New Yorker Sees Stopped Epistemological Clock

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/21/the-internet-of-us-and-the-end-of-facts?mbid=gnep&intcid=gnep&google_editors_picks=true

The New Yorker sees Trump and worries that "Facts have ended". They have been worried for awhile,  due to "Climate Change". In their universe, there is no irony whatsoever in using Hillary Clinton has a model for truth and reality with this telling quote:

But what she means, I guess, is that even some random old lady can see what Republican aspirants for the Oval Office can’t: “It’s hard to believe there are people running for President who still refuse to accept the settled science of climate change.”

We have been over this issue WAY too often -- in order to understand the problem with "settled science", we have to understand the terms "settled" and "science".

"Settled" -- "Metaphysical core unchallengeable base belief taken as self-evident" -- "I think, therefore I am", "I believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth".

"Science" -- "Testable hypothesis/theories trusted insofar as all tests to date verify the hypothesis as an inductive proof. Falsifiable if the next test fails, but never settled or proven". I often use the Thanksgiving turkey as an analogy. The turkey operates on the hypothesis that humans are a benevolent creature who feeds and cares for turkeys. This hypothesis is inductively verified each day until Thanksgiving, then it suffers brutal falsification.

This means that the term "settled science" is a logical fallacy, like "married bachelor" or , "virgin birth" (which is what makes it a miracle for Mary -> Jesus). The definition of "settled" and "science" mean that putting the terms together proves that we live in a wonderland where terms have no meaning. Which readers of this blog understand, but the vast percentage of modern people don't, and the New Yorker clearly is part of that vast percentage.

This does not however mean that reality fails to intrude on their reverie even though they have sworn rejection of reality rather forcibly. For many on the left, Trump seems to be enough of a shock to the system for them to see the broken epistemological clock of our nation. To wit ...

Lynch has been writing about this topic for a long time, and passionately. The root of the problem, as he sees it, is a well-known paradox: reason can’t defend itself without resort to reason. In his 2012 book, “In Praise of Reason,” Lynch identified three sources of skepticism about reason: the suspicion that all reasoning is rationalization, the idea that science is just another faith, and the notion that objectivity is an illusion. These ideas have a specific intellectual history, and none of them are on the wane. Their consequences, he believes, are dire: “Without a common background of standards against which we measure what counts as a reliable source of information, or a reliable method of inquiry, and what doesn’t, we won’t be able to agree on the facts, let alone values".

The foundation of Western civilization was that there was indeed such a common background -- Christianity, or at least "Natural Law / Deism". The metaphysical recursion stopped at a "prime mover" -- God, who had created us and thus we were able to discern his will / meaning / etc. Civilization requires a foundation, and it HAD one -- we would not have gotten to the lofty peak from which we now decline if there had been no foundation.

Philosophically, it is true that reason can't defend itself even WITH resort to reason. Lifting yourself by your own bootstraps STILL doesn't work, and metaphysical "Free Lunch" is STILL not to be had no matter how many Bernie Sanders voters there are. Reason always reasons from faith (in something) as it's foundation -- faith in the fact of words having meaning and comprehensibility if nothing else. But only those that understand this can even begin to discuss "facts".

The column closes with this rather chilling summary.

He [Lynch] thinks the best defense of reason is a common practical and ethical commitment. I believe he means popular sovereignty. That, anyway, is what Alexander Hamilton meant in the Federalist Papers, when he explained that the United States is an act of empirical inquiry: “It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” The evidence is not yet in yet".

First,  I certainly HOPE he is very wrong about Lynch (it seems unlikely a philosopher would think that), he is CLEARLY wrong about Hamilton. Hamilton was a FEDERALIST, he believed strongly in Rule of Law, Written Constitution, Separation of Powers, aristocracy curbing democracy, eg. Electoral College, Senators not elected by population, etc. 

"Popular sovereignty" is rule by majority -- mob rule! In the article he blithely wastes a lot of time showing how "proof by trial" is "atavistic" (mere appeal to "previous generations" or "tradition"), and therefore clearly wrong -- because, after all, the dominant modern religion is "progressivism", the faith that the newest is the best. It's "proof" rests on "if they were so smart, how come they're dead?". 

Mob rule is just another form of "might makes right" ... "test by trial" / atavism. Might can come from a ballot, bicep or bullet, but it is STILL just might! For some strange reason, Trump suddenly makes all sorts of people on the left question their metaphysical assumptions -- but amazingly not the column author!  

What Hamilton DID mean is a "Government of Laws, not men" ... some of the aspects I listed above. Our founders understood a great deal of what most moderns clearly do not -- as in my favorite John Adams Quote "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other". 

Even Jefferson, who had the most faith in popular sovereignty of all our major founders rejected "democracy", and rejected it FAR more in later life after the bloodbath of the French Revolution.

Lincoln understood that a "house divided" cannot stand, but it is even more obvious that a house with no foundation cannot stand. We HAD a foundation, as this article and a lot of other "thought" (really emotion) flowing around now shows us that we have none. We will either return to the foundation we had, come up with a new one (which I believe to be impossible) or fall. 

The most likely path at this point is certainly a continued fall to dissolution.

In Praise of Racism

How To Drive Right Wing Racists Insane With One Simple Question:

Racism --  (Google) The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

Edward O. Wilson, "The Meaning of Human Intelligence", p30 and 31, 

"A second overpowering human behavior is the overpowering instinctual urge to belong to groups." ... "A persons membership in his group--his tribe--is a large part of his identity. It also confers on him some degree or other of a sense of superiority".  

The text following this gives scientific backing to these statements, but I suspect we are all humans here, we know them to be true in our very souls. A little later, we find:

".... people prefer to be with others who look like them, speak the same dialect, and hold the same beliefs." 

Wilson of course knows he is on dangerous ground and attempts to couch his obviously true statements because he knows that the dominant culture thinks like the linked article. I really like this quote from early in "Meaning of Human Intelligence" :

"When Carl Sagan won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 1978, I dismissed it as a minor achievement for a scientist, scarcely worth listing. When I won the same prize the following year, it wondrously became a major literary award of which scientists should take special note."

 A marvelous and HONEST statement of human nature! We love ourselves and we love our group -- either we were created that way or we became that way because it was adaptive. Either way, that is who we are for at least many tens and hundreds of thousands of years to come -- assuming we can survive.

The one modification easy to make to the definition is the "all" -- it is of course "most", and the fact that our natural feeling is that our group is superior can be intellectually and spiritually tempered. It will still exist in our hearts, because it is our wiring, but with the help of God it can be channeled as can the other parts of our fallen nature.

We could re-write the racist definition as "Blacks believing that all blacks are superior and therefore black lives matter more than others".  It is totally clear that many current blacks are racist and extremely proud to be so, which I'd argue is the main reason that many whites are responding in kind in a world that has long left behind the unifying factor of Christian belief. Both blacks and whites are human, and barring belief and practice of a religion that specifies improved behavior, they behave accordingly.

The essence of the column above is our old friend the inversion. The "liberal" ideology/religion defines "minority" to be  "good" (even when they become the majority), and "traditional majority" (ie. white) to be "evil". This is directly in opposition to human nature, which "just is". Christianity seeks to IMPROVE on fallen human nature, not invert it. "Love your neighbor AS YOURSELF" doesn't say "learn to hate yourself, then your neighbor will seem better". It seeks to properly channel our fallen state back to God.

The purpose of leftism is to DESTROY the natural order.  Taking the natural inclination of people to love themselves (see previous Pulitzer prize) and to love their family, religion, race, ethnicity, tradition, etc and to INVERT it so that large groups are to be accepted in the new group/religion ("liberalism" / TP) by declaring their self-loathing for the natural order previously listed (self, family, etc). In order to be part of the "The Party"(TP-D), they are required to tell a lie against their very nature -- "Black Lives Matter -- but white lives do not!".

It is sad that such people as the author of the article never find me to interview -- the picture at the head of the article looks exactly like so many liberals that I have calmly explained my thoughts to. It is clear that their "tolerance" is extremely limited.

So, my off the cuff answer to "Why am I a proud white person"? The question from the article that is supposed to "drive me insane".

I believe that pride is natural but dangerous, I prefer to consider myself a BLESSED White Christian, but in the spirit of the question.

Christendom, Western civilization, the Constitution, Newtonian Physics, Albert Einstein, Edmund Burke, Winston Churchill, flight, the Moon Landing, electricity, clean water and sanitation, Scotch, Bourbon and the Green Bay Packers.

With the modifications above, I am a "proud racist" -- as a fallen human, as is the author of the article. They seek to deny their very nature and declare that they are no longer human. I seek to accept my fallen condition and become more like Christ with the help of the Holy Spirit.

As we watch the rest of  2016, we have a ringside seat for human nature and we can all see if it is redeemed by "liberalism" or if it could use some more of the help of God.

'via Blog this'

John Adams, Our Constitution

I have been devoting a good deal of time to making the 3,500+ blog posts more accessible to ME if nothing else.

Some fine day I shall write a bit on my "schemes" ... one example is using the label "AAAA" for what are either highly popular, or I believe to be critical posts for developing a transcendent world view, rooted in revelation, history, science and tradition, while remaining cognizant and sympathetic to our fallen human nature, and the needs of our fragile selves in this mortal coil.

This quote from Adams is one which I return to frequently in the present dark times.

Included here in text so I may clip it, and in a graphic form for inclusion in a more eye catching form.

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other" (John Adams)

Socialism, When Your Grandchild Dies

Drug Shortages Forcing Hard Decisions on Rationing Treatments - The New York Times:

If we were still a nation that was able to understand enough to self-govern, this is a story that ALL ought read and at least have the tradeoffs explained. In a conservative or engineering universe, EVERYTHING has a cost, and there are ALWAYS tradeoffs. When you vote in socialism you give up your ability to have any control in trying to make life better for those you hold most dear -- in my case, my granddaughter, but you can pick your own. You "outsource" your power and responsibility.

In a "liberal" or utopian universe, "all things are possible" -- perfection is always one more program, tax, regulation, law or "blue ribbon committee" away. The only thing really holding up nirvana are those damned reactionary conservatives!

“It was painful,” said Dr. Yoram Unguru, an oncologist at the Children’s Hospital at Sinai in Baltimore and a faculty member at the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University. “We kept coming back to wow, we’ve got that tragic choice: two kids in front of you, you only have enough for one. How do you choose?”

The article makes it clear that we are ALREADY at "triage" for even critical drugs for children in medicine. We have regulated, "negotiated", "optimized", drug manufacture to the point where profit margins are razor thin (at best).  Before the move to socialized medicine got it's first purchase in the US with the advent of Medicare in the '60s, the rest of the world could do socialized medicine and have the US as a "market driven backup". That backup is on life support at best now.

The canary is dead folks. (they used to use a canary in coal mines ... if the canary died, it was time to make like a priest and get the flock out of there!).

We have had AMPLE warnings on how socialized anything works. East / West Germany, USSR vs US, current Venezuela, current N vs S Korea. The US was the huge "backstop" that allowed Japan and Europe to go socialist without having to "go gulag". When "regulation" fails to produce what is required, shortages result, and there is no market operating anywhere, then the ONLY choice is "forced labor". The government must FORCE some company to produce the drug at some stated price (to start) ... but after a bit, why should they pay them anything? FORCE them to produce what has been declared as "required" by the centralized power. We KNOW how that "works" ... it doesn't.

When you see critical drugs being rationed for children HERE, then you have NO EXCUSE to not realize that the effects of socialism are not changed by some magic of being applied in this area of N America!

Vote BS, but hoard toilet paper!

In recent years, shortages of all sorts of drugs — anesthetics, painkillers,antibiotics, cancer treatments — have become the new normal in American medicine. The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists currently lists inadequate supplies of more than 150 drugs and therapeutics, for reasons ranging from manufacturing problems to federal safety crackdowns to drugmakers abandoning low-profit products. But while such shortages have periodically drawn attention, the rationing that results from them has been largely hidden from patients and the public.

The NY Times naturally LOVES socialism, they are not going to go ALL the way to making the connection for you, but that paragraph does pretty well. The next one adds a bit more ... "economic incentives" ... we are still more fascist than socialist, so those are still involved. Why not just FORCE them to produce what is required? That would get us to "real socialism", which is basically communism. Remember gas lines? Carter was going to "control the price" -- which naturally controls the SUPPLY as well!

Many drugs are made by only one manufacturer, so production or safety problems at a single plant can have big effects. For another company to begin making the products and getting them approved by regulators requires the right combination of manufacturing capabilities and economic incentives.

So, when socialism produces shortages, as it always does, then what is needed is "fairer / more expert / "enlightened" allocation of the now scarce resource. Oh, and they "advised" it ought to be "made public".  Potentially, while there is still enough private pharmaceutical industry left to blame things on, that might be a political winner, but when the last vestige of that is gone and we all KNOW that it is the government making all these production / rationing decisions? Hillary's e-mails are WAY more "public" than that information will be then!

The effort, led by Dr. Unguru, the Baltimore oncologist, recommended that the drugs be rationed based on the ability to save lives or years of life, including curability of a child’s cancer and the importance of the drug in improving the chances. It also recommended that children participating in clinical research should not get priority over those who are not, because of concerns about coercing families into trials. The group also advised that allocation decisions be public.

"The banality of evil" rears it's head again -- THIS is how socialism works! "The vagaries of distribution" indeed! Profit is the price paid for supply meeting demand! Regulate that away and numbers coursing their way through an endless myriad of bureaucratic "clearing houses", "agencies", "offices" and "czars" are supposed to match supply to demand, but never do. Eventually, those "numbers" are people, and they are dispensed with using the same cold logic and pseudo "efficiency" as mere numbers.

The vagaries in distribution and inconsistencies in rationing have led to calls for change. Doctors and others have suggested the creation of a clearinghouse of scarce drugs and voluntary sharing to promote equitable access for patients. Others argue that there should be a registry of patients given nonstandard treatments so the results can be tracked.

Dr. Lurie, the federal health official in charge of emergency preparedness and response, said that the government was working to encourage hospitals to conserve and substitute drugs to avoid a crisis and trying to fill gaps in manufacturing. Steps taken by the Food and Drug Administration have also helped reduce the number of shortages, she said.

IF any Sanders supporters have read this far, I'm sure they are saying, "yeah, sure ... and "capitalism", "freedom", etc are PERFECT!

NO, THEY ARE NOT! That is precisely the point -- they admit that they are NOT PERFECT, but at least they don't institutionalize evil! They KNOW and admit that. The market doesn't have to "wait 4 years to make a change" and you get to "vote" (by buying and selling) typically many times a day!

Left and Right Explained

From time to time it becomes clear that the commonly used terms "Left and Right" need to be disambiguated. That time has come again.

The origin of "left and right" goes back to the French Revolution, where those loyal to the king and the church sat on the right and the revolutionaries sat on the left. 

Control of language is a critical aspect of ideology, and using meaningless abstraction vs meaningful terms  to describe something is proof of ideological language manipulation (see Ethics Of Rhetoric).

In order to proceed, we need to all agree on the loaded term "ideology". Ideology is a system of ideas and values that people believe in. It is exactly like religion except religion typically has a claimed supernatural root. For nearly all religious people, their religion holds a higher place of value in their worldview than whatever ideology they may subscribe to. For the non-religious, their ideology IS their religion, though typically they would argue that their ideology was "true" and religions were "false" until they actually face death (or maybe until Judgement Day ... when they will claim it is "unjust")

Trying to summarize political thought and world view in a single dimension is obviously a vast oversimplification, but we humans love to do such things.  Since we ARE doing this ALL THE TIME, a sane person chooses meaningful terms for the dichotomy, limited though it is. 

A reasonable labeling is  "Control vs Chaos" (It's a "Get Smart" world). The "Left" is CONTROL, the "Right" is CHAOS. The US was founded as a "center right nation" meaning "a little bit toward chaos from the center". It was founded this way because we had just come from being ruled by a King (Monarchy) ... TOTALITARIAN is all the way "Left", ANARCHY is all the way "right". 

Hayek, "Road to Serfdom" covers the co-opting of the term "liberal" and discusses the problem with WWII and the largely "marketing split" between the two modern brands of heavy state control (Statist), Fascism (National Socialism) and Communism. Even though Communism, Socialism and Fascism are all LEFT, we certainly wanted to be the GOOD GUYS, and we were fighting with the Communists as allies (USSR) ... so Nazi became "Right/Evil".

Historically, to the ancients, Left was evil and Right was good. Jesus sits at God's right hand. Left was the "bad hand" ... you did your bathroom cleaning with the left hand and shook hands with the right.

The way the terms are used today is INTENDED to be confusing for ideological purposes. It is a way of manipulating the population and at the same time breaking connection with the ancient, natural and sacred. The ancient order has been reversed and "Right" is "Nazi / Racist / Reactionary / EVIL", while "Left" is "Modern, Democratic, Progressive, Socially Responsible / GOOD. 

Note also the overloading of "conservative" -- when the USSR was falling, the "hard liners" were "right wing" -- even though they clearly wanted communism,  commonly located as "left" on the modern spectrum. Same for "revolutionary" -- in the original French context, that was "left", but in modern times if there is a "bad revolution", it will be termed "right wing" by the dominant elite.

Our brains (for good and ill) are wired to "like like". Most people are RIGHT handed, so the timeless natural bias is to call the good "the right" and bad/evil "left". Simplistic and prone to prejudice, but "natural" and "human" -- not confusing. We innately believe that "right is right" ... our language and history wire it into our brain (or it is divinely there as I believe). 

Ecclesiastes 10:2 "The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left."

Satan seeks the  INVERSION of nature  ... right becomes left, good becomes evil, and death is worshiped over life -- thus you see lots of killing of babies, tattoos of skulls and demons, etc. The goal of  Satan is to invert the natural order -- natural sexuality inverted to homosexuality,  natural gender denied, the mothers natural desire to protect her baby inverted to abortion,  etc.

 While the inversion makes everyone "feel wrong" (because "right is right" is wired in from God), that "wrongness" also feels "subversive, rebellious,  impudent, proud, exciting, etc" -- which can easily be mistaken for "good"  (like riding a roller coaster) -- evil is often exciting, easy, and in modern times, actually culturally approved! (if it feels good, do it) 

Did God REALLY say? Gen 3:4-5 "The serpent said to the woman,You surely will not die 5 For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

So now you know left and right. Can you figure out good and evil?

25 Reasons for BS

25 Reasons Why I’m Voting For Bernie Sanders:

You can go off and read the reasons if you like ... I have a few in the same vein that if I cease to be reality based, I could proffer as my platform ...

1) I believe that white teens should be able to walk through black neighborhoods late at night, drunk, carrying large amounts of cash in complete safety.

2). I have the death sentence on 12 systems

3). I've shook NRA members hands.

4). I believe police forces should be disarmed, carry rainbow flags and dispense GMO free granola.

5). I believe that everyone should vote early and often with no identification required.

6). I think we should pay students to attend free universities for as long as they like with no grades and pay for it with money -- prettier money, printed on colorful paper with a lot of unicorns on it!

7), I support mandatory voting for EVERYONE! If you don't vote, you go to a special camp where they convince you to vote! Coupled with #5, we should have turnouts in the 300-700% range!

8). I think everything should be free. Healthcare, nursing home care, housecleaning, lawn mowing, booze, drugs, Internet, Cable TV, movies, sports, masonry  ... It should ALL be FREE!

9). I'd filibuster FOREVER for having no taxes paid by anyone in the 99% ... have the 1% pay it ALL and just print the rest! Now that I think of it, this seems like a BASIC RIGHT! Oh, and make the money more colorful and prettier -- with unicorns.

10). Why are we talking chump change like $15 hr? Anyone that wants to work deserves at least $100 bucks an hour -- heck, why not $1,000? This also seems like a BASIC RIGHT!

11). A Trillion? Why so little? I raise him double and add $30 Trillion! oh, and I would demand that we get most of the work done by disabled ex-con MINORITY veterans that are addicted to at least alcohol and one other substance and are unsure of their gender! Take THAT BS!

12). Everyone is entitled to EVERYTHING! If they want to work -- ENTITLED! If they don't want to work ENTITLED! If they want to be CEO? ENTITLED! Everyone is entitled to everything. It's ... you guessed it, A BASIC RIGHT!

13). EVERYONE should be paid equally! Men, women, children, pets, undocumented Democrats ... EVERYONE IS EQUAL! ... It's a BASIC RIGHT!

14). Why limit funding for any great idea? Planned Parenthood? UNLIMITED FUNDING! When people have ideas of things that they want, those are the things they want!

15). Why would anyone limit family leave, vacation days, sick leave, etc? Everyone gets UNLIMITED PAID LEAVE! ... for whatever they want! Can't Bill Gates or Warren Buffet take time off whenever they want for whatever reason they want? Why the hell should they have an advantage over anyone else? See 13  ... being off work tends to cost more. Everyone gets unlimited leave AND double salary while on leave!

16). Why have any campaign grovel for donations? All campaigns are FULLY FUNDED! No more grubby "donations"!

17). Coach? Why should ANYONE fly coach? Anyone that wants to fly anywhere flies on the best private jets! Why limit ourselves? See 13.

18). Banks? Why bother with banks? In my administration everything is free and everyone makes gigantic salaries. Sure, we can have a lot of "regulators" as an excuse for paying more gigantic salaries, but you don't really expect them to waste time looking at boring records full of columns of figures in a nation where everything is free and everyone is RICH do you? I didn't think so.

19). Gay rights? Hey, there are over 50 genders on Facebook and incalculable sexual preferences -- every one of them is to be "special, protected, subsidized, celebrated, honored, etc" in my administration. We will have special days for all of them with big parades pretty much every day of the year! Imagine the joy of "National uncertain genders attracted to imaginary species day"! A great excuse to produce a bunch of free T-shirts and party favors!

20). I got into politics because I was sick of everything not being PERFECT!

21). There was an invasion in 2003? Bummer!  I oppose all war back to Sumer vs Elam in 2700 BC (first documented war)! My first act as President would be to outlaw War for all of time ... retroactively!

22). While I oppose war, I love veterans. In my administration anything to do with Veterans will have UNLIMITED FUNDING!

23). Oh, I love the Iran deal. I propose we "DECLARE PEACE"! ... with everyone! On second thought, this is redundant since I have already declared war illegal -- SO, I "DECLARE LOVE!" ... all people everywhere will LOVE EVERYONE!  Why didn't we do this before?

24). Here today I declare that the CLIMATE WILL NOT CHANGE if I am elected! Not now, not EVER! This is it! ... unless you want it turned down a few tenths or something. I declare that all energy will henceforth be free, completely non-polluting and like my budgets, UNLIMITED! I'm forming a task force so that everyone can have the weather they want every day!

25). "Immigrants"? Isn't that kind of exclusive? Executive orders? I'm sick of all this -- on my first day in office I will send Congress home! It will be dissolved! Our borders will be  COMPLETELY OPEN !  No more politics! What we will have is PERFECTION -- I came to abolish politics.

I guess I really like politics after all. In a world free of want and war where everyone not only has everything, but loves everyone, we will all live happily ever after. For CERTAIN!

It is always a mystery to me why intelligent guys like BS with obviously intelligent supporters stop so far short of getting to what they and we all REALLY WANT!

It's simple, PERFECTION IS A BASIC RIGHT!!

'via Blog this'

Must Stop New Years From Coming

The time from very late Tuesday the 22nd until the 31st was the shortest and best eight days of my life as we had a wondrous holiday with our little granddaughter, her parents and our youngest son here from Denver. I knew it would be a special Christmas, but was shocked to experience one of the most rare of things in my over intellectualized, overly anxious, and tending to the darker emotions, life. I was treated to the most joyous of surprises as to just how wonderful Christmas could be. I generally dislike surprises -- and often feel concerned even when they are pleasant ones, because I feel I must not have thought adequately to realize this good thing could happen!

Oh, I still managed to "what if" some -- grandpa did a lot of the most careful driving he has ever done, however, unlike falling in love, marriage, having kids, milestones in their life, etc, the wonder and magic of a perfect little granddaughter is such an unalloyed gift that reminds me that God may always have "just one more surprise" in his plans for his children. Even for those who are very much the least deserving of all, which would be me. There are a number of times over the past seven years where I wished that my life had ended earlier because of bad things happening.  I was very wrong ... I would not have been around for those completely undeserved eight days! 

One of the many highlights of the time was the Baptism of our granddaughter, and so the embedded  "Borning Cry" which has become dear to me since becoming a Lutheran. Baptism is a completely undeserved gift, depending on none but Christ -- as is our life, made eternal through the gift of participating in God's Grace. 

It was 2008 before I understood the Lutheran phrase used at death -- "They have left this Vale of Tears".  Sudden younger death holds few advantages, but one is the likely avoidance of learning the impact of what that phrase means. Grandparents, aunts or uncles, pets, etc dying are an introduction to death, but they often fit into "the circle of life" -- the "proper order". "They had a good life" ... "they are at peace now", etc. Such phrases often bring comfort, but not always ... 

Life is even more precious when the "vale of tears" has been experienced. When the rest of your family gets into the car to head to the cities to fly back to Denver with your wife driving, you realize how vulnerable we all are to losses that are all the worse in that they actually are VERY imaginable. 

Some people like to claim that "religion is imaginary",  that there is "no evidence for it". In order to reach that conclusion they must of course not consider how unlikely our existence is, historical evidence for things like the resurrection, etc, but lets just say, OK, it's "imaginary". 

We KNOW that money is all dreamed up by man. Is that real? Capitalism? Communism? Human Rights? Which parts of your important life experience aren't "all in your head"? 

Well, my best Christmas ever is now "all in my head". Will it remain the best that I ever experience? Will tragedy strike and I will again fall prey to wishing it was my last? Will it be my last? Such is the essence of our lives -- poignant, ironic, capricious, indefinite, ethereal, ineffable  ... I'm not about to give up my best Christmas just because it is all in my head -- in fact, it is very very dear to me there -- like my Christianity (if the doubters are right). Sure, the fact that my best Christmas was very much "shared" and is in others heads as well is critical to it being "real" ... same with my Christianity. Same with money ... take a look at times in history when people lose their shared faith in it. Confederate currency anyone? 

So now life goes on with that bittersweet hole in the heart, but also much gratitude to God for allowing me to live to experience that joy. We were able to take her up to see my 89 year old father and get a four generation picture -- considering he was 30 when I was born and I was 31 when my son was born, there is a lot of grace in evidence there! 

Oh how my mom would have loved to hold her! Gods ways are not our ways.  I pray that heaven will wait 100 years at least for that meeting -- and  it will be a great one!

So "New Years Eve came, just the same" (like "The Grinch")  ... and now 2016 has come. 2015 was a year that started in terrible tragedy for us, but from 6/14 on contained a lot of indescribable joy,  and it now slips it's way into being all in our heads (and hearts). 

In childhood, the feeling of "Christmas is over" (and at that time, the INTERMINABLE amount of time until next year!) was a hollow difficult feeling. My parents said "you will grow out of it!" ... and I did, but at the price of Christmas not being as magic and dear as it once was. I was too "grown up" for such childish feelings. 

As my career moved along, there was a similar feeling in going back to work after the holiday break ... that left with the end of working. Then last year was the first year with no kids able to make it home -- a different sense of the holiday that made the loss of my mother touch my heart more as well. Last year was the Christmas of the missing. 

Now I've come full circle for at least one year, to have not "grown out of it" after all! My soul feels that there is a major message of life there -- to know great joy is to know great sadness, there are no peaks without valleys. To enter Heaven we must be "as a little child" -- it seems that God has given me a great lesson in understanding that truth! 

Atheists Can't Exist

Eric Metaxas: Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God - WSJ:

Actually, based on current scientific knowledge, NONE of us can be here -- but that seems especially poignant for atheists.

I once knew of an atheist whose last name was "May", who proudly declared himself a "Maytheist" -- "their own god". God is infinite, but is human hubris really limited? I sometimes wonder if the sad and hard to understand requirement of Hell doesn't fall to the need to contain the infinite hubris of Satan and those who deny the spiritually obvious with infinite hubris. Humans (in the flesh) are finite beings -- but perhaps they are allowed infinite hubris if they choose it? Would that be the opposite of choosing the infinite love of Christ? (not that we CAN choose the love ... it is by GRACE, however, since we have free will, we can choose to reject the love)

Reading the whole linked article is well worth it. I've written on the basic topic before.  A revelation of  especially the last 30 years is that another wave of human intellectual hubris in regard to our origins has washed up on the beach of reality and is now receding, leaving the beach as it was before.

After Newton and Darwin, science was pretty sure that all it took was "a few basic elements and processes", and "billions and billions of years" for us to sit back with a Scotch and observe how random chance "easily" bootstrapped a universe for us relax and ponder as lords of all -- albeit with a fairly significant concern that there HAD to be MANY other life forms out there pondering similarly.  We fervently hoped (but not prayed if we were "smart") that they were equally smug, enjoying a crackling fire and adult beverage rather than dreaming of nasty things like universal conquest!

In the early '80s there were few atheists as smug as Carl Sagan, whose "Cosmos" was a very entertaining, but very snooty journey to the beginning of time and to the far reaches of the universe "explaining everything" so that "intelligent people" could dispense with ancient religions and superstitions. Sagan pretty much cried out for the "If he is so smart, how come he is dead?" question.

Sagan now has indeed returned to the much less haughty dust from which he came, and has been replaced by an at least equally smug new "little god that shits", named Neil Degrasse Tyson, who proves to us that dust comes in different shades (he is black). Here is a quote from Neil that fits well with the theme of this post:

Every account of a higher power that I've seen described, of all religions that I've seen, include many statements with regard to the benevolence of that power. When I look at the universe and all the ways the universe wants to kill us, I find it hard to reconcile that with statements of beneficence.

What a learned position for someone whose faith says that he can't exist! Back in 1966,  Time Magazine featured a "God is Dead" cover, and Sagan  proudly gave the odds for life on other worlds:

The same year Time featured the now-famous headline, the astronomer Carl Sagan announced that there were two important criteria for a planet to support life: The right kind of star, and a planet the right distance from that star. Given the roughly octillion—1 followed by 27 zeros—planets in the universe, there should have been about septillion—1 followed by 24 zeros—planets capable of supporting life.

So, given 50 years and a lot of research, how is our search for that highly likely life going? Hmmm ... well, the "odds" have changed just a bit:

What happened? As our knowledge of the universe increased, it became clear that there were far more factors necessary for life than Sagan supposed. His two parameters grew to 10 and then 20 and then 50, and so the number of potentially life-supporting planets decreased accordingly. The number dropped to a few thousand planets and kept on plummeting.

Where did the odds plummet to? Well, the number of parameters is at least at 200 now and you don't hear many hopeful predictions about life on other worlds. In fact, the odds against even US being here are astronomical ... I cover a few of them near the end of this old post. Just for our universe to exist, the "smart money" says you need something like 10⁴⁰⁰ UNIVERSES to get to one like ours ... something like double that for getting a planet suitable  for any life at all, let alone conscious life!

So we are faced with the paradox that a rational atheist has to conclude that according to the "intelligent odds", they simply don't exist. Odds ike that are the mathematical way of saying "NO"! In which case, how can they call themselves "rational"? Or as Fred Hoyle put it ...

Fred Hoyle, the astronomer who coined the term “big bang,” said that his atheism was “greatly shaken” at these developments. He later wrote that “a common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology . . . . The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”

Strange how God has arranged it so that none have an excuse but their own blind will to reject his existence and Grace!

I did take exception to one aspect of the article. Our existence is not the greatest miracle, but the 2nd greatest -- God himself caring enough to take human form and die for our sins is the greatest miracle!

Merry Christmas!

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Coordination, Burden of Proof

The NYT Just Disappeared A Devastating Obama Admission:

Public Radio and based on FB posts from liberals, "The Party" (TP-D) spent some time this past week on the horrors of the Citizens United SCOTUS ruling and "Big Money" on politics. Most horribly of all,  "coordination".  In CA they passed a new law that makes "political coordination" a "crime" in which if you are charged, the burden of proof is on YOU to "prove you are innocent".

The regulation effectively shifts the burden of proof in cases of suspected coordination from the government to the candidate or outside spending committee.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article39362607.html#storylink=cpy

Naturally, NPR was all in favor of this "marvelous idea" -- with nary a concern that it violates one of the most basic principles of justice -- "the presumption of innocence"!  The NPR assumption is that since the vast majority of the government bureaucracy and legal system is all left leaning, the constant coordination of all types that TP operates with will continue, and they will be able to jail conservatives trying to achieve a tiny fraction of the total coordination that TP uses every day!

Certainly a VERY "good idea" for TP! (it happens to break one of most basic of human rights, but TP!)

The linked NYTs article is just a TINY example of MSM / TP coordination. In an interview with NYT, BO declared:

In his meeting with the columnists, Mr. Obama indicated that he did not see enough cable television to fully appreciate the anxiety after the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, and made clear that he plans to step up his public arguments.

This came out this past Thursday, but the NY Times quickly realized that this didn't really look that good for their guy BO, so the linked article shows the litany of changes they went through to get "on message". Nice to have our nations supposed "paper of record" daily coordinating activity with TP don't ya think?

  The original headline of the column that included the embarrassing quote was:

“Obama Visiting National Counterterrorism Center.”

By the time they had removed the offending quote and went through a few revisions, the headline read:

“Assailed by G.O.P., Obama Defends His Response To Terror Attacks.”

At least when you are member of TP, you are NEVER "assailed by the New York Times"!! ... In fact, articles and even headlines are tuned to put you in the best light possible and any opposition in the worst light possible! BO erroneously thought that he needed to "watch more cable tv", when "in fact" (as reported by the NYtimes), it was all the fault of the GOP all along!

If you have an R next to your name, having to raise money from outside groups is a "crime" for which you are GUILTY until you "prove yourself innocent" -- and we all know that proving a negative is a lot of fun. ( please PROVE you are NOT a space alien!)

We already know that "consistency is not an issue", but one might think that with the frequency that the left cites the "UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights", they MIGHT find it interesting that they suddenly find it an excellent idea to apply the exact INVERSE of article 11 to their "political enemies"!

Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

The US is a supposed signer to these accords -- no word yet on the likelihood that NPR and CA are going to be prosecuted under the UN for violation of "basic human rights" ... oh wait, we can only assume that a conservative is like "fetus" just not really human, basically "deplorable"  ... and we know what that means!

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Sticks, Stones, and The State, Vikings Edition

My run-in with hate speech at a Minnesota Vikings game - StarTribune.com:

While I'm going to treat the tale in the linked article as completely true, I would much prefer that before the Red Star prints such a thing they would have at least found the security guard mentioned for corroboration.  As you will see, the "story" is just a BIT too pat for someone that has any shred of independent thought.  That said, let's take it as gospel.

The charge is that "some angry guy" demanded to know if the "attorney and director of the Advocates for Human Rights Refugee and Immigrant Program" was a refugee,  at a Vikings game. Nothing physical, just a question, but this attorney and director "felt threatened", got security involved, got an apology that he felt was not sincere enough, demanded the interlocutor be ejected and the Vikings failed to comply.

Asking if the attorney was a "refugee" is supposed to be clear and reprehensible "hate speech". Not "rude", not "bad manners" ...

I was raised with "Sticks and stones will break your bones but words will never hurt you", and "If you can't stand up for yourself, nobody else is going to". We don't live in that civilization today, but what IS the "civilization" we have wrought?

I remember the time in my adult life when I came the closest to being intimidated. An old candidate for Congress from our district, Mary Reider had 20-30 union folks marching in a circle in front of the entrance to the Kahler chanting and blocking people like me heading in to see Newt Gingrich speak. The more intelligent people were going around to another exit. Something in my nature compelled me to stride into the group -- which, probably since I'm slightly above average size (though clearly not intelligence) completely stopped and let me pass with a just few shouted nasty words.

Did they have a right to block the entrance? Were the words that they hurled at me "hate speech"?  -- we know the answer. "Hate speech" and "proper intimidation" are declared by "The Party" (D).

I'm reminded of Churchill, "Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without effect". Walking through demonstrators is tame by comparison, but I'm sure the feeling is related.

So how does tattling to the teacher or the security guard make one feel? I suppose it depends on the results that your tattling provides, but I can't imagine it makes one EVER feel "secure or good", because AT BEST you are in hopes that the watchful eye of the State in some form or another is ALWAYS going to be there to protect you.

It is a huge difference in worldview. Like the liberal woman's rape defense -- pee or soil yourself in hopes that the attacker will be turned off and leave you alone, vs the conservative woman's defense -- pull out your .45 and let the attacker pee or soil himself while he hopes you let him live.

But the "liberal" mind never stops at just making THEIR choice, they want to make YOUR choice as well! Gun control is just one example.

But what scared me the most was the silence surrounding me. As I looked around, I didn’t know who was an ally or an enemy. In those hushed whispers, I felt like I was alone, unsafe and surrounded. It was the type of silence that emboldens a man to play inquisitor.

I hate to tell him, but the real world is ALWAYS that way, at least until you make your play.

So we live in a society where males are feminized and individual responsibility is transferred to the State, while anyone that "gets involved" is very likely to be sued by lawyers just like the one complaining. He wants people to stand up and get involved, yet he apparently feels no personal backbone to simply say "none of your damned business"! <insert favorite emphasis here ... a*hole, d*head, would all be "appropriate">

The problem with the "liberal" world view is that the only way it can come close to being any sort of reality is "1984" -- EVERY action of EVERYONE is completely scripted and "Big Brother" ALWAYS has the video of EVERY incident so that those that fail to comply COMPLETELY with liberal dogma will be punished, and those who do comply will be rewarded. The State tells you exactly what to do, and you WILL do it!

The column shows where "Hate Speech" starts to become thought control. One person decided to ask a question that the column author decided went beyond "rude or inappropriate", but he felt ZERO responsibility to personally stand up for his rights. HOWEVER, he believes that people otherwise conditioned by thousands of cues in their daily environment to "let the proper authorities handle it" ought to somehow "step in" when the "confrontation" had never even risen to the level of "words were exchanged".

The attorney failed to cross-examine -- but it is "society's fault".

The very people intent on producing a society of absolute sheep are now incensed when the sheep behave as sheep -- and they apparently actually believe (or at least claim to) that is possible to achieve their "utopia" without levels of State control and surveillance that so far have only been imagined in fictional books.

A people who can't stand on their own feet will eventually kneel before people that can.

America, Land of the Politically Correct and home of the kneelers.

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Trump, Obama With Balls (The Meaning of "No Rules")

Testosterone is the hormone of human action, power, swagger, bluster, attack and dominance.

As readers of this blog should well know by now, when law, reason and revelation are abandoned, there is no god or rule but power, and might becomes right. The largest armies, the most votes, the most bombastic violent dictator, the government most willing to silence, imprison and finally kill it's opposition. Such becomes "the good".

In the past two days we have a crystal clear example that would be completely obvious to a people versed in "self governing". The fact that the discussion we see happening, IS happening, makes it clear we are not a self governing people. Again, if you read this blog, that is no surprise to you and you have known it for a long time.

To state the obvious:

Exhibit A: Sunday Night, The President goes on national TV and says; "That is insane. If you’re too dangerous to board a plane, you’re too dangerous, by definition, to buy a gun."

The "No Fly" list is a semi-secret list with no Due Process to get on it. To take away an enumerated Constitutional Right without Due Process as been declared unconstitutional over and over as I covered in detail here.

Exhibit B: Last night, Trump calls for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering our country until our officials can figure out what is going on". The media and many that should know better go berserk saying this is "clearly unconstitutional"? Really? We have restricted immigration over our history on the basis of damned near anything you can think of -- country of origin, mental health, criminal record, skills, age, disease, etc, etc.

The Constitution (the one we no longer follow) was for AMERICANS, not the whole world!! We may have been imperialist, however we were not THAT imperialist.  (note, I disagree with Trump's position, but it is NOT obviously unconstitutional like BO's)

When the rule of law is removed (and even knowledge of the law), removal of consistency is absolutely required (consistency relative to ??), which in turn makes reasoning and peaceful negotiation impossible, since THERE ARE NO RULES! This being illustrated extremely well by this movie clip:

Obama believes in the power of manipulating the masses through the media and buying votes -- he scolds, pontificates and whines, he is bored and disappointed that he has to school the stupid recalcitrant masses yet again,  but he gives off no sense of personal power.

Trump does.

I have always assumed that our destruction would just continue the long slow slide to being a single party socialist dystopia like the old USSR, China, Cuba, Venezuela, etc with a media yammering about "what a paradise it is" while most waited in line for toilet paper and traded recipes for rat.  Those of us who foolishly spoke out remembering what once was, either died slowly in Gulags or rapidly by the "Stazi", while the youth, brainwashed in the horrors of "nasty old America" prior to the forces of of our new "woke enlightenment" approved demise.

But Trump shows us another face of lawlessness -- the kind our founders dealt with in the King, and the kind that arose in Germany. The CORE of conservatism is the recognition that man is NOT the "measure of all things", and that ALL human nature is both flawed and fixed -- it can be directed, cajoled, influenced, dominated, manipulated, etc, but it remains.

Humans like "royalty, wealth, athletes, movie stars, big televangelists, demagogues, etc" ... we don't all react the same to each one, but on the mass scale, we DO have an innate "urge to be led", urge to look up to SOMEBODY -- like testosterone, it isn't really bad or good, it just **IS**. It is BOTH a strength and a weakness like all our humanness.

So, once you throw out the rules, and people no longer even know what the rules once were, they start "seeking" -- "safety in numbers" is the Democrat way -- buy all the votes, dumb down the masses, promise them what they want, rig the "elections" with open borders, no id voting, etc, and EVENTUALLY all the power is yours! (and power is ALL without law)

Another way is the Trump way -- to hell with "Political Parties", to hell with anything but POWER! Sure, make use the hulk of a minority party out of any real power for 20 years (W was a RINO) as a vehicle, but make it clear, THERE ARE NO LONGER ANY RULES AND I AM PROOF!

Side Note ... The "nice" thing about lawless chaos is that there are MANY ways it can go -- the bad thing is that like all disordered systems, the VAST bulk of those ways are BAD -- yet another way than the Trump or BO, a better way would be a "return to revelation, law, reason and consistency", but that is REALLY unlikely right now!]

Once the mass of the people no longer care or even know about laws, reason, consistency, truth, morality, etc, as has happened here, things go "fully chaotic", or if you prefer "insane", but in any case "Beyond Reason" (Nietzsche),  what piece of vacuous fallacious rhetoric conjured for the purposes of today will win out with the ever flowing emotional tide of the shallow and fickle masses? Nobody knows -- the center has been removed. THERE IS NO LAW! LONG LIVE THE PEOPLE!

"Give us Bread and Circuses!", "Give us Barabbas!", "Sig Heil!", "Hope and Change!"  ... "Make America Great Again ??"

At a fundamental level, they are all the same. A republic with the rule of law was pretty nice in retrospect -- certainly "flawed", but then once you accept human nature (as our founders did), what you are seeking is a "bad system that is better than all the other systems", to paraphrase Churchill.

The Regensburg Lecture, Benedict / Schall, Book

http://www.amazon.com/The-Regensburg-Lecture-James-Schall/dp/1587316951

I first read this book in February of 2013 and read it again in the face of attempts by Muslims, media, Obama and others to claim that "Islamic terrorism is not Islamic" after Paris.

Such claims of course fly directly in the face of history, the Koran, Islamic tradition, and numerous events and discussions, including the response to Pope Benedict's Regensburg lecture covered in this book, which I consider to be extremely important for the trinity of faith, reason, and truth in our time -- both relative to Islam and secular attacks on that holy trinity of meaning.

The proximate reason that the political left and Islam reacted to the speech was Benedict's use of a QUOTE from a 14th century dialogue between Byzantine Christian emperor Manuel II Paleologus and a Persian scholar relative to violence in Islam which reads:

“Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,”

That was a QUOTE, used to point out that violence being associated with Islam is very old -- as old as Islam actually, and that there are many verses in Islamic texts, especially LATER ones that indicate that use of violence against "infidels" is actually commanded by Islam in a number of cases. The "religion of peace" only becomes operative when the entire world is unified in an Islamic Caliphate under Sharia Law in the most recent Islamic texts .... some of the oldest ones are less violent, because at that time Mohammad was powerless to act militarily.

As is often the case -- as in the Charlie Hebdo killings, the Danish Cartoon killings, etc, ... after the Pope's lecture, churches in the West Bank were attacked, an Italian nun was killed in Somalia and a priest was beheaded in Iraq. "Moderate Muslims" claimed to be terribly offended (with the Pope, not the violence), and many on the left were offended as well -- as Kerry intimated after Paris, even he -- and Obama who declared that "the future does not belong to those who slander the prophet", find such attacks and certainly "outrage" to be as Kerry put it "legitimate".

The alignment of the left and Islam is not accidental from the point of view of the book.

Moreover it is a difficult thing to understand, state, and accept the truth, however much these efforts constitute the real purpose of our minds. We can see both in our revelational and in our philosophic traditions that truth is not always or even often accepted and kept. But truth is never rejected without proposing a counter-theory or proof that would justify this rejection. That is, we can ironically not be "unreasonable" without, at the same time, being reasonable, without giving reasons for our deviation from reason. Such counter theories in the form of ideologies or myths, become themselves aspects of understanding the whole truth about something. To understand truth, it is necessary to understand the plausible errors surrounding it and arguments against it. 

As Benedict pointed out in the lecture, Islam teaches that God is not bound by rationality ... unlike the Christian God, the God of Islam is NOT a "God of order". So Islam, like much modern thought rejects reason in favor of "other means" -- whatever those may be!

“God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.”

This is much the same as modern leftist liberal thought -- "post modern", "deconstructivist" which find the idea of "truth" to be no longer operative -- the truth is VERY relative, and in fact can be pretty much whatever the left decides it to be. Clearly, without truth, there is no reason -- and there is no consistency, and THAT is exactly the kind of universe that the Islamic god rules over -- and strangely, where the modern US left lives in as well!

The lecture points out, what Socrates said to Phaedo on the loss of truth --  "It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being -- but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and suffer great loss".

The lecture itself is not very long, but it is very deep. The essence of the Catholic Faith the synthesis of the Greek Mind with Christian Revelation, through Augustine and Aquinas.  The assertion is that has been happening since the Enlightenment and Reformation is the "de-Hellenization" of faith -- which Benedict argues is destroying the university and civilization with it. This de-Hellenization  is in danger of converting Protestant Christianity to being "irrational", as the secular and Islamic worlds are forced to be since they lack the "logos" (Christ ... logic, reason).

We are vulnerable to the illogic of Islam because we have lost our spiritual Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), and our intellectual trinity "Faith (revelation/insight), Reason and Truth".

It is a VERY worthy read -- and re-read a few times. The whole book is only 160 pages, and the lecture itself is only SIXTEEN! They are however "a bit high octane" -- maybe like trading in your glass of beer for a glass of 190 proof Everclear!

Government In Action, The Criminal Neglect of Heather Curtis

Child's 'worst case of neglect' prompts $27M claim against DSHS:

Read it all if you have a strong stomach.

"I saw a young girl, thought she was a child, so small, skeletal like. And she was in nothing but a very, very soiled diaper," said Paredes-Garrett. "And she was wailing and moaning a sound I've never ever heard and the only thing I could compare it to would be a wounded animal."

Want to have the government in charge? Well, "Heather" could be an elderly you or someone that you love.

Break up families, churches and communities and then put a unionized government bureaucracy in charge, and Heather is what you get! We KNOW this ... USSR, National Socialist Germany, N Korea, Cuba, Venezuela ... don't avert your eyes! THIS is where we have descended to already, and we are hitting the accelerator for MORE!

Yes, socialists really really "care" ... about removing money from earners and transferring it to "whatever" to  increases their power. Anything else? Just imagine all the Heathers that aren't lucky enough to have someone call the cops and just die in filth and pain waiting for DSHS.

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Dying White, Cultural AIDs

Death Rates Rising for Middle-Aged White Americans, Study Finds - The New York Times:

The Bible simply says "Man does not live by bread alone". Brain science says people need connections to others, a sense of competence/value,  and meaning in their lives.

The mortality rate for whites 45 to 54 years old with no more than a high school education increased by 134 deaths per 100,000 people from 1999 to 2014. 

“It is difficult to find modern settings with survival losses of this magnitude,”

“This is a vivid indication that something is awry in these American households.”
Dr. Deaton had but one parallel. 

“Only H.I.V./AIDS in contemporary times has done anything like this,” he said.

We know who these people are. Obama calls them "bitter clingers". Many of them are in the south, or in "flyover country". They are often "racist, homophobic, low information, etc". You don't have to listen to much media to know that these people are not someone that America currently cares about.

While the article claims that it is just "the uneducated", I certainly know of and personally understand the same pains and temptations from those with more education. Life used to have certain anchors -- religion, family, work and community being very large. In the US the left has attacked each of these systematically, along with destroying the culture that was once America -- this is unlike what has happened in Europe and Japan.

In Europe, the state has grown and religion has suffered, but since church and state were intertwined, most of the people are at least nominally part of "the church" -- for baptisms, Christmas, sometimes Easter, weddings and funerals. As a practicing Christian, I don't applaud that, however, it is "something" as opposed to "nothing".

Even more importantly, it is completely fine -- and EXPECTED to be a PROUD "Irishman, Brit, Frenchman, German, Swede, Italian ... etc, etc". The rising statism in Europe was not anti-culture, nor anti the dominant ethnicity of the nation state. One can even take pride in being a German, although the nation was largely responsible for two world wars and the genocide of six million Jews.

Not so white Americans -- we are guilty for slavery over 100 years ago, it is a stain that our leftward marching elite wants ever fresh so that even though they were the party of both slavery and Jim Crow, eternal white guilt must be recognized to keep their black voters voting over 90% for them -- ONLY "Black Lives Matter".

We could go on, but this is likely a case where a more complex analysis obfuscates rather than clarifies. Just as AIDs in the developed world was the result of a complete breakdown in sexual morality among a specific group -- gay males, what we see in middle aged whites is the ongoing destruction of the culture and values of Americans of European descent.

We know that black inner city culture was destroyed by welfare and urban development in the '60s -- their numbers for this same age group are still worse, but whites now largely infected by the same pathogens -- rampant out of wedlock births, welfare and unemployment, dependency, loss of community and religious values, are rapidly falling to the same fates. This was well covered and predicted in "Coming Apart" by Charles Murray ... an excerpt and few comments here.

So far, Hispanic, largely Mexican culture has resisted the statist pathogens -- they cling to the Catholic Church, family and since they are often undocumented, they are more likely to live in packed houses working hard for often less than minimum wage to keep their families intact and send money back to other family members. They don't earn a lot, but they earn what they earn, it is respected, and has value.

the rate for middle-aged Hispanics is far lower than for middle-aged whites at 262 per 100,000.

Will the next generation of Hispanics be able to resist destruction by "The Party" (D)? The temptations for the young women are great -- get pregnant, get aid and raise children with a series of young men -- often with what appears to be a better economic deal, but one that goes very sour at middle age. As I covered here, the unmarried young woman with HS or less education and children has this choice ...

A). Stay at home and get from $20 - $35K a year
(B). Go to work 40 hours every week often at two jobs, since BOcare has mandated benefits MUST be provided for a job regularly over 30hrs, with no vacations and take in MAYBE $30K.

The choice doesn't come with a warning like a pack of cigarettes:

"Warning, living on welfare as an unwed mother may entail risks of depression, substance abuse and even death by suicide before age 60 for you and your sexual partners"! 

Not very likely that the very people that produce and push the values and pathogens that lead to the problem are very likely to warn where it leads is it?

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Closing Of The American Mind, Allan Bloom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Closing_of_the_American_Mind

After a lot of rememberance (some of it false), I re-read the book that along with National Review and Ayn Rand was one of the early works that led me to "open my mind" to the ancients, the classics, philosophy and the radical ideas of thinkers not sanctioned by the modern academy or culture. Call it the inverse of the kind of relativist, collectivist,  politically correct education that Bloom laments in this work. I find the following explains the title and purpose of the work.

"Actually openness results in American conformism -- out there in the rest of the world is drab diversity that teaches only that values are relative, whereas here we can create all the lifestyles we want. Our openness means we do not need others. Thus what is advertised as a great opening is a great closing. No longer is there hope that there are great wise men in other places and times who can reveal the truth about life." 

The book is a survey of the leading thoughts to Western civilization and what has become of them in the American University. The basic answer is that there is no truth, and therefore all points of view are somewhat equivalent, although the most "progressive" is favored, since it is current. Science is king -- but alas, Science has no values or meaning  beyond "it works" and "we have lots of detailed data about stuff", so thought is atomized along with matter. The post Nietzsche world of philosophy is summarized thusly:

"The revelation that philosophy finds nothingness at the end of it's quest informs the new philosopher that mythmaking must be his central concern in order to make a world."

Once God and Religion are gone, there is a vacuum that must be filled by myth, because man does not live by mere fact.

The first time I read this book, I struggled mightily with it -- and was not sure that I got it at all, but it made me aware that in my single minded focus to attain a career through college education, I had completely missed even a rudimentary understanding of the culture that had created the world I was intent to seek my livelihood in with all haste.

When I re-read it ... I assume in the late '90s, I was better equipped and felt that I understood it, this time it was a relative breeze. Education does work -- even autodidacticism.

My false memories were related to how early I thought it was written and that I must have read it sooner -- I thought it was written in the 1960's, it was published in '87. It DOES cover a lot of discussion of the '60s, which is where I must have gotten the idea.

It was more popular than I imagined -- I read it on the Kindle this time which included an afterword by Andrew Ferguson. Bloom died of AIDs in 1992, five years after the book was published. That fact no doubt figures heavily into some of the criticism of the work out in Wikipedia (linked at the top) relative to people claiming that young people coming out for gay rights and "marriage" is "proof of morality". One would hope that anyone who read the book would realize that it is rather proof of "all things being relative" in the now even more closed American mind.

Must all alcoholics be in favor of prohibition or of complete license to consume alcohol? Must all alcoholics hold any specific view relative to alcohol? Why would not the same be true of someone with homosexual tendencies? Will we someday state of alcoholics as a group that "You are born with a genetic disposition to alcoholism. If you do not drink, you are not being true to yourself"?

Such inconsistency -- and in fact, the creation of a mind so closed that it may not dare recognize the inconsistency in the previous paragraph is the core of what "Closing" teaches. The actual open mind is open to the possibility of truth, error and even paradox. It is willing to continue to seek "the good", even transcendent, divine truth rather than be closed to even the potential. It may not find what it seeks, but it does not discount it, and it does not give up the quest because the current times assert it MUST not exist.

I'm glad that I came full circle and re-read this one probably for the last time. It opened my mind, and the mind of America has closed beyond what I suspect even Bloom might have imagined since his death.

Hitler the Ecologist

Timothy Snyder's 'Black Earth' Offers a New Theory of Hitler's Anti-Semitism - The Atlantic:

I'm in the midst of "The Closing of the American Mind" ... it is my 3rd or 4th reading, but it has been over a decade since the last, or I'm sure I would have blogged it, although it will be HARD to summarize since it covers the breadth and a good deal of depth of all of Western Thought ... Plato, Socrates, Hegel, Weber, Heidegger, Kant, Hobbes, Locke, Calvin, Rousseau. Marx,  Nietzsche ... etc.

One of the fundamental things that must be understood is that "reason" is a TOOL that can be used to "rationally explain" most ANYTHING! What counts are "first principles" -- the "leap of faith" ... postulates that are not testable but taken as a priori FACT  like "the universe is predictable and understandable" ... the basis for science.

The other thing that is hard to accept, but I find very true, is that it all comes back to God or it comes back to Nietzsche ... who unfortunately, although NOT intentionally, led to Hitler. If you "kill god", then you enable new "Supermen" -- creators of new myth. Men who are "beyond good and evil", but rather DEFINE the new "values" (morality) -- using the "will to power" (the scare quotes are around the statements of Nietzsche).

“There is in fact no way of thinking about the world, says Hitler, which allows us to see human beings as human beings. Any idea which allows us to see each other as human beings … come[s] from Jews,” Snyder told me in an interview. As Snyder sees it, Hitler believed the only way for the world to revert to its natural order—that of brutal racial competition—was to eradicate the Jews.

Hitler saw the idea of "man as man" -- "universals" to be a "Jewish idea" -- the idea of abstractions being "beyond nature". Hitler was a naturalist ... an ecologist. He believed "survival of the fittest" and that humans were NATURAL ... not "chosen", "specially created", etc.

There is in fact no way of thinking about the world, says Hitler, which allows us to see human beings as human beings. Any idea which allows us to see each other as human beings—whether it’s a social contract; whether it’s a legal contract; whether it’s working-class solidarity; whether it’s Christianity—all these ideas come from Jews. And so for people to be people, for people to return to their essence, for them to represent their race, as Hitler sees things, you have to strip away all those ideas. And the only way to strip away all those ideas is to eradicate the Jews. And if you eradicate the Jews, then the world snaps back into what Hitler sees as its primeval, correct state: Races struggles against each other, kill each other, starve each other to death, and try and take land.

Hitler is very wrong of course ... the idea of the world as we see it being a "projection" of universals or "perfect forms" goes back to Plato ... but Augustine, in "City of God" synthesized the Judaeo / Christian vision with Plato ... Augustine realized that the God of the Bible was the reality of what Plato apprehended dimly.

He sees the Jews as being the thing which destroys the world, which infects the world. He uses the term “pestilence” in this sense—the Jews have infected the world. They’ve made the world not just impure in some kind of metaphorical sense—he really means it. And so the only way to purify the world—to make things go back to the way they’re supposed to be, to have a natural ecology, to go back to this struggle between races, which Hitler thinks is natural—the only way to do that is to physically eliminate the Jews.

 All our "big questions" of the day come back to "God or nature" -- Religion says God, ecology says nature. Hitler was an ecologist. One needed listen to an ecologist very long to hear that MAN is a "pestilence" -- Hitler was just a more selective ecologist. He felt that once the Jews were eliminated, nature would take it's course and the fittest would reign.

I worry a little bit now about, just very generally, that with the financial crisis; with the instability in the Middle East; with the Chinese economy tanking; with Russia breaking all the rules in Europe; and with people in Russia, in Europe, in North Africa more freely expressing anti-Semitic views—I worry a bit that we are tilting towards some kind of anti-globalization where the Jews, or somebody else, could become the explanation for why things are going wrong.

Humans LOVE to have a scapegoat! The Jews, the 1%, "the right", Christians, etc

Once you abandon God ... or the idea of  the "transcendent" if you just can't buy God, then you fall into what Nietzsche so courageously but tragically discovered -- the abyss. The utter meaninglessness of existence. Then you are DRIVEN -- to self destruction,  or to "the will to power" ... the creation of brand new mythology that comes from outside of reason.

A quick glance at mythology -- be it Nazism, Islam, Marxism, Progressivism, Atheism, Scientism, Historicism  ...  or from the non-believer POV, Christianity will inform you that they are not all "equal".

You WILL pick one ... or perhaps you have a great "will to power" and will invent your own, but it is at least incumbent on any thinking person to know what they serve.

'via Blog this'

Not Working -- American Style

Labor force participation rate falls faster in U.S. than elsewhere - Fortune:

The linked article gives some interesting facts that we don't see in the news much -- you can go look at them and it is worth it, but I'll summarize here.

1. Nearly a third of Americans are not working -- lowest participation since 1977
2. The US is the ONLY nation in the top 8 developed nations where this is happening -- even Japan, where the aging demographics problem is worse than here is not seeing it. 
3. Productivity is ALSO dropping -- at worst levels since '93.

The article doesn't say why -- nobody knows why officially. They hint that it MAY be due to "freelance / cash economy".

I'll give you my theory.

First, the personal case -- no doubt shared by a few million people that many would call "lucky". Add a pension to wife's income and realize that any supplementing to that is taxed at roughly 50% counting Federal and State. I can pull money out of what was saved over 34 years and if very careful, hold the tax rate to "low 40%" -- MN 10% tax on top of Feds (no FICA). 60% of your savings is a lot lower number ... it gives one a LOT of "pause".

As long as I was working and the massive taxes were being pulled out all the time, it was "just numbers". I was a VERY good tax bossie cow for the government. Had I not been fired, I would have no doubt continued to work 60+ hours a week, pour money into the TDSP tax trap, and pay out gigantic tax payments in the same stupid boiling frog manner as I did for 34 years. We have a few millions of people in this boat -- in what counts for a country these days, this is the "Happy Boat" --  but also the "patsy boat".  (if you go to a poker game and don't know who the patsy is, it's you!)

Then there is the starting out, struggling, broken (homes, addiction, criminal record, etc), low education / capability, boat. The $15 an hour minimum wage and under set -- $15 x 40 x 52 = $31,200 a year. Here is that bastion of conservatism, WaPO on welfare benefits for a single mom with two kids. Going through the whole article is a strain, but they end up giving a REPUBLICAN only 2 Pinocchios on their rating which is incredible -- they usually give the words of Jesus 3, and only Karl Marx is completely truthful from their POV!

It’s correct that a single parent can receive $35,000 in benefits, if he or she lives in one of the 10 states listed in the Cato report, or Washington, D.C. But the median welfare package, which would have been the relevant number to use, is about $28,800 — lower than Grothman’s figure.

If you go look at the Cato report, you have to get to the 41st from the top least state in benefits to dip below $20K ... Maine and $19,871. My belief is that people at the bottom of the income ladder react to incentives and disincentives exactly like those at the middle and the top. They aren't "lazy", nor are they stupid -- they are rational!

As a single mother with two kids, you can either:

(A). Stay at home and get from $20 - $35K a year
(B). Go to work 40 hours every week with no vacations and take in  MAYBE $31,200.

Does this strike you as a "tough choice"?

Stay at home and you can maybe take in a few other kids for cash daycare. If there is a guy that isn't a total deadbeat and doesn't beat your kids, he can shack up and hopefully add at least some part-time work to the kitty. Hell, if you can find a stand up guy that actually brings in that $31Kish number and you can manage to move to one of the over $30K welfare states ... say #14, Minnesota at $31,603, you are looking at $62K a year "family" income with one parent working! A hard working trucker in the US pulls down something in the $50K range.

So it isn't hard to understand at all why the bottom of the ladder isn't that into working anymore -- incentives to NOT work, DISincentives to work. Stupid is as stupid does!

In between we have a hodge podge --  the median income and most families are clustered around $50K a year, so it is easy to see that welfare type disbursements have a HUGE effect on OVER HALF of the "families" in the US. In fact, 40% of Americans get over half their income from the government!

Destruction of morality and families is critical to the "progressive" agenda to destroy America. Gay "marriage" is important since it further reduces any latent sense of morality, but heterosexual marriage and ESPECIALLY the idea that men flitting in and out of a mother's bed is somehow "immoral / wrong / socially bad / etc" is CRITICAL. Once the figure of God has been removed, the earthy embodiment in a human "Father" being removed is the next important step to destroy culture. For over half of the children in the US, we are already there.

The definition of "family" used to be mom taking care of kids and dad working. Now there is no definition of family -- but for roughly half of the "families" with children in the nation, the "economic father" is the government, and whoever happens to be in mom's bed is "some guy". He may or may not work -- if she is a "good and discerning woman" (by modern standards), he may work quite a bit and even hang around for awhile. The "family" may even be quite comfortable ... lots of "stuff", entertainment, etc. Isn't that what the "progressive family" is all about?

We have been doing this for a generation and we now find that a lot less people are working and those that are are less productive.

Oh, and "nobody knows why"!

'via Blog this'

Rule Of Used Toilet Paper

God vs. the Constitution in Kentucky - The New York Times:

When 5 people in robes with no authority at all (since they broke their vow to uphold the Constitution),  took the formerly sacred document to the bathroom and used it to wipe their asses on Obergefell (gay "marriage"), the media and left wing applauded. The 5 judges ought to have been removed, and if any government employees were to go to jail, it ought to have been them. That would have been "rule of law" and the proper people being "under, rather than above it".

Now the media and TP --(The Party - D), but "Toilet Paper" is also a good moniker for them, feels the excrement stained piece of garbage with "Constitution" scrawled at the top ought to be "sacred" once more. As with a gay "marriage" ... "sacred" only to beelzebub!

But it’s worth repeating once again: No one is telling Ms. Davis what she may or may not believe, or how to live her own life in accord with the dictates of her conscience and her God. What they are saying is that as an employee and representative of the government, she lives under the law, not above it.

Sorry, we have NO RULE OF LAW, only raw executive power, judicial conjuring and public opinion heavily influenced by noxious filth spewing orifices like the NY Times.

We used to have rule of law. If the country that was America wanted to define a "right" to gay "marriage" it was very simple. Write a Constitutional Amendment, pass it through both houses with 2/3 majorities, then have 3/4 of the states ratify it. We used to understand that -- see 19th Amendment!

THEN, there would be a "Constitutional right" to gay "marriage". It would still be wrong -- because it is a crime against God and a crime against nature, but it would THEN be law!

The Kentucky clerk is not an appealing spokesperson -- which the media will naturally make the most of. She should resign her job since this is a regime that is fast making it impossible for Christians to work in its employ. The time when it is impossible for Christians to even live openly in the territory controlled by the lawless cabal is perilously close.

The next time you hear about the latest obstacle DC has put in the way of people that want to avail themselves of a firearm post Heller, or some other locality making it impossible for people to get Concealed Carry permits, think of how they treat Ms Davis vs those people! LAW either applies the  TO ALL, or it isn't "law" unless you live in a totalitarian state rather than a Constitutional Republic ... hmmm, maybe we aren't paying attention?

What we "all live under" now is a fetid stew of tyranny consisting of mob rule, bureaucratic fiat, judicial whim and executive edict. We don't know the timetable or who will ultimately drive the random path to ruin --  dictator? populist mob? military? But it is very clear we have left the path of being a Constitutional Republic living under rule of law.

We seem rather ripe to be "Trumped" ... if not by Trump himself, by something.