meant to the development of this country. We seem to be stuck in the Granger whining about freight rates and the Ida Tarbell journalism about the Robber Barons. Festivals and tourist railroads like the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad, show people at an experiential level something of the romance of railroading, but they do not really convey the reality of the danger, the sacrifices, the visions, the courage, that built railroads and made them a part of our everyday reality. It is a possible start for some, but in general my perception was that most people really see excursion trains as another version of an amusement park ride--one in which they do not have to be strapped, and in which they can walk up and down and buy snacks and soda during the ride. Yet, I wonder if at some level they really do sense it. After all, they coughed up $30 plus their snacks and lunch for a four-hour ride, and no one seemed to feel cheated.

So, once again, I have been able to go back in time, and pretend that railroads are still all that they were when I was growing up. And next year we will do it again.

UPDATE: Here are links to the two Facebook picture albums I created from the trip
Petersburg festival: Here
Western Maryland: Here

The Missing Moderates

2010-06-13T18:53:00.002-04:00

One of the prevailing factoids today is that Jihadists are “only” 10% of the Muslim population, and that the vast majority of Muslims are moderates. Where are they? We see no evidence in the press of moderate Muslim activity or statements. All we see is the assertion that they are there. In the meantime we suck up to the violent side if Islam, by our behavior recognizing it as Islam. We have been calling Islam the Religion of Peace since 9/11, and yet all the violence we face is backed by some form of Islam. Save for a minority set of Christians in Lebanon and Egypt, all of whom face constant hostility, and Israel, the entire Middle East is Muslim. Even Turkey which was the great example of a secular Muslim state, is succumbing to Jihadism and Sharia.

Any reading outside of the MSM will show that Islam is inherently violent. It gives permission to kill infidels with no guilt, and in fact that is a virtue. It encourages lying to the infidel (taqiyya). It believes in allowing infidels to live only as long as they are subservient dhimmis, paying protection money, jizyah. And where is there anything to state otherwise? I don’t read it in the MSM or in any commentary. To those that would claim there are more pacifist passages in the Quran, I would note that they occur earlier in the Quran and are overridden by the later entries. It is one of the rules of Quranic interpretation that the latest writings take precedence over the earlier writings.

I have read that “moderates” are threatened by the radicals into subservience to the Wahhabbi rule of the mosque, and that there have been murders of families that tried to stand up to the jihadists. If this is so, why has it not been reported or more note taken of it? Why have the threatened ones not gone to the authorities? Why have enclaves of jihadists, far more virulent and violent than any of our home-grown militias, been allowed to grow and remain? Why have we allowed the recruitment in our prisons of jihadists?

This is where political correctness proceeds to condone murder and prevent our real understanding of what goes on in the mosques in this country. If it were a known fact that sedition is being preached in the mosques, political correctness would do everything it could to prevent our sending undercover agents into the mosques to determine it exactly. If the preaching of the imams in the mosque encouraged the violation of law, we would be equally prevented. HOWEVER, let it be thought or even hinted that such a thing were occurring in a Christian church and it would be swarming with undercover agents from both law enforcement and the IRS.

Are the “moderates” not reporting this because they are afraid that since it relates to Islam they will be damned to Hell for reporting to the infidel? If so, I feel sorry for them for such a belief. It will indeed kill them and their families in the long-run, either from eventually disobeying the imams, or from being considered part of the problem when the whole mess blows up in this country, as it will.

Moderates, if such a thing exists, have to make a choice, either they are with the Jihadists or they are not. If they are not, they need to make it known and very visibly and vocally so that if the jihadists come for revenge for apostasy, it will make a big enough splash that we will have to do something about it. Islamic murder stories have no legs, so to speak, to date. They occur and then die out almost overnight, yet we can spend days of newsprint on tawdry affairs and murders of our own society. We also need to entertain the idea that there are no moderate Muslims. The concept relates to more to Judeo-Christianity than to Islam. Judeo-Christianity has many tolerated interpretations of doctrine, many of which would be considered “moderate.” In Islam no such thing occurs. If one ascribes to a particular branch of Islam, then one is committed for life, and what’s more, is subject to the death penalty for trying to leave the faith.

Political correctness projects onto Islam our concepts of what a religion is and then treats it accordingly, despite obvious evidence that it is not the same at all. Political correctness also insists on there being moderate Muslims. I suggest that it is the very nature of Islam that there are no moderates. There is no tolerance when the surface is peeled away. Any so-called tolerance is only a form of taqiyya to buy time until Shiria is implemented. We are looking for something that exists in our society and is never allowed in Middle-Eastern culture. In the Middle East, it is my way or die. The highway is not an option. The sooner we realize this the sooner we can start protecting ourselves.

A contrived crisis

2010-06-05T13:04:00.002-04:00

Long before Emmanual Rahm, politicians of all stripes were making sure crises were not wasted. He simply made it explicit what they were doing. However, in the past few years crises have been manufactured to achieve various agendas. The most notible is global warming, but we have another one with roots as deep. It simply flies under the radar most of the time until Michelle Obama wants a bit of press.

From time to time we hear of an obesity epidemic or crisis, that this nation is too fat and we have to do something about it. I have spent the entire Memorial Day weekend and last night watching large crowds of people who represent a fair cross-section of this country. The idea of an obesity epidemic is pure, unadulterated BS. Less than 10% of the people I saw were overweight by a reasonable standard.

So where does this come from? For at least thirty years we hear from time to time from wannabe food cops that certain foods are unhealthy--"Spaghetti Alfredo is heart-attack on a plate." We have the FDA issuing guidelines for vitamin intake, and some government agency issues guidelines for healthy height and weight combinations. What I have noticed is that the height and weight guidelines have been becoming harder to meet over the years. At this point one has to be a version of Twiggy (You do remember her don't you?), or Kate Moss for the younger crowd, to meet them. By using these changing standards, more people can be considered overweight, and therefore one manufactures a crisis and thereby an excuse to regulate one more aspect of our daily lives.

At the same time guidelines for diabetic blood-sugar and for normal blood pressure are also dropping. This plays right into the hands of pharmaceutical companies. Pharmaceuticals are the treatment of choice for both Type II diabetes and hypertension. After all it takes more and more treatment to get that next little bit of improvement. In fact, there are now starting to appear articles indicating that one can too tightly control sugar and blood pressure in Type II diabetics and thereby increase their risk of stroke and heart attack. Gasp! Heresy! It also plays into the hands of the regulators, because the more stringent requirements for diagnosing Type II diabetes creates still another crisis that is co-existent with the obesity crisis--a two-fer.

What we need is something for these idiots to regulate that doesn't get in our road. We need some great, never-to-be-solved but always-to-be-attacked crisis
that will occupy them while we go about living our lives and being productive. Just for the record, I am obese. I will continue to be obese as long as I don't take it seriously and do something about it--ON MY OWN. I have been thin before, so I know what it takes. When I want to do it I will get there, and as long as I don't really care or want to, all the coercion in the world won't help. That is something that do-gooders and wannabe regulators never consider.

An excellent single source

2010-06-05T08:57:00.002-04:00

A couple of months ago, I received an email requesting I post a link on my blog to the Amazon listing of the book, "Climatism:Science, Common Sense, and the 21st Century's Hottest Topic," by Steve Goreham. Steve himself sent me the request based on what he perceived my own views on the topic to be. At that time I told him I had a rigid rule of not posting commercial links on my blog, but would purchase the book, read it, and post a review. This is that review.

Climatism is the term the author has given to the ideology that drives the global warming alarmism and the resultant politics. The book is organized into three parts, the first discusses the science concerning climate and the published data that has driven the great Global Warming alarmism. The second discusses the history and fallacies of the global warming movement. The third part discusses the various solutions and why they will not work as desired.

The book is remarkably even-handed on a topic that quickly polarizes people. The science in the first part is made very accessible to anyone with the ability to read and think. I saw nothing beyond what a person with a high school education could comprehend with a little effort, and at the same time it was not trivialized science. The only concession the author made to non-scientific people was to turn a number of charts upside down to emphasize the correspondence. It was very effective, because though I am trained to read charts as plotted, I saw a closer correspondence than I would have seen the other way.

The second part was a very good presentation of environmental history and the political forces that have become attached to environmentalism. I learned a lot about what was going on back when I was interested in other issues so was not following environmentalism closely. To quote one of my fellow bloggers (Gates of Vienna) "We are in a new phase of a very old war." And the greatest problem we face is, though the press is rapidly coming to reveal the errors, the political momentum is built up and those who gain power from environmental issues have a solid position of control.

The third part discusses the various remedies that are touted as "The Solutions" to global warming. The author does an excellent job of showing just how unrealistic they are as complete solutions. He very clearly says that they should be tried, WHERE APPROPRIATE. This part of the even-handedness of the overall book. Where there is logic on the environmentalist side, he accepts and shows it. Where there is illogic and wishful thinking he exposes it. The one place where he is directly confrontive is to state and demonstrate that the goal of climatism is power to control our lives.

The only real downside in my opinion is his constant reference to carbon dioxide as 4 molecules in 10,000. I understand the point he is making, but having made it once, I think it would have been better to use other phrases. By constant repetition, he falls into the trap that is commonly used by liberals of trying to win arguments by trivializing the argument of the opposition. This book is too strongly written to use such tactics.

As a single source on the entire global warming debate, this book is outstanding, and I strongly recommend that anyone interested in this topic purchase it. There is also a website with useful links as well.

For today, Memorial Day

2010-05-31T22:49:00.002-04:00

I come from a family that has done its share, both my grandfathers were in WW I, my father was in WW II, my uncle was in the Korean War. This essay captures our duty today to the memory of all that have gone before to protect our freedom, overseas so that we would not have to endure the horrors of war at home. Because of their sacrifices we have never had to experience day after day of 9/11 multiple times a day as Europe and Japan did. Granted Germany and Japan were the aggressors and the rest of Europe the victims, but without their blood, honor, and valor, we would have ultimately been the victims.

Read the essay, and pause and give thanks either in prayer or a moment of gratitude to what all our veterans, dead and alive have done for us.

Idiots Savant

2010-05-20T21:41:00.002-04:00

In the days before Political Correctness and the introduction of “Savant Syndrome” there was a very descriptive term, “idiot savant,” which referred to a person that was mentally deficient yet displayed extreme ability in a very narrow field, such as mental arithmetic. The reason this was descriptive, was that at one time, there was a gradation of mental ability that has been made taboo by the gurus of offensiveness. People were normal, sub-normal, stupid, morons, idiots, and imbeciles in decreasing order of mental acuity. It was a somewhat precise scale, about 10-15 points on the intelligence scale separated each level. The term “savant” comes from the French verb savoir. A person of great knowledge was referred to as a savant.

I bring up this term because of a phenomenon I am observing more and more frequently these days, what appear to be very intelligent and accomplished people in a particular field, seeming to understand less and less about life in general. In a very narrow, specialized area they operate quite competently, even brilliantly, yet fail to cope with some of the more common and trivial issues.

The most obvious and prevalent examples are show-business celebrities. They act, dance, and sing brilliantly, yet when they open their mouths on any issue, sound like complete fools. They seem unable to know right from wrong, or to have any kind of stable relationships, all things that average people have a very good grasp on.

Another group that qualifies as contenders for this designation is the host of college professors that seem to think that academic freedom only applies to the ideas they approve of, and certainly not to their students. They forget the simple dictum that freedom is not divisible, it either is, or is not, and that if they espouse the suppression of ideas they don’t like, that sometime in the future, it will be their ideas that are suppressed.

What has occurred is that our education system over the years has reduced knowledge to isolated collections of facts, not integrated systems of ideas to be discussed and thought about. Students learn a profession, but never are educated in the classic sense of the word. They have no concepts of anything to judge with. They do not think in terms of principles or guidelines, but only in concrete facts of here and now with no context around them. These students go into the world armed with facts and slogans and no way to evaluate the truth or falsity of other facts and slogans. There are no standards, no principles, no absolutes, only competing ideas, all of which are considered equal by default.

People listen to TV news or read stories in the newspapers and accept it as possibly authoritative. (This does seem to be changing in the sense of not trusting the sources as completely honest or unbiased.) What is worse, the stories from those sources are being written by people with no more knowledge than the readers about the topics they are writing on. Without context and grounding and the ability to analyze even in rudimentary ways, the readers are misled with no way to prevent it.

What once was a fluke, an aberration in the order of things, is being created by our education system. Those who would lead us,or that we might look to lead us, once upon a time, people of common sense, even if political animals, now quote great detail about things with no comprehension of the underlying principles and processes. The would be followers hear the mass of facts and have no way of evaluating. In effect,we are becoming a nation of idiots savant.

Failing at being a Christian

2010-05-13T17:07:00.004-04:00

I recently had this particular piece pointed out to me by one of my good friends. On the surface it appears fairly valid, but digging into it, I find it extremely judgmental and elitist. He lists ten ways Christians fail, and I will comment on all ten.

1) Too much money. "Wealthy Christian" should be an oxymoron
This attitude comes from a very literal reading of the scriptures, if his examples are to be used. I would ask him first of all did he do this? Did he take a vow of poverty? Regardless of the possible hypocrisy here, there is a very valid interpretation of the anti-wealth sayings that does allow for wealth accumulation. It has to do with whether one loves God or the money more. Jesus was after shock effect. He saw the love of money as corruptive of morality and was trying to get people's attention. There are a lot of interpretations of the "eye of the needle" verse, but notice that a camel could get through the eye of the needle if its packs were removed first. It didn't mean it couldn't happen at all. How does God's business get supported if not by the largess of wealthy people? Every church has certain donors that effectively are the prime support of the budget. And no, they are not trying to buy their way into Heaven. They give because of their belief in doing God's work. The important thing is how the money was acquired. If by moral means, then as long as it is less important than God, where is the harm?

2) Too confident God thinks we're all that and a leather-bound gift Bible. I'd like to humbly suggest that we spend a little more time wondering how we displease God and a little less time being confident that we do.
I will grant that there are people who attempt to assume their belief makes them better than others, but I find them few and far between. We don't have to go into a constant state of Mea Culpa to be humble. That was one of the things that drove Luther to find redemption directly in God's Grace. He could never list and beg repentance for all his sins. [Actually the way the sentence is constructed the author is suggesting spending less time being confident that we displease God.] But he is running counter to the Christian message here, that God loves us. As Christians we are expected to assume we are loved by God. One can draw a fine distinction here, that just because we are loved does not mean everything we do pleases God, but one of the reasons we go to church and pray is because we KNOW we don't please God all the time. We don't have to wonder about it. If we are honest with ourselves, we know when we sin. [What does the leather-bound Bible have to do with it?]

3) Too quick to believe that we know what God really means by what he says in the Bible
This is plain elitist in outlook. Yes, the Bible is complex and subject to many interpretations. The more I study it the more I am convinced there is no one correct interpretation of any of it. As long as the interpretations lead to a strong belief and good behavior, it is not really that important to most Christians. Very few of us are able to subject the basis of our beliefs to examination and questioning and still come out with any belief. Actually, few of us even want to do that. It doesn't take a genius studying the scriptures to make a good Christian. It takes a person willing to follow the bulk of the message. Whether they question it or not is immaterial. Generally they will ask questions, get an answer that satisfies them and go on. If what the pastor says the Bible means makes sense, then that is what is accepted as the meaning. Church is not a debating society, it is an expression of belief. Belief is ultimately unquestioning unless confronted by life events totally unaccounted for by the belief. He can worry over meaning all he wants and that is fine for him. For most people, once they believe, they put their energy elsewhere.

More so, which interpretation does he want us to accept, all of them, some of them? Choices have to be made and belief is built on those choices. Major theological questions are embedded in the translations we use—try comparing nine different translations of Jesus’ answer to Pilate as to whether he is the King of the Jews. There are at least seven different renderings.

Look at item 1. I would say he makes the same error, since there are other interpretations of the wealth scriptures.

4) Too action-oriented. We Christians could stand to spend less time acting in the name of God, and more time reflecting on the (ever subtle) majesty of God
This sounds like the feel-good versions of Christianity. What I profess is good enough. Works have no importance. We are not justified by works according to most Protestant interpretations, but by Grace. However, having been justified by Grace does not absolve us from the charge to carry out God’s work in the world. Christianity is mission-oriented. It was the charge from Jesus before he left the disciples to go forth, baptizing in the Name of the Father. Along with that were all his other teachings that had to do with helping the poor, the downtrodden. From my reading of the scriptures, it is not possible to be too action-oriented if it furthers God’s kingdom on Earth. The associated link to his post makes no more sense than the text with the item. The pairs of what he considers opposites, end up as an insult to those who actively practice doing good.

5) Too invasive of others generally. It is my personal, humble opinion that anyone seeking to mix church and state has failed to understand the nature and role of either.
It is not possible to have a firm belief in the morality espoused by Christianity and not bring that to the table politically. This comment sounds like he is a member of the hard wall separation of church and state. It also sets up an invalid straw man that grossly misinterprets the anti-disestablishment clause. First of all the clause reads that Congress shall make no law establishing a religion, and the second part, which is commonly ignored, nor make any law against the practice of religion. The author sets up a straw man of “exclusionary imperatives of a particular religion” which is expressly forbidden then generalizes it to be all of religion for his argument. He would have people deny their moral standards in the name of “impersonal, objective” government. This is of itself an oxymoron. Government is the common ground arrived at by agreement among INDIVIDUAL’s “personal, subjective” beliefs and desires. It is by nature subjective at its core. It is the common agreement of what will be governing that applies to all people equally.

6) Too invasive of others personally. We Christians are too often too eager to get up into the faces of others about their personal religious beliefs
I rarely encounter Christians that are “too eager to get up into the faces of others.” Again, I think he takes the very few and makes them the representative of the whole. Most Christians do exactly what he says, live their lives by their beliefs and evangelize by example. And I strongly disagree with the idea that it is impossible to talk someone into being a Christian. There are those who have the Pauline experience, and there are those who come to Christianity by bits and pieces, thinking and talking about each step of the way. It is certainly obvious if a stranger accosts you with the equivalent or the exact words of, “Have you been saved?” that it will be a turn off. However, that is not how good evangelism is done, and he does a disservice by acting as if it is.

7) Too quick to abandon logic. When talking to others about our faith, we Christians too often resort to a language and line of reasoning that leaves good ol' fashion logic sitting on the ground behind us, waving a sad good-bye.
It is hard where to start with this statement and its accompanying text. First, by implication, he ignores the huge world of theological literature with its varied and complex reasoning. He then expects everyday Christians to step outside their beliefs and see them as subjective and then act in some pure mode of speech that makes this clear. We are talking about belief here, and when Christians state the basis of their belief, they don’t really care whether they impress others or not. Those who are unimpressed or unsympathetic are not going to be converted in that way. At the same time, he makes the same kind of mistake in item #4 saying that there should be “more mysticism.” There is little or no logic in mysticism. It is a complete abandonment of logic.

8) Too fixated on homosexuality. Can we Christians stop already with the gay and lesbian fixation?
Considering that we are constantly bombarded in the media with Rainbow Coalition issues, how can Christians not be concerned? Actually, I question who is fixated with the question. Christians see the world as being deliberately sinful, even celebrating that sinfulness, and are trying to do something about it. Ignoring it will not have it go away. His dismissiveness is quite insulting to people to whom this is a vital question. [I personally have little brief with such issues, mostly a live and let live approach. However, his attack on those who do care is uncalled for.]

9) Too insular. When I became a Christian, one of the things that most amazed me about Christians is the degree to which they tend to hang out only with other Christians
This is a version of I want my cake and eat it too. I want to be a Christian but still go around with all the sinners and enjoy their parties and music. He apparently joined an insular group of Christians and generalized it to all Christians. Sure Christians associate with the people they know best—other Christians. They also avoid behavior that they consider sinful, which translates into not associating with non-Christians in some cases. My experience is that most Christians associate freely within their beliefs of what is acceptable behavior, not conditioning their associations on what the other people believe, but on how they act. His glib, “The heathen class has all the good music.” Ignores the history of music and for that matter modern Christian Rock.

10) Too uneducated about Christianity. Generally speaking (which of course is the most offensive way to speak about any group of people), Christians tend to embarrass themselves by knowing so little about either the Bible or the history of Christianity
Embarrass themselves to whom? An auto mechanic doesn’t have to have an engineering degree to be a good mechanic, nor does a carpenter have to be an architect. Similarly a Christian doesn’t have to be a theologian. Nor does it really make any difference where a belief came from if it is a moral belief. It is only those who would argue the basis of belief, and they are few of the Christian population, that really need or care to know how things were decided. Most people have neither the time, interest, nor the ability to study the roots of Christianity, and it is pure elitist bull crap to expect it. Rather it is a way of saying , “I am better because I do know this.”

All of us know Christians that rub our noses in their Christianity, then go out and do things that appear to completely contradict what they say. We also know Christians that have beliefs we are not in agreement with. That does not mean they fail to be Christians. The post this author makes does a great disservice to all Christians. He has used a sound-bite type of approach, focused on the aspects of Christianity practiced by a few Christians in some cases and by the majority in others that would make it look the worst possible in the eyes of a secularist and presented it as a global criticism of Christianity. From this particular post and from the associated posts from his blog, he appears to be a Christian that believes that the profession of belief and the experiencing of the overwhelming awe of God are all that is required. He then condemns the rest of Christianity by those standards plus a requirement that Christians be as scholarly as he. Far from the inclusiveness he wants in item #9 towards non-Christians, he is being exclusionary towards those with whom he supposedly professes a common belief.

If one considers the context of the publication of this post, it bears a strong resemblance to the politics of the English nobility in WW II who actually were sympathetic of the Nazis. The Huffington Post is one of the most left/liberal of the well-known blogs, right along with the Daily Kos. Left/liberals are strongly allied with the secularist approach to society—remove God from the public view, and let government do all the charity. This is the enemy in the holy war currently being waged in our country today. It is an attempt to completely undercut all that we, as a country, stand for and are built on. It becomes easy in such a context to read an underlying political motivation into the post. In particular items #1, #3, #4, #5, and #8 can be used in a political context and are definitely reminiscent of current political hot-buttons. This post has great propaganda value to a secularist. “Look, even a Christian condemns Christianity.” Rather than separating politics and religion, this article strongly associates them, but makes it very hidden.

When there is no crisis to take advantage of......

2010-05-06T22:36:00.002-04:00

In USA Today, front page below the fold, this headline:
"Toxins inflicting 'grievous harm'"
followed by
"Obama advisory panel urges national attention"

Two members (the third position is vacant) of the President's Cancer Panel says that the government has grossly underestimated the problem because of lack of research. [They could have also overestimated the problem for the same reason. bk] It urges the President to act even if the evidence isn't definitive. [Sounds like global warming to me. bk] The American Cancer Society called the report "unbalanced" and said it states hypotheses as facts. The ACS also says that the risk from smoking is many times higher.

......invent one.

If you think too much is made of the evil of Political Correctness.....

2010-04-30T15:50:00.002-04:00

This essay in Belmont Club shows where we are headed with political correctness. We are consistently a decade or two behind England. Unless we change the lag will disappear.

......think again.

They conveniently forget......

2010-04-30T13:29:00.002-04:00

Read any article in the MSM about the Arizona law and its repercussions and the reactions to it, and the words are always immigration, immigrants, etc. as if these are what Arizona is against.

.....it is ILLEGAL immigration. They don't WANT to have a clue.

Something to read

2010-04-30T09:16:00.002-04:00

I only link to another post when I think it says something truly important. This post certainly does. You might check out the website itself. Ostensibly it is written by a pre-teen. If so, he is phenomenally intelligent and articulate. Well worth your time to visit.

It gets more obvious......

2010-04-30T08:42:00.002-04:00

Arizona passes a law that duplicates Federal law at the state level and intends to enforce it. What happens? It is being vilified and every possible challenge to invalidate it is being sought. Here it is in all its ugly splendor--the attempt to use legality and publicity to promote illegal behavior. When people publically consider breaking the law to be proper, we are in serious trouble.

.....that politicians and power groups WANT illegal immigration.

Revisiting a controversy

2010-04-27T12:47:00.000-04:00

A few years ago there was a furor over the attempts by some Christians to introduce the teaching of Intelligent Design in the schools science curriculum. It went so far as a suit in Pennsylvania to force the teaching. The issue has since died out, but from my perspective it was handled extremely poorly by both sides, and a genuine teaching opportunity was lost. The press, being on against Intelligent Design (ID) from the start, failed to show the real issues underneath, and while everyone was pointing fingers at ID as being religious and a version of Creationism, no one pointed out that the arguments and positions of the other side were equally non-rational being Evolutionism. I think it is instructive to look at this in more detail, because it is another version of the kinds of arguments that have been going on throughout history.

Biblical literalists, that believe the world was created complete as we know it approximately 6000 years ago spend great amounts of energy, physical, emotional, and mental, trying to fit all that is known into their belief. They call it a theory of creation, and if they were willing to actually test its conclusions and inputs against known information honestly, they could indeed call it a theory, however poorly it does its job of explanation, and how invalid it is against any tests based on current knowledge. Because it is not subjected to external challenge, and is defended by ad hoc assumptions to keep the belief, it is an ideology and is most appropriately named Creationism. In fact there is a museum that purports to show and demonstrate the history of the earth in these terms in Petersburg, Kentucky, just Southwest of Cincinnati, Ohio.

One step more reasonable is Intelligent Design. The concept is based on an analogy to finding a watch, seeing its complexity, order, and functioning, and from that hypothesizing a watch maker. In this case, proponents of ID accept pretty much all of the factual basis of modern science, but then interpret it quite differently. Two of the most common arguments for a “watch maker” or “Universe Maker” or God, are the flagellum of some bacteria and a misapplication of probability to chemistry. In the case of a flagellum, because it consists of a dozen very specific proteins, any one of which when removed, renders the flagellum immobile, the analogy is drawn that like a watch, take out any one gear and it fails to function, and the watch is designed, so then is also the bacterial flagellum. What is missing is the idea that the flagellum might have started very imperfectly and over millions and billions of years changed and became perfected. In fact the ignoring of the element of time is one of the most glaring errors in ID.
The other “argument” is a gross misapplication of the concepts of statistics, an ignoring of the principles of chemical dynamics, and a refusal to think in the proper time scales. Essentially the argument is that given the number of atoms in a living being, the probability of them coming together in that configuration is so small as to be impossible, therefore they had to be guided, by God. First of all, one cannot validly calculate such a probability, since that isn’t how it happened. Probability must be calculated on the pathways to the result. Second, of all, if one looks at the chemistry of the universe, one finds that everywhere, the first small molecules of life are found. It is actually more probable that such compounds as amino acids, simple sugars, and even the polycyclic members of nucleic acid, will form than the atoms of matter will stay separated. Those compounds give off energy when they form, thus making them more stable than their separated components. When such compounds are then concentrated, they in turn form other stable, larger molecules, and so forth. Finally, given the amount of time that the universe appears to have been in existence, even relatively low probability events have had opportunities to occur.

Where the ID proponents really come into battle though is with evolution. They simply look at the complexity of living organisms and do not conceive of them occurring by chance or without direction. The eye has been used as an example of this, but interestingly enough, there were some simulated evolution studies that showed that given an increased sensitivity to light in a few cells on the surface of a multi-cellular organism, something functioning as an eye will form. For that matter one can see so-called convergent evolution in the eye of an octopus vs. the eye of chordates. The evolutionary path between them split off long before there was anything considered as a precursor to an eye, but both have amazingly similar eyes.

There is a subset of the ID proponents that will allow continuing evolution, but refuse to grant evolution of all living things from simple precursor organisms. Their constant refrain is, “Show me an transition form.” However, what this really means is, “Show me every possible link between the evolution from one predecessor to the final version that you claim.” There is an absolute refusal to accept any inferred links. However, I have also seen them reject actual transition forms because they don’t show the next step in the process.

For anyone fairly well educated in the basic sciences, it is easy to beat up on the Creationists and ID’ers. However, that is not to say that evolution gets a free pass. Regardless of how well corroborated, evolution is a theory not a fact. It is an interpretation of the facts that appears to fit them the best of other possible interpretations, but it has its own difficulties that are often ignored. The biggest one is, what is the jump from a collection of chemicals to a living organism? One can find all sorts of pieces in the literature. There are little hollow spheres of protein called coacervates that can form non-biotically, but yet in some ways behave like organisms. One can trap enzymes inside them a have them seem to metabolize, drawing in a sugar or similar compound and breaking it into two or more pieces. The pre-biotic chemists have done all sorts of things since the first Stanley Muller experiments that converted a hypothesized primordial gas mixture into a soup of biological molecules simply through constant electrical discharges and boiling the condensate to recycle the monomers and atoms. They have found all sorts of ways to create the precursors of DNA and ATP, two of the fundamental bases of life.
Or another question is how did DNA become the code? For that matter how did RNA become the translator? But still more fundamental, what defines life? We seem to know it when we see it, but have a very hard time properly defining it so that we will know definitively when we create it. Additionally, we still argue over the actual evolutionary pathways given that they exist. And there are many wonders in the biological world that are rarely discussed. We take it for granted now that mitochondria have DNA, and in fact that is being used as a marker in human evolution. But how did it get there in the first place? Most likely mitochondria and their plant analog, chloroplasts, were once independent organisms that became ingested but not digested, and formed a mutual supportive system. The metabolic traces are there, with very primitive anaerobic metabolism in the cytoplasm but the real energy-yielding reactions in the included chloroplasts or mitochondria.

What has happened in the school systems is that science has come to be taught as a collection of facts, not as a way of gathering, organizing, and using facts about the world around us. This is most evident in teaching evolution. It is taught as established fact, not well-corroborated theory. As such it should be labeled Evolutionism, not Theory of Evolution. It is well beyond the scope of this essay, but I think the teaching of science to the point of its being Scientism fits other agenda.

In fighting the introduction of ID into the classroom, teachers avoided having to actually show how science works. They would have had to understand the material well enough to explain its strengths and weaknesses and be able to analyze the fallacies of ID. There were many reasons and excuses given, not the least of which was the ad hominum attack of it was religious and non-intellectual.

From my perspective neither side was being honest. The ID’ers wanted their ideas presented as valid theory to be discussed, actually as an alternative to evolution, and the teachers and did not want any challenge to their intellectual hegemony. Rather than ID being given the necessary exposure to show it for what it was, and ideology, it was suppressed for other reasons. And classroom science became even more entrenched as a collection of facts rather than a system of knowledge acquisition and analysis. It is all reminiscent of the same debates with slightly different foci throughout history from the Middle Ages to the present.

Exclusion, Inclusion, Coercion

2010-04-25T19:22:00.000-04:00

These three words describe the manner in which the three monotheistic religions interact with the rest of the world. They represent Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, respectively. The observations are based on their behavior and their scriptural guidance.

The Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, is filled with injunctions to the Jews not to intermarry or associate with the inhabitants of lands that they conquered or migrated to. The primary concern was to maintain the purity of the people and the covenants with God. To this day, Jews do not evangelize, though the prohibitions among reformed and perhaps conservative Jews have been relaxed. They do intermarry with gentiles. For the Jews the strategy has brought persecution, but also they have survived as a people, drawing themselves from their Diaspora back to Israel.

Christianity, on the other hand, has followed the injunction to go forth and baptize the nations in the name of the Trinity. It took the shift from evangelizing only other Jews, to Paul’s sanctions of evangelizing the gentiles and letting them avoid all the Pharisaic rules and regulations. He was more concerned with their actions towards one another and the rest of the world. As a consequence, Christianity, partly due to the history with Rome, became the dominant religion of Europe. The important note was that it was as much orthodoxy as orthopraxy that provided the growth. A major characteristic of Christianity is that it is done by choice, including the practices of the faith, as well as the questioning. This is not to say that has always been the case during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but generally speaking it holds true, and certainly does today.

Islam evangelizes, and does so aggressively, BY FORCE. Where the Muslims conquered, they offered a choice of death, dhimmitude, or conversion. Depending on the burden of the jizzya or dhimmi tax, conversion might be more acceptable, to other than those willing to martyr themselves. Once converted, apostasy is punishable by death. Once a Muslim, always a Muslim, whether one wants to be or not. Needless to say, this is effective in numbers of converts, but one questions the strength of the faith. Apparently that is not a concern. When considering the scriptural basis of Muslim behavior, it is important to realize that like the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, there are passages that can be interpreted as gentle and others as violent or aggressive. However, the rule in Muslim interpretation is that the later sutras override the earlier ones. Interestingly enough, the later sutras are the ones that are the most aggressive and punitive to infidels.

At this point, I am going to offer some of my own interpretations and speculations. First, that the Muslim-Jewish conflict is not new, and did not start with the creation of Israel. That just handed a cause to the Muslims on a plate. Muslims have had it in for the Jews ever since Mohammed was rejected as a scholar by the “People of the Book” as he called them. The problem is that Islam is simply a corrupted version of Judaism through combining a rather poor memory of Hebrew scripture with the norms of nomadic Arabian culture. Try reading the Quran. It is hard, because it is incoherent. If one reads the history of Islam and the visions in sources that are sympathetic to Islam, it is hard not to see it as a simple justification for whatever Mohammed wanted to do at the time. I found it very suspicious that every time he ran into a problem, he would have a vision that commanded him to do what was the most expedient and not necessarily the most principled.

The Muslim-Christian conflict results simply from the fact that Christians are infidels. We are hated for who we are, and until we get that idea straight in our heads, we will be constantly on the defensive. From my perspective, any Jewish-Christian conflict is due to politics not religion. This is not the essay to address that.

I guess that is enough to get me a fatwa. Ever notice that Jews and Christians never condemn their critics or threaten them with death? Tends to support my theses above.

Theodicy

2010-04-25T16:45:00.000-04:00

This essay is a continuation of a previous one, “Benevolence, Good, Bad, and Evil,” and an expansion of a second, “Thoughts on the Nature of God.” The first essay established the definition of the terms in its title as preparation for this essay, and the second, though it definitely touched on theodicy, was more concerned with the nature of God Himself than the theodicic problem. This essay will examine the question in more detail.

The theodicic problem can most concisely be stated as, “How can God allow evil things to happen in the world?” This is a wonderfully complex question under the surface of the words, because it implies many things about God and assumes other things about Him as well. It implies that God has a choice, assumes that he has the power to prevent it, and describes the events as evil, considering that to be the correct description. This question was first asked in a meaningful way, philosophically, after the great earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1755. The loss of life and property was massive for the times, and given the orientation of the people at that time, the question was natural, “How could God let this happen?”

It is obvious the question still resonates today, when we have any major disaster. Fundamentalists will say it is God’s punishment for the way the victims lived. Never mind that both good people, BY THEIR STANDARDS, were killed as well as the bad. Others simply say it is the forces of nature. Others sweep the question under the rug, because it points out their own internal conflicts in their beliefs. The problem arises because God is considered omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent. As I discussed in “Thoughts on the Nature of God,” it is the omnipotent part in combination with the omni-benevolent part that creates the problem.

In some ways, the theodicic question is uniquely Christian in nature. Judaism, as related in the Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible, sees God as fairly harsh and judgmental at times, punishing His people for failure to live up to their covenants with him. To them the concept of omni-benevolence rings false. Islam is similar in that they will see anything happening to the infidel as coming to him, and as evidence of Allah’s judgment. Witness recent statements in the news. Christianity is unique in its concept of nonjudgmental love and caring, which is the basis of the idea of omni-benevolence.

Omnipotence comes from the very beginnings of belief. The logic is fairly simple and obvious, if God created everything, then he must be able to control everything. He is all-powerful. Even if it is taken one step in indirection, God created the laws by which everything came to be, there is still the implication that He is able to completely control everything. After all, if He created the laws, then he can change them as He wishes. But at least from Medieval time forward, there is also the belief that matter is totally inert, and the action of matter comes from the direct intervention of God. In one or another forms, that belief also still occurs today, and definitely relates to the question before us. Many Christians do believe that God controls everything, all the time. [It is hard to see how they rationalize that with the concept of free will.] When presented with the theodicic question, the response will be on the order of, “It is all in God’s hands, He always has a plan, God’s ways are not known to us,” etc., in other words, “I don’t know, and don’t want to think about it.”

In “Thoughts on the Nature of God,” I argued that of the three omni’s, omniscience, at least operationally, and omni-benevolence could have good cases made for them, and that the weak link was omnipotence. But here it is useful to look at omnipotence a bit more. In attributing the creation of the universe to God, there has been a form of rear-guard action fought throughout history, what has come to be known as The God of the Gaps. In essence, as science explains more and more, God is used to explain what is still unknown. For the most part it is not used in serious discussions of creation. However, God as the first cause, or the creator of the matter and laws of the universe from nothing is very much alive and well. This is the ultimate God of the Gaps. “Where did the matter and energy for the Big Bang come from that started the universe, and what determined the laws by which it operates?” “I don’t know,” is emotionally very unsatisfying to most people, hence, it came from God. This still argues for, or at least implies, the omnipotence of God.

So one way to limit omnipotence is to say, that God does not violate the laws of nature. Granted He created them, but now does not change or violate them. This doesn’t get rid of the omnipotence just let’s God voluntarily restrict its use. However, this still leads to theodicic problems as we shall see below.

Let’s now review a bit what was written in “Benevolence, Good, Bad, and Evil.” The crux of the discussion was that Benevolence and Evil entailed intent, but Good and Bad were neutral, in the sense that their effects are judged by their impact on humans, but they happen fortuitously or randomly if you will. They are equal opportunity effects, both people considered good and people considered bad suffer or benefit from them. For the discussion below there are two model events, a natural disaster such as the Lisbon earthquake or the Indonesian tsunami a few years ago, and a man-made disaster, in this case, 9/11 and the destruction of the World Trade Center.

Let’s start with the Lisbon earthquake since that is where theodicy became a philosophic issue. From our perspective today, the Lisbon earthquake was the result of stress relief in the crust of the earth. The stress build-up was due to the relative motions of two plates of the earth’s crust. Through long but consistent chains of reasoning, the event can be tied back to the laws of nature, or the ways in which the physical world works.

Here is the issue: if God made the rules, then he is ultimately responsible for all the deaths, and moreover, can be considered intentionally responsible, since the rules were made by intent. If he is intentionally responsible, then the Lisbon quake is evil since the intent was to enable harm through the operation of the rules of nature. If one tries to argue that as an unintended consequence of the structure of the rules, then one has denied omniscience. If one accepts the intent then one denies omni-benevolence. Something has to give or God is guilty of evil. Notice it makes no difference whether one says God created the earthquake on purpose or says that God did not interfere with the operation of the rules he made. The result is morally the same, unless one makes a utilitarian argument that it was less harmful to allow the Lisbon earthquake than to prevent it. Generally speaking, utilitarian arguments are an anathema to the Christian religion, and to make one in defense of God could be considered sacrilegious at the least and heretical at the worst.

The only solution to the quandary is to say God is less than omnipotent and could not prevent the earthquake. If one denies omni-benevolence then God is morally responsible for all the deaths and damage and it is therefore an evil act—it was intentional. To deny omniscience is to turn omnipotence into a potential out-of-control situation, where vast powers are unleashed without knowledge of their ultimate effects. Again a situation that resolves to evil when bad things happen. If God is less than omnipotent, then He is incapable of exercising the choice to prevent or allow the Lisbon earthquake. Without that capability, he no longer can be held morally responsible and the Lisbon earthquake is an extremely bad event, but not an evil one.

Now let us turn to 9/11. There is no doubt that in human terms, 9/11 was an evil event. It was the deliberate action of the members of Al Qaeda to kill as many infidels and destroy as much property as possible with four fully-fueled airliners. There is no doubt about its intentionality—it took years of preparation for the event. However, we have to decide where God is in all this. If he is omniscient, he knew it would happen; if He is omni-benevolent, He would not want it to happen, and if He is omnipotent, why did He let it happen?

So again we are at the theodicic crossroads, and the arguments against denying omniscience and omni-benevolence are the same. We are back to discussing omnipotence but with some variations. One of the major considerations of moral questions, and in fact underlies all moral questions, is whether or not the actor could have done other than they did. As long as we believe the person had a choice and were capable of exercising the choice, they are held to be morally responsible. In the case of 9/11, why did God not prevent it? It is ridiculous to argue that He wanted some or all of the people that died to do so, and in the case of its being only some the rest are collateral damage. That tosses omni-benevolence out the window. In addition, if He is omnipotent, he could have found a better way to do it.

Starting with the hypothesis above that God cannot alter the rules of nature, then can He still be held responsible? Potentially yes, because Christianity believes He knows all our thoughts and behavior, and with that the potential to change minds. But that raises a difficult question, if God wants us to be moral, we must have free will or our morality is meaningless. If He causes us to make choices, then we have no free will. So once again can God change our minds and doesn’t, or is He unable to directly force us to make the desired choice and therefore can only suggest options? If He can change our minds and doesn’t then we are in the position of being responsible for his choice as well as our own. It also tends to deny omni-benevolence. How can He want the best for all of us, if He allows evil to occur when He could have prevented it?

Again, I think that God’s ability is limited. He can read our minds, and He can, in His own way, communicate suggestions and requests to us. However, we have to be open to them and to Him. It is just like trying to talk in a noisy environment, if the background is too loud, even if one can hear the other’s voice, they may not be understood, and if the background is loud enough, even the voice will be lost. Or to use another analogy, one must be wanting to hear or talk for a message to get through. So if God is doing all he can to communicate, and we are doing nothing, then when we make a wrong choice, it is our responsibility, and solely ours, as to the outcome. Hence, for 9/11, the members of Al Qaeda were so determined to kill infidels, that they were never open to any other argument, and are therefore totally morally responsible for its results.

To have limited God’s power so drastically, that He is capable only of suggesting and asking things of us, has major implications on religion and religious metaphysics. If God is not omnipotent, then He most likely did not create the universe, so where did it come from? If God did not create the universe, then where did He come from? For that matter if He is so weak, what good is He? These are all outside the discussion of this essay, but the last question was addressed somewhat in “Thoughts on the Nature of God.”

In summary, the theodicic question arises from the belief that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent. Once one shows that these are inherently contradictory, one must select one to be less than “omni.” This paper argues that the resolution of the theodicic question is to limit God’s omnipotence.

Atheism, Agnosticism, Theism

2010-04-24T13:20:00.002-04:00

In one sense this looks like a continuum, but actually it is not. The continuum is simply atheism to theism. Within the two, one can make further distinctions. Interestingly enough, they are almost mirrors of each other in the behavior of their adherents. But it will help to do some taxonomy first.

From my perspective, which includes thirty years, earlier as an atheist and later an agnostic, atheism has roughly three main types, militant, quiet, and indifferent. Militant atheists, also referred to as Capital “A” Atheists, are very obvious. They are busy filing suits to rid society of any public mention of God whether governmentally stated or privately stated. They are evangelists for No-God. Often they defend the Theory of Evolution as fact. The most well-known of these was Madeline Maury who started her career of militant, politically active atheism forty or fifty years ago. Though it is a topic for another essay, they most frequently associate politically with the modern liberal factions. They put as much energy and passion into their atheism as Fundamentalists put into their Christianity or Islam. From my knowledge of a few of them, it is my supposition that their atheism is emotionally inspired to begin with and is not subject to any kind of reason as to its reasons for action.

Quiet atheists are often much more thoughtful about their atheism, and as a consequence also more tolerant of theists. Many, like I was, arrived there from a process of questioning the religion they were brought up in, especially when it ran counter to what they were learning in school. They made a choice between what was known intellectually and a belief in God, as He was presented to them, seeing the two as incompatible. They may or may not join cause with the militants on particular issues, but being more tolerant, most likely don’t see it as important unless it violates one of their principles. Their politics will be across the spectrum and based on principle, just as their religious beliefs or lack thereof are.

Indifferent atheists generally have never been exposed to religion, and don’t know and don’t care if there is or is not a God. It’s a “Nah, I don’t think so” approach. This is not the same as agnosticism which will be discussed next. Generally speaking they simply live life by the moment, focusing on what is useful or workable to them and with little concern for all the furor over religious issues in public. I suspect this constitutes the largest part of the people that don’t believe in God. But they probably blend belief-wise into the corresponding theist group.

This is a good place to mention Agnosticism because I don’t place it as the middle ground between atheism and theism. That is because what I consider proper agnosticism requires some thought to realize that there is no proof of the existence or non-existence of God, and a conscious decision to live with the unknown. It takes quite a bit of mental energy to maintain a position with a known unresolved issue. Human nature generally wants to decide one way or another because is makes the remaining decisions easier. The biggest distinction between an indifferent atheist and an agnostic is the answer to the question, “Do you believe there is God?” The former says, “Naw, or some equivalent in casualness,” and the latter, “I don’t know.” In effect, I consider agnosticism off to the side of the continuum.

Progressing along the continuum, we reach the indifferent theists. Typically these are people that have gone to church out of habit all their lives or have been exposed to religion enough to believe in God, but don’t let it have any impact in the way they live their lives. If asked if they believe there is a God, they will say, "Yes, I guess so," but if asked how it effects the way they live their lives will probably have no effective answer. My experience says this is a large proportion of the people who claim to believe in God. Statistics indicate that up to 80% of the country says they believe in God, but the attendance at churches is falling. To me this indicates the belief has no real importance, hence the label indifferent theists.

There is a transition group between the indifferent and quiet theists. This has sprung up in the past several years with the growth of the mega-churches. Mega-churches are characterized by a simple message that makes people feel good. There is strong emotional involvement at the time of worship, and there may be donations, often large, to the church, but the actual impact on the day-to-day lives of many of the attendees is minimal. It is transactionally oriented—be baptized, go to church, donate money, and all is good. Somehow, miraculously, your behavior will be OK and you are automatically saved. The emphasis is not on law and behavior but on the salvation part, with little emphasis on changing behavior. There are testimonials on the good works done under religious motivation, but it has the same spectator feel as attending a movie, play, or lecture.

The quiet theists are probably the largest proportion of the theists that attend church. They belong to all denominations of all the monotheistic religions. They worship fairly regularly, and actually strive to follow the teachings of their religion. They are reluctant to evangelize and only talk about religion amongst themselves. But they live their religion in their lives, doing good, volunteering, donating to all sorts of causes. (This is not to say that others don’t, it is just to point it out as a defining characteristic of the group.) Going to church for them is not a command but a desire, and they take pleasure in the company of their fellow church-goers.

At the extreme of the continuum are the militant theists. The most extreme form are the Islamic jihadists that believe killing non-believers is a holy thing to do. They have their equivalents in Fundamentalist Christians that have killed abortion clinic workers, bombed abortion clinics, and carried out other violent acts in the name of their religious beliefs. Somewhat less extreme and more common on the Christian side of things in this country are the very vocal evangelists for banning abortion, banning sexually oriented media, or making the religious definition of union the legal definition. [Marriage is originally a religious term, and embedding its definition in law is the equivalent to attempts to implement Shari’ia in secular law.] They are also the same general group that wanted to elevate Intelligent Design to the status of scientific theory. Only in their case it was not to be considered theory but fact. The characteristic here is that there is a self-righteousness that says that I believe it is wrong for religious reasons therefore everyone has to obey, even if by force.

Because of their outspokenness, the two extremes are often used to characterize the entire group, militant atheists being the avatar for all atheists and the same for militant theists. Either out of ignorance, failure to think for themselves, or group cohesion, the rest of the group often goes along. It is the actions of the extremes that have put us in the position of having a holy war between religion and secularism in this country. The truth is that this is either a minor or a non-issue to most of the populace, but they are too busy living their lives to take the time to defuse it. With the exception of the militants, there is far more in common among all believers and non-believers than there is difference, and there is tolerance of other opinion. We need to strive to make this more operative.

Elites are plain afraid of ordinary people.

2010-04-19T17:47:00.002-04:00

I was just reading Kathleen Parker's column in JWR, and it struck me that she really is afraid of people who are not as educated and nuanced as she. She sounds like a liberal press release, and she has supposedly conservative credentials. Though she lost my respect when she became an Obamacon, trashing Sarah Palin as not being sufficiently sophisticated, I return to reading her column hoping (there's that word again) that she will have something substantive to say. So far there is no change (there is That word again also). The only times I find her saying something non-elitist is on the most inconsequential things.

Real life has finally arrived at the gates of la-la land and it is scaring the pants off the inhabitants. They have no clue as to what is going on, and no way of understanding it.

The product of education

2010-04-19T17:43:00.002-04:00

A few minutes ago, a high school girl knocked on my door, identified herself, handed me a pamphelet, and asked for my support of the latest tax levy. The most troubling thing about her was she had a sweet smile, was very mannerly, and had wide-open, empty eyes. There was no person behind the face. This is what our schools are turning out--pod people.

Guess which way I will vote on the levy.

Oops, I just realized I need an absentee ballot. I will be gone election day.

Running Scared?

2010-04-19T10:37:00.002-04:00

One of the more obvious ploys used by liberals is to attempt to criminalize any behavior that opposes their views and actions. Here is the latest: Attempting to accuse Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin of sedition. What a laugh. Based on a quick review of the definition of sedition:

On NBC's April 18 "The Chris Matthews Show," Time columnist Joe Klein all but accused former GOP vice-presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, along with Fox News host Glenn Beck of sedition.

"I did a little bit of research just before this show - it's on this little napkin here. I looked up the definition of sedition which is conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of the state. And a lot of these statements, especially the ones coming from people like Glenn Beck and to a certain extent Sarah Palin, rub right up close to being seditious."

Considering Ramsey Clark, Jane Fonda, and John Kerry all committed treason, the accusation of sedition is a real show of chutzpah. By the definition quoted on the show, any political dissent is seditious which is exactly what they are shooting for.

Behavior of the press

2010-04-17T10:33:00.002-04:00

Over the past 12 years or so, we have seen an increasingly subjective press, reporting only what they wish to report and giving only the information they wish to give, filling in the gaps with pure opinion disguised as reporting. In the process they have adopted a stance of my end justifies any means to get it, including publishing secrets relating to national security, lying, failure to check obviously incorrect sources, and highly selective quoting in and out of context. The American people have slowly come to realize the situation and have developed a profound distrust of the media.

The problem is that most people have little time or the resources to obtain information from other than the main stream media. This would not be so bad except that all but one MSM source is obviously on one side of any question, the liberal-left side. Interestingly enough the one source that is not obviously biased to the liberal-left position, Fox News, is vilified by politicians and the other press, and enjoys the largest audience of any news supplier. In comparison to the the other news sources Fox might be considered conservative. However, I consider them mixed. I do not find my views completely supported by their offerings, and I consider myself conservative/libertarian.

This situation is not new. There have been crusading journalists and publishers throughout our history. Some of the news printed from the eighteenth and nineteen centuries is extremely lurid and inaccurate, in many instances outright libelous. However, as a counterweight to that were the large number of publications of varying views, public discussions, and a certain overall ethic that generally did not print things that would be harmful to the country vs. the rest of the world. From my perspective it has been just since the end of WW II that all this has broken down.

What went wrong? When and where did Freedom of the Press become a license to destroy? When did journalistic ethics change from a pride in finding all the facts and getting at what is hidden by legitimate means to accepting any and all information from any source unquestioned and publishing it?

The final breaking was the Vietnam War. [Whether you call it the politically correct “Vietnam Conflict” or not, it was a war.] With Walter Cronkite’s reporting on the Tet offensive, journalists discovered that they had the power to influence events not report them. Then there was the publication of the Pentagon Papers by the New York Times. This was the first of the open publication of illegally obtained information, relating to national security. Because the content of the papers ran counter to the liberal/left orthodoxy it was considered virtuous to break the law and publish them. From that we now routinely have news reported as from anonymous sources not authorized to discuss whatever is being reported on. Under the guise of Freedom of the Press, we now have unlawful, even treasonous activity allowed.

Probably what really put the icing on the cake was Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s investigation of the Watergate break-in. This was a brilliant investigation, and despite my general agreement with much of Richard Nixon’s politics, he did deserve to go down for abuse of the office of the President. The problem was that the wrong lesson came from it for many journalists. They didn’t see the work and effort and the investigation and the value of the press, they saw the power to destroy a public official they didn’t like, and didn’t like them. It was payback time.

The Constitution, specifically in the First Amendment, states that the freedom of the press cannot be abridged. However, nowhere does it say that such freedom also has immunity from prosecution for illegal activity, so-called protection of sources, or libel. What has to be clearly understood to fix the problem is that publication of opinion and fact, legally obtained, cannot be prohibited, though we are starting to see hints of this coming. What has to be stringently enforced is that if information is obtained illegally, the perpetrator must be prosecuted, not allowed to hide behind a fraudulent interpretation of the First Amendment.

More generally, and therefore more impossibly, there needs to be an understanding that journalism has a greater responsibility than the next scoop. Though in many cases the next scoop is essential to the survival of the press, or at least to its immediate standings, there are many things that are harmful to other people, that compromise the security of the country, or are plain illegal. We have seen many instances of the press committing borderline or even obviously treasonous acts with no regard to the consequences other than furthering their own image and/or agenda. What is worse, there is no politician or law enforcement official with the principles or the courage to call them on it.

There is hope, however. Most of the most egregious examples of what this essay is talking about are suffering severe loss of audience, far greater than can be accounted for by economic reasons, or technological reasons. The general populace is often slow to react to subtle issues, but react they eventually do. This is one place where market forces are still operative. The most liberal of newspapers and television news outlets are showing a monotonic decline of readership and audience and have for several years now. It will continue until there is change.

E8: An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything

2010-04-09T21:34:00.003-04:00

My friend Kevin Kim asked for my take on this paper in a comment to a recent post about the successful run of the Super Collider in Europe.

This is a fascinating mathematical tour de force in which the author is able to show that if reality is described in algebras, then all the algebras can be commuted with one another. From this he posits that he has created a theory of everything.

Several years ago I posted an item on Scientific Fallacy, in which I pointed out that it is very easy to confuse the description of a thing with the reality of a thing. I think this is what has occurred with this paper. What he as created, and a great accomplishment it is, is a description of everything. He also predicts some as yet unobserved items.

With reference to my statements made quite a number of times that theoretical physics reminds me of pre-Copernican astronomy, this is mostly a better way of calculating the epicycles not a change in their nature. He assumes the existing metaphysics and finds a way to describe it better. All my questions of modern physics revolve not around their methods but the interpretations. Because the mathematics works so well, nobody wants to question the metaphysics that is drawn from it. They simply dismiss its incomprehensibility as not important, as long as the math is consistent and measurements can be made consistent with the math.

For all its mathematical beauty, and in a mathematical sense it is quite aesthetic, it still falls within this same realm.

I finally broke down and embedded a You Tube Video

2010-04-06T11:19:00.002-04:00

This was too good not to share with everybody.

We remember what happened to the Christians...

2010-04-06T09:00:00.003-04:00

So the President is making official policy to drastically limit the use of nuclear weapons. He is certainly true to his ideology, while trying to make politics work with the conservative side by not outright banning them. I have no problem with people living by their stated principles and even admire it when they encounter adversity while doing so. There is a big difference here--his principles are being applied to the entire US, and they are not ours.

If he wants to go unarmed in the world full of bad guys that have no qualms about beating up on someone who is defenseless, that's fine--as long as he only has willing volunteers going with him.

In my mind, this behavior borders on impeachable for not living up to his oath of office or his responsibilities as President with respect to the security of the US. How leaving ourselves open to attack by removing deterent translates into protecting us is beyond me. He has proven time and again in the past 14 months that his talk is just that, talk. His graded deterent with non-nuclear weapons is so much hot air. He either has no spine and will let the US be totally destroyed, or he will be like most cowards and get his backbone too late and end up with a much larger war than would have been necessary otherwise.

His domestic policy sucks, but his foreign policy is plain scary.

The world is full of lions and he wants to go out there with good intentions.

...the lions ate them.

Non-violent resistance....

2010-04-03T19:52:00.002-04:00

I have long been pondering the effectiveness of Ghandi, among others, in the world, and Martin Luther King in this country. I have also thought about Rosa Parks and the Selma, Alabama, schools. Non-violent resistance resonates with the part of us that recoils from beating or punishing anyone or any animal that is simply letting itself be beaten. Decent people only fight that which fights back.

Unfortunately there is a sub-species [emphasis on sub-] of human that relishes the total destruction of another human being even after they have totally surrendered. To a human of that sub-species, surrender is an encouragement. They are stopped only by equal or greater resistance. When the US realizes on a large scale that Jihadism, and many other -ism are of that ilk, only then will we finally succeed in our goals which are at the root, peaceful.

....assumes decency on the part of most of the spectators.

Put the blame where it belongs....

2010-04-03T18:18:00.002-04:00

This article courtesy of Jewish World Review points out something nobody seems to notice on either side of the political barricades...President Obama's policy towards Israel is simply a more personalized continuation of President Bush II's.

This then leads to the question of what is constant here?

To me it is obvious, the Department of State. The reason it is obvious, is that neither Pres. Bush nor Pres. Obama had any foreign relations expertise when they assumed office. It all comes from the State Department. We saw the various stupidities under both Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice (I had hoped both would have cleaned house, and instead became pawns of their own minions). Now we see the same stupidities continued under Hillary Clinton. By now folks, the Secretary of State is a figurehead. The real state department is all the faceless people writing position papers that are fed to the Secretary.

.....in the State Department.

The Monroe Doctrine, R.I.P.

2010-04-03T08:34:00.002-04:00

When Russia and Cuba were great buddies The Monroe Doctrine took a severe body blow. JFK somewhat resussitated it with the missile standoff, or at least put it on life-support. With this Drudge link, we can now call the Monroe Doctrine officially dead.

We will regret it.